‘Oikophobia’: Our Western Self-Hatred as a sign of Western civilizational decline

[Lord Thesaurian]

What I think is interesting is that your second and third source say that minorities are more likely to be on the receiving end of non-lethal force and that minorities are disproportionately killed by police, (1 and 2), respectively. Your first and third sources even seem to be at odds: the first one accounts all disparity in police shootings to crime and there is no real disproportion, while the third one says that minorities are disproportionately killed by black and white officers equally. Just reading the abstracts of those papers alone show it’s not nearly as clear-cut “there is no real racism here” as you make it seem. In fact, there has been concerns about the white supremacist presence in local law enforcement for some years now, something that is just intolerable to me.

The studies are not at odds. My point is that it’s not a clear cut issue - certainly not as clear cut as the DNC/BLM would have people believe. For one thing disparity =/= racism. For another, the variations in the findings you note above are a result of different benchmarks. The census benchmark is common and that’s what people are usually talking about when discussing racial disparities.

The second study I cited indicates:

This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings.

Here the author used his own data collection from individual events of police shootings reported in the media and from police dept records.

The first:

Is there evidence of a Black–White disparity in death by police gunfire in the United States? This is commonly answered by comparing the odds of being fatally shot for Blacks and Whites, with odds benchmarked against each group’s population proportion. However, adjusting for population values has questionable assumptions given the context of deadly force decisions. We benchmark 2 years of fatal shooting data on 16 crime rate estimates. When adjusting for crime, we find no systematic evidence of anti-Black disparities in fatal shootings, fatal shootings of unarmed citizens, or fatal shootings involving misidentification of harmless objects. Multiverse analyses showed only one significant anti-Black disparity of 144 possible tests. Exposure to police given crime rate differences likely accounts for the higher per capita rate of fatal police shootings for Blacks, at least when analyzing all shootings. For unarmed shootings or misidentification shootings, data are too uncertain to be conclusive.

An interesting bit here is the authors were able to illustrate how different benchmarks can produce wildly different impressions from the data.

We first reproduce the well-known finding that Blacks are more likely to be fatally shot than Whites given population proportions. Between 2015 and 2016, 1,051 Whites and 510 Blacks were killed by police gunfire. Benchmarking these fatal police shooting data on 2015–2016 U.S. Census population values, the odds ratio for Blacks relative to Whites is 2.5, indicating that the odds were 2.5 times higher for Blacks to be killed by police compared to Whites given their population proportions.

When fatal police shootings are benchmarked against crime data rather than population proportions, a different picture emerges. Figure 1 presents the odds of being fatally shot by police given homicide (left panel), violent crime (center panel), and weapons violation (right panel) rates for Blacks and Whites. When fatal shooting data are benchmarked against the number of murder/nonnegligent manslaughter reports and arrests, the odds ratio obtained when benchmarking against population proportions flips completely. The odds were 2.7 times higher for Whites to be killed by police gunfire relative to Blacks given each group’s SRS homicide reports, 2.6 times higher for Whites given each group’s SRS homicide arrests, 2.9 times higher for Whites given each group’s NIBRS homicide reports, 3.9 times higher for Whites given each group’s NIBRS homicide arrests, and 2.5 times higher for Whites given each group’s CDC death by assault data.

The third:

The debate over possible bias in the use of deadly force has recently been exacerbated by highly publicized killings of African American males around the country. While much research has been conducted examining police behavior, little has been done to investigate the impact of race on police behavior. This article aims to answer this question: are white police officers more likely to use lethal force on minority suspects or people of a specific race? To answer this question, the authors construct a data set of all confirmed uses of lethal force by police officers in the United States in 2014 and 2015. They find that although minority suspects are disproportionately killed by police, white officers appear to be no more likely to use lethal force against minorities than nonwhite officers.

The authors note the causes of the disparity they encounter are unknown. The impression of disparity comes from the population benchmark the authors use on page 6. As explained by the authors of the first study, this assumption based on a single benchmark doesn’t hold when controlling for crime rate benchmarks and more robust testing. If racism on the part of white officers isn’t the reason for the disparity even against a single benchmark, and other studies don’t find the same disparity when using other benchmarks, those claiming to be targeted by racist cops have quite alot of homework to do before calling it a question of civil rights. Journalistic and political narratives aren’t hindered by fact, any more than are Trump’s caravans of rapist immigrants.

The structural issues created by the false narrative vis a vis police shootings and racism have already borne fruit, even if the riots aren’t a big deal, as you seem to suggest. California’s reparations initiative is facially unconstitutional, and that’s just the start of things to come, some of which I mentioned in the last post. In any case, the onus would be on those claiming racist police are a national crisis in America to prove it, not on police or the public to prove they aren’t.

[Heathen Hammer]

As far as I can tell, no, but it's not not white genocide either.

Throwing a temper tantrum over a phrase "its okay to be X" means you really hate the X group.

Take it easy, Edward Gibbon. Most historians don't ascribe Christianity as the primary cause for the fall of the Western Roman Empire anymore.

So this supposed cycle of the collapse of white Western civilizations due to self-hatred happened to Rome, except when it didn't happen to the Republic, but that actually still proves it right because it would've happened if it didn't not happen? Huh? It seems like your theory just simply can't be wrong.

Civilizations are like organisms, they can get sick and recover, or not recover and die. The sickness is establishment of leisure class that detaches itself from the rest of the civilization and views it as a resource or even an enemy.

Well, shoot, that phrase made it to the Anti-Defamation League’s database of hate symbols for a reason, so racists probably do use it. Is it too much for you to admit that you didn’t know that? The fact that they can trick non-racists to also use it and muddy the waters of who believes what doesn’t really change that it’s also a code phrase used by racists. White nationalists use dog whistles like it all the time in order to find each other and sound less extreme normal people.

I don’t see how Black Lives Matter fits into this. I’m aware of some of the excesses of people involved, but the idea that activists for reducing poverty or violence against blacks in the U.S. is functionally equivalent to white supremacists is just absurd. For one thing, American blacks are more vulnerable as a group than whites.

ADL is leftist equivalent for Stormfront (that got repeatedly pimp-slapped with defamation lawsuits), so I wouldn't really consider anything going into its, um, "database" being there for any credible reason other then extreme partisanship and bias.
"Its a code word by racists", okay, by that logic almost any phrase was used by some nefarious ideology before, including all and every call for equality, which were extensively used by Stalinist USSR and Maoist China, therefore equality is dogwhistle used by socialists to find each other and to seem less extreme to normal people, as per your own logic, am I correct?
And again, supporting black nationalism and whining about white nationalism makes one a hypocrite, nothing more, especially given how all racial groups in US are equally vulnerable.

[pacifism]

The studies are not at odds. My point is that it’s not a clear cut issue - certainly not as clear cut as the DNC/BLM would have people believe. For one thing disparity =/= racism. For another, the variations in the findings you note above are a result of different benchmarks. The census benchmark is common and that’s what people are usually talking about when discussing racial disparities.

The second study I cited indicates:

Here the author used his own data collection from individual events of police shootings reported in the media and from police dept records.

The first:

An interesting bit here is the authors were able to illustrate how different benchmarks can produce wildly different impressions from the data.

The third:

The authors note the causes of the disparity they encounter are unknown. The impression of disparity comes from the population benchmark the authors use on page 6. As explained by the authors of the first study, this assumption based on a single benchmark doesn’t hold when controlling for crime rate benchmarks and more robust testing.

Racial disparities are not a sign of racism? The correlation between the two is obvious enough, depending on your definition of racism. The WaPo database showed that armed and unarmed blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately shot by active duty police. Contrary to your first source, the PLOS article I cited uses Bayesian analysis on the county level and also included income and crime rates and found that crime rates do not account for the racial disparity in fatal police shootings. Poverty doesn’t seem to fully explain it either. Perhaps there are some methodology shenanigans afoot, but I don’t know that because I can only read the abstract of your first source.

If racism on the part of white officers isn’t the reason for the disparity even against a single benchmark, and other studies don’t find the same disparity when using other benchmarks, those claiming to be targeted by racist cops have quite alot of homework to do before calling it a question of civil rights. Journalistic and political narratives aren’t hindered by fact, any more than are Trump’s caravans of rapist immigrants.

The structural issues created by the false narrative vis a vis police shootings and racism have already borne fruit, even if the riots aren’t a big deal, as you seem to suggest. California’s reparations initiative is facially unconstitutional, and that’s just the start of things to come, some of which I mentioned in the last post. In any case, the onus would be on those claiming racist police are a national crisis in America to prove it, not on police or the public to prove they aren’t.

Let’s not pretend like you addressed the crux of what I argued. Don’t complain about someone not doing their homework when you won’t even grade most of my assignment.

My point wasn’t that I don’t care about insurance costs of riots, it’s that maybe you don’t actually care about the insurance costs as much as you let on. If you were consistent about the tragedy of property damage so much, you would be writing hundreds of posts about the need to take environmentalist action now instead of just redbaiting BLM all the time.

Throwing a temper tantrum over a phrase "its okay to be X" means you really hate the X group.

Cute. And almost on cue, too. 6/10

Civilizations are like organisms, they can get sick and recover, or not recover and die. The sickness is establishment of leisure class that detaches itself from the rest of the civilization and views it as a resource or even an enemy.

Then I’m afraid I don’t see the use of your theory, if it can go either way. Is this “self-hatred” supposed to be a symptom of decline, or the cause of decline? If it’s a symptom, why treat a symptom instead of the cause? If it’s the cause, why are there counterexamples of recoveries that never targeted it?

What do you even think is the solution to the phenomenon you think is taking place?

ADL is leftist equivalent for Stormfront (that got repeatedly pimp-slapped with defamation lawsuits), so I wouldn't really consider anything going into its, um, "database" being there for any credible reason other then extreme partisanship and bias.
"Its a code word by racists", okay, by that logic almost any phrase was used by some nefarious ideology before, including all and every call for equality, which were extensively used by Stalinist USSR and Maoist China, therefore equality is dogwhistle used by socialists to find each other and to seem less extreme to normal people, as per your own logic, am I correct?
And again, supporting black nationalism and whining about white nationalism makes one a hypocrite, nothing more, especially given how all racial groups in US are equally vulnerable.

I would love to see your pitch for why the Anti-Defamation League is equivalent to left-wing Stormfront. You do realize that ADL has been criticized by leftist groups too, right? And it’s not like they’re the only organization to report that “it’s okay to be white” was being promoted on The Daily Stormer and David Duke’s website.

The whole point of dog-whistles is plausible deniability. That’s why I’m not trying to speculate what your actual views are, unlike you, because I don’t presume to know them. I’m not saying that any political movement monopolizes on dog-whistles either. Segregationists in the U.S. south who were “merely fighting for state’s rights” were using dog-whistles, Jeremy Corbyn attaching himself to rhetoric that tied into anti-Semitic canards was using dog-whistles, and Hillary Clinton’s reference to “urban” superpredator gangs invoked imagery of fearing the dangerous nonwhite man, which was also a dog-whistle. Far-right types on the internet using "ironic humor" and dog-whistles is a well-documented phenomenon. Sometimes, it isn’t so much the intention of the speaker as it is the interpretation of the recipients that is problematic. Corbyn probably doesn’t actually hate “The Jews”, but actual anti-Semites would have been very pleased with what he was accidentally or intentionally implying. Under Mao and Stalin, if “promoting equality” actually meant shooting or starving dissidents, then yes, they were using the word as a dog-whistle. Nowadays, we know that that was how they thought they should achieve their idea of equality, so it’s not so much a dog-whistle as it is just a poor definition of equality and an evil means of reaching it.

Accusing someone of using a dog-whistle is a risky business. I’m not accusing you of intentionally doing so, but I’m informing you that the phrase “it’s okay to be white” has been used by actual racists as a benign cover, when they are actually trying to say (1) that society is moving eliminate the problematic white race or whatever and (2) reaffirm that there’s therefore nothing wrong with the fourteen words. So it’s not so much that someone is using words and racists use words too, it’s using words that racist also use when they’re trying spread racial antagonism and recruit people into their circles.

Also, I never said I support black nationalism. I said it was different than white nationalism. In part because the U.S. was a white supremacist nation for some time, but it was never a black supremacist nation. Slavery, discrimination, and disenfranchisement made black communities poorer and more vulnerable in a way that it never did to white ones.

[Heathen Hammer]

Then I’m afraid I don’t see the use of your theory, if it can go either way. Is this “self-hatred” supposed to be a symptom of decline, or the cause of decline? If it’s a symptom, why treat a symptom instead of the cause? If it’s the cause, why are there counterexamples of recoveries that never targeted it?

What do you even think is the solution to the phenomenon you think is taking place?

As I said, oikophobia is a symptom of the cause, which is the existence of permanent cosmopolitan leisure class. The only long-term solution that I see is dismantling of the current international finance system that enables this class, as well as reforming domestic laws and tackling the problem of private interest groups being able to influence governments on policy level.

I would love to see your pitch for why the Anti-Defamation League is equivalent to left-wing Stormfront. You do realize that ADL has been criticized by leftist groups too, right? And it’s not like they’re the only organization to report that “it’s okay to be white” was being promoted on The Daily Stormer and David Duke’s website.

The whole point of dog-whistles is plausible deniability. That’s why I’m not trying to speculate what your actual views are, unlike you, because I don’t presume to know them. I’m not saying that any political movement monopolizes on dog-whistles either. Segregationists in the U.S. south who were “merely fighting for state’s rights” were using dog-whistles, Jeremy Corbyn attaching himself to rhetoric that tied into anti-Semitic canards was using dog-whistles, and Hillary Clinton’s reference to “urban” superpredator gangs invoked imagery of fearing the dangerous nonwhite man, which was also a dog-whistle. Far-right types on the internet using "ironic humor" and dog-whistles is a well-documented phenomenon. Sometimes, it isn’t so much the intention of the speaker as it is the interpretation of the recipients that is problematic. Corbyn probably doesn’t actually hate “The Jews”, but actual anti-Semites would have been very pleased with what he was accidentally or intentionally implying. Under Mao and Stalin, if “promoting equality” actually meant shooting or starving dissidents, then yes, they were using the word as a dog-whistle. Nowadays, we know that that was how they thought they should achieve their idea of equality, so it’s not so much a dog-whistle as it is just a poor definition of equality and an evil means of reaching it.

Accusing someone of using a dog-whistle is a risky business. I’m not accusing you of intentionally doing so, but I’m informing you that the phrase “it’s okay to be white” has been used by actual racists as a benign cover, when they are actually trying to say (1) that society is moving eliminate the problematic white race or whatever and (2) reaffirm that there’s therefore nothing wrong with the fourteen words. So it’s not so much that someone is using words and racists use words too, it’s using words that racist also use when they’re trying spread racial antagonism and recruit people into their circles.

Also, I never said I support black nationalism. I said it was different than white nationalism. In part because the U.S. was a white supremacist nation for some time, but it was never a black supremacist nation. Slavery, discrimination, and disenfranchisement made black communities poorer and more vulnerable in a way that it never did to white ones.

Again, ADL's track record of paying millions in defamation damages shows that it is simply not a credible source and is little more then a hyper-partisan mouthpiece pretending to be objective to less politically mature and more gullible left-wing audience, for sake of spreading propaganda.
"Dog whistle" is just an elaborate way to present your private assumption is factual "well, they are not saying X because they really are saying Y to appeal to Z". As the Dude says, that's, just like your opinion, man. One can tie any phrase to any political movement and make an argument that its a "dogwhistle". Hence why trying to justify oikophobic left throwing a racist temper tantrum over the notion of being of specific race is okay is either showing your bias or being unable to objectively assess the information. In fact, far-left trying to tie rather neutral and middle-of-the-road statements like IOTBW to "far-right" is only advertising well, the far-right. Kinda like 80s Evangelicals made Satanism cool and normal because of "Satanic Panic".

[Lord Thesaurian]

Racial disparities are not a sign of racism? The correlation between the two is obvious enough, depending on your definition of racism. The WaPo database showed that armed and unarmed blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately shot by active duty police. Contrary to your first source, the PLOS article I cited uses Bayesian analysis on the county level and also included income and crime rates and found that crime rates do not account for the racial disparity in fatal police shootings. Poverty doesn’t seem to fully explain it either. Perhaps there are some methodology shenanigans afoot, but I don’t know that because I can only read the abstract of your first source.

I wouldn’t classify information that contradicts your viewpoint as “shenanigans” by default, any more than I would consider perceived disparities a confirmation just because you consider the inference to be obvious. As I said, the lack of an explanation for disparity based on census data does not mean racism must therefore be the cause. The studies you cite don’t make such claims. Why are you? I already quoted the methodology of the first study I cited; you can read the full pdf here. The PLOS study you referred to constructs a theoretical framework to build a “risk ratio” or probability of being shot by police relative to racial census data. As I said, the population benchmark is, to my knowledge, the primary basis of allegations of racial disparity in those studies that highlight it. The PLOS author seems to confirm this as well:

In each model that considers them, race-specific crime rates are always entered as simultaneous predictors (see Tables 1 and 2). This model parameterization allows us to examine the effects of race-specific crime rates on racial bias in police shootings. However, there are questions that this model parameterization precludes. Most importantly, having an aggregated measure of crime rate would allow one to test the questions: 1) does racial bias in police shooting increase in areas where crime is generally more prevalent? And, 2) as the difference of black crime rate minus white crime rate increases, does racial bias in police shootings also increase?

As a robustness check, the results from two alternative model parameterizations in predicting the relative risk of being {unarmed, black, and shot by police} to being {unarmed, white, and shot by police} are presented. These models are based on including the sum and difference of race-specific crime rates in the regression; see Appendix.pdf in S1 File. The results of these supplementary models are qualitatively the same as those of the main models; racial bias in police shooting is not reliably associated with crime rate and not related to the difference in race-specific crime rates.

.......

It is important to reiterate that these risk ratios come only from the sample of individuals who were shot by police and census data on race/ethnicity-specific population information. The USPSD does not have information on encounter rates between police and subjects according to ethnicity. As such, the data cannot speak to the relative risk of being shot by a police officer conditional on being encountered by police, and do not give us a direct window into the psychology of the officers who are pulling the triggers. The racial biases and behaviors of officers upon encountering a suspect could clearly be components of the relative risk effects observed in the data, but other social factors could also contribute to the observed patterns in the data. More specifically, heterogeneity in encounter rates between suspects and police as a function of race could play a strong role in the racial biases in shooting rates presented here.

So, when the author says “racial bias in police shootings,” he nevertheless qualifies that he does not mean racial bias on the part of the officers doing the shooting, nor does he seem to have an explanation for the perceived bias he highlights. The takeaway is basically the observation of disparity relative to racial population, which was acknowledged and accounted for in the study you suggest is “contradicted” by it:

We present an analysis of the odds of being killed by police gunfire for Blacks versus Whites, benchmarked against mea- sures of criminal activity for each race. Data on fatal police shootings are compiled across a 2-year period, 2015–2016, taken from The Guardian’s online database (The Counted, 2016). This database is more complete than official federal databases; police departments underreport to the federal gov- ernment by *50% (Davis & Lowery, 2015; Klinger, Rosen- feld, Isom, & Deckard, 2016; Nix et al., 2017; White, 2016). We analyze all fatal shootings, fatal shootings in which citizens were unarmed and not aggressing against police, and fatal shootings involving misidentification of a harmless object for a weapon.

We ask whether Blacks or Whites are more likely to be fatally shot when benchmarking fatal police shooting data on three classes of criminal report data from 2015 to 2016: mur- der/nonnegligent manslaughter, violent crime, and weapons violations. These three categories of crime are the most aggres- sive in terms of interpersonal violence and, as such, are appro- priate proxies for exposure to those situations during which police may be more likely to use deadly force. (See Online Sup- plemental Material #1 for detail on calculating these values across data sets.) We ask, given each group’s involvement in criminal activity, is there evidence of racial disparity in fatal shootings of Black versus White citizens?
As actual crime rates cannot be known for certain, they must be approximated or inferred from some measure. We estimate criminal activity of Blacks and Whites from four sources: (1) the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) Summary Report System (SRS), (2) the FBI’s National Incident-Based Report- ing System (NIBRS), (3) the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), and (4) the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) WONDER database.

Odds ratios are calculated by comparing the odds of being fatally shot for Blacks given Black crime rates with the odds of being fatally shot for Whites given White crime rates. Odds are calculated using the data in Table 1 by benchmarking the average 2015 and 2016 fatal police shooting data (within race) on the average 2015 and 2016 crime data (within race).1

In sum, in nearly every case, Whites were either more likely to be fatally shot by police or police showed no significant dis- parity in either direction. Although Blacks have greater odds of being fatally shot given population proportions, Whites overall were more likely to be fatally shot given each group’s involve- ment in those situations where the police may be more likely to use deadly force.

Let’s not pretend like you addressed the crux of what I argued. Don’t complain about someone not doing their homework when you won’t even grade most of my assignment.

Let’s not pretend I didn’t address your argument which was made in response to my post, just because I didn’t take the time to pick apart all your red herring claims about racial disparities, which attempted to establish by inference that which you couldn’t or wouldn’t establish directly. These did not conflict with the claims made by the studies I cited and which you’ve disputed.

My point wasn’t that I don’t care about insurance costs of riots, it’s that maybe you don’t actually care about the insurance costs as much as you let on. If you were consistent about the tragedy of property damage so much, you would be writing hundreds of posts about the need to take environmentalist action now instead of just redbaiting BLM all the time.

Impugning my motives by inference, accusing me of redbaiting on account of your own presumed ideological or political sympathies, and deflecting to “what about wildfires” would all suggest some disingenuous intent on your part if anything, not mine. All I did was indicate that empirical analysis doesn’t provide conclusive evidence of racial differences in fatal police shootings in the US when controlling for contextual factors, which is true. The PLOS study and other data you provided in an apparent attempt to refute the study(s) I linked to don’t even attempt to do so.

[athanaric]

Cute. And almost on cue, too. 6/10

For the record, do you think it is ok to be white or not?

[Cope]

Racial disparities are not a sign of racism? The correlation between the two is obvious enough, depending on your definition of racism. The WaPo database showed that armed and unarmed blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately shot by active duty police. Contrary to your first source, the PLOS article I cited uses Bayesian analysis on the county level and also included income and crime rates and found that crime rates do not account for the racial disparity in fatal police shootings. Poverty doesn’t seem to fully explain it either. Perhaps there are some methodology shenanigans afoot, but I don’t know that because I can only read the abstract of your first source.

1. Correlation does not imply causation. There is no reason to expect an equal distribution of persons belonging to particular groups across all (or frankly any) fields.

2. The assumption of discrimination is typically applied selectively; it is rarely (to use an educational example) invoked to explain the over-representation of women in higher education, the disproportionate number of Jewish people at elite universities or the alarming oversaturation of liberals in humanities faculties.

3. Extraordinary evidence would be needed to prove the existence of systemic racism in a society where anti-discriminatory measures are codified (both by law and policy) in every major institution and where racism is treated as a cardinal social sin punishable by exile from polite society. Pointing to the nebulous concept of implicit bias (which is typically more severe among non-whites than whites) as an explanation for disparate group outcomes is insufficient.

My point wasn’t that I don’t care about insurance costs of riots, it’s that maybe you don’t actually care about the insurance costs as much as you let on. If you were consistent about the tragedy of property damage so much, you would be writing hundreds of posts about the need to take environmentalist action now instead of just redbaiting BLM all the time.

No one intentionally causes property damage via disinterest or disbelief in global heating. It can be argued that the climate is changing as a consequence of apathy, incompetence and/or greed, not that extreme weather events are being summoned by oil tycoons and Republican policy makers. Equally (and without wanting to go into to detail) there is a case to be made that the costs associated with aggressively refitting the world with green technology (Sanders proposed $16 tn over ten years) are greater than the costs which will be incurred if a slower, market based transition is pursued.

The whole point of dog-whistles is plausible deniability. That’s why I’m not trying to speculate what your actual views are, unlike you, because I don’t presume to know them. I’m not saying that any political movement monopolizes on dog-whistles either. Segregationists in the U.S. south who were “merely fighting for state’s rights” were using dog-whistles, Jeremy Corbyn attaching himself to rhetoric that tied into anti-Semitic canards was using dog-whistles, and Hillary Clinton’s reference to “urban” superpredator gangs invoked imagery of fearing the dangerous nonwhite man, which was also a dog-whistle. Far-right types on the internet using "ironic humor" and dog-whistles is a well-documented phenomenon. Sometimes, it isn’t so much the intention of the speaker as it is the interpretation of the recipients that is problematic. Corbyn probably doesn’t actually hate “The Jews”, but actual anti-Semites would have been very pleased with what he was accidentally or intentionally implying. Under Mao and Stalin, if “promoting equality” actually meant shooting or starving dissidents, then yes, they were using the word as a dog-whistle. Nowadays, we know that that was how they thought they should achieve their idea of equality, so it’s not so much a dog-whistle as it is just a poor definition of equality and an evil means of reaching it.

By which standard the phrases "white privilege", "toxic masculinity", "white Jesus" and "black lives matter" (the latter of which is often deployed identically to the far-right's "It's Okay To Be White" slogan) are dog-whistles too. The concern is that these liberal expressions and their latent meanings are, unlike the aggravating IOTBW social experiment, entrenched within the mainstream as valid perspectives.

[pacifism]

I wouldn’t classify information that contradicts your viewpoint as “shenanigans” by default, any more than I would consider perceived disparities a confirmation just because you consider the inference to be obvious. As I said, the lack of an explanation for disparity based on census data does not mean racism must therefore be the cause. The studies you cite don’t make such claims. Why are you? I already quoted the methodology of the first study I cited; you can read the full pdf here. The PLOS study you referred to constructs a theoretical framework to build a “risk ratio” or probability of being shot by police relative to racial census data. As I said, the population benchmark is, to my knowledge, the primary basis of allegations of racial disparity in those studies that highlight it. The PLOS author seems to confirm this as well:

So, when the author says “racial bias in police shootings,” he nevertheless qualifies that he does not mean racial bias on the part of the officers doing the shooting, nor does he seem to have an explanation for the perceived bias he highlights. The takeaway is basically the observation of disparity relative to racial population, which was acknowledged and accounted for in the study you suggest is “contradicted” by it:

You’re really extrapolating a lot from a single word choice. The point was that I didn’t know how that first study reached its conclusions because I would’ve had to cough up $37.50 to read anything beyond the abstract. It’s obviously reasonable to favor sources that have its methods available than ones that don’t, so why didn’t you just link to the pdf in the first place? I’m sorry, but I’m just not spiteful enough to spend money to read a boring academic paper to prove some minor point or whatever. But I do really love those subtle-yet-slightly-ironic insinuations that I just simply shut down everything that I disagree with. I’m really not sure what I did to deserve that.

The paper you cited compares police shootings of blacks and whites based on certain racial crime rates: homicide, violent crime, and weapons violations. Their results, based on those crime rates, is that blacks are not disproportionately shot by police compared to whites. As you rightly quoted, that contradicts the findings of the PLOS article I cited. What doesn’t make sense to me is that one can apply those crime rates data to on unarmed people. The chances of an unarmed person being more threatening and likely to be committing homicide, violent crime, or a weapons violation strikes me as being quite low. But, unarmed black people are still disproportionately shot by police based on population. That was clear in the Guardian database that that paper uses. If racial disparities in violent crime rates sufficiently account for racial disparities in police shootings, the PLOS paper couldn’t find it. We may be able to expect police departments in higher crime areas to kill more people, but that trend is not clearly happening either.

You’re also still framing my argument in a way that makes it sound like I think police officers are a bunch of racists hunting for minorities to beat up in the streets or something. But I never actually said that. The explicit racial views of each individual officer who shot a black person doesn’t really matter to me. I would even be surprised if they are significantly more racist than a group of non-cops with similar demographics. What concerns me is that cops kill a lot of people in the U.S., and there is evidence that different races are being informally treated differently by the criminal justice system, and there is even evidence that it may not be due to crime or poverty. The evidence for each of these claims is progressively weaker or less clear, but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a problem.

Let’s not pretend I didn’t address your argument which was made in response to my post, just because I didn’t take the time to pick apart all your red herring claims about racial disparities, which attempted to establish by inference that which you couldn’t or wouldn’t establish directly. These did not conflict with the claims made by the studies I cited and which you’ve disputed.

You really didn’t. I made a minor aside on your sources before I went into my own argument.
- You didn’t address my suggestion that paternalist racism is less actively harmful than white supremacist racism.
- You didn’t address my sources that showed that white nationalist types have taken an interest in infiltrating and recruiting within local law enforcement.
- You didn’t address my argument that racial profiling and tendencies to escalate confrontations are enough to cause problems and racial disparities, if we decide that those white nationalist types are too few to “really matter”. That’s actually an argument against the idea that cops are particularly more racist than other people.

All of those are relevant to what you brought up for some reason in a discussion about the distinctions between black nationalism and white nationalism in the U.S. You’re not willing to address my main argument in that topic or this new one, you’re not obliged to, but it’s silly to just call them red herrings when it’s a topic you chose to bring up. If that’s how it works, why don’t I just call your post a bunch of red herrings and pretend like I just proved something?

Impugning my motives by inference, accusing me of redbaiting on account of your own presumed ideological or political sympathies, and deflecting to “what about wildfires” would all suggest some disingenuous intent on your part if anything, not mine. All I did was indicate that empirical analysis doesn’t provide conclusive evidence of racial differences in fatal police shootings in the US when controlling for contextual factors, which is true. The PLOS study and other data you provided in an apparent attempt to refute the study(s) I linked to don’t even attempt to do so.

Cut the sanctimonious baloney. I would never impugn on your motives. I straight-up said that you were being hypocritical.

This forum has hundreds of your posts in the last few months alone, just paragraphs, going on and on about Marxist BLM and statues and all the damage they cause. If you ever cared about property damage so much, I would expect you to at least occasionally post about other major forms of property damage too. But no, it only comes up when BLM comes up. I’m the one being disingenuous? Puh-leeze. You’re not fooling anybody. You’re being worse than I am, speculating about my intentions and behavior multiple times when I just said that you are being inconsistent.

For the record, do you think it is ok to be white or not?

What a gotchya! question. “For the record”, I express my belief in the fundamental equality of all humankind without using slogans invented by right-wing provocateurs and coopted by white nationalists, thank you.

Correlation does not imply causation. There is no reason to expect an equal distribution of groups across all (or frankly any) fields. Extraordinary evidence would be needed to prove the existence of systemic racism in a society where anti-discriminatory measures are codified (both by law and policy) in every major institution and where racism is treated as a cardinal sin punishable by social exile. Pointing to the nebulous concept of implicit bias (which is typically more severe among non-whites than whites) as an explanation for disparate group outcomes is insufficient.

Correlation does not imply causation as an adage is on slightly shakier ground when the topic is how racism manifests in an institution that used to be fairly overtly racist. Even if implicit racial bias in the criminal justice system and racial disparities in determining suspicious activity/the use of force by law enforcement have no causality(!), the two are still similar enough to expect the correlation to have a common cause or something.

No one intentionally causes property damage via disinterest or disbelief in global heating. It can be argued that the climate is changing as a consequence of apathy, incompetence and/or greed, not that extreme weather events are being summoned by oil tycoons and Republican policy makers. Equally (and without wanting to go into to detail) there is a case to be made that the costs associated with aggressively refitting the world with green technology (Sanders proposed $16 tn over ten years) are greater than the costs which will be incurred if a slower, market based transition is pursued.

Well, I’m not interested in adding the additional topic of environmentalism to this increasingly-long post of mine right now, but idea that the problem lies in disinterest or disbelief of people makes the distinction a little less clear-cut, wouldn’t you think? Plenty of people are also disinterested or disbelieving of the issues BLM tries to raise awareness of.

By which standard the phrases "white privilege", "toxic masculinity", "white Jesus" and "black lives matter" (the latter of which is often deployed identically to the far-right's "It's Okay To Be White" slogan) are dog-whistles too. The concern is that these liberal expressions and their latent meanings are, unlike the aggravating IOTBW social experiment, entrenched within the mainstream as valid perspectives.

They can be thought of that way, I suppose, but I’m not sure what the coded message those phrases are supposed to have. What message is in the undertone? Is it really something as bad as the exact form of racism that caused so many problems in the U.S.? I don't see how it's problematic to be particularly aggressive countering white nationalism since it dominated the U.S. government for most of its history in a way that progressive activists these days simply haven't.

Given the size of right-wing media and the current strength of the Republican Party, I’m not sure how mainstream or entrenched any of those terms really are.

As I said, oikophobia is a symptom of the cause, which is the existence of permanent cosmopolitan leisure class. The only long-term solution that I see is dismantling of the current international finance system that enables this class, as well as reforming domestic laws and tackling the problem of private interest groups being able to influence governments on policy level.

What’s a “permanent cosmopolitan leisure class”? Why is the international finance system to blame? Those things sound like relatively modern phenomenon, so I don’t get how it caused the fall of empires throughout history.

Again, ADL's track record of paying millions in defamation damages shows that it is simply not a credible source and is little more then a hyper-partisan mouthpiece pretending to be objective to less politically mature and more gullible left-wing audience, for sake of spreading propaganda.

Clearly not hyper partisan enough, for some peoples’ tastes. You’re still going to have to explain it to me a little bit slower how the Anti-Defamation League is equivalent to Stormfront.

"Dog whistle" is just an elaborate way to present your private assumption is factual "well, they are not saying X because they really are saying Y to appeal to Z". As the Dude says, that's, just like your opinion, man. One can tie any phrase to any political movement and make an argument that its a "dogwhistle". Hence why trying to justify oikophobic left throwing a racist temper tantrum over the notion of being of specific race is okay is either showing your bias or being unable to objectively assess the information. In fact, far-left trying to tie rather neutral and middle-of-the-road statements like IOTBW to "far-right" is only advertising well, the far-right. Kinda like 80s Evangelicals made Satanism cool and normal because of "Satanic Panic".

IOTBW was never a politically neutral phrase, and the fact that actual racists celebrated and propagated the use of that term only makes it that much worse to pretend that it’s neutral and get confused when someone criticizes using it.

EDIT: You know what? Never mind. I give up trying to explain this to you. Feel free to do a victory dance or whatever you do when your presupposed responses sufficiently wear down someone’s desire to interact with you.

[athanaric]

What a gotchya! question. “For the record”, I express my belief in the fundamental equality of all humankind without using slogans invented by right-wing provocateurs and coopted by white nationalists, thank you.

It's a simple question really. Anyone who answers "no" is a racist by definition. So yeah, it's a "gotcha" question", and a very useful one at that.
But from your answer I gather you (sort of?) agree that it's OK to be white. If you're making such a fuss about the source, just imagine how many of the things and wordings you use in your daily life might've been invented, or abused, by unsavoury characters. See how far that gets you.
I think it's a problem if you're so preoccupied with (inferred) subtext or (alleged) intentions that you can't take anything at face value, unless it's a slogan you know was made up by people in your own political corner.
Compare the reactions to "It's OK to be white" to the reactions to "Black Lives Matter". I dare say (at least from my experience) that most people who oppose the BLM movement and its political goals don't disagree with the literal meaning of the slogan. Meanwhile, the other slogan has found widespread condemnation along with its supposed originators, without the distinction that opponents of the BLM movement are capable of making.

For the record, I think it's OK to be black. Or white. Or any other colour. See? It's pretty easy. No need to rail about sinister plots and intentions, which you probably won't be able to provide proof for anyway.

[pacifism]

I do not have a problem with white people. My problem has never been "racists use words". It's using the exact words and terms racists use to simultaneously hide and spread their beliefs about race. It's antagonizing and unnecessarily lowers the discourse.

I do not think that pro-black activism or believing systemic racism exists in America is inherently anti-white, or that BLM is inherently racist against whites. Anyone can criticize BLM without saying "it's okay to be white". Anyone can criticize affirmative action without saying "anti-racist is code for anti-white", which is admittedly a more extreme example. My point is: why use questionable terminology to disagree with certain racial justice proposals when non-questionable ones already exist?

[Lord Thesaurian]

You’re really extrapolating a lot from a single word choice. The point was that I didn’t know how that first study reached its conclusions because I would’ve had to cough up $37.50 to read anything beyond the abstract. It’s obviously reasonable to favor sources that have its methods available than ones that don’t, so why didn’t you just link to the pdf in the first place? I’m sorry, but I’m just not spiteful enough to spend money to read a boring academic paper to prove some minor point or whatever. But I do really love those subtle-yet-slightly-ironic insinuations that I just simply shut down everything that I disagree with. I’m really not sure what I did to deserve that.

The paper you cited compares police shootings of blacks and whites based on certain racial crime rates: homicide, violent crime, and weapons violations. Their results, based on those crime rates, is that blacks are not disproportionately shot by police compared to whites. As you rightly quoted, that contradicts the findings of the PLOS article I cited. What doesn’t make sense to me is that one can apply those crime rates data to on unarmed people. The chances of an unarmed person being more threatening and likely to be committing homicide, violent crime, or a weapons violation strikes me as being quite low. But, unarmed black people are still disproportionately shot by police based on population. That was clear in the Guardian database that that paper uses. If racial disparities in violent crime rates sufficiently account for racial disparities in police shootings, the PLOS paper couldn’t find it. We may be able to expect police departments in higher crime areas to kill more people, but that trend is not clearly happening either.

You’re also still framing my argument in a way that makes it sound like I think police officers are a bunch of racists hunting for minorities to beat up in the streets or something. But I never actually said that. The explicit racial views of each individual officer who shot a black person doesn’t really matter to me. I would even be surprised if they are significantly more racist than a group of non-cops with similar demographics. What concerns me is that cops kill a lot of people in the U.S., and there is evidence that different races are being informally treated differently by the criminal justice system, and there is even evidence that it may not be due to crime or poverty. The evidence for each of these claims is progressively weaker or less clear, but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a problem.

The point is that you’re making an argument that police in the US are systemically racist by citing data that doesn’t indicate that. The observation of disparity is not conclusive evidence for such claims and the data/studies aren’t contradictory. Again, you’re looking at the census benchmark and wondering why it doesn’t comport with findings that control for other metrics. What I’m doing is presenting a more complete picture of the data, as opposed to looking at it from selected angles and deciding the answer must be racism, especially given that there’s no conclusive evidence the police themselves who are doing the shooting show racial bias when using deadly force.

You really didn’t. I made a minor aside on your sources before I went into my own argument.
- You didn’t address my suggestion that paternalist racism is less actively harmful than white supremacist racism.

This is something you brought up, though. I’m not interested in having a “which brand of racism is worse in your opinion and why” discussion for the purposes of some inference that was more directly addressed by relevant data.

- You didn’t address my sources that showed that white nationalist types have taken an interest in infiltrating and recruiting within local law enforcement.

- You didn’t address my argument that racial profiling and tendencies to escalate confrontations are enough to cause problems and racial disparities, if we decide that those white nationalist types are too few to “really matter”. That’s actually an argument against the idea that cops are particularly more racist than other people.

This isn’t relevant to the discussion given that we’ve already established there’s no conclusive evidence the police themselves who are doing the shooting show racial bias when using deadly force. The first study I cited specifically examines “each [racial] group’s involve- ment in those situations where the police may be more likely to use deadly force” and finds no disparity against blacks, or even finds disparities unfavorable to whites. This is a more direct analysis than the ones you sought to use as proxies for escalation, be it the possible perception of black men as more threatening, traffic stops, convictions, sentencing, etc.

All of those are relevant to what you brought up for some reason in a discussion about the distinctions between black nationalism and white nationalism in the U.S. You’re not willing to address my main argument in that topic or this new one, you’re not obliged to, but it’s silly to just call them red herrings when it’s a topic you chose to bring up. If that’s how it works, why don’t I just call your post a bunch of red herrings and pretend like I just proved something?

The point I made was that “One brand of [white identity] extremism is treated with derision and condemnation; the other [black identity extremism] with increasingly mandatory ritual praise and celebration on penalty of political, social and economic repercussions.” Your argument doesn’t appear to dispute that point, rather to detract from it with tangents that police “could still be a little racist” because of selected disparities, and “white racists are worse,” which aren’t presented in any way that would be falsifiable, even if one were to entertain the new direction you evidently would like to take the discussion. As was mentioned by your interlocutor, one would need an extraordinary amount of evidence to demonstrate that perceived disparities in outcomes between police and civilian interactions are in fact caused by racism on a sufficient size and scale.

Cut the sanctimonious baloney. I would never impugn on your motives. I straight-up said that you were being hypocritical.

Let’s not be dense. Accusing me of hypocrisy means you are taking issue with my motives for presenting my argument the way I have, rather than the substance. While this isn’t an invalid tactic on its own, your basis for such accusations, “what about wild fires,” is incoherent nonsense.

This forum has hundreds of your posts in the last few months alone, just paragraphs, going on and on about Marxist BLM and statues and all the damage they cause. If you ever cared about property damage so much, I would expect you to at least occasionally post about other major forms of property damage too. But no, it only comes up when BLM comes up. I’m the one being disingenuous? Puh-leeze. You’re not fooling anybody. You’re being worse than I am, speculating about my intentions and behavior multiple times when I just said that you are being inconsistent.

Property damage is not the basis of my criticism of BLM, which would be obvious to anyone who has actually read the “hundreds” of posts I’ve made on the subject, let alone the couple in this thread. Alleging inconsistency on my part or on the part of the data we’ve discussed is, at best, an evasion on yours.

[Muizer]

I do not think that pro-black activism or believing systemic racism exists in America is inherently anti-white, or that BLM is inherently racist against whites. Anyone can criticize BLM without saying "it's okay to be white". Anyone can criticize affirmative action without saying "anti-racist is code for anti-white", which is admittedly a more extreme example.

Of course. There's basically two categories of people who dispute the reality of systemic racism and white privilege: Those who are offended because they didn't bother to actually look up what these terms mean and those who do know but are happy for things to stay the way they are.

Having said that, activists tend to add their own unpalatable ingredient to the discussion. They (in my experience mostly 'holier than thou' white allies) have taken what was originally a call for private self reflection on the part of white individuals and turned it into a culture of public confession, penance and redemption.

[Cope]

Correlation does not imply causation as an adage is on slightly shakier ground when the topic is how racism manifests in an institution that used to be fairly overtly racist.

Not when said institution(s) have been systematized by law, policy and social expectation to oppose racial discrimination. The entrenched insistence on the assumption of discrimination (esp. when there are more rational explanations) is evidence of an established aversion to racism, not the reverse.

Even if implicit racial bias in the criminal justice system and racial disparities in determining suspicious activity/the use of force by law enforcement have no causality(!), the two are still similar enough to expect the correlation to have a common cause or something.

You haven't proven that "implicit racial bias" in the criminal justice is responsible for statistically significant trends.

Well, I’m not interested in adding the additional topic of environmentalism to this increasingly-long post of mine right now, but idea that the problem lies in disinterest or disbelief of people makes the distinction a little less clear-cut, wouldn’t you think? Plenty of people are also disinterested or disbelieving of the issues BLM tries to raise awareness of.

You are somewhat missing the point. Deliberate acts of destructiveness (looting, rioting etc.) are more morally egregious than the damage caused by extreme weather events.

They can be thought of that way, I suppose, but I’m not sure what the coded message those phrases are supposed to have. What message is in the undertone?

The term white privilege is typically used (particularly by activists) as a pejorative to imply that the achievements, positions or wealth acquired by white people are ill-gotten or undeserved. Similarly, the implicit purpose of the phrase toxic masculinity (you'll note that no other form of gender expression is described as "toxic") is to denigrate typical male behaviours such as competitiveness and stoicism.

Is it really something as bad as the exact form of racism that caused so many problems in the U.S.? I don't see how it's problematic to be particularly aggressive countering white nationalism since it dominated the U.S. government for most of its history in a way that progressive activists these days simply haven't.

1. Appealing to the hierarchy of oppression is not a convincing defence.

2. The aforementioned progressive dog-whistles have nothing to do with "countering white nationalism".

Given the size of right-wing media and the current strength of the Republican Party, I’m not sure how mainstream or entrenched any of those terms really are.

The concepts of white privilege and toxic masculinity are typically treated as axiomatic by liberals and leftists. See the below comment to which I offer a reply as an example.

Of course. There's basically two categories of people who dispute the reality of systemic racism and white privilege: Those who are offended because they didn't bother to actually look up what these terms mean and those who do know but are happy for things to stay the way they are.

Repeatedly asserting the "reality" of a sociopolitical mythology does not establish it in fact.

[DaVinci]

Repeatedly asserting the mythology of a sociopolitical reality does not establish it in fact.

[Cope]

Repeatedly asserting the mythology of a sociopolitical reality does not establish it in fact.

The onus is on the claimant to prove his assertion; it is not incumbent on me disprove assertions made without evidence (although I already have).

[Muizer]

@Cope

Assuming we believe people of colour are not actually inherently inferior, there must be causes for the persistence of racial inequality in society. "Institutional racism" is a catch-all for all those causes. Institutional racism is set apart from individual racism in that it doesn't require actions motivated by racist beliefs. For the most part we're talking about the passive, unthinking acceptance of the status quo.

[Cope]

@Cope

Assuming we believe people of colour are not actually inherently inferior, there must be causes for the persistence of racial inequality in society. "Institutional racism" is a catch-all for all those causes. Institutional racism is set apart from individual racism in that it doesn't require actions motivated by racist beliefs. For the most part we're talking about the passive, unthinking acceptance of the status quo.

Allow me to refer you to my previous comments:

1. Correlation does not imply causation. There is no reason to expect an equal distribution of persons belonging to particular groups across all (or frankly any) fields.

2. The assumption of discrimination is typically applied selectively; it is rarely (to use an educational example) invoked to explain the over-representation of women in higher education, the disproportionate number of Jewish people at elite universities or the alarming oversaturation of liberals in humanities faculties.

3. Extraordinary evidence would be needed to prove the existence of systemic racism in a society where anti-discriminatory measures are codified (both by law and policy) in every major institution and where racism is treated as a cardinal social sin punishable by exile from polite society. Pointing to the nebulous concept of implicit bias (which is typically more severe among non-whites than whites) as an explanation for disparate group outcomes is insufficient.

Either you have an arbitrary commitment to equalizing group outcomes (in which case you are bound, for instance, to support the displacement of Jewish and Asian Americans from their positions atop the income and educational ladders), or you believe, as many liberals latently believe, that equalization standards should only be applied selectively according to politicized interests (i.e. to end "white privilege").

[Aexodus]

@Cope

Assuming we believe people of colour are not actually inherently inferior, there must be causes for the persistence of racial inequality in society. "Institutional racism" is a catch-all for all those causes. Institutional racism is set apart from individual racism in that it doesn't require actions motivated by racist beliefs. For the most part we're talking about the passive, unthinking acceptance of the status quo.

If America discriminates against blacks, why are African immigrants so successful?

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Among major immigrant groups coming to the U.S., Africans had the fastest growth rate from 2000 to 2013 – increasing 41 percent during that period, according to a Pew Research Center report. By 2015, there were 2.1 million African immigrants in the U.S.

The MSU-led study is one of the first to examine how race and gender shape assimilation for African immigrants. Specific findings include:

• While black African immigrant men saw their earnings increase 79 percent between 1990 and 2010, they made, on average, only $45,343 in 2010 – less than the $49,478 earned by white men born in the U.S. Black men born in the U.S. made an average of just $24,160 in 2010.
• Some 52 percent of black African immigrant men had a college education, compared to 30 percent of white men born in the U.S. and 13 percent of black men born in the U.S.
• The massive earnings growth of black African immigrant women was the big surprise, Nawyn said. Their average earnings jumped from $17,727 in 1990 to $40,699 in 2010. Those earnings in 2010 far outpaced the $27,114 earned by white U.S.-born women and the $21,696 earned by black U.S.-born women.
• Although black African women had a higher rate of college education – 37 percent, compared to 27 percent for white U.S.-born women and 17 percent for black U.S.-born women – their earnings were still higher than expected after controlling for education.

“The earnings trajectory of black African immigrant women was surprising,” Nawyn said, “and it’s because they have more occupational mobility than their male counterparts. After 20-plus years in the United States, black African women have greater representation in high-skilled jobs in health care, whereas black African men still have ‘driver’ as their top occupational status, even though they have pretty high levels of education.”

https://research.msu.edu/african-imm...nomic-success/

---

Those immigrants have achieved at least college degrees in their home countries, they come from the upperclass of this countries.

So they have better chances for good jobs.

As education is extremely dependant from social status and wealth in UK and USA, black us-born people will stay down, as they mainly visit poor public schools in poor city ghettos.

Although if America is not so racistic, why have male black african college absolvents "driver" as most occupational job?

[Muizer]

Either you have an arbitrary commitment to equalizing group outcomes (in which case you are bound, for instance, to support the displacement of Jewish and Asian Americans from their positions atop the income and educational ladders), or you believe, as many liberals latently believe, that equalization standards should only be applied selectively according to politicized interests (i.e. to end "white privilege").

.


To begin with, your comment does not address my quote. And I mean at all. It's like you're quoting the wrong post or passage. It's got absolutely nothing to do with what I said.

As far as your quoted post is concerned

There is no reason to expect an equal distribution of persons belonging to particular groups across all (or frankly any) fields.

For the most part, that is exactly the (statistical) expectation if the hypothesis is that we live in a world where race, religion, gender etc. don't matter.

The assumption of discrimination is typically applied selectively; it is rarely (to use an educational example) invoked to explain the over-representation of women in higher education, the disproportionate number of Jewish people at elite universities or the alarming oversaturation of liberals in humanities faculties.

Whataboutism.

3. Extraordinary evidence would be needed to prove the existence of systemic racism in a society where anti-discriminatory measures are codified (both by law and policy) in every major institution and where racism is treated as a cardinal social sin punishable by exile from polite society.

Extraordinary evidence is needed that murder and theft happen in a society where both are severely punished? You got this backwards. Those measures are evidence that the problems they address exist.