[odbol]

You don't need to travel far to encounter racism in the U.S. Hell, I live in Silicon Valley and I see racism every day. My black friends get pulled over all the time for "driving while black." I've seen people of color get discriminated against in the workplace. My Facebook friends post some seriously gnarly memes sometimes, so bad that sometimes I even wonder if they even realize they are being racist.

But anecdotes are not proof. Here's hard data on racism in the U.S.:

- Stop and Frisk laws disproportionately target people of color, not to mention it's unconstitutional ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2012/07/17/stop... )

- Punishment for crack-cocaine (mainly black users) was 10x worse than powder cocaine (mainly rich, white users), even though it's the same drug.

- North Carolina basically admitted to creating laws to stop black voters from voting ( http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-ca... )

I can go on and on. No matter how "well-traveled" you think you are, perhaps you weren't hanging out with the people who are being oppressed. They are speaking out pretty much constantly now, if you choose to listen.

[ccvannorman]

I used to be in the "But I'm not racist and most of my friends aren't, so most people shouldn't be racist, right?" camp.

Now I'm in the "Oh shit, a very large number of people here are racist, including pretty much everyone in my own family." All it took was paying attention over the years.

We've got a long way to go.

[Arizhel]

>Now I'm in the "Oh shit, a very large number of people here are racist, including pretty much everyone in my own family." All it took was paying attention over the years.

Which is why I don't use Facebook and don't have many friends. Most Americans are huge racists and bigots.

[pm24601]

The only way I have found to not be racist is to consciously choose to NOT be racist.

I put myself in social situations as much as possible with people of other races and deal with the vague uncomfortableness.

I probably still am racist - but at least I am pushing myself.

[mjolk]

> The only way I have found to not be racist is to consciously choose to NOT be racist.

I'm glad that you found a strategy that worked for you, but that doesn't mean that other people are racist.

[jolux]

It's actually pretty difficult not to be racist. I'm racist, for example, as are pretty much all other white people in the US. I try hard not to be, but I think it would help white peoples' understanding to assume that you are racist and realize that it's sort of a nasty default state of being born white in a white supremacist society that needs to be actively fought against to be eliminated.

No white person is wholly racist or wholly not racist, it's all shades of gray, the most important part is that we understand why it's important to combat racism and do so actively in ourselves and when it happens in public. The only solution to racism is active anti-racism and the destruction of "white" as a category afforded special privileges by our culture and institutions.

[mjolk]

> It's actually pretty difficult not to be racist. I'm racist, for example, as are pretty much all other white people in the US...No white person is wholly racist or wholly not racist, it's all shades of gray...

It's incredibly easy to not be racist if you're not racist. I've spent zero effort to continue not being racist this year (same as last year).

I'd say that it's weird that you're singling out white people in the US (which is also amusing, because opposed to what other country?) as racist, but you've already self-reported as a racist. It appears that you're working on this and I wish you the best of luck.

Also, anyone can be racist, not just white people.

[jolux]

>It's incredibly easy to not be racist if you're not racist. I've spent zero effort to continue not being racist this year (same as last year).

This is just one of those things where if you think you have it licked, you probably don't. It's less about understanding how to reach the end goal than it is understanding the process we need to get there. I realize you probably think you're not racist, but there is a high probability you have at the very least some implicit bias against non-white people if you are white and were brought up in a largely white community.

I'd like to think I'm not racist, but unfortunately going around to people yelling "but I'm not racist" doesn't really do a lot to solve the very real and persisting problem of racism even if it were entirely true in the first place. Curiously the racists I know are also the most likely to loudly and frequently proclaim that they aren't racist, often just before they say something racist. Even if you are a perfect angel yourself I think in most if not all moral frameworks you still have a shared responsibility of fighting against racism if you are white.

>I'd say that it's weird that you're singling out white people in the US (which is also amusing, because opposed to what other country?) as racist, but you've already self-reported as a racist.

I'm not sure what your point is here, I think Americans are a lot less racist than most people in Europe but we still have a lot of work to do.

>Also, anyone can be racist, not just white people.

Yes, that is very true. I apologize for forgetting about internalized oppression. Internalized racism is an extremely difficult problem and speaks to how deeply white supremacy pervades much of Western culture and governance. Again, the solution is recognizing that it exists and taking steps to change that while doing what we can to protect the people it affects.

[mjolk]

> This is just one of those things where if you think you have it licked, you probably don't...there is a high probability you have at the very least some implicit bias..

No, sorry, I reject your ideology and manipulations. Repeating it in a different way, slightly more generally isn't any more convincing.

> Even if you are a perfect angel yourself I think in most if not all moral frameworks you still have a shared responsibility of fighting against racism if you are white.

I don't want to join your club and I do not want to give you legal privilege or power. If you want to improve the quality of life for people, go tutor kids or donate your time or something.

> I'm not sure what your point is here, I think Americans are a lot less racist than most people in Europe but we still have a lot of work to do.

Then why frame it that way? If you go looking for racism everywhere, you're going to find it. It's like a Baader-Meinhof phenomenon for people that really need to be twitter-followed for not having crappy/silly judgments about physical characteristics of people.

> Yes, that is very true. I apologize for forgetting about internalized oppression. Internalized racism is an extremely difficult problem and speaks to how deeply white supremacy pervades much of Western culture and governance.

Wait, what? Non-white people can be racist against white people. Are you trying to troll?

[bluejekyll]

It might be that what is being stated as racist, is better described as racial bias. Bias' are generally subconscious, whereas usually the term racist is reserved for outward, and aggressive bigotry.

Understanding ones own bias' is important in understanding how to help correct the problems.

[taneq]

> I'm racist, for example

Really?

> as are pretty much all other white people in the US

Oh, I see now.

> it's sort of a nasty default state of being born white in a white supremacist society

Yes, so people with white skin all think/feel a certain way, mhmm?

[jolux]

>Yes, so people with white skin all think/feel a certain way, mhmm?

No, it's not like everyone consciously chooses to be racist, it's just that you sort of learn it subconsciously if you're not really careful. It's sort of like if the first programming language you learn is PHP then your use of other languages will be colored by it unless you make a conscious effort to unlearn.

[throwaway1892]

> I'm racist, for example, as are pretty much all other people in the US

FTFY.

I think that a part of human nature make us distrust those who are different, whatever the difference is.

[bigbugbag]

Those are policies and law, not people. Silicon Valley is not representative of the U.S. quite the contrary, specially since driving while black might be linked to heavy use of predictive policing[1] in California (yes the minority report thing), Facebook is definitely not what I would consider representative of people, actually the contrary again.

I have to say that I had the prejudice that the U.S. people were racists and traveling around the place proved me otherwise.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_policing

[Arizhel]

Those are policies enacted by politicians, and those politicians are popularly elected by the people in elections.

The people of the US absolutely are racist xenophobes; they've proven it by their voting patterns over and over, especially with the latest election. They're just good at hiding it from you when you talk to them in person. The real racism comes out in the voting booth.

[tehwebguy]

Of course they are people!

The cops in the first 2 examples, the judge / DA / prosecutor / jury in the 3rd example, and the legislators ho wrote the law in the 4th example.

[mjolk]

> - Stop and Frisk laws disproportionately target people of color, not to mention it's unconstitutional ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2012/07/17/stop.... )

Or "stop and frisk" took place in areas with higher crime rates, where, coincidentally, non-white people live in higher density. Weird how you didn't want to address the disproportionate rates of crime by race, which I think is closer to the root of the problem, no matter how uncomfortable it is to talk about.

> - Punishment for crack-cocaine (mainly black users) was 10x worse than powder cocaine (mainly rich, white users), even though it's the same drug.

This statement gets paraded around a lot. The idea is strict penalties to discourage use, which is why crack-cocaine sentencing converges with that of methamphetamine (predominantly "white" drug). Whereas crack-cocaine decimated predominantly minority-inhabited areas of major US cities, would you have preferred for the response to be weaker?

> - North Carolina basically admitted to creating laws to stop black voters from voting ( http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-ca.... )

Per article: "...a requirement that voters show photo identification to vote and restored same-day voter registration, a week of early voting, pre-registration for teenagers, and out-of-precinct voting."

There's nothing intrinsic in someone's skin color or ethnic background that would cause someone to not have a valid ID -- and under a democratic leadership, the ruling party will do everything in its power to make sure the votes continue going in their favor. It's not racist or xenophobic to want a voter of a district to prove he or she is from that district.

I don't know much about North Carolina and maybe they're terrible racists, but I still plainly reject that America is by-majority racist or xenophobic.

> Hell, I live in Silicon Valley and I see racism every day...I can go on and on. No matter how "well-traveled" you think you are, perhaps you weren't hanging out with the people who are being oppressed. They are speaking out pretty much constantly now, if you choose to listen.

We're just trading anecdotes, so my statement of experience that I haven't seen it disproportionately affect non-white people is on even footing with your assertion of seeing it "every day". Maybe I'm being sensitive, but it seems like you're trying to suggest that I don't "listen" or that I have major misconceptions about my world experiences, which is a weirdly casual thing and vaguely insulting.

> My Facebook friends post some seriously gnarly memes sometimes, so bad that sometimes I even wonder if they even realize they are being racist.

It's possible that you see racism every day because you associate with racists. I don't socialize with people that have exposed themselves as racists (because I find them ridiculous and small), which might explain the differences in our perceptions.

[viraptor]

> crack-cocaine sentencing converges with that of methamphetamine [...] would you have preferred for the response to be weaker?

For users? YES! (in both cases)

> There's nothing intrinsic in someone's skin color or ethnic background that would cause someone to not have a valid ID

Just like there's nothing intrinsic in skin color or ethnic background for higher crime rates. Yet due to economic/social factors, the rates vary in both cases. Generally the lower household income, the higher percentage of no-ID. Which maps onto races as expected.

http://www.projectvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/AMERIC...

[mjolk]

> For users? YES! (in both cases)

I think that treatment should be a larger part of the response to crack or meth, but my point was that specifically targeting a substance for harsher policing is not strictly a single-race issue.

> Just like there's nothing intrinsic in skin color or ethnic background for higher crime rates. Yet due to economic/social factors, the rates vary in both cases. Generally the lower household income, the higher percentage of no-ID. Which maps onto races as expected.

Agreed, entirely, but I'm suggesting that the proof-of-eligibility was about voter count, but opposition knew the message would travel better if they conflated it with race.

[viraptor]

The rates effectively differ per race. You could say that this is just about legal votes - but then, why not make sure everybody has similar access? Make the change years ahead, announce it, simplify the process to get the ID, (specifically for poor groups) etc. - everybody wins.

But if a group that is preferred by white people pushes just for the introduction/enforcement of that rule, knowing that it gives them an advantage? You could play semantics and talk about groups affected by income, etc. That's an interesting discussion and could give higher confidence numbers. But the practical effect is that with the ID enforcement, at most 5% of likely supporters and at most 13% of likely opposition group lose the right to vote.

[mjolk]

> The rates effectively differ per race. You could say that this is just about legal votes - but then, why not make sure everybody has similar access?

Because politics and vote count. Same reason why re-districting/gerrymandering happens.

> You could play semantics and talk about groups affected by income, etc. That's an interesting discussion and could give higher confidence numbers. But the practical effect is that with the ID enforcement, at most 5% of likely supporters and at most 13% of likely opposition group lose the right to vote.

This is towards what I'm saying -- it's about expected votes from districts. If the motivation from the Democrats is about voter blocs, that's about winning positions and not about "fighting racism", but they're go with the latter because emotional appeal.

[FireBeyond]

> The idea is strict penalties to discourage use

An idea so thoroughly rebuked by countless studies around the US and the world as to be effectively useless. And anyone in a law-making position who with a straight face pleads ignorance to this deserves ridicule.

[mjolk]

To be sure, I didn't say anything about the effectiveness of harsher sentencing on addictive substances (as I'm not very well read on this subject), but that's the intent of coming down harder on endemics caused by substances that are cheap to produce and quick to gain usage.

[lol_no]

>There's nothing intrinsic in someone's skin color or ethnic background that would cause someone to not have a valid ID

Not in race, but socioeconomic classes, yes.

[Chris2048]

You provide no proof of the anecdote you made, specifically:

> My black friends get pulled over all the time for "driving while black."

read the WP page on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_while_black

unless you or your friend have statistics for you area, there is no way to diagnose individual cases of DWB.

How did you come by the links you provided? If you googled "racism in america", for example, your results will be biased towards certain kinds of evidence, having the same result as cherry-picking.

> Stop and Frisk laws disproportionately target people of color

The article says: "Where there are black and Hispanic majorities, so too is there increased stop-and-frisk activity". The article doesn't give enough information to conclude what's going on (and we also don't know if what is shown is representative of relevant statistics available on that area), but the best they can conclude is "race is undeniably a factor" - this is not the same as "racism".

Aslso, in the comments of that article: https://spatialityblog.com/2012/07/27/nyc-stop-frisk-cartogr...

> Punishment for crack-cocaine (mainly black users) was 10x worse than powder cocaine (mainly rich, white users), even though it's the same drug.

Again, you push a correlation, and imply causation as proof of racism. You could do the same with loans: too much or too little can be harmful. In the case of crack "it's the same drug" isn't relevant, if it was, why would black users just switch to powder cocaine? It's the answers to that question that shows the difference, and the reason crack is considered more harmful.

It's also not entirely true that crack is a different substance:

"despite the fact that powder cocaine and crack cocaine both derive from cocaine, the two are different substances." -- http://cocaine.org/the-difference-between-powder-cocaine-and...

Whatever the chemical basis, crack is made from powdered cocaine, and:

> crack cocaine is more psychologically addicting than powder cocaine, and is thus more likely to result in chronic and heavy use

take from that what you will. maybe the above is a result of it's association with poor, or even black users. But whatever the case, it does cause more harm. Why assume harsher penalties are there to harm black/poor/etc communities, when we are talking about a severely harmful substance. Are things better when drugs like this are treated with lighter sentences?

> North Carolina basically admitted to creating laws to stop black voters from voting

I'm not so familiar with this one, but I do feel there is more correlation stated here, with some questions about causation:

Some raised here: http://www.dailywire.com/news/7992/5-statistics-show-voter-i...

for example:

> African American voters, who were less likely to hold the required forms of photo ID

The suggestion here is that this is why the vote was restricted in this way. But ID restrictions also correlate with attempts to reduce voting fraud, plus what isn't there a difference between IDs held and IDs that can be obtained?

> The state argued in court that "counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black" and "disproportionately Democratic," and said it did away with Sunday voting as a result.

put another way, Sunday voting is racist, because it disproportionately aids black voters? without more context about the effect of Sunday voting on voter opportunity/consistency, it's not really possible to judge.

More concerning to me are perhaps the claims of undue focus, e.g.:

> fraud was more common in mail-in absentee voting, which was not affected

However, I would be skeptical given the other things in the article claimed to be "smoking guns".

In summary, I don't dispute the above might be true, but I'm not convinced by the article above , because they don't answer some basic, obvious questions I'd have about the implied causes.

[bigbugbag]

> crack cocaine is more psychologically addicting than powder cocaine, and is thus more likely to result in chronic and heavy use

What the heck is this nonsense ? crack is more addictive because it takes a shorter route to the brain. the shorter the route the more addictive it is. And that's on the premises that a substance can be addictive and not a matter of lifestyle and lack of a fulfilling life. (See rat park and Bruce Alexander).

[Chris2048]

Are you not agreeing with this statement?

Also, I covered that association may also be a factor. The point is, crack is seen as having a greater effect of harm, so it's not clear harsher sentences are intended to harm black communities.

[Chris2048]

sigh

Yet again, I initially receive nothing but downvotes for providing a full response with various counterpoints, links etc, yet no comebacks or refutations...

[couchand]

Your intentional ignorance of the violent history of racism in our voting systems is your argument's own refutation.

[Chris2048]

A refutation is a refutation, a soundbite is not.

You know neither my intent, nor knowledge; but a "violent history of racism in our voting systems" is irrelevant to a discussion of statistics.

Read the last line of my previous post.