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Melissia wrote:

There are a lot of poor white kids out there in poverty unable to move up, and they have fewer opportunities than poor black kids because they themselves aren't black or they aren't hispanic or they aren't asian or whatever other minority...

A “whites only” scholarship offered at Texas State University has yet to get any takers, according to a story in The Austin American-Statesman.

The Former Majority Association for Equality — a nonprofit group — is offering five $500 scholarships exclusively to white male students. The $500 can be used at universities other than Texas State, and, oddly enough, applicants only need to be “25 percent Caucasian.”

they have had no takers.

How come all those poor white kids out there in poverty unable to move up don't apply for these?

CT GAMER wrote:How come all those poor white kids out there in poverty unable to move up don't apply for these?

Clearly they don't have enough money to get the internet

Or the support structure that spreads information to people that "minority" students appear to have (looking at the various "black student" type websites that have been posted in this thread) doesn't exist for the "majority".

CT GAMER wrote:How come all those poor white kids out there in poverty unable to move up don't apply for these?

Probably because they don't want to be labelled as racist for receiving a "whites only" scholarship. I know I sure wouldn't have taken it, even if it was offered to me with no strings attached.

biccat wrote:

CT GAMER wrote:How come all those poor white kids out there in poverty unable to move up don't apply for these?

Probably because they don't want to be labelled as racist for receiving a "whites only" scholarship. I know I sure wouldn't have taken it, even if it was offered to me with no strings attached.

Are recipients of various scholarships published or made known? I would have thought it would be against some kind of law to do so.

it would be interesting to see statistics on need based aid (both governmental and private), broken down by race.

Basicically, I wonder if there is anyway to see if minority students get more or less aid based on need than similarly situated white students.

What makes the question hard is the concept of family support. So much of the focus is on the income disparity between blacks and whites, when the real difference is the wealth disparity. I didn't pay for law school with money from my dad's paycheck, I paid for it with loans and money I inherited from a grandmother. It was wealth, not income, that enabled me to get through. Interestingly enough, this is one reason that white immigrant groups have assimilated so well: they married into money.

biccat wrote:

CT GAMER wrote:How come all those poor white kids out there in poverty unable to move up don't apply for these?

Probably because they don't want to be labelled as racist for receiving a "whites only" scholarship. I know I sure wouldn't have taken it, even if it was offered to me with no strings attached.

Neitehr would I


But that is my whole point. Melissa is calling for whites only scholarships saying they must be made available or it is somehow racist/prejudice not to. So which is it?

I think the argument isn't that "whites only" scholarships are good or needed, but that "minority only" scholarships are bad.

It's a real life troll. I mean, there are many different ways that term "racist" seems to be used. Minority only scholarships are racially discriminatory, but are not (at least as far as I can tell) based on bigotry.

The law should be color blind: it doesn't matter your race when you speed or sell drugs or cheat on your taxes. Many private actions have become, by law, color blind: housing, travel, dining, etc.

However; insisting that all aid or support become color blind ignores the underlying social and economic inequalities in our society. Saying, "I'm only going to help black kids" is racially discriminatory, but it's not bigoted, any more than when ethnic groups sponsor scholarships.

For example, here's a scholarship for graduate students of Polish ancestry:
http://polishcultureacpc.org/schol/PulaskiSch.html

With increasing numbers of individuals of mixed race, there will be some non-white student eligible for this, but I'm guessing the applicants and winners are virtually if not entirelly white.

Polonius wrote:However; insisting that all aid or support become color blind ignores the underlying social and economic inequalities in our society.

I disagree. Insisting on color blind aid and support will help overcome underlying social and economic inequalities in our society.

If the interest is eliminating poverty by educational achievement, we should have scholarships based on poverty, not based on race.

But the interest seems to be in moving X% of the whole population of blacks into the middle/upper class, where X is the percent of the whole population of whites in the middle/upper class.

If the options are "(a) 3 poor white kids get into college; or (b) 1 poor black kid gets into college," I'd pick option A every time. Maybe that makes me racist. If so, I'm OK with that.

Hmm.

biccat wrote:

Polonius wrote:However; insisting that all aid or support become color blind ignores the underlying social and economic inequalities in our society.

I disagree. Insisting on color blind aid and support will help overcome underlying social and economic inequalities in our society.

How exactly? And how would doing so help more than increasing the educational and professional levels of the bottom rungs of the ladder?

If the interest is eliminating poverty by educational achievement, we should have scholarships based on poverty, not based on race.

But the interest seems to be in moving X% of the whole population of blacks into the middle/upper class, where X is the percent of the whole population of whites in the middle/upper class.

There are scholarships based on poverty. Most are, in fact. Very few are based on race. Even the United Negro College Fund opens their scholarship competitions to all races. And they are an organization whose entire purpose is to close the education gap between whites and blacks. Compare that to the number of scholarships open only to people of specific ethnicities (almost all european).

I think you're right, I think the goal is to move poor blacks out of poverty. How is that a bad thing? Economics, unlike politics, is not a zero sum game. By tapping into the human capital that has lain dormant, we're actually creating more value over all.

If the options are "(a) 3 poor white kids get into college; or (b) 1 poor black kid gets into college," I'd pick option A every time. Maybe that makes me racist. If so, I'm OK with that.

I think that's common sense, but your scenario seems to imply a universe in which black students take up three times the resources of white students.

Where things get tighter is if you have two applicants for a spot in a college, and they are identical. Same high school, same GPA, same ACT, same extracurriculars, same family income, everything. One is black, and one is white. In this virtually impossible hypothetical, I would argue that any decision is supportable. Toss a coin, pick a name out of a hat, whatever. If I were truely looking for talent, I'd pick the black kid, simply because having the same skills and results against even a minimal amount of racism makes him more impressive. Now, the reverse could be true: a white kid that came up through an inner city school district and overcame being a local minority. But in most cases, the black applicant would have experienced (or witnessed) more racism than the white kid.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Wonder Showzen's A Celebration of White People Throughout History from MTV2

That last scene shows mostly asians, actually.

(I'm going to hell)

Polonius wrote:

biccat wrote:

Polonius wrote:However; insisting that all aid or support become color blind ignores the underlying social and economic inequalities in our society.

I disagree. Insisting on color blind aid and support will help overcome underlying social and economic inequalities in our society.

How exactly? And how would doing so help more than increasing the educational and professional levels of the bottom rungs of the ladder?

Poverty and race are not 100% correlated. By basing scholarships on race, you create a situation where non-poor students compete with poor students for the same money.

Polonius wrote:

If the interest is eliminating poverty by educational achievement, we should have scholarships based on poverty, not based on race.

But the interest seems to be in moving X% of the whole population of blacks into the middle/upper class, where X is the percent of the whole population of whites in the middle/upper class.

There are scholarships based on poverty. Most are, in fact. Very few are based on race. Even the United Negro College Fund opens their scholarship competitions to all races. And they are an organization whose entire purpose is to close the education gap between whites and blacks. Compare that to the number of scholarships open only to people of specific ethnicities (almost all european).

There are scholarships open only to Europeans? Do you have any citations for this? I thought this "whites only" scholarship was a novel thing.

Polonius wrote:I think you're right, I think the goal is to move poor blacks out of poverty. How is that a bad thing? Economics, unlike politics, is not a zero sum game. By tapping into the human capital that has lain dormant, we're actually creating more value over all.

I agree wholly with you. However, I disagree that moving blacks out of povery is the best policy goal, economically. The goal should be to eliminate poverty, and that can be best done by limiting scholarships to need, not to ethnicity.

Polonius wrote:

If the options are "(a) 3 poor white kids get into college; or (b) 1 poor black kid gets into college," I'd pick option A every time. Maybe that makes me racist. If so, I'm OK with that.

I think that's common sense, but your scenario seems to imply a universe in which black students take up three times the resources of white students.

No, it's a hypothetical. It doesn't have to make sense. Black students don't take up more slots than white students, I was simply making the point that we should focus on getting more people into education (assuming education leads to upward class mobility), not on racial preferences.

Polonius wrote:Where things get tighter is if you have two applicants for a spot in a college, and they are identical. Same high school, same GPA, same ACT, same extracurriculars, same family income, everything. One is black, and one is white. In this virtually impossible hypothetical, I would argue that any decision is supportable. Toss a coin, pick a name out of a hat, whatever. If I were truely looking for talent, I'd pick the black kid, simply because having the same skills and results against even a minimal amount of racism makes him more impressive. Now, the reverse could be true: a white kid that came up through an inner city school district and overcame being a local minority. But in most cases, the black applicant would have experienced (or witnessed) more racism than the white kid.

Except you never have two students who are identical. This hypothetical provides the basis for putting a thumb on the scale to favor race-based admissions.

If you say that being a black student "tips the scales" because of racism, then you are attributing some non-zero value to race. Once you ascribe some non-zero value to race, the question must be, how unequal can students be before racism makes up the difference in their accomplishments?

For example, A and B have the same everything (as you described). They both get a (completely arbitrary) score of "100". To admit one student over the other, you have to give the black student some edge, maybe 1 point. But now you've created an inequality, where a black student only has to get a 99 to be equal to a white student with 100. You've admitted that racism is worth 1 point, so you can't deny the black student for getting 1 point less than his white counterpart, it was due to racism!

All other things being precisely equal, a nonwhite will be at a disadvantage compared to a white in almost any situation involving other people.

Our culturally deeply ingrains in all of us powerful biases that affect out behavior without us realizing it. I can assure you that every single person in this thread, myself included is racist in the truest sense of the word. We may not be hateful, and most of us aren't overtly bigoted but make no mistake you do hold bias against nonwhites.

We are dealing with a legacy of oppression and fierce othering that goes back hundreds of years, it hasn't vanished in the space of a generation.

Two people may have the exact same education, skills and talent, but if one is white and one isn't they are in no way playing on a level field.

biccat wrote:Poverty and race are not 100% correlated. By basing scholarships on race, you create a situation where non-poor students compete with poor students for the same money.

True, which is why few, if any, scholarships aimed at black students (because few if any are "blacks only") are need blind. Outside of internal scholarships at schools, and some competition based scholarships, most private funds are need based to some extent.

Polonius wrote:There are scholarships open only to Europeans? Do you have any citations for this? I thought this "whites only" scholarship was a novel thing.

I just posted a link for a scholarship for students of Polish ancestry that I found with litreally 15 seconds of searching. A lot of ethnic enclaves do that on the local level as well.

http://lithuanian-american.org/scholarship_en.php
http://irishamericanparade.com/Scholarship.html
http://www.germanamerican.org/scholarshipform.pdf

Here's an article that discusses this topic in more details:
http://www.multiculturaladvantage.com/opportunity/scholarships/diversity/bias/White-Ethnic-Scholarships-Dont-Trouble-Student-Group-Protesting-Minority-Scholarships.asp

I agree wholly with you. However, I disagree that moving blacks out of povery is the best policy goal, economically. The goal should be to eliminate poverty, and that can be best done by limiting scholarships to need, not to ethnicity.

Well, things get murky at some point. Moving people out of absolute poverty is a not zero sum game. Moving people out of relative poverty, however, is. There's no better time to be dirt poor than right now, but I still would rather be middle class than poor. There will always be people on the bottom rung of society, and if groups want to help pull themselves out of that relative lapse, that's fine by me.

No, it's a hypothetical. It doesn't have to make sense. Black students don't take up more slots than white students, I was simply making the point that we should focus on getting more people into education (assuming education leads to upward class mobility), not on racial preferences.

Well, hypos should make sense. Yours made sense, it just made a self evidence point.

Except you never have two students who are identical. This hypothetical provides the basis for putting a thumb on the scale to favor race-based admissions.

If you say that being a black student "tips the scales" because of racism, then you are attributing some non-zero value to race. Once you ascribe some non-zero value to race, the question must be, how unequal can students be before racism makes up the difference in their accomplishments?

For example, A and B have the same everything (as you described). They both get a (completely arbitrary) score of "100". To admit one student over the other, you have to give the black student some edge, maybe 1 point. But now you've created an inequality, where a black student only has to get a 99 to be equal to a white student with 100. You've admitted that racism is worth 1 point, so you can't deny the black student for getting 1 point less than his white counterpart, it was due to racism!

Well, I'm pretty comfortable with spotting black kids a few points. Somehow despite all of that I still went to a state law school and got a governmental position as a white male.

Ideally, college admissions would factor in the totality of "degree of difficulty." Did you go to a crappy school and still ace the SAT? Did you grow up in foster care and still succeed in high school? I'm more impressed by a similar student that coasted. I'd be more comfortable with allowing students to make statements about challenges or harships they've overcame (including race) and have those factor in. That would be a fairer and more accurate way of rating students.

But when you look at something like college admissions, you have literally thouaands of applicants and a handful of staff to sort through them in a short time window. Giving a small boost to minority candidates might be sloppy, but nor more or less than putting faith in High school grades (which could be horribly inflated) or standardized test scores (which have a very soft correlation to undergraduate success) or any other factor.

Polonius wrote:

biccat wrote:

Polonius wrote:However; insisting that all aid or support become color blind ignores the underlying social and economic inequalities in our society.

I disagree. Insisting on color blind aid and support will help overcome underlying social and economic inequalities in our society.

How exactly? And how would doing so help more than increasing the educational and professional levels of the bottom rungs of the ladder?

2 Kids and 1 scholarship to give. GPA, SAT, ACT, and extracurrics are not identical, but they are close enough that the school can call it a draw.

Student #1 is black. His father is a neurosurgeon and his mother is a lawyer. All 4 of his grandparents are or were college educated professionals that finished college during the civil rights movement and were the first members of their families to ever graduate college. He is on a high school varsity team, but not quite good enough for an athletic scholarship. He is however perfectly able to serve in the military. With the money his family has and the value they place on education all the extra scholarship funds would do for him is free up more cash to go towards his beer fund.

Student #2 is white. His father is in jail, and his mother lost parental rights because of a crystal meth addiction. Nobody in his family tree has ever graduated from college, and about half have dropped out of high school because somebody got knocked up. He is currently being raised by a single surviving grandmother on a small fixed income that is mostly social security. Without WIC he and his grandmother would go hungry. He has a bad case of asthma from his mother smoking around him for most of his life and thus it's impossible for him to join the military for a scholarship.

How does maintaining scholarships that are not color blind aid and support Student #2 to overcome underlying social and economic inequalities in our society?

The cycle of poverty is colorblind and does not discriminate.

Emperors Faithful wrote:

Phototoxin wrote:

I do disagree with the notion that a one legged black lesbian single mother with an eyepatch gets a job in preference to a more qualified, able bodied white man.

Wha-?

If I may explain...

This comment is based on the claim that certain London Councils had a weighting system on certain categories. This was originally for things like crisis loans, housing etc, but this is the first time I've seen/heard it on jobs.

Baiscally, if you fulfilled all the above categories at the same time you were 100% guaranteed to be given whatever you asked for.

Class on Polictical Correctness is now closed!

Cheers

Andrew

I've always thought the "join the military" line was total bs. It gets me that completely rational, sane people can say that being trained to kill people is a reasonable solution to anything.

How many need based scholarships is Student #1 going to recieve? Find me a scholarship that favors black students that isn't need based.

I wasn't advocating blindly giving money to black students. If this was a purely merit based situation, than yeah, the white kid might get screwed. It happens.

If the cycle of poverty is truley color blind, than why are so many more minorities poor?

Polonius wrote:If the cycle of poverty is truley color blind, than why are so many more minorities poor?

Are we talking per capita, or real numbers?

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:I've always thought the "join the military" line was total bs. It gets me that completely rational, sane people can say that being trained to kill people is a reasonable solution to anything.

I think the argument he was making was that in his hypothetical, one person had many more options for paying for school (family, military) than the other. Making it unfair to deny the one with fewer options the scholarship when they're equal.

Of course, on the grand scale, this is also true, just with white kids generally (although certainly not always) having far more opportunities than black kids.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

Polonius wrote:If the cycle of poverty is truley color blind, than why are so many more minorities poor?

Are we talking per capita, or real numbers?

per capita. From Wiki:

Poverty and raceThe US Census declared that in 2008 13.2% of the general population lived in poverty:[30]
8.6% of all non-Hispanic White
11.8% of all Asian-American
23.2% of all Hispanic (of any nationality)
24.2% of all American Indian and Alaska Native
24.7% of all African-American.

About half of those living in poverty are non-Hispanic white, but poverty rates are much higher for blacks and other minorities. 57% of all poor rural children are non-Hispanic white, compared with 28% of poor urban children.[31]

Polonius wrote:

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:I've always thought the "join the military" line was total bs. It gets me that completely rational, sane people can say that being trained to kill people is a reasonable solution to anything.

I think the argument he was making was that in his hypothetical, one person had many more options for paying for school (family, military) than the other. Making it unfair to deny the one with fewer options the scholarship when they're equal.

Of course, on the grand scale, this is also true, just with white kids generally (although certainly not always) having far more opportunities than black kids.

I was referring more to in general, not pointing at any one person. I've heard the line a few times myself and it's always irritating.

Polonius wrote:

biccat wrote:Poverty and race are not 100% correlated. By basing scholarships on race, you create a situation where non-poor students compete with poor students for the same money.

True, which is why few, if any, scholarships aimed at black students (because few if any are "blacks only") are need blind. Outside of internal scholarships at schools, and some competition based scholarships, most private funds are need based to some extent.

To be honest, I really don't care what private groups do with their private money. The group in the opening post is OK by me (at least, I don't see any reason for legal action against them). So are blacks-only scholarships offered by the NAACP or any other private group.

I still think it's racist, but I don't think there's anything legally that should be done about it. The issue is the double standard, why are "white only" scholarships seen as bad and "black only" are seen as good?

Polonius wrote:

biccat wrote:There are scholarships open only to Europeans? Do you have any citations for this? I thought this "whites only" scholarship was a novel thing.

I just posted a link for a scholarship for students of Polish ancestry that I found with litreally 15 seconds of searching. A lot of ethnic enclaves do that on the local level as well.

http://lithuanian-american.org/scholarship_en.php
http://irishamericanparade.com/Scholarship.html
http://www.germanamerican.org/scholarshipform.pdf

I honestly did not know these were available. But you're confusing ethnicity with race. These aren't available to "white kids," they're only available to a select group. Not racist, but ethnically bigoted, which is just as bad, if not worse.

Still tho, private groups can do whatever they want.

Polonius wrote:Here's an article that discusses this topic in more details:
http://www.multiculturaladvantage.com/opportunity/scholarships/diversity/bias/White-Ethnic-Scholarships-Dont-Trouble-Student-Group-Protesting-Minority-Scholarships.asp

Um, that doesn't "discuss" anything. It's pretty biased and inflamatory. Plus, the author of the article misses the point entirely. These stunts are tongue-in-cheek pokes at the idea of race-based scholarships and benefits, like the infamous "affirmative action bake sale." I'm pretty sure if the author had bothered to ask about ethnic scholarships, the individuals at issue would have rejected those as well. But he didn't ask, he merely assumed they were racist white guys.

Additionally, the whole website seems to be a sort of "Noblesse Oblige," (well, maybe "Blanc Oblige"). They bill themselves as having scholarships for "traditionally disadvantaged ethnic groups," but for some reason has to search for Irish and Jewish based scholarships. How these groups don't count as "traditionally disadvantaged" is beyond me.

Polonius wrote:

biccat wrote:I agree wholly with you. However, I disagree that moving blacks out of povery is the best policy goal, economically. The goal should be to eliminate poverty, and that can be best done by limiting scholarships to need, not to ethnicity.

Well, things get murky at some point. Moving people out of absolute poverty is a not zero sum game. Moving people out of relative poverty, however, is. There's no better time to be dirt poor than right now, but I still would rather be middle class than poor. There will always be people on the bottom rung of society, and if groups want to help pull themselves out of that relative lapse, that's fine by me.

I suppose I agree with this.

Polonius wrote:

biccat wrote: No, it's a hypothetical. It doesn't have to make sense. Black students don't take up more slots than white students, I was simply making the point that we should focus on getting more people into education (assuming education leads to upward class mobility), not on racial preferences.

Well, hypos should make sense. Yours made sense, it just made a self evidence point.

I don't think that point is self-evident. I'd be willing to wager that there are people out there who would disagree with my hypo. And I'm sure there are some that would rather see 1 white kid go to school than 3 black kids.

Polonius wrote:Well, I'm pretty comfortable with spotting black kids a few points.

So you don't think blacks should have to have the same educational achievements as a white kid to get into a school?

Polonius wrote:Somehow despite all of that I still went to a state law school and got a governmental position as a white male.

State law schools totally get a bad rap.

Polonius wrote:Giving a small boost to minority candidates might be sloppy

My problem isn't that it's sloppy, it's that such a boost is elevating one race above another, suggesting that blacks can't meet the same educational requirements as whites. All this does is lead to high rates of college drop-outs, because if you were a C student at school, it doesn't matter if that was due to racism. You're probably just not going to be able to cut it in college.

biccat wrote:

The issue is the double standard, why are "white only" scholarships seen as bad and "black only" are seen as good?.

Because US society (and by association academics) has a foundation of institutional racism and bias (part intentional, especially in the past, but now mostly partly because things here are slow to change and the research is just now becoming more widely known) against minorities the legacy of which can be seen to this day?

Poverty, prejudice, euro-centric curriculum, standardized test bias, and a host of other factors mean that people DO having different starting lines and obstacles ahead of them as far as achieving academically based upon things like their race, socio-economic status, etc.

Plenty of research has been conducted that shows that given a totally new block of knowledge that is new and unfamiliar to both blacks and white that each group shows the same ability to learn and test well on it: thus no racial difference in intelligence or learning ability can be argued.

However take those same groups and instead teach and test using the material in typical standardized testing and black scores fall off compared to whites.

Much of testing testing and academics have been (though things are changing) biased in their assumptions of both what everyone has been exposed to and taught, the impact of race and soci-ecenomic on learning, and how culturally relevant it is to all. Much research has been done on subjects like cultural/racial bias in academics/standardized testing. Both groups are trying to get into the same colleges but one side has a systemic advantage in learning the requirements to accomplish that. It has nothing to do with inferiority or intelligence, but a legacy of inequality that still informs and permeates how we teach and educate to this very day in this country.

biccat wrote:
I honestly did not know these were available. But you're confusing ethnicity with race. These aren't available to "white kids," they're only available to a select group. Not racist, but ethnically bigoted, which is just as bad, if not worse.

How is that bigotry? Giving money only to a single ethnicity, race, religion, etc. does not indicate strong intolerance, it indicates preference. One can prefer people of Polish ancestry without being intolerant of all people of other ancestries.

biccat wrote:
So you don't think blacks should have to have the same educational achievements as a white kid to get into a school?

How do you define what educational achievements are the same, or even comparable? Is the kid that got a 4.0 at Kentucky Country Day School the equivalent of a kid that got a 4.0 at a Louisville public school? If not, then how far apart are they?

I think one of greatest flaws in the argument from admission according to equivalent achievement is that very few people are going to agree on what constitutes equivalent achievement, and many more will say that equality isn't as important as the specific mission of the school doing the admitting.

biccat wrote:
All this does is lead to high rates of college drop-outs, because if you were a C student at school, it doesn't matter if that was due to racism. You're probably just not going to be able to cut it in college.

You may have a point, though without some kind of statistics showing that minority students are more likely to drop out of college than equivalent white students we won't know for sure.

Moreover, there's an argument that suggests a college that admits C-students (of any kind) will tend to have a higher rate of dropouts by its nature, and that this is simply a fact these institutions accept.

Chongara wrote:you do hold bias against nonwhites.

Bullgak.

I hold a bias against peoples' ideologies, not their race. I'm bigoted against religious nutjobs and republican/conservative/backwards nutjobs and liberal/whiny/politically correct nutjobs and lazy nujobs who leech the system and so on and so forth. I'm biased against criminals and people who refuse to try to make amends for past wrongs, and try to escape justice or act like it doesn't matter. I'm biased against drug addicts, and sex addicts, and people who don't use protection and yet complain whenever the female in the couple gets pregnant or one or both of them get an STD. I'm biased against plenty of people, but it's for what's in their heads rather than for the color of their skin.

What's in their heads is more important and effects me personally, the color of their skin does not.

Chongara wrote:We may not be hateful, and most of us aren't overtly bigoted but make no mistake you do hold bias against nonwhites.

I'm bigoted against Canadians. Does this change anything?

Also, you're assuming that I'm white. If I am not white, does that mean I'm biased against whites, but not against asians, or hispanics?

This is all very confusing.

I'll stick to hating Canadians. Mainly because of the Queen of England thing.

biccat wrote:

Chongara wrote:We may not be hateful, and most of us aren't overtly bigoted but make no mistake you do hold bias against nonwhites.

I'm bigoted against Canadians. Does this change anything?

Also, you're assuming that I'm white. If I am not white, does that mean I'm biased against whites, but not against asians, or hispanics?

This is all very confusing.

I'll stick to hating Canadians. Mainly because of the Queen of England thing.

Nonwhites also carry the same bias against Nonwhites that whites do. Cultural racism doesn't discriminate when it comes to who it ingrains itself in. I'd say Nonwhites tend to be more aware of it than whites, and have more incentive to try and take more steps to resist it, but they aren't free of it.

Melissia wrote:

Chongara wrote:you do hold bias against nonwhites.

Bullgak.

I hold a bias against peoples' ideologies, not their race. I'm bigoted against religious nutjobs and republican/conservative/backwards nutjobs and liberal/whiny/politically correct nutjobs and lazy nujobs who leech the system and so on and so forth. I'm biased against criminals and people who refuse to try to make amends for past wrongs, and try to escape justice or act like it doesn't matter. I'm biased against drug addicts, and sex addicts, and people who don't use protection and yet complain whenever the female in the couple gets pregnant or one or both of them get an STD. I'm biased against plenty of people, but it's for what's in their heads rather than for the color of their skin.

What's in their heads is more important and effects me personally, the color of their skin does not.

You may think this. I absolutely believe it genuinely seems this way to you.. You may never even ponder the concept of race or color, that doesn't mean you don't hold a bias. I'm not claiming every goes around thinking "Dear god, gotta put those darkies in their place", I'm saying when it comes to your gut reactions and the little judgments and decisions you make every day, without even consciously thinking about them are heavily influenced by race.

And are they?

I was part of a "white" minority (that is to say, no race held over fifty percent of the populace) in a school primarily filled with hispanics and a sizable population of black asian students. Of the three places I went to work, two of them had primarily hispanic workers and the other one was primarily blacks (a local newspaper plant, oddly enough).

Frankly I've dealt with minorities more than I have white people outside of my extended family. And even then, there's plenty of minorities which don't depend on physical race either that get just as much discrimination. Many "races" are more culturally defined than physically anyway, such as people who are born to two black parents but have fair skin-- are they black, white, purple, gold, chocobo? That's even assuming you'd consider me white, as based off of my physical features (I don't know my lineage due to being adopted and not wanting to really go open up that history) I could very well have a strong hispanic heritage myself-- and what about people who are part white, part black? Part hispanic, part asian? I have a friend who was descended from a Japanese mother and a Chinese father, and is married to a black soldier. What would you consider their child, if they choose to have one? Would they be racist against everyone else too? Meh at your assumption.

All racists are people, but not all people are racists... the overly simplistic assumption that everyone is racist is just meh.

schadenfreude wrote:Student #1 is black. His father is a neurosurgeon and his mother is a lawyer.

Shows what you know of how college is funded. Unless this kid is getting a non-ethnic academic scholarship, such as Rhodes Scholar, I can guarantee you he isn't getting any scholarships or federal aid. The extreme low end of neurosurgeon pay is over $150,000 annually. Even if his mom is a crappy lawyer she is taking in a bit over $50,000. He isn't qualifying for anything. On the other hand his parents can afford to send him to school.

schadenfreude wrote:High rate of high school drop outs
Low rate of college grads
Too many single mothers
Too many men in prison

Root causes are a poverty cycle

I agree completely. And therefore note when Comrade claims that things (he doesn't say but I'm guessing he means college attendance and employment) should be based on ability, skill and capability, then he either has to claim that black people are less capable, skilled and able, or that the current system acts against them, as they are as skilled and capable as anyone else, but paid 75% as much. So, if we actually want to have positions decided on ability and skills we need to introduce systems that nullify those racist effects.

Yeah?

and the negative effects of the aa culture on their community.

Sbuh? Wouldn't any negative parts of that culture also be a product of the poverty cycle?


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dogma wrote:It depends on what "international" means in that context. Some US schools use it as a "miscellaneous" response when reporting racial heritage. If that's the case, then there's a good chance that the Asian/Pacific Islanders category is composed of many actual international students. There's also a large contingent of naturalized students at any given coastal state school. People that aren't considered international because they aren't on student visas.

Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Cheers.


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biccat wrote:But you suggested that his admission to Yale was based on white privilege, when the fact is that it had nothing to do with his race and everything to do with his family connections.

Connections that are overwhelmingly more common amongst... white people.


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Slarg232 wrote:I disagree about the allowances thing; they should both be covered the same, no matter the biase of the majority or the culture; otherwise it simply isn't truely teaching us what we need to know.

I don't mean we need to make allowances in history books, and teach things in any way other than what they are, I mean we need to make allowances in greater society. We need to accept that the majority population is going to gain benefits just from being the majority population, and in order to actually build a society with genuinely equal opportunities we need to make allowances for other groups.

Also they really need to start teaching more about those people then, because of those, I only ever heard about Harriet Tubman before now.

Going to have to google the rest of them, can't right now, baking cookies for work.

They're good stories, ripe for teaching in history class. The idea that black folk played a huge role in their own freedom is something a lot of folk are unaware of... probably a good reason to dump black history month - it doesn't seem to be doing what it should be doing.


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biccat wrote:

CT GAMER wrote:I know this thread won't be as fun if we don't yell "reverse racism" every five seconds and splash gasoline everywhere, but still...

What is this "reverse racism" you speak of? I wasn't aware that there could be such a thing as "reverse racism," since racism is belief in the superiority of one race over another, or I suppose more generally the idea that races are somehow unequal (intrinsic differences aside).

Except racism has more than one meaning. The meaning you give there is the most common in the mainstream, but hardly the only meaning.

But there's another meaning that is heavily used in academia, referring to how social structures have placed certain races higher than others. That is, white groups had considerable political and economic power to shape systems locally and internationally, and they've shaped systems that have seen them take more power. In this sense, reverse racism has a meaning, whenever a system is put in place that causes power to flow away from the majority and towards minorities it is reverse racism.


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biccat wrote:I still think it's racist, but I don't think there's anything legally that should be done about it. The issue is the double standard, why are "white only" scholarships seen as bad and "black only" are seen as good?

Because of the totally different situations facing the two ethnic groups. One is overwhelmingly represented in the top levels of government and business, the other is very rare.

Giving money to individuals in a group that is at the bottom is very different to giving money to individuals in a group that is typically at the top. One increases inclusin, one increases exclusion.

Ahtman wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:Student #1 is black. His father is a neurosurgeon and his mother is a lawyer.

Shows what you know of how college is funded. Unless this kid is getting a non-ethnic academic scholarship, such as Rhodes Scholar, I can guarantee you he isn't getting any scholarships or federal aid. The extreme low end of neurosurgeon pay is over $150,000 annually. Even if his mom is a crappy lawyer she is taking in a bit over $50,000. He isn't qualifying for anything. On the other hand his parents can afford to send him to school.

What are the federal regulations on privately funded scholarships?

His parents can afford to send him to school, but they are in no way legally required to. When I was in the military I knew quite a few guys from very affluent and religiously fanatic families who were completely estranged from their family by the age of 18 because they didn't drink their parents cool aid. Which brings me to this.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:I've always thought the "join the military" line was total bs. It gets me that completely rational, sane people can say that being trained to kill people is a reasonable solution to anything.

Newsflash: Most people who join the military don't volunteer to be infantry. I can't say I knew anybody when I was on a submarine who joined to kill people. Seeing as how just about everybody who works in nuclear power and commercial airline pilots have a military background by your logic just about every nuclear power plant operator and commercial airline pilot are irrational/insane people.