[t-writescode]

When the privileged classes have had generations to generate social networks that connect privileged people with privileged people (arguably one of the greatest privileges white people have, along with generational wealth and societies general presuppositions that go along with it), is it so bad to actively recognize that and go against it?

Racism says an ethnicity is better or worse than another intrinsically.

This is recognizing a section of our population has been, by and large, historically kept from making those connections and intentionally favoring them, not just for their sake but for the sake of their children’s children, by working to get them the same levels of connections the privileged class has historically had.

[someperson]

Racial groups are themselves not homogeneous.

There are plenty of eg, black doctors who raise privileged black children, and plenty of eg, poor rural whites who grew up in poverty.

Race-based affirmative action based on race doesn't do a good job of addressing the systemic problems with economic opportunity, and just causes rifts within society.

[majormajor]

Opportunity-based affirmative action is something that I think would be desperately useful, but ... it would run into a lot of the same perceptual problems as race-based programs.

The historical lines correlate strongly (though yes, not 100%) with race so the white kid who's in the program as a result of the affirmative action who grew up in a poor area with poor schools is going to blend in with the "regular" whites whereas the black kid who was the child of doctors is going to still be judged on the first thing people notice about them - their skin.

Fixing our past sins will take both proactive action AND continual vigilance by all of us to fight our snap judgments and first impressions.

But I believe it would be MUCH better than today's "merit" based systems which just create insane amount of pressure on kids starting in middle school or even earlier, to pad resumes and compete for the best schools, etc. That's a race to the (mental health) bottom of a whole different sort.

[tachyonbeam]

Tell that to the cis-white-male who was raised on a trailer park by a single mom when you explain to him why he doesn't get a scholarship though. Not everyone who's white or male is in a position of relative privilege. Affirmative action can create new forms of injustices as well. Somehow nowadays we think that deciding who gets what on the basis of sex and skin color is A-OK, because we're doing it right, we're doing it for the greater good... What could possibly go wrong?

[krimi]

Im pretty sure a cis white male can get a scholarship if coming from a poor background. This link for examplw comes first when doing a quick google search, and everyone on their promo picture is white: http://www.collegescholarships.org/scholarships/low-income.h...

[collyw]

In the UK white working class males (who received free school meals - an indicator of poverty) are the least likely group to go to university.

[jmpman]

With the same grades as others?

[scarmig]

Are Asian Americans privileged? For example, would you say that Vietnamese refugees and descendants of trafficked Chinese railroad laborers have been celebrated and given unfair advantages by white society?

[mushbino]

This is an extremely touchy and hotbutton issue. Many scholors have researched this very topic quite a bit. It helps to illustrate the point when you look into historical tensions between the black and Asian communities, especially in California.

Asian communities face less discrimination from the white community as there hasn't been a lot of reinforcement of negative stereotypes relating to any of the Asian communities. Compare that with the history and treatment of the black community and you can trace a direct line from slavery to where many communities are today. A lot of propaganda regarding black people had been fed to whites for hundreds of years in order to justify their enslavement.

The black community has seen Asians as a "preferred minority" who has benefited from their civil rights work and at the same time given opportunities they didn't have without giving back to black communities.

There is a lot of nuance in there, but that's the super short version.

[collyw]

> Asian communities face less discrimination from the white community

I am based in Europe so I maybe things are different here. We still hear a lot about how minorities are discriminated against, but it always seems based on equality of outcome as the "proof", and it seems to be pretty selective where they are looking. I see little evidence of real discrimination in fact most people seem quite disgusted by it.

[sonotathrowaway]

Asian-American encompasses an very diverse set of experiences in America, you can’t really create a cohesive narrative in the same way you could with other groups. The fact that you easily identify different groups with very distinct experiences should clue you in to that.

[scarmig]

So your claim is that Asian-Americans are diverse, while black and Hispanic people each form unvariegated, homogeneous identities?

I very intentionally point out particular groups in my original comment, because proponents of race-based affirmative action always avoid grappling with why it's fair to discriminate against some relatively successful subgroups of Asian Americans by bringing up red herrings about Hmong and Cambodian refugees (who, it's worth pointing out, are typically excluded from the benefits of affirmative action anyway, which makes it even more of a red herring).

[sonotathrowaway]

If you take the population of black Americans you’ll find that the overwhelming majority of them have their history in the ~3.9 million people trafficked during the slave trade and the following diaspora from the south throughout the 40s-60s, the majority as in 80%+. If you look at Asian Americans, you’ll find that the overwhelming majority of them do not descend from the ~20k transcontinental railroad laborers.

It’s not hard to tell that their experiences must be vastly different, because 20k is a very small proportion of the total Asian American population, while 3.5m is a much larger percentage.

I hope this help you with differentiating how relatively homogeneous groups are.

[collyw]

At the same time it's fair to say that many of the Asian Americans will come from families that arrived with very little and have managed to become successful in the US within a generation or two, through hard work and disciple, no?

[scarmig]

Because I'd like some clarity on your actual position:

Should Hmong refugees, as one of the less successful Asian American subgroups, be extended the benefits of affirmative action?

[SuoDuanDao]

>The way you could with other groups

Who is 'you' white man?

[0-_-0]

I'm a white person, where can I find this mythical social network and generational wealth I can use?

[mushbino]

Traditionally? Ivy league schools or your parent's network that probably came from the same.

Being white in America, or really anywhere else in the world comes with its privileges. If you haven't taken advantage of them, that's your own fault.

[snicky]

Not sure about America, but I don't understand what do you mean by saying that being white anywhere in the world comes with priviliges. I am a white male from a Eastern European country where 99.9% of people are the same race. How am I priviliged and in comparison to who?

[mushbino]

Historically, predominantly white empires colonize territories that aren't white. If you're black, brown, indigenous, you're most likely from a former or current colony. It's been used as a justification for blatant exploitation.

This type of marginalization has happened and is still currently happening in Eastern Europe, but it's done around ethnic and/or religious lines. The most obvious examples of this are the the treatment of Jews and more recently the Bosniaks in the Balkans. It also happened in Russia to the Cossacks and Crimean Tatars, among others. It operates on the same principal.

[snicky]

Sorry, but I still don't understand your point. How am I priviliged if people from a foreign country colonized another part of the world? I and my ancestors didn't have anything to do with this. Our country was, in fact, "colonized" for more than a hundred years too.

All the minority groups you just mentioned are also Caucasian, so they are priviliged, but at the same time they... are not? In your original post you made a racial claim that just didn't make much sense to me at all, same as all race-related stereotypes that try to somehow classify groups of billions.

[mushbino]

It's purely tribalism at its heart. It's much easier to exploit a group if they are perceived as different. Skin color and looks are the easiest things to distinguish one group from another. It's more challenging to marginalize a group if they can be seen as just like you and me.

In the Americas, the dominant group, both financially and politically has been people with lighter skin. This is how we've been trained to think for a very long time and it persists to this day. Had history played out differently and people with dark skin did the colonizing to people with white skin, things would be different, but that's not the case.

This same thing has been done to Jews in Europe and elsewhere for a couple thousand years. These groups of people who are "different" have been used as convenient scapegoats, which we know has played a central role in civilization since the very beginning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoating

To bring it back to the US, the black population and eventually the Hispanic population have been used as scapegoats for white societies to look at as the source of their problems. It's a way of maintaining social cohesion (in the dominant group).

[0-_-0]

Some more information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Hungary#Ethnic_changes...

[john_moscow]

You are educated, smart and self-reliant. You are a threat to the Politburo and ought to be replaced with someone helpless, dependent and loyal. Everything else is just optics.

[AmericanChopper]

My parents were both drug addicts. How can I get in touch with their Ivy League network contacts?

[mushbino]

This can be debated on a case by case basis, but that's not how racism works. We're talking statistics here. If you're white in the US you are statistically more likely to have privileges not afforded to others.

If you're white re you more likely to be successful and face less discrimination from your point of birth going forward? Yes you are.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/race-report-statistic...

[AmericanChopper]

What you’re doing here is using the color of somebody’s skin to make very broad assumptions about the experiences of their life. Aside from the fact that these assumptions will often just be flat out wrong, it’s also a very racist way of viewing other people, and an especially arrogant way of treating them.

If you think people who are systemically disadvantaged deserve some additional help, then target it to people who are systemically disadvantaged. You can do that without without creating any racial discrimination, or any of the harm that comes along with it.

[mushbino]

If you take a historical map of the US slave population and overlay that with the concentration of the black population in the Southern US today and then overlay that with a map of median income, avg life expectancy, education, etc. you'll see a very clear connection.

I agree that a more level playing field along income lines would create a more fair and just society, but you're talking about a problem that the free market cannot solve and would lead to an argument for a very different type of economic model. I'm all for it, but it's a tough sell in the US.

[t-writescode]

Further, if you do make it through the rough parts of your life and push through and find yourself in a situation where you _could_ get a job in some industrious, high-paying field, like hires like, so the reality that many other people of your ethnicity DO have those privileges allows you to take advantage of them, too because "oh hey, I was interviewing that guy and we really got along. he's just like me!"

[scarmig]

As an interesting thought experiment:

Suppose we created a national social graph, and gave each person a value in it. High prestige, high social access people automatically get a certain high rating, and other nodes are given fractional social access ratings dependent on their neighboring nodes. The devil's in the details here, but you get the idea.

Affirmative action could then be targeted depending on your level of social access. The less you have, the more affirmative action you get. This would allow for a lot more mixing of the social graph and result in a gradual leveling over time.

Is this appealing, in lieu of race-based affirmative action?

[t-writescode]

How would you go about selling and implementing this in a way that wouldn't be political suicide?

[AmericanChopper]

It is racist to implement systems of racial discrimination. There is no way that you could modify the meaning of the word racism to the point that it no longer includes racial discrimination.

Racism also doesn’t presuppose any particular motive. There are many reasons that somebody could choose to be racist, and if you look at real world racists, you’ll find that they offer a wide variety of justifications for their views. Just as you have done in this comment. You are making the argument that your racism is morally righteous, and that it will create positive outcome (which, coincidentally, certainly isn’t an uncommon position for racists to take).

You’ve also made the mistake of presuming that the problem you describe requires a racist solution. It absolutely doesn’t. If wealth creates more inter-generational wealth, and poverty creates more inter-generational poverty, then you need a solution for social mobility, not to artificially elevate people based on ethnic group membership (which of course also disadvantages others based on their different ethnic group membership). A poor white or Asian kid, who’s family has always been poor, is going to face the same socio-economic disadvantages that you’re describing, and a wealthy black kid isn’t going to be facing them at all. The solution your offering (aside from being racist) doesn’t solve the problem you’re describing. In many cases, it actually makes it worse, because if you look at how such systems operate, you’ll find that a decent portion of the people who benefit from them actually come from relatively well off families.