What Does Modern Prejudice Look Like?
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I couldn't imagine going to a restaurant and getting a discount because the owner and I are both white. Even typing this out and thinking about someone telling me they would give me preferential treatment because I'm white makes me uncomfortable.
All that said, how is in-group preferential treatment any different than familial preferential treatment. The article mentioned giving away free tickets as an example. Is it wrong to give your brother some concert tickets you have because you should be equally inclined to give them to a perfect stranger? Okay, how about a third cousin whom you never but you know would like the tickets? Is giving that third cousin the tickets that much different than giving them to a neighbor?
Maybe they're not all that different, just different forms of tribalism. I can certainly see it applying early last century in the U. S., when you're fresh off a visit to Ellis Island and the natives aren't particularly fond of you. If you don't watch out for each other, who else will? Further back in history such prejudices may have been more valuable when unfriendly tribes are just a short walk away.
Same thing for family: the rest of the world isn't going to give us a leg up, so we best watch out for each other.
Or maybe for both it's just familiarity. When you're a long way from home, I can see value in having someone around who understands your cultural background and speaks the language you grew up with. As for family, I'm probably not the one to ask. Mine is spread all over the U. S., and even if my sister lived next door I'd be just as likely to give courtside seats to a coworker as I would to her.
But in the real world, we have social groups with complicated dynamics. Expressing solidarity with your group is a normal and important part of this. Tech geeks do it too! And yes, sometimes that takes the form or a free beer or a "Greek discount" or whatever.
Edit: Added 'easy'
And, it must be noted: if you really think hard about things (something that tech geeks, in my experience, are really bad at doing in a social context), you'll realize that your "wrong" filter always seems to be applied against some group other than the ones you're part of. Whether you realize it or not you participate in this kind of social game too, even to the exclusion of other groups. And it's not "wrong" when you do it either.
Basically you don't like "Greek discount" because you're not Greek. But if you met DHH at a bar and he offered that beer, you'd take it, right?
I don't really think that I would feel the urge to offer someone a beer because I was aware of them as a programmer - but if they went to my high school? I don't think so, and I can't recall doing that, but I just might be misremembering. Would I take it? Of course, I like free stuff. I don't know if I'd offer it. That feels like a weird backslapping "this guy is alright, he listens to Black Flag" or "he's from Arkansas, woo pig!"
Of course, if I used rails, I would offer him a beer, but that's because I'd be showing up at the bar after a day of making a living off of his work:)
It certainly doesn't look much like the world you're familiar with.
If you look around, there are plenty of species that work that way. You really shouldn't have to imagine that hard.
I often amuse myself when the recurring gender debate (or other similar debates) come up on HN by trying to convince participants to first concretely describe the world they are actually trying to produce before they go too far off into la-la land making wild prescriptions about what needs to happen. This is another example of that sort of thing. Are you sure you want to produce a world in which nobody, ever, for any reason, has any sort of preference for one person over another and gives any sort of preferential treatment as a result? If you really think about it, probably not. Trying to take the ultimate hard line on "no discrimination" isn't a sound solution. It is neither logically nor socially viable. The method has become mistaken for the cause itself, the direction for the destination.
Think about all the times you went shopping at a department store and weren't hassled by store security. That's your preferential treatment.
Retailers don't want to expend money and other resources on security personnel and equipment. Unfortunately, they have to do so because certain individuals do partake in behavior that harms the store in one way or another.
If a given store repeatedly has trouble (or a lack of trouble) with individuals who have certain traits in common, perhaps even including skin color, then it's understandable that people exhibiting such traits may be treated with a certain degree of suspicion.
The store is merely trying to manage risk in an efficient manner, rather than intentionally giving people with one trait an advantage over others without that trait.
Ideally you're right (If the metrics backed this up). The problem is when stereotypes become the metric, which is common, especially with minorities.
If 90% of your store's theft was caused by 5% of your customers - that can be identified of having the same race/color, are you really going to blame the owner or employee that gives more attention to those 5% than the other 95%? If so, what is your solution to this issue? Should it be ignored?
While they may not apply to each and every individual, many times they do hold true to some extent, even if it may not be particularly pleasant to acknowledge.
What about a job? Or a political position? Or a promotion?
It's more likely that you simply won't be discriminated against. It also means that you are statistically more likely to belong to a minority group that does have privilege, for example the minority group of people with high wealth.
Of course you might well not belong to such a minority group. So for a poor white , the fact that bill gates is rich does not really help you.
I think this is where a lot of where the confusion regards these issues comes from.
"Greenwald and Banaji are not suggesting that people stop helping their friends, relatives and neighbors. Rather, they suggest that we direct some effort to people we may not naturally think to help."
You need to shake that PC bullshit off. There is nothing wrong with freedom of association, nor with feeling good about being "white". Neither of those things is discrimination (or evil).
Not only are you just 8% of the world's population (and on a decline), but you're also part of a race (if you accept white as meaning of somewhat Eastern European decent) that has built some of the most impressive civilizations, empires, and cultures on this planet,... filled libraries with countless works on all subjects and matters,... ended slavery (a long world-wide practice that was mosty done by non-whites; and still is),... built and financed just about every part and institution in America (USA was 90% white even up to 1960; now about 62-72%),... invented, refined, and progressed just about every modern technology and field,... actively discriminated against your own race to help & better minorities,... and did a countless other exceptional things in abundance.
It's amazing how people will associate the bad things that some people did (the things that are all easy to do like kill and destroy - that all other races have done in abundance) to the white race, yet at the same time ignore all the positive things they did to advance the whole of humanity (things that are difficult to do - things that require quite a bit of work, self-sacrifice, intellect, and character/morality).
The human condition is complicated, and the human brain is a pattern matching and association machine.
Humans have been identifying and separating themselves by color/race since the beginning of time, even before we could talk. It is the first category... before rich/poor, beautiful/ugly, young/old, etc. It's almost primial.
The context to what I wrote was in relation to the current "white privilege" PC bullshit that has been indoctrinated into our collective. Nothing more.
How exactly does proving that something has always existed also show that it is right?
Can't it just be an evolutionary survival mechanism?... One of the things that primarily is designed to help people come together and stay away from danger.
I'd imagine at the core of it there is a neural network (that you're born with) that categorizes things into - "like me" - "not like me".
In of itself, it's not something that's right/wrong in a moral sense, but how it's further consciously used can be.
Not really, since the concept is meaningless (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1998-10/WUiS-GSRD-071...)
You may or may not be part of cultural group with another white person, but the idea that there is any shared heritage among races is simply untrue. You aren't any more related to most of them than anyone else.
Your own mind subconsciously knows the nice ideas you want to believe are nonsense. Interestingly, that is analogous to the otherwise open-minded subjects of the study at hand who subconsciously favour their own.
Should I have put "white person" in quotes? Should I had phrased it like "what would commonly be called a "white person"".
I felt that would be overly pedantic of me and besides you are missing the point: "white people" do exist, it's just wrong to assign any shared attributes to them other than "looks like a white person". And by the way, I don't mean "wrong" in any kind of moral sense, I mean wrong in terms of "factually incorrect".
If he had talked about ghosts instead of "white people" would I have sounded awfully silly if I had said "ghosts don't exist. Ghosts are frequently just photography artifacts or sleep paralysis hallucinations." because I used the word "ghosts" in the next sentence?
So you think that the pre-scientific idea of categorizing people by skin colour and nose and eye features is valid and that the scientific understanding from genetics is "nonsense" that I "want to believe"?
That's both ridiculously presumptuous and ... well, stupid.
That being said, your frustration is misplaced. Instead of incorrectly spinning a legacy of slavery into a positive attribute, understand that there were some events that set minorities down negative paths that have repercussions to this day.
Rest assured that everyone in America knows the myriad of positive things that white people do. But, as they are minorities, other races don't have the outlet for such positive slants.
I know such thoughts aren't considered PC the way saying "Black Pride" or "Latino Pride" is, but I think it's kind of cool that I share a similar heritage with the inventors of calculus or linear algebra or the transistor.
Meh, you look in the mirror, really examine yourself, and the thing you come back with to make yourself feel better is your skin color? That... is kinda sad.
I mean, I'm not going to feel bad when other people give me an unfair advantage. I don't have the time or emotional reserves. I tell myself that it's on them, not me. But it's certainly not a source of pride.
And you're right. In a vacuum that would be quite sad and stupid.
But when someone is telling you that white people are the reason for all the wrongs in this world (and they need to make things right), or that you should be ashamed of your white-privilege, I provide another perspective.
Personally, myself, I don't have a source of pride in being white, I identify myself mostly as an individual caught up in this crazy thing we call existence.
But most importantly, I neither have a source of guilt in being white. And that was kind of what I was trying to convey.... That neither should he.
oh, well, sure. Guilt is... usually not very productive even when it was your fault, and collective guilt is out of fashion for good reason.
But there's a big difference between saying "I'm not responsible for the racism of others" (which, I think, is fine, even healthy for you.) and saying "I take pride in my race"
>But when someone is telling you that white people are the reason for all the wrongs in this world (and they need to make things right), or that you should be ashamed of your white-privilege, I provide another perspective.
Eh, I am not really getting this feeling that you seem to have that people blame me for the world's problems 'cause I'm white, or even that they begrudge me the advantages that could have had something to do with my race. (It's never 100% clear-cut) I mean, I didn't go to school, and I haven't worked for the government since I was sixteen or seventeen, so maybe that's where you see it, but I'm just not seeing a lot of this white-hate, you know?
To me? the important part of being aware of racism is making more rational choices; we've all got nasty little brain bugs that, if left unexamined, will cause our "gut" to make sub-optimal decisions. And it's not only about race; that's what the article was about, for most of us now, there are in-groups that resonate far more strongly than ethnicity.
You've probably never watched a video of a race debate/relations type of meeting that's not designed to be PC or have white apologetic speakers...
You'd be surprised how many white people (that show up in the audience) are completely oblivious to everything positive the white race has done, while being hyper-sensitive to every negative thing they have done - and how many of the people in other race categories think that white people should be exterminated.
But I'm not talking about the general public of course. I'm mostly talking about people that expect you to feel guilty for being white... Which has been the context of everything I've said so far.
So there's a video that says bad things about people who look like you, and this upsets you? Is this video on the internet, where everyone can see it?
But in all seriousness, my primary point here is that identifying with your race? it's a class marker. A low class marker. Socioeconomic class matters more (in terms of how others treat you) than race. A lot more. (some would say that the two are related, and there certainly is a correlation, but in the end, green is the color that matters.)
My secondary point is that I've never seen serious real-world discrimination against white folk, so quit your whining. (I mean, yes, we're all a little bit racist. I'm just saying, I've not seen /serious/ discrimination against white people. Nobody acts weird when someone shows up for an interview, and turns out he's white.)
The good feelings, come from the fact that I believe that people for the most part should be free to help their peers as they want, it is part of nature to strengthen your group...
Yet, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth, when circles that are supposed to be fair, and claim to be fair, aren't. It is specially bad when we are outside those circles...
On my case there are two ones that are particularly striking: One, I am not related to the US startup scene at all, I did not went to Ivy League universities, or anything close, I don't know anyone at MIT, Stanford or have a friend in the whole city of San Francisco...
This mean that getting investment is not easy...
Some people might say: "Oh, but anyone can apply to Y Combinator or to a VC!" well, yes... You can apply, but if you read around, many times "social proof" is required, and what is social proof?
Or the other case, is since I make games, I might want to compete for a award, yet brazillians mostly gave up on IGF, because most of IGF winners (and judges, and organizers) are somehow related to CMP itself (the organizer company) or Tig Source (a blog and forum ran by Derek Yu, winner and judge).
But IGF one is not exactly new, every year people bash it because of that, and every year a flamewar ensues in several forums... And some ex-IGF judges and founders sent me e-mails claiming that this is the reason they are ex-IGF in first place.
If you find yourself appealing to nature, you're starting down a slippery slope.
In other words, in labeling some human behavior natural (for example heterosexuality), or unnatural (for example flying in a plane), you are immediately discounting large swaths of reality in favor of dressed up idiosyncratic personal prejudices.
"We have never met before, but I instantly know him. One look, one phrase, and I know where he grew up, how he grew up, where he got his drive and his sense of humor. He is New York. He is Jewish. He looks like my uncle Louis, his voice is my uncle Sam. I feel we’ve been together at countless weddings, bar mitzvahs, and funerals. I know his genetic structure. I'm certain that within the last five hundred years—perhaps even more recently—we shared the same ancestor."
--- Robert Reich, Clinton administration Secretary of Labor, on his first face-to-face meeting with Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan
That's what kinship feels like. The same psychological effects described in the OP are every bit as real when it come to racial and ethnic identity. It's not "fair"—we don't choose our heritage—but then "fairness" in matters of interpersonal human affairs always was a chimera and a false god. Should people just not be allowed to meet each other face to face? It's silly.
In some cases, when making some kinds of selections, this is entirely reasonable. For example, in auditions for certain orchestras:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audition#Instrumentalists_2
> In many major orchestras, a cloth screen may be used at some stages of the audition process, to protect the audition panel from allegations of favouritism or sexism.
So they don't see the musician. They hear the music. Which is what the orchestra is about, right?
The social experience. The experience of going someplace special, outside the normal orbit of your life, and being That Person for a while. That Person being your mental image of the kind of person who goes to a concert played by a live orchestra in a concert hall. Maybe, on the other hand, it's a warm and homey return to a younger time, when your grandfather took you to that one performance of Mahler which you will never, ever forget.
Lots of reasons, really.
> The people performing the music are just as much a part of the performance as the music itself.
But is it vital that they be white? Or Jewish? Or perceptibly taller than average even when sitting down?
I settled on predilection.
Anecdotally, I'd say it's extremely common. I've confronted a few people about it and heard the same arguments in each case. It seems to boil down to a notion that anything which can be phrased in positive terms can't possibly be bad - quite a handy rationalization.
Brown man reviews work of brown woman and white (Jewish?) man in favor of trying to help those outside your group-identity to foster openness and whatnot. Brown man proceeds to mention brown woman 27 times by name to her co-author's 6.
I'm not calling him a hypocrite - I don't think it was conscious either. If there is a point to be made here, though, perhaps that's it: the Morally Outraged About Extremely Subtle, Subconscious Effects of Involuntary Decisions have not fully investigated and do not fully comprehend the obligations they're laying at everyone's feet.
It seems to me that the vast majority of the difference is rooted elsewhere, because you'd have to tell a pretty good "just so" story to suggest that "modern prejudice" simultaneously helped Asians and punished Hispanics.
I'm guessing it's mostly a black-white thing though, for most other US minorities I would be surprised if the effects weren't dominated by the differences on quantity and wealth of immigrants.
An established area of research -- ethnology, and related fields like ethnomathematics and ethnography -- exists in social science disciplines to generate qualitative data in response to exactly these kinds of questions.
It's interesting that the article (and presumably the researchers) presume this is a bad thing. This is, in essence, natural selection playing out. Adopting the behaviors of those closest to us is also how will advance (or retreat) as a species.
"Natural" != "morally right"
But it isn't.
And, in case this was a point of confusion, race != family.
Traditionally, it was done via military service. In exchange for risking your life, those in power will educate you, give you a set of skills and some discipline, and surround you with people also looking to get ahead. If you wanted your child to have a better life, military enrollment was a good, if risky, way to go. More recently, schools have been the answer. If you wanted your child to succeed, you put an emphasis on education so he could get into the best schools, learn a valuable skill, and be surrounded by those with similar aspirations. I’m sure that going forward, even more and cheaper opportunities will arise based on technology.
If you look just at the United States, nearly every immigrant group has done this. The Irish, Italians, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean immigrants, all of which were at the bottom of the social totem pole at one time, have all adopted the prevalent socioeconomic background of the dominant groups of the time. And they’ve all succeeded to the point where nobody in the United States considers “the Irish” or “the Chinese” to inhabit a separate or distinct socioeconomic subgroup of Americans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/fashion/02studied.html?_r=...
For example, I know I'm much more likely to get favoritism from people who share my ethnic background partly because there is the common belief within that group that nobody else is "looking out for us"-- so we have to "look out for each other."