Dilbert dropped as scott adams declares blacks to be a hate group.

[Ana the Ist]

Word games like pretending that because 4Chan people came up with the phrase "It's OK to be white" to ferret out anti-white racists,

There is no word games. You keep claiming that some shift in meaning occurred but you fail repeatedly to explain what the different meaning is.

The only reason you're trying to make this argument, is because you now realize how embarrassingly obvious your previous argument was. Just a couple of posts ago you said the phrase was invented for the purpose of trolling. It was...and it still is. It's for trolling racists. They're the ones triggered by such an obviously benign statement.

Go back and watch the news coverage....they don't know the origins. They don't know who spawned this phrase. They openly state that only white supremacists think it's ok to be white! As if all white people should hate themselves for whatever reasons they hate white people.

That is a word game, to put it politely. You would like us all to pretend with you that it does not matter that "It's OK to be white" has been adopted by white supremacists in order to inject their abhorrent views into the public conversation on race with an innocuous-sounding phrase.

What abhorrent views? They printed the phrase "it's ok to be white" on an otherwise blank piece of paper. They did it, because just like many others, they saw a lot of racism towards whites coming from the left. There's no mystery here...and yes, the racism is still there.

It's not some secret. Ever since the left began propagating the idea that only white people are racist and racism against white people doesn't exist....there's been a flood of open racism towards whites. The left normalized racism towards whites. It's old news.

Imagine the response if the left wasn't filled with anti-white racists. They pass a leaflet taped to a post on their college campus that says "its OK to be white". No outrage, no one is triggered, no fainting leftists crying over how unsafe they feel.

There's no normalization for any white supremacist talking points that followed. Nobody on the right side of the aisle is seriously debating the merits of a white ethnostate in public discourse. They simply pointed out what was obvious to them and everyone else who isn't racist.

After all, that's not what it was originally meant to do! My point is that I acknowledge that, but by your refusal to acknowledge subsequent developments in its usage

I've pointed out that you can't explain whatever shift in meaning you claim is occurring for 3 posts now. 3.

The reason why you can't explain any shift....is because there is none. You can try to make one up...but you probably know that I'll challenge that by asking you for evidence you don't have.

I'll just offer you some advice...don't blindly follow political rhetoric. Think for yourself. If you do that, at least you'll quit falling for this obvious attempt to expose racists.

My only point is that you ignore this evolution to the detriment of your supposed point that it is not racist, full stop.

If there was any change in meaning, any evolution in meaning, that you could show me....you would have by now. I get that it's embarrassing to fall for such an obvious attempt to expose racists...but that's on you.

I think you misread me here. When I wrote about it being adopted to normalize racist views

What is the racist view normalized by the phrase "it's ok to be white"?

Again, I'm talking about the evolution of the term

I fully understand the point you're failing to make. I fully understand why you have to pick different words like "mistress" to make it.

It's because the meaning of the phrase hasn't gone through any evolution. It means literally the same thing as it did when they came up with it.

That's why it worked in the Rasmussen poll!

I'm sorry, that was sloppy wording on my part. When I wrote "proportionality", I meant in terms of use of force, not population.

Rather, it is out of proportion to the supposed 'threat' faced from a mentally ill homeless man like James Boyd that the police would shoot him several times, especially when video evidence exists of him cooperating completely with their commands. That is way overboard, and there's no conceivable way that they can argue that they were scared or whatever other excuse police usually have for doing their job incredibly poorly, or not at all (see: Uvalde school shooting).

That's a subjective opinion, and frankly...who cares? Some people think it is disproportionate for Israel to fire 3 missles at known terrorist locations in Palestine after Palistine indiscriminately fires a few hundred or thousand rockets at the civilian population of Israel.

That's just an opinion though, and there's no real way to measure that sort of proportionality.

As for Uvalde, again, try thinking for yourself. A lot of people have stupidly advocated for ending a legal doctrine known as qualified immunity. I pointed out that without this doctrine, police have no protection from legal punishment for honest mistakes. I even argued that if it were removed, police would probably not respond to shooting calls and if they did, they might choose to not engage with the shooter.

I was pointing this out after Parkland, because a cop was outside the school...not responding. He may have been a coward. Uvalde however, happened because of a dumb ignorant public that thinks perfect police is a reasonable expectation.

I'm sorry, but this is just not how words work. This is not a true reflection of language use and evolution.

Again, we agree that words can change, we agree that phrases can change. That's not what our disagreement is.

Our disagreement is whether or not the phrase "it's ok to be white" has changed. You can make empty, hollow claims that it changed till you're blue in face...

But until you can show me what the new meaning is and provide some evidence for it...you're just making empty claims.

 

[Ana the Ist]

No, but I would expect it to be similar to the relative percentage of the white population who make the same choice,

Why? Why would you expect that?

were all other things equal (as again, attempts at meritocratic systems must assume).

All other things aren't equal...and no meritocracy assumes as much. Think about what you're saying. If you and I were equal at anything....say brain surgery for example....how would a meritocracy identify merit?

Unfortunately, according to the American Medical Association, that is not the case with regard to African Americans and the medical field in the United States. Rather, the AMA states at the link above that "for more than 100 years, the AMA actively reinforced or passively accepted racial inequalities and the exclusion of African-American physicians."

Let's take them at their word for a moment. Let's assume they are being honest and not merely trying to appease people who are accusing them of racism.

How have they excluded black people?

Are a bunch of black pre-med students being rejected because they are black? Are a bunch of black students being denied degrees despite passing all their requisite requirements?

Surely the AMA must know this...or else how would they know some exclusion is occurring?

You may indeed go for it anyway (as black medical pioneers like Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler did even during the Civil War)

You're not seriously suggesting that the AMA is excluding black people today because of some example you have from the Civil War. That's not even remotely close to proof of discrimination today. That's proof of discrimination over 150 years ago.

Even the idea that some black student was about to apply to med-school, but then read some story about "Rebecca Lee Crumpler" and decided not to apply to medical school isn't a story of racial discrimination. It's a story of a black student not trying. That's not exclusion....it's not even close.

Hahaha. My point was that your attitude of "That may lead to disparities, but that's life" does not seem to hold when fewer white people are being hired.

I gave you an example of exclusion. It's not based on merit. In fact, they are passing on qualified candidates (qualified means meritous in this context) based on race.

If you could show this happening to black people in hiring as well, I'd be against it. Instead, you're telling me tales from the Civil War. It's hard to believe that you cannot understand the difference between the two.

You cooked up a scenario in your head where this hypothetical black guy who just happened to be a worse salesperson than the alternative candidate is passed over based on his lack of merit,

I don't recall cooking up any such scenario. If you want to do that though, let's do it...

Let's imagine a racist company hiring only white people regardless of merit, and a company that hires anyone of any race who proves they can sell the product well.

Which of these two companies do you think will succeed if they compete to sell the same product?

I'd wager the racist company would fail...and quickly.

so it's fine because it's not explicitly racist (unlike hiring managers being told to hire fewer white people),

It's not racist at all. It's entirely rational for a business to choose employees with merit. See above.

which is what lead to my question about your vision of meritocracy somehow naturally leading to the exclusion of black people.

I never claimed any such vision. That's your idea of a meritocracy, not mine.

In fact, it's probably because of your bogus idea of a meritocracy and failure to understand what "exclusion" is that organizations like the AMA are making these statements contrary to the evidence.

I sincerely doubt that the AMA is excluding anyone.

Again: are black people just naturally worse at everything you come up with as an example for how meritocracies work?

I didn't say black people are worse at anything. Dr Ben Carson, for example, is a world renowned neurosurgeon. That seems like an impossibility if the AMA were racially exclusive.

Any system in which a candidate's background is not taken into account in the hiring process.

A "level playing field" is one where we don't consider a candidate's "background" (which is extremely vague in this context) in the hiring process.

It sounds like level playing field=meritocracy here....but that contradicts your arguments against meritocracies and for DEI initiatives (which only consider things like racial background.

Did you mean to say something different?

The vision of the pure meritocracy in the minds of those who swear by it (whether it actually exists or works as they say it does or not).

I wouldn't say a "pure meritocracy" exists because that assumes we have a perfect way to assess merit.

I do think it's interesting that you describe meritocracies as a "level playing field" which implies the DEI initiatives represent a crooked playing field. That's why I don't understand your claims of wanting doctors, pilots, or even cab drivers who got their job because of merit, instead of "background" characteristics like race.

I just gave you three definitions. Take your pick.

Ok...level playing field = meritocracy. Why are you arguing against a level playing field?

No I do not

Because they don't exist. I don't know why you refer to a meritocracy as a "hypothetical" scenario unless you're unfamiliar with the concept entirely. Given your repeated mischaracterization of it...I suppose that might be the problem.

 

[Ana the Ist]

For example, I am inclined to disagree with any statement that validates people according to their skin color.

You're inclined to disagree with the statement "black lives matter"?

 

[dzheremi]

There is no word games.

Yes it is. You are deliberately ignoring or otherwise denying its usage by white supremacist groups outside of the 4Chan community that originally popularized it with their trolling campaign in 2017, in order to maintain the fiction that it is still only an innocuous phrase meant to expose anti-white racists. Ever since white supremacists adopted it, it has not been only that.

You keep claiming that some shift in meaning occurred but you fail repeatedly to explain what the different meaning is.

No. You keep failing to read my posts properly. Here is the entire sentence (with emphasis added to the part that you have apparently misunderstood) that you have chopped into different parts in order to respond as you have here, by claiming that I wrote something that I did not write:

Word games like pretending that because 4Chan people came up with the phrase "It's OK to be white" to ferret out anti-white racists, then that is exactly what it means, and subsequent developments in its usage -- like it's adoption by white supremacists -- are of no concern or do not provide a context in which people who agree that there is nothing inherently wrong with being white would still have reason to object to that phrase.​

​

I can't be sure ahead of any subsequent clarification what you mean by "some shift in meaning", but it seems like you believe that I'm saying that these white supremacist groups took what was meant to be an innocuous phrase and made it mean something else by redefining it, when what I'm actually saying is that its adoption by those groups is in itself what has given it its status as a hateful slogan, as they now use it on their own flyers that contain not just the phrase, but links to their white supremacist websites and so on so that the average person, upon seeing this curious flyer with a simple, seemingly easy-to-agree-with statement on it, might become curious about what website is being advertised on it, and then through that curiosity get sucked into the world of online white supremacy groups (or so those groups hope).

What I have done is tied it in with other examples of negative shifts in meaning of other words to show what I believe things like the results of the Rasmussen poll indicate, from a sociolinguistic perspective: that it is on its way as a phrase to developing a similar negatively-biased popular understanding not because of its origin (note that I am ceding to you here the idea that at its origin it is a tool of 4Chan trolls to expose anti-white racists, and not just a repackaging of a racist idea itself), but because of the increasing awareness on the part of regular people (like the respondents of the Rasmussen poll) of its use by white supremacist groups in order to promote their ideas.

The only reason you're trying to make this argument, is because you now realize how embarrassingly obvious your previous argument was.

What do you mean? This has been my argument from the get-go. It's a phrase, it has a certain usage among a particular group for a particular purpose at the outset of the 4Chan campaign, it is picked up after its popularization via that campaign by white supremacists who use it to draw people into their movement. This is a fair summation that includes your point about its supposedly benign origins while also recognizing that it has not stayed so benign because of subsequent developments. You could affirm this sequence of events yourself without even having to change your own belief that it is still benign, so I don't know why you think that it's such a terrible argument (I'm assuming that this is what you mean by 'obvious', because otherwise I don't know what that means...of course it is obvious, in the sense that I am laying it out for everyone to see). It's just laying out the timeline of its popularization via 4Chan and subsequent co-opting by white supremacists.

Just a couple of posts ago you said the phrase was invented for the purpose of trolling. It was...and it still is. It's for trolling racists. They're the ones triggered by such an obviously benign statement.

Go back and watch the news coverage....they don't know the origins. They don't know who spawned this phrase. They openly state that only white supremacists think it's ok to be white! As if all white people should hate themselves for whatever reasons they hate white people.

I don't know who 'they' are here, but once again, since I've ceded to you for the sake of argument that its origins are benign, I don't know what the opinion of this mysterious 'they' has to do with the conversation we're now having. Are you meaning to imply that some force out there is purposely trying to make "It's OK to be white" out to be a racist statement when it shouldn't be? Because I think we agree on that. My entire point is that white supremacists are doing that by using it to support their movements. I've certainly never written or even meant to imply that white people should feel bad for being white (I don't, so why would I argue that anyone else should?). I've only offered reasons why it might be that people who agree that there's nothing inherently wrong with being white would still reject the phrase "It's OK to be white", due to its white supremacist connotations.

What abhorrent views? They printed the phrase "it's ok to be white" on an otherwise blank piece of paper. They did it, because just like many others, they saw a lot of racism towards whites coming from the left. There's no mystery here...and yes, the racism is still there.

Again, not the original 4Chan people who came up with the campaign to use this phrase to out anti-white racists, but the white supremacists who have subsequently used it to try to reinvigorate their hate movements.

This conversation would go a lot easier if you'd at least recognize that this has happened.

There's no normalization for any white supremacist talking points that followed.

That's why I wrote that it is an effort on the part of those groups to normalize their views within the wider societal discussion on race. If those views were already normalized in the modern day they wouldn't need to attach themselves to 4Chan's trolling campaign.

Nobody on the right side of the aisle is seriously debating the merits of a white ethnostate in public discourse. They simply pointed out what was obvious to them and everyone else who isn't racist.

I don't know about that one way or another, since I don't travel in alt-right circles. It is my understanding that that is where the white supremacist underbelly of the right-wing lives, though (meaning that they are not forced out publicly, but quietly tolerated or even supported on the occasion when doing so might offer the right-wing the opportunity to hold on to power), so I am disinclined to accept this at face value. Not in a world where Charlottesville happens and the reaction of the president at the time is to blunder his way around a statement about 'both sides' (the politician's "All Lives Matter", perhaps?). The racists of the Charlottesville march were the ones who called their rally "Unite the Right". The anti-racist counter-protesters did not do so.

I've pointed out that you can't explain whatever shift in meaning you claim is occurring for 3 posts now. 3.

Yes, you've shown that you are not understanding me for quite a few posts now. That is fine. I can keep trying. I have a master's degree in linguistics with a focus on sociolinguistics, so this is a realm I am quite comfortable operating in, though obviously getting people outside of the field to understand things like linguistic development can be a challenge, the present conversation bearing witness.

The reason why you can't explain any shift....is because there is none. You can try to make one up...but you probably know that I'll challenge that by asking you for evidence you don't have.

By writing this do you mean that you do not believe that white supremacists have adopted the slogan for their own ends? Because I originally linked to the ADL's statement some time ago where they made the point that this has happened. So that's not dependent on me recognizing it, or on your recognizing it, for that matter. That is just what has happened since the popularization of the phrase by 4Chan. I can link to the ADL's summation again, or to any number of popular articles that say the same thing, if it helps. I even found an academic journal article on this earlier today (because apparently an "It's OK to be White" bill was introduced by a right-wing politician in Australia in 2018, which gave Australian academics reason to look into it), though it is behind a pay-wall at Taylor & Francis Online, and anyway seems (fittingly) rather dry. The reference is: K. Sengul "‘It's OK to be white’: the discursive construction of victimhood, ‘anti-white racism’ and calculated ambivalence in Australia" in Critical Discourse Studies, vol. 19, issue 6 (2022), 593-609. Published online 04 May, 2021.

So I think there's actually plenty of evidence. I just can't make you accept any of it, obviously, so I'm not going to spend any extra time chasing down every last article I can find only to have you dismiss them because you're determined to stick to your pre-existing understanding. I think we've used up enough bandwidth discussing this issue as it is.

I'll just offer you some advice...don't blindly follow political rhetoric. Think for yourself.

To quote Bart Simpson, the ironing is delicious.

That's a subjective opinion, and frankly...who cares?

Every post in this thread has been someone's subjective opinion. We're on a discussion and debate forum right now. How is this any kind of point to make?

But until you can show me what the new meaning is and provide some evidence for it...you're just making empty claims.

And until you can show that you understand the point I'm making, I see no reason to respond to your misunderstandings as though they are something that I have to answer for.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Is that what anyone's telling non-white people?

Yes, absolutely...perhaps you've heard of this guy Joe Biden and his SCOTUS pick? Black women only.

Racial discrimination is central to the Democratic Party platform. I don't know of any Democrat politicians who don't support DIE initiatives. Where did you say you're from? Minnesota? Isn't that where they told the white teachers they would be fired or laid off first?

I was hired because I have a master's degree and experience that is directly relevant to my field. That's according to the hiring manager herself, so unless she was lying for some reason, I don't think she considered my race as a deciding factor. (Though I don't have access to the company's hiring guidelines, so who knows.)

Well by your logic, if you don't have exactly proportional racial diversity....it must be because of racism!

Well yeah...because white people have not had trouble getting their feet in the door to be considered for certain jobs on account of their race.

I'll refer you again to the study I posted. We already know this statement is 100% false.

This is perhaps going to sound like a stereotypical lefty answer to you, but since I don't make a habit of following national news on anything more than a semi-regular basis, I'm not entirely sure which particular case of police brutality you are referring to here.

I'm not that surprised. It didn't stay in the news cycle very long.

I'm not saying that it couldn't happen. I'm saying that using the fear of it potentially happening in the absence of any evidence that it is actually happening strikes me as racist,

Well I've been handing you literal evidence of it happening.

Now, I'm not trying to embarass you by the obvious comparison one can make between your rhetoric and his....but you know, it's awfully similar.

Here he is trying to answer some basic administrative questions.

Call me crazy but after looking up whether these were some obscure trick questions or just basic sort of questions...this guy isn't even close to qualified. He does however, seem to hit all the party platform talking points on racial discrimination.

in the same way that the fear that illegal immigration from Latin America is somehow opening the door to Islamist terrorism is racist

Oh wow...people are going to think you're doing this on purpose lol.

Maybe you're also unaware of the record number of terrorists caught trying to sneak into the country under this administration (over 100 at this point) and also, the record number of people we know have snuck into the country illegally (over 1 million at this point).

I mean, you're making this easy. Do you recall me using the phrase "catastrophically stupid" in regards to policies? Yes, Islamic terrorists have been sneaking into the country in record numbers and officials in this administration have been repeatedly sounding the alarm that it's almost certain that they've made it well into the interior.

Here's the upside though...

That guy in the videos above? He's not in charge of capturing them. He's in charge of airline administration (the thing he doesn't seem to know anything about). The people in charge of capturing the terrorists are busy entrapping some backwoods Michigan militia guys, calling them white supremacists, and then high fiving each other....but once their done, I'm certain they'll jump right on top of preventing the next 9/11.

Ah yes. You are clearly the debate champion of the internet.

Well...I know you don't seem to follow the news but you're badly uninformed.

This is paternalistic as all get out.

Just trying to help. Did you think you were making a good point above that wasn't going to backfire in any way?

 

[Pommer]

I don't know who 'they' are here, but once again, since I've ceded to you for the sake of argument that its origins are benign, I don't know what the opinion of this mysterious 'they' has to do with the conversation we're now having. Are you meaning to imply that some force out there is purposely trying to make "It's OK to be white" out to be a racist statement when it shouldn't be? Because I think we agree on that. My entire point is that white supremacists are doing that by using it to support their movements. I've certainly never written or even meant to imply that white people should feel bad for being white (I don't, so why would I argue that anyone else should?). I've only offered reasons why it might be that people who agree that there's nothing inherently wrong with being white would still reject the phrase "It's OK to be white", due to its white supremacist connotations.

Thank you both for an interesting subthread, the arguments on both sides have been internally spot-on; and lest we err in the age old game of “let’s talk past one another”, please see if this rings true?

I think that @Ana the Ist’s reasoning is this:
1. We can agree that “it’s okay to be white” is not racially offensive to anyone who is not a racist themselves.
2. Even though real, actual, racists use it, to, [you know] “groom” people onto their “way of thinking” that
3. Doesn’t negate the first fact that it’s not racially offensive to anyone not already a racist
4. We can’t know where “the line” is for racism, though, and we’d end up calling totally-normal not-racist-at-all folks racists, because we can’t let the real racists, who want to use the phrase in our culture, to destroy the phrase’s inherent inoffensiveness, otherwise “they” win; we have to stand up to racists trying to change our culture like that by adopting “phrases” and perverting their meaning
5. And if anybody disagrees they’re the real racists!

It’s an elegant argument, it really is, if this was the way things actually worked.

 

[Pommer]

Yeah. We aren't all equals. You may have noticed that this conversation hasn't gone well for you. It's not a coincidence. One of us is clearly better than the other at argumentation. I'm certain you have talents and skills that I don't have. Perhaps you're really good at making toast...and I burn my toast more often than you do. If we learn that you make perfect toast more often than me....that's going to create a disparity in our outcomes. Disparities aren't indicative of a problem though....they're just a disparity.

I have different requirements for toast, thus it gets made to different “donenesses” if I want it for toast itself or for a sandwich or toastsants for a quick salad pick-me-up.
There’s a “slightly ‘too brown’” in any given application, and I only apply it to toast.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Yes it is. You are deliberately ignoring or otherwise denying its usage by white supremacist groups outside of the 4Chan community that originally popularized it with their trolling campaign in 2017,

What usage?

It was originally used to expose racists. It worked marvelously.

Rasmussen apparently used it for the exact same reason....2 for 2.

Do you have evidence of some other usage or not?

No. You keep failing to read my posts properly.

Apparently I gave you too much credit.

Here is the entire sentence (with emphasis added to the part that you have apparently misunderstood) that you have chopped into different parts in order to respond as you have here, by claiming that I wrote something that I did not write:

Word games like pretending that because 4Chan people came up with the phrase "It's OK to be white" to ferret out anti-white racists, then that is exactly what it means, and subsequent developments in its usage -- like it's adoption by white supremacists -- are of no concern or do not provide a context in which people who agree that there is nothing inherently wrong with being white would still have reason to object to that phrase.​

​

I can't be sure ahead of any subsequent clarification what you mean by "some shift in meaning", but it seems like you believe that I'm saying that these white supremacist groups took what was meant to be an innocuous phrase and made it mean something else by redefining it, when what I'm actually saying is that its adoption by those groups is in itself what has given it its status as a hateful slogan, as they now use it on their own flyers that contain not just the phrase, but links to their white supremacist websites and so on so that the average person, upon seeing this curious flyer with a simple, seemingly easy-to-agree-with statement on it, might become curious about what website is being advertised on it, and then through that curiosity get sucked into the world of online white supremacy groups (or so those groups hope).

Here's why I thought you were referring to a shift in meaning...

For example, "mistress" is not generally understood to refer to the female headmaster of a school or a teacher of pupils anymore, even though that's where its ultimate origins lie (in Latin magister). It would not be weird for someone to look at a female teacher differently if she insisted on calling herself "Mistress _______" because that's the origin of the term, since in modern American English it has other connotations


That's something you just said 1 page ago. It doesn't matter if you use the word "connotation" or "usage" or "context"....the thing you referenced was a literal shift in meaning. One meaning is female teacher, the other meaning is woman who is taking part in adultery with a married man. That's a shift in meaning.

Now, you apparently agree that the meaning of the phrase "it's ok to be white" was, and currently is....

It's ok to be white.

Not "it's ok to be white **wink wink** white power!"

Nor "it's ok to be white so join Identity Europa"

But merely....

It's ok to be white.

So I'll ask, what possible reason apart from racism is there to disagree with that statement?

I've only offered reasons why it might be that people who agree that there's nothing inherently wrong with being white would still reject the phrase

You haven't offered any reasons....but I'll give you the chance to now. See above.

Yes, you've shown that you are not understanding me for quite a few posts now. That is fine. I can keep trying. I have a master's degree in linguistics with a focus on sociolinguistics,

You're joking with me, right?

Did they charge you money for this degree?

By writing this do you mean that you do not believe that white supremacists have adopted the slogan for their own ends? Because I originally linked to the ADL's statement some time ago where they made the point that this has happened. So that's not dependent on me recognizing it, or on your recognizing it, for that matter. That is just what has happened since the popularization of the phrase by 4Chan. I can link to the ADL's summation again, or to any number of popular articles that say the same thing, if it helps. I even found an academic journal article on this earlier today (because apparently an "It's OK to be White" bill was introduced by a right-wing politician in Australia in 2018, which gave Australian academics reason to look into it), though it is behind a pay-wall at Taylor & Francis Online, and anyway seems (fittingly) rather dry. The reference is: K. Sengul "‘It's OK to be white’: the discursive construction of victimhood,

Nope, it's ok. This doesn't look like real research....it looks like a CRT ethnic studies major's thesis for grad school.

As it stands, I don't believe in an "expertise" on something as simple as racism. When you consider how hard the Gender Studies experts grapple with a concept like sex or gender....it's not hard to see why.

‘anti-white racism’ and calculated ambivalence in Australia" in Critical Discourse Studies, vol. 19, issue 6 (2022), 593-609. Published online 04 May, 2021.

Yeah, and I'm aware the critical part of "Critical Discourse Studies" has nothing to do with critical thinking.

Did a deeper dive on that stuff years ago than I care to admit openly.

If you want to argue a different usage....and before you do, I'll just explain why it's a worse argument....you'll just need to give me some examples of this different usage and explain why you think 25-50% of black people in the US are so keenly aware of this alternative usage that white supremacists apparently adopted (or so you claim).

It's a worse argument because it's not just the difficulty of demonstrating an entirely different usage (after all, there's no real reason to think such a successful usage as the original one would suddenly be abandoned by the same ideological racists who came up with it)....but it's also the difficulty of showing that millions, literally millions of black people are so interested in the subtle linguistic shifts of a benign phrase used by white supremacists that they now see it as used for some other purpose than exposing racism against whites.

I honestly don't know a single black person who pays that much attention to white supremacists at all. For example....

This is an example of an NFT created by a white supremacist trio and they sold millions of dollars of these to black celebrities....and the vast majority of black people right now probably don't realize that this is extremely racist. I've only seen a few point it out....and those in the know had to explain it to black people who were buying these.

To my knowledge, they're still being sold. It's not the sort of thing that white supremacists would be able to get away with if they were under a microscope from the black community.

 

[dzheremi]

Why? Why would you expect that?

Why wouldn't I, or anyone? Unless there is some sort of reason to posit a natural disinterest in medicine among black people in particular (which here is no reason to posit, and is anyway countered by not only examples like the one I provided at the AAMC link, but also the existence of medical procedures in pre-colonial Africa, such as successful C-sections being performed in Uganda in the 1870s), what would explain this disparity?

I know it is a common charge that left-leaning people tend to see 'racism in the gaps' (and that's not untrue, depending), but in the context of education and medicine and many other similar things which black people in the USA were long denied access to, it's not without reason. Again, the AMA themselves recognize the role they played in shutting out black people from the mainstream medical establishment in the United States for over a century. The existence of associations of black physicians, like the existence of black colleges, certain entire churches like the African Methodist Episcopal Church, etc., testify to this reality. As far as concerns medical school in particular, a racial breakdown shows that black students have a markedly lower acceptance rate than their white and Latino counterparts, which is especially interesting given that their average MCAT scores do not significantly differ from the average Latino scores (both of which are lower than the average white scores). All three groups' scores are within 8.5 points of each other, though the difference in acceptance rates between those at the higher end of this range and those at the lower is quite large (19%) -- in fact, larger than the overall gap between those who matriculate the least (blacks, at 38%) and those who matriculate the most (Latinos and Asians, tied at 44%), which would seem to support my earlier point that the least competent of those who apply to medical school (at least as measured by the average MCAT scores of each group) don't tend to advance into the medical field to begin with. Not being a statistician, however, the real mystery here to me is why Latinos have acceptance rates closer to those of whites if their average scores tend to be closer to those of blacks. Latinos are 2.2 points ahead of blacks, but 6 points behind whites; despite this, they are accepted into medical school at a rate of 46%, which is higher than both whites (44%) and blacks (39%). Seems like another case of meritocracy not working the way it's supposed to! (NB: the smiley face means I'm joking; as I understand it, medical schools are allowed to consider race in admissions, though I have seen conflicting reports as to whether or not they actually do so. One article from the NIH said they 'usually' don't, while there is some kind of advocacy group in Utah called "Do No Harm" who have argued that whether or not the schools do, the national accreditation organization whose name is escaping me right now has been trying to put pressure on medical schools in that state to up their intake of minority students and faculty, seemingly without regard to the quality of their test scores/work. I'm honestly not sure how to take that, since they are after all an advocacy group, so I wouldn't assume that they are neutral in their interpretation of the organization's directives.)

All other things aren't equal...and no meritocracy assumes as much. Think about what you're saying. If you and I were equal at anything....say brain surgery for example....how would a meritocracy identify merit?

"All other things" meaning everything that is outside of what test scores measure, since test scores are what you are left with when you cannot consider an applicant's race, socioeconomic background, family background (cf. legacies), etc. Obviously a candidate's ability to physically and intellectually excel at the work itself (brain surgery, flying an airplane, whatever) is the ultimate measure, but that generally comes up much later, in the student's progression through the educational system and again in the post-graduate hiring process, since obviously you cannot exclude anyone from enrolling in medical school on the basis of their not being able to perform brain surgery up to a certain standard before they get the education necessary to do exactly that.

The problem with medical school in particular (and honestly I did not expect to find this before having to dig into those statistics in particular to answer this post, so thank you for the opportunity to learn about this) seems to be that not even test scores -- which you might reasonably expect to be the ultimate meritocratic measure of who should be admitted -- are apparently not enough to explain disparities between the racial groups, since Latinos can apparently score lower than whites and still be admitted at higher percentage than they are. Even though I'm sure there's some story behind this, the source I consulted did not seem to address it directly, and I don't know enough about how medical schools work to be able to say that this is definitely a result of some kind of DEI-related admissions inflation (or else why wouldn't they do the same for black students, whose average MCAT scores are closer to those of Latinos than whites). It seems like claiming that could have the same potential pitfall as claiming 'racism in the gaps'.

Let's take them at their word for a moment. Let's assume they are being honest and not merely trying to appease people who are accusing them of racism.

How have they excluded black people?

Are a bunch of black pre-med students being rejected because they are black? Are a bunch of black students being denied degrees despite passing all their requisite requirements?

Surely the AMA must know this...or else how would they know some exclusion is occurring?

I don't think they are referring to today. I think they are acknowledging that this was the case historically, although what exact time period this is meant to cover and the means by which they did so during that time is left unstated. My point in bringing it up is that according to them, they did so. They were most unmeritocratic for all that time, by whichever means they accomplished this exclusion.

You're not seriously suggesting that the AMA is excluding black people today because of some example you have from the Civil War. That's not even remotely close to proof of discrimination today. That's proof of discrimination over 150 years ago.

You're right, that's not what I'm suggesting at all. "For over 100 years" places the period of discrimination into well after the civil war (since the AMA was founded in the 1840s), according to the statement from the AMA themselves.

I gave you an example of exclusion. It's not based on merit. In fact, they are passing on qualified candidates (qualified means meritous in this context) based on race.

If you could show this happening to black people in hiring as well, I'd be against it. Instead, you're telling me tales from the Civil War. It's hard to believe that you cannot understand the difference between the two.

Do you not understand the reason for the example? My point was that for the entire 100+ years during which the AMA was practicing deliberate exclusion of black people based on race, it's not like you could make the argument that black people were just making different decisions (as you predictably have in a part of your reply that I've excised for space reasons, and because I don't disagree that people of any background can and do make any number of different decisions which may lead to different outcomes), because when they are disallowed from following what they might otherwise choose to follow, it's not a matter of freedom of choice. Conversely (here's where the example comes in), we can show that when we have examples of black people being allowed to participate in the mainstream medical establishment, they can do so to as high a level as any white person, even to the degree that there are examples of black people becoming MDs as far back as during the Civil War itself, if not even earlier. (The AAMC article specified that Crumpler was the first black woman to receive an MD in the US; it appears that a black man by the name of James McCune Smith probably received an MD earlier than this, though both of their lives overlap with the outbreak of the Civil War, so I'm not sure about that.)

I don't recall cooking up any such scenario. If you want to do that though, let's do it...

I have to go make dinner right now, so no thanks, but it was some sort of comment about how "the company doesn't care that he's black; they care that he can sell" or some such. Perhaps I misunderstood your point in bringing up this hypothetical man.

Let's imagine a racist company hiring only white people regardless of merit, and a company that hires anyone of any race who proves they can sell the product well.

Which of these two companies do you think will succeed if they compete to sell the same product?

I'd wager the racist company would fail...and quickly.

Well duh. The key here is 'without merit'. If anyone is hiring anyone who is without merit (regardless of their skin color), they're going to fail. From what I can tell, however, the case with regard to hiring more diverse candidates at most companies tends to play out in such a way that two candidates who are already being considered for the same position (i.e., already demonstrate enough merit to be considered as employable there) are hired or not on the basis of their race. It's still racial discrimination, no doubt (and once again, I'm still against it), but it's not a case of "the white guy is perfect and the non-white guy is a bumbling idiot who doesn't know what they're doing." I don't know that this is going on at any company to the degree that they wouldn't also be hiring white people who don't know what they're doing (in deference to your earlier example of the black employee from the FAA testifying before congress or whatever it was; I think we can both recognize that there are plenty of people of all backgrounds in positions that they're not qualified to be in, but I don't see any evidence that incompetence is race-specific).

It sounds like level playing field=meritocracy here....but that contradicts your arguments against meritocracies and for DEI initiatives (which only consider things like racial background.

Did you mean to say something different?

No, that is exactly what I meant. And I never argued against meritocracies as a thing; what I've written is that I don't think they actually exist, or at least not 'pure' meritocracies such that only the candidate's competence at performing job X is considered. Since meritocracy is therefore not all it's cracked up to be, I can either say I believe in it in the same way that I 'believe' in communism (maybe great in theory, but we don't live in theory, we live in reality, and in reality communism has not ever ushered in the equality that its proponents claim it will), or that it is basically the mirror image of DEI initiatives: it's meant to make things fair, but it doesn't, because it can't, so it would be unwise to suggest it as a stand-alone replacement for the current way of doing things in those companies that have DEI initiatives that have resulted in racially-discriminatory hiring practices that don't actually achieve what they're supposed to anyway (again, according to the hiring managers who answered the GlassDoor poll).

you describe meritocracies as a "level playing field" which implies the DEI initiatives represent a crooked playing field.

Of course they do. My point is that what most people have in mind as an alternative to them is also crooked. When I use a phrase like "level playing field", I'm using it because I know that's what proponents of meritocracy assume exists once DEI initiatives are done away with. You know, the whole "I didn't need a leg up based on race to get my job" idea...well no duh, you were never excluded from being hired based on your race until now! That doesn't make it right that such discrimination is now occurring, of course, but my point is that this way of looking at things does not result in a level playing field, either. It just means that people who do not see that the advantages that they have had, because there never needed to be DEI initiatives crafted for them in the first place, can continue on in the fiction that they got to where they are based on their own merit, while simultaneously being contemptuous towards those who have benefitted from DEI initiatives on that account. That's lousy.

That's why I don't understand your claims of wanting doctors, pilots, or even cab drivers who got their job because of merit, instead of "background" characteristics like race.

What's not to understand? I would prefer it if people get jobs that they are qualified to do. That doesn't necessarily mean that race or other background characteristics cannot be taken into account. I don't see it as an 'either-or' situation to begin with. It's the 'regulated but largely open economy with a strong, properly-funded social safety net' approach to handling this question, to continue with my previous parallel to communism. The trouble is, it seems like the ideological poles rule the discussion of this issue: either you want a pure meritocracy where nobody can so much as peek at any information outside of an applicant's previous experience, or you want a racially-infused anarchy where anyone who comes in for an interview is immediately hired without even looking at their application or anyone else's so long as they can boast the most races, genders, sexualities, etc., etc. of any person that the hiring manager has ever seen.

I'm only saying that there should be some other way to tackle these issues, though predictably I do not know exactly what form it would take.

 

[childeye 2]

You're inclined to disagree with the statement "black lives matter"?

I'm inclined to disagree with any statement that evaluates people/persons based on the skin they're born in, or their race or ethnicity.

"Black lives matter" is not the same as "It's okay to be black". Do you see the difference?

rac·ism
[ˈrāˌsizəm]

NOUN

1. prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized:

• the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another:
  "theories of racism"

 

[Ana the Ist]

I'm inclined to disagree with any statement that validates people based on the skin they're born in, or their race or ethnicity.

rac·ism
[ˈrāˌsizəm]

NOUN

1. prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized:

You're coincidentally making my point about open ended questions lol.

I'm asking a yes or no question to avoid an ambiguous answer like the one you just posted.

Based on your statement, I'd have to assume that you're inclined to disagree with the statement "black lives matter".

 

[childeye 2]

You're coincidentally making my point about open ended questions lol.

I'm asking a yes or no question to avoid an ambiguous answer like the one you just posted.

Based on your statement, I'd have to assume that you're inclined to disagree with the statement "black lives matter".

I don't see the yes/no format as an issue. I'm avoiding the false equivalency in your comparison, so that there's no need to assume anything.

"Black lives matter" is not the same as "It's okay to be black". Do you see the difference in sentiments or not?

 

[dzheremi]

Here's why I thought you were referring to a shift in meaning...

For example, "mistress" is not generally understood to refer to the female headmaster of a school or a teacher of pupils anymore, even though that's where its ultimate origins lie (in Latin magister). It would not be weird for someone to look at a female teacher differently if she insisted on calling herself "Mistress _______" because that's the origin of the term, since in modern American English it has other connotations


That's something you just said 1 page ago.

Yes it is. This very easily establishes the overall point I was making about how you cannot use the origin of a term to restrict the understanding of it at some later time, since language changes over time as terms are adopted and spread through different communities and different places. This is probably the easiest way to illustrate this, because there is no value judgment involved in recognizing that mistress does not mean the same thing now as it once did hundreds of years ago, whereas what we are discussing now involves by its very nature evaluating the phrase as either acceptable or unacceptable.

A possibly more appropriate term to use concerning the type of change that I believe we are currently seeing with regard to "It's OK to be white" would be pejoration, which is the technical term for when a word which was previously regarded as positive comes to be seen as negative. I did not use that term here for a few reasons:

1. It can invite arguments about whether or not the term is being appropriately used and understood, and we are already having that exact conversation right now with regard to "It's OK to be white", so the idea of having it again because you disagree with an example is not pleasant, to say the least.
2. I've never seen that term applied to an entire phrase, only individual vocabulary items, so I'm not sure if there is a different term to use for the specific situation we are discussing.
3. I don't know that it is entirely appropriate to use here even if it can be applied to whole phrases, because the phrase we are arguing over is supposed to be neutral, not positive. I have reason to believe that this could make a difference, as there is an entirely different term for when a word that was previously seen as negative comes to be regarded as positive (amelioration). If there is a specific term for neutral words being elevated or downgraded in this manner, I don't know it.

Now, you apparently agree that the meaning of the phrase "it's ok to be white" was, and currently is....

It's ok to be white.

I never disagreed with that. My point is that it is not the end of the story with regard to this phrase. Would that it were.

Not "it's ok to be white **wink wink** white power!"

Nor "it's ok to be white so join Identity Europa"

But merely....

It's ok to be white.

Hahaha. I dunno, I think if someone were to say "It's ok to be white" and follow it up with suggestive winking, I might have a clue that they mean something other than what they've literally just said. Haha.

So I'll ask, what possible reason apart from racism is there to disagree with that statement?

And I'll answer again that this is not the only thing that it can be used to convey support for. Again, this conversation would go a lot easier if you would just recognize that simple fact as a fact. You don't have to like it, or agree with it, or cede the point you are already making regarding the origin of the phrase itself. I'm not disputing that to begin with.

You're joking with me, right?

Did they charge you money for this degree?

Probably more than whatever they charged you for your degree in Internet (Alt) Rightness from the University of Reddit.

Nope, it's ok. This doesn't look like real research....it looks like a CRT ethnic studies major's thesis for grad school.

I can't vouch for the individual journal, since I've never heard of it, but I do know that Taylor and Francis is a solid academic publisher (one of their imprints is Routledge, which you may be familiar with if you ever consult academic references in your line of work), with a long history in that business that long predates "CRT ethnic studies" or whatever nonsense.

If you want to argue a different usage....and before you do, I'll just explain why it's a worse argument....you'll just need to give me some examples of this different usage and explain why you think 25-50% of black people in the US are so keenly aware of this alternative usage that white supremacists apparently adopted (or so you claim).

Again, it's not my claim. I don't run the ADL, or NPR, or the Washington Post, or any of the other places you can very readily access that report the same thing regarding its usage by white supremacists since its origination on 4Chan.

It's a worse argument because it's not just the difficulty of demonstrating an entirely different usage (after all, there's no real reason to think such a successful usage as the original one would suddenly be abandoned by the same ideological racists who came up with it)

I'm not sure what you're trying to say in the parenthesis here. Which "ideological racists" are you referring to as having come up with it? I thought your contention is that 4Chan came up with it for anti-racist purposes.

but it's also the difficulty of showing that millions, literally millions of black people are so interested in the subtle linguistic shifts of a benign phrase used by white supremacists that they now see it as used for some other purpose than exposing racism against whites.

Two questions come to mind here: Did the Rasmussen poll survey millions of black people? And why would they have to even be aware that any such shift has taken place, let alone "so interested" in it? You don't need know how it started out its life in order to evaluate it if you recognize that it is currently used by racist bigots to shore up their numbers. This is yet another reason why its ultimate origin is not the greatest thing to go by if you're looking to explain why X% of people evaluated it negatively. It is presumably not relevant to those people, either because they don't know about it, or because they know about it but don't see the point in caring about that, since it's not like knowing about its origin makes it okay when it is employed by people whose intentions or aims they oppose.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Why wouldn't I, or anyone?

Because disparities in outcomes are the norm....not the exception. There's far more causal factors in human behavior than can possibly be accounted for and absolutely no principle nor rule that should create that expectation.

The only time when we would expect social outcome disparities to disappear would be in societies that strip away all individual freedoms and liberty.

Unless there is some sort of reason to posit a natural disinterest in medicine among black people in particular

I don't actually have to posit anything. Without any expectation of equal outcomes (and certainly no reason for any such expectation) I don't have to explain the disparity.

Consider two groups of people who have as nearly identical circumstances as we can realistically imagine. 1st born and second born brothers in 2 parent households making 150k a year. The brothers attend the same schools, have the same parents, live in the same society, with only a year in difference. Wildly different outcomes. The second born is 40% more likely to do time in jail. The first born is 8 times more likely to be a CEO. And the number of disparities just keeps going. It doesn't really matter how you draw the line between the groups...it's far more rare for equal outcomes to occur naturally than unnaturally (as in when outcomes are forced).

Now, I understand that if you blindly accepted such rhetoric as "if blah blah blah wasn't happening, then we'd see proportional outcomes" that's hard to accept but...that's the facts.

I know it is a common charge that left-leaning people tend to see 'racism in the gaps' (and that's not untrue, depending),

I like "the boy who cried racism" better but yeah...same thing.

but in the context of education and medicine and many other similar things which black people in the USA were long denied access to, it's not without reason.

I asked you for a reason why you expect equal outcomes and you didn't have any reason.

It's entirely without reason.

Again, the AMA themselves recognize the role they played in shutting out black people from the mainstream medical establishment in the United States for over a century.

No...they made a claim. There's literally no evidence that they are "shutting out black people" nor have you provided any.

It seems more like their claim is made to appease your flawed assumptions.

As far as concerns medical school in particular, a racial breakdown shows that black students have a markedly lower acceptance rate than their white and Latino counterparts, which is especially interesting given that their average MCAT scores do not significantly differ from the average Latino scores (both of which are lower than the average white scores).

Are more Latinos applying? Numerically....not proportionally.

If yes...there's your answer. Anything else?

All three groups' scores are within 8.5 points of each other,

But that is a difference and one that matters regarding acceptance.

though the difference in acceptance rates between those at the higher end of this range and those at the lower is quite large (19%)

You're looking at the extreme ends of a ratio to defend your assumptions.

-- in fact, larger than the overall gap between those who matriculate the least (blacks, at 38%) and those who matriculate the most (Latinos and Asians, tied at 44%),

Why would you expect the ratio of difference between scores and acceptance rates to be the same lol?

I understand that statistics can be complicated but they aren't that complicated. Imagine the maximum score was 100 and lowest a 0.

Now imagine that there's 100k spaces available in all med schools.

Now imagine there's 150k applicants....and out of them 101k perfect 100 scores. Should the people who scored 99 get in? B-b-b-but there's only a 1% difference in scores! Wahhhhhh!

Your paper is trying hard to prove the assumptions created at the beginning of the paper, isn't it?

which would seem to support my earlier point that the least competent of those who apply to medical school (at least as measured by the average MCAT scores of each group) don't tend to advance into the medical field to begin with.

And?

Not being a statistician, however, the real mystery here to me is why Latinos have acceptance rates closer to those of whites if their average scores tend to be closer to those of blacks.

Again...are they applying more?

Here's another possibility...they're white and lying about their race to get an affirmative action bump. A significant number of white students do this to improve their odds of getting accepted into college.

Latinos are 2.2 points ahead of blacks, but 6 points behind whites; despite this, they are accepted into medical school at a rate of 46%, which is higher than both whites (44%) and blacks (39%).

I can't see how those stats are related without knowing what the application numbers are. Does the paper break down the race of every single applicant? Or does it just assume they all apply at roughly the same rate? Or did they artificially select sample groups of applicants?

At this point all you're telling me is worthless numbers.

Seems like another case of meritocracy not working the way it's supposed to! (NB: the smiley face means I'm joking; as I understand it, medical schools are allowed to consider race in admissions,

Yeah most colleges do. In fact, it sounds like blacks have the lowest score and acceptance rates. Latinos have the middle score yet highest acceptance rates. While whites have the highest score (of the three, excluding Asians since they throw off this whole racial heirarchy story of yours) yet for some reason....they're the middle regarding acceptance rates.

The picture you just painted is one where whites are being unfairly discriminated against....not blacks.

This was supposed to be your proof of black exclusion? It sounds more like they're upset they aren't being given privileges that boost them past the whites the way latinos are.

This of course, assumes they accounted for the race of literally every applicant....otherwise, those numbers aren't related in the way the paper claims. Lemme guess....they used multivariate mean regression analysis to build hypothetical models for each group instead. Am I close?

though I have seen conflicting reports as to whether or not they actually do so. One article from the NIH said they 'usually' don't, while there is some kind of advocacy group in Utah called "Do No Harm" who have argued that whether or not the schools do, the national accreditation organization whose name is escaping me right now has been trying to put pressure on medical schools in that state to up their intake of minority students and faculty, seemingly without regard to the quality of their test scores/work.

Yeah that's the problem I referred to earlier.

I'm honestly not sure how to take that, since they are after all an advocacy group, so I wouldn't assume that they are neutral in their interpretation of the organization's directives.)

It's a free country. I have no problem with the advocacy group existing. The problem is when the response to such a request is anything other than no.

"All other things" meaning everything that is outside of what test scores measure, since test scores are what you are left with when you cannot consider an applicant's race, socioeconomic background, family background (cf. legacies), etc.

Ok.

Obviously a candidate's ability to physically and intellectually excel at the work itself (brain surgery, flying an airplane, whatever) is the ultimate measure, but that generally comes up much later, in the student's progression through the educational system and again in the post-graduate hiring process.

Right.

The problem with medical school in particular (and honestly I did not expect to find this before having to dig into those statistics in particular to answer this post, so thank you for the opportunity to learn about this) seems to be that not even test scores -- which you might reasonably expect to be the ultimate meritocratic measure of who should be admitted -- are apparently not enough to explain disparities between the racial groups, since Latinos can apparently score lower than whites and still be admitted at higher percentage than they are.

Yeah....even more amazing is you consider that "exclusion" of black people despite...

1. They're clearly being accepted into medical school.

2. If your paper isn't fudging the math, they're the only group being admitted in a fair way....lowest average scores, lowest average acceptance.

3. White students are being accepted at lower rates than their scores would indicate aka this would be an example of racial discrimination in your mind wouldn't it? (Assuming the math isn't fudged)

Even though I'm sure there's some story behind this, the source I consulted did not seem to address it directly, and I don't know enough about how medical schools work to be able to say that this is definitely a result of some kind of DEI-related admissions inflation (or else why wouldn't they do the same for black students, whose average MCAT scores are closer to those of Latinos than whites). It seems like claiming that could have the same potential pitfall as claiming 'racism in the gaps'.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest indicators of poor/fake research quality is the degree to which the paper's findings comport to a current political narrative (as research into the peer review/replication crisis indicates). This is due to the way such research is funded in the first place.

I don't think they are referring to today.

Me neither. Which begs the question of what problem exactly are we trying to solve with these DIE initiatives?

I think they are acknowledging that this was the case historically,

Ok...that's nice. I still want doctors who understand medicine though.

although what exact time period this is meant to cover and the means by which they did so during that time is left unstated. My point in bringing it up is that according to them, they did so. They were most unmeritocratic for all that time, by whichever means they accomplished this exclusion.

But not now.

Do you not understand the reason for the example? My point was that for the entire 100+ years during which the AMA was practicing deliberate exclusion of black people based on race,

Right.

it's not like you could make the argument that black people were just making different decisions (as you predictably have in a part of your reply that I've excised for space reasons, and because I don't disagree that people of any background can and do make any number of different decisions which may lead to different outcomes),

Well I have no idea how many would have chosen to go to medical school if they had the chance....but I understand that already, see my above statement about removing individual freedoms and liberty.

Conversely (here's where the example comes in), we can show that when we have examples of black people being allowed to participate in the mainstream medical establishment, they can do so to as high a level as any white person,

Never said they couldn't.

I have to go make dinner right now, so no thanks, but it was some sort of comment about how "the company doesn't care that he's black; they care that he can sell" or some such. Perhaps I misunderstood your point in bringing up this hypothetical man.

I'm not sure....

It seems we both agree that the AMA doesn't exclude black people.

Return to my question about what problem exactly is the DIE initiative supposed to address?

Well duh. The key here is 'without merit'. If anyone is hiring anyone who is without merit (regardless of their skin color), they're going to fail. From what I can tell, however, the case with regard to hiring more diverse candidates at most companies tends to play out in such a way that two candidates who are already being considered for the same position (i.e., already demonstrate enough merit to be considered as employable there) are hired or not on the basis of their race.

No....unfortunately not. DIE initiatives assume, like you, that unless outcomes are proportionally similar to population sizes, then some hidden racism is afoot.

There's a rather revealing book written by one of these DIE advocates lamenting the slow progress of these initiatives in making the desired racial outcomes. The obstacles outlined include...

1. Upper management failing to understand the benefits (not joking about this).
2. Laws getting in the way (specifically, civil rights anti-discrimination laws....something California tried repeal).

It's still racial discrimination, no doubt (and once again, I'm still against it), but it's not a case of "the white guy is perfect and the non-white guy is a bumbling idiot who doesn't know what they're doing."

I never claimed any such thing.

No, that is exactly what I meant. And I never argued against meritocracies as a thing; what I've written is that I don't think they actually exist, or at least not 'pure' meritocracies such that only the candidate's competence at performing job X is considered.

Well like I said, we cannot assess merit perfectly. Watch the movie Moneyball for a fun example.

Since meritocracy is therefore not all it's cracked up to be, I can either say I believe in it in the same way that I 'believe' in communism (maybe great in theory, but we don't live in theory, we live in reality, and in reality communism has not ever ushered in the equality that its proponents claim it will)

I've never heard any proponents of meritocracy describe it the way you claim. Only its detractors.

Of course they do. My point is that what most people have in mind as an alternative to them is also crooked.

I'm sure it feels that way. See my 100/99 example above.

When I use a phrase like "level playing field", I'm using it because I know that's what proponents of meritocracy assume exists once DEI initiatives are done away with.

Think of it like this...

Meritocracy is when the obstacles to an outcome that exist for everyone (like an entrance exam, or standardized test, or a 9-12 month application process) are fair. That's all. Your individual obstacles might be different.

What's not to understand? I would prefer it if people get jobs that they are qualified to do. That doesn't necessarily mean that race or other background characteristics cannot be taken into account.

How would you account for them without making any sort of assumptions about race to begin with?

 

[Ana the Ist]

I don't see the yes/no format as an issue. I'm avoiding the false equivalency in your comparison, so that there's no need to assume anything.

There's no false equivalency.

"Black lives matter" is not the same as "It's okay to be black". Do you see the difference or not?

The only difference is that the statement "it's ok to be white" is less a statement of validation than "black lives matter" and more a statement of acceptance.


Validation-

recognition or affirmation that a person or their feelings or opinions are valid or worthwhile.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Thank you both for an interesting subthread, the arguments on both sides have been internally spot-on; and lest we err in the age old game of “let’s talk past one another”, please see if this rings true?

I think that @Ana the Ist’s reasoning is this:
1. We can agree that “it’s okay to be white” is not racially offensive to anyone who is not a racist themselves.

Correct.

2. Even though real, actual, racists use it, to, [you know] “groom” people onto their “way of thinking” that

"Groom". That's hilarious. What are they grooming people to believe exactly? That the endless stream of racism towards whites coming from the left is in fact, racist?

3. Doesn’t negate the first fact that it’s not racially offensive to anyone not already a racist

No...it doesn't lol.

4. We can’t know where “the line” is for racism, though, and we’d end up calling totally-normal not-racist-at-all folks racists, because we can’t let the real racists, who want to use the phrase in our culture, to destroy the phrase’s inherent

What's a "real racist"? It seems anyone who believes in racist things is a real racist.

inoffensiveness, otherwise “they” win; we have to stand up to racists trying to change our culture like that by adopting “phrases” and perverting their meaning

Well I'm not expecting much of you personally @Pommer

5. And if anybody disagrees they’re the real racists!

It’s an elegant argument, it really is, if this was the way things actually worked.

Here's a fun fact...Ole @Ana the Ist has a bit of memory still left in the grey matter still clunking around in his dome. I couldn't help but think about a discussion we had back in January regarding a certain feminist website and my suspicion of using them as a source....


To which you sarcastically replied...

Yes, we know, “who says what” is more important than “what was said”.

Now, it may seem to some like you were trying to make an argument about how it's more important to consider "who said something" not "what was said"....

But I would be dishonest if I didn't point out that in the context of the conversation....that statement was being made mockingly, or sarcastically, and you were actually making the opposite point (that the truth of what someone says is far more important than the person who says it).


**anyone who doubts this or wishes to see an actual example of when context matters, something that's been unsuccessfully argued in this thread for awhile now, feel free to click on the quote above and see for yourself....no need to take my word for it**

Now, even more amusingly, I asked if that wasn't indeed what you believe, because you care far less about the truth...and far more about whether or not the truth is spoken by someone you like.

So I'll ask again @Pommer and just let you kill your own argument....

What matters more? What was said....or who said it?

 

[rturner76]

Sadly sometimes they find out their black ancestors owned slaves.

Some people also have mixed heritage. but whatever makes you feel better about what your ancestors did.

 

[childeye 2]

There's no false equivalency.

Black lives matter vs. It's okay to be black.

"Black lives matter" is not equivalent to "Black skin doesn't matter".

 

[Ana the Ist]

Black lives matter vs. It's okay to be black.

Yeah...the first is definitely validation. The second is acceptance.

"Black lives matter" is not equivalent to "Black skin doesn't matter".

Who is saying "black skin doesn't matter"?

 

[Ana the Ist]

Some people also have mixed heritage.

Indeed. Pay attention though, I said sometimes they find out their black ancestors owned slaves. That's not a mixed heritage....that's just a heritage.

but whatever makes you feel better about what your ancestors did.

Oh no....what did my ancestors do?!?


Lol.


Edit- BTW thanks for a prime example of the kind of shaming that helped create all these self hating racist white liberals in the first place.