Wimbledon and Bias

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

... I'm still taken aback when I have to fill out an American government form, and it asks me about my race. That's because in Europe, we (now) take it for granted that the government ought to be color-blind.

Hi Thomas

I would beg to differ with you on the above statement... our government forms do ask for ethnic background - starting from the age of 4 when our primary education commences, the forms our government send out require an answer, even if it a "decline to answer" tick in the box, what ethnic background our children are. I believe, tho am not positive, that most of the government forms (certainly in education) ask for an answer of ethnic background.

I've attached a link which I think you should be able to see unless it is on the corporate private pages...

http://www.devon.gov.uk/j4s-formed-s11-2008.pdf

in which case, the image below shows the forms we place on our database...

http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk41/LzzieIzzie/whatever/CaptureEthnithicy.jpg

When applying for government jobs, I believe we also have to fill in an ethnicity form - however, I can't pull up a link to that from home, but I do remember having to complete a form when I started working for the government.

1 Reply

@Izzie,

Well, that's sad. But thanks for correcting me.

EDIT: I notice this is a school admission form. I can see some use for ethnical categories there because they're a proxy to their languages, their food preferences for the school meals, any sensitivities about mixed-gender swimming classes, and other issues relevant to their schooling. Nevertheless, I wish governments didn't ask this stuff.

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@Thomas,

It is rather sad, isn't it! Perhaps in other European countries the admissions / employment forms are different. This may just be a UK thing.

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@Izzie,

wow. you'd never get away trying to use a form like that in Canada

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@ehBeth,

yep Beth, I'm a little more cynical about the reasons for their (governments) "pursuit" of information about 4 year olds... (but I digress...) when they start secondary school at the age of 11 the kids get to make their own choice of religion and ethnicity...

I would say 95%ish of my school parents answer the ethnicity question but decline to answer the religion question.

(ohhh oops... thunder boooooomers and power's on and off) Shocked

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@Thomas,

If no one collects the data, then no analysis can be done. Everyone can claim they don't discriminate because no one can prove otherwise. The US collects that data so that it can understand racial trends in hiring, education, etc. That information has been used to prove discrimination in loan processing, housing, hiring, etc. Without it, there is no recourse for someone who claims (for example) that a bank is refusing to lend to a minority group all other things being equal.

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@gungasnake,

Geez, anybody taking history lessons from a movie like True Romance has really got to have his head up his ass.

"Moors," as the term was used by Medieval and early modern Europeans were primarily a Berber peoples, people from North Africa who shared much of the same genetic make up as did the Egyptians of those times.

Assholes like Gunga who use the term "nigger" generally use it to derogatorily refer to people of West African descent, or more generally to peoples that exhibit so called "Negroid" features.

Modern Sicilians are a mixture of peoples from North Africa, the Levant and Arabia, and Greece.

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@engineer,

engineer wrote:

If no one collects the data, then no analysis can be done.

Currently, nobody in the United States collects data on people's religious affiliations. Yet there surely still is anti-Semitism, anti-Islamism, anti-Atheism, and many other kinds of nasty religious bigotry in this country. Would you therefore advocate that the US start mining its citizens for religious data? The logic of your argument suggests that you should.

engineer wrote:

The US collects that data so that it can understand racial trends in hiring, education, etc. That information has been used to prove discrimination in loan processing, housing, hiring, etc. Without it, there is no recourse for someone who claims (for example) that a bank is refusing to lend to a minority group all other things being equal.

At best, that makes the data collection a double-edge sword. After all, you can't take it for granted that the Jim Crows of the world stay out of power forever. (I don't, anyway.) And if they do come back, the same data the good guys now use to defend minority rights will help the Jim Crows become more effective oppressors. On balance, I strongly prefer a state that's truly color-blind.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Currently, nobody in the United States collects data on people's religious affiliations. Yet there surely still is anti-Semitism, anti-Islamism, anti-Atheism, and many other kinds of nasty religious bigotry in this country. Would you therefore advocate that the US start mining its citizens for religious data? The logic of your argument suggests that you should.

No, because religion is not readily apparent. If there is someone who is prone to racial bigotry, your race is obvious to them. This is not the case with religion.

Thomas wrote:

At best, that makes the data collection a double-edge sword. After all, you can't take it for granted that the Jim Crows of the world stay out of power forever. (I don't, anyway.) And if they do come back, the same data the good guys now use to defend minority rights will help the Jim Crows become more effective oppressors.

But the Jim Crows do not need Washington data to be oppressors; they can see the color of your skin without much effort. The Jim Crows in Washington can choose to ignore that information (read Bush Justice Department), but it's hard for them to use it to actively promote discrimination. The "color blind" government is really just a blind government. There is certainly rampant discrimination against minorities going on but in an information vacuum, you can't quantify it or even recognize it other than as an anecdotal occurence. This seems to be a real problem in France where Arabs say they face significant discrimination in hiring, pay and housing, but no one can confirm or refute their claims. Patterns that are completely hiden looking at one or two cases become obvious when thousands of data points are put together. Collecting this type of data doesn't make the problem go away, but it provides a way to verify the most egregious claims and to monitor progress over time.

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Progress being ... what?

You can measure the share of minority people in jails, and can see if it's getting closer to their share in the non-jail population. But how do you know whether "getting closer" constitutes progress? If minorities, person for person, are twice as likely to commit crimes, there should be twice as many of them in jail. If they're half as likely, there should be half as many of them in jail. In both cases, "proportional representation" would be the wrong goal to aim for. So what exactly constitutes progress, in terms of what these questionnaires measure?

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@Thomas,

You can measure how minorities are moving into suburban neighborhoods, whether minorities are getting credit in accordance with their credit scores, if prison sentencing for similar crimes is the same regardless of race, etc. My point is if you refuse to look, then there is no possible way to understand how race influences society, nor is there any way to prove and provide redress for institutionalized racism. A bank can claim that their proprietary loan system denied you a loan because of factors in your credit history and you really have no proof that race was a factor, but thousands of loans in aggregate can paint a pretty persuasive picture, either to defend the bank against your spurious claim or to support you. Case in point: Countrywide Racial Discrimination Lawsuit

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@engineer,

... or you can require that the banks disclose their criteria for approving loans, and police compliance with those criteria. That does the same job without race-based data mining.

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@engineer,

engineer wrote:

If no one collects the data, then no analysis can be done. Everyone can claim they don't discriminate because no one can prove otherwise. The US collects that data so that it can understand racial trends in hiring, education, etc. That information has been used to prove discrimination in loan processing, housing, hiring, etc. Without it, there is no recourse for someone who claims (for example) that a bank is refusing to lend to a minority group all other things being equal.

I agree, but I also think, but obviously could not prove, it has the side-effect of making race a bigger deal to the society and think that there hasn't been a recent utilization of it that is positive enough to cancel out the negative side-effect.

And another problem with it is that even with the data you can't usually prove anything about discrimination itself, just the end result of selection practices. So you can really only enforce equality in results. And this generates more racial friction because that approach itself is race discrimination.

I think a big part of where America goes wrong on race is trying to micro-measure tiny bits of discrimination and then argue over it. I think it makes race a bigger issue, and causes more racial friction at some point when society is splitting hairs over discrimination and generating a lot of false-positive accusations (one big reason people resent things like the arbitrary derogation of terms is that they usually learn about it by being told they have been insensitive or ignorant, when they had no ill intentions).

I think the best way to combat being treated with indignity is with dignity, and nickel-and-diming and playing gotcha (as is often the case in race politics) over race and prejudice isn't effective IMO. But in America, like in most issues, it has to be so dammed polarized and frictitious a national debate. I think the debate itself gets in the way of a truly post-racial America sometimes, because now the labels and epithets are flying both ways with calls for retribution and racism used as a rhetorical bludgeon.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

snood wrote:
I fancy myself as a fairly intelligent person, but I can't seem to come up with any reasons (that aren't unflattering of the 'bothered' people) for anyone being bothered by that.

Perhaps the reason is just that some people, being less intelligent than you are, prefer that entities retain their dictionary names. Sure, you might consider their lack of intelligence unflattering. But then again, not everyone depends on your flattery for their sense of self-worth.

Glad you got that off your chest. What would be, say, my "dictionary name", oh literal one?

1 Reply

@snood,

Your dictionary name would be "that soldier guy", of course.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

I'm still taken aback when I have to fill out an American government form, and it asks me about my race. That's because in Europe, we (now) take it for granted that the government ought to be color-blind.

In theory at least, there was a brief shining moment during which that was the way it was in the United States as well. The civil rights act of 1964 legally abolished racism in America. Between 64 and Dick Nixon's first reverse racism law in 69, there was no legal racism of any sort.

That clearly was too good for many people, particularly demoKKKrats.

The basic problem of the dems is that they never learned any new skills coming out of the 1930s and the depression. All they even claim to be good at is representing victims and, where nature does not provide victims in sufficient numbers, they seek to create them, either by crushing major sectors of our own economy with junk-science bullshit programs like cap and trade, or by importing victim voting blocks in wholesale lots from countries like Mexico.

Reverse racism is part and parcel of their win by victim-promotion policies.

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Quote:

snood wrote:
I fancy myself as a fairly intelligent person, but I can't seem to come up with any reasons (that aren't unflattering of the 'bothered' people) for anyone being bothered by that.

Quote:

One of the main effects of illusory superiority in intelligence is the Downing effect. This describes the tendency of people with a below average intelligence quotient (IQ) to overestimate their intelligence, and of people with an above average IQ to underestimate their intelligence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

1 Reply

@Pamela Rosa,

Pamela Rosa wrote:

Quote:
snood wrote:
I fancy myself as a fairly intelligent person, but I can't seem to come up with any reasons (that aren't unflattering of the 'bothered' people) for anyone being bothered by that.

Quote:
One of the main effects of illusory superiority in intelligence is the Downing effect. This describes the tendency of people with a below average intelligence quotient (IQ) to overestimate their intelligence, and of people with an above average IQ to underestimate their intelligence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

That's very enlightening, Pamela rosa. But it still doesn't explain the phenomena of rancid pond scum like you being able to use a keyboard. Research that will you love, and get back to us.

1 Reply

@snood,

snood wrote:

Let's explore for the hell of it, shall we?
So to your mind, a Mexican is a person of color, but not a Spanish person?

We see a lot of people confused on this point in Texas. People from Mexico, who speak Spanish, are automatically equated to people from Spain, who speak Spanish.

People from Mexico Not Equal

People from Spain

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

ok...go on.
So Mexicans who are descended from Aztecs are men of colour? And Spaniards are not?
Jump in any time snood?

1 Reply

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