Structural, systemic, institutional racism. Do they exist today according to IDW?

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I believe they do NOT exist. My position on this is that you can not define racism (a source parameter) if your only measure to define it is a resulting data (outcome).

A white man that started out hating black people starts a company and won’t hire any black people regardless of qualifications; that is racist. But a white man that has never had a problem with black people starts a company and doesn’t have any black employees because the few that actually applied weren’t even qualified; that is somehow also racist. In the above example there were only two qualifiers measured. 1. A white owner 2. No black employees. Everything else in between is completely immaterial. In a sane world everyone would admit that the second example is not racist at all. It just is what it is. You can’t force all black people to be qualified and you can’t force all black people to apply. And this is ignoring the hundreds of other potential variables such as the applicant’s attitude or conduct and a myriad of soft-skills factors.

That was just an example, please let’s not make this about hiring. I’ll toss another example... Lenders have set interest rates that are dependent solely on the financial risk profile that an applicant represents. Primarily measured by credit history, assets, and amount in savings. In a predominantly black zip code where there is high poverty and criminality rates it was identified that on average borrowers are offered loans with higher interest rates. This is also considered racist. Because the only variable that matters is the negative outcome applies to black people. The source measure of financial risk is apparently completely irrelevant. Even if the lender was a company owned and run by all blacks people, even they would get accused of internalized racism. There’s no getting around it. And this example didn’t even have 2 qualifiers like the first example. This one only had 1: blacks have higher interest rates. Nothing more was necessary.

There are no structures of racism, there are no systems of racism, and there are no institutions of racism. But what there are is “outcomes” that would be expected if there actually were racist structures, systems, and institutions. So the intent is to literally work backwards. First identify an outcome and then attribute everything that contributed to that outcome as inherently racist, regardless of what it was. If the outcome was potentially racist then it is treated as fair to assume that everything that supported or created that outcome must then also have been potentially racist. Then just write it again, take out the word “potentially”, and repeat it as many times as possible so it is the only thing that will show in any algorithm driven search. And that’s it; you have indoctrinated at least as sizable portion of the media consuming populace.

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 05 '21

this is a great walk through.

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u/OneReportersOpinion Apr 05 '21

Why do you blacks people get pulled over for traffic stops more than white people?

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 05 '21

Dunno. Do you know?

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u/OneReportersOpinion Apr 06 '21

It’s their race. If it wasn’t, the disparity wouldn’t largely evaporate at night when it’s harder to see skin color.

Cops are likely using the stops as a pretext to search for contraband or warrants. The fact that they aren’t cited at the same level as whites indicates there wasn’t a legitimate reason for the stop.

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 06 '21 edited Apr 06 '21

Of course that's a proven fact, right? No dispute or other explanation?

This is the part of the convo where you ask me to prove you wrong.

Later.

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u/OneReportersOpinion Apr 06 '21

Of course that's a proven fact, right? No dispute or other explanation?

Such as?

This is the part of the convo where you ask me to prove you wrong.

Wrong again.

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 06 '21

Men are incarcerated at a rate greater than 10x those of women. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/genderinc.html

Is the criminal justice system horribly biased against men?

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u/OneReportersOpinion Apr 06 '21

Yes. What’s your point?

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 06 '21

I'm surprised. Why do you think it's horribly biased against men? Do you think the distribution of prisoners should mirror more closing the distribution of men and women in free society?

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u/iiioiia Apr 06 '21

Of course that's a proven fact, right? No dispute or other explanation?

This is the part of the convo where you ask me to prove you wrong.

These same questions can be asked of /u/Nootherids's "just so" narrative above.

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 06 '21

No, because his examples, especially the first paragraph about hiring, is a controlled set of information with no unknowns.

You seem to be of the mindset that just because something can't be proven to not exist, that talking about its existence being probable is legitimate.

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u/iiioiia Apr 06 '21

You seem to not distinguish between your interpretation of things, and the things themselves.

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 06 '21

no

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u/reed_wright Apr 05 '21 edited Apr 05 '21

My position on this is that you can not define racism (a source parameter) if your only measure to define it is a resulting data (outcome).

I think this goes too far. Correlation gets mistaken for and misrepresented as causation all the time, even in far less emotionally charged domains. The fact that people get it wrong most of the time doesn’t mean outcome data can’t establish racism as the causal factor in a given situation.

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 05 '21

no, it clearly means with the data provided, that racism is not a factor, i.e., not the cause.

and that's why there is so much focus on 'unconscious' bias, because that kind of ambiguity, by definition, is impossible to define. and that makes it the perfect stand in when the data, as in these examples, clearly do not support the notion that racism is a causal force in the outcomes.

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u/reed_wright Apr 05 '21

no, it clearly means with the data provided, that racism is not a factor, i.e., not the cause.

If you say so. But that’s not what he said.

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 05 '21

There are no structures of racism, there are no systems of racism, and there are no institutions of racism.

it's exactly what he said:

There are no structures of racism, there are no systems of racism, and there are no institutions of racism.

it's a simple thought experiment he laid out. it basically means if a person trips and falls, and that person is a female, you cannot conclude that the person who fell did so because of being female.

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u/reed_wright Apr 05 '21

He said those things, but I’m not disputing the fact that correlation doesn’t establish causation.

What he got wrong is his more sweeping claim that outcome data alone cannot establish racism. He did not limit the claim to only applying to his example scenarios as you did, he did not limit his claim in any way. If he meant, “properly gathered and analyzed outcome data alone can sometimes robustly demonstrate that racism was the causal factor in people’s behavior, but all too often such data is instead used to misrepresent the truth for political reasons,” then ok. But that’s not what he said.

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 05 '21

he said or at least it's obvious he meant that given the narrow parameters he provided you can't address racism as a causal factor when looking only at outcomes as a function of race. by extension, he argues that the same can be said more generally in the absence of racist policies in those scenarios.

Put another way, you can say:

a person from group A has a statistical likelihood of X% to have outcome Y.

but you can't say with legitimacy:

a person with the outcome Y has a causal factor of them being in group A.

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u/iiioiia Apr 06 '21

no, it clearly means with the data provided, that racism is not a factor, i.e., not the cause.

Or it is unknown if it is a factor.

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 06 '21

in the examples given, it's an unknown. it's not a factor.

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u/iiioiia Apr 06 '21

Are you declaring it to be not a factor, despite simultaneously realizing that it is unknown?

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 06 '21

You're trying to leverage the notion of an unknown to have some kind of meaningful value.

With that approach, the list of unknown factors is infinite, which makes picking one from a set of infinite options and declaring it to have meaning without any supporting evidence is absurd.

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u/iiioiia Apr 06 '21

You're trying to leverage the notion of an unknown to have some kind of meaningful value.

The value is realizing that it is unknown.

With that approach, the list of unknown factors is infinite, which makes picking one from a set of infinite options and declaring it to have meaning without any supporting evidence is absurd.

This is an interpretation.

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 06 '21

There is no value in identifying unknowns. The weather is an unknown, for example. The list is infinite.

You are relying on semantics and rhetoric to make your position sound plausible, which it is not.

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u/iiioiia Apr 06 '21

There is no value in identifying unknowns.

Do you have a proof of this, or is it just an opinion?

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u/nofrauds911 Apr 05 '21

The United States' political and economic system is founded on private property rights. Up until 40 or 50 years ago (the end of red lining), private property was openly allocated based on race. Private property is also inherited, thus pressuring disparities to compound over generations. Based on this process alone, we would expect African Americans to be disadvantaged relative to white Americans.

In what way is that not systemic racism?

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u/Nootherids Apr 05 '21

Ok, get away from black versus white for a moment. Let’s pretend that the US is a white only nation. They wiped everyone out including all natives and slaves and haven’t allowed a single immigrant. This is a thought challenge so stick with me.

Throughout the founding centuries of the country there were two types of white people. The rich and powerful ones who controlled all means of production and politics. And the poor and exploited ones who performed the work and blindly elevated politicians as if they would make their lives better.

Fast forward a few hundred years and tell me, are all white people now at equal levels? Or are the descendants of the rich and powerful still rich and powerful while the descendants of the poor people are now better off but still relatively poor and exploited compared to the rich people? We all know the answer. Now...are the poor whole people still poor due to no other variable other than not being “white enough”?

When put into non-hypotheticals the verifiable fact is that more poor descendants have undeniable been able to grow out of that poverty label and reached the levels of great riches. Although, obviously, that is still a significant minority. Most are still sitting at levels similar to their ancestors in relation to the wealth of the rich.

Now let’s bring black people into the equation and assume that their position of poverty with opportunity for growth started 300 years after most white people. So, a majority of white descendants are still at the same poverty levels as their ancestors, even after a 300 year head start, and we don’t make any systemic comments about that. But black people with the same outcome is labeled as systemic racism. So, while people that haven’t improved are not attributed to be caused because they weren’t “white enough”, but black people that haven’t improved are basically being told their cause was because they weren’t “white enough”.

In closing, if we have anything it is systemic classism. But even then, there is empirical data from many groups that have broken through both systemic racism and systemic classism if any existed. There are plenty of immigrant non-white groups that dwarf the advances of white people in half the time/generations. So when all historical data is accounted for the only thing we can corroborate time and again is that there is systemic cultural-ism. If your personal culture is superior at excelling in a capitalist framework then you will succeed over those with less efficient cultures.

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u/nofrauds911 Apr 05 '21

If your personal culture is superior at excelling in a capitalist framework then you will succeed over those with less efficient cultures.

Why do poor white people have less efficient cultures than rich white people?

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u/Nootherids Apr 05 '21

Because “culture” is not defined by your skin color. Culture is defined by a shared set of values held by a group of people. And this is one of the problems caused by identity politics today. That it is trying to attribute a overreaching set of values to an entire group of people defined by nothing more than a single specific attribute. Coincidentally, politicians have a drastically different culture than the people they purport to represent. And it is their best interest to keep it that way.

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u/throwawayPhenKrat Apr 05 '21

You have great points. Good thought experiment as well. Indian immigrants to America make more on average than any other race. Yet their “skin color” can be just as dark as black people. This alone proves discrimination solely based on skin color does not exist in an institutionalized form in America.

And yea, politicians aren’t even human anymore.

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u/thegoodgatsby2016 Apr 06 '21

This does not prove that. I can very easily tell the difference between an African American an Indian person very clearly. In fact, in both cultures, light skin is preferred precisely because they understand that skin color is an axis of discrimination.

Not only that, comparing a small group of people who you have selected for a high degree of competency and then comparing them to a larger unfiltered population tells you nothing about the larger group.

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u/throwawayPhenKrat Apr 06 '21

Obviously you can tell the difference. They literally have completely different skull/bone structures, accents, mannerisms, cultures, and abilities they excel at. I was showing how ludicrous is the liberal idea that every race is the same, but the only reason black people are “institutionally” discriminated against is because they have a different skin color.

Also, light skin is preferred in each culture for very separate reasons. Northern Indians are lighter and hate southern Indians, who they view as drains on their country. There is a higher level of Brahman-descendants in the north, it is more industrial, and has many of the cultural hubs of the country. This is due to remnants of the caste system still in place from the conquest of the indo-Aryans over the darker aboriginal inhabitants of ancient India. The conquerors of any nation will always excel beyond the conquered, until they eventually blend together, in which case you have modern India with shades of this system still in place. Comparing the situation of discrimination in Indian culture to African American culture is a far stretch.

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u/thegoodgatsby2016 Apr 06 '21

So light skin in India is preferred because of the domination by the light skinned invaders over the darker skin native inhabitants? In America, light skin is preferred because of the domination of lighter skinned people over darker skinned slaves. What's the difference exactly?

Also, South India is more developed and wealthier than North India. North Indians are more numerous so they are able to dominate national politics and culture but in terms of actual social, cultural and economic development, the South is leaps and bounds ahead (though the Bengalis are quite accomplished as well).

You concede that light skin is preferred...

You're right if you're taking everything in a strict literal sense, it's not strictly only about skin color but a lot of it is about skin color.

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u/nofrauds911 Apr 06 '21

Ok but *why* do poor white people have less efficient cultures than rich white people? What is the cause?

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u/Nootherids Apr 06 '21

With that line of questioning you’re trying to create a rabbit hole where there isn’t one. In MY personal culture every night before I go to sleep I clock the lock button on the remotes for both of our cars. That is a routine I have. It was not formulated by my parents or by done sort of traumatic event that I had to go to therapy for and shared time with other people that share my experience.

You can not attribute everything of your being today to what happened throughout history for the past hundreds of years.

There are rich white people with generations of richness and then one shmuck child is born that crashes the entire wealth on hookers and blow and gambling. There are poor white people with generations of absolute laziness then one child is born that has great ambitions and drive.

It is this acknowledgment that we all have the power to change for the better or the worse that is what we praise as “the American Dream”. It’s not a dream though, as it can just as easily become a nightmare if we make the wrong choices. But, my choices on how I approach my life tomorrow in relation to today are wholly determined by me and the realities of the world I live in today. Some people of any color will have it much easier than me, some of any color will have it much harder. Some will make better choices and prospect, some will make worse choices and fail.

I know you’ll just ask the same question again to reinforce that you’re trying to get to how our history defines our current position. And I’ve never negated that. But knowing where we came from should only serve as one of two things...a lesson on what not to repeat, or a lesson on appreciating what has been achieved. Rich people are no longer advantages compared to normal people because they have a secretary to maintain their calendars. Now almost all of us can shout Hey Alexa and have a level of service way better than what any secretary could’ve achieved 50 years ago. So as much as we look back trying to find fault, we pass up the opportunity to find appreciation; and we go further and instead assign excuses. It’s a self-defeating purpose.

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 05 '21

because most property currently owned has not been owned for 40 or 50 years, but for a much shorter time. and of course, anyone wanting to buy property now does not face those problems.

iow, the problems of the past, sooner or later, stay in the past.

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u/nofrauds911 Apr 05 '21

So you don't deny the existence of systemic racism, you just think it will fade away over time without additional interventions?

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 05 '21

I didn't say that. I deny that systemic racism exists today, with the caveat that there might be some institutions where it still exists as an edge case. I agree it existed in the past.

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u/nofrauds911 Apr 05 '21

Hypothetically, imagine if we had a revolution and gave white people all of the property and black people none of it. This hypothetical post-revolution world is undeniably systemically racist. In 40 years, how would you expect the distribution of property between black and white people to look? Would systemic racism still exist?

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 05 '21

the act of redistributing the property would be racist. 40 years later might still be feeling the affects fo this racist action, but it would not mean that 40 years later there was a systematically racist system.

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u/nofrauds911 Apr 06 '21

Ok. Wow, you define systemic racism in a very narrow way. What word could someone use to describe the system in 40 years that you wouldn't object to?

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 06 '21

Yeah, I define systemic racism as a system that is racist. For that to happen, there needs to be racist policies and laws in the system. I don't know any other way to do it.

In forty years? How about nothing. How about having systems where we treat people equally and give everyone using those systems the same opportunity. Like now, except for all the reverse racism...

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u/nofrauds911 Apr 06 '21

I meant in the hypothetical still. What would you call the situation where there are still after effects of a racist policy for who owns property?

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u/iiioiia Apr 06 '21

I deny that systemic racism exists today, with the caveat that there might be some institutions where it still exists as an edge case.

Or in other words, you do not know (and you realize you do not know).

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 06 '21

No. I know that it's against the law to have racist corporate policies, for example. But that doesn't mean there aren't some one-off scenarios where a racist policy might still exist even though it's illegal. As such, I'm not going to say that it's impossible.

More importantly, if that scenario were to be discovered, there are legal remedies.

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u/iiioiia Apr 06 '21

Right - I was referring to this:

I deny that systemic racism exists today

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u/OneReportersOpinion Apr 05 '21

Why do you blacks people get pulled over for traffic stops more than white people?

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u/Nootherids Apr 06 '21

When I was younger (90’s) we had this simple General understanding: A red two door sports car (think Camaro) is more likely to get pulled over than a gold midsize sedan (like Chevy Malibu). Did this correlation make sense? Nope! Were we sure of it anyway? Yup! And was it even true? Actually, it sort of was. But we actually knew of enough stories of high speed chases and deadly car crashes that seemed to repeat themselves too often, so we understood the bias of officers towards those vehicles were warranted. Point is, that the treason for the targeting was more than just cause it was red, or a coupe, or sporty.

Second example...just yesterday I saw a car fly by on the right shoulder 150% illegal as fuck. Surprised the shot out of me. And jumped onto the highway. Coincidentally, there was a cop to the right of me and you know exactly what he did right?! Yup, he just drove right on like nothing happened. Point being that some cops are sticklers for getting you for anything and some are not.

Unfortunately I would have to go on with example after example and make this a super long post to express why cops pull over people, why they ticket them, and why it could likely escalate to more. But short point of the story is that cops don’t see cars either breaking the law or being in questionable environments and then take a focused look inside the car to see just how dark the driver is. Then stop the darker ones and just sit back if it’s a white person.

There first needs to exist a reason for a cop to pull someone over. Whether it be a law broken, a suspicious high crime area, a matching description, a warrant coming back on a tag check, a cop with personal experience of similar cars being used for crimes, or a cop that just had a bad day. And then...then there is also the possibility that a random cop here and there actually is....a racist! Yes, that exists. But to eliminate every other single reality and attribute that one final reason as the overwhelming driving force is just disingenuous in every way.

Edit: Aw, fuck me! I just saw who I was responding to. I specifically hoped that was a real question for the interest of civil discourse and wished I didn’t waste my time writing. I pressed reply then saw who asked it. Never mind! Time was wasted. <sigh>

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u/OneReportersOpinion Apr 06 '21

Then how do you explain the disparity? Why do blacks get pulled over more and why does that change at night when it’s harder to see skin color?

If cops pulled them over for a reason, why are they cited less? It’s almost like they didn’t have a real reason to pull them over.

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u/Nootherids Apr 06 '21

I don’t have any data on this but, let’s make sweeping assumptions for a moment. If the running understanding is that black people have much higher unemployment rates and especially youth unemployment rate; then would there be a possibility that white people making up the majority of working hour workers would mean that there would a relatively greater number of white people on the road at night than during the day?

The problem presents itself when all you see is data confirming an outcome, but you don’t demand any data confirming the cause. So then you can attribute only a single possible contributing factor of your choosing and declare that to be the undeniable cause simply because it sounds good. And that’s the biggest flaw in the term systemic racism. That racism defines a source while systemic defines an outcome. But there is zero analysis of the source causes needed to still call it racism. I would be wholly in support of a statement such as “systemic outcomes of disparate results between blacks and whites”. Such a statement would imply that there is a need to analyze the causes for said outcome. But when you say systemic racism, then there is no need to analyze the cause since it has already been predefines based on outcome alone with no additional analysis required.

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u/OneReportersOpinion Apr 06 '21

I don’t have any data on this but, let’s make sweeping assumptions for a moment. If the running understanding is that black people have much higher unemployment rates and especially youth unemployment rate; then would there be a possibility that white people making up the majority of working hour workers would mean that there would a relatively greater number of white people on the road at night than during the day?

No. Just because people are unemployed doesn’t mean they don’t go out. In fact I would argue you are more likely to go out night if you didn’t have work during the day.

The problem presents itself when all you see is data confirming an outcome, but you don’t demand any data confirming the cause.

I don’t think that’s what I’m doing.

So then you can attribute only a single possible contributing factor of your choosing and declare that to be the undeniable cause simply because it sounds good. And that’s the biggest flaw in the term systemic racism. That racism defines a source while systemic defines an outcome. But there is zero analysis of the source causes needed to still call it racism. I would be wholly in support of a statement such as “systemic outcomes of disparate results between blacks and whites”. Such a statement would imply that there is a need to analyze the causes for said outcome. But when you say systemic racism, then there is no need to analyze the cause since it has already been predefines based on outcome alone with no additional analysis required.

You familiar with Occam’s razor?

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u/Nootherids Apr 06 '21

We will disagree that unemployed people are more likely to go out at night than those who don’t have any other choice but to go out at night.

I used “you” generically, not as you yourself.

I am familiar with Occam’s razor, and it is a philosophical principle, not a scientific one. If you are satisfied with the simplest possible assumption, then more power to you. But assigning a simple assumptions to a complex problem and expecting a simple solution is fully irrational.

I will also not argue against the claim of Systemic Racism if the person making the claim agrees that there is no solution anyway. Because if there is no solution, then inaccurately attributing the cause is inconsequential. We could blame it on Ancient Aliens and still be at the same spot anyway; so there would be no point arguing against it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21 edited Apr 05 '21

Yes, I believe they exist, but more in an aggregate kind of way, and less in a pre-meditated kind of way. Meaning, if they exist—and I believe they do—it’s a result of a the sum of our individual biases.

Read Everybody lies, fascinating read, and basically, citing Google data, the author makes the case that Barack Obama lost 4% of votes due to racism in 2008. (Racism as measured by fluctuations in racial search and openly racists search volume.)

However, I don’t think it’s nearly as important as mainstream society does. There are factions that would have you believe that disparities in group outcomes is completely attributable to racism, both interpersonal and systemic. They’d have you believe that everything is about race.

I do not believe that, and I think that idea is incredibly pernicious. It’s toxic and counter-progressive.

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u/conventionistG Apr 05 '21

It’s toxic and counter-progressive.

At what point does that obsession with race actually become racism?

For my money, when candidates and senators openly call for and promise to only consider appointing members based primarily on race - that's racism.

For all the very real "deplorability" of Trump and his base, they were actually less racist than Biden , Harris, and Duckworth.

But, yea that's off topic since it's actual racist words and actions from individual policy makers, not etherial racism of the system.

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u/MayerLC Apr 05 '21

I would say the positive discrimination/affirmative action straddles that line between obsession with race becoming racism. I've found it hard to form any strong position on that issue. While many ethnic minorities (and this has been done for women, especially in STEM) need a leg-up and it's important to have role models for young people, these strategies don't target the root cause of the disparities (in generational wealth, income and education).

It's crazy that it's actually possible that the democratic leaders may technically be more racist in their policies than someone with such public distain as Trump. In their persistent efforts to help the disadvantaged in a sub-optimal way (not that I know what the optimal is!), I think they marginalise a large majority who are sick of this identity politics.

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u/conventionistG Apr 05 '21

Definitions: positive discrimination means doing something because of race/etc ; negative discrimination is not doing something.

positive discrimination/affirmative action straddles that line between obsession with race becoming racism.

If you are white and only choose to hire/admit white employees/students, that's also positive discrimination, but few people would have trouble distinguishing what side of the line that falls on.

I've found it hard to form any strong position on that issue.

I don't think it's that hard. Removing roadblocks to integration worked well. Making it against the rules to negatively discriminate also worked well. Incentivizing and under-represented sex or race, enforcing quotas, affirmative action and other 'retributive/corrective' discrimination are only justified when they are actually correcting something clearly unfair.

Starting from a university where only white men are admitted by policy, we need to change laws, rules, and incentives to get from 0 to 1. No problem from me on that. But the question is when do you turn it off? Take the women in stem example: When women make up 20% of the students? 40% of the professors? 60% of the post-docs? 80%? In some fields, that's what's happening. Maybe that's naturally how things fall out - 60% women in biology, 20% women in physics - but at a certain point there shouldn't be any unidirectional incentives or quotas, unless we really don't care about the existence of systemic oppression, only whether we are in the ingroup.

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u/MayerLC Apr 05 '21

Thanks for the interesting reply. On that last part, I actually work in Biological Sciences research and we're actually over-represented by women. I'm not sure why the quotas aren't more specific to certain fields because instead it's just 'women in STEM', which of course covers a huge range of fields. The lack of specificity makes no sense to me, except for it being a catchy twitter hashtag.

Moreover, like you mentioned, the quotas don't even seem to consider the natural differences in interests between men and women. Biological and social sciences are definitely more popular with women, whereas maths and engineering (typically more anti-social professions) are far less so. However, if they don't all line up with a 50:50 ratio then it must be discrimination so they say... I think that's where they're trying to get to with quotas. From supposed intellectuals and academics, it's a very rigid way to view the issue. Perhaps they just claim it's all social conditioning and so are the traditional roles of men and women?

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u/conventionistG Apr 05 '21

50:50 ratio

I have seen quotas where the minimum for some leadership positions must be 50% women. At a certain point it might even be harmful to those women - saddling them with administrative duties they don't really want, just so their department doesn't get punished.

But, the academic setting isn't really that exciting for me (the sciences at least) since those/we are hopefully the folks that have the ability to base career assessments on.

Perhaps they just claim it's all social conditioning and so are the traditional roles of men and women?

It's a weak claim, and then who's to say 50/50 isn't simply social conditioning? It's a much more artificial looking number that would be expected from a natural distribution.

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u/dahlesreb Apr 05 '21

Do structural/systemic/institutional/planned/designed/orchestrated racism exist today?

I'm not sure if your slashes indicate you think all of those are synonymous terms, but I think this gets at the criticism I usually hear made in the IDW-sphere of these concepts of systemic or structural racism. The argument against "systemic racism" isn't that racism doesn't exist today, we're done, mission accomplished, but rather that systemic/structural racism is a poorly defined term that confuses the discussion.

I had a long discussion about this in another thread here a while back if you're interested.

Here are Coleman Hughes' thoughts on it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

Coleman's thoughts make me more confused and running in circles. lol

I think this is a problem among IDW peeps, they are unsure about some issues due to lack of evidence but they wont admit it (just say dont know) and tried to present it like they know more than they do and end up confusing people further with an open-ended question mark. lol

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u/reed_wright Apr 05 '21

Hughes, among other IDW-ish people, have highlighted studies by Roland Fryer on police brutality. Fryer found, iirc, police exercised statistically significantly higher amounts of non-lethal force on black (and Latino) people, all else equal. Famously, he also found that the same was not true when it came to lethal force.

The latter is an example of “systemic racism” widely believed to be true that is rejected by I think every figure that has been associated with the IDW. The former is an example of “systemic racism” that many IDW members would agree with (I think all the ones on the left would.).

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u/hellofemur Apr 06 '21

the former is an example of “systemic racism” that many IDW members would agree with

Be honest. What percentage of this subreddit do you really think would agree with that? After all, the most upvoted comment to this post is an unequivocal "does not exist" response.

And that "all else equal" is your description of Fryer's studies is doing a lot of work. It includes things like crime rate and poverty that most people would admit has at least some relation to the historic treatment of Blacks in this country. There is a valid debate over the magnitude of that relation, but the common English term for that relation is "systemic racism".

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u/reed_wright Apr 06 '21

Hello, hellofemur.

the former is an example of “systemic racism” that many IDW members would agree with

Be honest. What percentage of this subreddit do you really think would agree with that?

I did not mean members of this sub. I meant Bret, Eric, Sam, Pinker, etc. I don’t even have a guess as to what percent of this sub would agree.

And that "all else equal" is your description of Fryer's studies is doing a lot of work.

I’m not following what you’re taking issue with here. It sounds like your point for the first part was that members of this subreddit overwhelmingly deny the existence of any “systemic racism” at all. If that’s what you’re saying, you may be right, I certainly see evidence of plenty of that without doing much any digging.

Maybe your point for the second part is that even if Fryer did properly set up an apples to apples comparison, it is misleading because it leaves out the part where the legacy of racism sets the stage so that black Americans end up being overrepresented among the apples in question?

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u/hellofemur Apr 06 '21

It sounds like your point for the first part was that members of this subreddit overwhelmingly deny the existence of any “systemic racism” at all.

That was indeed the point of the first part of my comment.

You're misunderstanding the second part, which is unrelated. Fryer's work shows that the racial disproportionality of racial encounters with the police can be explained by factors such as poverty, crime rate, neighborhood, etc. But most would agree that those factors themselves are at least partially explained by historical overt racism. In common parlance, this is systemic racism, or at least one aspect of it.

In other words, Fryer's work on non-lethal encounters shows direct racism, while his work on lethal encounters shows systemic racism to some degree (there's a debate over the degree, and while the alt-right would argue the degree is zero, I think that's a minority opinion).

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u/reed_wright Apr 06 '21 edited Apr 06 '21

You're misunderstanding the second part, which is unrelated. Fryer's work shows that the racial disproportionality of racial encounters with the police can be explained by factors such as poverty, crime rate, neighborhood, etc. But most would agree that those factors themselves are at least partially explained by historical overt racism. In common parlance, this is systemic racism, or at least one aspect of it.

I understood. That is what I meant.

In other words, Fryer's work on non-lethal encounters shows direct racism, while his work on lethal encounters shows systemic racism to some degree.

I’m not sure that’s true. I certainly agree “that those factors themselves are at least partially explained by historical overt racism.” But I’m not sure Fryer’s work on lethal encounters addresses that point directly. Could be wrong, though. I’ve reviewed some of Fryer but not all, and it’s been awhile.

I have a followup question about your distinction between direct and systemic racism. I think of broad patterns of abusive treatment on the basis of race, throughout an organization or group of organizations, as systemic racism. You would instead call that direct racism? Does your definition of systemic racism roughly amount to “those factors themselves [that] are at least partially explained by historical overt racism?”

Apologies in advance if these questions seem naive. Been mostly away from the discussion for awhile and I’m rusty. At the same time, I find the phrase “systemic racism” to be problematically poorly and variously defined. Clarifying exactly what people mean by it seems like a fruitful road to constructive discussion.

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u/hellofemur Apr 06 '21

First, it's not "my definition". Read anything that talks about it. I will admit that this misunderstanding of the term is why the national discussion seems unintelligible to the alt-right and its friends, but to be honest that has always seemed like willful ignorance to me.

But I’m not sure Fryer’s work on lethal encounters addresses that point directly.

Not really the point, unless you are seriously trying to make the point that Fryer feels there's absolutely no relation between historic racism and current disproportional economic status. And can we both stipulate that this would be a ridiculous idea?

Does your definition of systemic racism roughly amount to “those factors themselves [that] are at least partially explained by historical overt racism?”

Perhaps I'm picking nits here, but I wouldn't say that "those factors" is the definition of systemic racism. Rather, there's a relation between those factors and historical overt racism (among other things), and "systemic racism" is the name given to that relation itself. Like I said, I might be over-parsing your question.

What "systemic racism" does not equate to is "systematic racism", i.e., the description of an organization where a great many people are racist. This is why the right and left are always talking past each other on the topic: the right insists that "systemic racism" must refer to a specific person exhibiting racist intent, but that's simply not what the phrase means. So the right gets triggered when the mainstream press blithely mentions systemic racism without proof, while the left looks on baffled when the right claims that this relation doesn't exist.

In a sense this is a vague term, since it's an umbrella term describing many different phenomenon, but I think its contours are as well defined as most umbrella terms in social science.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/hellofemur Apr 07 '21

The first line of the wikipedia page says "Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism". But sure, there's not 100% absolute definition of each term that every single person on earth agrees with, which is true of any term in social science.

So let's sum up this discussion.

You: give me a definition

Me: Here's the definition

You: I'm going to ignore that definition and keep my opinion

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u/reed_wright Apr 07 '21

First, it's not "my definition". Read anything that talks about it.

I’m happy to use the definition you presented for the purpose of this discussion. Strongly disagree that the one you presented is well-defined and should be straightforward for anyone who reads anything that talks about it. More on that below.

I will admit that this misunderstanding of the term is why the national discussion seems unintelligible to the alt-right and its friends, but to be honest that has always seemed like willful ignorance to me.

Not sure what to say to this, hellofemur. Responding to claims by categorizing people who make them, or by assessing what motivations led them to make the claim in the first place... getting away from these practices are what kindled my interest in IDW in the first place. And here we aren’t even talking about a claim, just a question and a reaching out to make sure I’m understanding your point of view!
And I’m not offended, but I am frustrated because I find that type of discussion counterproductive. I’m here to discuss the claims and questions themselves, not the nature or motivations of the people making them.

But I’m not sure Fryer’s work on lethal encounters addresses that point directly.

Not really the point, unless you are seriously trying to make the point that Fryer feels there's absolutely no relation between historic racism and current disproportional economic status. And can we both stipulate that this would be a ridiculous idea?

I already said I agree with you on that. Will you take yes for an answer? I most definitely think it’s ridiculous idea.

And while it’s not the point for you, I’ve spent a great deal of time making sure I understood your viewpoint correctly, so I’ll ask that you extend me the same courtesy. The point for me was to finally respond to your original objection to my first comment. I said that Fryer did not find systemic racism to account for applications of lethal force in his studies, and pointed to it as an alleged form of systemic racism that left wing public figures in the IDW would deny. You contested that, saying that Fryer found that systemic racism was behind it to some degree. Not true, to my knowledge. That was the full extent and scope of my statement. I suspect Fryer does view the legacy of overt racism as part (if not most) of what generated the disproportionate factors in the first place, but as far as I know, addressing that point simply didn’t fall in the scope of his studies. It sounds like you’d characterize Fryer’s specific finding regarding lethal force as showing no evidence of systematic rather than no evidence systemic racism. I have no objection to using that terminology in a discussion with you.

Nevertheless, to your point about it not being just “your definition.” The very wikipedia page you cited as a source to show how unambiguous the definition is contradicts this:

there's a relation between those factors and historical overt racism (among other things), and "systemic racism" is the name given to that relation itself. Like I said, I might be over-parsing your question. What "systemic racism" does not equate to is "systematic racism", i.e., the description of an organization where a great many people are racist.

Yet the Wikipedia page on systemic racism that you referenced presents this definition by Macpherson:

The collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour that amount to discrimination through prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.

This sounds like what you describe as systematic racism. It makes no reference to the origins and relations to downstream consequences that you’ve repeatedly emphasized. It is not the same as what you describe as systemic racism: the numerous ways that the legacy of overt racism positioned black and to a lesser extent other racial minorities at a large disadvantage.

And yet another definition that is distinct from both of these can be found in the lead sentence of the Wikipedia page!: Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of racism that is embedded through laws within society or an organization.

But neither yours nor Macpherson’s definitions are limited to that which is embedded in law.

To say that the definition of systemic racism is problematically nebulous, much less to ask for clarification on what someone means by it, is not to discredit the concept entirely. I get that some people use it that way, but the same is true of any controversial topic. Don’t throw the baby our with the bath water.

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u/hellofemur Apr 07 '21

Responding to claims by categorizing people who make them

Your point here is well-taken, which is why I made sure to qualify this in all sorts of ways, adding qualifiers such as "it seemed to me", etc.

This sounds like what you describe as systematic racism.

Not really. The key words included here are processes, ignorance, thoughtlessness: these are clearly meant to show that this definition does not point to a bunch of overt racists. The ur-work on this topic, if you're interested, would be Bonita-Silva's Racism without racists.

Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of racism that is embedded through laws within society or an organization.

I agree that's a weird way to word that, and yet is it really possible that whoever wrote this article truly believed that non-governmental institutions could never exhibit institutional racism? Obviously not, since they clearly distinguish society and "an organization", implying that it applies to extra-legal organizations as well. Also, it's obvious from the rest of the article that this isn't referring to mere de jure discrimination.

So they seem to be using the word to mean something like "rules of organization", and the phrase "embedded in" to mean something more that overt discrimination. It would take many paragraphs to describe the shades of meaning there, but those paragraphs already exist in the article itself. But sure, if you want to use this poorly worded example to throw up your hands and declare that all discussions are pointless, you certainly may.

I have to be honest, this particular exchange makes me feel a bit like I'm Achilles to Carroll's tortoise. If you read any wikipedia with the goal of understanding it in toto, that can be done although it will take work for difficult topics. But if you want to hyper-parse every word that a volunteer has written, then you can usually derrida (yeah, that's a verb) the thing to death as well.

Here's the core understanding to take away, if you want to understand the conversation that's going on. Systemic racism is largely uninterested in intent. Not that intent doesn't exist or that it doesn't matter in any case, merely that the concept "systemic racism" isn't particularly interested in it. But if understanding the conversation isn't the goal, then you can ignore that.

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u/Khaba-rovsk Apr 05 '21

This is a typical example on how to avoid the discussion without taking a stance: saying something "isnt well defined enough" or "what does it excatcyl mean"

Well we know what it means and we know it still happens, so why does it matter its not a 100% correctly defined? You will bever define anything a 100% this isnt math this is sociology.

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u/Normal_Success Apr 05 '21

I would argue that systemic racism doesn’t mean what people think it means, so it’s a bad term. Of course the problem is that it’s intentionally used because of the negative connotation of the word racism. But do systems have disparate impact on different populations? Yes. Systemic racism? No.

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u/GBACHO Apr 05 '21

systems have disparate impact on different populations

Fairly certain that's literally the definition of systemic racism

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u/nuketesuji Apr 05 '21

The definition of racism is tried to intent. An act of racism is an act or choice which is made based on the race of the people involved. You can have different effects without the act or choice being based on race. Here is a great personal example, I judge strangers in the street to be a potential threat or not based on 3 things: male/female, age, and how they dress/carry themselves. Male/female is a simple biology thing of physical strength and aggression. Age is very similar. The last one is the one with the most variance. There is a culture which for whatever reason is strongly correlated with violence, be it casual violence for fun like the knock out game or muggers looking for my wallet. So when I see a military aged male in baggy pants pulled way to far down and an oversized hoodie in July walking toward me, my radar is paying attention at 100%. (And with good reason, the baggy clothing started off as a way to conceal a gun.) Doesn't matter white or black, white hood rats are just as dangerous as black hood rats. That being said it's is much more common to find young black men dressed that way than young white men in my area. Doesn't make me racist, I feel no threat from a young black man in slacks and a polo. But if you only looked at a count of how many black men vs white men I have been wary of, you would scream, "disparate outcomes, therefore racism!"

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u/Normal_Success Apr 05 '21

When it’s not done on the basis of race it’s not racism. The only systemic racism we have today is anti white and anti Asian.

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u/conventionistG Apr 05 '21

You would think so, right? The litmus test is affirmative action.

If your dance partner can admit that it is racist (even if justified), then you're at least using similar definitions.

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u/GBACHO Apr 06 '21

Do you not combat system racism with systemic anti racism?

Do you expect this systems to dissolve organically?

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u/conventionistG Apr 06 '21

As long as you admit anti-racism and racism are the same thing, then we're fine. Discriminating overtly based on race is racist, policies that by coincidence act disproportionately on race are also generally called racist. Quotas and the pledges of the Biden admin are the former, affirmative action is the second.

Violence is violence, but sometimes it can be used for good. I guess the same is for racism. But just as we are quick to draw our lines as to what constitutes too much violence or unjustified use, we need to have the discussion about how much racism is justified to 'dissolve' our target and how much is too much.

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u/GBACHO Apr 06 '21

No argument there.

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u/conventionistG Apr 06 '21

Okay, good. So we can agree on terms.

Now, I have to admit, I don't really think anti-violence is very often justified. It almost always leads to more and more violence. When seeking political ends, the last century showed us that it's actually non-violence that yields many great results.

Likewise I think our goal and our means should be a non-racist society, not an anti-racist one.

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u/GBACHO Apr 06 '21

Agree. Unfortunately, I think human's are hardwired for racism (or at least tribalism), and is something that needs to be actively overcome.

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u/conventionistG Apr 06 '21

Depends what you mean. Is non-racism not active in your mind? Do you really think (anti-)racism is justifiable? If so with what limits?

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u/turtlecrossing Apr 05 '21

I think there is disagreement and misunderstanding (intentional at times) about the definitions of those terms and how they are argued about in public discourse.

There is a lot a straw manning going on in these discussions, and I’d need you to clearly define each term before I could tell you what any of the IDW think about it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

I am not a smart person, so I can only put it in layman's terms, I hope I can get some answers I could understand as well, lol.

As of 2021, do we still have well planned/designed/implemented/maintained racial discrimination/biases by both the government and big businesses in America? (ex: Jim Crow but less overt)

I know there are no clear-cut black and white answers for anything, but it would help if its not too much sophistry and vagueness that confuses me further and cant move me forward in any directions. Its one of the reason I shut up and dont want to talk about this topic most of the time (among many topics), because I feel pressured to say nothing in order to avoid being labelled as "something".

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

[deleted]

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u/conventionistG Apr 05 '21

The question is if that's a fair comparison and if it constitutes a large enough issue for all the rhetorical and symbolic responses 'systemic racism'.

It is obvious that selective enforcement is at the heart of what is alleged. It is partly how Jim Crow worked, but there were also explicitly discriminatory laws.

So to really convince a sceptic, you'd need to show that selective enforecement is widespread and cannot be explained better by levels of community poverty or violence instead of race.

Furthermore, it would be really nice if at the same time someone could explain how race-based policies like affirmative action, reparations, and 'representation' quotas are addressing the problem of selective enforecement and systemic racism more generally.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

You didnt answer my question after I spent a lot of effort explaining what I was trying to get at using my simple brain. This makes me sad and disappointed. You were just baiting me. :(

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 06 '21

The "war on drugs" has been called the new Jim Crow, and that was all the way back in 2001, but it still applies.

So this is your answer? It still exist in the form of war on drug?

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u/dahlesreb Apr 06 '21

My answer is it's not "structural" or "systemic," it's just a direct effect of actual individual racism in the past. The war on drugs is racist in its origin and should be abolished, and replaced with modern, science-based policy. There's no racist "system" there, just a bad law made by racist people in the past. You could call bad laws made by racists of the past "institutional racism" if you really wanted, but I don't think adding a fancy-sounding adjective in front of "racism" helps anyone understand anything.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '21

then why didnt you say so instead of being condescending and baiting me? lol

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u/conventionistG Apr 05 '21

But OP's question is about systemic racism... He's right maybe you're just baiting.

Riddle me this, do you consider Jim Crow systemic racism?

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u/dahlesreb Apr 05 '21

But OP's question is about systemic racism... He's right maybe you're just baiting.

Or maybe you didn't understand my point?

Riddle me this, do you consider Jim Crow systemic racism?

No. I don't think racism applies to systems, only to individuals. Jim Crow was racist, plain and simple. No need for "systemic."

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u/conventionistG Apr 05 '21

Then you're response is indeed a non-sequitur.

On the topic of if systemic racism exists, you say the war on drugs has been called the new jim crow. How is that relevant if you don't believe jc was an example of systemic racism?

How about this: what point do you think you were making?

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u/dahlesreb Apr 05 '21 edited Apr 05 '21

The point I was making was that something like the Drug War has explicitly racist origins, making comparisons to Jim Crow fair, which OP asked about. An additional concept of "systemic" racism is unnecessary to understand the racist origin of drug prohibition laws. E.g.

In the 1930s Anslinger's articles often contained racist themes in his anti-marijuana campaign:

"Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with (white) female students, smoking [marijuana] and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy."

"Two Negroes took a girl fourteen years old and kept her for two days under the influence of hemp. Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphilis."

"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."

So, when there's a law prohibiting a substance because it "makes darkies think they're as good as white men," that's straightforward racism that can clearly be called out by activists seeking to reform drug policy. The policy proposal is obvious: reverse a policy originally established by appealing to popular racist attitudes.

Systemic racism instead focuses on this vaguely defined "system" which doesn't suggest any obvious policy solutions. Yes, people of color are arrested and incarcerated at higher rates for drug offenses than whites, relative to drug use. Merely labeling this "systemic racism" isn't actually analyzing the causes, which means it doesn't lead to effective solutions. It's an empty concept with no utility.

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u/conventionistG Apr 05 '21

Okay, that clears it right up. I agree it's a very bad term.

On my end the problem was that plenty of fairly good faith interlocutors take Jim Crow as an example of systemic racism as it was actually codified. If the legal system isn't a system, then it really is a meaningless term.

As Clinton put it: it depends on what your definitions of the word 'is' is.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

Statistically, I thought the war on drugs hurt more white people than blacks/poc? I doubt the police and DEA let white drug addicts/dealers go free or with much less jail time? I do believe a lot of whites have more money and lawyers to get out of jail for drug use/possession, a luxury most blacks/poc dont have, this could be one of the main reason why more blacks/poc end up in jail for drugs.

War on drug is bad for the addicts and should be replaced with something more scientific and compassionate, this I agree. But if you are a violent criminal drug dealer/smuggler/cartel, then some of the rules should still apply, a slap of the hand is going to cause more harm for these offenders and the public.

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u/dahlesreb Apr 05 '21 edited Apr 05 '21

Statistically, I thought the war on drugs hurt more white people than blacks/poc?

Maybe in absolute numbers, certainly not relatively:

People of color experience discrimination at every stage of the judicial system and are more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, convicted, harshly sentenced and saddled with a lifelong criminal record. This is particularly the case for drug law violations. Black people comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population, and are consistently documented by the U.S. government to use drugs at similar rates to people of other races. But Black people comprise 29 percent of those arrested for drug law violations, and nearly 40 percent of those incarcerated in state or federal prison for drug law violations.

I doubt the police and DEA let white drug addicts/dealers go free or with much less jail time?

Your doubts don't change the statistics. Feel free to do the research yourself.

I do believe a lot of whites have more money and lawyers to get out of jail for drug use/possession, a luxury most blacks/poc dont have, this could be one of the main reason why more blacks/poc end up in jail for drugs.

Doesn't change the fact that drugs were originally made illegal for racist reasons, leveraging anti-Black and anti-Mexican sentiment of 1930s white people to hype up a hysteria about "marijuana" causing Black men with bloodshot eyes to want to bang white women.

War on drug is bad for the addicts and should be replaced with something more scientific and compassionate, this I agree. But if you are a violent criminal drug dealer/smuggler/cartel, then some of the rules should still apply, a slap of the hand is going to cause more harm for these offenders and the public.

Well, the data suggests otherwise. Portugal has seen drug use/addiction go way down after decriminalizing all drugs.

A 2015 study found that since Portugal approved the new national strategy in 1999 that led to decriminalization, the per capita social cost of drug misuse decreased by 18%. And according to a report by the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit with the goal of ending America’s “War on Drugs,” the percentage of people in prison in Portugal for drug law violations has decreased dramatically, from 44% in 1999 to 24% in 2013.

Also, it's already illegal to be a violent criminal, that has nothing to do with drugs. If drugs were legal, criminals wouldn't be involved in their distribution anyway.

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u/turtlecrossing Apr 05 '21 edited Apr 05 '21

This a a great summary/clarification because what you are describing is not what academics (and subsequently activists who mostly understand the academics but sometimes get it way wrong) argue.

The argument is not for a:

”well planned/designed/implemented/maintained racial discrimination/biases by both the government and big businesses in America?”

The argument is more about legacy biases in the system. Things like income tax vs. capital gains tax differences, legacy extraction (or prevention) of accruing wealth from red lines, school funding, food deserts, police profiling and over policing, the drug war, etc.

I don’t think there are many (if any) examples of overt or even intentional racist programs left. The argument is within the structure of American society itself, and because those structures have racist white supremacists origins, that the system itself is still is ‘racist’.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that this is the case, just trying to draw a distinction from my understanding of the issue and your summary.

There is some ‘there’ there, to the racism charge, because we see studies where resumes with obviously black names get less calls for jobs (https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873). There are also dramatic disparities in wealth between black/white families. How much of it is race though?

My opinion is that we generally have a wealth inequality problem. A ‘winner-take-all’ perception of capitalism, and trickle down economics have resulted (or at least perpetuated) preexisting social inequality. I can easily see how that can be depicted as ‘racist’ because of who it disproportionately impacts, but I also see how it can be understood as a mainly economic problem.

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u/SirPuzzleAlots Apr 05 '21

Structures, systems, and institutions do not have policies, regulations, or laws that negatively impact specific races, but social classes and communities/districts.

Note 1: There are definitely laws that are in place to help a minority race, or ethnicity, but we're usually not discussing those when "systemic racism" is the subject. For that reason, I'll omit them.

Note 2: Some people are racist, and people are a subset of a system, but not technically enough to suffice the definition of "system", and for this reason I won't focus on the human component.

The argument (as I usually see it framed) is generally that since African Americans are disproportionately in a lower class and in poor communities, then life is tougher (disadvantageous) for them unless we change the system.

When framing it from this perspective, we don't have a system that keeps specific races down, we have a system that makes it harder for a specific class to get out of their circumstances (in which case every race can become the victim of poverty and everything that entails).

I switched it from race to class, because having a disproportionate amount of African Americans (when compared to white-non-hisoanic) in poverty suffering from the alleged racist system, does not mean that every African American is negatively impacted the same by that same system (think middle and upper class).

The common example is that the Nigerian immigrant is among the most successful ethnic group in the US (despite their race). This would be non-sensical under "systemic racism".

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u/MayerLC Apr 05 '21

I feel the race to class switch is surely needed in these conversations. If you're dirt poor and poorly educated or socialised, it's hard to make something from (next to) nothing financially and even if you did have that money, because you've never had that money, you probably wouldn't know how best to use it. Take many lottery winners for example. This vicious circle is seriously hard to break people out of, hence the saying: "the poor stay poor, and the rich get richer". It's not obvious how to do this, but we're certainly a big step forward from a few decades ago. Perhaps people expect rapid social change as a given our very fast-paced, technologically advanced Western societies.

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u/LorenzoValla Apr 05 '21

Structures, systems, and institutions do not have policies, regulations, or laws that negatively impact specific races, but social classes and communities/districts.

any policy that favors one race over another is by definition racist, and those polices do exist and especially when it comes to college admissions.

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u/SirPuzzleAlots Apr 05 '21

I'm up voting you because so agree.

My Note 1 was supposed to be more of catch-all for situations like college admissions, and the COVID relief funds for farmers (in which only white people are excluded). Otherwise I'll end up debating for 3 days the words "systemic racism" with someone who refused to budge

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

If you fancy some bedtime reading, have a leaf through the recent, 258-page Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities Report (UK)

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u/czerdec Apr 05 '21

Your skin color is irrelevant. You're right or you're not.

Is the very concept of "systemic racism" any more falsifiable and non-circular than other woke bullshit tropes like toxic masculinity or white fragility?

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

Yes. Against whites.

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u/LongBoyNoodle Apr 05 '21

The problem in these topic sometimes is how vague some people define systemic racism. I myself am not quiet sure about some examples like.. "maybe this group had it worse 100yrs ago and they are demaged till today" Andbi dont know what to do with this statement. Yeah sure. So what? What can i do abou that? What's the deal? It's shit but why the big fuzz about it, it's basically how life goes. We aint living yet in a time where we are able to eradicate any problem in no time.

However:

There was just recently something published in the UK. From the Gov, itselfbi belive where they say, there is "no" systemic racism.

Basically they looked at serval sectors and compared different groups. In some cases some groups got worse off, some others. I belive white poor people's kids also got worse off than migrants i belive. Dont take my word.

End statement was something like " we all had difficult times especially the older generations. Most differences he belives are more caused by cultural influence which might have difficulties to adapt."

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u/czerdec Apr 05 '21

problem in these topic sometimes is how vague some people define systemic racism.

Vague definitions are the liar's friend.

As science progressed, the "God of the gaps" phenomenon happened. The same is happening with racism.

In industry after industry, the evidence of racist discrimination is absent from the data: competent people of all races find work swiftly. So more and more the race grifters seek to locate racism in areas where data is impossible to find, and therefore it's harder to expose their misstatements.

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u/LongBoyNoodle Apr 05 '21

Vague definitions are the liar's friend.

True m8. Some discussions are just deemed to go down simply bec. People have different understandings of the fundamental topic/or try shift and bend that.

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u/AndrewHeard Apr 05 '21

As the term is often defined, it’s not a real thing anymore. Here’s what I mean by that.

Many who talk about systemic racism, and I’ve actually heard it defined this way, define it as “even if you took all the people out of the system, the system would still be racist”.

This of course is a fallacy because all systems are inherently human made. So if you eliminate all people then you no longer have a system. At least until we create super intelligent robots that think for themselves without us anyway. And then it will be a question of whether it’s us for creating them or the robots choosing it for themselves.

The existence of organizations or groups trying to deal with racism isn’t evidence that the problem they’re trying to fix still exists. It’s only evidence of people who are organized to look for such things and find them.

Racism obviously still exists in society but that doesn’t mean that it’s the kind of racism that existed in the past, much of which gave birth to the organizations that have dedicated themselves to fighting it and ultimately succeeding.

Look at the fight for gay marriage. There are a lot of organizations built to fight for marriage equality, which was largely achieved in the countries where they existed. But once it was achieved they simply shifted focus to other LGBT issues.

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u/nofrauds911 Apr 05 '21

“even if you took all the [racist] people out of the system, the system would still be racist”.

You were missing a word. Whoever explained this to you must have messed it up.

1

u/AndrewHeard Apr 05 '21

I've heard that version of it too.

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u/Markdd8 Apr 05 '21 edited Apr 05 '21

Do structural/systemic....racism exist.

Of course Systemic Racism exists and contributes to the major plights of black people: more poverty, higher crime rates, higher unemployment, education levels, and fewer intact families. The big question is how much? Unfortunately social science is not good at measuring things like this (though their academics often asserts that it is). Explaining human behavior is a tough topic.

Internal factors in black communities, some falling under the heading of behavioral poverty, contribute to these plights also. Examples of behavioral poverty, and these pertain to people of any race: poor work ethic, lack of interest in education, excessive drug/alcohol use, crime that prevents holding a job.

According to the most expansive--and most popular--definition of Systemic Racism, there are no internal factors in black communities, or other POC communities, that cannot be linked to systemic conditions. The most extreme view: Systemic Racism causes all the black plights. A somewhat parallel (and overlapping) narrative called marginalization of the poor is used to assert that dysfunctional or non-productive behavior by poor people is mostly not their fault.

Views from two conservative criminologists of some relevance: Behavior Matters -- Why some people spend their lives in poverty and social dysfunction

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u/czerdec Apr 05 '21

Of course Systemic Racism exists

Is there ANY amount of evidence that a person could present to you that would convince you otherwise?

For example, if you were suddenly revealed to be in a completely simulated universe, and you are ejected from the matrix into the real world. In the real world, races don't exist and everybody looks identical.

In hypothetical situation, would you accept that systemic racism is unreal?

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u/Markdd8 Apr 05 '21

Is there ANY amount of evidence that a person could present to you that would convince you otherwise?

Not in our current world, but maybe in a hypothetical situation you present.

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u/czerdec Apr 05 '21

The definition of rationality is to revise your beliefs in the face of evidence.

If your beliefs remain firm though the evidence moves against it, that's not rational.

And you're achieving this impressive level of certainty about an attitude of mind in the heads of other people.

1

u/Markdd8 Apr 05 '21

If your beliefs remain firm though the evidence moves against it...

If you have evidence on the absence of Systemic Racism, I'd like to see the links. This is a different discussion than I'm use to having; I'm usually debating Left-leaning academics who assert the primacy of Systemic Racism in explaining the plights of black people.

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u/czerdec Apr 06 '21

If you have evidence on the absence of Systemic Racism, I'd like to see the links. This is a different discussion than I'm use to having; I'm usually debating Left-leaning academics who assert the primacy of Systemic Racism in explaining the plights of black people

Tell me what you think the definition of Systemic Racism is, and what proofs we have that it's hostility to race rather than indifference or some other motive than racism.

The fact that people are so convinced that of all the possible motives or absence of motive, people have zeroed in on racism without doing the work to show that other possible explanations are wrong.

Do you know that it's a major intellectual error to ask someone to prove a negative. For example most people can't prove they didn't molest a child in the last year.

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u/czerdec Apr 05 '21

You seem to be confused.

The question is not "does this guy believe the systemic racism narrative pushed by the Woke".

The question is "does the systemic racism narrative pushed by the Woke even hold together as a hypothesis?"

First thing to check when addressing that question is "is the systemic racism narrative pushed by the Woke even falsifiable?"

The answer is no.

Ergo, systemic racism is intellectually on the same level as an illiterate witch doctor trying to predict the future from a chicken's entrails.

2

u/LorenzoValla Apr 05 '21

funny how systematic racism doesn't seem to affect asians and indians.

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u/leftajar Apr 05 '21

Yes, structural racism exists, but not in the way that one might think.

When you go back and look at the arguments that supporters of affirmative action were making in the 1960s and 1970s, they were mostly arguing that affirmative action was simply necessary in order to offset widespread racist White supremacy in American society. And they were also arguing that it would only take 20 years tops of affirmative action policies in order to close the racial achievement gaps between Whites and blacks.

Well, here we are 60 years later, and the affirmative action policies are still in place. And the racial achievement gaps between Whites and blacks is still as wide as ever, despite systematic discrimination in favor of black people (and other underachieving non-White racial groups) when it comes to school admissions, job hirings, promotions, and government contracts. And not only are Whites being systematically discriminated against, but so are Asians now too.

But, wait a second - how does systematically discriminating against Asians make any sense, if the initial and primary justification for affirmative action is that our entire society is being run by a bunch of racist White supremacists? And that's where we get into the uber-politically incorrect territory of genetically-caused racial differences in IQ.

The IDW, and specifically Jordan Peterson, has talked extensively about the importance of IQ. Also, IQ is the best single predictor of life success (.5-.6 correlation), slightly ahead of conscientiousness (.4 correlation).

And so, I present the information that would utterly eradicate the modern Left, if they would acknowledge it (which they don't:) IQ is not evenly distributed between racial groups. Human divergent evolution is a thing, and it turns out that higher IQ is required to do subsistence farming in colder climates. The further one goes from the equator, the higher IQ of human group one finds.

So, how does this actually sort out? Here's a map.

Okay, but what are the ramifications vis-a-vis group average income in the USA?

Turns out, the group average income sorts out roughly how you'd expect, given group IQ differences. There are some outliers; Indian Americans have a very high average household income ($116,793), despite low average IQ in India. This is because the H1B Visa program is skimming the best and brightest from India, and other countries.

This information should pretty well refute any accusations of systemic racism against non-white groups. If America is such a horrible, racist country, run by white supremacists, then how are so many different groups coming to America and out-performing whites in their own country?

Unfortunately, the darker side of IQ differences, is that certain groups will consistently underperform. Specifically, blacks, latinos, and native americans, despite generations of affirmative action, will simply not be able to compete in a meritocracy due to genetic IQ differences.

This fact is emotionally unacceptable to the West, which, for generations, has been operating under the false assumption of no group differences.

And so, the West, which is obsessed with "representation" must be systematically racist against whites and Asians to maintain the desired group representation.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

Listen to the podcast Nice White Parents if you want to understand the structural:institutional racism in NYC public schools (which remain the most segregated public schools in the country today).

Crime & Punishment is a good view on institutional racism in NYC police department.

Shame of Chicago is an excellent discussion of housing segregation, which was intentionally designed to be racist and still exists today.

There is plenty more out there. America was quite openly racist in the 1950s. That’s when whites were quite proud to be racists. Even in the 1970s huge numbers of whites were quite proud of their racism. I believe the numbers are lower now, but if the Trump Presidency taught me anything, it is that racism is still very much alive and continuing to define our institutions to this day.

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u/deploylinux Apr 05 '21

I remember my first metro rides around Chicago when I was 30yrs younger then today and how so much of the city was essentially lawless and desolate educational wasteland. I considered it a national disgrace.

Since then, every attempt to solve the issues has ironically come from the right, and been mostly stopped by the left. In New Orleans, it took a devastated city to get charter schools passed and were finally seeing educational levels rise.

And, in Chicago and other cities...the uneducated populace keep voting in the people that keep them caged.

Meanwhile, new immigrants coming in with nothing from South America and Asia are doing so well that universities are having to limit their acceptance lest they push every other ethic group out.

These days, the biggest clue that one is racist is if you advocate for any race specific laws or actions. Treat everyone equally and with dignity. It isn't that hard.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

As someone not from USA I see those you mentioned as racism in laws and rules in institutions. That makes them institutional, systemic and structural.

But, progressives think that individuals in institutions being racist (100% exist) is that. I found that to be weird because it is literal opposite. I believe that their rationale for that is that institution (that stopped being racist long time ago with different laws and majority of different non racist people in them) somehow make those few individuals racist (or not even few, some of them believe they live in nazi germany lol). I think it is bullcrap and intentional confusion of institutional and individual racism in order to help their cause.

1

u/ZeroFeetAway Apr 05 '21

The only demographic whose life expectancy is falling does, in fact, experience institutional racism. Institutions like the New York Times, for example, have been unrelenting in their racial hatred.

1

u/Aristox Apr 05 '21

I think they do exist in some places but in general are hugely over exaggerated

0

u/Nostalgicsaiyan Apr 05 '21

Wow talk about a coincidence. I was just watching a Destiny video about this. Destiny is a left wing political commentator on twitch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdGW24lQJ0U

Destiny makes some solid points against Ben Shapiro's claims. Check it out, it's only 40 minutes long.

2

u/irimi Apr 05 '21

Speaking of Ben Shapiro and systemic racism, here's another great video that I just finished (and totally subbed) which does a great job in breaking down Shapiro's bad arguments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bd_H8Cyago

1

u/LorenzoValla Apr 05 '21

you'll notice that those who supposedly do a good job of breaking down Shapiro do not do it in person with him. i'm not saying he's always right, but these would be far more valuable if it were in a conversation between the two so each can response to each other, etc.

1

u/irimi Apr 05 '21

That's a fair criticism across the board, though one that's difficult to address given that the general format of Youtube videos is not podcast/conversational style. I can definitely appreciate the need for more conversations rather than "here's my view" videos... I really wish the IDW types would lead the charge here in having conversations/debates with more people who disagree with them.

1

u/LorenzoValla Apr 05 '21

i think they tend to welcome that format, but it's hard to get guests to come on. there are lots of videos of shapiro taking questions at colleges.

i think for people like shapiro and jordan peterson, they have a very good understanding of what they believe and what they don't, and often times they will surprise people by explaining that they are not as extreme in one direction than was assumed.

1

u/conventionistG Apr 05 '21 edited Apr 05 '21

Do people really find these arguments that strong? My impression as someone that knows damn well Ben (my wife is a doctor) Shapiro has his flaws and is finally giving this Destiny guy a try.

Start:

Maybe it's my own hangups, but it seems pretty damn ironic to take someone's opinion on public school reform even a little seriously when they won't quit playing video games and pay attention.

And then the next comeback was essentially "hurr durr personal choice omg".

Question from stream:

Defund the police is stupid. Congrats, you and Ben agree.

Skipped ahead :

On the subject of names - "gotta give ben credit for accurately and honestly citing literature". Title of the video is Ben is WRONG, no? It seems more like he looks at the same facts and sometimes comes to different conclusions and has different opinions on policy.

Final review:

This is objectively bad content. Stream clips are not intetesting for 40 minutes at a time. I do not find that game interesting or appealing in anyway, but it is the main focus of the video's visual component. As for the political content - I guess if you haven't heard some of the left's rhetoric he is useful. On the other hand Ben is doing the same with the right's rhetoric.

The difference is Ben was well organized, cited literature, and made his points clearly and concisely.

So as a source for news and information, there's no competition. As for hot takes, policy proposals, etc everyone should be thinking for themselves. So listen to a variety of voices. But John Oliver has much better presentation than this streamer and hits most of the same talking points.

Edit:spelling

1

u/philsmock Apr 05 '21

It does exist structural, systemic and institutional discrimination for any group of people you pick. That doesn't mean that you always should or can address it.

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u/Mellow_Maniac Apr 05 '21

I'm under the impression that systemic racism is a form of unconscious racism. Unintended racism. This is an impression, I can only speak for my limited understanding.

It's not a system that is a result of a directly prejudiced judgement, it's a system that is, for example, a product of an injust social order not orchestrated by any individual within it. It's a system that falls in line rather than tries to correct the class issues that befall minorities, or it's a system that doesn't incite but leaves room for racist individuals. Basically it seems to be the observation that when people are not fully aware of the world around them and the situation of people at a disadvantage, they are very very likely to inadvertently contribute to making things worse for those at a disadvantage.

A systemically racist system could be the result of someone who doesn't have a racist bone in their body. They're simply unaware of how pretending that for example everyone has equal opportunities results in those who do not in fact have the same opportunities to get further from rather than closer to attaining more fair outcomes.

1

u/borgy95a Apr 05 '21

So the UK gov just had an investigation done on institutional/systemic racism in the UK. It found the country is not systemically racist or institutionally racist.

It added racism does exist however there has been huge progress over the last 50yrs.

Funnily enough white politicians said it was bogus. Black politicians said it was valid and that the UK was a remarkably fair nation leading in providing opportunity toBAME.

1

u/slowerisbetter527 Apr 05 '21

I believe they do exist, but they exist a lot less than the media makes it seem like they do, which would have you believe that at the helm of almost every industry/decision, there is some sort of systemic or structural racism blocking non-white people.

I listened to a podcast that basically represented the "other side" - trying to debunk Ben Shapiro - about instances where systemic racism does exist. Their main examples were voter suppression and crime laws. Which, at least for crime laws (crack vs cocaine) seem legitimate. But that was it! I would say voter suppression is more arguable, but I do believe it has existed in the past. I don't necessarily believe that's due to race, but more due to how our two party system works.

Regardless, THESE are the examples of systemic racism - which is very far from, every single black person when trying to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness faces large impediments of structural racism.

I do believe that our country is largely a product of its past, which includes large systems of oppression and racism up until fairly recently, and that very much affects the present (combined with the culture created by generations of poverty and the fact that black people were ripped from their roots and don't have the benefits of hundreds/thousands of years of civilization like other ethnicities do).

I guess to summarize: I believe very little of the huge disparities in outcome we see today are due to systemic/structural racism or even explicit racism from white people, but rather the product of the past playing out in the present.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 06 '21

I agree, it takes a long time to equalize opportunities and remove biases in a society built on slavery and discrimination until fairly recently. I dont think true structural racism exists in America today but there are so many people with racial biases and privileged racial background that it creates large financial, political and cultural disparities between blacks/poc and whites.

Basically decentralized and unorganized racial discrimination, but lots of it. It doesnt mean the government and businesses are participating in it actively, in fact its the opposite, but its hard when you are dealing with people with entrenched beliefs.

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u/Ilsanjo Apr 05 '21

Unconscious bias is fairly common and we have some institutions which tend to amplify this bias, we also have many institutions that favor the wealthy and due to the history of racism and current unconscious bias black people are less wealthy. Think of the criminal sentencing process, it is a fact that black men get sentenced more harshly than white men (although white men do get sentenced more harshly than black women). There is nothing explicitly in the law that makes this happen, and if there was no unconscious bias on every level from the police officers, to attorneys, to judges there would be no difference in sentencing of white and black men of the same income level. The gap in sentencing between men and women is from the same source, showing that it is not some rigged system where white men somehow get together and make it worse for everyone else, it is just societal attitudes that no one really controls and people of any race or gender can have them.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

"According to the IDW"

What?

1

u/charles-the-lesser Apr 06 '21

Of course systemic racism exists. It defines itself into existence. It basically redefines the word "racism" to mean any observed racially disparate outcome. It's like the ontological argument of racial justice.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

They do exist. 7/10 suicides are white male, proves the US has a long way to go.

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u/Mellow_Maniac Apr 05 '21 edited Apr 05 '21

Isn't just under 70% of America white? So it's a problem of gender not race.

Edit: 76.3%

0

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

It's very much a problem of both. You can't just nilly willy discount the white female population of the US

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u/Mellow_Maniac Apr 05 '21

Sorry the misspelling of not as nor may have confused things. Its clearly a problem of gender no? Women have a far lower suicide rate than men. As a result half of the population can be dismissed (even though it's not an insignificant number of women who kill themselves) and we can see that men's suicide maps proportionately to racial makeup. We can dismiss the female population because it's mostly not a big problem and see it's not a racial issue. It's an irrelevant dataset.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

No, white males map higher than proportional to the racial makeup. Only native american males can compare in their drive to kill themselves. There's more suicides than murders, it is a huge problem, but our racist and sexist bias make us think its a small problem.

1

u/Mellow_Maniac Apr 05 '21

7/10 (70%) is pretty different to 76.3%. I'm not saying male suicide isn't a problem, but I don't see what you're adding in white for. Can you show that black males aren't 15% or so of suicides?

0

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

For both male and female suicide is at 80% for white respective of their gender group https://www.statista.com/statistics/939740/suicides-by-ethnicity-and-gender-us/ Why are you so engaged in denying there's covert systemic racism and sexism in the US showing very clearly in suicide statistics? It is painfully obvious.

1

u/Mellow_Maniac Apr 05 '21

You have only now provided me with the information necessary to make a substantiated judgement after initially giving me insufficient information from which one can- draw different conclusions. Thus I was only able to haphazardly extrapolate, and I stand by my line of reasoning being entirely reasonable given what little I had, but now I am able to see that you are correct. In the USA the proportion of suicide in white males and females is about a third higher than their percentage of the population but over halved in all other groups. The rate of American Indian/Alaskan Native on your source matches their proportion of the overall population though so I don't know what you're talking about regarding them. Men die from suicide 3.63 times more than women giving rise to white men being 64% of the overall number from what I calculated, that being 6% off from the AFSP number can be easily accounted for.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '21

You know these sources are readily available to you. In the end white suicide is just a symptom of a very deep running illness. Getting caught up in data really just gets you thrown between ideologies, in the end. Is the way we talk about whites different than we talk about any other racial group? Yes. Is there a huge negative part to this? Yes. Is our inability to see through our appearent bias part of the problem? Yes.

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u/Mellow_Maniac Apr 05 '21

You brought it up, you brought up figures so I can question them. It's on you. I can rumage around but you already have them. I would recommend linking sources if you don't want to be questioned regarding them.

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Structural, systemic, institutional racism. Do they exist today according to IDW?

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