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[Tiruin]

YOU'RE AMAZING AND I HAVE MISSED YOU FOR MONTHS (while I may seem inactive on Bay12, I'm literally active on discord daily, because thesis [but moreso the lockdown and otherwise] are taking up my time \o/)

E: I've been tons busy when juggling work/otherwise, now having entered freelancing [writing/transcription, compared to my Psych field ugh] and seeing the greater international scope of things (and its difficulties) as they are .___.;

[Reelya]

Racism and the class system are intrinsically linked.

Obviously, in absolute terms, the police spend more time and bullets shooting white people than black people. That's a fact. So we say that's not a valid metric, you need to adjust for factors, in this case different population sizes. And doing that reveals that black people are about 2.5 more likely, per capita to be shot by police.

However, we can't just adjust for factors we want to and reject adjusting for other relevant factors. If we're allowed to cherry-pick which factors we're adjusting for, you can basically prove any conclusion. For example if there's an absolute bias against black people per-se then adjusting for poverty rates shouldn't change that.

However if you adjust for poverty rates, then the disparity in shooting rates actually goes away again. Poor white people are about as likely to be shot by police as poor black people.
https://replicationindex.com/2019/09/27/poverty-explain-racial-biases-in-police-shootings/

Both poor whites and poor blacks are roughly equally oppressed classes on the metric of being targeted by police per-capita. Which shows that the deep rooted problem is ultimately a class-system issue, with race being a proxy for class. This is the reason that dividing things on a color-of-skin basis as the basis of improving things doesn't work, it fails to address the core problem.

[Yoink]

Clone Hitlers then it's ok to kill them because they're Hitler. Use the meat for a chain of Hitler burger shops.

"Welcome to Übermunch, can I take your executive order?"

I've just started re-watching Santa Clarita Diet and this is very relevant.   

It’s sad that that show ended

Yep. And so inconclusively.    
Damn Netflix. And apparently Netflix owns all rights to their shows for like, a few years after cancellation, so the creators can't just shift to another network/streaming service. It'd be nice to imagine they might someday reboot the show for a sequel or something, but it seems like a long shot (at least with the same cast).   

[Bumber]

I am 100% aware that you are not the only person who is making posts like this right now, and I am only picking on you because your quote is the first one I saw. In fact, this has nothing to do with you as an individual (I have no idea who you are, and you probably don't know me), but I'm going to indulge myself anyway.

-> The power structures in this country (USA) were created by white people for the unilateral benefit of white people, through violence and theft.
-> The entire construct of race was created by white people. It is not natural, as evidenced by the fact that it makes no fucking sense when you examine the ideas and history closely.
-> Regardless of whether a given white person intends to benefit, that person does benefit from our racist and inegalitarian system, often without being aware of it. For example, if someone refuses to rent to a Black family in a nice part of town, you might not know that the realtor was racist. If they're willing to rent to you instead, then you benefited, again, entirely unknowingly, from racism.

How would you consider the Irish, Italians, etc. to fit in here, considering they weren't always considered "white"?

[Reelya]

Also the idea of unilateral benefit seems a bit of a leap, given that most people in history have been poor. It's always been about the "unilateral" benefit of a small group of the economic elite, everyone else be damned. Having the same skin color is arbitrary. Things weren't created for their "benefit". If there weren't any slaves in the first place then the system would be pretty much the same as it is now. The system wasn't created for the "benefit" of everyone who isn't black. You also have the example of Asian people. The system definitely wasn't created for the "benefit" of Asian people either, yet Asian people have done very well for themselves, so how does that fit with the "everything is for white people only" thing?

Really, the main benefit of being white is that there are more white people. the whole thing basically boils down to the fact that if you fit in with the mainstream of <whatever> group then you're going to have an easier time of it. If you're white in Japan then a lot of opportunities won't be open to you. That doesn't mean that the system is "rigged" to favor Japanese people, it just means that if you fit in, then things are easier for you because of course they are. It's just a truism, and entirely circular reasoning and tells you nothing about "the system" at all. People form into groups-of-like-people are interact more with people-like-them all on their own without you having to "rig" anything. In fact you have to heavily rig things for this to not be the case, which is why special programs to support minorities are warranted. It's not because the system is "rigged" against them, it's that being in a minority is fundamentally rigged as an innate consequence of not being in the majority.

[Vector]

Love you too, Tiru

Racism and the class system are intrinsically linked.

True!

Both poor whites and poor blacks are roughly equally oppressed classes on the metric of being targeted by police per-capita. Which shows that the deep rooted problem is ultimately a class-system issue, with race being a proxy for class. This is the reason that dividing things on a color-of-skin basis as the basis of improving things doesn't work, it fails to address the core problem.

There are multiple issues here. First, the question of why the Black population is comparatively overrepresented among the working poor. Much of this has to do, of course, with historical social welfare programs like the GI bill specifically barring Black participation; and with redlining coercing Black families towards less desirable parts of town in many cities, including the one in which I live, which makes it much more difficult to build up home equity and from there intergenerational wealth and prosperity.

How would you consider the Irish, Italians, etc. to fit in here, considering they weren't always considered "white"?

Whiteness and the question of who belongs in this group and who doesn't has always been at issue (see also: "race as a construct doesn't make sense"). I addressed your proposed edge case, in my opinion, when I said: "And if there is no such ancestor--and you're certain that there is none--then you probably have a story about the legacy of oppression your own people experienced on their way here--in which case you know what suffering is." Historical suffering for a population which has subsequently assimilated is also not equal, by the way, to the experiences of a population that is currently experiencing violent oppression.

I'm also going to add that I'm one of those people of "questionable white" descent (incessantly asked "what I am" and whether I'm Eastern European; the correct answer is probably "white trash"). Being the target of frequent maltreatment has made me much more interested in helping other people who are being mistreated than in playing the "who's ancestors are most hurt" game. We're all actually on the same side against the overwhelmingly white billionaire class

Also the idea of unilateral benefit seems a bit of a leap, given that most people in history have been poor.

It is not to the benefit of indigenous people to be subjected to colonization. If it was not to the benefit of the poor majority to participate in colonization, why did they do so?

The system definitely wasn't created for the "benefit" of Asian people either, yet Asian people have done very well for themselves, so how does that fit with the "everything is for white people only" thing?

Are you familiar with the Hmong people? There is a pretty wide spread in the outcomes of Asian-American immigrants to the United States.

That doesn't mean that the system is "rigged" to favor Japanese people, it just means that if you fit in, then things are easier for you because of course they are. It's just a truism, and entirely circular reasoning and tells you nothing about "the system" at all.

Zainichi in Japan. For a book on the many ways in which racism has been formally and explicitly written into law in the United States, please read The Color of Law.

[Reelya]

You might find this one interesting too:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/21/17139300/economic-mobility-study-race-black-white-women-men-incarceration-income-chetty-hendren-jones-porter

The researchers find that, conditional on their parents’ income, black women actually outperform white women in terms of individual earnings.

Let me be very clear: This does not mean there is no income gap between white and black women. There very much is. In 2016, white women working full time and all year earned $57,559 on average compared to $45,261 for black women working full time, according to Census data. This chart does not show that the gap has somehow been closed or that black women aren’t disadvantaged economically.

But it appears, based on this new analysis, that the massive gap between black and white women’s salaries can be explained by differences in family background:
[graph]
In other words, the fact that fewer black women grow up in affluent families accounts for the ongoing inequality between white and black women’s wages. Black and white women born into equivalently wealthy families enjoy basically the same economic outcomes.

A straightforward reading of intersectionality really wouldn't predict anything like that, the standard reading is that that minority women just have a double-whammy automatically. But as seen, adjusting for circumstance in this case parental income entirely removes the "black female" penalty rate on income.

Black men have worse economic outcomes than white men coming from the same economic background, but there's no such apparent penalty for black women vs white women.

EDIT: Note: i'd guess this part can be explained at least partly by differences in education spending, since far more black women go to college than black men.
https://www.econ.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/tian_luo_thesis.pdf

educational spending, in the years 1980 through 2003, has risen significantly for Asians relative to Whites, while the opposite is observed for Blacks. Higher educational attainment follows a similar trend, as well as household income, however wage differentials conditional on education level and individual characteristics is still a concern for certain groups, while for other groups, wage differential is reversed. In these years, the wage differential that favored males has decreased, but still largely significant. Minority groups and females are generally disfavored, as suggested by the residual wage differential, however the wage differential is gradually and completely reversed for Black females and Asian Males with higher education in recent years. In fact, these two groups earn on average 14% and 13% more, respectively, than Whites with the same education level and individual characteristics.

----

Yeah, I get the point about colonialism but I also think that's a separate but related point. What we're talking about here is people today and the outcomes given the same circumstances. For black people, it's the interplay of gender and race, specifically, that seems to matter, but in the sense that the lack of economic mobility is entirely limited for black men rather than women. And pretty much all of that can be explained as we're not investing enough in black male education. More scholarships specific to black men should do it.

EDIT2: I recall reading something similar about England too. Poor working-class boys falling behind in education, getting in trouble etc. Could be a similar dynamic there to in the USA with the black kids, which links back to the class thing. Could be we don't expend enough resources education working-class boys in general since they're seen as just a laboring class, whereas working-class girls are seen as a pool of skilled labor (office work, filing etc), so resources are spent on their education, because this is seen as maximizing the labor value overall: poor boys only good to lug stuff around, but the girls need skills to be economically useful.

[scriver]

Okay I want to join in but I have only so much time to spend on the shitter before I have to return to the sisophic toil of putting stocking soda in fridges so I'll just say

1. Good to see you again vector, hope you are well, always nice when you stop by for a visit

2. Sad as it may be the sad thread is not the place for a prolonged discussion about any issues, and it lacks a thread owner (it's a historic monument now) so nobody can close it if it gets heated without dragging Toady into it. So guys please be considerate of our this cultural heritage when you post and preferably move the discussion to another or a new thread

[TD1]

Bay12's legacy:

A historic monument to sadness.

[Quaksna]

Yeah, the tradition of whining and complaining have lasted for 7871 pages, it can not be broken. Sad we are, sad we must remain.

[Lord Shonus]

There are multiple issues here. First, the question of why the Black population is comparatively overrepresented among the working poor. Much of this has to do, of course, with historical social welfare programs like the GI bill specifically barring Black participation; and with redlining coercing Black families towards less desirable parts of town in many cities, including the one in which I live, which makes it much more difficult to build up home equity and from there intergenerational wealth and prosperity.

There's another major factor. After WWII, white people flush with cash (from war work, several years of accumulated military pay, and the side benefits of the economic boom caused by being the only major economy that wasn't destroyed by the war) poured out of the cities into the suburbs, leaving behind a lot of very nice city homes. The same war work brought a ton of black people north, and (while they were not paid as well as white folk were) provided them with far more money than sharecropping would ever have given them. With no desire to move back south, and all these inner-city homes in very nice neighborhoods now open, the path was obvious. The problem was that the white people took all the money with them, because they were the ones that had the really good jobs. The people who stayed in the cities were poor whites that didn't have the funds to move, or else the black folk that bit down on the lure of much nicer houses than they'd ever expected to live in. This is commonly referred to as "white flight".


Fast forward twenty years. Now, the cities have lost most of their tax revenue, because property values have plummeted. So the schools are shot, the roads are shot, and a lot of folk are out of work because the jobs moved out too. That's "urban decay".


This combination is the single biggest reason why so many black people are in a awful economic position today. If we were to wave a magic wand and erase all racist thinking without a trace, the same people would be in the same position and have the same problems. Because three or four generations of terrible economic position have locked them into a cycle that can only be broken with a lot of money and time. Money and time that no politician is willing to sponsor, because it will take too long to reap the credit for it. So we get an endless procession of "feel good" programs that look bright and shiny but don't solve shit.

[Yoink]

Huh, I agree with Scriver (I think that's a somewhat rare occurrence but I struggle to keep track of everyone so who knows). I'm sure there are at least a couple of threads you could discuss such matters in without threatening chill composure of the venerable Sad Thread.   


I hate my life.   

[Reelya]

Fast forward twenty years. Now, the cities have lost most of their tax revenue, because property values have plummeted. So the schools are shot, the roads are shot, and a lot of folk are out of work because the jobs moved out too. That's "urban decay".

A big factor there is the absolutely ridiculous way that local rates are used to fund schools in the USA. Broken system by design right there. It should be a flat rate of spending per student at the state level at least.

[Imic]

My sad for today is that I have been diagnosed with depression. I was looking to get a PTSD diagnosis, but I got like a million other things and an appointment in six months to discuss the possibility of a PTSD diagnosis. Honestly, Instead of writing this all down, I just want to make an unintelligible sound with my mouth and fall onto the floor. May remove this post one day.

[hector13]

My sad for today is that I have been diagnosed with depression. I was looking to get a PTSD diagnosis, but I got like a million other things and an appointment in six months to discuss the possibility of a PTSD diagnosis. Honestly, Instead of writing this all down, I just want to make an unintelligible sound with my mouth and fall onto the floor. May remove this post one day.

Progress is being made, however small (or lateral!) that progress appears.