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Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

I think US-bias is more so class bias than race bias and this comes with a 99% correlation to racial discrimination due to the half millenium of directly ensuring certain races could not access the economy or capital or literacy.

Racial discrimination also occurs.

A lot of support for racial equality is lost because it is too reductive and invalidates the experience of potential allies in the majority power who experience biases or don't inherit some of the privileges that they are assumed by others to have. A lot of racial discrimination is created and perpetuated by invalidating those potential allies' experience. While the class bias is never addressed at all.

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> class bias is never addressed at all

You see this a lot in online forums, e.g. a person will blithely mock "wal-mart shoppers" or "rednecks" without rebuke and then jump down your throat with "white privilege" if they perceive the slightest possiblity of you questioning a racial bias claim.

Interestingly, I see some of the former in online forums. I see a decent amount of the latter, both with and without justification. I've never in my life seen a single poster do that. You have a cite demonstrating this happens "a lot"?

This sounds like a strawman. You're taking a criticism often made (again, not without justification) against "your side" and arguing against it by charging the "other side" with hipocrisy despite the fact that e.g. the /r/FloridaMan community has almost no overlap with woke SJWs (or even the surburban families in my neighborhood with BLM signs in their yards).

You can search my username and the word "redneck" and you'll find one.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25702815

Reading the thread shows a very different story to the one in the GGP.

Another poster describes the Capitol riot as a "day-out for rednecks". You say "there aren't many rednecks in San Diego" and the other poster replies to say that they believe there are a lot of 'rural conservatives' around San Diego. Then you accuse them of using a slur, although it's not really clear if you are rebuking him for calling Capitol rioters 'rednecks' or for accusing rednecks of being Capitol rioters.

I don't see where that poster told someone off for using racist slurs, but I believe you that it happened.

Not sure this is even one example of what was claimed above to happen 'a lot'?

A redneck is usually a white, working class person of meager means. This is how I've known the term growing up.

What the commenter I originally replied to was doing was using the term to refer to white people, any white person. When I pointed out that a good portion of the people in the article are from San Diego (I followed a doxxing thread on Reddit during this, nearly all of these people were business owners or people of means), another person tried to reframe the original posters context as "rural conservative". Again, pretty plainly misses the mark, and again, the people in that article are not rural at all. They live in this city, where it costs $600k to get a basic house. One of them owned a coffee shop of all businesses. I don't know about you, but I generally do not see people who call themselves rednecks opening coffee shops in the middle of a major city.

I can't speak to the frequency that this happens. The person I responded to in this thread claimed they'd never seen it, so I linked to an instance of it that I remembered.

I mean I agree with you that it was wrong to use the word 'rednecks' to refer to people protesting at the Capitol. However this doesn't seem at all to be an example of what the other poster claimed, of people who loudly object to racial slurs and yet 'mock rednecks and Wal-mart shoppers'?

SJW and "woke" are nebulous terms with grass-roots participation. Personally, I don't know how you can establish patterns of grass-roots groups without extensive research and observation, which does not happen today. It seems like a fruitless conversation to have because any time you accuse any grass-roots group of something people will say things like:

- that's not a group

- they're not affiliated with x

- anyone can join

- no true Scotsman

- not enough data

Plausible deniability is built-in. That's why I only responded to the bit about frequency, because someone saying it never happens is quite surprising, someone implying it's a norm is equally surprising, at least to me.

But... YOU were the one who implied it was a norm, by insisting that it happens "a lot" that the same people who make fun of rednecks then jump on people or other perceived racial bias. And I didn't, and still don't, think that's true at all. And nothing you've shown here seems like evidence to me, you're just lumping all your "enemies" in one bucket and figuring that they're the same folks.

> But... YOU were the one who implied it was a norm, by insisting that it happens "a lot" that the same people who make fun of rednecks then jump on people or other perceived racial bias. And I didn't, and still don't, think that's true at all. And nothing you've shown here seems like evidence to me, you're just lumping all your "enemies" in one bucket and figuring that they're the same folks.

I am not the same person you were replying to here, FYI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26961742

I am guessing you are mixing me and the person you were originally replying to up. If you'd bothered to read my response I said that I find statements regarding "never" and "norm" around this equally surprising. The thread I linked you to has me correcting two posters use of the term. I never asserted it was a norm.

Furthermore, in another of these replies I very clearly stated that I don't think allegations against SJW or "woke" people are worth chasing because nobody is really out collecting data and studying their behavior, both online and in person.

There once was a study where they eloquently demonstrated this by putting the same white actor into two situations: one had him lay down acting like he was dying from a hear attack in front of Wall Street wearing a suit. The other had him doing the same thing but wearing worn out sports clothing.

They found that people responded more favorably to the actor when he appeared to be of the same social class.

We can thank the wars against poverty, drugs, homelessness, and crime for this. These all serve as foils against considering ones own class and how easy it is to move downwards in America without any support for those not in abject poverty nor consideration for the disappearance of community building locations, events, and organizations, in large part due to union busting.

You are suggesting that draconian actions against drugs, homelessness and crime are causes for people associating with their own class and prejudicing other classes. I suspect it's the other way around; we are prejudiced to favor our own kind across many metrics and the consequence of that prejudice is homelessness, crime, poverty etc...

I say this because the kind of prejudice you point out is rampant across all societies, not just America and if anything, America handles it a lot better than any other society.

"America handles it a lot better than any other society."

How did you come to that conclusion? If I come up with some metrics, like the amount of support and education poor people can access, or the amount of people in jail, or access to justice, America is near the bottomn out of 'developed' nations.

as a white that grew up very very poor, I can't possibly understand why so many black people try to convince me that I'm guilty of white privilege, when most of them had many more resources growing up.

Sure you can. You're less likely to be pulled over in most of the US than a black person driving the same car and wearing the same clothes.

I was stopped too by police and one time briefly searched, so what? Being stopped by the police is not a game changer. If you haven't done anything wrong you'll walk away and go to work and back home.

Why is being stopped by police such a big deal? I think the police should do more of that in the US, it would reduce crime considerably.

Let's work through a hypothetical. Say that drug use is evenly distributed regardless of race across a group of people. If orange people get searched more frequently, even if every search is equally justified, then the number of orange people being prosecuted for drug infractions would be disproportionate.

Note: I am not making a statement about the propriety of this, but merely working through an example of applied statistics.

Because one should have the freedom to continue about their day without being detained for no reason. Can you support your claim? In my city people who have outstanding warrants (arguably having met a standard of having committed a crime) are regularly released after being stopped by police. It seems to me that being stopped by the police doesn't result in the detention of people actually charged with crimes - so why should an average citizen be subject to that or worse?

I honestly don't understand this argument. Please help me do so, because I keep hearing it.

If you're doing crimes, you're paying for them. Now the police, the argument goes, lets white people walk away with warrants. In the same time, they let less black people walk away. Is that the argument?

This might be true, but my problem is the letting people walk away in the first place. I don't want the police to do that at all. If the crime is not too bad, then don't emit warrants to begin with. But if there is a warrant, then that should be enforced.

I don't see how not enforcing warrants for black people or criminals of any color will make things better. It won't make things better for the society at large or for the black community. I believe the hard working black people also want less crime on the streets.

There is a problem with longer sentencing for black people, from what I heard. That is not a police issue. Police violence is a police issue, for all races. But police trying to arrest based on a warrant is not an issue, even if it devolves in violence.

What am I getting wrong?

In my city (non US), the police block a bridge over the river, stop everyone, and check the levels of alcohol in their breath. I don't make a fuss about it, because it probably keeps me safer as a lot of idiots won't drink and drive because of this being done regularly.

Deal with it. The police stopping you is not them thinking you are a criminal necessarily.

stop everyone

That's a very different situation which is obviously non-discriminatory. But consider how you'd feel if they just stopped some and waved others through, don't you see the potential for unfairness?

The rapidly evolving complexity of your arguments above and below suggests to me your appearance of cluelessness was no more than a rhetorical posture. I have more respect for people who make their strongest arguments up front.

Classic sealioning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

It's a pity you're getting downvoted.

How did I troll? I started a conversation, it evolved in a way I didn't anticipate. I did write full answers, with both personal experience, data and articles? How is that "trollinhg by asking concerned questions"?

I did make my point and tried to support it with (some) data.

"it would reduce crime considerably"

There are several things wrong with this statement: the idea that most crimes are commited by individuals and not corporations, the idea that they are commited on the street, and the idea that searching a person somehow can prevent crime.

Firstly a large chunk of crime, is commited by corporates, thats wage theft, consumer law breaches, money laundering, environmental protection, etc. Secondly most crimes are white collar crimes, and we do a very poor job of investigating both.

Lastly even for street crime, which is a small percentage of all crime, stop and search is just a populist show of force that does nothing usefull.

You know what actually reduces crime? Having competent detectives, investigators and prosecutors who can actualy arrest not the individual weed smoker but the kingpin running the show, or bring a complex case against a major company have it stand up to their highly paid team of lawyers.

This is where you are wrong. First of all, I was only talking about violent crimes.

Real life experiment, look at Baltimore homicides https://homicides.news.baltimoresun.com/?range=2015

Look at pre-2015 and post-2015. The homicides increased from 200s to 300s. All because of a police crime and BLM protests in 2015. Now you have 100 extra people each year losing their lives. US needs more police, not less. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/07/12/baltim...

All the police did was not getting proactively involved on the streets, those stop and search you were mentioning. They still responded to calls and did their investigations. The result is 50% more deaths from homicides, each year.

I mean the past year hasn't shown you that being stopped while being black is could end up being a dangerous situation?

not really.

Jacob Blake was wanted for rape and he violated a restraining order(approaching the said rape victim). He fought the police and even choke-hold one of them. He was preparing to run away with a stolen car with the kids in it (that he did not have custody of). Their mother was the one that called the police, and the police knew who they were dealing with. If he would have been let go by the police, I assume an amber alert would have been issued.

Floyd was being arrested for passing counterfeit bills.

Brianna Taylor was shot after her boyfriend started shooting at the cops. The cops were executing a warrant for drug dealing. They didn't find anything, but that is beyond the point.

The guy that was shot at Wendy's (Rayshard Brooks -had to look him up)was so drunk that he fell asleep at the drive through, and the employees had to call the police to clear the lane. He had prior DUIs and he fought during the arrest, stole a taser and fired it at the cops.

These were the big cases of last year that I can remember right now. None of these were because of mere stops in traffic.

The 3 shouldn't have died, sure, but I am addressing your point: It was more than a benign stop for any of the big cases last year. I am assuming there are traffic stops where innocent people died, but BLM of 2020 was not protesting for them.

It isn't my argument, but as I try to understand all sides I'll do my best to explain the position anyway.

The idea goes something like this. You have white privilege because you are visibly white. By being visibly white you gain an automatic differentiation from those who are non-white. The belief is that the system, being largely run by white people will extend courtesy and nicer treatment to those who look like it whilst those who differ in appearance must "earn" the position you are given by the elements of your birth. It's a bit more complicated than that but that's my understanding of the core of it.

I am not trying to strawman the argument and if I have it wrong, please explain where I wandered off course.

I don't think he argued that by being white he might have some advantages, although it can be argued especially these days. His point was that there are million of other parameters that can affect ones life experience, so why just one advantage in the skin colour department makes him priviliged when he had so many other disadvantages in other departments.

What I was explaining is my understanding of the point of view of the people who believe he does have privilege for his race. It is not my belief but I try to understand all sides of arguments and did my best to represent it.

To continue, briefly. The difference between the various other types of benefits vs "whiteness" is twofold but interconnected. It is obvious who is and is not in the group and the group has institutional power. Most other sets of parameters do not work together in this way.

Again this isn't my position so if it is yours and I've misrepresented it, chime in please.

I don't care whose position it is and I apreciate your effort to explain it, no need to apologise.

Regarding the point itself, rich people or higher classes people as a group also have "institutional power", much more than white people as a group. It is pretty easy to differentiate people background after some sentences as the research shows. So the only difference between those two disadvantages is exchanging some words. Even if it is a significant difference, it still doesn't change or cancel other circumstances in a person life and doesn't make this difference overruling any other difference.

`By being visibly white you gain an automatic differentiation from those who are non-white.`

Thought experiment. Two crazy looking homeless people approach you yelling. They are dirty in ripped clothes and look to be high on strong drugs. One is black, one is white. Do you feel better about, or differentiate the white person because he is "your people"?

If you are a cop —- the answetis yes, yes of course.

There's probably an unconscious bias, but I'd still be fearful to some degree of both.

Homelessness is a problem that must be solved at the highest possible level of government. Since the 'problem' is able to move around the entire country that is the only way to fairly have the collective whole (society) integrate and restore the individual in need to either being a productive member of society, or at least a dignified living solution for when medicine or some other aspect has failed.

Seen in an even wider view, much of illegal immigration is quite likely driven by the homeless or persecuted ignoring the borders of nations that have failed them, as they seek the natural birth rights of anyone on their planet.

That isn't a good thought experiment.

Unconscious biases are likely to have much more effect in ambiguous situations where it's harder to try to understand someone's motivations or how to react, than in a situation where those things are clear. Their absence in the latter does not imply their absence in the former.

you may find this interesting - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/20/the-invention-o...

you will get some replies with the depth of "it would be worse if you were not white." I think there is only the smallest amount of truth there. Here are things that have happened to me, a poor white kid from california (and this is just off the top of my head):

I could never join a sports team in school or other extra curricular, that shit's expensive.

I had to steal food to get enough to eat.

I've been pulled over multiple times, nearly every case because my car was shitty and the cop was shaking me down.

I've been stopped by cops for walking through a hospital parking lot to go visit a friend.

I've had a cop pull a gun out at me and order me to the ground. I was 14.

I was told at a young age to follow cop orders exactly and be non threatening else I may get shot.

My mom didn't come to a complete stop at a side street stop sign. Pulled over and the entire car tossed. The cop told my mom she likely stole it and they will find out what she did.

A white buddy got the shit beat out of him by a cop. His crime was being poor and skating.

I've seen a lot of nice cars going to a car race and then there was my buddy and I in a shitty car. We got pulled over and harassed.

I was constantly excluded from most of my peer group because I was poor.

I had to work multiple jobs to put myself through college -- little financial aid there.

I spent over a decade scraping by because I didn't have a single role model on how to grow my career (or even really start one). Living in a low socio-economic area makes it hard to earn enough to get out.

I was the first and only person in my family to go to college.

I've been ghosted on interviews, called racist names, and hell, my wife had rocks thrown at her as a kid because she was one of like 5 white kids at her inner city school.

Classism is elephant in the room nobody seemingly will acknowledge. But, hey, I'm white, so it can't be that bad, right? /s

As someone who grew up poor and white, this was similar to my experience.

> accused of being guilty of white privilege

Maybe "accused" and "guilty" are not the right framing here - you inherit white privilege because of your ethnicity, it doesnt necessarily make you guilty of anything, but you benefit from it whether you want it or not.

You can think of it in the same way that the wealthier people you mention have inherited a better social class by just being born. They can profit from the privilege of their wealth, while suffering from racial discrimination. You can suffer from poverty, while not being hindered by your skin color. People are multi-dimensional.

I think a fairer way to compare would be to compare people from the same social class when looking for privilege and inequality here. Is a poor white person doing better than a poor black person? Is a rich black person doing better than a poor black person? Is a white rich female doing better than a white rich male? Etc...

If people are multi dimensional, why are you grouping people by race and saying they have inherent characteristics based on race?

Going by your second paragraph, a black person born from wealthy parents who send their kid to harvard, has much more priviledge than a trailer park white kid.

So why are you grouping "whites" together as priviledged? What the hell does race have to do with anything?

There are many vectors by which one can measure privilege: race, class, money, educational opportunity, parental guidance/availability, physical ability, and many more. It is entirely possible to benefit from one of those things without another.

> so many black people try to convince me that I'm guilty of white privilege

The articles beating this drum are actually overwhelmingly written by white people.

I think the term was popularized precisely because it is needlessly incendiary, as controversy means better click-bait. If you ignore the blanket term entirely and focus simply on meaning, people mostly agree with one another.

For instance, it's uncontroversial to suggest that most white people will not face racial discrimination on the level that black people do in America. It's uncontroversial to suggest that there is a disprivilege by virtue of discrimination. But the term "white privilege" is employed to convey that all white people get "special treatment". That is literally what privilege means, after all. And of course people don't respond so well to that.

If you ask a proponent of the term whether they would tell a homeless white man they have "white privilege", they will hem and haw, finally suggesting that it would be "impolite" but that they do indeed have it. *Why the hesitation* if it's innocuous? Cognitive dissonance is why. When they have to explain it to people, white privilege is typically defined in terms of black dis-privilege, but the literal meaning is that every white person gets special treatment. Of course that will be met with resentment.

All of which to say, if use of language isn't well designed to create an understanding, it's not designed to further social causes. It's designed to create friction.

Very well put. This whole BLM and white priviledge movement looks like it's setup to cause trouble, not solve issues. I think it's detrimental to the black cause too, so I wonder who and with what purpose is pushing this messaging?

Like you said, it would have been so much easier for everyone to acknowledge the black dis-priviledge. In the current state of affairs, the poors of Appalachia are somewhat privileged? That's laughable, they haven't had a good chance in generations.

It's being pushed by the corporations are politicians so they don't have to treat the real cause, or give away their own wealth, in order to solve the class problems. It's easier to blame some random redneck with low intellect as the root cause instead of watching into their own wallets.

privilege is a misnomer when its really freedom from some distractions

nobody is going to call the police on you for simply walking in a neighborhood

nextdoor and facebook groups arent going to have messages from vigilant bored housewives just because you walked down the street

sundown towns and the ideas that reinforce them don't exist for you

but saying “privilege” suggests other things are handed to you that wouldn't necessarily be true

What I find interesting in all your examples is it feels the cause for issues are power imbalances and racism.

The people calling the cops are likely the white neighbors on their black neighbors and not the other way around. In your nextdoor example, it's not just "bored housewives", it's "white bored housewives". I don't suppose you feel that black bored housewives are also posting those messages.

Correct. Did you need that validated or I am missing the point of your post….? Not sure how to respond, you know that we are agreeing, like 100%?

No response needed, but I think it's interesting that you (and others) use safe language to describe the perpetrators, like "nobody" and "nextdoor groups", when really it's just other white people.

I must say it also looks rather beneficial to some - while the lower classes are duking it out over a divisive issue the upper classes are safe from social reform. Divide and rule.

President Lyndon Johnson said

>If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

It does not just apply to dynamics between white and non white people, it applies to all people, even within tribes of the same skin color, and probably even other tribal species.

He didn’t make it up either - the French government did exactly that about 200 years ago in Haiti. They introduced apartheid for the purpose of sowing discord between people and undermining the independence movement.

An even older example is Indians and the caste system. I would even posit it greatly assisted Britain in being able to pilfer the subcontinent from halfway around the world with a fraction of the population.

Why would all social classes be the same in motivations and goals? You can never trust the "loyalty" of groups they never signed up for.

A mining company owner, a wall street trader, a tech start up millionaire, a head partner of a law firm and old-money heir(ess) would all have different interests and goals. The same goes for lower classes as well.

For starters, the rich have uniform interest in taxation policy - brackets, inheritance, wealth tax, loopholes, trusts, offshores.

Uniform interest perhaps, but decidedly not uniform motivation and goals on those topics.

> A lot of support for racial equality is lost because it is too reductive and invalidates the experience of potential allies in the majority

There was a study on that recently:

https://osf.io/tdkf3/

released yesterday, wow

nice to see the collective conscious is producing similar paths of study

I've got a lot of problems with this work, but I think I can best summarize my issues with the question: Who are the "Democratic elites"? A list of "Democratic politicians" and quotes from them is given, but I'm curious if that's the full summation of who the "elites" are, or if there are other, thus far unnamed "elites".

I can't think of a better example, but this reminds me of some of the papers on skull size from the late 19th/early 20th century (Mortonites? A bit fuzzy, it's been a minute). There was an undeniable correlation, but it took decades to undo the false causation that was implied (not directly stated in that paper or this one), and that damage still has not been fully undone, despite the heroic lifelong work of Franz Boas and others.

This paper needed to discuss why racial framing isn't persuasive, and it doesn't do that. The whole, "We should trick white people into being kinder to minorities" argument is, frankly, insulting to white people, among many other not-very-noble things. White people should be able to hear arguments about racial inequality without losing their collective minds.

While I don't think the study is particularly strong by itself, your criticisms are kind of strange.

I find that hard to believe that defining a roster of "Democrat elites" materially changes the survey responses and analysis. The only way this critique is relevant is if you reject the premise of the paper, but you don't seem to be doing that?

Is that a critique of all correlative studies? What specifically is this paper doing that you think bridges on phrenology (or all that other brain-size hokum)?

Why must this paper do that? There's a whole field of political science and opinion polling devoted to effective messaging, and they produce studies like this all the time. Maybe you find focus-group-shaped messaging "insulting", but that seems orthogonal to the goals of this paper. But maybe you can crack that nut and then we can purge like half of Twitter and most political talking heads ;)

I expect a paper to at least facially address potential confounding aspects, which the paper does, just not this (to me obvious) one.

The issue as I see it is that this supposes there's a selective group of people setting an arbitrary agenda, whereas the reality is closer to the idea that the majority of Americans are expressing this point of view and these specific politicians are repeating it.

They're committing the very sin they're trying to study, dividing the point of view into a class-based one, by claiming it's the "elites" holding the viewpoint, and not the people themselves.

I would scrub the word "elite" from the paper, it creates needless tension and isn't accurate (or at the very least, define the term specifically). Additionally, I'd directly address the idea that these results could be confounded by latent racism, and I'd probably do that by introducing the concept in the introduction, and refer back to it in the conclusion.

In other words, "Future research should investigate the causal mechanisms behind this." is not enough. Maybe end with this, but do more.

> The whole, "We should trick white people into being kinder to minorities" argument is, frankly, insulting to white people, among many other not-very-noble things. White people should be able to hear arguments about racial inequality without losing their collective minds.

I think this is missing the problem with that framing.

You're kind of assuming that the reason people oppose a bill purported to solve a problem for minorities is that they hate black people and want them to be miserable.

Suppose you're a white fisherman just scraping by on the Gulf Coast. Things are bad. You wish something would change.

The media reports there is a bill being debated in Congress. It's a thousand pages long and you don't understand it, but they say its purpose is to help black people. Gosh, you wish they would do something that would help you for once. Probably going to raise your taxes to pay for it, too. This bill sucks.

Compare this to saying that the bill is to help working class people. Hey, working class, that's you! Finally!

It's the same bill. It helps black people because they're disproportionately working class. To specifically tell other working class people that it's only meant to help someone else is how you destroy solidarity. It's what you do if you want them to fight each other even though they have a shared interest.

I hear you, and I can soften my tone somewhat, but I still think this is trying to advocate for some kind of "secret liberal agenda" (and I mean those words specifically, not as a dig), and I don't think that's a good idea. If you're trying to help black people, say that's what you're doing, don't "hide" your intention, if that's what your intention is.

I think it's the responsibility of the white fisherman in your story to read the parts of the text and listen to the parts of the arguments that address him and his problems (and there are plenty), and to be glad that it also helps minorities. His failure to figure that out is his fault, not the people trying to help's fault (I'm not great at softening my tone, you may notice; I'm genuinely sorry about that).

> His failure to figure that out is his fault, not the people trying to help's fault

So it's pretty unrealistic to expect every fisherman to go out and read every bill that comes before Congress. Members of Congress don't even read the bills.

It's supposed to be the role of journalists to convey what the bills do to the public. And then that's what we're talking about.

If the media is telling everyone that the bill is to help someone else and not you (with the plausible implication that it could come at your expense in a zero sum game), it can't be that surprising that this gets less support than putting more emphasis on the fact that it also helps you.

Agreed, with the one quibble that I don't believe the majority of media is actually doing that.

Totally agree with you. Which explain why African immigrant that speak (proper) English and wear a suit and tie. Don't have trouble in job interview even if they are "black". While the Black American blame it on racism.

>A lot of support for racial equality is lost because it is too reductive and invalidates the experience of potential allies in the majority power who experience biases or don't inherit some of the privileges that they are assumed by others to have. A lot of racial discrimination is created and perpetuated by invalidating those potential allies' experience. While the class bias is never addressed at all.

It works so well and so consistently one might be fooled into think it is by design to protect social elites.

99 percent correlation is too high and contradicts the spirit of the statement that it's more class bias than race bias. If the correlation is 99 percent then they're nearly completely identical

the point is how to address it and gain support from people that don't experience it but have the power to change it

if we tell everyone they have problems with skin tones and phenotypes when really their primary unconscious bias is being pretentious, then we need to adjust the messaging and address it more accurately

Correlation doesn't mean causation. If the cause is class bias, and you spend all your energy trying to make people more tolerant of other races, when actually they have no racist feelings whatsoever but have terrible class prejudices, then all your efforts are in vain. Trying to conflate the two things just because a correlation might exist is the problem OP is talking about.

Agree, except

> 99% correlation to racial discrimination

suggests that other races do not occupy the lower classes in any significant numbers compared to Blacks. I'd say 40ish %, which is still very high.

I never said that, the article never said that, nobody ever said that except you. Giving the benefit of the doubt here: I think you are thinking about a specific form of discrimination, which some people of some heritage overcome.

Me saying that you suggested something means I understand you did not literally say it.

Or, your assumptions of values, ethics, and how humans function is twisted in a knot. Humans are built to synthesize multitudes of facts, signals, etc using a rubric of experience. The result is imperfect.

Racial equality is a moot point since there are no races. Everyone can even make their children a different color/race by simply "marrying" someone of the desired color/"race".

Removing the idea people are segregated in races, a fight long won in Europe, should maybe be the first priority in America. I still can't believe pollers are allowed to split vote intention by random color groups (I'd be ok with segregating by "descendant of slaves, recent immigrant from africa, recent immigrant from Canada, things like that - but "black" means literally nothing at all).

The two are so incredibly intertwined given our history that it's hard to separate them. While I think talking about race without talking about class is a huge mistake, it's also a mistake to think that class in a way that doesn't take race into consideration.

For instance, AAVE is seen as "low class" despite there being plenty of speakers of it who are not lower class at all.

The kind of racial reductionism we've seen come from (often well-to-do) liberal circles that presents being white (or not Black) no matter the class background as a walk in the park is a dead end of course, but we have to be careful to recognize that there are a number of structural racial problems that don't always have a targeted class character (unless you get to the very upper echelons of wealth).

That said, the popular discourse in America is woefully under-prepared to understand class divisions between and within racial groups. That lack of nuanced discussion is why we end up favoring an understanding that is fully rooted in upper-middle-class experiences and study.

A Black writer who grew up poor, went to a city college and still lives in their neighborhood will never get an op-ed position at the New York Times no matter how good of a writer they are, so their experience gets completely lost in the mainstream, despite being so important to understanding class and race in America.

Yes, and on your first point I think this will be a recurring addendum to my post. My point is that we must address the class issue between and within racial groups or simply put: American culture. It requires compartmentalizing and understanding this more heavily, instead of looking only at the result. We are chiseling at the top of an iceberg, trying to trace backwards and assuming people feel a way that many otherwise supportive people really don't feel, instead of tackling a root cause.

I think class is primarily dictated by three things on a superficial level, e.g ten minutes or less of a first interaction with someone:

- How you speak

- How you dress

- How physically attractive you are, specifically in regards to things like height, fitness, and angular features.

Skin color takes a backseat to these factors in the modern era

I'd say it's more like 10 seconds, maybe even less than that, but I agree.

Yes, with the addendum of, "If any of these things place you into a minority community, you immediately lose."

What is "good speech"? What is "good dress"? What is "attractive"? To much of society, those answers are, "Whatever sounds/looks like the popular culture I consume." and that's a problem.

Imagine you are someone who lives in Beijing meeting a person from the Chinese countryside for the first time. That should help you come up with answers to your questions.

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