So what can people really do to promote "equality"?

[BeagleJesus]

I think the problems we are facing are deeply rooted in American culture and in order to improve things we need to try and force a paradigm shift in the way we interact with one another.

Here are a few basic rules that I think can help us move in a positive direction:

• No one owes you the benefit of the doubt. Stop asking for it and stop expecting it.

• If your actions do not match your intentions then do not expect anyone to care about what you intended to do while ignoring the results of what you actually did.

• Your cultural preferences and expectations are not goals for others to live up to. If you walk into every interaction expecting folks to conform to your expectation of normal or acceptable then you need to change your attitude and give others the space to be themselves without having to endure your judgement about what is right or proper. Stop asking and stop expecting others to bridge the cultural gap because that is what makes you most comfortable.

• Once you’re confident that you’ve got the first three down then, Get Out There and Get Uncomfortable! We all tend to get locked into our own little bubbles which makes it easy to become isolated from people who are different from you. I fear a lot of us unconsciously associate normality and comfort with the color of the faces we are surrounded by. Spend time around people who are not like you until you feel you can spend all day, everyday around folks who are different all the while feeling totally comfortable. Then the next time a black/brown/Asian person comes in to be interviewed, or moves into the house next door, or sits next to you on the bus you won’t automatically classify them as other or different. My belief is if we try hard enough and do this long enough hopefully we can all start to see each other as people and the rest will follow.

That’s just my 2cents…hope it makes sense.

[TriPolar]

How to Promote Equality

1. Practice it. This one should be easy, don’t treat other people as members of groups, consider them individually.

2. Stand up for it. Don’t stand by while it happens in front of you. Speak up when people use hateful language or spread negative stereotypes. If you can’t speak up for some reason then go away, don’t even let them think you’ll tolerate it.

3. Point it out. A lot of people prefer to remain blissfully ignorant. Don’t let them be that comfortable. I think many people just want to go along with the crowd. You can at least let them know they won’t be alone if they stand up as well.

4. Vote against hate mongering politicians. You can’t just not vote for them, you have to go out and vote for someone else. You can be more politically active than just voting, you can send letters to your representatives, sign petitions, and respond to polls. Politicians will follow the voters if they can see where they are going.

[Ludovic]

@BeagleJesus

• No one owes you the benefit of the doubt. Stop asking for it and stop expecting it.

• If your actions do not match your intentions then do not expect anyone to care about what you intended to do while ignoring the results of what you actually did.

When taken together, I’d agree with the most egregious example of the combination of these. One should not be given too much benefit of the doubt when ones actions are different from supposed intentions. You don’t need to give someone so much benefit of the doubt that at ever turn you say “well, we don’t know if they actually believe what they’re acting like they believe.”

However, that does not mean that just because you belong to an artificially-constructed arbitrary group, that it is valid for others to assume that you are in need of a lot more introspection and awareness.

But it works both ways as well, and if someone says “white people do this” or “men do that” very infrequently one shouldn’t assume that they meant to stereotype based on a one-time textual slipup. But the more they do that, the less of a benefit of a doubt I give them.

[BeagleJesus]

@Ludovic

When taken together, I’d agree with the most egregious example of the combination of these. One should not be given too much benefit of the doubt when ones actions are different from supposed intentions. You don’t need to give someone so much benefit of the doubt that at ever turn you say “well, we don’t know if they actually believe what they’re acting like they believe.”

However, that does not mean that just because you belong to an artificially-constructed arbitrary group, that it is valid for others to assume that you are in need of a lot more introspection and awareness.

But it works both ways as well, and if someone says “white people do this” or “men do that” very infrequently one shouldn’t assume that they meant to stereotype based on a one-time textual slipup. But the more they do that, the less of a benefit of a doubt I give them.

I think the very first thing we all need to do is learn how to communicate without giving accidental offense. I think this lesson is so far past due that I am willing to advocate for ZERO benefit of the doubt until we all prescribe to some basic form of civil discourse.

At this point in history, if you can’t be bothered to ensure you aren’t on the wrong side of some basic civil discourse then I have no problem assuming the worst about (the generic) you.

[Jragon]

The main issue is systemic racism, not racist people per se. While things like unconscious bias or outright bigotry absolutely play into it (especially with making laws or opposing changes that challenge the system), the entire point of systemic racism is it would still benefit white people and disadvantage BIPOC even if you cast a spell to magically remove all racist thoughts and feelings on the planet. Hence systemic, it’s built into the system.

While the idea that you just need to cast a wider net, maybe put up some job fliers in a black cultural center, and then you’ll just get a slew of black candidates just as qualified as white candidates who just didn’t know about your job or were afraid of a racist culture is well meaning but ignores the systemic issues at play. The issue isn’t that a bunch of black people with education at top schools are just lying around with no network or connections waiting for a job opportunity to be specifically targeted at them. Not to say zero highly qualified black candidates exist, but that the systemic issues at play inherently reduce the numbers.

So yes, you may need to give black (or indigenous, or latinx) candidates a bump and intentionally factor in the fact that due to conditions such as poverty or racism or systemic factors earlier in the system (e.g. black people score lower on the SAT even when grades are controlled for, suggesting the SAT has some design issues that affect the typical black student), they may never have had the opportunity to get that ivy/patriot league education. Or, due to poverty, may have needed to work two jobs and then never made those connections playing intramural lacrosse or couldn’t do coding projects in their free time. They may be more likely to need more flexibility to take care of family who have chronic health conditions due to not being able to afford health insurance for much of their lives.

Not to mention intersectionality, for instance, a black woman would have these problems but also face systemic sexism (e.g. lower lifetime wages or qualifications due to the well documented effects of things such as taking maternity leave).

Of course, a lot of these are poverty issues that could well affect a white candidate as well, and I absolutely think we should factor in the effects of poverty and background to pursue equity based on class as well, but the fact of the matter is that we do have to consciously adjust for the fact that the system is slanted against most BIPOC from their birth, and they may not have the opportunity to be as qualified as white candidates (at least on paper) on average, even if they’re perfectly capable of performing the job (maybe with some accommodations as listed above).

[Jragon]

Note: This is more succinctly summed up by the fact that a lot of organizations, particularly educational ones, are (at least saying they are, if not so much in practice) moving away from the idea of “equality” towards “equity.” You can read more about the distinction here.

[thorny_locust]

@UltraVires

What it boils down to is that the black candidate MUST be hired at the expense of the white candidate. It matters not if the black candidate grew up in an upper middle class household and the white candidate pounded the horse shit off of his boots after escaping his trailer in Boone County, WV. It is the outward appearance.
.

The question there is, does the employer also give preference to the black candidate who had a terrible start, whether in Boone County or in inner-city Detroit, over the white candidate who grew up in an upper middle class household?

[puddleglum]

@Whack-a-Mole

The problem is, you might be biased when hiring even while thinking you are totally not biased.

This brings to mind how people used to be hired for an orchestra.

In the old days people would show up for an audition to become a member of the orchestra and sit on a stage and play for the judges/hiring people. All that mattered was the person’s ability to play their instrument well, so one would think. As it happened orchestras were very male and white dominated.

Then they moved to a system where people did their audition for the job behind a curtain. All of the judges could hear the music but not see the person. They truly had to decide on ability only…there was nothing else they could use to decide.

All of a sudden women and minorities became much more likely to be found in the orchestra pits.

Mind you, the people hiring before being blind to the person playing I am SURE would say they were not racist and that race played no role in their decision making.

But the results tell a different story. Were they lying or just unaware of their own bias?

This is a famous study but the results are incorrect. If you look at the actual numbers the difference in hiring between blind and non blind auditions is small and not statistically significant.

[Kimstu]

@UltraVires

I mean, you are free to call me a racist if you like for hiring the white candidate, again with no knowledge of me or the underlying circumstances, but people reject such a determination from someone without knowledge. I certainly do.

The issue is not whether anybody should automatically jump to the conclusion that you are “a racist” just because you hired a white candidate over a black one: of course they shouldn’t. The issue is whether you have any right to expect that people must assume by default that you are not a racist. And that, as Beagle Jesus notes, is a benefit of the doubt that white people should not consider themselves entitled to.

@UltraVires

And frankly I choose not to perpetuate racism.

Sorry, but as a white person in a historically and persistently racist society, you are not able to magically immunize yourself from perpetuating racism simply by declaring that you “choose not to”.

Of course it’s great to be alert about the continued impacts of racism and to strive to push back against them. But deciding to just ignore the existence of racism, and refusing to examine your own assumptions and actions for unintentionally racist effects, is not an effective way to “choose not to perpetuate racism”.

@UltraVires

I’m as saddened as anyone by slavery and Jim Crow, but I’m not going to continue to view people based upon the color of their skin to somehow make up for shit that happened before either them or I was born.

You’re missing the point that what people are complaining about is not “shit that happened before either they or you were born”, but shit that is still going on right now, and that you in many ways continue to benefit from whether you want to or not.

Pretending that racism is something that happened only in the past, and that has nothing to do with you, and that isn’t still working to your advantage as a white American, is delusional. There is no excuse for any reasonably well-informed white American these days continuing to insist on this attitude.

@UltraVires

Nope. Not happening. You guys have to come up with a different idea.

Who says? I mean, maybe a different idea about ways to eradicate racism will become the cultural norm, but maybe not: maybe these very ideas right here about ways to eradicate racism will become the cultural norm. (They’re already sufficiently normalized to have occurred separately to several different people on a messageboard, for one thing.)

If that happens, you’ll either adapt to it or just eventually fade away into family and community memory as, at best, a clueless old man when it comes to issues of race. Your trying to lay down the law about what other people “have to come up with” in terms of solutions to racism that don’t trespass on your personal comfort zone will not determine that outcome.

[octopus]

Equality of treatment and opportunity or equality of outcome? These are mutually exclusive.

[Kimstu]

Well, what specifically do you mean by each of those, and how do you measure “equality” within them?

“Equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome” has been a casual anti-affirmative-action catchphrase for a long time, but it’s not clear how either of those options is assessing “equality”.

[Odesio]

@thorny_locust

The question there is, does the employer also give preference to the black candidate who had a terrible start, whether in Boone County or in inner-city Detroit, over the white candidate who grew up in an upper middle class household?

There are limits to what a potential employer might do. I’m not going to take into account a candidate’s upbringing when it comes to determining whether or not they’re qualified for a position. In most cases I’m not going to have such intimate knowledge of their upbringing anyway. Why would I? It isn’t relevant to my business needs.

[thorny_locust]

@thorny_locust

The question there is, does the employer also give preference to the black candidate who had a terrible start, whether in Boone County or in inner-city Detroit, over the white candidate who grew up in an upper middle class household?

@Odesio

There are limits to what a potential employer might do. I’m not going to take into account a candidate’s upbringing when it comes to determining whether or not they’re qualified for a position. In most cases I’m not going to have such intimate knowledge of their upbringing anyway. Why would I? It isn’t relevant to my business needs.

I was replying to UltraVires, who said (I’ll quote a bit more of the post this time):

@UltraVires

I reject the premise. I mean, you are free to call me a racist if you like for hiring the white candidate, again with no knowledge of me or the underlying circumstances, but people reject such a determination from someone without knowledge. I certainly do.

What it boils down to is that the black candidate MUST be hired at the expense of the white candidate. It matters not if the black candidate grew up in an upper middle class household and the white candidate pounded the horse shit off of his boots after escaping his trailer in Boone County, WV. It is the outward appearance.

So apparently UltraVires thinks it is relevant to his business needs, and is using such things to determine hiring policies; or at least thinks it’s a relevant example, and that employers ought to use such things to determine hiring policies.

I agree that such information is often unknown to the employer and/or irrelevant to the job.

[str8cashhomie]

So I’ve been struggling a lot with the OP, and while I am going to work on getting out of my bubble and examining my biases and prejudices in the future, most of what my other white liberal friends talk about feels like windowdressing.

I strongly agree with this:

@Jragon

The main issue is systemic racism, not racist people per se. While things like unconscious bias or outright bigotry absolutely play into it (especially with making laws or opposing changes that challenge the system), the entire point of systemic racism is it would still benefit white people and disadvantage BIPOC even if you cast a spell to magically remove all racist thoughts and feelings on the planet. Hence systemic, it’s built into the system.

While the idea that you just need to cast a wider net, maybe put up some job fliers in a black cultural center, and then you’ll just get a slew of black candidates just as qualified as white candidates who just didn’t know about your job or were afraid of a racist culture is well meaning but ignores the systemic issues at play. The issue isn’t that a bunch of black people with education at top schools are just lying around with no network or connections waiting for a job opportunity to be specifically targeted at them. Not to say zero highly qualified black candidates exist, but that the systemic issues at play inherently reduce the numbers.

So yes, you may need to give black (or indigenous, or latinx) candidates a bump and intentionally factor in the fact that due to conditions such as poverty or racism or systemic factors earlier in the system (e.g. black people score lower on the SAT even when grades are controlled for, suggesting the SAT has some design issues that affect the typical black student), they may never have had the opportunity to get that ivy/patriot league education. Or, due to poverty, may have needed to work two jobs and then never made those connections playing intramural lacrosse or couldn’t do coding projects in their free time. They may be more likely to need more flexibility to take care of family who have chronic health conditions due to not being able to afford health insurance for much of their lives.

Personally, what I generally see from people I know that perpetuates systemic racism is the vicious cycle of middle-to-upper-class white people clustering in towns with a high cost of living, high local taxes and a good school system, and poor people being relegated to renting in highly racially segregated towns where especially poor black people are trapped in towns with a very small tax base and fewer opportunities to invest in the future either by being homeowners in areas that can see their housing values increase, or having access to a great education.

I can be a pretty abrasive person but I don’t have it in me to call people out for wanting to live in a rich white town and give their kids great opportunities. I don’t know anyone who specifically had a racially motivated reason to move (white flight, etc.) so all I see is the “coincidence” that there’s a new “hot town” to move to, it’s always a predominantly white town and a bunch of middle class white people move there.

I really don’t know what I can do that really gets at some of the root issues of the problem.

[Kimstu]

@str8cashhomie

I really don’t know what I can do that really gets at some of the root issues of the problem.

Well, one possible relief measure for the problems you describe is regional taxbase/revenue sharing. That way, municipalities’ effective tax bases aren’t restricted to their own city limits, and you don’t get such drastic disparities between the abundant public resources in wealthy white suburban communities and the poorer urban communities whose services help support the commuter suburbs. As this article notes,

The forces of polarization — the push of concentrated poverty and the pull of concentrated resources — operate throughout metropolitan regions. Because the dynamics are regional, only a regional approach can change them. There is little that communities acting on their own can do to affect these trends.

Fragmented regional communities cumulatively concentrate the social and economic needs of the region on the weak resource base of the central cities and inner suburbs, those least able to resist. As their costs increase and their resources decline, these communities are surrounded by aggressively competing communities with lower social costs and greater resources. In this environment, they become, as David Rusk has said, “the poorhouse of the region…the residual category for those without choices.”

By the same token, as long as other parts of a region can enjoy the benefits of regional economy — its markets, transportation systems, and labor force — but exclude many of the region’s social costs and responsibilities, resources and households with broad economic choices will naturally flow there. When the older communities are taxed to fund the massive supporting infrastructure for this new, more exclusive development, they are further enervated, the process accelerates, and injustice increases. […]

Tax base sharing eases the fiscal crisis in declining communities, allowing them to shore up decline. It also relieves pressure on growing communities to spread local debt costs through growth and erodes fiscal incentives encouraging low-density sprawl.

[str8cashhomie]

@Kimstu

Well, one possible relief measure for the problems you describe is regional taxbase/revenue sharing. That way, municipalities’ effective tax bases aren’t restricted to their own city limits, and you don’t get such drastic disparities between the abundant public resources in wealthy white suburban communities and the poorer urban communities whose services help support the commuter suburbs. As this article notes,

I appreciate this. I hadn’t heard of regional taxbase sharing although I have previously been a proponent of states raising more taxes and having bigger budgets for this reason. Will look more into this.

[msmith537]

@UltraVires

But then it becomes a self-fulfilling belief. If it comes down to a choice between mostly equally qualified black and white candidates, if I choose the black candidate, then I get a pat on the back and credit for being diverse, but if I pick the white candidate then I have let my implicit biases get in the way.

Depends on what criteria makes each candidate “qualified”.

Personally, I feel like people know when they are giving someone a fair evaluation and when they think of someone as “one of those people” and are looking for an excuse to reject them.

@str8cashhomie

Personally, what I generally see from people I know that perpetuates systemic racism is the vicious cycle of middle-to-upper-class white people clustering in towns with a high cost of living, high local taxes and a good school system, and poor people being relegated to renting in highly racially segregated towns where especially poor black people are trapped in towns with a very small tax base and fewer opportunities to invest in the future either by being homeowners in areas that can see their housing values increase, or having access to a great education.

I think this is true. I see this a lot in my town where most of the parents are white working professionals and a disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics work as building staff and nannies who live in other towns. The towns aren’t segregated by race but by economics. And unless at least one adult works in a lucrative job in Manhattan, they simply can’t afford to buy a house or condo in the more affluent suburbs.

[thickpancreas]

@msmith537

So everyone on my social media is all about #BlackLivesMatter and being #woke and shit. But I kind of feel like it’s all mostly bullshit. Like it’s not like I don’t believe they legitimately aren’t into equality and diversity and whatnot. But realistically, what can they do to promote it.

I grew up in a 90%+ white suburb. I then attended 90%+ white colleges (where I was in a 90% white fraternity) and then went to work at 90% white corporations.

I guess what I’m asking is at what point would I be in a position to actually make an impact on “equality”? Who would be in a position to make those decisions?

Don’t worry about it, things are already plenty equal (I’m a black guy).

[Ruken]

@Odesio

As far as employment goes, a lot of larger companies use the Four Fifths Rule to make sure their hiring practices aren’t having an adverse impact on minority candidates. Under the Four Fifths Rule, a selection rate for group which is less than 80% of the rate for the group with the highest rate will usually be regarded as evidence of adverse impact. It’s a little confusing and I’m terrible at explaining it but here’s an example.

Globicide has 13 open positions for technicians.

100 males apply and 10 of them are hired. Hire rate = 10%
50 females apply and 3 of them are hired. Hire rate = 6%

Because women were only hired at 60% the rate that men were, it’s considered evidence of adverse impact though it’s certainly not a definitive test. It’s just evidence that Globicide needs to make sure their hiring practices are not discriminatory.

This practice tempts Simpson’s Paradox: Simpson's paradox - Wikipedia

[Odesio]

@Ruken

This practice tempts Simpson’s Paradox: Simpson's paradox - Wikipedia

It’s best to think of it as a red flag encouraging employers to take a closer look at their hiring practices to ensure there is no discriminatory behavior. It is not meant to be definitive proof of adverse hiring practices and should not be used in that manner.