It's a complicated question. I personally don't have a problem with ethnic jokes as long as they're funny (and since most jokes are at somebody's expense, I'd say that they often are funny). But if you want to discourage someone telling them, the easiest way is to simply not laugh.

As far as 'white people' jokes...sometimes they're funny, but I occasional;y get annoyed (not offended) at white people slinging them around since it kind of seems like a lame stab at 'cool,'..as if they're offering themselves up as exceptions or something, which just seems to reek of self-hatred to me.

For an caucasian equivalent to 'nigga,' I offer 'whiteboy.' I've referred to myself as one and everytime I've been called one, even by nonwhites it's been with a measure of affection- 'whiteboy knows his stuff' etc.

Sorry, for the long answer but I've always been of the opinion that there's certain cultural contexts where the explicit idea is to get as offensive as possible and that if people can't handle that they should look elsewhere, which seems fair enough.

I think it's different when it's a majority group, because of the very fact of the majority (I didn't make this opinion up--it's pretty widespread among social scientists, feminists, etc.). Others around here (occhiblu and Miko come to mind, which isn't intended to exclude anybody else) have said it better than I could, but, briefly, there are power dynamics at play.

It's not equivalent because "average white guys" have been in power in Western society for as long as there's been Western society. People who make the argument about reverse racism have a fundamental misunderstanding of the stakes involved, and are likely to dismiss racial jokes anyway as being simply words. What they don't understand, or don't want to see, is that the reason that racial or ethnic jokes can be offensive is not because they hurt people's feelings, but because they're a shorthand reminder of social and political policies designed to disenfranchise certain groups. The argument against Jew jokes, for instance, is not that they lead to things like the holocaust, that's ridiculous. It's that they belong to the same philosophical (sic) construct which lead to the holocaust. One need not hate Jews to make such a joke, but the logic of the joke is constructed around a politics of exclusion (and often hate).

The shock jock n-word thing is interesting. There was an attempt by, I think, a student of color group in Michigan to counter all of the team names related to Indians by selling shirts with the term Whitey on them. They couldn't keep them on the shelf, they were snapped up so quickly by white folks, precisely because the term isn't equivalent. The shock jocks, and often people who make the "just the same" argument, come across to me as primarily jealous. In that sense, there is a hint (a small one) of equivalency, since what they're getting is a taste of being on the outside with no acceptable way in.

One of the reasons that this is so hard to discuss with folks, aside from a general level of willful stupidity in those who make the argument, is that they confuse personal hardship with the hardship of a whole group of people. It's an ahistorical argument, sometimes exacerbated by a justifiable anger that race is the explicitly understood term of exclusion in the US, and class is occluded and denied, although it's equally powerful.

I don't have an answer for you. My friends (especially my non-white friends) think it's terrible that I answer to "Hey, Whitegirl!" I can't manage to be offended.

In most contexts, I agree with what omiewise said. If you live where whites are the minority, it's slightly different, though I guess not too much (since in the wider US context I'm still the majority). I'm not sure that made sense.

I'm not sure anyone can come up with a good, universal, convincing, zingy response to this. Some people who don't agree with (or understand) the the whole 'cultural context' argument are just idiots, sure, but others perhaps just have a different moral framework.

Perhaps they are moral absolutists, who don't subscribe to the ideas of moral/cultural relativism or consequentialism (I believe the technical term is deontologists, but I could be wrong). To them, for example, stealing is intrinsically wrong regardless of the consequences - so stealing a loaf of bread from Walmart is every bit as wrong as stealing from your local baker's. If that's what you believe, then it would be fair to argue that mocking any racial group is equally bad, regardless of that racial group's history/social position.

I'm not arguing for moral absolutism, or saying that I subscribe to it myself. I'm just saying that you may end up finding out, if you call someone out on this, that you have very different approach to morality from them, on the most fundamental level. This means you're more likely to end up in a weeks-long, indecisive, mother-of-all-arguments fight, rather than quickly exposing a flaw in their reasoning.

Hee. I've been invoked. I feel like someone should say my name three times.

I think box is right, it does have to do with power, and some things are acceptable (if maybe not ideal) going one way that would be totally unacceptable going the other way. Think of it on an actual established hierarchy: Workers making fun of the boss are not really dangerous; they're just blowing off steam, or bonding -- there's even a culturally sanctioned ritual for this with "roasts," where being mocked is elevated to an honor.

But a boss joking about his employees is considered a bit cruel. She has real power over their lives, and her criticisms, even if joking, hurt more -- not only personally but also economically. I may be missing something, but I can't think of a culturally sanctioned way that authority figures can safely mock subordinates.

Because there's nothing "safe" about it. That person has actual power over you.

Obviously, every single majority-group member does not have absolute power over an individual minority-group member. But there's still the possibility there -- one straight guy mocking a stranger for being a fag can get the stranger beaten; one white woman joking that a black co-worker is nappy-headed can keep that co-worker from being promoted; one university president mocking women for the way they play with toy trucks can keep those women from getting tenure (for example...).

There's still too much sexism, homophobia, racism, and other discrimination with real life economic and physical consequences for those sorts of jokes, delivered by a members of in-power groups, to be safe.

Whereas we'd have to construct some hugely elaborate scenarios for the reverse to be true -- I'm walking through Harlem at night wearing an expensive watch, and someone starts whistling at the white girl, for example. But that still depends on me being the minority figure in that scenario, and doesn't translate to a generalized threat.

Typical whiteboy answers.

I'm sorry but to me, a lot of the handwringing seems to be educated white people trying to deal with guilt feelings. And I reject the concept of collective guilt, since it's way too close to the consept of original sin.

One need not hate Jews to make such a joke, but the logic of the joke is constructed around a politics of exclusion (and often hate).

Well, how far do you want to take that? Almost all humor is at someone's expense. What are we going to be left with: puns and knock-knock jokes? People pretending that saying the right words actually changes anything. Given a choice between vulgarity and banality, I'll take vulgarity. We'll never make any progress past prejudice in this world until we start talking honestly and linguistic correctness and over-analysis of minutia strikes me more as prissy puritanism than real engagement.

(Sorry for the gender flip in the midst of my comments. I'm working on more inclusive gendered language and failing. Sigh.)

omiewise, remember Higgers Drugs on Connecticut Avenue? Cracked me and my honky friends up everytime we passed by.

one white woman joking that a black co-worker is nappy-headed can keep that co-worker from being promoted;

Pips teaches at a 100% non-white school in the South Bronx, and one of her students was passing a petition (with lots of signatures already on it) to bring Imus back. FWIW.

And also, when it comes to these issues, it's very difficult to venture a dissenting opinion without being branded a racist/misogynist/homophobe* which tends to stifle actual dialogue and merely exacerbates existing divisions, IMHO.

*not saying anybody's done that, I'm just saying

I'm working on more inclusive gendered language and failing.

That's the biggest problem with all this. Wanting to get rid of prejudical language is admirable (if a bit quixotic and deluded), but the alternatives proffered are so sterile and banal that anyone who loves language is turned off.

Well, how far do you want to take that?

Is six million far enough, or do you think we should go farther?

I don't see any arguments for puritanism in this thread, and I think it's a straw man, a real honest to goodness complete fabrication for the sake of arguing something else entirely. The issue, as my whole post made clear, is not that the humor is at someone's expense, but that we know what the terms of that expense are. Neither is there a concept of collective guilt at operation here, there's a concept of history and sociology.

If, from the time your sister was conscious you'd kicked the shit out of her everyday for being a tattle tale, a joke about her being a tattletale when she's 15 isn't simply going to be at her expense, it's going to contain an implied threat. Even if you stopped kicking the shit out of her daily two years before.

The thing is, jon, this discussion, this is "real engagement." It's engagement with history and consequences as well as feelings and attitudes. Dismissing it as hand-wringing is not only wrong, it's disingenuous because it assumes that talking about these things somehow serve to preserve the status quo more than a nigger joke does. It's just a ludicrous assertion.

(But then you and I have been through this argument before, and I continue to not understand your point, not even a little bit.)

omiewise, remember Higgers Drugs on Connecticut Avenue? Cracked me and my honky friends up everytime we passed by.

dano, that's so weird, not only do I remember it, I was just thinking about it a few minutes ago. I wasn't sure then, and I'm not sure now, what called the memory up, but I was sitting here in this very chair thinking about it and how it got changed to a CVS. (I worked next door at Politics and Prose for many years.)

the alternatives proffered are so sterile and banal that anyone who loves language is turned off.

Like using "she" occasionally? I'm not sure that's particularly sterile or banal. Especially as I still keep seeing "Dr. So and So" in the articles I'm in the midst of reading and immediately assuming it's a guy. Which is exactly the problem some of this is trying to solve -- how do you create the levelest playing field you can, in which every individual can do his or her best and be judged on the same criteria? To me, creating that means being sensitive to historical reality and modifying our behaviors accordingly -- both in not making sexist/racist/etc jokes and in not getting all up in arms when we [member of whatever in-group's appropriate] are "discriminated against," since in reality it's just not happening all that much. I don't think it's that big of a burden, given what other groups are required to overcome.

I'm sorry but to me, a lot of the handwringing seems to be educated white people trying to deal with guilt feelings

jonmc, you are relying again too on this ad hominem argument. Dismissing a moral objection as 'handwringing' and suggesting that it results from personal guilt feelings is just an attempt to undermine the social standing of the person speaking, and does not actually address the argument that humor directed at an entire class of people is typically based on the power structure defined by the dominant culture. I think you need to address the argument on moral grounds, not on grounds that would assume that anyone who objects to your point of view a) is white and b) feels guilty, because those are not the questions at issue.

Almost all humor is at someone's expense

In homogenous cultures, there's still humor. Instead of basing it on assumptions and stereotypes applied to an entire class of individuals, it's based on human foibles, character traits, mistaken identity, confusions, misheard words....I could go on, but suggesting that a world without racist jokes would be a humorless world isn't accurate.

Folklorists tend to have kind of an interesting take on jokes, anyway. A lot of them assert that jokes are something other than just humor - almost every joke imaginable plays on an anxiety of some kind: sexual, racial, class, ethnic, appearance, safety, death, tragedy, illness. Jokes don't really exist to make us laugh; they use the power of surprise and some of the scariness to help people distance themselves from, or feel some control over, anxieties.

Good NYer piece here, including comments from my favorite joke theorist Alan Dundes.

omiewise, you kind of just illustrated my point a little. I offered a dissenting opinion and I get dismissed as 'ludicrous.' That's not engagement either.

My ultimate point is that talk is cheap. For a couple of weeks we watched TV talking heads and internet pundits get conspiciously indignant about Don Imus, then clock out and drive home to their all-white subdivisions. I'm sorry but there's a lot of hypocrisy around this subject. I think that treating oppressed groups like delicate faberge eggs is patronizing and prejudicial in and of itself and ultimately accomplishes nothing. And maybe I'm just a little bit tired, after a life of underemployment and all the other day to day bullshit and condescension of the world at large, that on top of everything else, because I'm personally responsible for all the worlds problms.

on top of everything else, because I'm personally responsible for all the worlds problms.

on top of everything else, because I'm white, male and heterosexual, I'm responsible for all the worlds problems.

I don't think there is such thing as a homogeneous culture. You just make jokes about the lower class, the women, the alcoholics, the mentally ill, the ones with red hair, whatever. There is always someone you can exclude through jokes.

both in not making sexist/racist/etc jokes

And who gets to decide what's what?

NTM, this whole discussion is based around the illusion that life is ever fair.

I'm going to throw out something that no one will ever actually do, so feel free to disregard.

Retire the words. I will use "nigger" for this example. Personally, I think there is a certain smell of bullshit attached to "taking a word back", and having it mean one thing for one group, and one thing for another. If the word has inherent hurt attached to it, then, even if it is "taken back", it still has layers of meaning. I've seen black people call each other "nigger" both affectionately and with decided venom, so I can't really buy that it has been "taken back".

Why not try to file it away permanently? Why keep it alive at all? I wouldn't be sorry to see it go away. Every argument I have ever heard about why it is okay to keep it alive in the black community has seemed pretty hollow.

Oh, it might hurt the content of rap, or stand up comedians, but I always found it interesting that Richard Pryor reached a point where he realized that he needed to retire it. If he can do it with a major staple in his act, why can't others?

As to psmealey's actual question - is there a good response?

If you didn't like what you heard on the radio, you could call or e-mail the radio station.

If it's something that happens in your personal social environment, it's always a bit more complicated. I find that sometimes it's worth saying something, but other times it's better to let it ride. I don't like the passivity of that, but picking battles is important, and life educates people, with or without my constant intervention. Sometimes it's enough not to laugh, just remain stony-faced or change the subject. That sends a message that the content is unwelcome.

As far as the n-word thing, whenever white people express a desire to use the word or to have their own word or any such nonsense, all I can do is wonder why. Why would anyone care? Why do they feel the need for such an expression? Why should it bother a white person so much that they are not rewarded or encouraged for such loaded speech? It's almost as though it's one last corner they have yet to legitimately colonize and it just drives them mad.

But anyway. To object or not to object, to speak up or not - it's something on my mind most days these days, about all sorts of topics. I was just at a conference with a lovely presenter, a very smart man who had a lot of useful things to say, and really cared about his work quite a bit. During the 8-hour conference, though, he made two little lighthearted-ish jokes that played on sexist stereotypes. I mean, they were really mild. When it was time to fill out the program evaluation, I spent several minutes wondering whether or not to mention it. I had no desire to hurt his feelings or imply that the workshop was no good. But then, I realized, I've been in this workshop for eight hours, and I still remember these two things. They fell flat, they were off topic, and they detracted from the professionalism of his presentation. And furthermore, I'm tired of letting them go by. It's the power of silence, silence as aquiescence, that allows even subtle forms of oppression to continue. So I wrote a gentle comment that humor that played on gender stereotypes wasn't a welcome part of the presentation.

We don't get a changed culture until we individually change.

lol white people.

or to put it another way: because blacks have less power than whites, does that mean I'm racist if I think say, that Al Sharpton is a slimy, opportunist shitbag ward heeler? since women have less power than men, can I not say that I think Paris Hilton is a vapid materialistic shit-for-brains? Because gayfolk have less power than straights does that mean I'm wrong to say I think Rosie O'Donnell is a talentless psycho? My vision of equality is that everybody is equally worthless and full of shit, including me.

During the 8-hour conference, though, he made two little lighthearted-ish jokes that played on sexist stereotypes. I mean, they were really mild. When it was time to fill out the program evaluation, I spent several minutes wondering whether or not to mention it.

*cough* handwringing *cough*

yay for Miko!

Nobody said "cracker" yet?

Isn't it possible, jon, to look at a cultural explanation for certain phenomenon and agree that it can be valid globally but not personally? In other words, isn't it possible for occhiblu to say, "People are hurt when racial jokes are used. It is more socially charged to make a joke about a group without power than to make a joke about a group of people who have social power" without meaning, "Anyone who makes a joke about minorities is a big asshole who deserves to burn in hell?"

Or, to your last point, can't you see that there's a difference between insulting a person and insulting people? There's a difference between calling the Rev. Jesse Jackson a shitbag and calling black people shitbags. There's a difference between calling Paris Hilton "shit for brains" and implying that all women have shit for brains (and believe me, I've had just such a thing said to me before).

Wow, who would ever think that a Mecha thread like this would turn into a jonmc vs. the "white-male-oppressors" grudge match? Certainly not me. ;)

or to put it another way: because blacks have less power than whites, does that mean I'm racist if I think say, that Al Sharpton is a slimy, opportunist shitbag ward heeler? since women have less power than men, can I not say that I think Paris Hilton is a vapid materialistic shit-for-brains? Because gayfolk have less power than straights does that mean I'm wrong to say I think Rosie O'Donnell is a talentless psycho? My vision of equality is that everybody is equally worthless and full of shit, including me.

You often say stuff like this as an example jon, and I think it demonstrates how completely you miss the point.

Of course you can say that. Being sensitive to shit like race, sex, etc. doesn't mean coddling.

What would be offensive, to me, would be if you called Al Sharpton's character into play and implied that it was because he was black that he was like that. Or that Paris Hilton was a vapid materialistic shit for brains because she was a woman.

By all means insult the individual. That's not what this topic is about at all.

...and muddgirl said it better than me anyway.

muddgirl just said what I wanted to say, much more nicely than I could have, so I'm going to go back to writing my psychology paper about hysterical wimmins now.

jonmc, you are certainly not personally responsible for the ills of society any more than I am or anyone else is.

But if you accept the status quo and relegate yourself to a powerless position within it, you become personally responsible for not doing anything to change it.

or to put it another way: because blacks have less power than whites, does that mean I'm racist if I think say, that Al Sharpton is a slimy, opportunist shitbag ward heeler..? etc.

No, because of one very important difference: here you are critiquing individuals based on their individual characteristics, not based on their class characteristics. It's the application of supposed attributes to an entire class of people that contributes to oppression.

*cough* handwringing *cough*
posted by jonmc 03 May | 15:23

Did I say handwringing? How does wondering -- thinking, considering -- equal handwringing? It's a sign of weakness to think now, to weigh the benefit of the doubt - is that it?

im with jonmc on this one...

I had a jewish gf that told me all the best jew jokes i know...and a black gf that is the most un-PC person i know...

They refused to let WORDS have power over them...regardless of the power dynamic behind those words...

Isn't this like the song Sarah Silverman sings in "jesus is magic?" Something about jewy people driving german cars and gays calling each other fag...

meh...

um, yeah, what muddgirl said.

omiewise, you kind of just illustrated my point a little. I offered a dissenting opinion and I get dismissed as 'ludicrous.' That's not engagement either.

Bullshit, jon. I didn't call your opinion ludicrous, I called your argument ludicrous. I didn't dismiss it because it differs from mine, I dismissed it because it sucked, as an argument. That's why I went on to explain what you were actually proposing, which is that nigger jokes are somehow closer to "real engagement" than a discussion of historical and sociological circumstance.

If your argument is that discussing the historical reasons why ethnic humor expresses power relations in American society constitutes a lack of "real engagement" because it relies on "linguistic correctness" (and that is the argument you presented) then it's a bullshit argument. You did the same thing the last time we clashed about this, basically expressing surprise that I was so hide-bound that I would dismiss your position, but as I said then, you have yet to really present a position about this issue worth defending. Every time it comes up you suggest that it's best not to talk about race, that it does more harm than good, unless we discuss it using impolite language over a beer at the bar. It's an interesting position, not least because it's completely un-nuanced, but you pretty much end the presentation with that assertion, never actually, you know, arguing your position.

If you want to convince me, and perhaps you don't, then fucking work to convince me. It isn't enough to project onto those making the argument you don't like, you have to actually tell me why pointing out the historical roots of racial oppression is a bad idea, you have to actually tell me why being vulgar solves problems, and what problems it solves. Does it serve to remove implied threats from polite discourse? Does it serve to educate? Does it serve to relieve feelings of inferiority and guilt? Why should I pay attention to your contention.

I respect you and like you and I know you can have those kinds of conversations, you do it about music all the time. You construct a coherent and logical framework that both conveys and contains your argument without relying on cant and rhetoric.

I realize this post is a bit condescending, but your posts are too. You accuse everyone who expresses a concern for racial issues of bad faith and pandering, without ever adequately specifying why that might be. In addition, and I may have said this before, I suspect that your lack of an argument, your reliance on assertion and logical fallacies, tells the whole story here. You don't have an argument to make, this topic makes you really uncomfortable, and you want to derail thoughtful discussion of these issues whenever you're presented with them. I'm not, I'm really not, speculating on your motives, but I have a hard time coming up with any other adequate explanation give how frequently this particular impasse comes up.

(Oh, sorry, I meant to say that it will be several hours before I'm able to view this thread again, so I'm ducking out. But I will read it, I'm not trying to prevent response.)

As to psmealey's actual question - is there a good response?
If you didn't like what you heard on the radio, you could call or e-mail the radio station.

The radio station thing was what caused me to consider the issue initially, but that's not what my question was. It was about coming to terms with whether my own attitudes about this are patronizing, hypocritical and/or internally inconsistent. I think OmieWise pretty much nailed what I was looking for way up top.

On re-reading your question, psmealey, I'm moved to make the banal observation that usually when people feel uncomfortable about something, there's a really good reason.

Even if it's very hard to know exactly what the reason is.

All the more reason to investigate seriously.

To be specific, this is what nailed it for me:

the reason that racial or ethnic jokes can be offensive is not because they hurt people's feelings, but because they're a shorthand reminder of social and political policies designed to disenfranchise certain groups.

Obviously, as we've seen from the rest of the thread, YMMV, as thoughts/feelings are intensely personal on this matter, but that came closer to expressing what I was feeling more eloquently than I could have.

I couldn't agree more, Miko.

Did I say handwringing? How does wondering -- thinking, considering -- equal handwringing? It's a sign of weakness to think now, to weigh the benefit of the doubt - is that it?

When it's over something that even you admit was inconsequential, it's handwringing.

But if you accept the status quo and relegate yourself to a powerless position within it, you become personally responsible for not doing anything to change it.

Actually, the overwhelming majority of humaity is pretty much helpless against the tide of history, as far as I can tell. And nobody's motives are pure as far as I can tell.

schuyler's right. I have a whole stable of paddy and wop jokes. My opinon (and I realize I'll be dismissed because I'm just a dummy questioning the wisdom of my betters) is ultimately this: 95% of linguistic policing is a way for yuppies to feel better about themselves while not actually doing anything, the other 5% is just basic manners.

That's why I went on to explain what you were actually proposing, which is that nigger jokes are somehow closer to "real engagement" than a discussion of historical and sociological circumstance.

OK, now you're a mind reader?

What I'm actually saying is that treating words and humor as if they were radioactive is counterproductive and yes, an evasion of the actual issue. If we are ever going to make progress past prejudice we will have to

1) LAY ALL OUR CARDS ON THE TABLE. Everybody, of every race and gender is bigoted in some fashion and we'll never get past that if we don't admit our prejudices and say what they are

2)REALIZE THAT ALL THE LAWS IN THE WORLD AREN'T ENOUGH. You can pass anti discrimination statutes and that's great, but that still wont change the fact that there's a society full of people who distrust and fear eachother. (I won't say hate, since I believe that prejudice of the fear and mistrust variety is far more pervasive than outirght hatred at least in the US) What we have to realize is that prejudice rarely develops in a vaccuum. People (people who in many ways are decent people otherwise) wind up believing harmful things, and we need to figure out the process of how that happens.

3)REALIZE THAT THE ABOVE IS USED TO POLITICAL ADVANTAGE BY THE PEOPLE WHO RULE THE WORLD. Prejudice is a tool that the powerful use to keep the genral populace hostile. Divide and conquer. As KRS-ONE says 'If black & white didn't argue the most/they'd realize the government's screwing them both.'

Maybe you disagree. That's fine. But do me a favor and don't tell me what I think.

The only comment I can think to make at this point.

And furthermore, I'm tired of letting them go by

Yes, that sums it up for me.

If I'm reading Miko right, her point was not that the two sex-stereotyping remarks were unimportant, but that the tacit message in them is so prevalent as to camouflage them as trivial.

jonmc, surely it's occurred to you that the reason it doesn't seem like a big deal to you is exactly because you're a white male, and therefore a member of the group that is considered the default setting by mainstream society?

surely it's occurred to you that the reason it doesn't seem like a big deal to you

Oops, let me rephrase that lest I be telling you what you have thought.

I meant, "has it ever occurred to you that..."

OK, that came off more hostile than I meant to. But I'm hoping that the second half of my last comment makes my postion more clear. I've just read and heard way to much discourse where the accusations of the various 'isms' are thrown around to dismiss differing views which sticks in my craw. I'm fairly sure that on the question of race we're on the same side, even though we may have wildly diverging ideas on what to do about it. What got me upset was the implication that those ideas put me on the 'enemies of equality' list.

jonmc, surely it's occurred to you that the reason it doesn't seem like a big deal to you is exactly because you're a white male, and therefore a member of the group that is considered the default setting by mainstream society?

Of course. But here's the rub (the rub that always causes resentment on this issue): the rulers of this society are (for the most part) white heterosexual Christian males, most white heterosexual Christian males are not rulers or even powerful.

(I'm taking a break from the hysterical wimmins paper.)

...What we have to realize is that prejudice rarely develops in a vaccuum. People (people who in many ways are decent people otherwise) wind up believing harmful things, and we need to figure out the process of how that happens.

But that's exactly what these conversations are. We are working on trying to explain and understand the ways in which seemingly innocent remarks reinforce a shitty status quo, thus creating an environment in which people grow up believing harmful things.

I'm really confused -- if you think this is an important process, then how does your conception of what that process should look like differ from these sorts of conversations?

even you admit was inconsequential

The thing is, that's not the conclusion I came to. I came to the conclusion that it was not inconsquential, that though small it was a reminder by a male presenter to a 75%-female group of his supposed qualities as a member of the male class and our supposed qualities as members of the female class. As such I could not let it go. I did not wring my hands, I used them to take a pen and write down that I thought it was unprofessional and a bad example.

the overwhelming majority of humaity is pretty much helpless against the tide of history

You really have to wilfully ignore so much human history in order to believe people are helpless. Without even leaving the typical grade-school roster of notable Americans - Ida Wells, Martin Luther King, Helen Keller, Jackie Robinson, Clara Barton, Thomas Edison - you can clearly see that individuals can and do change the world constantly. To assume that you can't do anything about your society is a cop-out.

95% of linguistic policing is a way for yuppies to feel better about themselves while not actually doing anything

Who are you talking about here? Whose argument are you refuting? Who is this Yuppie Who Is Not Doing Anything? Are they here? Are you saying I am one? Or anyone else here? Or could this Y.W.I.N.D.A be the straw man Omiewise refers to?

Everybody, of every race and gender is bigoted in some fashion

I contest that. I think we're prejudiced, generally, in that we tend to generalize our narrow experiences and then project them onto others, literally pre-judging them. I agree that we need to know our prejudices, and I go further and say we need to work toward understanding that they are nothing but projections of our assumptions and then do our best to get rid of them. But I do not agree that we're all bigots:"A bigot is a prejudiced person who is intolerant of opinions, lifestyles, or identities differing from his or her own." It's possble to be prejudiced without being bigoted, and furthermore it's possible to reduce and sometimes eradicate prejudices, particularly when they're inaccurate, as they so often are.

People (people who in many ways are decent people otherwise) wind up believing harmful things, and we need to figure out the process of how that happens

Part of the process happens when you grow up seeing and hearing racist and sexist remarks and notice that no one objects. Also, I don't think anyone suggested making laws about jokes.

Prejudice is a tool that the powerful use to keep the genral populace hostile.

That's kind of exactly what some of us are saying. And that we don't want to continue using that tool. It's a fool's game.

Dude.

Invisible backpack. [PDF]

But here's the rub (the rub that always causes resentment on this issue): the rulers of this society are (for the most part) white heterosexual Christian males, most white heterosexual Christian males are not rulers or even powerful.

Of course, Jon, and no-one likes being told they have to behave a certain way or they can't think a certain thing. I agree with you in a lot of ways on this topic. But this statement: "the rulers of this society are (for the most part) white heterosexual Christian males, most white heterosexual Christian males are not rulers or even powerful" misses something critical.

Power is a highly concentrated thing and just as most white heterosexual Christian males haven't got any power most people don't either. The difference is, he--the white heterosexual Christian male without any power--is treated profoundly and fundamentally differently than I, the white heterosexual Christian female is. He is addressed first in any room that he and I are standing in; I am not, even--for instance--in court, when it's already been acknowledged that I am the appropriate person to speak on the issue. He is never diminished in that unique depersonalizing way of being treated as his sex organs or his skin color. He may be dismissed as a powerless, unimportant person, but he is dismissed as a person, not as something less.

So, you're absolutely right. A set of standards that people are allowed to say this, but not that, or think this, but not that, is oppressive and, I think, misguided. but Average Joe White Christian Heterosexual American Powerless Male has *never* lived in a world where he--as powerless as he, the average joe is--was routinely reduced to less than human, was despersonalized by casual language. It's two different sorts of powerlessness.

Joe White Christian Heterosexual American Powerless Male has *never* lived in a world where he--as powerless as he, the average joe is--was routinely reduced to less than human, was despersonalized by casual language.

Except for all those trailer trash jokes.

white heterosexual Christian males, most white heterosexual Christian males are not rulers or even powerful

That's true; but there are ways in which we benefit from class privileges without ever even asking for it or being aware of it. It's uncomfortable, but understanding that some people have been conferred relative advantages in the world even when it doesn't seem like it is part of grappling with the legacy of racial, gender, and class oppression.

Have you ever checked out the classic and much-linked Invisible Privilege links? Like White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Privilege Knapsack, or here's Straight Privilege, or the Male Privilege Checklist? I'm sure you've run across this stuff before, and I don't mean to be condescending by suggesting you've never thought about it. Of course some individuals do benefit from the current social system despite the fact that they may not realize they are benefiting. But even when they don't - when they really don't feel powerful -- does that justify the system? Does that make it somehow a better system that doesn't need to change?

Except for all those trailer trash jokes.

But I don't think those jokes are dismissive of all white people, are they? All poor people yes, and I would certainly include classism as a problem here. But I grew up relatively well-off and can't say I've ever felt dismissed or demeaned by references to "white trash" in the way my aunt, for example, who's insanely wealthy now but who did actually grow up in a trailer, does.

Unfortunately, we spend so much time concentrating on minutia that we get needlessly enmired in it and get self-righteous and puritanical about it. to the point where to diverge from consesus opinion is to be branded a racist/misogynist/ etc. and I have a real problem with that.

(crush-on-a-stick, I,m not insane enough to deny that nonwhites, women, etc have to deal with shit that I don't. I'm just saying that to often the blame for the problem is visited upon non-ruling white guy's head even though he's not the real root of the problem)

but Average Joe White Christian Heterosexual American Powerless Male has *never* lived in a world where he--as powerless as he, the average joe is--was routinely reduced to less than human, was despersonalized by casual language. It's two different sorts of powerlessness.

watch bosses interact with employees.

I just want to point out that, in essence, jonmc pretty much agrees with the tenets behind what we're saying, even if his approach is different. This is the most powerful point he's made all thread, IMO:

"What we have to realize is that prejudice rarely develops in a vaccuum. People (people who in many ways are decent people otherwise) wind up believing harmful things, and we need to figure out the process of how that happens."

I'm glad he's willing to discuss his worldview, despite all the persecution he may suffer for it :)

to diverge from consesus opinion is to be branded a racist/misogynist

I still don't really see that happening here.

he's not the real root of the problem

No, but my basic point is that there is a lot within individual control, and if we don't do it, we're allowing the problem to continue.

Let's say I adopted a kid, and the kid got cancer. I didn't cause the cancer, but if I don't do anything and just let the cancer progress, the condition will continue to worsen. If I pursue a course of treatment and get some medicine and make changes in behavior, the condition could actually improve.

As muddgirl says, I agree that jonmc essentially supports egalitarianism. I just think he's in danger of being the person he deplores: someone who recognizes the problem but does nothing about it. That's not a problem of language, it's a problem of action.

favorite joke theorist?
Who the hell has a favorite joke theorist?

When white people can use the n-word.

Thank you. And I don't consider anybody here disagreeing with me to be persecution, just disagreement. Civilized people can disagree on difficult issues, I think.

White Powerless Male is often demeaned. I drew a distinction between being demeaned and still remaining a Person and being demeaned and not even recognized as a Person.

Who the hell has a favorite joke theorist

Folklorists are weird. On the other hand, they get to think about fun things like jokes all day. And they have the best collections of jokes (and bawdy songs, and stuff like that) you'd ever want to hear.

I don't think those jokes are dismissive of all white people

They are dismissive of all white people that "Average Joe" knows.

Just because Average Joe looks like other white guys to some people doesn't mean he is or that he sees himself that way. You have to have the right accent and the right dental work to qualify for a lot of the privileges you're talking about here.

I acknowledge that I may be over sensitive because of the rampant classism I'm immersed in, although it doesn't hold a candle to the classism I ran into going to Indiana University, which was straight up distain, vs. my current situation's condescending noblesse oblige.

Yeah, it's not like every redneck with a mullet doesn't get teased around here, or the twiggy hipsters, etc....

I think that your "average joe" is only "average" within a fairly specific subculture...

For the record, and as I exit the thread: I'm tickled by "she" as the gender-neutral pronoun, as in occhiblu's comment early in the thread. Those academics I know who oppose use of "s/he" contort themselves most delightfully trying to explain why "he" is properly gender-inclusive but "she" is not.

Classism, racism, and sexism all have their own power, it's true. But the interesting thing about it is that in the dominant culture, they all reinforce one another. So, for instance, within a lowest-class-stratum environment, the same overall standards of race and gender tend to apply. White males are more powerful than nonwhite males are more powerful than females and so on. Within a mostly male stratum or environment, wealthy males are more powerful than less wealthy males are more powerful than any females. I'm not sure what to say about power dynamics regarding race in mostly non-white environments, but I am aware of some discussion within black feminism about the roles women were expected to play in the Civil Rights movement, or are still expected to play in organizations, families, and workplaces today.

It's a fucking mess!

Some people lump together a lot of the social movements of the 20th century - feminism, Civil Rights, labor, GLBT expression, anti-poverty campaigns - and call the whole shebang the "Human Potential Movement." That name always sounds a little extra 70s to me, but I think the idea that they're all linked is accurate. We've reached a point in history where we think it would be better to define personhood and value using some different methods than the Western, Eurocentric patriarchy had. It really is about starting with a conception of equal human dignity in everyone.

You have to have the right accent and the right dental work to qualify for a lot of the privileges you're talking about here.

I'm certainly not arguing against that -- you're totally right. But that's a class issue, not a race issue. They intersect, of course, but I don't think "trailer trash" is dismissive of whites as a group of people.

I mean, that's the thing about privilege. When everything is framed as win/lose, then people are always going to try to find ways to be superior to someone else. Which I think is why it's so important to recognize one's own privilege and try not to abuse it; it's the only real way I know to move toward egalitarianism.

On non-preview: Yeah, Elsa, but it helps if you also remember to go back and change "his" to "her." Which I'm apparently not so good at!

Another interesting topic turns into Jonmc vs. The World! Feels like old times!

I'm sure the overall message of things like "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack" is commendable, but some of the thinking (and writing) is really sloppy.

These are cited as examples of terrible, pervasive white privilege, when they are nothing of the sort:

I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
This is surely just because there are more white people. I, as a green-eyed person, would find it hard to make sure I was surrounded by my fellow green-eyes. I'm hardly oppressed by that by any objective definition (even if being green-eyed was really important to me), nor do I have any right to have anything done about it.

I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
Again, this is because there are lots of white people around. If she's arguing white people are disproportionately represented in the media, then she should actually clearly say that, rather than assuming a sympathetic readership will jump to that conclusion for her.

I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
This is just nonsense. Of course shops cater to the majority. What else would you expect them to do? If I lived in a country where I was a minority, I wouldn't expect all my "cultural traditions" to be represented as often as those of the majority.

I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.
I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin.
I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazine featuring people of my race.
Because you're in the majority. Perfectly normal. Again, if she's saying white people are over-represented in positions of power she should come out and say that.

Why is this kind of sloppy thinking tolerated? It's even pointed out as a "classic"!

I still don't really see that happening here.

Not here.But I've seen it happen in other discourse enough, to have a distaste for it. I don't deny that there's truth to what's been said. I'm merely saying that at the end of long day at a crappy job, the last thing anyone wants to hear is how 'priviliged,' they are, which is why it often falls on deaf ears, which is what I mean when I say that a lot of the rhetoric surrounding stuff like this is counterproductive. I think we need to find a way to communicate some of these ideas without sounding accusatory or condescending, which I'm sorry to say it often does.

I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented

as somebody who spends a lot of time in record stores, I have to say that if you have difficulty finding non-white music, you need to get out of the house more.

I found the the link addressing gender imbalances to be very relevant to my own experiences, by the way. In that case, you can't argue that men are the numerical majority in the whole population.

And matthewr, just because something is inevitable due to the ratio of white people to black people in society doesn't mean it has no effect on people's viewpoints and mindsets. I support funding for minority student centers at universities, for example, because I know from experience how tiring it is to always be the obviously "different" one, and how nice it is to spend some time with other people who are always "different", too.

I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

This is completely untrue where I live (which is partly why I live here, I must admit).

There is a reason why words matter.

If it were simply an issue of letting your actions speak for you (which I think is what jon tries to imply, ad nauseum, when this stuff comes up), words wouldn't be an issue. But it just isn't that simple.

Look at race, look at sexual orientation. I know a lot of people -- and I suspect most people here do too -- who go out of their way to avoid blacks or gays. Won't go into certain parts of town, stuff like that. They don't want to have anything to do with them. Now, that's not really an action (although it certainly speaks for those people). It's more of an anti-act. So how can those people be judged by their acts towards blacks or gays, if they never even come face to face with them? (Or, if they do, they're likely to be super polite. Racism and homophobia is best practiced by hypocrites.)

So, there are no acts to judge by. Are their words then off-limits? Some nigger or fag joke is simply a fuck-you to political correctness? A way of showing personal liberation?

No, dammit, it's an expression of dislike. It's passive-aggressive, but that doesn't mean it doesn't mean what it means.

Words DO matter. They're the tools we have to communicate every little thing about ourselves. Actions are are meaningless by comparison, because you have to be in the right place at the right time to even witness them. (Unless they're described to you, you know, in WORDS.)

"Political Correctness" is a term that was derived by wienies who don't want to take the time to examine whether their words might be hurtful. They don't want to take the time to determine whether they themselves may be causing pain, because they feel that they're good people and hey -- they don't spit on the spics, or anything.

We all think we're good people. Even the most die-hard racists think they're good people. But in some sense, we're not what we do or what we think -- we are what we say. Because that is how the world receives us.

I thumb my nose at dismissing careful word choice as "political correctness." It's a diversionary tactic. And it's a much easier position to take than to examine whether you yourself may be perpetuating the race, sex, class, etc., issues that we still face every damn day. Because fuck it, we're all good people, and none of us is part of the problem.

Except all of us ARE part of the problem. Even you, jon. But oh no! Let's pretend it's NOT a problem! There! That'll fix it!

Also, doesn't pretty much everyone hate to cut white people hair? It's usually either fine and straight, which is annoying, or it's curly, which is even more annoying.

I am raising my hand as a person who works hard yet does not have everything I want in life, who (obviously) thinks a great deal of society is stacked against me due to my gender, and yet still finds discussions of how privileged I am to be important and useful.

In case we're taking a poll.

I've lost the thread of this argument somewhere in here. What was the question?

Heh. I think psmealey said it was answered, more or less. Now we're just arguing amongst ourselves.

James Brown's This is a man's world has been playing on my computer for like the last half hour.

So I think we should take it to the bridge. Perhaps with some popcorn.

I have read this whole thread, and I do not think that anyone who has posted is wrong, per se.

What I want in my life is a bit of slack around my friends and loved ones, to be unguarded. We are all brought up with prejudice. For most of us, our learned ways of communicating show that.

With people who know me well, I would like to have their whole experience of me brought into play, and if I say something marginal (in my case, usually around gay issues, and, more often than not, while bantering with my daughter) I would prefer that someone (usually my wife) not jump down my throat.

It is interesting that the school district I work in has a Superintendent who is black, male, and generally supports republican candidates. He got rid of a female black administrator at the end of last year, and although she cried racism, most people, including me, had been impacted for years by her incompetence.

We also have about 6 or 7 queer principals, covering the full spectrum of out, a couple gay dept. heads, and probably more women in higher places than men. And more gay teachers than I can count, or probably know about (two of my daughter's male teachers this year were dating last year). I work in the Maintenance Dept, which has mostly white conservative males, who constantly bristle at the power structure of the district as a whole.

I would generally line up under jon's point of view, as a white male, who, if he has any unacknowledged privileges, is tired of hearing about it and would like to be judged on his behavior, and who he is in the world. I get it. And I refuse to beat myself up.

Except all of us ARE part of the problem. Even you, jon.

which I explicitly admit. But feel free to keep presuming you know what I think. Look, you don't like me or what I say. Fine. But try to actually listen, instead of looking for reasons to make accusations.

And I'd add this: do you 'choose your words carefully' out of fear? That's fear of 'the other' too. Oppressed people are not magical beings. Some people (of all races, genders and sexuality) like filthy, deliberately offensive humor. Some don't. It's a question of personality more than anything else.

also, omie, miko, occhi: I realize you're all educated people and I'm just a dumb slob, but I'd sincerely appreciate it if you didn't talk to me like I'm fucking retarded.

I personally think context is everything. I would never use the word nigger because a) that word has horrible personal connotations to me even tho I am white and b) it has horrible connotations to any person of color that would hear it come out of a white mouth. If a black person uses the term with another black person the context changes dramatically. Kinda like you can take two color squares of the same color, put them on two different colored backgrounds, and the same-colored squares look totally different.

There are a lot of things about black culture that black people keep fairly hidden from white people in general.* We who are white do not understand the impact of some of the things we say such as regarding Imus and "nappy." I didn't even know what nappy WAS till my son-in-law explained it to me. So if we want to be caring decent human beings maybe we need to not play fast and loose with terms we are not fully familiar with. What gives us the right to think we can say whatever the heck we please and expect others to not be offended?

*Or so I have been told by one black friend of mine.

also, omie, miko, occhi: I realize you're all educated people and I'm just a dumb slob, but I'd sincerely appreciate it if you didn't talk to me like I'm fucking retarded.

Jesus christ, jon, no one here (but you) has accused you of being fucking retarded, and I'd postulate that it's YOU who's not listening.

The conversation has gone like this:

Person 1: I think that it's about A, and here's why.
Jonmc: But I think "Y."
Person 2: Yes, but it could also be about B, in addition to A.
Jonmc: But I think "Y."
Persons 3 and 4: But jon, what 1 and 2 are saying is A and B.
Jon: But I think "Y."

Don't get a persecution complex here, jon. YOU'RE the one who's not listening to what other people are saying. Ask yourself, have you ever walked away from a thread like this saying, "Huh, I learned something"? No. Because you're dead set on repeating and repeating your own views, defending them, and then feeling sorry for yourself. It's not a new thing.

And I apologize for turning this on one individual, but it's just so damn frustrating. And, yeah, I'm sorry, but predictable.

Heh, mudpup- we all know jon drives you around the bend.

also, omie, miko, occhi: I realize you're all educated people and I'm just a dumb slob, but I'd sincerely appreciate it if you didn't talk to me like I'm fucking retarded.

Huh? I don't think you're a dumb slob, and I pretty much try to address everybody as though they're smart. Where did I fail today?

I refuse to beat myself up.

Nobody's asking anyone to beat themselves up. Can't you see a difference between considering and reckoning with their identity and privilege and beating themselves up?

mudpuppie: that's mainly because what I say is consistently misrepresented (which is exactly what you did in your last comment ("But oh no! Let's pretend it's NOT a problem! There! That'll fix it!")). If people didn't do that*, I wouldn't have to wind up over-explicating what I'm trying to say, and your comment shows that you didn't get it. So what I'm really saying is "This is what I mean by 'Y.'"

no one here (but you) has accused you of being fucking retarded,

not directly, no, but the condescension is palpable at least to me.

*To be totally forthcoming, even people who agree with me seem to miss the point a lot of the time. On mefi, some asshole was going off about how 'the mexicans' were destroying his town and making an ass of himself. On his user page he says this. way to miss the point, dude.

Nobody's asking anyone to beat themselves up. Can't you see a difference between considering and reckoning with their identity and privilege and beating themselves up?

Miko, come on. Most of the discourse I've read surrounding 'white privilige' is pretty much a non-stop recitation of how if you were born white, male and straight you're the bad guy by defult. and, yeah, after awhile that's beating yourself up.

I am raising my hand as a person who works hard yet does not have everything I want in life, who (obviously) thinks a great deal of society is stacked against me due to my gender, and yet still finds discussions of how privileged I am to be important and useful.

Sometimes we're the windshield, and sometimes we're the bug, sister. It's important to say, "priviledge isn't black and white." I may come from a poor background, low-class, and I may be a woman in a predominantly male field, but I am way more privileged than a LOT of people in this world."

Make that 'can't people see a difference' , because I went back to remake the sentence so it didn't appear like a personal attack, which it wasn't.

I understand it may be tiresome to hear about privilege, but it shouldn't be too difficult to think about for anyone who is trying to create a more fair society. After all, if it's tiring to hear about, imagine how tiring it is to contend with it when it impedes your lifetime progress again and again and again.

jon, read occhi's comment! I don't have everything the way I want, either. I still have to recognize white privilege and female privilege when it occurs. But I'm not freaked out about it, I don't resent people for pointing it out, and I'm not beating myself up - sometimes it's challenging, but it's reality, and unless I understand how it works I can't do much about it. Where's the defensiveness coming from?

Can you find some examples in the stuff I posted that say that white men are the 'bad guy'?

Danf, I think in some of your examples you show how people's anxieties around race cause them to conflate events that are really individual and personal with assumptions about race and class. The woman was incompetent? She was incompetent! If that was the real reason for her firing, and there was no evidence that racism or sexism was at play, then I'm sure most people had the common sense to judge her argument for what it was. I don't know what the maintenance workers beef about, but chances are it's workplace power structures - sometimes those involve class, race, and gender, sometimes they just involve the fact that workplaces are hierarchical and power is not distributed evenly.

People of goodwill are generally recognized as being of goodwill.

See, this is the stuff that makes my head explode.

jonmc, you have called yourself a bad guy. That's not what I'm saying, not what the literature is saying, and not what I hear anyone here saying.

What the chorus here has suggested, and what is typically covered in the various privilege literature, is not the placement of blame, but offering a different perspective: that most members of a majority are understandably less sensitized to potentially hurtful language or acts describing or directed to minorities (a concept which, ludicrously, includes women, not a numerical minority).

Presumably in those situations where you are part of the minority, you do notice the hurtful language, whether you object to it or not.

I'm a white, nominally middle-class woman raised by educated parents in financial straits. I'm certain I don't see much of my own privilege. That doesn't make me a bad person, just an oblivious one.

Since I do assume you're intelligent, I'm also beginning grudgingly to believe that you're disingenuously and willfully ignoring the discrepancy between placing blame and offering a minority perspective.

(more) I think most men are people of goodwill. It can be a pain in the ass to deal with what the past has left for us. I'm sorry about the way it feels, I really am. It's a pain in the ass for everybody. That's why it needs to stop, and that's why I believe it's important not to be blandly accepting of things that devalue human beings. The only reason I'm still here talking about it is that I really don't think any of the men here are the 'bad guy.' If I thought anyone was too biased to let us get anywhere in such a discussion, there'd be no point staying.

Hey, I'm white, male and middle-class too. And I used to belive a lot of this stuff, but I don't so much anymore. or at least that it's all a simple as we'd all want to belive.

I think what jonmc is trying to say here is that "John Brown's body lies a'mouldering in the grave," ironic as that may be.

You know, that last paragraph of mine came off like a personal attack. I wish I'd found a more gracious way to phrase it.

But it often feels like you're not reading, or not responding to, the points actual posters actually post in conversations like these,in favor of strawman arguments you tear down and that pushes me to wonder what your objective is.

on preview: who said it was simple?

It's definitely not simple and I wouldn't argue that it is. However, there are some ideas that I'd rather be on the side of, and others I don't want to defend, given their logical outcomes. Arguments that logically end 'nothing can be done about oppressive social systems, they're the way of the world,' don't stand to logic, weaken and fail under the evidence of history, and hurt people in the short term.

I'm not defending anything, I'm trying to understand where it somes from, and the only honest way to do that is look within. And I have a strong distaste for pieties, so that's why a lot of this stuff wears thin with me. YMMV. I'll just leave the subject alone from here on out.

Me, too, for today at least. I much preferred the rollicking TV thread to this square dance.

psmealy, I'm a white woman living in a mostly black city, the former and always Capitol of the Confederacy.

Here's a suggestion. Switch to the local hip-hop station morning show for a week. See if you think those people are funny or offensive.

It might just fit your world view better than the cock rock station - it does mine.

You'll gain insight into the black community, get a laugh, AND not support the station that aired what confused/offended you. So that's a response.

If you're still offended by what you hear, switch to NPR, or if possible, your own music.

In other words, vote through the marketplace.

I don't mean to dismiss all that's come before - much important, heady stuff, but I think this qualifies as a fair response to the original post, so I'm tagging on with a tangent.

We all see things thru our personal grid. Interestingly enough jonmc(and the folks he us responding to here) prove the point on this thread...We all assume jonmc is a certain way, he assumes we see him in a certain way, both sides reading the others' comments thru that gridview.

Fascinating...

I'm of the opinion that white guys who say that they're discriminated against are just angry that they've nothing to whine about. They're usually small minded people who just want to rail out at the world and who use some specious "It's not fair there are women only groups and men only clubs are disallowed" style argument so they have an excuse to moan on about how hard done by they are. I have a large amount of contempt for these people.

In fact they're the same sort of people that witter on about, for example, having to pay a higher rate of tax because they accidently earn twice as much as anyone else.

jonmc: I can see where you're coming from and if everyone thought or behaved exactly like you it'd be cool. But they don't. Also, I'm a liberal hand-wringer and proud of the fact. It's not about guilt, it's about feeling bad that entire sections of the population are held back from achieving there potential because of colour or sex or religion.

The N- Word. I disapprove of this word wherever it's used. I hate its usage in Hip Hop, and think this usage demeans black people and reinforces racial stereotypes. I've been called out recently for saying this (and accused of racism in the bargain), but it's how I feel.

Back to the concept of collective guilt. I'd agree that conceptually it's akin to the idea of original sin, but my feeling is that in this modern world racism is less about who you keep down and more about who gets pushed up. I guess this is what the invisible backpack thing's all about. Because of this, there's a kind of tragedy of the commons that kicks in where a lack of individuals taking responsibility for group behaviour leads to a collective position which is collectively racist. It's not your fault that black people are (as a group) poorer than they have been for 40 years, but if you don't shoulder a degree of responsibility things will get worse.

Anyway - Those are my garbled thoughts on the matter.

Word, seanyboy.

Ya cracker.

Or as Chris Rock says, "Cracker Ass Cracker."

Man is a genius.

"someone who recognizes the problem but does nothing about it. That's not a problem of language, it's a problem of action."

I would say that it goes deeper, to apathy and a general lack of motivation. The most privileged people still have personal problems that consume much of their time and energy. As much as some of you want to transform this into a collective society, the bottom line remains that we are each individuals and the needs of the individual ultimately predominate.

From another perspective, racism and classism are social constructs, and as such, they are open to many varied definitions and degrees of perceived gravity. After all: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but 'nappy headed ho' will kill a [black person]" is a valid, if tastelessly worded, declaration.

jon-I've condescended only in kind, and I don't think you're dumb. I also haven't told you what you were thinking, I told you what you said. I put what you said in the context of the rest of the thread. You said, in the earlier context of the thread, that vulgar language would get us farther than what was going on in the thread, which was a consideration of the socioeconomic consequences of racism and the bearing that that has on racist jokes. Yeah, I was being kind of a dick, but I wasn't misrepresenting you in any way, and if you go back and read what you and I both wrote I think you'll see that.

That aside, I appreciate your layout of the issues at hand. Of course we mostly agree, but I think there is a big area of disagreement, and I think that it's that disagreement that keeps coming up in these threads. While it's absolutely true that we're all raised prejudiced in some sort of way, I think that's beside the point, while you think it is the point. As I said in my first post, I don't really care about whether people's feelings are hurt. In that sense, I agree with you that there are much more important things to worry about. What I care about is that racial slurs are part of a history of oppression and exclusion. That's why it's different for a black woman to call someone a cracker than it is for a white woman to call someone a nigger. And, that's what makes them beyond the pale of civil discourse (in the general sense, if you've got an understanding with friends, that's your own business).

I'm not interested in censoring anyone, there is no issue of prior restraint here, but when the question is, "What do you think of this?" My answer is that it isn't cool. It isn't cool not because people don't like it, it isn't cool because it's part of a structure of power designed to fuck people over. And you don't have to fuck people over to survive.

So, yeah, I agree that we need to talk frankly about all this shit, and part of that might be being able to say offensive shit to people we care about in an effort to clear the air or explain our differences or something, but those are very specific purposes where that's appropriate. And while self-righteously condemning racism (which I've seen no one do in this thread) may be simply a way for some people to feel better about themselves, in general I think it's better to err on the side of condemning racism, even if self-righteously, than to let it hang out there just to honor the honesty of it. Hurtful honesty isn't an ethic I particularly value in the rest of my life, so I have no idea why I would do so in relation to racism, where I'm not even the person most concerned.

And, more generally, I must say that I know very few black people, for instance, and I know a lot of black people, who are comfortable with racist language going unchecked. Folks that I work with, who are poor, disenfranchised black folks, constantly feel as if racism is present and detrimental in their lives. They clearly use nigger not as a term of endearment when talking to me, but to describe behavior that they condemn in friends and family. In other words, they use it as an insult. For that matter, they use "white" as an insult as well, and always beg my pardon when they have to describe someone as white. That's how pervasively they understand racism: while they don't necessarily see me as racist, they assume that most white people that they meet are racist and that that racism will harm them, hence they see calling someone white as an insult. I hear, "He was white, no offense," every day of the week.

I think I bring this up because the other subtext here is that discussions of this stuff must somehow be academic: if it isn't direct action, it's worthless. But I think about race and racism and deal with race and racism in all aspects of my work every day. This is a very personal issue.

"you don't have to fuck people over to survive."

To survive? Maybe not. To advance? That goes without saying, since that is basic supply and demand.

... and omiewise, don't play poker.

100th comment, holla

"...It isn't cool not because people don't like it, it isn't cool because it's part of a structure of power designed to fuck people over. And you don't have to fuck people over to survive. ..."

Particularly if they'll continue to screw themselves. Case in point: 24s for lease.

Let me explain, for those of you who don't get the issues presented in the above link. In a lot of cities, it's become really fashionable for some people to equip their cars with large diameter wheels and expensive low profile sport tires. The designation of the wheel diameter in inches is a common way of referring to this, so "24s" are 24 inch nominal diameter rims, usually chrome plated. Bigger diameters are better. But these sets of aftermarket rims and tires can be fairly expensive -- more than $5,000 for a full set of Pirellis on polished magnesium or chrome 24s. That's a lot of dough for many members of the target demographic to plunk down.

So a guy in Atlanta has started a business that provides these items on a "rent to own" basis. Yep. "Rent to own" wheels and tires, for your 20 year old tricked out Chevy Caprice. Complete with ruinous built-in interest rates that the rent-to-own model usually carries. His first shop here in Jacksonville is doing land office business. Better than Microsoft at CompUSA actually, and good enough that parking is an issue to his neighbor businesses. And he's the only wheel and tire guy on Atlantic Boulevard that doesn't have the word "sale" plastered in his front windows.

Meanwhile, over at Edward Waters College, they've just elected another new president, trying to recover from the 2004 loss of accreditation scandal, that nearly closed the school, and stopped their building and campus renovation program cold. So I heard somebody today, just a guy at a restaurant across the street from the wheel man, say that EWC should take a lesson from the wheel man, and make education "rent to own."

What was I supposed to do, but grin? It was a blackly humorous, original comment. Was it racist? I dunno, but the guy didn't use any racial epithets or "code words" or substitutions. Was it clever? I wasn't the only one that grinned.

In tangentially unrelated local news, we had a drive by shooting incident yesterday where 7 people were shot in two apparently related incidents. "We are not getting cooperation from the victims," the sheriff said. A 29 year old mother of 4 children between the ages of 4 and 13 (you do the math), quoted in that story, was outraged because her neighborhood isn't safe enough for her kids to play outside, or walk home from school. I sympathize with her, but if there had been 2 shot gun blasts in broad daylight in my neighborhood, the cops would have to call in overtime to take care of all the reports they'd be getting. It isn't hard to find people spinning that story on teh Internets, already.

Language may encapsulate problematic issues, but stereotypes don't thrive in a vacuum of actions, either. The boogeymen for racism around here, aren't all soulless riders of factory rubber.

I'm not really sure what your point is, paulsc... it seems like you're saying it's okay to make jokes if the stereotypes are true?

To me this seems like a chicken and egg argument, because the folks who are renting-to-buy the 24s, in a different, privileged, environment wouldn't be spending their money that way - they'd be making reasonable purchases, like prestige golf clubs and vintage wines. :)

Making jokes that reinforce negative stereotypes is just one of many small ways to ensure that those stereotypes are perpetuated and the system continues to split along certain lines. Jokes that suggest that black people aren't wise with their money may be funny because some black people are making what many people see as foolish purchases, but they also reinforce the sort of prejudice that might make an employer just "feel" like this specific black candidate probably wouldn't be a good choice for a management position. And, etc., etc., chicken/egg.

Anyway, similar questions about language, majority/minority issues, prejudice and its consequences in the news today: House passes expanded hate crime bill.

The car/wheel issue, a tried and true racist trope (look at all the caddies parked in the ghetto), also ignores the history of the importance of cars in the black community, which is itself a history of racism: when even very successful black folks were redlined out of all but the worst communities, buying a nice car was one of the only ways to externally demonstrate that success. Is it more stupid to lose your car or to lose your McMansion?

Omie, I apologize for the vociferousness, but I still do belive we're talking right past eachother on this, and I'll just leave it at that.

"...Is it more stupid to lose your car or to lose your McMansion?"
posted by omiewise 04 May | 06:12

Speaking for myself, the '97 Dodge Intrepid on which I was having the oil changed (and the proximate cause of my being next door in the restaurant for lunch) is mostly sentimental value at this point - it was my Dad's car, but it's worth only a few hundred dollars. With 175,000 miles on it, I doubt it's ever gonna be worth more than that. So, for me, it would be hella easy financial decision to choose between that car and any real estate asset.

I'd never consider putting 24s on it. Dad would've hated 'em.:-)

And if you really think the guys pimpin' their rides with wheel bling are doing so out of deep respect for, and historical solidarity with, their cultural heritage of economic disenfranchisement, I'd say you oughta get out more, omiewise. Otherwise, nice cast.

"...it seems like you're saying it's okay to make jokes if the stereotypes are true? ..."
posted by taz 04 May | 05:06

Not really. I'm saying there is a power and a gravitas to the quiet dignity Rep. John Lewis brings to any public event he attends, that Cynthia McKinney never did. I'm saying Rosa Parks did the right thing, and that maybe Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing" could've taken a page from her book. I'm saying that folks who rent 24s are a lot less likely to ever be buying golf clubs or building them, the mechanics of compound interest being what they are. And I'm saying that as much as possible, results of decisions should belong, good and bad, to those that make them, and that such a view doesn't preclude a genuine interest in human rights, and a life long respect for the transformative power of individual dignity.

And I'm saying if a white haired black man wants to make sociological observations, in a public restaurant, I'm gonna listen, if I want, and grin if I think he's wryly on point. I might even pick up his lunch check, and not feel paternalistic.

The car/wheel issue, a tried and true racist trope (look at all the caddies parked in the ghetto), also ignores the history of the importance of cars in the black community

It also ignores another important part of the context of 'rent to own.' From the time of the end of slavery to the time when the Fair Lending Laws of the civil rights legislation began to take effect -- somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 years - banks consistently and methodically discriminated against non-white people seeking loans and mortgages. This lack of access to credit has created a population in which disproportionately few members are homeowners and business owners, and before that can be blamed on any personal characteristics, we have to look at the long pattern of institutional and governmental discrimination that made such conditions possible.

In the case of black Americans, consider a population who owned no property, commonly or individually, at the end of the Civil War. Immediately cast upon a work-for-hire market in which there was no opportunity to build up a nest egg, any income earned went directly to immediate support. The cumulative effect of that over time should be obvious to anyone who's ever lived paycheck to paycheck. In this situation, if you're a person who's managed to save enough for a down payment, or who has come into some property to serve as collateral for a loan, you might have some hope of lifting yourself to the more stable class of home ownership, in which rent payments really become payments to yourself as you build up an asset which will (hopefully) increase in value and leave a durable item for your descendants to inherit. However, discrimination in lending made this scenario impossible for the majority of nonwhite people until the past forty years - not even a single lifetime ago. When the Fair Lending Laws went into effect, preventing banks from disciminating on the basis of skin color, they were unevenly enforced. Then, too, tacit practices continue - banks can generally find a reason to deny a loan based on a loan officer's personal bent, and you'll never know, if you're not white, whether race was an additional factor. In recent times, this has meant that the poor - the disproportionately nonwhite poor - have been ideal targets of lending practices designed to fleece people who don't have much ready money, which has, of course, been in the news lately. Those banks were exploiting social conditions that resulted from a century-long denial of access to credit to black people, among others.

We all stand on the backs of those who went before us. While black Americans were denied the privilege of self and family economic betterment through lending, white families enjoyed the ability to accumulate wealth this way. We've not yet seen an even playing field. It's no surprise that the black community is still contending with the problem of accumulating and passing along wealth. That history is the reason that there's more renting - of houses, cars, appliances, furniture, - and less ownership than you'd find in a similar white community.

Anecdotes aren't useful. WE could go on matching each anecdote with one about crass and stupid behavior in wealthy white people. Would this prove white privilege does not exist? No. Would it prove that black people have brought ecomonic disadvantage on themselves? Not with the history we have.

rsults of decisions should belong, good and bad, to those that make them

Except that those results are visited upon their children and their children's children, which is why we're still having this discussion.

"... Anecdotes aren't useful. ..."

Sure they are. They're perfect counterpoint to sweeping generalizations, and personal views presented as historical conclusions. They powerfully illustrate the truth that people can and do succeed economically based on their own decisions, regardless of their ancestry, which is a pretty fundemental American story. They celebrate people like John Lewis becoming minority whip, and how Robert L. Johnson launched a media empire today worth billions. And they're as memorable as Condi Rice giving piano recitals.

Tell me all you know about crass and stupid behavior in wealthy white people, please. That's pretty much what psmeasley was looking to hear about, originally, anyhow.

results of decisions should belong, good and bad, to those that make them, and that such a view doesn't preclude a genuine interest in human rights, and a life long respect for the transformative power of individual dignity.

I agree with a lot of that, especially when the decisions are made from the platform of an equal playing field; when they aren't, and when the people who have benefited the most from that inequality are also the ones who are making jokes about the supposed lesser intelligence/skill/maturity of the marginalized group, then I admit that I can't help but suspect that, at worst, those people have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and, at best, are blindly propagating a continuation of the imbalance, mostly because they aren't personally damaged by it, and thus haven't really thought about the dynamics of the situation.

But I understand your and jon's ideas about the inherent paternalism of some of my ideas. I don't think that you're wrong, but, for myself, I choose to suffer the guilt of that possible condescension. It doesn't make me feel good, but I would feel worse if I chose a position that doesn't acknowledge the power of words to prolong or intensify injustice. I'm also guilty of being a lazy moralist, because I'm not involved in specific action like many people here, so my opinions really and truly don't have that much significance; they are my own observations, and my own preferences for how to carry on my life. I don't make racial/sexist/gay jokes because I believe them to be specifically harmful; you don't believe that, and jon doesn't believe that (among others), but I don't accuse any of you of not having "a genuine interest in human rights". I really don't feel that way. We just disagree on this issue.

I sympathize with her, but if there had been 2 shot gun blasts in broad daylight in my neighborhood, the cops would have to call in overtime to take care of all the reports they'd be getting.

That's because you could be reasonably assured that the cops would go after the perps and protect you in the process. Poorer communities don't necessarily have that confidence. This is a huge problem in Philly where the number of witnesses killed before they can testify or physically intimidated into silence is staggering.

I'm going back to minding my own business now.

I don't make racial/sexist/gay jokes because I believe them to be specifically harmful; you don't believe that, and jon doesn't believe that (among others),

Not exactly. It's more... among my friends and co-workers at my last job (a pretty diverse group racially and otherwise) we enjoyed engaging in playful verbal combat with eachother (but with the understanding that there's 'joke world' and 'real world') and I'm sure that some of the shit we said to eachother would raise eyebrows in other contexts, but in that context treating somebody like they were too delicate to handle the camaraderie would seem a little...patronizing, I guess is the word I'm looking for. But again, it's all context, I suppose. When I was younger I'd sometimes give people a hard time about verbal gaffes, but the older I get, the less judgemental I'm inclined to be. But I admit I'm completely muddleheaded. Sorry for rambling.

But again, it's all context, I suppose.

yup.

And if you really think the guys pimpin' their rides with wheel bling are doing so out of deep respect for, and historical solidarity with, their cultural heritage of economic disenfranchisement, I'd say you oughta get out more, omiewise.

That's neither what I said or what I suggested. I also never said that it isn't stupid to spend money one doesn't have on rims.

What I said is that the criticism of that behavior tends to ignore the historical roots of the behavior, glossing over the reasons why, originally, black people living in crappy neighborhoods sometimes bought cars that they might seem to not be able to afford. But, I suspect you know exactly what I meant.

at worst, those people have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and, at best, are blindly propagating a continuation of the imbalance, mostly because they aren't personally damaged by it, and thus haven't really thought about the dynamics of the situation

Exactly.

As to argument from anecdote: A good story and a strong argument are different things. Stories are endless; there are a million stories, as they say, in the naked city. The crass and stupid behavior of people in general is a deep, deep mine to start digging in. Anecdotes have their uses, but anecdotes are single data points. When you group data points together and look at the aggregate, patterns in racial discrimination in the U.S. undeniably emerge. To suggest otherwise is to deny the evidence of history.

Now, that is not to say that it's impossible for members of an oppressed class to be successful: obviously that does happen with some regularity. However, if that success remains the exception, and if the group of people those successful individuals come from, taken as a class, do not have a proportionally equivalent number of people who meet some definition of 'success' as you'd find in another class of people, then you either have to conclude one of two things: (a) that some set of power differentials has impeded the progress of members of that class disproportionately, or (b) that factors inherent within those people account for their lack of success.

I find the second position (b) unsupported. Biological arguments for innate differences in intellect don't stand up to scientific inquiry, and social arguments about personality characteristics (lazy, not foresighted, don't want to work, self-indulgent) can't be isolated from the effects of being raised in an environment structured around discrimination, lack of access to resources, and widepsread poverty. On the other hand, the argument (a) that legal, governmental, and cultural structure has granted privilege to some groups and denied it to others has abundant evidence to support it, and has very easily demonstrated effects, such as the one I gave above with regard to fair lending. There are plenty of good civil rights history websites which will give lots of others.

People are individuals and racial relations are complex and many-faceted; no question about that. But I agree with taz that the only reasons to suggest there is no power differential between classes of people in society is either 'vested interest in the status quo', or genuine ignorance of the experiences of others.

I'll be leaving now. But to those who might still believe there is an even playing field and that success or lack thereof is due solely to individual skill and hard work, I suggest this: rather than carrying on further internet conversation that may have reached an impasse, how about getting some more anecdotal evidence, some more personal points of view, by asking nonwhite friends a few simple questions, and then just genuinely listening to their answers. Ask them, "In your life experience, do you think that being nonwhite (or poor, or female) has impeded your progress to your goals in any way? Do you ever think you've been treated unfairly because of your (race/class/gender?) Do you think it's easier for (white/rich/male) people to get along in this world? Can you give an example?" I think when respectfully asked, these questions can lead to a very interesting opportunity to understand how power dynamics are working in this society. I couldn't predict exactly what you're going to hear - I don't know, of course - but you might find it interesting to get a variety of viewpoints, from people whose experience is different from your own, about whether they feel these large patterns of discrimination at play in their lives. I think talking to individuals you know, rather than talking about Condoleezza Rice and Robert Johnson, might help you put those anecdotal points into a wider perspective. In my experience, there is indeed a very wide range of responses to those sorts of questions and of opinions on policy topics such as affirmative action or welfare law, but clear instances of systemic discrimination have also been consistently described.

But again, it's all context, I suppose.

Yeah, absolutely - and it's like what omiewise mentioned above - an understanding among friends is your own business, and your friends'. If they found your talk objectionable, then you would all be in a position to talk it out amongs yourselves.

As to guilt, I don't spend much time worrying about whether I'm motivated by guilt. I sure don't feel guilty. I don't talk about myself and my personal background much in arguments which are not really about personalities, but there are some excellent reasons in my own personal background why I'm impassioned about social justice and discrimination. That's why I think it's not fair to assume that people are always talking from 'White Guilt,' which I think is a pretty outmoded 70s idea anyway. There are other reasons besides guilt to work toward greater social justice, which include even simple enlighted self-interest. Personally, I'm not all that concerned with why people do the right thing. Stopping ourselves from doing wrong things seems the more important issue.

Oh, Jesus. Normative privilege, the jonmc show, the fundamental problem of the majority both wanting the majority's power and the minority's cachet...

And this foolishness: "They're perfect counterpoint to sweeping generalizations, and personal views presented as historical conclusions. They powerfully illustrate the truth that people can and do succeed economically based on their own decisions, regardless of their ancestry, which is a pretty fundemental American story."

Data is not the plural of anecdote, and Horatio Alger's a myth. In fact, what you're doing is putting forth a pleasing and pretty fundamental American MYTH and failing to note that those stories and anecdotes are only interesting in that they're the exceptions that prove the rule.

"As to argument from anecdote: A good story and a strong argument are different things. ..."
posted by Miko 04 May | 10:41

I couldn't agree more with your initial premise, and less with your conclusions; a good story tops a strong argument, for social interest and political applicability, every time. Stories are the essential glue of human interaction. Stories win elections, change attitudes, inspire hearts, encapsulate wisdom. Social statistics depend as much on methods and choices of those producing and working with them, as they do on invariate mathematical forumlae; they range our ignorance, and point to what we've forgotten to record, as often as they have any predictive use. I'm all for double entry bookkeeping, but there's little strategy in the average balance sheet, and few lessons in ledgers. The spirit of a society is, at best, imperfectly recorded in its census and tax returns.

I'm really troubled by your casually flung notion of "class" in describing American society. It's hugely problematic, even as a legal term of art. I'm even more put off by your suggestions that my entire life experience fit some silly duality of your definition:
"But I agree with taz that the only reasons to suggest there is no power differential between classes of people in society is either 'vested interest in the status quo', or genuine ignorance of the experiences of others."

For the record, I'm not a member of the Cabal, and last I heard, there was no Cabal; too bad, too, as if there were, and they'd have me, I'd join right up. I've had plenty of recitations of the experiences of others, at Chamber of Commerce meetings, service club breakfasts, social events, and 56 years of going about in the world, while raising kids, and caring for others. Based on that, and the operation of Occam's Razor, I could suggest that an equally likely explanation that fits your view is that, truly, your concept of class is more an artifact of your view of the world, than it is reality. There's no Cabal, even in a Republic operated by persistent (if historically imperfect) institutions, and results tend to follow individual variance to a great degree. But if your beliefs are really working for you, you're welcome to them. Mine seem to be working for most people I do know.

Choosing to view the world through such polarizing filters as your suggested questions describe must, in my experience, eventually embitter the soul. (More on that in a minute.) I suspect my attorney would prohibit my asking your suggested questions of most job applicants I might interview, and I don't believe there is any way to ask such things "respectfully." I think they'd be problematic to include (in a context relevant form) on most loan applications, or rental applications, too. Worse, and this, I think, is a central point of disagreement I have with "class" as a concept, is that encouraging people to self-identify as members of anything other than the total body politic is fundementally at odds with the notion that

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

No mention of "class" there, or indeed, anywhere in the Declaration of Independence. The only place in the original Consitution the word "class" appears is Article 1, Section 3, where it's used to initially divide the Senate into thirds, to start off the staggering of Senate rotation, by foreshortening the terms of two-thirds of the original Senators to 2 and 4 year durations. The word "class" is not in the Bill of Rights. It's not in Amendents 11-27, either.

"We, The People, ..." That's the only grouping or "class" we've really needed, and most of present and past failings we've had and continue to have as a society, in my view, have come about when we have considered people's needs and rights to be different, because of minor distinctions some, but not others, chose to note, at this turn of events, or that.

So I think asking your questions would be pretty demeaning to those asked, and I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it of closest friends, and I wouldn't do it of family, either, even if I felt I could rely on their love. But more than demeaning, to act upon notions of "class" in our society is to necessarily convince many, if not most, that they are not individually responsible for their fates. It is to foretell and apologize for failure, before any chance is taken, or opportunity given. That's far worse than impolite. That's destructive to ambition, and dismissive of individual achievement. Try as you might, it's also a constant source of grease for very many kinds of slippery social slopes. And it's worse than fraud to hold out hope that in some more perfect future, equality of individual results will be assured by operation of law and custom, if we can only live long enough to see that happy day.

Now here's the practical example from my experience of these matters, that I promised above. As a young man, I watched my mother and 3 other women fight an EEO civil suit with the Federal government for 5 years while working there. She spent more than $45,000 in legal fees (1970 dollars), and the other women equal amounts. I still have 2758 pages of discovery documentation that her money bought. In the end, despite all that, she had to hear from her own lawyers that there was no evidence of systemic conduct to deny advancement to women in her branch. That was a hugely difficult pill for her to swallow, and as the other women dropped away from the case, too, she turned those pages of documentation, night after night. Her handwritten notes still fill the margins. But in the end, she put it down, and said to me, simply, one night "I was wrong. There isn't a pattern of discrimination." She was emotionally spent for a year or so, after that fight. But making that admission to herself, finally, wrought great changes in her outlook. She began to see her job as a job, not a crusade, and her colleagues as people once again. And she transferred to other job sites, and retired on her own terms, and enjoyed years of productive life thereafter. She was, in the end, one of the best examples of a person coming to grips with a deeply held cognitive dissonance I've ever known. I recommend her example, for the relief of spirit her intellectual honesty wrought in her.

I've always told every kid that's ever asked me, that they can be anything they want to be (independent of physical and mental limitations), if they are willing to pay the price, and in my adult lifetime, I think that has been the case, although I remember times when it was not, by law. But I've also told them that the price won't be the same for everyone, for any specific goal, because we're all individuals. That's not unfair, so much as it is a necessary condition of balancing freedom for all with protection of the rights of any one, in a real world of limited resources.

In my view, wisdom is conducting the politics of change not to produce equality of result, but so as to maintain the greatest freedoms for everyone with the least governance needed to protect enumerated rights of all. I understand that is not satisfactory to you, and that you want a regulated result.

You'll appreciate that I could reasonably remain skeptical of such, I trust, having seen, as I did, both sides of the Berlin Wall, when there still was one.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

No mention of "class" there, or indeed, anywhere in the Declaration of Independence.

I think if you're looking for evidence of class differences in our society, there are better places to find them than in the text of the Declaration of Independence.

If you're seeking to ignore them, though, it's pretty much the perfect place to look.

Not even Charles Murray has the balls to suggest that there aren't huge disparities in American society, he just uses racist logic to explain them.

Whoa! I never knew Meta-C (heh, sounds like a multi-vitamin) got to 100 plus comments. Kewwwl.

As with the darker blue and the green, I shall post without reading all comments. :)

I've been thinking about this in a couple of contexts. First, my 16-year-old foster daughter (Asian, raised in Taiwan, US citizen) has been thinking a lot about ethic and racist slurs, and trying to understand why they are so powerful and make people so angry, and where she fits into this lexicon. [I have brought her some articles about the latest slur scandals (e.g. Time Magazine's "Who Can Say What" cover story, stories about Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, George Allen of Macaca fame, etc.).] It's hard to say exactly where this foster Asian queer butch accented-English girl fits into the power hierarchy, and what it means when she experimentally refers to herself as a "chink."

Second, I am on a private, moderated, predominantly white, mainly do-gooder-y listserv for women who have had a particular life experience (which is itself associated with discrimination). There has been a discussion recently about whether to change the netiquette/groundrules when we talk about issues of race and/or racism. There is a cadre of members who are thinking about writing up a list of proposed rules for members to follow in writing about race and racism. Some suggestions include rules which depend upon whether the poster is a majority or minority.

Me, 15 years ago I would have been one of this sub-group. I still think it's critical to think hard about how we talk about race, and to remember where we are situated, which privileges we have, who is in our audience, who is speaking, who is silent, the assumptions we are making, the impact of what we say, who is bearing the costs and pain of different statements, etc.

B - b - but ... context is so rich and complex -- there is no way (in my opinion) for a list of rules to be appropriate for each situation.

"I've had plenty of recitations of the experiences of others, at Chamber of Commerce meetings, service club breakfasts, social events, and 56 years of going about in the world, while raising kids, and caring for others. Based on that, and the operation of Occam's Razor, I could suggest that an equally likely explanation that fits your view is that, truly, your concept of class is more an artifact of your view of the world, than it is reality."

OK. So you've got 56 man-years of experience. You think that's more valuable than the BILLIONS OF MAN-YEARS accumulated by Americans up until now? Occam's razor says that you're, again, extrapolating your objectively narrow but subjectively broad experience far beyond the significant digits that it allows.
Or would you only be convinced by someone 57-years-old who had travelled more?

But look at it this way— suppose I'm wrong. Suppose my life experience is invalid when compared to yours— suppose there is no systemic discrimination, race or class based.
Are people hurt more by me being wrong or by you?

Further, let's take another one of those ugly studies and think about it, and ignore your experience for a moment— a recent study of the NBA found that refs make calls that favor their own race about 4% of the time above random. That means, functionally, the NBA officiating is about 4% racist (and it applies for both white and blacks— they call for their own about 4% more than they should if random). Let's assume that American society is equally racist (which may or may not be defensible). How many interactions do you think people have per day with people of another race? Even at two or three, assuming we're not in Utah, that's about (spitballin') 750 million instances times 4% = 30 million racist interactions per day. Or, you know, everyone in Texas and Virginia all at once.

Which is still a significant problem, you know? Even if some guy in Akron told you a story about not being racist today.

"... Are people hurt more by me being wrong or by you? ..."

klangklangston, as usual, I'm having a hard time processing your comments. Let's see if I can explain why.

1) You assert (in the double negative) that there is systemic racism in America.
2) You sort of "cite" a study about NBA refs whose individual calls are slightly more in favor of their own race, than of others. You don't bother to link it, or present evidence that it's a properly designed study, so it might just be a Fig Newton of your imagination, but let's let that go, shall we? You completely fail to understand that unless refs are making their calls entirely in a systemic framework of interactions, that their calls might not even add up to a valid statistical bump in either direction, at the league level.
3) On the basis of nothing, you feel your NBA statistical model extends to normal societal interactions, which is a pretty specious jump of "klanglogic," even for you. But if valid, your mechanism, operating at the individual interaction level in a nearly psuedo-random way across a large and ethnically diverse population, would tend to swamp small systemic mechanisms of racial bias, not magnify them.
4) You think you've said something insightful.

But to answer your question, if you're right and there is small systemic bias in society, you'll be happy to penalize millions trying to right wrongs that may have small net social costs, operating as they must in competition with personal factors. You'll convince millions that the dice are loaded against them, and there is no point in trying. You'll convince millions of other who tried and failed, that their failure is not their responsibility, and that there is no point in examining their history to find improvements for their lives. So, if you're right, and I'm wrong, I see millions of people's lives sabotaged by discouragement of ambition, and failure to accept responsibility, I guess.

If you're wrong, and I'm right, I see people expected to look to their own resources, as much as possible, to succeed. I see a society which is interested in recognizing achievement, and encouraging those strategies and institutions that contribute to more people being successful. I see hope for a better future, built on millions of people's individual strategies for overcoming problems. I see a society that is ultimately more agile in responding to opportunity because it is less regulated, and which therefore has greater freedom for most of its members.

Sorry for assuming that you've been following the news, Paul— this study's been all over.

Aside from that Paul, you're the guy standing outside saying "There's no such thing as global warming. Why, it wasn't even that hot today!"

Which is why anecdote isn't data.

And as far as the dire predictions of me being wrong— how, exactly, am I dooming generations? By seeing that there is bias in systems toward those who create and maintain those systems?

In short, your dudgeon is completely unwarranted and speaks to a histrionic perception of an undistributed middle. But Metachat isn't the place to call you retarded, nor to continue on wiht the diminishing returns of trying to bring some glimmer of enlightenment against the calcified pseudo-evidence of your experience.

No fool like an old fool.

"...No fool like an old fool."
posted by klangklangston 05 May | 08:05

You're killin' me here, klangklangston. :-)

From your NYT article:

"The paper by Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price has yet to undergo formal peer review before publication in an economic journal,..."

and

"Editors' Note: May 5, 2007

A front-page article on Wednesday about an academic study that detected a racial bias in the foul calls of referees in the National Basketball Association noted that The New York Times had asked three independent experts to review the study and materials from a subsequent N.B.A. study that detected no bias. ...

After the article was published, The Times learned that one of the three experts, Larry Katz of Harvard University, was the chairman of Mr. Wolfers’s doctoral thesis committee, as Mr. Wolfers had acknowledged in previous studies. Because of this, Mr. Katz should not have been cited as an independent expert."

And

...Two veteran players who are African-American, Mike James of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Alan Henderson of the Philadelphia 76ers, each said that they did not think black or white officials had treated them differently.

“If that’s going on, then it’s something that needs to be dealt with,” James said. “But I’ve never seen it.”

And

"Mr. Wolfers said that he and Mr. Price classified each N.B.A. player and referee as either black or not black by assessing photographs and speaking with an anonymous former referee, and then using that information to predict how an official would view the player."

And

"The N.B.A.’s reciprocal study was conducted by the Segal Company, the actuarial consulting firm which designed the in-house data-collection system the league uses to identify patterns for referee-training purposes, to test for evidence of bias. The league’s study was less formal and detailed than an academic paper, included foul calls for only two and a half seasons (from November 2004 through January 2007), and did not consider differences among players by position, veteran status and the like. But it did have the clear advantage of specifying which of the three referees blew his whistle on each foul. [emphasis added]"

klangklangston, you picked a pretty good article to illustrate my point about the arguability of social statistics. :-) Thanks!

And pardon me if, once again, I'm unimpressed by the power of your "pseudo-evidence"...

This just in! There is no racism in our society! People can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps!

Woohoo!

And if they can't, it's their own damned fault. They should have bought bigger boots rather than that rent-to-own fake leather crap.

paulsc, I don't have much to say about your and klangklangston's wider argument, but the paper about subconscious racial bias on the part of NBA referees, by Wolfers and Price, is pretty solid stuff.

It has not yet undergone peer review, but I've no doubt it will pass through easily and be published in one of the more prestigious economics journals. Other prominent economists take the same view. Of course academics must be careful not to rely on research that has not been peer-reviewed, but in the real world it's absurd to describe anything that has not yet been been reviewed as "pseudo-evidence". You could make the argument that the NYT ought not to publish articles about research that hasn't yet been peer-reviewed, but that seems like a separate issue.

The fact that some African-American players have never seen evidence of this means nothing. You can argue with their paper by pointing out flaws in their econometrics, but not by producing some anecdotes.

By quoting the part about how they determined a player's race, you imply there's something wrong with it. The ideal method would be to pay a panel of real NBA referees to look at every single NBA player and decide if he's "black" or "white" (since of course it's perception of race that matters here, not 'actual' race in genetic terms). But in the real world of financial and time constraints, categorising them yourself seems reasonable. Are you implying some bias is introduced here, that Wolfers and Price somehow see some players as white who referees would see as black? I find that hypothesis hard to believe.

As for the Larry Katz thing, yes that was a cock-up on the part of the NYT to cite him as an independent reviewer, but Katz is hardly some rent-a-quote nobody - he's a serious, prominent academic, who edits one the three most important economics journals, and his opinion shouldn't be cynically discounted just because he has some connection to one of the authors.

"By quoting the part about how they determined a player's race, you imply there's something wrong with it. "

Puhleeeze, matthewr.

The part that stands out in the quote, to me, is bolded below.

"Mr. Wolfers said that he and Mr. Price classified each N.B.A. player and referee as either black or not black by assessing photographs and speaking with an anonymous former referee, and then using that information to predict how an official would view the player."

The study's authors couldn't possibly know how each individual ref would categorize each individual player, if in fact, each, or any, refs actually did. The mere assumption that all refs inherently assign players to mental race buckets at all, which is inherent to their study, is a hypothesis on their part, a guess, which could strongly influence their results. It's also an implicit charge of racism against each official working in the league.

"...Are you implying some bias is introduced here, that Wolfers and Price somehow see some players as white who referees would see as black? I find that hypothesis hard to believe. ..."

I don't, because once you dig into the study, you find further gems, like this:

"In each case, we simply noted whether a player or referee appeared black, or not. (Hispanics, Asians,and other groups are not well represented among either NBA players or referees, and throughout the paper we refer to non-blacks somewhat imprecisely as “white”.)"

They decide, arbitrarily, player by player, who belongs to what race, and toss anyone that they don't feel like identifying as black on their "white" pile. And you think their methodology is sound? Where's the data table on their own selection bias? How many runs did they make on different initial race distributions?

And down near their conclusions section, on page 29, we get this:

"Who is Discriminated Against?
There are also two ways in which these own-race biases may emerge: they may reflect referees favoring players of their own race, or alternatively disfavoring those of the opposite race. The arbitrary assignment of referees to games means that we can test whether our estimates reflect an influence of referee race on black players, or on white players. Table 3 is instructive, showing that the rate at which fouls are earned by black players is largely invariant to the racial composition of the refereeing crew. By contrast the rate at which fouls are earned by white players responds quite strongly to referee race. Further regression-based tests yield a similar pattern (see in particular the coefficient on %white referees in Table 4), suggesting that the impact of the biases we document is on white players, who are either favored by white referees, or disfavored by black referees." [emphasis added]

In simple terms, the study authors conclude that black players aren't being penalized, but that the white players (including whatever inconvenient Asians, Hispanics or other ethnic persons that they tossed on the white pile), are the ones subject to unfair treatment.

There's only so much beating this dead horse deserves, but if you want to keep going, have at it.

And finally, in response to your comment "...and his opinion shouldn't be cynically discounted just because he has some connection to one of the authors." I didn't suggest his opinion be discounted, the NYT did, and there was nothing cynical about it.

I had thought a lot about anecdote and the trouble with anecdote as evidence this morning on my run. I was going to write about why anecdote is bad, primarily because all anecdotes are true, which has no bearing on whether or not they're wrong. In fact, I've got precisely the opposite anecdote about gender bias in the workplace: my step-mother sued the US govt and the case was decided, after many years and a lot of money, in her favor in a judgment handed down by Robert Bork (no fan of class-based judgments).

But, after coming back to the thread and reading what paulsc has written, I'm really not going to go into it. Paul, you're ignoring hundreds of years of historical and sociological research which clearly identifies racial and gender bias in our society. Hell, it hasn't even been a hundred years since women got the vote, or 50 years since African Americans got it. It just been 150 years since slavery was ended, for christ's sake. Acknowledging those facts, and the facts of bias, say nothing about how we should therefore proceed, although you suggest that there's such inherent danger in admitting the truth that it's better for society to pretend that everything is hunky dory.

It is you making the extraordinary claims here, sir, not anyone else. You are precisely in the position of a believer in creationism: your belief comes first and prevents you admitting the dis-confirming evidence that everyone in the reality based community is operating with. It's an extremely intellectually dishonest position, and one that's only held by ideologues, knaves, or fools. It's hard to know why anyone should take anything you say seriously after your bullshit in this thread.

omie, I agree with everything you've said, but as a note:

Black men actually got the vote in the US 50 years before women did; blacks in 1870 and women in 1920.

I tend to trot out this statistic every time people claim that racism is obviously a problem but we've "solved" sexism. So I'm rather attached to the numbers, and to their implications.

Good looking out. I actually knew the official date, but was talking about what you might call the effective date. I hesitated about which to use.

/hugs omie for saying what I've only been able to sputter in half-sentences while hoeing the garden

The study's authors couldn't possibly know how each individual ref would categorize each individual player

They classified each player as black or white, and assumed that players they described as black would also be thought of as black. What's wrong with that? I don't think there's much evidence to suggest that economists and referees have wildly divergent perceptions of who is black and who is white. The magnitude of the possible error here must be tiny.

The mere assumption that all refs inherently assign players to mental race buckets at all .. is a guess .. [and] an implicit charge of racism against each official working in the league.

When you look at someone, of course you're aware on some level of their skin colour. How could you not be? Even if refs somehow don't (even subconsciously) notice a player's race, it shouldn't show up in the regression results, should it? And I don't see how assuming that refs are aware of players' races is, of itself, an accusation of racism. When you look at someone, of course you are aware of their skin colour, but that's not anything to do with racism.

They decide, arbitrarily, player by player, who belongs to what race .. Where's the data table on their own selection bias?

How else do you propose deciding what race a referee is likely to see a player as? Of course they're subjectively deciding what race a player appears to be - just as referees subjectively decide the same thing. I don't see why the economists would come to a different classification from the refs. The number of Hispanics and Asians etc is so small as to be insignificant.

Roughly speaking, there is slight evidence of pro-black (or anti-white) bias by black referees (18 of 29 referees have negative coefficients), and somewhat stronger evidence of pro-white (or anti-black) bias by white referees (evident in 43 of 55 cases).

This gives the lie to your assertion that somehow white players are the only ones being discriminated against here. When the study says white players "are either favored by white referees, or disfavored by black referees" you seem to misread that as "the only thing that happens is white players are disfavoured by black referees". In fact, in that section the authors were analysing whether, for each race, the own-race bias results from their race being favoured or the other race being disfavoured, since these are not exactly the same things.

I actually knew the official date, but was talking about what you might call the effective date. I hesitated about which to use.

Yeah, and I suspect (well, I know) that African-Americans still have a lot more problems at the polls than women do, so your implications are right in many ways. But it's just one of those statistics that really jumped out at me when I did the math -- that this country's official policy made blacks full citizens 50 years before they did so for women -- so I'm possibly overly attached to the implications, especially when claims against systematic bias are trotted out.

No, no, I actually came back into the thread to say that you're right, because of the implications for women it should be noted as such. It's a very good point.

"...Paul, you're ignoring hundreds of years of historical and sociological research which clearly identifies racial and gender bias in our society. ..."

I sometimes wonder what it takes to actually be read around here. Maybe repetition through quoting myself?

"...There's no Cabal, even in a Republic operated by persistent (if historically imperfect) institutions, and results tend to follow individual variance to a great degree. [emphasis added] ..."

"... I've always told every kid that's ever asked me, that they can be anything they want to be (independent of physical and mental limitations), if they are willing to pay the price, and in my adult lifetime, I think that has been the case, although I remember times when it was not, by law. ..."

So, omiewise, that's 2 explicit acknowledgements of the existence of historical bias on my part, in this thread. I didn't ignore it, but my comments weren't based in any consideration or denial of historical bias (although I checked the founding documents for the word "class" to discuss why I find that a troubling concept in discussing American society). I also didn't discuss the operation of law and civil society, and the Civil War, over that history, to change those conditions. I think it's reasonable to make my own points, not those of others.

"You are precisely in the position of a believer in creationism: your belief comes first and prevents you admitting the dis-confirming evidence that everyone in the reality based community is operating with. ..."

Clearly, I'm not, as my self-quotes show. What's intellectually dishonest about your position, and doctrinaire in the extreme for somebody who believes himself to be a member of "the reality based community" (and I quote your self-description, but do not snicker in doing so, simply because I have no idea what "community" that might be, "reality" being a concept still in much dispute among philosophers and investigators of quantum phenomena) is that you fail to acknowledge that the history of bias in America is counterbalanced by a long march of corrective actions. You ignore the operation of society to redress injustice, as if the finding of any injustice is sufficient warrant to indict the whole of our social structure.

That's pitifully alarmist. And it's far from "reality based" as I understand the world of human affairs, to expect, ever, some perfect society. What I contend is not that we now have, or ever will, a perfect justice, but that, in a society which provides means of redress, remaining injustice may not be systemic, but incidental, and can continue to be addressed. At some point, the operation of incidental bias does drop below the influence of individual choice, and at that point, minorities run in every election for President, people who once would have been disenfranchised become billionaires, women command Space Shuttle missions, and any kid can grow up to be anything.

Moreover, I contend that we may have reached that point, or pretty close to it, already. If race remains an issue in America, it apparently does so most notably among millionaires on basketball courts, and at least Watts and Newark won't burn again this summer. That's real progress in my lifetime.

"...It's an extremely intellectually dishonest position, and one that's only held by ideologues, knaves, or fools. It's hard to know why anyone should take anything you say seriously after your bullshit in this thread."
posted by omiewise 05 May | 17:25

I'm not an ideologue, a knave, or a fool, for holding a different view of American society, anymore than you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist for apparently believing in the ongoing operation of systemic racism, despite the existence of laws prohibiting such, and courts ready to prosecute violations and sentence transgressors. You have some opinions that differ from mine, but I don't need to call you names or belittle your intellect to comment about mine.

I do wonder why, if you believe what you apparently do, that you're wasting time calling me names, instead of acting to eliminate the wrongs you believe so passionately exist, through political and legal action. I can't offer redress of your grievances, or those of others you might well just be imagining exist, and I don't think every slight by one person of another demands a pound of flesh in recompense. If you think reparations for slavery are just, write your Congressman. If you want to give back Texas to Mexico, and Tennessee to the Cherokee, get in touch with your Senator. Could it be that your sense of injustice doesn't rise to the effort of letters written, and the price of stationary and stamps?

Without commenting on its content, because it doesn't really matter at this point, I just want to point out that the comment immediatley above this one is pretty funny if you read it a la William Shatner.

[NOT SHATNERIST]

"This gives the lie to your assertion that somehow white players are the only ones being discriminated against here. ..."

What "assertion" of mine is it you're ranting on about? What I said, that I think you're trying to work up a head of steam about was:

"In simple terms, the study authors conclude that black players aren't being penalized, but that the white players (including whatever inconvenient Asians, Hispanics or other ethnic persons that they tossed on the white pile), are the ones subject to unfair treatment." [emphasis added]"

It's unfair to white players to either go easy on them (subjecting their achievements to debate, a la Roger Maris' "61 with a star") or to call them down excessively. And I didn't say anything about only white players being discriminated against. I added emphasis where the authors of the study said things to that effect, for visual clarity. If you like, consider my comment revised to delete the bolding, if that means anything.

You're clearly grasping at straws to legitimize what is pretty clearly a controversial study. I certianly don't have a horse in this race, personally. I was the one upthread who doubted the efficacy of interjecting social research into discussions of principle, simply because of how I've seen these things go in many other on line discussions. Here we are again, punching air over a news story about some bit of social research, which is nowhere near as repeatable or subject to the rigors of scientific challenge and testing as the most basic high school chemistry experiment.

Whoopee.

Eh, I wandered away, then got pissed off again, and had to come back to address a couple things.

I'm not an ideologue, a knave, or a fool, for holding a different view of American society, anymore than you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist for apparently believing in the ongoing operation of systemic racism, despite the existence of laws prohibiting such, and courts ready to prosecute violations and sentence transgressors.

See, this is where you're being obtuse.

1) You're using "systemic" to imply that there's a racist cabal. You, in fact, used the world cabal some 50 comments ago. No one else here has implied a cabal -- just that racist thoughts and behaviors and attitudes still exist in our society. And they do. Whether they're systemic, or cabalious, or whatever, racism is still with us. Period.

2) Laws? LAWS? There are no laws against racism. There are laws against discrimination. Criminal laws against hate crimes (which necessitate that grave bodily harm be committed). Civil laws against everyday discrimination. But violation of civil laws is only remedied through lawsuits. And as you yourself pointed out (in that anecdote about your mother -- and we all know now that anecdotes trump all other evidence), lawsuits are only so effective. And they SHOULD be unnecessary. But they're not. Because even with laws against discrimination, racism still happens. QED.

Arguing that there are laws against racism, so it must not exist, is really just stupid.

And finally:

If race remains an issue in America, it apparently does so most notably among millionaires on basketball courts...

This is just jaw-droppingly, incredibly moronic. I'd say "obtuse," but I've already used that word. Plus, it doesn't really convey the nausea.

Look, if you want to deny that racism exists, fine. Stay in your little (gated community?) enclave and ignore the rest of the society. That's fine.

But don't go around telling people who actually ARE trying to change things -- by spending time on internet forums pointing out the fallacies arguments like yours, for one thing (and, most likely, in bigger ways as well)that racism is a problem that happened some years ago, before our beneficent politicians enacted laws to stop it.

Just don't.

Without commenting on its content, because it doesn't really matter at this point, I just want to point out that the prior comment is hilarious if you read it in the dispassionate voice of Leonard Nimoy, playing Spock. Or better yet, Majel Barrett, playing The Computer.

I really think you're on to something here, mudpuppie.

You're clearly grasping at straws to legitimize what is pretty clearly a controversial study.

It's only controversial in that it studies a controversial topic. The study itself has thus far gained nothing but praise from econometricians. I'm not using it to argue for anything else, or to support anyone else's point of view, I'm just pointing out where you went wrong in criticising it.

And I didn't say anything about only white players being discriminated against.

Er, what about that time you said the "authors conclude that black players aren't being penalized, but that the white players .. are the ones subject to unfair treatment."? You'll find the study actually says nothing of the sort.

some bit of social research, which is nowhere near as repeatable or subject to the rigors of scientific challenge and testing as the most basic high school chemistry experiment.

It's entirely subject to the rigours of academic challenge. You can collect the data, run the regressions and tests, and check that your conclusions match theirs. If you don't agree with the statistical techniques they used, or the data they used, there's nothing stopping you from telling us why. To judge econometric research in comparison with chemistry experiments is a completely meaningless apples-and-oranges criticism.

It's unfair to white players to either go easy on them (subjecting their achievements to debate, a la Roger Maris' "61 with a star") or to call them down excessively.

Wow. What kind of person, on finding that white referees favour white basketball players manages to claim that white people are somehow losing out?

Apologizing for the livejournal link, but this is cracking my shit up.

(And I think Omie got the Bonus Square automatic win. Congrats!)

"... The study itself has thus far gained nothing but praise from econometricians. ..."
posted by matthewr 05 May | 21:58

Why are the opinions of fellow econometricians sacrosanct? I've questioned the basis of their initial group selections, and the NBA's auditing firm has already questioned their methodology for checking actual referree calls by race assignment. Its conclusions have also been questioned in the NYT article and elsewhere by professional basketball players. I think it's fair to say that the study itself is controversial, and that the fact that it is, is part of what made it newsworthy to the NYT.

Moreover, in a quick flip around the Web, I've seen some interesting comments that remind people that fouls are a strategic component of the game, and will be frequently intentionally drawn, not just called. There is also a question of the study not being able to control for game "style," which is where teams that tend to muscle and bang are allowed to play a bit rough, while other teams are intentionally over-whistled by the officials, to keep control of the game in the hands of the officials.

I suspect others will question the study further, as it works its way to publication. There's no reason to race to stamp it "Approved" in this thread, ahead of normal peer review.

And even if its conclusions do stand up, what's the point of it? If the bias the study thinks it found is unconcious, we're stuck with it, unless we put robots in charge of our games. I, for one, don't want to watch robot games.

"... What kind of person, on finding that white referees favour white basketball players manages to claim that white people are somehow losing out?"

The kind that remembers Maris clenching his jaw and looking down at the floor, when asked for the umpteenth time about the star.

There's a reason that right or wrong, the zebra's word, after challenges and appeal, is final. That reason is that sports, like courts, are a human endeavor, and judgement is valued. You play knowing that you're going to lose some calls you shouldn't as well as benefit from some that ought to go to the other guy. Being willing to compete anyway, and to try to win so convincingly that there is no question of your superiority is one hallmark of sportsmanship.

If the fix is truly in, you're expected to stand up for yourself, and there should be corrective mechanisms, that don't strike at the human heart of the endeavor. And I don't think any sportsman is against doing what is reasonable to ensure fairness in sports, while keeping it a human endeavor. At times, even applying things like taped play review remains controversial long after it is established practice, as it changes, inevitably, the flow of close games, more than others. Moreover, if you insist that every game you lose, or even play, is fixed, you're Mark Cuban, and you don't much understand sports.

But as I say, personally, I don't care. I'd ignore this study as a not very interesting academic excercise, and watch the games. If I were a betting man, I might be more cognizant of the conclusions, but absent interactions with oddsmakers, one additional foul per player every 5 to 8 games is just, invisible, man.

Ya know, that Ref study was mentioned as AN example or racism. Not THE example of racism.

Carry on.

There's a reason that right or wrong, the zebra's word, after challenges and appeal, is final. That reason is that sports ...

Dude, no one is trying to take the NBA away from you. Wolfers and Price are interested in subconscious racial bias and the NBA is an excellent opportunity to test for these biases because of the large dataset, the instantaneous snap decisions involved, the ability to control for other factors etc. mudpuppie is right, the NBA's role here is merely as a source of data, with some good statistical properties (like referees' random assignation to games).

I've questioned the basis of their initial group selections
And not come with any argument as to how their classification of race would introduce bias, without massive wilful fraud on their part being necessitated, or suggested a better alternative.

and the NBA's auditing firm has already questioned their methodology
The NBA's auditors have better data, but (as well as not publishing any results) they admit to making a "less formal and detailed" study, and didn't even try to control for player position. On the use of econometrics, I'm more inclined to listen to an academic econometrician's opinion than that of the NBA's auditing firm.

And even if its conclusions do stand up, what's the point of it?

Well, the point of it is to determine whether there is evidence for significant subconscious racial bias amongst an otherwise expert group of individuals making fast decisions.

if the bias the study thinks it found is unconcious, we're stuck with it, unless we put robots in charge of our games.

So? That's not Wolfers' and Price's problem. Worrying about either racist or robotic referees is up to the NBA, and Wolfers and Price aren't here to tell the NBA (or society) how to fix racial bias.

Oh my fucking Christ, you did not just cite Ralph Ellison, you honky-ass motherfucker!

Did you read that book? And you're using it to argue that racial discrimination happens so seldomly as to be invisible in its effects? You honky-ass motherfucker.

You want to have an argument with the author of the NY Times article, where he goes through the criticisms one by one? Have at it.

Until then, you gotta stop arguing that either the games were all fixed or that the bias doesn't matter, else someone's liable to point out that sports are, you know, about statistics. Not your dear Roger's 61— which plays right along with your addle-pated insistance on bullshit over fact (there's no asterix), but real statistics: percentages. Pitchers scuff balls for less than a 4% shift in calls, and seasons are measured in aggregate— No one's gonna care at the end of the year that the Pacers beat the Pistons once, but the three to four games that the study authors believe could be gained over the course of the season can mean the difference between Golden State getting to the playoffs and not.

And yes, of course fouls are used strategically. But if you listen to the comments from the authors, they ran regressions against that too. But the NBA is counting on you not taking this study seriously because you're too stupid to understand statistics, and too comfortable with the status quo.

Yes, this is one study about racism in the world, Paul. But the point, as mentioned WAY back up there was that at even 4% racism in interactions, the aggregate effect would still be huge on the population. And that's given that the NBA is probably one of the most PROGRESSIVE sports.

But no, Paul, you honky-ass motherfucker, you're a white man who's got an interest in the status quo, and in believing that you got where you did through your own effort and skill, not through privilege and edges. And because of that, you're willing to stand, look around, and say "I don't believe the world's round. Everything I see says that it's flat."

And then you have the temerity to insist that somehow laws protect against racism and that we've solved the racism problem? I mean, I'm not even going to get into discussions on political systems, because you're too fucking dense. You're not willing to put a brief moment of empathy in, you're not willing to consider scientific evidence, what else but fucking dense do you call someone so willfully ignorant? Someone who misappropriates the language of victimhood, who would (hopefully in a tone-deaf attempt at humor) willfully misconstrue a book all about the damages wrought by exclusion from normative privilege? Someone so bereft of both sense and sensitivity that you can only hope for a Watermelon Man deus ex machina? Someone willing to be wrong on every single fucking point they offer just to avoid having to say "Yes, racism is real and still exists and still hurts people, and my attitudes probably aren't helping."

Well, you call 'em a honky-ass motherfucker.

Now come back with some whining about the slurs, because I can signify OK for a white guy.

"...Now come back with some whining about the slurs, because I can signify OK for a white guy."
posted by klangklangston 06 May | 00:51

Jeez, klang, if all you've got left is invective, I wouldn't want to take your last tinkertoy. Was I supposed to be mortally wounded? "Honky-ass?" Ouch! That huuuurrrrttts!

Maybe you're right, and racism is the dominant feature of American society. Maybe I'm white (actually, I don't personally know about that, and I tend to get creative, just for the hell of it, when presented with racial affiliation checkboxes on forms), and therefore constantly operating on sub-concious bias, living a life that's 100% unearned gimme. No matter how much I might try, no matter how much education I might get, no matter how many sensitivity courses I attend, I'll never escape my color except by dying, and I'll always be a honky.

Should I shut myself up then (as mudpuppie suggests), like Ellison's character, and steal light from the power company, to try to prove to myself that I'm something more? Seems kind of defeatist. And as Ellison found, a plot turn from which it's really hard to write your way out. Cuts off all the sequel streams, too, which kills the movie deals.

But if I prefer to think that my light skin is not determinative of my fate, nor the next man's or woman's skin color, or gender, determinative of theirs, maybe it makes sense to see what else they've got, besides racial affiliation, or sex, when I meet them. Maybe it makes sense to not put myself in situations where snap judgements are more important than reasoned response. Maybe I'll need to collect more facts in making decisions involving people, and consider other qualities about them than they may project in the first 30 seconds after I've met them.

Maybe basketball shouldn't be my game.

Just spitballin' here, but maybe the decision mechanisms for calling basketball games shouldn't be the ones I live by in the larger world. Whaddya really think, klang?

Good thing, then, as it's turned out, that it's not. 'Cause you know, white guys (you know, "honkys") (and I guess for econometric research purposes, Asian and Latin guys, too), can't jump. PDF

Wow, Paul, I'm sorry to hear about this recent accident that's left you totally retarded.

Here're some quotes from me:
"In short, your dudgeon is completely unwarranted and speaks to a histrionic perception of an undistributed middle."

"But the point, as mentioned WAY back up there was that at even 4% racism in interactions, the aggregate effect would still be huge on the population."

Do you see those quotes, Paul? I mean, I realize I'm having to talk you through this like a dog learning to sit, but when you say "Maybe you're right, and racism is the dominant feature of American society," and "living a life that's 100% unearned gimme," I can only pity your learning disability.

Do you know that 4 and 100 are different numbers, Paul? I mean, we can get that far, right? And, since I've been unfairly picking on someone so obviously unable to utilize higher functions, I'll explain what a systemic or structural bias means— it means that the rules of a game, or their enforcment, affect the outcome. That's not too hard when put into plain language, is it Paul? It's usually predictable, and can be measured through this thing called, now don't get scared, econometrics. Just like the paper up above. It means by looking at results patterns, you can figure out some of the cause. Like how an increase in the height of the pitching rubber will lead to lower ERAs (or WHIPs if you want to be more precise). It's not scary on it's own Paul, and more importantly— it happens in degrees, or, as they're sometimes known— percentages.

The difference between the 4% reffing bias and the change that you'd get by moving the pitching rubber is that, on some level, our society has decided that racism is unfair. And it also happens in degrees. But, and here's the sports analogy continuing— those percentages add up. Played over a significant number of "pitches" or "fouls," they mean games.
Or, if you look at referee Joey Crawford, recently suspended, they mean championships. To be clear, I am not arguing that Crawford was racist, but rather that he called 40% more fouls on the Pistons than anyone else in the league when he was their playoff head ref. And he called about 30% more fouls on the Pistons than he called on anyone else in the league. Is it more likely that the Pistons were dirty or that Crawford had a hate on for 'em? It wasn't fair, it was a systemic bias, and the numbers meant that Detroit had less control over strategic fouling against Miami. (We'll leave aside the longstanding allegations from both Sports Illustrated and ESPN, both of which do a story every couple of years about this, that the NBA goes out of its way to favor large market teams and marquee players).

But do you get it now, Paul? Do you understand how, if you'll forgive me, the racism isn't black and white here— your 100% bullshit is a straw man. And it's not in line with what anyone has been saying.

Because if you don't get it now, you're fucking retarded and should probably stay the hell out of any intellectual discussion on bias or race from here on out, just to avoid making the rest of us white people seem as fucking clueless and insensitive as you are.