White Privilege

I would ask what the charges were and examine the case before I charge off and say it was wrongful.

DA's tend not to waste their time trying to prosecute on shaky circumstantial or speculative evidence.

edited 1st May '12 6:18:28 PM by Barkey

@Starship: I didn't say that racial bias was non-existent. I was merely asserting that what we think is clear-cut starts getting screwy when one takes a closer look. Yes, blacks get shafted and that's wrong. But I still believe and maintain that the best way to confront that is to remove the logical basis for such discrimination.

Blacks are disproportionately poor? Let's help the poor and let minorities disproportionately benefit. They're viewed as ignorant? Work on education. Viewed as criminals? Give disadvantaged people more legitimate opportunities for life improvement.

And as the movers, shakers, and go-getters of various minority groups seize on these opportunities and use them to better themselves, the stereotypes that oppress them will start to vanish, simply because they will start to become less and less accurate.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

What the.... Scrib, two Mo Fs in the same freakin' hour? Is this some sort of record?

It was an honor

Since when has inaccuracy ever prevented people from relying on stereotypes?

You can't even write racist abuse in excrement on somebody's car without the politically correct brigade jumping down your throat!

@Wicked: actually, stereotypes general have their basis in reality. That's how they generally get started.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

I'm saying, stereotypes generally continue circulating themselves long after they become outdated or inaccurate.

You can't even write racist abuse in excrement on somebody's car without the politically correct brigade jumping down your throat!

Numbers on this is what I actually asked for. The point I was making implicitly is the one that Drunk made explicitly — when you control for other factors, like income and education, the numbers are much more even. You're much more likely to end up in jail if you're poor and white than if you're rich and black. However, black people are more likely to be poor. Is it a good thing that being poor makes you more likely to have trouble with the law, or that poor people are disproportionately black? Of course not. But it means that things like arrest and incarceration rates have more to do with income than race — which means that the fact that black people are arrested/imprisoned more often isn't racist. (The fact that black people are more likely to be poor is arguably a result of racism, but that wasn't the argument being made.)

If you have numbers that look at race alone, while controlling for other factors (ie, separating correlation from causation), then I'd be interested in seeing them.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

If they were ever accurate. Drunk's post 1380 is just wrong; stereotypes don't have to make sense when they're created at all.

edited 1st May '12 8:42:54 PM by BlackHumor

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

I can't think of any.

There's an underlying reason behind every stereotype, and most viewpoints are correct From a Certain Point of View.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

@Black Humor: So, stereotypes are spontaneously generated?

Dude, everything has a basis in reality. Even things you don't like.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

No, they're generated by people trying to justify a prejudice. They have a basis in reality alright, an artificial basis.

edited 1st May '12 9:15:15 PM by stripesthezebra

And I'm telling you and everyone else that this is not as accurate as you think. And since you're the one enamored of stats, I suggest you look into this. I know to be true as does any person of color, at least in NYC, so I have no need to look up stats to appease you in this instance.

On to Scrib's point, stereotypes are things that do generate from somewhere. Sometimes they come from a factual basis, other times, it's nothing more than supposition. The stereotypes that account for racial disparity tend to be both. We cannot deny that as less and less predominantly black and Hispanic inner-city neighborhoods become less poor and crime-ridden, the police cannot continue to justify stop and frisk policies or the extremely high number of arrests in these neighborhoods against white ones.

It was an honor

That predominantly black and hispanic communities are, on average, poorer and have more crime than white communities is not a stereotype. The stereotype is that black people and latinos are hoodlums from the ghetto by nature.

You don't see how the one feeds the other?

It was an honor

Of course I do, I'm not stupid. Yes, latinos, black people, and several other minorities are, on average, poorer than white people. The stereotype is that these groups deserve that because it's in their nature, which is bullshit. White people, at least in the states, came up with those stereotypes to justify the social order.

That's not the problem. Very few people believe that.

The problem is when people assume that someone who's a minority is poor, badly educated, and likely to commit a crime.

Statistically, they're not wrong. Which is why the stereotypes exist. That's the problem. Not that "other people" believe minorities are subhuman, or inferior by nature.

Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.

Stripes, I never thought you were stupid. I'm just saying what Ultrayellow just illustrated. In short, I don't see how we can fix one without fixing the other.

It was an honor

And also, it is not like model minorities like the Chinese are not stereotyped. I vaguely remember on the news there is a study that after the Victorian police gained power to randomly search people, Asians are twice as likely than white to get searched, with the blacks as high as five times more likely. Can't seem to find that study though.

Statistically, sure. But I've never once in my life encountered anything that could possibly justify a prejudice, or make me believe a stereotype. If some white people go around life assuming that blacks, latinos, etc. are all criminals and poor, then those white people are the ones who need to change.

&

As for the stuff about alleviating poverty, yes absolutely. It is an imperitive that we ameliorate the conditions that are so unfortunately common in minority communities. But many are against this, because they simply refuse to acknowledge that those conditions didn't come to be because minorities are more prone to poverty and criminality, but because of repairable social problems. That is, they believe stereotypes.

Also:

"That's not the problem. Very few people believe that"

Well, Drunk Scriblerian just went ahead and said that everything (which I take to mean all the stereotypes) has a basis in reality, whereas I was under the impression that the formerly widely propagated stereotypes that Jews are parasitic insects, black people are violent pseudo monkeys and asians are physically similar to rats/are yellow were, in fact, not based in reality at all. So enough people apparently believe it that we have someone on here who does.

That said, you're right, few people believe that. But it only takes a few people to really screw something up.

edited 2nd May '12 8:23:18 PM by stripesthezebra

Stereotypes being based in reality doesn't make them true. Racial stereotypes are indeed bigoted, but they didn't just appear out of thin air. Most were based on people's perceptions of those groups, which where influenced by actual trends. That said, stereotypes like "they control the world and are subhuman demons" have no logical basis at all, since they are entirely based on hatred.

edited 2nd May '12 8:41:44 PM by Boredman

cum

Yes well, a long time ago in the United States of America, black people were cursed with the unenviable position of slavery. Thus, the current trend at the time was for black people to be slaves. And so, the stereotype came about that blacks were naturally suited to be slaves to whites, not because they were, but because most black people in america were forced into that position, and many whites liked it that way. Like I said, the only basis in reality stereotypes have is an artificial one. Which, in reality, means about as much as no basis at all.

Most modern stereotypes about Black people are at least partially manufactured by the ruling class of Antebellum society. For example, fried chicken came about from the belief that slaves would steal one of the masters' chickens if they weren't watched carefully. Watermelon came about from slaves being given a watermelon and assuming it was a single-person food that was not to be eaten with utensils (in other words, the image of a "greedy, ignorant slave" trying to eat a watermelon by him/herself became symbolic with how subhuman they were).

edited 3rd May '12 1:13:40 PM by KingZeal

So again, we've established that race stereotypes are the Ur-Example of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. I think we're all in agreement here.

The point is, to destroy it we must attack in both fronts simultaneously. We have to challenge people's assumptions and then we tackle the statistics that feed the assumptions.

It was an honor

I agree totally with this.

edited 3rd May '12 2:24:27 PM by stripesthezebra

I'm still never sure how you can beat a stereotypical food stereotype. Particularly when the food itself is sufficiently tasty that you can't really convince people to stop eating it.

Fight smart, not fair.