Hacker News Reader

Comment by datsci_est_2015 | Hacker News Reader

datsci_est_2015

And mainstream conservative justification, including the US Supreme Court, is that because this is not overtly racist in its design, but just coincidentally racist in its impact, it has plausible deniability. Basically an extension of the “racism is over” school of thought.

And an extension of the progressive / conservative disagreement between how a system is designed vs. the impacts of a system determines its fairness and justness.

Edit: funny, I pre-sniped the sibling responses to your comment.

View on HN

I appreciate you called out the more fundamental disagreement here: "... the progressive / conservative disagreement between how a system is designed vs. the impacts of a system determines its fairness and justness."

I think a lot of people miss this or pretend that the conservative position is just old-school racism (although it definitely is sometimes). But there are really hard philosophical, ethical, and political questions at the base of a lot our political problems. I think it helps keep people from arguing past each other if they can find out where the really "hard" part of their political disagreement actually is.

It’s called disparate impact more specifically, but that term is unfortunately increasingly politicized as it’s inconvenient.

That's not "unfortunate". It was a deliberate choice. Any term used to describe the problem is treated as if it meant something bad, and then we're told we can't talk about it because it's "politicized". As if the entire point of the political process was about something other than resolving disagreements.

Conservative position is the old school racism, just with a dishonest excuse on top of it.

Those systems are not having disparate impats randomly. They were deaigned that way on purpose.

Your framing is fundamentally illiberal. Refraining from engaging using “well deep in your heart” excuses means you can self-righteously ignore any position you disagree with and never have to face real argument. And it is wonderfully non-falsifiable, so you can always use it!

This isn't a "deep in your heart" excuse. It's a documented conservative strategy for decades.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...

https://adams.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/supreme-cou...

It is not "illiberal'. It is descriptive and objective. As opposed to pretending I am naive dumbo.

I did not engaged in "well deep down". I said "the motivation is clearly that. Even openly stated again and again and again whenever in front of symphatetic audience"

I highly recommend the video series "The Alt-Right Playbook" (in the sense of an expose, not a how-to) which has an episode dedicated to this, titled "Always a Bigger Fish". [0], which goes into how people might be talking "past" one-another.

______

> Your conservative friend is often baffled as to what you're even trying to say when you point out there's not enough high-paying jobs or affordable health plans for everyone.

> There's not supposed to be. The system requires an underclass. Someone's gotta clean the toilets.

> Capitalism, then, is a proving ground: it's how you demonstrate where in the hierarchy you deserve to be. Do you have more than you need, or less?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs&list=PLJA_jUddXv...

I'm sure the video goes into more depth, but the "inevitability of hierarchy" explanation has never made sense to me.

If reactionaries place more importance on hierarchy, then shouldn't this mean accepting the hierarchy as it stands and knowing their place in it? Progressive beliefs are often seen as being a product of out of touch affluenza, so [stereotypical] progressives' relative direction in the hierarchy should be clear. Meanwhile the underclass below them with shittier jobs should make them feel content from being above a different group of people - illegal labor especially puts even more people below them!

Rather what they would seem to want is some other hierarchy where they sit higher. And while it's completely understandable to want to improve your position, it's specious to give this credit as some noble abstract belief in hierarchy rather than mere zero-sum scrapping to improve their lot.

So at least to me, reactionary propaganda exploiting people's sense of an [unfair] hierarchy doesn't seem like anything particularly different than reactionary propaganda exploiting people's sense of $whatever else to get them riled up and turn off their ability to reason or communicate. It's never actually about the lofty value, but rather emotional appeals to how you've been wronged so let's get revenge.

Progressive thinkers like Ibram X. Kendi believe every single policy issue must be evaluated on the basis of whether it happens to impact different races differently. Essentially turning the state into a gigantic social engineering project.

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-racial-crossroads/

Unlike conservative agenda of ... massive social engineering? Like, conservatives openly talk about shaping society the way they want it, punishing those who dont conform and try to pass laws to do so.

And the alternative for you is to just ignore that any law (or government action) has any different impact on race at all? Why are we arguing at the extremes? What alternative history must one subscribe to in order to believe that ignoring disparate impact won’t end in humans rights abuses? Have you even heard about something like how nuclear testing and proliferation disproportionately impacted the Navajo nation especially because they had absolutely no recourse against it? Are we just supposed to say “tough luck”? “Might makes right?” “Should’ve gotten a better lawyer?”

I don't actually believe that it disproportionately affected the Navajo nation. I believe that it affected the Navajo nation some because a lot of nuclear tests were done in the remote western deserts which is where the Navajo reservation is. And I believe that some people who claimed they were advocating for Navajo interests claimed this constituted an offense against them in such a way that it justifies some kind of disparate action law. But I don't actually believe that Navajo were more affected than non-Navajo by nuclear testing; and I don't want people to be able to claim that they were in such a way that it creates any kind of legal obligation on non-Navajo.

I think we can start with just ignoring skin color and just be people, just be Americans.

>And the alternative for you is to just ignore that any law (or government action) has any different impact on race at all?

I mean, every law will inevitably impact different groups at least a little differently. I'm not a fan of obsessing about race every time a law is written, no.

>What alternative history must one subscribe to in order to believe that ignoring disparate impact won’t end in humans rights abuses?

This seems like sloppy reasoning. If a person's rights are being violated, they ought to be able to make that argument in court without reference to disparate impact.

What we've seen in the US is the 90s "judge people as individuals" paradigm has been replaced by a "racial collectivism" paradigm. In recent years, this new paradigm was initially mainstream on the left, then became mainstream on the right:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg

The "racial collectivism" paradigm is corrosive to individual rights, no matter who wields it. Furthermore, collectivist activity on the part of one ethnic group ends up being countered by collectivist activity on the part of other ethnic groups, in a doom spiral. The result is descent into hateful sectarianism. Scroll through X on any Tuesday to see what I mean.

>nuclear testing and proliferation disproportionately impacted the Navajo nation especially because they had absolutely no recourse against it? Are we just supposed to say “tough luck”? “Might makes right?” “Should’ve gotten a better lawyer?”

Consider a hypothetical where the town near the nuclear test has a population which is a perfect microcosm of the US in terms of race, gender, age, class, etc. No "disparate impact" argument can be possibly made in this hypothetical, since all of the racial "collectives" are equally harmed.

Does this change the fact that the nuclear tests are harming people? Or the best approaches to the problem?

Racial collectivism just isn't a good approach. People are more responsive to the needs of others when they view them as fellow humans or fellow citizens, not representatives of alien collectives.

> This seems like sloppy reasoning. If a person's rights are being violated, they ought to be able to make that argument in court without reference to disparate impact.

Where does that leave the equal protection clause?

> every law will inevitably impact different groups at least a little differently

What if a large portion of laws systematically impacts one group negatively?

Sometimes it happens. Taxation can systematically impact rich people negatively, for instance.

Right. So we shouldn't take the effects of taxation into account when making tax laws?

Yes, but just because a law disproportionately hurts a particular group is not necessarily a problem.

Correct, not necessarily. But if it is, that should be considered.

> >And the alternative for you is to just ignore that any law (or government action) has any different impact on race at all?

> I mean, every law will inevitably impact different groups at least a little differently. I'm not a fan of obsessing about race every time a law is written, no.

If it affected you directly, you might care.

Because it doesn't, you are in the position to pick and choose what you give your interest and energy to.

In a democracy, voters are free to petition their elected officials regarding policies which affect them. I think that should usually be enough.

It's not, as those policies allow those in power and currently benefiting from the status quo to abuse minorities. It's why rights and equal protections have to be codified.

> turning the state into a gigantic social engineering project

What do you think the state is but a gigantic social engineering project?

I hate this line of thinking. It's hard to argue that Republicans are strictly racist when you have people like Tim Scott in respected positions. Literally Condoleezza Rice was the Secretary of State. If we are going to take racism seriously, race needs to be the causal mechanism... not culture, not politics.

The distinction between cultural differences and something like strict colorism make this a difficult issue to adjudicate. Correlation does not imply causation, and looking at nontrivial counter-examples should be helpful.

It's really difficult to argue the party's goal in gerrymandering is trying to prevent black people from gaining significant positions in government when the same party is electing and appointing black folks to significant positions in government.

I say this as a lefty.

The presence of token minorities doesn't change the intention or effect of their policies.

There aren't enough rich people out there for Republicans to win elections based on the votes of people their policies actually help. They use things like racism and transphobia to energize voters among groups they hurt (such as folks relying on medicaid, social security, farm subsidies, clean air and water, etc.)

The presence of many token minorities, some of which are elected by popular vote, does undermine the argument that the point is to stop minorities from achieving elected office.

Again, you are conflating racism with passing policies that harm groups that correlate with race. Those are not the same thing.

The point of the Civil Rights Act was that many southern states were trying to stop black people from achieving office because they were black. They weren't trying to infringe the voting rights of white liberals. There is a world of difference between trying to end Medicare and trying to end Medicare... only for minorities.

> you are conflating racism with passing policies that harm groups that correlate with race. Those are not the same thing.

Authors of the voting rights act understood that the former is so often a veneer for the latter that they are functionally the same thing. You are making the same argument as mid-century racist policymakers that were defeated by the VRA. Back then you would argue that Poll taxes and voter tests aren't illegal, they just prevent the indigent and uneducated from voting. Well those policies were the beating heart of Jim Crow, which the VRA intended to defeat.

You essentially argue that policymakers should enjoy the right to quietly undermine minority voting power up until the point where they explicitly say "and I'm doing this because I'm a racist targeting minorities". Well we've been there. It's been illegal to make laws directly against racial groups since reconstruction. This is why much of Jim Crow was built on a foundation of targeting adjacent traits rather than race specifically, and why many lament the defanging of the VRA.

>Authors of the voting rights act understood that the former is so often a veneer for the latter that they are functionally the same thing.

You can't say this with a straight face. Before the civil rights act we literally had white's only sections of businesses. Separate-but-unequal was the apartheid of the South. That just doesn't exist anymore in any kind of open and accepted way, thank god.

>You essentially argue that policymakers should enjoy the right to quietly undermine minority voting power up until the point where they explicitly say "and I'm doing this because I'm a racist targeting minorities".

Again, I'm not saying that at all, the Supreme Court isn't saying that either. You are again conflating minorities as a singular voting bloc with a singular voting interest. The entire point here is that there is plenty of evidence that this is about politics, not about race.

I think gerrymandering is atrocious. I think we should move to a proportional voting system where gerrymandering is no longer achievable. The idea that 25% of a population can dictate government control to the other 75% of the population by drawing arbitrary lines is atrocious. I just think it's quite clear that this isn't happening to suppress the vote along racial lines.

The idea here is that I think it's quite plausible that black republicans are being used along gerrymandering line to help elect republicans. If it were about race... then black republicans would also need to be disenfranchised.

Jim Crow was very obviously terrible... it was also very overt and obvious. I grew up in Texas, and the idea that the right is a secret cabal of racists trying to create some kind of white government is insane. The idea that the general socioeconomic concerns of the black community put most black voters on the political left makes vastly more sense, and it also explains the significantly larger numbers of Hispanic representatives on the Texas right.

It's not one data point. There is plenty of evidence that this is about politics... not about race.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com