Comment by braythwayt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by braythwayt | Hacker News Reader

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Your entire argument is based on a false dichotomy. You say “There is no racism, everything can be explained by black people” and then try to demonstrate that black people have some problem or other.

But this is like saying that a road cannot be unsafe, look, here are statistics showing that some of the people who drive are drunk.

You trying to demonstrate that black people this or black people that in aggregate does not in any way invalidate the proposition that there is systemic racism.

Racism is, quite simply, when individuals are not judged on their merits, but on their membership in a class. If you say to me that statistically this or that or the other thing about American Blacks, that does not in any way say that individuals are not being judged and incurring negative opportunities because of their being black.

If anything, the message you are putting out is, “Yes, there is racism, but look, here is why it is justified.” I have debunked this argument before, and I won’t waste my time retyping the entire thing out.

“Racism is Socially Engineered Injustice:” http://braythwayt.com/2016/03/30/racism-is-injustice.html

And you are definitely attempting to socially engineer injustice. Witness the fact that in this alleged rebuttal, you ignored the major accusation I made: That you are denying racism exists.

What you did id completely ignore that and go back to trying to prattle on about how bad black people are. So I charge you again: Why are you so invested in getting people to believe that there is no racism?

What are you working so hard to prevent?

When riding a bike, I think it is wise to judge the class "car drivers on Saturday night," different than the class "car drivers on Tuesday afternoon," because "car drivers on Saturday night" are more likely to be drunk.

I ignored all the stuff where you went off the rails and started making wacky accusations, or whatever, it wasn't particularly clear...

My only mention of blacks was in showing how the talking point of "arrested more often for the same crimes(drug possession)" doesn't hold up to scrutiny when you consider how often those drug crimes are occurring in combination with other more serious crimes. In that case it is perfectly reasonable to talk in aggregate, since that is what you were doing in relaying that faulty stat.

that does not in any way say that individuals are not being judged and incurring negative opportunities because of their being black.

Whether that is occurring and to what degree cannot be said. Even if it could, what do you want to do about it? You can't just re-education camp everyone until they meet your standards.

Human nature doesn't work that way. But maybe you can take solace in knowing that biases may present themselves not just about racial groups. Saturday night drivers may be judged differently than other days, men may be judged more suspiciously around small children than women, investments more likely to return money may be judged as more favorable places to put money.

This is clearly a personal issue for you. I think we agree that we both want the best for all people.

My feeling is that for a harmonious society with integrity, we need to ascribe to phenomena, causes for which there is clear evidence for a causal relationship.

If you want to ascribe "institutional racism" as the cause to certain phenomena, but the observation can be made that those same phenomena exist in environments without the institutions you are blaming, Mexican performance in Mexico vs the USA for example, then the "institutional racism" theory doesn't hold water.

But even without that avenue to negate, you would still need significant evidence to validate the "institutional racism" theory. You can't just say, "I've observed Phenomenon B, and I've theorized Cause A, so A must cause B."

Decrying "institutional racism" as this kind of ambiguous, universal menace doesn't help anybody. First you would need clear evidence of it. Then it wouldn't be ambiguous, then you could solve the problem. You can't solve ambiguous problems, they need to be specific.

If you can't even lay out clear unambiguous evidence for the problem you are trying solve, then how will you know when it is solved? What are you fighting for?

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