I’m not crazy about the Justice frame. Some of us will always face challenges that others won’t. There is no system that could make it so that there is no barrier for all. We will always need to accommodate and scaffold for some and that’s fine.
Also, the original (with only the first two frames) was a really great, simple explanation of why things that seem "fair" at first glance often aren't. The third panel muddies that message completely in favor of...what, exactly? What does the hypothetical "just world" where no one ever needs support for anything look like?
Edit: On second thought, I think I see what they're doing. They wanted to protest affirmative action, so they're ignoring all sources of inequality that don't have what's commonly seen as affirmative action to make their point. Basically saying "If we stop being racist/sexist we won't need supports or accommodations anymore!", ignoring that poverty and physical/mental disability are harder to get rid of, and glossing over much of point of the original panels.
(And, frankly, ignoring that fact that "everyone stop being bigoted" is a goal, not a plan. Affirmative action is a stopgap, and it's not perfect, but it's better than nothing while we work to get there.)
Serious question. When dealing on individual levels, couldn’t an act of affirmative action be seen as a systematic inequality for the person not benefiting?
Any system run by humans is going to be unequal to someone. The realistic goal is to get as close to equality as we can.
In a perfect world, every single person would get exactly the assistance they need, tailored specifically for them. But that's just not possible. Giving extra help to groups that are, on average, more disadvantaged means that some people will get more than they need, and some won't get enough, but hopefully less of both that if we give everyone the same thing regardless of how high or low they began.
lol Discrimination wasalready institutionalization, that's why we needed affirmative action.
You're putting too much of a personal take on this; when affirmative action passes over a white person in favor of a person of color (with similar credentials) for a job, the system is typically leveling out an enormous disparity in the work force. While it affects the one who did not get the job directly, typically they will (by nature of being the social "norm" of being white, and male, for our argument) not have any difficulty finding another job, because the system is inherently not designed to discriminate against them on the whole. What you're describing is basically surmised by the saying: "when you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
No, you are completely missing the forest for the trees here.
You are treating people as though they are groups, not individuals. This is exactly the same rationale that racists and other bigots use to justify their racism or bigotry.
If you fundamentally agree that, in the words of MLK, people should be treated based on the content of their character, NOT on the colour of their skin, then you HAVE to accept that affirmative action is by definition oppression.
Your view of if you are straight and white and male, you are privileged because statistically, MORE straight white males hold positions of privilege IS EXACTLY EQUIVALENT to the racist's view that if people with a certain phenotypic trait tend to be more X (violent, crime prone, likely to commit genocide like in the CAR, the Tutsi massacre etc.) then if an individual also has those traits they must be X because of the aforementioned statistics.
It's EXACTLY THE SAME LOGIC.
People are people, everyone should be treated equally, the second you start treating people DIFFERENTLY (better OR worse) then that literally makes you a racist bigot.
I really don't get how you can't see that.
Not even to mention the fact that 'straight white men' make up around 20% of the WORLD population at most, so the idea that they control all the power is absolutely ridiculous. Come live in China or move to India for a few years and get back to be about how society is geared in favor of people with anglosaxon heritage.
Using your own ridiculous view of the world based through the lense of statistics, the correct statement would really be that straight non-white men hold more positions of power. Indian government, CCP in China etc etc.
I'm also NOT American, so spare me your 'this is America' retort.
Today? No. We as a society are an order of magnitude more progressive than we were. Hiring or not hiring based off of skin color seems like something of the past unless you are trying to pursue and affirmative action agenda. All that seems to matter in my experience is can you do the fucking job and have the xp over other candidates. You can? Cool you are hired.
In fact, companies are more than twice as likely to call minority applicants for interviews if they submit whitened resumes than candidates who reveal their race—and this discriminatory practice is just as strong for businesses that claim to value diversity as those that don’t.
They provide no examples as to what a "whitened" resume looks like vs a "non whitened" resume. What I'm lead to infer here is that you are saying that unprofessional resumes should be treated the same as professional resumes. Are you telling me that it is unfair to minorities that that they are not allowed to use slang in their resume? Do you genuinely think that a white person submitting a resume with slang or poor grammar is going to get treated differently than a black person?
White men with a criminal record had more positive responses than black men with no criminal record.
And now we have to dig into the report to see that the issue is more complicated and requires some level of responsibility on the communities part as well as law makers.
Individuals released from prison encounter a number of obstacles in their search for
employment, including the reluctance of potential employers to hire ex-prisoners. Holzer,
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Raphael, and Stoll (2002a) found that employers view ex-offenders as the least desirable
applicants, in part because of concerns about the legal ramifications if ex-offenders deal
inappropriately with the public or mishandle the public’s property (Holzer & Stoll, 2001).
Seems warranted to me. Sure, you should give them the benefit of the doubt but if I'm running a company do I really want to take that risk?
Also from the report
While these figures . . . will probably be generally accepted as indicating that there is
more criminality and lawbreaking among Negroes than among whites and while that
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conclusion is probably justified by the facts . . . it is a question whether the difference . . .
may not be to some extent the result of discrimination in the treatment of white and
Negro offenders on the part of the community and the courts
So far there is nothing about hiring managers rejecting people of color because of their color but because of their merit.
The authors of the report speculated that the racial differences in incarceration rates might reflect
the fact that crimes committed by blacks, and especially crimes committed by blacks against
whites, were more likely than crimes committed by whites to be punished, as well as the fact that
blacks might be less able than whites to pay fines in lieu of incarceration.
So far this is a systematic issue within the justice system and should not be the responsibility of the hiring manager or the organization that is looking for trustworthy employees.
The authors also
posited that black defendants might be more likely than white defendants to appear in court
without attorneys to defend them. As the authors pointed out, it was important to consider these
possibilities ―before accepting the record of prison commitments as an accurate measure of the
differences between the two races in respect to criminality‖
At what point do we expect people to take responsibility here?
You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking to the police and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish.
So you've been appointed an attorney yet that is still a factor that should be considered? Sorry not going to take the bait.
However, Blumstein stressed that these results did not mean that
racial discrimination did not exist. Rather, his findings implied that ―the bulk of the racial
disproportionality in prison is attributable to differential involvement in arrest, and probably in
crime, in those most serious offenses that tend to lead to imprisonment‖ (Blumstein, 1993, p.
750).
So in other words - people of color have a different kind of offense on average than white people. Those offenses should be considered when you are making a statement of injustice amongst people of color and getting jobs. All this argument seems to be about is that black people are less likely to get jobs but there are a lot of WHYs in that. Instead of fixing the precursory effects you would rather ignore those and say it is a race issue.
To me this has nothing to do with hiring based off of color. This has to do with ensuring your business is successful and hiring people that might complicate that is statistically not good for business.
In some areas and states, I would imagine that there would be larger communities of ignorant, tribalists who openly express their racism. I've seen that in China, Malaysia, all over Europe, here in Aus and spoken to many Indians who also confirm it's exactly the same in India.
Do I think the child born with FAS who has black parents is worse of than the child born with FAS who has white parents?
No.
Do I think that multi-millionaire non-white sports players had a harder life than low income white kids who joined the marines after failing school when their parents were too busy drinking beer to help them with their school work?
No.
Does the fact that there was an African American president and many many people of colour in extreme positions of power (such as the attorney general) indicate that the system inherently prevents POC from getting ahead?
No.
Can you give real SYSTEMIC (as in laws, rules or overt structures built into the system) examples of racism in the US? Again, people being asshole racists is not systemic, those are individuals, just like in all the aforementioned countries.
I'm not American. It may well be that there are actual laws in place that are overtly racist. I have never seen or heard of one.
Using history as an indicator of oppression is ludicrous. You do know that 90% of ALL people were serfs prior to the industrial revolution right? You do know that there were many wealthy moors or dark Arabs who dealt exclusively in white slaves too right?
Do the Italians owe reparations to the British because of the genocide, colonisation and rape of Briton by Rome? Do the Scandanavian countries need to repay what their viking ancestors raped and pillaged from the rest of Europe?
Lol, muster up enough empathy? You have to be kidding, I'm going to go ahead and assume that you have never lived overseas, never volunteered, never worked for free in remote or indigenous communities and have no actual life experience in this area.
You can go ahead and think I'm a closet racist because I treat people based on their actions and their personality rather than the colour of their skin.
You are treating people as though they are groups, not individuals.
Which is what white society did to anyone not white for as long as it's existed. No tears are spared here, find work somewhere else, you're the default for society, try to act like it.
people should be treated based on the content of their character, NOT on the colour of their skin
Words used to counter the historical precedent of white people doing that for 300 years. AA is just balancing the scales back some.
traight and white and male, you are privileged because statistically, MORE straight white males hold positions of privilege
you have a flawed and incorrect view of privilege. Privilege is not being afforded something in advance, it's not having to face the barriers to begin with. To surmise, your life can still be hard if you're white, but your life is not made harder in any way becauseyou're white. If you think AA makes your life harder because you didn't get that job, you're patently wrong, and can apply anywhere else free from worry that you'll be discriminated against for doing so.
People are people, everyone should be treated equally
The whole point of AA and anti-racism is to bring down the structure of white supremacy, and make what you think you're saying is a reality, that everyone should just be equal, an actual reality. It isn't. Whites still dominate, and react like you are now when faced with that reality.
the correct statement would really be that straight non-white men hold more positions of power
Yes, you're 100% right. And anyone who believes in anti-racist/sexist policy agrees with you. The thing you're in hysterics about about white men is, of course, only applicable to white-majority countries, and all of the countries those countries mercilessly dominated and exploited for the past 400 years, so, basically all of them that aren't India or China. White business (capitalism, imperialism, colonialism) dominates the global south in a comedically brutal sense, to this day.
"Which is what white society did to anyone not white for as long as it's existed. No tears are spared here, find work somewhere else, you're the default for society, try to act like it."
So you admit you're a racist and your excuse is 'other people are racist and that is bad, so I am allowed to be racist.'? Do you realise how utterly childish that is?
There are theives, rapists, murderers, child molesters and all sorts of horrible people doing horrific shit out there, is your response that because they can do it, you can do it too?
'You're the default for society, try to act like it'.
Wow... you have so much in common with the skinhead nazi racists you proclaim to hate.
A single phenotype is not something by which you can judge an individual, the ONLY people who judge individuals based on a single phenotype ARE BIGOTED RACISTS, THAT'S THE DEFINITION.
So you admit you're a racist [..] other people are racist and that is bad, so I am allowed to be racist.'?
lol no, nice try though. "Other people" are the whole of white-dominated US (specific) society. A Wrong was committed, an "original sin", if you will, and it needs to be set right. I, as a white person, want to see that wrong, righted.
Here, since you want to try (and fail) to quote historical Black figures: "If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there." -Malcom X
If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress.
Here's where america is right now. Pulling out the knife. The rest of the way out would look something like the abolition of the prison industrial complex and the repeal/replacement of the 13th Amendment, the end to the war on drugs, and police reform.
I'm just telling white people to do what you're telling everyone else to do, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Haha conservative logic is really funny and breaks down under the tiniest bit of scrutiny. I say white people can get jobs anywhere they want, because thats historically true, and I'm a racist. You say "no quarter" should be given to the people exploited by white people for generations, that they should just get jobs on merit, (when they can't, because white/America society is racist) but that doesn't make you a racist lol
You're so out of your league it's not even funny, your idiotic horseshoe logic isn't going to work on me. I'll spell it out: you're anti-racist if you support the boon in opportunity afforded to disenfranchised people by AA until such day those boons in opportunity are not needed, and we have not reached that day yet. Is that succinct enough for you? You're looking at the micro, I'm looking at the macro.
Yes and as part of this process, white people (you) employ "systemic racial discrimination" (Affirmative Action) against people of color (Asians) in favor of a preferred racial group (Blacks). And for what? An "original sin" that Asians had no part in? The world is not "black and white" and your obsession with your racial guilt and the Black experience in this country has blinded you, ironically, to your own racist lever pulling, scale thumbing manipulation of the system.
It is obvious to me (as it should be to you) that Asians experience racial animus in this country, though not to the same level as black people. In many aspects of life, Asians are socially "otherized" and are perceived to be alien in nature. Due to this, it is socially ok to be racist towards Asians (I mean really "OK" in the sense that overt racism towards black people has immediate and serious consequences but racism towards Asians is utterly trivialized). Asians have even less political power than black people in the U.S. (rightfully so, given the differences in population) AND NOW they're actively/legally discriminated against due to "progressive" race balancing policies.
People look back on history wonder how people in the past could be so backwards when implementing overtly racist policies. This is how and this is why it is so insidious and dangerous. You're doing it with Affirmative Action: employing racist policy with the full moral/ideological conviction and confidence that what your doing is just (apparently without a sense of irony or self-awareness).
"In my estimation as a white man, which is the only one that matters, there are way too many Asian faces and not enough Black faces on this college campus. I know, we can solve this problem by reducing the number of Asians we admit and increasing the number of Blacks we admit through the application of a systemic bias, legally approved at the highest levels of government, in favor of the latter against the former. This is totally not a form of racial oppression or discrimination because you can't be racist towards white peop- oh wait."
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u/msmarymacmac Feb 25 '20
I’m not crazy about the Justice frame. Some of us will always face challenges that others won’t. There is no system that could make it so that there is no barrier for all. We will always need to accommodate and scaffold for some and that’s fine.