Racism, Sexism, Antisemitism and other things one can unwittingly be

It's a tough call, really. If educators and legislators cater to minorities, it can come off as condescending, which it is some ways. On the other hand, many young African Americans are still being subliminally encouraged to pursue careers in entertainment and food service, either through television and music, or through limited access to educational resources such as the internet and public libraries. Really fast: name ten black public figures who aren't the president and aren't working in entertainment or sports. Minority parents are aware of this, and I see several minority parents bringing their children to the library because they can't afford internet access at home. Being able to come home and jump on Wikipedia so you can read about the Crusades or gravitational forces makes a world of a difference.

Recent studies have shown that children with home internet access are more likely to score in the upper percentile on standardized tests than those without home access. There is also a correlation between minorities without home access and whites with home access. You should be able to find the data on the Department of Education website or on the NSF website. This was one of the key issues that kept coming up in those EPSCOR meetings.

To fuel Gabrael's argument, there are some poor white students who fall into the "left behind" category, but on the whole, minorities are still the lowest ranked. Gabrael's home town has one of the largest percentages of white residents of any city in Central Arkansas next to Bald Knob, Rosebud, Beebe and a few others. You know what all of these towns have in common? They're flagrantly racist as fuck and poor as fuck. They also have a large number of laborers without a HS diploma. The Arkansas State Police actually set up a task force solely devoted to fighting meth producers and dealers in the towns I just listed, partly because meth is one of the quickest ways to make money. These meth dealers in turn form allegiances with white supremacists, some of whom Gabrael has already mentioned. An art project, music lessons or a science fair can make the difference between a well-balanced, open-minded adult and a close-minded HS dropout who is too stupid to realize that referring to African Americans as "coons" fell out of fashion quite a damn while back. I really didn't like typing that word.

I don't entirely agree with Gabrael's argument, but I've noticed from personal observation that many whites in Arkansas resort to joining hate groups and dealing drugs because they either don't perceive their potential for social and intellectual mobility or because the appearance of social mobility is so vague that many whites refuse to acknowledge it when the issue comes up. I have an article that adequately explains the concept of white privilege and why many white Americans refuse to acknowledge it, but I don't think it's quite on-topic. It should be on the first page of the "White Privilege" thread if anyone is interested.

This is partly the reason why you hear about KKK members preaching about how they represent an oppressed group because they allegedly have no protected rights. They look at towns like Bald Knob and Vilonia as evidence and say "see, we are oppressed because these towns are full of white people, and they can't economically sustain themselves". The reality is that they're just miserably poor, and the supremacists perpetuate that economic and intellectual poverty. To me, this represents a clear difference between the "oops, I'm being a thoughtless asshole" racism and the "I'm going to hang anyone who doesn't have porcelain skin" racism because the former group is being led by one of the latter.

edited 5th Sep '12 12:39:36 AM by Aprilla

While it doesn't completely explain it, it is fairly true that race is often America's proxy for social class in the European sense — possibly because using it means not having to acknowledge that the "American Dream" of social mobility is bullshit for a goodly proportion of the population.

A brighter future for a darker age.

@ Aprilla, who's fault is it that black kids don't think they can be doctors or presidents?

You know I am really big on parental envolvement. I get having limited resources. Hell, I do. But I have yet to see how that is an even a viable excuse anymore. I applaude the parents who take their kids to the library or use the tutoring programs at the schools. I know statistically that blacks preform lower at ATU, but if you look at who is using the library aids, tutoring sessions, and what not it's Asians first, than whites. All you have to do is make an appointment. The stuff is free. So how come they're not using it at the rate of other races?

ATU actually sends recruiters to China now. Why not? They can't get any funding from our government and international students pay double if not triple. Without my Saudi Engineering friends the tutoring program probably couldn't fund itself. It sucks but they don't have much of a choice.

Why would just taking the race and gender slot off of the ACT be so bad? In a way, wouldn't that be positive encouragement? "Look! They will only know my score! They won't judge me for being black/female/hispanic/green!" Let your scores speak for yourself. I know standardized tests suck. I took my fair share. But it paid for my undergrad so I can't knock it. I gave a damn because I knew no scholarship, no college, no future thanks to my dad.

I can see the hopelessness that some of my former classmates have over escaping their situations being very similar to the hopelessness an impoverished black family will have in Conway. The difference is at if they look at the scholarship form of UCA, the black kid should feel more empowered. Look at all the money they can try for! But take the same level white kid, well. Let's hope they are the statistic that tests better.

That's not helping the problems. It is condesending to the black kids because it says they're too stupid for the standardized test scholarship so they need help just because of their color. It tells white kids they don't matter and they have to work harder because they're white. It contributes to the "but I didn't own slaves" mentality just as strong as "white man's keeping me down" perspective.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Jeez, guys, how am I supposed to keep up with this when you insist on having such a fast-paced, dynamic conversation?

@Gabrael (all the way back to post #257): No, I meant privileged, although wealth is a type of privilege. Do you think that privilege doesn't exist within the African-American community? Spike Lee had something to say about that.

@Everyone: Privileges are nothing more than unearned advantages. Everyone has some sort of privilege. Some of us have relatively more than others. No matter how much injustice you experience, there is always someone over whom you have an unfair advantage. It's even possible for two people to have unfair, unearned advantages over each other, which is one of the implications of the argument I was making back in post 47.

The problem I am pointing out (and this affects Aprilla's argument as well) is that it's primarily the more privileged members of minority communities that benefit from the biased policies of universities like the one Gabrael is attending, or from government policies that are intended to correct discrimination against a minority group (like AA is).

Both Gabrael and Aprilla are right, and both are wrong, in the sense that if poor rural whites selectively compare themselves to privileged members of minority communities they have good reason to believe that they are in fact the victims of injustice, yet the more numerous non-privileged members of those same minority communities are also victims of injustice.

Gabrael's college's policies sound like a case of going too far- how can they justify accepting no grants specifically for white people in a state that suffers from such high degrees of rural white poverty? It doubly makes no sense in that they are helping to perpetuate the very conditions that overt racists are able to take advantage of. Giving a break to poor whites ultimately helps heal social conflicts, which in turn is good for everyone, even poor blacks.

On the other hand, blaming people (whites or blacks) for failing to understand the full implications of their attitudes for their hypothetical enlightened self-interest (a la "What's the Matter With Kansas") is unrealistic and unfair (upper middle class people like me get handed their opportunities with much less effort than we expect from poor people on welfare or holding down multiple jobs). Yeah, it's easy to take your kid to the library, but it's more important to keep them inside where they wont get shot.

The whole deal with systemic injustice is that it's systemic. As proud of our individualism as we may be, as much as we would like to think that pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is all it should take, that's a cultural myth which makes a poor basis for social policy, whichever way you apply it (against poor whites or poor blacks). You cant correct a systemic injustice with individual action. That's the lesson the environmental folks had to learn a generation ago. That was the point of my confessional.

Yet it's very difficult to write policies that offer opportunities to one minority without penalizing another. Colorblind testing, for example, would discriminate against non-privileged people of color while not doing anything really for underclass whites. It looks good, it might be a symbolic action of some kind, but it wouldn't really change the rates at which different types of people are able to get into college. The privileged members of the different communities would still have the advantage.

Unfortunately, I dont have a magic bullet to offer here. I do know that trying to identify who is deserving, and who is undeserving, of receiving various benefits is the wrong direction to take. The right direction uses population statistics, and rates of rising and falling standards of living as it's basis.

That, of course, goes directly against the political climate we are in.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Good summation. This whole problem of inadvertent racial disparity is depressing to say the least.

Looking at Aprilla's statement, I do wonder if we simply eradicate extreme poverty if the situation will resolve itself.

edited 5th Sep '12 7:55:46 AM by TheStarshipMaxima

It was an honor

@ Gabrael:

Same in Britain and in most other developed countries I guess — foreign*

students bring in the money. When I was at University, there were several Chinese students I knew, including one from Hong Kong, and others from Jamaica, Sweden and one from Saudi Arabia on a connected course. Actually, knowing and being friends with people outside your area can help with Racism, Sexism and other -isms...

edited 5th Sep '12 8:07:21 AM by Greenmantle

Keep Rolling On

So true. It's too bad we can't force people accused of bigotry into a mandatory 14-week friendship program with people who are "other"......

It was an honor

De Marquis, I get what your saying but I still fail to see how if a University is giving money to kids just because they're black, they're already privledged. There are plently who were as bad or even worse off than my family financially and educationally, and due to these programs geared specifically towards them, they are doing better. Not great, but better.

What actually constitues a priviledge?

We are trying to perfect the system we have here. With the CORE program they are trying to undo some of the damage of No Child Left Behind that ravaged our state across the board. That will take time. But we still evaluate these with standardized tests. My ACT was essay as well as fill in the blank. That's more liberal then the tests my son will be taking next year. People are going to have to get better at these in general or everything will just get cyclic.

You can't even get into a college without a high enough standardized score anyway. We can't run from them. Why not embrace them?

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

@Gab: "De Marquis, I get what your saying but I still fail to see how if a University is giving money to kids just because they're black, they're already privledged."

You have the direction of causation backwards. They aren't privileged because they receive money from the grant, it's because they were already privileged within their community that they were able to go get the money. The privileged status happened first.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Within the community? Not likely.

Again, what constitutes a privilege?

Any kid can look at the college and see there is money there if they can just score a high enough ACT to get in. That's a level field.

Now both races have the problem of just saying it's too hard or wanting the "easy way out" without just going to their school counselor or doing their own research so they sell drugs instead. That's a cultural problem, not an institutional one. A lot of the white guys around here go armed forces.

Almost all the schools, even po-dunk El Paso have job fairs. So it's not like the oppertunities to find access to these programs need a map and super secret decoder rings. As I mentioned with the tutoring program, people are throwing all sorts of resources around. But the kids have to give a damn enough to want to use them.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Bits and pieces of De Marquis' comments are more or less what I was arguing earlier. A privilege is basically an unearned advantage. It is a social, intellectual or economic advantage (often all three) acquired through the social standing of one's family. To put things a little bit more on-topic, this often means that a privileged person's world view can be narrower in scope, specifically with regard to awareness and sensitivity to the disadvantages of other people. That, in turn, can lead to nasty ideas like "why do they need welfare so badly?" or "I worked to get to where I am, why can't they do it? Because they're a naturally lazy bunch of people who want handouts?" That was what I interpreted from De Marquis' confessional - this mythological idea that we live in a meritocracy where hard work is a ticket to success.

To extend Gabrael's point, feelings of inferiority or incompetence start at the home. Someone mentioned Spike Lee earlier. I'm not especially fond of him in certain aspects, but he once famously said that parents can destroy or elevate a child's dreams more than anyone else in society. Fear, hatred, and misunderstandings also begin at the home, and children bring these misunderstandings into schools, and later into the workplace.

edited 5th Sep '12 10:27:10 AM by Aprilla

@Gab: "Within the community? Not likely."

Why not? What makes you think that social institutions do not favor certain members of minority communities over other members?

"Any kid can look at the college and see there is money there if they can just score a high enough ACT to get in. That's a level field."

Well, scoring a high ACT isn't based simply on one's own inherent academic ability. Where you went to school, and who your parents were, has a lot to do with it. Even the probability of considering college as a reasonable option for oneself will depend on the role models one has been exposed to. All unearned advantages, and therefore all are forms of privilege.

I think you are underestimating the effect that the environment has on children's attitudes. The number one predictor of childrens reading ability is the number of books that their parents owned. Not whether they actually read any of these books to their kids (they controlled for that). It's simply the physical presence of the books that matters, and that's likely because of the positive attitude toward reading the parents are projecting. Children adopt the attitudes of the adults around them, it isn't reasonable to expect otherwise. And since role models are not distributed in our society evenly or randomly, it's an unearned advantage, a function of your families' socio-economic status. A privilege.

I'm not making any distinction between culture and other social institutions. Children don't pick their culture any more than they pick their school district.

So- my point? Not that poor people of any color literally have no opportunity to improve themselves- obviously they do- but that the difficulty of taking advantage of those opportunities (opportunity cost?) is greater the lower your economic status is. We expect poor people to work harder to take advantage of opportunities that members of the Middle Class can get much more easily (and rich folk get handed on a platter). This is unjust, and a form of privilege.

This fuels racism, etc. because it leads to a social situation in which members of different demographic communities actually have a reasonable justification for disliking each other (the lower ranking members of both groups, after all, are being discriminated against).

I guess I'm saying more or less what Aprilla is saying, except much less clearly. My apologies.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

I am the middle of three. My sister is only two years older than me. She is barely a high school graduate. She is an ignorant racist. Example: I had to explain to her that introducing my black boyfriend as "Don't worry! He's not here to rob us!" isn't a polite thing. Totally blew her mind.

We both had the same poverty level, same parents, lived through the same tumultuous childhood, in the same racist, inadequate education system, and live in the same town. She passed high school on pity. She's never taken the ACT. She's never been to school of any kind. She got lucky with a secretary job and has a very unstable relationship with her 3 year old daughter. She has dangerously high cholesterol and self esteem issues among other things at just 28 years old.

I, only two years behind, graduated with honors and a few hours of college credit, speak 4 languages and can translate 6 more. I am the first in my family to get even one Bachelor's, but I have two. I paid for my own college with a perfect ACT score. I kept in school even with being left pregnant at 19. My son can understand two languages and loves me dearly. I am in decent shape and run 5 miles a day.

Same family. Two drastically different outcomes.

Environment is important yes, but at some point you have to take responsibility for yourself. Even if you are impoverished and weren't given a lot of options, even the most common person can make the connection staying home and doing drugs isn't the best way to solve it.

Sometimes some of the best innovators and role models we have were the first to break out regardless of environment. Why is it black kids here want to be like Kanye West and not Richard Wright? Most of the kids from my high school who joined the military did so because that was their way to escape being white trash forever.

I look at the Hispanic kids next door. Their dad works 14 hours. Their mother doesn't have much English. But the kids they watch will sit outside to do their homework, helping each other. Sometimes the older girls will even ask for my help. They don't have the resources. They don't even have a car. They draw their words in the dirt. They speak better English than me.

We as a society if we want to ease these tensions can't keep throwing resources in all the wrong ways. I'm not saying we need to throw everyone aside and tell them to get up or shut up. But we do need to open more dialogues between groups, stop self segregating as much (My school district was rezoned just last year so that more minorities could be included).

As I said in the job thread, Don't make it your fault if you're not where you want to be. If you can do something about it, do it.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Gabe, I don't want to...incite...anything, but I genuinely am curious. Why do you think that you were able to take the same crap hand dealt to your sister and those around you and yet you've completely defied expectations?

And off topic, Kanye West isn't a bad person to look up to, even if he is an asstard .

It was an honor

Simple. I killed the Batman!

In all honesty I have no idea. I have been asked that before, both from people who don't believe my sister and I share DNA as well as when people see/hear where I went to grade school.

I'm just me.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

@Gab: Well, sure, no one here is arguing that individual differences have no effect, or that we shouldn't celebrate people who succeed against the odds. But I do hope you realise that just because one can point to certain individuals who have been exemplar in raising themselves above their circumstances, we cant judge an entire population or community because they collectively do not resemble the exemplars. That's arguing from anecdotal data. That said, you should be proud of yourself.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

We can judge a population by those who push ahead. We should if we want to know how successful these outreach programs are. Are they really special little snowflakes or did they just use what was there? A kid gets a 20 on the ACT can get in college. If they're black, their ride is paid here. That is a big boost that came from little effort. Most of those scholarships only require a 2.5 gpa. That's not that hard. ACT scholarships require 3.5 gpa with extra hours.

Setting aside so many resources specifically for minorities, sometimes at the expense of a majority, will create tension and apprehension. In Arkansas even more so because of our messed up history with racism and sexism. We need to evaluate is the cost worth the benefits versus the actual effectiveness as Aprilla pointed out.

If we keep acting like it takes some sort of superman or divine miracle to make it work, how can we encourage a cultural shift to actually get people invested enough to care and use the resources available?

If people can't be motivated to change their educations, then how can we motivate them to be more open in their cultural perspectives? It's the cycle of complacentcy that encourages the tensions of differences.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

I'm tempted to disagree with you, but I don't quite follow what you mean.

It sounds like your underlying argument is that society shouldn't metaphorically take a hammer to situations that require more thought and surgical precision. Affirmative Action has been clumsy in practice mainly because it was so broad and sweeping in its implementation, and quality control in many professional and academic environments was compromised as a result.

I get it is hard to escape poverty or a bad home or a bad education. Minorities have extra hurdles to jump. But just because someone jumps them and moves to something better doesn't mean they are some special, gifted case all the time. And we as a society shouldn't be to quick to say they "beat the odds" when all they did was make use of the current resources.

A poor immigrant who fights the system to get full scholarship to America has beaten the odds. A minority kid who just accomplishes a basic ability to study and is handed scholarships due more to their color than their academic merit is not beating the odds. They are using the tools of the system to their advantage.

This phrasing makes their accomplishment palpable to their community. You don't have to be a super brainiac to get into college. Hell, there are a vast multitude of minority grants for trade schools like contractors or heating and air apprenticeships. Most any minority can do this.

And we as a society need to make that reality known. You can either blow time and energy on trying to be the next Jay-Z or Calle 13. Or you can go to UCA, get a BA or BS that is all but giftwrapped for you, and have a gaurenteed chance.

It is not as impossible as people think. And the minority communities need to be made aware of that because the majority communities are. It would be hard for a white person to fill empathy for a black person about college being so out of reach when they have more guides to get them in and keep them in. Making those who have gone through it out to be something unique and so special doesn't help break the complacent, "I'm trapped here" or worse, "White man's keeping me down" attitudes.

Because even if the minority community doesn't see their chances, I gaurentee their poor white counterpart probably does. Giving someone special treatment will cause resentment. People whining about being in a negative space, but not investing in the resources provided to them to overcome it will cause even more resentment.

Demistify the process of getting an education. Humanize the people who actually do the work. And more people should make use of these resources. More people use it, the less of a need for the special treatment, society becomes a more equal and culturally sensative, we can get rid of the special treatment as it becomes obsolete or refocus our needs to other avenues of equality.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Eh...I kind of sorta get what you're saying, but it has an overly simplistic socio-economic rhetoric to it that doesn't sit well with me. I'll leave it at that.

In the words of the Dude: "Yeah, well...you know...like, that's just like, uh...your opinion, man."

Odds do not work that way. And neither do minority-based scholarships.

edited 6th Sep '12 4:30:36 AM by KingZeal

Aprilla, what other solutions are there? It won't happen overnight. It won't be easy. But we can't keep giving special treatments that aren't working as effectively as we like. Again, a cost benefit point. You made that point.

If a certain outreach program isn't working we need to see why and either modify or scrap the program. Are blacks not entering UCA and ATU (less so) because they don't know about all these programs or options, they don't know how easy it can be to get in, or they don't care?

The first two can be remedied by everyone. The last, they'll have to deal with on their own.

It's a waste of resources and intensifying racial tensions if it's not working right. That's why it's not something we can just hope works itself out.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

What basis do you have to assume these things aren't working?

Saying "they don't work perfectly, so get rid of them" is a Perfect Solution Fallacy.

I think Gab, Aprilla and I are in violent agreement with each other (ie, there dont appear to be any major disagreements left, just minor nit picks, like rhetorical style).

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Speaking of affirmative action, there was this study a while back on a law school with affirmative action policies. They found that the students who only managed to get in because of affirmative action did score lower grades as a group than the rest of the students. However, when the school studied the same students years after graduation, and evaluated them on things like salary, quality of life, the awards they won, their job satisfaction, they found no significant discrepancy between the two groups.

Just some food for thought regarding affirmative action, imo.

"You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be."