I think the study’s examination of this question is pretty reasonable, and it is an important question.
Once again, did you read it?
I respect that you have qualified this statement (bolding mine). Certainly some liberals do what you say, just as some conservatives, or any other group you can name, do. This recognition is what’s missing from political discussions today. This us vs. them mentality has got to stop if we are ever to have a chance at coming together and solving our problems as a nation.
But still probably not right., that makes it sound like it is a binary distinction where some Liberals are some are not and all Conservatives don’t. Really its a continuum of effects, which as a group Liberals are more down one side of the scale than Conservatives. Its more like saying a study saying "Men eat more Bacon than Women.’ Saying the conclusion is men eat bacon and women don’t would be misleading, or just saying unlike women some men eat bacon would miss the point. The truth is that there is bacon eating on all sides but on average as a grouip men do it to a larger extent than women.
Again, this is not what the article is saying.
Lets try explaining it this way. Its all about signalling. Using “Competence words” is basically like saying, “I am great you should respect me!”, using “warm words” is basically saying “I’m just like you, let’s be friends!”
Now white liberals when interacting with a black person are more likely to have the something like the following thought process.
I am aware that there is a view among some whites that that they are superior and blacks are inferior. I don’t hold this stereotype, but this black person doesn’t know that and probably has experience with other whites who felt like they were his superior. If I go in there and say “I am great you should respect me” he’s going to think that I’m one of those people who think whites are better than blacks. So I should avoid doing that. In fact I’m better off saying words that indicate “I’m just like you let’s be friends.” to prove to him I’m not one of those people.
If I talk to a white person though, there is not this awkward dynamic so I can just go ahead and win his respect using words that tell him I’m competent and worthy of respect."
Conservatives on the other hand are more likely to not bother worrying about all of this and are perfectly happy to assert “I am great you should respect me” to blacks particularly if they actually believe that because of their race they do deserve respect from an inferior.
So howcum the “certain minorities” (this sounds suspiciously like a euphemism) have not, ah, unfucked themselves after many decades and generations? How much longer do you think it might take? (Please take this as neutrally as possible and provide an intelligent answer.)
BTW, I haven’t read the article, but I assume it has the usual bias of social studies of this kind, even if unwittingly. And yes, academics can be very unwitting at times. And yes, any discussion of certain minorities is sure to raise a storm of protest and criticism. It’s all good fodder for a rousing polemic.
I would presume that once our society actually treats all groups equally without regard to race, gender, gender identity, etc., then we might have a chance of seeing roughly equal statistical achievement. Until then, we certainly have no chance of anything close to equal chances at achievement.
For technical reasons I cannot reply directly to the OP, but I would like to assure him that this white liberal dumbs himself down when he speaks to black people, same as how he dumbs himself down when speaking to anybody else.
Is this a serious question?
ETA: The post that I was responding to misunderstood why affirmative action was implemented. I stated why.
This isn’t science. Science also includes peer review and replication – without that you cannot reliably draw conclusions. This is what passes for science in pop culture. For now, it’s interesting and something that should be looked into. But for now, it’s also nothing more than click-bait.
Agreed. I called it pointless twice and tried to make similar point as you, but no one seemed to want to discuss. You can’t draw any real conclusions from the “study”.
You can draw a conclusion that the article writer and researchers were ignorant of dialect usage in America, or incompetent if they were aware of it yet ignored it in their conclusions.
One study is still data. It just might not be good data.
This comes up a whole lot. I see it all the time with all sorts of studies, sometimes even with the best of intentions. People draw premature conclusions based on studies without knowing if they are well-constructed and that the conclusions are sound.
In some ways, it used to be worse – Richard Feynman did a meta-study decades ago of published papers in medical journals and in journals of psychology determined that the vast majority of them were flawed because the people conducting the study didn’t understand the math and hence were drawing incorrect conclusions based on bad statistical analysis (even when the data was good, the conclusions were not). But then again, they didn’t have to contend with the echo chamber that is the internet.
How do white conservatives talk about black people to other white conservatives? I think that would be far more telling about latent and explicit racist tendancies, and doubt any of the straw-grasping conservatives here claiming liberals were the real racists all along would want to discover they’ve been an unwitting subject of such a test.
Left/liberal views are not inconsistent with thinking blacks are on average inferior. Although it does not require such a view of blacks to be left/liberal.
For example racial preferences in college admissions. One reason to favor them would be because you believe otherwise African Americans will never achieve admission to the ‘best’ schools in proportion, but it creates too much tension in society to have such unequal outcomes in college admission by group. Another reason (the one overwhelmingly given in public) would be that you believe the academic system as-is mis-measures academic achievement, the distribution of college potential among black* students is exactly the same as any other group if measured correctly, therefore a system of race preferences is needed to correct for the mismeasurement.
There’s no way to tell how many left/liberal people believe in race based benefits because they think blacks can never achieve equal outcomes without them, v how many think it’s a way toward a future where blacks will achieve equally without them. You can’t really go by what people say, because the first of those views would draw scathing personal condemnation, and the other is entirely socially acceptable. Note, I don’t think the first belief is ‘racist’. Racism IMO is where you believe individuals should be judged based on their race. If you truly judge individuals as individuals, you’re not a racist. Non-racism doesn’t require believing that the statistical distribution of all talents is exactly the same for all groups, again IMO.
The OP discusses white liberals, but it’s also possible that non-white liberals believe there are differences in achievement potential by race, not necessarily in favor of their own race.
*the other defense often given is it’s a preference to overcome unequal economic backgrounds, which do correlate with race in US society, but if that were actually the only goal you could just have a preference system strictly based on a student’s economic background which excluded any consideration of race.
The study has not “demonstrated” anything yet. From the article you cited:
It is a start, it is an interesting result but it requires more study before you start drawing broad conclusions.
It’s usually them who decide what black people can or cannot handle when it comes to speech. (I live in a black-majority city in the US)… I don’t really consider them liberals.
Who’s “them” in this sentence? Black people? Conservatives? Giant ants?
Interesting.
I’d be curious how the results would have shook out if the “white” name was “Daisy Mae” which is more stereotypically white than “Emily” and speaks to class and educational stereotypes to the same degree as “Lakisha”
Be that as it may something else jumps out here. Conservatives had less competence in vocabulary in presenting a book review to “Emily” than liberals did and the same lower level when dealing with “Lakisha” - but more interesting is that when introducing themselves to “Lakisha” the conservatives tried to put on airs and use more high falootin’ words than when speaking to Emily. Huh.
The study of course is crap but I still suspect the findings are real to some degree. I readily admit that I play the room - call it code switching or whatever you want but in conscious and I am sure unconscious ways I will alter how I speak based on the words I think my audience knows. I learned to do that as a kid when my speaking as came natural to me (which meant using the words I read and heard from my older sibs and parents and I read a lot) got me made fun of as an egghead or worse. I would relax and speak that way in certain classes and with certain friends but I altered my speech in other crowds. As a physician I will speak one way if the room contains doctors and another if the room is those of no higher education.
I think we all do this to some degree. We make different references to someone of our in-group who we expect to get the allusion than in a different crowd. And of course we all are guilty of implicit stereotyping when we do it.
If I am introducing myself to “Maisy Lu” or “Billy Bob” I will speak a bit differently than speaking with “Emily” or “Leonard” … and my stereotyped assumptions based on the name may be way off, but this is something that becomes quickly apparent in real world interactions when I hear Billy Bob or Lakisha speak.
The study could have used pictures of middle class people, one Black and one white, and neutral names, such as “Michelle” for each. I suspect that there might still be an impact due to implicit bias but I also suspect it would be very small.
As done pretty worthless, yeah. Most of note for how white conservatives tried to act fancier introducing themselves to a Lakisha.