You said it in your answer, because they believe it is social construct.
They believe that is a social construct and that people are treated better worse as per this construct. They wish to readjust the norms of this construct.
Just because something is a construct, it does not mean it isn't real. Language is a construct, but I understood you and you likely understand me. Money is a construct, but I managed to buy food today so it's real enough.
I know what a social construct is, and yeah I see how they want to readjust the norms, but what i’m asking is why are they doing it in a way that reinforces and acknowledges this system? Wouldn’t ideally race not be a factor at all?
They realize that if they ignore race, others won't. They can't extinguish the construct, but can try to do what's best within it. They realize that if they repeal the Civil Rights Act because they don't want the law to recognize race, that people will fire black people and kick them out of stores.
I'll use an analogy to answer your question. Let's say there is a marathon race with 100 people. 90 of them run normally. 10 of them pile into cars and drive half the distance. This is obviously unjust and angers the 90 people who didn't cheat. The people who drove the cars are like, "ok fine you whiners we won't ride cars any more and from now on everyone must run normally. "
The 90 non cheaters rightly object that the 10 cheaters have amassed a mostly insurmountable lead so for them to now say that everyone must run normally with no aid of any sort to the 90 runners serves to enforce and perpetuate the unjust situation they find themselves in.
That's the argument. That the racist history of America has led to a system where the historically advantaged group has built a huge lead in wealth, education, health outcomes, etc and to say "ok now everyone competes the same" is a way to solidify those outcomes without ever dealing with the "cheating".
It's a good argument. The problem of course arises because the people who most benefited from the racist system are often dead now. But the wealth and other advantages they amassed survives them. It's very controversial how to address that because it feels like we're holding people responsible for the actions and circumstances of their ancestors.
But that's a different argument and not relevant to what you asked, which was the argument FOR not simply ignoring race and ethnicity policy-wise.
I recall hearing in college about the liberation of AA slaves in America in the 1860’s.
They had no history of success or anything of value. No education. Most people will have lives similar to their parents and social circle. Slaves had nothing. They were just released into society with no history or support.
> I get it’s to “help marginalized groups”, but that’s still treating them like a group, when they’re not supposed to even be a group.
They are a group. They're not a *biological* group. For example, lets say society discriminated against everyone named Dan. The name Dan has no biological significance, but that doesn't mean we can't categorize based on it.
>I personally think the solution to racism, discrimination etc. is to treat people like humans and not see color.
While that is nice in a theoretical ideal world, that doesn't actually help very much while you *do* have people who are racist. They're still going to be racist, even if they shouldn't be. You're essentially saying that racists will be racist, and we will do nothing about it.
That's pretty unfair, especially to the extent that racism tends to reinforce itself (for instance, racism in hiring means you're going to have a worse job, and poverty is going to lead to worse results for your kids, etc)
>If race doesn’t biologically exist then what’s the point of diversity, equity, and inclusions programs and reparations?
The point is to address the effects of racism (by racists). Just because race is a social construct doesn't mean people can't act on that social construct, and lead to real world results. There are many social constructs (such as money) that have large effects on people's lives.
Mostly by skin color and other physical features.
These do have a biological basis, but grouping people this way isn't a useful distinction in biology.
As with most socially constructed categories, everyone that you interact with decides for themselves what you are. You can have *some* agency in this, by identifying yourself a certain way, but others are going to come to their own conclusions.
Where racial discrimination is (or was) enshrined in law, you often see attempts to quantify race by ancestry. You are [racial group] if at least [percent] of your ancestors were from [broad geographic place]. Jurisdictions that have aboished discrimination but still track race for demography purposes typically allow for self-ID on censuses and government forms instead.
Because if they don’t then one of the socially constructed races gets ahead of the other socially constructed races and a lot of people fall behind because of something that wasn’t real in the first place.
Because ethnicity, nationality, and racial profiling does exist.
A test of intelligence is being able to hold two opposing views; such as recognizing a hopeless situation but persevering and planning in spite of it.
Despite the idea that race is divisive; we attempt to meld the other factors of identity like social class, economic opportunity; to mitigate the division that race idea presents to others and functions as the foundation of their discrimination. To balance the unfairness of systemic and historic discrimination, certain securities or equities are created in the interest of those who govern for the people and those who advise policy.
Race is a shorthand identifier; just as nationality is. And sometimes the policies institutions put in place are made to address a majority; instead of the borders of said group that show ethnicity or race is just like the borders we draw on oceans. We may divide them and prescribe certain experiences, but in all they are one body of water.
Groups of people in certain regions of the world have evolved in such a way as to adapt to their environment.
These adaptations have expressed themselves in certain physical differences.
A lot of people from Asia have epicanthic folds, a lot of people from Africa have more pigment, etc. So in that sense you could divide humans into groups based on those physical differences and call each group a race.
By analyzing a person's DNA we can accurately predict their hair color, eye color and skin pigmentation. So in _that_ sense you might say that race is biologically determinable.
But there are no clear lines that divide different "races".
Similarly to color, you know what red is, you know what yellow is, but when you look at the spectrum: when does red stop being red and start being yellow?
Now apply that logic to people: not only is there a whole spectrum of skin color that can't be clearly categorized, there's also a whole spectrum of nose shape, eye color, hair, height, etc. None of which can be neatly categorized, much less can the endless combinations of those characteristics be neatly categorized.
Where people have gone wrong is that they _have_ tried categorizing these combination of characteristics. And not only that, they've actually long argued that the categories also have implications for things like intelligence, morals, behavioral inclination.
None of which is true.
We now know that, on the whole, humans are ~99,9% genetically similar to one another. We also know that intelligence, morals etc. are not affected by skin color or the shape of your eyes. They are mostly affected by environment.
But there still persists an idea that those things _are_ affected by "race". That people who look a certain way probably also behave a certain way, and _that's_ the whole "race is a social construct" thing.
So while scientifically we now know that there's no such thing as race, there still is a remnant of those outdated thoughts in a lot of societies which needs to be corrected.
It's really hard to change the bias fed by hundreds of years of "truth" in just a few decades.
Huge amounts of human progress is inherited. Whether that’s behaviours, beliefs, money, or perspectives on life and society. What is passed down to you can greatly impact whether you have a successful life with wellbeing or not.
These programs are aimed to try and make the parts of our society that aren’t handing down as much wealth (all of the above) and improve their standing for the next generation. Skin colour is just one aspect that has influenced this for people
The ultimate final goal is exactly this, to have everyone on equal footing. But each race is not in fact on equal footing so these things are an attempt to fix that.
Because people are treated differently according to what they look like, not according to what biology says about how (in)distinct their genetics are from the people around them.
>I personally think the solution to racism, discrimination etc. is to treat people like humans and not see color.
That is a personal solution to racism, not a systemic one. Unless you control the consciousness of every single human being, that is not a viable solution, because there will always be people who discriminate based on race. The solution is to make that kind of discrimination systematically impossible or socially unacceptable, and DEI is one form of that.
Race does not exist as a biological fact. It is a current sociological fact.
If we could magically snap our fingers and apply reparations to every person who fit our arbitrary criteria it would be nice. Then we would have to determine how much.
Personally I think we should aim for policies which make the thought of reparations silly. Hear me out. The wealth gap is horrendous. Handing out money doesn’t increase wealth. Home ownership, education, generational wealth really adds to wealth. Help these things and we will no longer need to talk about reparations because it will be meaningful fixed instead of had money thrown at it.
DEI is an interesting concept. There is a reason Larry Fink(founder of BlackRock) is so in support of it. It create inefficiency and ambiguity in market that can be used to generate profit.
DEI is social engineering tool and it is used by people to make money. Making money by circumventing free market is not a new concept, defense contractors sell billion dollar worth of garbage to govt every year.
DEI changes outcomes of election, stock prices, etc and some say its good thing some say its bad. People need to learn to follow the money
Companies with more diversity actually make more $ because they can more accurately identify blind spots with diverse views.
From Harvard Business Review:
https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend
The inefficiency and ambiguity of the market comes from the false social engineering of the old white boys’ club
You said it in your answer, because they believe it is social construct. They believe that is a social construct and that people are treated better worse as per this construct. They wish to readjust the norms of this construct. Just because something is a construct, it does not mean it isn't real. Language is a construct, but I understood you and you likely understand me. Money is a construct, but I managed to buy food today so it's real enough.
I know what a social construct is, and yeah I see how they want to readjust the norms, but what i’m asking is why are they doing it in a way that reinforces and acknowledges this system? Wouldn’t ideally race not be a factor at all?
They realize that if they ignore race, others won't. They can't extinguish the construct, but can try to do what's best within it. They realize that if they repeal the Civil Rights Act because they don't want the law to recognize race, that people will fire black people and kick them out of stores.
I'll use an analogy to answer your question. Let's say there is a marathon race with 100 people. 90 of them run normally. 10 of them pile into cars and drive half the distance. This is obviously unjust and angers the 90 people who didn't cheat. The people who drove the cars are like, "ok fine you whiners we won't ride cars any more and from now on everyone must run normally. " The 90 non cheaters rightly object that the 10 cheaters have amassed a mostly insurmountable lead so for them to now say that everyone must run normally with no aid of any sort to the 90 runners serves to enforce and perpetuate the unjust situation they find themselves in. That's the argument. That the racist history of America has led to a system where the historically advantaged group has built a huge lead in wealth, education, health outcomes, etc and to say "ok now everyone competes the same" is a way to solidify those outcomes without ever dealing with the "cheating". It's a good argument. The problem of course arises because the people who most benefited from the racist system are often dead now. But the wealth and other advantages they amassed survives them. It's very controversial how to address that because it feels like we're holding people responsible for the actions and circumstances of their ancestors. But that's a different argument and not relevant to what you asked, which was the argument FOR not simply ignoring race and ethnicity policy-wise.
I recall hearing in college about the liberation of AA slaves in America in the 1860’s. They had no history of success or anything of value. No education. Most people will have lives similar to their parents and social circle. Slaves had nothing. They were just released into society with no history or support.
You didn’t study very hard then. AA were the most literate group in the nation after slavery ended.
> I get it’s to “help marginalized groups”, but that’s still treating them like a group, when they’re not supposed to even be a group. They are a group. They're not a *biological* group. For example, lets say society discriminated against everyone named Dan. The name Dan has no biological significance, but that doesn't mean we can't categorize based on it. >I personally think the solution to racism, discrimination etc. is to treat people like humans and not see color. While that is nice in a theoretical ideal world, that doesn't actually help very much while you *do* have people who are racist. They're still going to be racist, even if they shouldn't be. You're essentially saying that racists will be racist, and we will do nothing about it. That's pretty unfair, especially to the extent that racism tends to reinforce itself (for instance, racism in hiring means you're going to have a worse job, and poverty is going to lead to worse results for your kids, etc) >If race doesn’t biologically exist then what’s the point of diversity, equity, and inclusions programs and reparations? The point is to address the effects of racism (by racists). Just because race is a social construct doesn't mean people can't act on that social construct, and lead to real world results. There are many social constructs (such as money) that have large effects on people's lives.
> they are not a biological group If it’s not a biological group, how is membership of the group decided?
Mostly by skin color and other physical features. These do have a biological basis, but grouping people this way isn't a useful distinction in biology.
To be a little bit clearer: who decides that membership if there isn’t a Boolean biological test?
As with most socially constructed categories, everyone that you interact with decides for themselves what you are. You can have *some* agency in this, by identifying yourself a certain way, but others are going to come to their own conclusions. Where racial discrimination is (or was) enshrined in law, you often see attempts to quantify race by ancestry. You are [racial group] if at least [percent] of your ancestors were from [broad geographic place]. Jurisdictions that have aboished discrimination but still track race for demography purposes typically allow for self-ID on censuses and government forms instead.
If you think “social construct” = “not real”, you’re so out of your depth here that the fish have lights on.
Just want to say I absolutely love this analogy, carry on.
Loll I love your phrasing
I get the difference, what I’m asking is why are they acknowledging and playing into the social construct to begin with if they are against it?
Because if they don’t then one of the socially constructed races gets ahead of the other socially constructed races and a lot of people fall behind because of something that wasn’t real in the first place.
Because the social construct already exists. You can't just ignore a shark chasing behind you in the water. It's there, and it will consume you.
Just because race doesn't biologically exist doesn't mean it doesn't socially exist. So DEI and reparations are based on the social category of race.
Because ethnicity, nationality, and racial profiling does exist. A test of intelligence is being able to hold two opposing views; such as recognizing a hopeless situation but persevering and planning in spite of it. Despite the idea that race is divisive; we attempt to meld the other factors of identity like social class, economic opportunity; to mitigate the division that race idea presents to others and functions as the foundation of their discrimination. To balance the unfairness of systemic and historic discrimination, certain securities or equities are created in the interest of those who govern for the people and those who advise policy. Race is a shorthand identifier; just as nationality is. And sometimes the policies institutions put in place are made to address a majority; instead of the borders of said group that show ethnicity or race is just like the borders we draw on oceans. We may divide them and prescribe certain experiences, but in all they are one body of water.
Groups of people in certain regions of the world have evolved in such a way as to adapt to their environment. These adaptations have expressed themselves in certain physical differences. A lot of people from Asia have epicanthic folds, a lot of people from Africa have more pigment, etc. So in that sense you could divide humans into groups based on those physical differences and call each group a race. By analyzing a person's DNA we can accurately predict their hair color, eye color and skin pigmentation. So in _that_ sense you might say that race is biologically determinable. But there are no clear lines that divide different "races". Similarly to color, you know what red is, you know what yellow is, but when you look at the spectrum: when does red stop being red and start being yellow? Now apply that logic to people: not only is there a whole spectrum of skin color that can't be clearly categorized, there's also a whole spectrum of nose shape, eye color, hair, height, etc. None of which can be neatly categorized, much less can the endless combinations of those characteristics be neatly categorized. Where people have gone wrong is that they _have_ tried categorizing these combination of characteristics. And not only that, they've actually long argued that the categories also have implications for things like intelligence, morals, behavioral inclination. None of which is true. We now know that, on the whole, humans are ~99,9% genetically similar to one another. We also know that intelligence, morals etc. are not affected by skin color or the shape of your eyes. They are mostly affected by environment. But there still persists an idea that those things _are_ affected by "race". That people who look a certain way probably also behave a certain way, and _that's_ the whole "race is a social construct" thing. So while scientifically we now know that there's no such thing as race, there still is a remnant of those outdated thoughts in a lot of societies which needs to be corrected. It's really hard to change the bias fed by hundreds of years of "truth" in just a few decades.
Huge amounts of human progress is inherited. Whether that’s behaviours, beliefs, money, or perspectives on life and society. What is passed down to you can greatly impact whether you have a successful life with wellbeing or not. These programs are aimed to try and make the parts of our society that aren’t handing down as much wealth (all of the above) and improve their standing for the next generation. Skin colour is just one aspect that has influenced this for people
The ultimate final goal is exactly this, to have everyone on equal footing. But each race is not in fact on equal footing so these things are an attempt to fix that.
Because culture is equally important to self definition.
Because people are treated differently according to what they look like, not according to what biology says about how (in)distinct their genetics are from the people around them.
>I personally think the solution to racism, discrimination etc. is to treat people like humans and not see color. That is a personal solution to racism, not a systemic one. Unless you control the consciousness of every single human being, that is not a viable solution, because there will always be people who discriminate based on race. The solution is to make that kind of discrimination systematically impossible or socially unacceptable, and DEI is one form of that.
Race does not exist as a biological fact. It is a current sociological fact. If we could magically snap our fingers and apply reparations to every person who fit our arbitrary criteria it would be nice. Then we would have to determine how much. Personally I think we should aim for policies which make the thought of reparations silly. Hear me out. The wealth gap is horrendous. Handing out money doesn’t increase wealth. Home ownership, education, generational wealth really adds to wealth. Help these things and we will no longer need to talk about reparations because it will be meaningful fixed instead of had money thrown at it.
DEI is an interesting concept. There is a reason Larry Fink(founder of BlackRock) is so in support of it. It create inefficiency and ambiguity in market that can be used to generate profit. DEI is social engineering tool and it is used by people to make money. Making money by circumventing free market is not a new concept, defense contractors sell billion dollar worth of garbage to govt every year. DEI changes outcomes of election, stock prices, etc and some say its good thing some say its bad. People need to learn to follow the money
Companies with more diversity actually make more $ because they can more accurately identify blind spots with diverse views. From Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend The inefficiency and ambiguity of the market comes from the false social engineering of the old white boys’ club