Wrong doesn't even cut it. Your ideas about minimum wage are completely misguided.

Here's the original story, note it's from bigger:

So, my question is: why do you assume the unwanted kid who has a mother who hates him is black? Is it because he's bad academically and has problems reading?

Note: for those paying attention, this would seem to be an example of systemic, small-r racism that happens a hundred times a day in a lot of people, and is what us evil libruls are talking about.

Do I think bahbah is burning crosses on anyone's lawn or looking to reinstitute slavery, no of course not. Do I think that bahbah is an example of one of millions of people who perhaps even unconsciously think "kid having problems reading and a bad home, probably a black kid", yes I do. Do I think that bahbah doesn't understand that of course this could be a white kid or a Hispanic kid or a black kid or an Asian kid? Of course not. Is it telling that bahbah assumed it's a black kid that is in such a situation, yes it is.

Like, all I really deep down want is for people to be critical thinkers about this stuff and check the assumptions at the door and see if they make any sense! That should be what everyone who wants to take race out of the equation WANTS, right? Stop talking about it and the problem will go away because present racism doesn't exist?

So stop imputing negative images of black kids onto kids in bad situations, and positive images of white kids onto kids in good situations. That would be a nice start to your stated goal.

To take it a step further, lets create a society where those stereotypes are both inaccurate, and don't exist.

This is bah bah's modus operandi. There is a reason he is banned from other parts of this forum

lol good try. Although, bigger didn't specifically say the child/mother was black it was implied not only in that post of his (by bringing up racism), but also in the related post directly before it (which also talks about race and directly in regards to the African American race).


Another failed attempt by a 2+2er at making a conservative appear racist. Do liberals not see how sad this is? His last resort is to try to claim racism because he has no way of logically countering my argument. It is people like you that give trump a chance to win the election.

I struggled long and hard to respond to your post & the quote, at times thinking that really, perhaps we don't share sufficient common ground to enable any real exchange of value, at others trying to work up a critique of the quote (but then, what's the point if any thing I say is evidence of my lack of true consciousness), at other times wondering what you're goals itt are in order to better know how to interact with you; in the end I gave up, and what was left was the sense that I think you're using the critique of subjectivity to allow you to jettison anything that you don't agree with, without subjecting the same level of skepticism to things that you do agree with, and I think that's the wrong way to address problems of objectivity, and frankly surprising for someone so smart.

I'm pretty sure it's the people willing to vote for Trump that give Trump a chance to win the election.

Don't blame me for your own deficiencies.

Also note that the immediate defense is "you can't call me racist" when the expressed point was "just check your assumptions at the door", which he's completely unwilling to do. Because he LIKES those assumptions.

So, like, you have people who are completely unwilling to even examine their own views a little bit, yet persist in participating in what is supposed to be a discussion forum. What the holy **** is the point of interacting with you except for my own amusement?

Like, to be clear, when I call you "racist" to your face, it's not, generally speaking, because I want you to feel like a terrible awful person. I do think racism is awful, but sure, people can make mistakes.

I want you to think "hmm, do I perhaps have these views because I'm negatively stereotyping people, maybe I should think about this a bit more, why did I picture the kid with reading problems as black and the kid whose dad donated $50k to the school library to be white anyway".

So when you say "but I'm not racist", you think you're saying "no I'm really not a terrible person, how dare you call me that" but you're really saying "no, my views are my views and nothing you can say will make me think about them".

Bigger implied the child was black. Then master implied the child was black. I never even implied the child was black. I was responding to master's post and my convo wasn't really even about the child - I was responding to masters' generalization.

Please see line of posting here:

Again, nice try trying to make a conservative sound racist.

And note that this isn't an uncommon thing to do! If you take the time to read WN's links, it's the same problem that comes up in the blind resumes.

Imagine Steven Wartzengruber and DeJuan Jackson. You probably already have an image of what these people look like -- I know I do! If I told you one of them has red hair and freckles, and you had to bet your life on it, every one of us is putting our bet on Steve. If I told you one of them is black, you probably already know in your head which. And this isn't a particularly big deal.

When it becomes a big deal is when I ask you "which one do you think got arrested last year for selling drugs?" "Which one do you think got raised by a single parent?" "Which one went to a better public school?" Because these are all things that affect our perception of things like which one of them is more likely to be a good employee, and therefore which one I call for an interview. Which speaks to bigger's "everyone has the same opportunities". They don't. There is incontrovertible proof that they don't. (Yes, it's better than it used to be. I don't care.)

And we KNOW these biases exist, because of things like the studies WN posted about. And we KNOW that people either aren't aware of them, or are aware of them but think it's an Other People Problem, or are aware of them but think black people should just overcome it somehow anyway.

Bahbah, you don't really need my help to "sound" racist. Your words speak for themselves, and their racistness or lack thereof does not depend on my observation of the event.

If Bigger thought the race of the child was relevant, he would have said so! Evidence: in the other case, where the race of the people involved mattered, he said so! In this case he didn't! So it maybe didn't matter!

Do you think that, accepting your assumption that this particular kid is black ,that if he were white I wouldn't care about his plight? If you think that, please **** off until you change your views, because you're wrong and that's insulting.

Based on how you have approached a lot of the topics that have been discussed I would agree. I do not believe the issue is "common ground" so much as approach to new ideas. Just to use a for instance, take the discussing of Stalin, Furr, etc. It really is not important that we have a common ground on that issue (you think Stalin was likely a genocidal mass murderer, fine). What is concerning isn't that you believe that, it is that, when confronted with a viewpoint that challenges conventional wisdom, your attack (on Furr for instance) is basically "it is not even worth me reading an alternate viewpoint because it disagrees with conventional wisdom". Not only is that an anti-intellectual approach in a vacuum, but it is called further into question when conventional wisdom has been shaped by decades of self-serving propaganda. I am not saying that conventional wisdom is de facto wrong, just that the bias does exist which should all the more reason given one motivation to question what conventional wisdom is. So it is not that I am hoping you will agree with me, I am just hoping you will apply a critical eye to the conventional wisdom.

I think I have rarely resorted to writing something off purely because I don't agree with it. I believe in most situations I provide reasoning or evidence for the views I espouse. More often than not, I would say the alternate side is doing what you are talking about. That is, when I present a view that calls into question the Western paradigm, it is met with "well that is obviously wrong purely because of how different it is from what everyone 'knows' to be true". At least that is how I have seen it.

Like, the point of the blind resume studies is not "OMG look what awful people some business owners are!", though there are probably a small minority of hardcore racists out there. Those people are, I think we agree, 1) unreachable, and 2) really ought to be shunned*.

The people that are attempting to be reached are the people who have these images in their head (DeJuan is a kid from a bad school, probably doesn't have good values, is more likely to have a criminal record if I can't check to see if he has a criminal record), and get them to confront them. I can't possibly see how that's an ideal to be fought AGAINST?



* (Isn't one of the arguments in favor of letting employers do whatever they want in these areas is "the market will decide", and if by then not shunning such businesses are you not deciding "I'm the part of the market that supports racism?")

Because saying somebody might have unconscious racist tendencies hurts their fee fees

Whether deliberately or not, you've completely failed to grasp my rationale for a strong degree of skepticism regarding furr's work. This is exactly what surprises me.

Let's start with the simple stuff.

Can we all agree that if there are two resumes:

1) Steven Wartzengruber, BA in Political Science from Tulane, 3.2 GPA, no relevant work experience

and

2) DeJuan Jackson, BA in Political Science from Tulane, 3.2 GPA, no relevant work experience

that these two people should be treated as equally qualified for the job, right? There's no non-racist reason that an employer would call Steven for an interview and not DeJuan?


(WN, please correct me if I'm misrepresenting these studies.)

Fwiw, I'm completely open to "west bad" as a line of argument, but I think "& Stalin pol pot, Mao etc good" as a follow on is a fallback into a tired 1970s Manichean line of thinking that is morally and intellectually bankrupt

This is exactly what I was talking about yesterday. There's a whole mini population of people who feel this way. I don't know the first thing about political science or how to analyze this phenomena, but it does seem like in the last 150 years racism hasn't really dissipated as much as its morphed from a conscious choice to a subconscious standard among a large group.

Dwetzel, why do you think there are so many people with racist tendencies who sincerely believe they are not racist? How do you overcome something like this if the goal is to illuminate their prejudices? Will you convince them they are racist? Probably not, so whats your strategy?

Nobody likes to admit they have flaws, so that there are people with issues that aren't self-aware isn't exactly a shocking revelation.

I mean, I always start by trying to reason with them. If they admit they have latent racist tendencies (note that admitting this doesn't mean they're admitting to be a terrible person!), that's the first step to addressing the issue. Then we can talk about things like "ok, a lot of people do that, what are the effects of that on things like education and job opportunities and what can we do in terms of policy to achieve greater equality in these areas". But it makes no sense to do that with someone who doesn't admit there's an issue.

If they don't admit that, you try to point out to them that yes they do, using reasonable examples like the resume studies and "what do you picture when I give you these two names" that are completely neutral and shouldn't trigger defensive anger in rational people. Ideally, statistical analysis can at least get people to admit a lot of OTHER people have this issue.

If, after doing that, people are still like "blah blah you're just trying to call me racist, there's no issues", then, frankly, **** them, they're part of the problem and are actively avoiding being part of the solution, so at that point no I don't really care about whether trying to eliminate the effects of their tendencies offends or disadvantages them, and if it makes me feel better to make them feel like **** I don't really care; they already proved they are not reachable.

I tend to assume, apparently falsely, that people participating in a discussion forum are at least open to discussion of things like this and recognizing that studies show there are actual problems in the world that need actual fixing. Obviously that's a silly assumption and most people just post to hear themselves talk.

The methodologies are sometimes more complex but that is the kind of comparison they are trying to get to. So, for example, in this one from 2014, they say (from the abstract):

I'm not sure every study of the resume effect involves only applicants with college degrees, but that one does. The methodology and literature review sections at the beginning of these papers are usually worth reading. You can get a summary of other related research and a feel for the methods.

Little changes in methods lead to interestingly different outcomes. For example, this other 2014 study, which is similar in many ways, didn't find a racial bias. But, they used only the last names "Jefferson" and "Washington" to try to signal that applicants were black. So their fictional black applicant was "Ryan Washington" or "Ryan Jefferson" (p. 3). The study that did find a bias also used the Washington and Jefferson last names (which really are highly correlated to African-Americans), but paired them with first names "DeShawn" and "DeAndre" (p. 7).

So, how do you interpret the difference? There are at least a few possibilities. One is that employers don't recognize Washington and Jefferson as black names, in which case the other study is kind of a nice control and suggests that the bias found in the first study is meaningful.

Another possibility is that names like DeShawn trigger expectations about socio-economic status that are highly correlated to race but don't entirely reduce to race. The authors of the first study tried to use local addresses to signal socio-economic status (cf. p. 12), but it may be that the connotations of "weird sounding first name" overwhelmed that. In any case, everything is always complicated but I do think studies like this demonstrate some sort of implicit racial bias.

Thanks WN.

Even there, of course, I'd note that if it is names with a "strong socioeconomic correlation" that aren't necessarily tied to race, that's merely a different sort of bias to be eliminated, isn't it?

If the discussion shifts from "racial problems" to "class problems", and such will actually solve the problems, that's fine. I'd note though that there's a very strong correlation between the people who insist there are no racial problems and the people who think we should do even less than we do now to reduce economic inequality.

I don't sound racist.

Bigger brought up the issue of race in that post. I don't know if he intentional didn't say the specific race, but by reading that post and the one before it he strongly hinted at the race of the child.

Again, go back to the conversation. I was not the one that assumed the kid was black. I think you are getting me confused with another poster. Master was the one that said the kid was black. I was the one that asked master about his post that generalized black people.