From: solman@athena.mit.edu (Jason W Solinsky)
Subject: Re: Institutional racism in education
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 02:18:28 GMT

In article <ISBELL.92Dec7094808@panther.ai.mit.edu>, isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell) writes:

|> In the Real World(tm), they still remain dependent.  You might be able
|> to define the dependence away, but by the time you've done that you
|> removed the meaning of your argument and especially your definition of
|> "opportunity" (see the extreme example--it violates our intuition of
|> "opportunity"). 

Since I don't want to continue this, you certainly can define away the
dependaence and very easily. As far as this definition removing the meaning of
the argument, I said from the begining that it had no meaning. Racial
opportunity to become wealthy is significant only from the point of view of a
racist.

|> I suppose then that junk bond traders on Wall Street and S&L's have
|> stopped hiring White males since almost ALL of money lost in those
|> fiascos revolved around Whites males?

And not surprisingly white males occupy almost ALL the positions which
would allow somebody to commit such a crime. Thus, this statement has no
statistical significance.

|> And I suppose you see how your argument actually refutes your point,
|> since WHites have been "robbed" by an infinitesimal fraction of
|> Blacks?

It does nothing of the sort. The act of being "robbed" is not the primary
negative effect of AA and my arguments against AA are not based on this.

|> One of the clues, is your use of the phrase "would begin stereotyping
|> certain whites."  Because Whites are seen as the default, we seek to
|> discriminate against "certain" Whites, as opposed to all of them.
|> This does not happen for Blacks.

You are clearly not getting this. When you meet somebody, anybody, you try to
categorize them based on personal experience. everything that they do or say
during that "first impression" will influence this categorization. This works
for whites and blacks and purple striped aliens from Mars.

Now as far as overall categorizations go (i.e. things that you associate with
all whites and all blacks) there is a very simple obvious reason why most whites
do not associate things that one white does with the entire white race. It is
because most of the people that they have met in their life time are white.
Anything unusual that a white is observed doing does not significantly change the
difference between your impression of "all whites" and your impression of "all
people" because the two groups are nearly the same. If you observe a black person
doing something unusual your perception of "all blacks" changes by a far greater
amount than your perception of "all blacks".

|> One of the side effects is that when a White person fails, it reflects
|> on him or her.  When a Black person fails, it reflects on the race.
|> This is just silly, but it's real.

That is the most rediculous thing that I have ever heard (well, its up there
anyway). It is NOT real. When a black person fails, that INDIVIDUAL FAILS.
The overall influences which created your example of rich whites not wanting
a black neighbor were created by a lifetime of seeing blacks committing more
violence and possessing less wealth. (BTW, I found your conclusion that greater
wealth implies less violence interesting.)

|> With all due respect, this is one of the most ridiculous things I have
|> ever read in scaa.  It is a poem of rationalization, but absolutely
|> insane. The reasons for this a many, but at the very least one should
|> be able to understand at least some of that from noticing the invasion
|> of White folks in scaa telling us that we're all lazy or the amount
|> of discrimination against Blacks "shouldn't matter" to MIT or that "on
|> the individual level" the discrimination is infintesimal.

This occured because somebody crossposted to groups with very different
compositions. This and all of my articles are in misc.education. My original
point stands.

|> |When a white encounters discrimination, the person who did the discrimination
|> |stands up, hollars at the top of his.her lungs yes I discriminated and I'm
|> |proud of it and there is no recourse. We all feel extremelly upset
|> |when a theif steals something, but we know that the police are there
|> |and that they may catch the theif. 
|> 
|> ...or beat you to death with a flashlight.
|> 
|> |If, in the presence of the police,
|> |somebody were to encounter the 
|> |their and ask the police to arrest him, and the theif and police told them
|> |"sorry, what happened isn't a crime because your skin is the wrong color" the
|> |level of agravation is many many times worse.
|> 
|> I am simply amazed.  I wish I could begin to address the flaws in
|> this, but it would just take too damn long.

It is a perfectly valid analogy. It is not a particularly big secret that a
means of redress is absoltely critical to diluting the impact of a crime.
The unfairness which is dealt blacks has a means of redress. The unfairness that
is dealt whites does not.

Jason W. Solinsky
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,soc.culture.african.american,misc.education