Does systemic racism exist in the US?

[antaeus]

Neither AOC nor Obama discuss defunding police in those quotes. Anyway, we know what defunding police means. It means defunding police departments, not reform, as cited previously.

In the eyes of those protesting on the street there are probably a range of opinions.

For some, it is a pressure chant: "if you don't sort your out, we'll see you out of a job". For others it is a generic call for reform, but I'd say in the minds of many people chanting on the streets it is a literal "turf them out"

And that's the problem with mob chants like this. They overlook practical solutions that might advance their cause in a more inclusive way for easy chant slogans which risk more division.

But in a polarised dialogue, it's always the extreme views that hold sway - thus we see some arguing that the US is the most racist place in the world, and others arguing that racism doesn't exist. When in reality it's a mixture of both, and neither. This is evidenced in this thread, and the Floyd thread, where the dialogue seeks to either deny completely that there is any systemic issue, or to suggest that the system is entirely corrupted. Neither of which is true.

-Discussion moved from the thread about the 2020 US elections. ~Abdülmecid I

[Lord Thesaurian]

In the eyes of those protesting on the street there are probably a range of opinions.

For some, it is a pressure chant: "if you don't sort your out, we'll see you out of a job". For others it is a generic call for reform, but I'd say in the minds of many people chanting on the streets it is a literal "turf them out"

And that's the problem with mob chants like this. They overlook practical solutions that might advance their cause in a more inclusive way for easy chant slogans which risk more division.

But in a polarised dialogue, it's always the extreme views that hold sway - thus we see some arguing that the US is the most racist place in the world, and others arguing that racism doesn't exist. When in reality it's a mixture of both, and neither. This is evidenced in this thread, and the Floyd thread, where the dialogue seeks to either deny completely that there is any systemic issue, or to suggest that the system is entirely corrupted. Neither of which is true.

While claims that the US is a fundamentally racist country are certainly en vogue, I haven’t seen anyone claim racism doesn’t exist. The #Defund and “systemic racism” narratives are deliberately polarizing and motivated by ideological extremism, rather than a product of overzealous protest chants.

[Ludicus]

I see, Mao on the cover of the book. In fact, there was a time when Maoist China stood with African American activists. But you see,the US systemic, structural racism wasn't invented by the Maoist propaganda.
------
My two cents: Trump call for "patriotic education", but schools need antiracist curriculum. Celebrating "diversity" is not enough. In some ex-colonial countries nation building came at the price of acts of exclusion that have had lasting effects: in the US, the enslavement, oppression, and ongoing discrimination of African Americans.

Wheter you like it or not- Trump lost, but racism is alive and infused in U.S. history

Fascism historians Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Federico Finchelstein warned that Donald Trump’s narcissism is more than just a character flaw;it is a clarion call to build an authoritarian state. Even indefeat, they argued,strongmen and their followers often continue to undermine institutions — just as Trump appears to be doing following theelection with his refusal to accept the results.
(...) For others, fascism may not be knocking at the door, but the shock of the2016 election was not undone by the 2020 results. If anything, the strong showing of the Republican party, despite a platform of xenophobia and hatred, exposed the chasms that divide Americans by race and class.
Without serious social and electoral reform, the next authoritarian to make a play to lead the U.S. may be much more capable.Trump may have been stopped from his “autocratic attempt,”but the party he transformed has yet to renounce his politics. Trumplost, but Trumpism is alive and well,along with the conditions that propelled him to power in the firstplace.
Trump’s everyday racism is not an aberration. Although it may be extreme,it’s at the core of America’s history As Kimberlé Crenshaw put it in Time magazine,referring to Trump’s directive to all federal agencies to stop anti-bias training to address white privilege:
"It’s an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what’s in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it"

---
Trump's refusal to concede the election is common tactic of authoritarians,
ABC's Stephanopoulos to GOP senator on presidential race

Stephanopoulos told Braun that audits and recounts in several states have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Election results have been certified in states led by Republican governors, sucha s Arizona and Georgia, he said. "So the process has played out, hasn't it? And there's no evidence of widespread fraud. Why can't you accept the results?"

Two days ago,Trump held a rally in Valdosta, Georgia, and claimed the election was rigged and that he had won.Kelly Loeffler told the crowd(1) at Valdosta, “We're going to stand with President Trump because he is fighting for us"
Trump said, "This election was rigged and we can't let it happen to two of the greatest, most respected people in Washington" pointing to Loeffler and Perdue. "We can't let it happen again. Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he wasdoing."

(1) Another super-spreader event.A negationist crowd: no masks, no social distancing. God job.

[Lord Thesaurian]

But you see,the US systemic, structural racism wasn't invented by the Maoist propaganda.

That’s not what the article claimed or discussed.

[antaeus]

While claims that the US is a fundamentally racist country are certainly en vogue, I haven’t seen anyone claim racism doesn’t exist. The #Defund and “systemic racism” narratives are deliberately polarizing and motivated by ideological extremism, rather than a product of overzealous protest chants.

Of course in a situation where the debate is polarised, you would suggest that the opinion you disagree with is extremist. You're literally enacting the situation my post described.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Of course in a situation where the debate is polarised, you would suggest that the opinion you disagree with is extremist. You're literally enacting the situation my post described.

The extremism of BLM’s leadership, premise, and demands have been discussed at length, directly refuting your claims to the contrary.

[irontaino]

I see, Mao on the cover of the book. In fact, there was a time when Maoist China stood with African American activists. But you see,the US systemic, structural racism wasn't invented by the Maoist propaganda.

There's an interesting logic from conservatives on this issue. On one hand, they'll say gun laws don't work because not everyone follows the law. Fair enough, there's merit to that argument. On the other hand, they'll say racism is over because laws. Why do they think everyone follows the laws when it comes to racism, when they know not everyone does so with gun laws?

[Cope]

There's an interesting logic from conservatives on this issue. On one hand, they'll say gun laws don't work because not everyone follows the law. Fair enough, there's merit to that argument. On the other hand, they'll say racism is over because laws. Why do they think everyone follows the laws when it comes to racism, when they know not everyone does so with gun laws?

The law, institutional policies and social expectation all strongly point to the fact that systemic racism does not currently exist in America. No one of any note or relevance argues that "racism is over because laws".

[nhytgbvfeco2]

I see, Mao on the cover of the book. In fact, there was a time when Maoist China stood with African American activists. But you see,the US systemic, structural racism wasn't invented by the Maoist propaganda.

It also wasn't invented by Nazi propaganda, but for some reason I doubt that you'd give the same benefit of the doubt to people holding Mein Kampf books.

[chilon]

Im yet to see Trump supporters in generalized violent behavior to be honest. The same cant be said by BLM.

Unless you are saying the violent riots, the burning down, and looting of business was done by Trump Supporters.

Which is an embarrassing argument to state.

I've yet to see any actual BLM protesters start or instigate violence. You are just confusing people using the protests as cover - the same people who broke windows at the G7 protests years ago. People that are looting are just looking to come up on goods, they have no actual interest in BLM and just use that as a cover to loot.

On the other hand Trump supporters actively advocate violence.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53934109

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlo...lle_car_attack

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...olis-precinct/

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/02/tech/...unt/index.html

and plenty more.

oh and who can forget the plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/23/92725...-to-roil-state

[antaeus]

The extremism of BLM’s leadership, premise, and demands have been discussed at length, directly refuting your claims to the contrary.

You didn't catch the edit note did you Mr Shoot first ask questions later.


Of interest to the topic in general, and suggestive of where there is a disconnect on both GOP and Democrat sides of these arguments... Yascha Mounk did an excellent interview with David Shor - who was famously fired from a progressive consulting firm after Floyd's death for tweeting that non-violent protest is more effective than violent - a position I agree with.

Shor has been a liberal data analyst for many years and worked with the Obama campaign. His data suggests some interesting trends that are causal to the weird disconnect we have at the moment.

The first thing he pointed out is that data suggests that that the activist right wing of the GOP tends to be made up of lesser educated white people. The moderate centre of the GOP is more educated, and increasingly multicultural. On the other hand the moderate centre of the Democrats tends to be lower educated and multicultural, while the activist left wing of the democrats tends to be more educated and white. And because of the way that media control the dialogue between both sides, the argument that both liberal and conservative media present us with is a debate between the activists: higher and lower educated white people - This was the 2016 election in a nutshell. When the voters who actually seem to make a difference in elections, and whom represent their parties overwhelming mainstreams, are the more educated Republicans who tend to vote based on policy issues like the size of government and taxation vs the less educated multicultural Democrats who tend to vote on issues like education and access to health care. These swinging middle voters tend to be less interested in narratives about racism and culture war - and in the last year have been turned off by both pro-gun-anti-lockdown freedom protests as well as the larger BLM protests.

The second thing he discussed is what this data means going forward. That Democrats need to stop with the "you're with us or against us" talk on race because it's turning off the very lower educated multicultural communities it is designed to help. The catch 22 with this is that their minority activist left is what the media want to sell. AOC, Sanders and co aren't the Democrats - They are a minority wing. But the media need the noise they make. On the other hand, the GOP has started turning off it's more educated centrists, for whom there has become a narrative of "why do I have to accept toxic nationalism with my low taxes?" all the while Fox paints the entire Democrat party with hard-socialist brush and CNN paints the GOP with the racist-populist brush. The irony is that in both this election and the last, and the one before that, that it wasn't the partisan activists who decided the election, but the multicultural moderates who pinched their noses.

As an aside, if this forum represents this trend in any way, it probably means we see our arguments here made between moderate leaning conservatives vs activist leaning progressives. Both of whom assume they represent the mainstream. When in fact there is an activist conservative, and moderate progressive viewpoint that isn't really represented in our debates.

[Lord Thesaurian]

For what it’s worth, I consider myself center left (my political compass seems to concur). I’d say we have a few “activist GOP” on the forum. In this same thread at least one person is leaning into the voter fraud/stolen election narrative pretty hard. As they say, the loudest voices make the most noise. Progressives and hardcore Trumpists are the minorities, respectively, but they dominate the public image and priorities of their respective parties. And that’s a problem.

[antaeus]

The law, institutional policies and social expectation all strongly point to the fact that systemic racism does not currently exist in America. No one of any note or relevance argues that "racism is over because laws".

I tend to agree with you that in wider society, systemic racism isn't a significant problem. But this doesn't mean that all parts of society or all systems within it are free from problems. In this context, it all depends on what mean when we use the term "systemic"

For example: It is unlikely that federal law enforcement suffers from systemic racism because of the high levels of accountability and visibility that system works within. While it is likely thanks to the individual nature of beliefs, that there are individuals within federal law enforcement whom maintain prejudicial views that might impact on the experiences of people they come into contact with. On the other hand, thanks to the decentralised way local law enforcement is managed, it is plausible that some departments might have workplace cultures that allow for broad prejudices to flourish and that those workplace cultures become de facto systemic within their areas of influence or operation. Even though it is likely that there are individuals within these offices whom express no obvious prejudices.

The problem I see with a blanket denial of systemic racism, or a highly technical definition that allows for the denial, is that it delegitimises the lived experiences of a great many people whom don't represent the majority. Whereas a nuanced perspective allows for the acknowledgement that in some contexts, work remains to be done. Again in this debate, the dialogue has been stolen by extreme perspectives.

[Muizer]

I tend to agree with you that in wider society, systemic racism isn't a significant problem.

It's important not to be bamboozled by those who consider the word 'racism' an affront and those who abuse this sentiment in others by misrepresenting terms like 'structural racism' or 'systemic racism'. Bottom line is that structural racism needs just one thing as proof of its existence: statistically significantly worse outcomes for black people in terms of income, education, healthcare etc. Such disparity in outcomes requires an explanation. The only explanation that would absolve society as a whole would be that it's all self inflicted somehow. You can see how close one is sailing to the winds of overt racism if one goes down that route. If not, one has to recognize that there are factors operating in society that are perpetuating these disparate outcomes. Various definitions exist of structural racism that point to what these factors might be, but in its broadest sense no more is needed than this. Some definitions that reflect this:

structural racism: inequalities rooted in the system-wide operation of a society that excludes substantial numbers of members of particular groups from significant participation in major social institutions.

http://www.aclrc.com/forms-of-racism

A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time. Structural racism is not something that a few people or institutions choose to practice. Instead it has been a feature of the social, economic and political systems in which we all exist.

https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-...sm-definition/

Narrower definitions exist, which limit structural racism to policies of organizations, but that should not distract us from the fact that seemingly innocuous decisions made by individuals in everyday life can be a part of this as well. Where do you decide to live, what school do you send your children to, who are in your social network ....

Fact of the matter is, the broad definition of structural racism allows for a wide range of political opinion from 'radical left' to moderate right, but it poses an unsolvable dilemma to those with a libertarian mindset. Tackling systemic racism is always going to require substantial government intervention. To those attached to "the American way of life" , the fight against structural racism takes the shape of a Socialist Trojan Horse. It leaves them in the position where it becomes essential to deny structural racism exists in the first place in order to preserve the illusion of the colour blind, meritocratic society and to shut the door on Socialism.

One typical kind of push-back argument is to tackle incidents associated with racism in a piecemeal fashion. In any specific case, usually excuses can be found for whoever was branded as the agent of racism. The tactic is to head into the trees, so people lose sight of the forest. That it took something as (literally) inexcusable as the killing of George Floyd to create some momentum beyond the black community is telling IMHO. Another is to focus attention on the more radical activists, branding them as the instigators of violence and division, without recognizing they are at least also symptoms of underlying, unaddressed problems.

IMHO what we are seeing these days is a reckoning with the political establishment as a whole for only paying lip-service to idea of tackling racial inequality. It is, in a sense, ironic to see people pointing the finger at the Democrats for cultivating a racial 'clientele', when we're quite obviously seeing the opposite: the black constituency detaching itself from their traditional Democratic 'patrons'. Their vote is no longer unconditional and the Democrats will have to start delivering in word and deed. That's the inverse of patronage. It is in fact somewhat comparable to the newly visible Trump constituency which seems to have detached itself from, and can be used to put pressure on the Republican party establishment. I suppose both parties have always been 'alliances' of a sort, but social media have vastly lowered the barrier to people joining this or that cause and putting it on the agenda without going through the party political hierarchy. I very much doubt that genie will go back into the bottle.

[Cope]

It's important not to be bamboozled by those who consider the word 'racism' an affront and those who abuse this sentiment in others by misrepresenting terms like 'structural racism' or 'systemic racism'. Bottom line is that structural racism needs just one thing as proof of its existence: statistically significantly worse outcomes for black people in terms of income, education, healthcare etc.

This is a lie.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Disparate outcomes do not prove the existence of systemic racism. Contrary to repeated claims of “no explanation” for these disparities, the primary factors in several key situational disparities were discussed here. Plus, several of these disparities arise through the lens of outcomes vs census racial population, and are greatly reduced or eliminated when analyzed under contextual metrics. The irony of Democrats’ racial clientelism is that this is the party of so-called anti racism. Racial constituencies demanding payment for their support is a defining example of the clientelistic relationship, rather than a contradiction. It’s also difficult to paint BLM as a reactionary movement when the organization was quite literally created by extremist trained organizers, bankrolled by Democrat megadonors, and facilitated by the overwhelming support of the political and corporate establishments.

[sumskilz]

Bottom line is that structural racism needs just one thing as proof of its existence: statistically significantly worse outcomes for black people in terms of income, education, healthcare etc.

Based on those criteria, American society is structurally racist against everyone except East Asians, South Asians, and Ashkenazi Jews. As I recall, recent sub-Saharan African and Arab immigrants also tend to be better off than typical white Americans on average.

[Cope]

Based on those criteria, American society is structurally racist against everyone except East Asians, South Asians, and Ashkenazi Jews. As I recall, recent sub-Saharan African and Arab immigrants also tend to be better off than typical white Americans on average.

In the absence of evidence that differing racial outcomes are the product of discrimination, it is simply claimed that the disparity itself is the systemic racism. This sort of "reasoning" is an attempt to shift the goalposts, which, as mentioned, collapses when its broader implications are considered (i.e. that Asian Americans and Jewish Americans are at the apex of the alleged structural racist hierarchy).

All of this has been outlined to Muizer in detail (including evidence showing the relative prosperity of Asian Americans) elsewhere.

Edit: Arab Americans are categorized as white according to the US census.

[sumskilz]

Edit: Arab Americans are categorized as white according to the US census.

Yeah, and that's how most MENA ancestry people wanted it until somewhat recently, but now that being white is supposedly a bad thing, a lot of them want to jump ship. I say supposedly for obvious reasons, but I'm 64% European by genetic ancestry and I never put "white" on any academic or grant applications, based on the assumption that if it makes any difference it won't be in my favor. In any case, there are a few organizations that collect demographic data on Arab Americans, like the Arab American Institute.

[Cope]

Yeah, and that's how most MENA ancestry people wanted it until somewhat recently, but now that being white is supposedly a bad thing, a lot of them want to jump ship. I say supposedly for obvious reasons, but I'm 64% European by genetic ancestry and I never put "white" on any academic or grant applications, based on the assumption that if it makes any difference it won't be in my favor. In any case, there are a few organizations that collect demographic data on Arab Americans, like the Arab American Institute.

The census data shows that in 2019, the median household income for Arab Americans (all groups) was $64,739. The national average was $65, 712. I'm not sure what the data is for Arab immigrants specifically.

In this post, I sought to illustrate that generalizations about racial groups are undermined by significant disparities within racial groups (e.g. Australian Americans have a median household income which is twice that of German Pennsylvanian Americans, despite both being categorized as "white").