OMG I love that song.
You should use this line next time you try to buy insurance.
And heck, why would you even buy insurance unless you knew you were likely to need it? I mean, in any insurance transaction where only one party knows anything about âthatspecial,â the willingness to buy insurance should be a signal that youâre too risky to insure.
But just as actuarial tables are applied to individuals, the empirical evidence indicates that only 20% self-report biases for whites and against blacks, yet tests reveal about 80% actually harbour those biases.
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I donât disagree with what youâre saying, but the difference is that, unlike an insurance agent, whose job it is to know you and what you do, milliefink is not privy to that information, blanket condemnations aside.
Iâm not surprised. Most of us have biases of one kind or another, regardless of gender or race. But biases come in all shapes and sizes and effects.
I seem to recall that milliefink teaches identity (gender, race, sexual orientation, etc.) studies at the college level, which would mean you were in a discussion with someone whose job it is to know the research on this subject.
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For comforting platitudes about straight white men, I suggest you peruse Timeâs Man of the Year which began in 1927.
Though the first woman was âMan of the Yearâ in 1936, it took until 1999 to switch the name to âPerson of the Year.â
Thatâs well after the first non-human (computer, 1982) and, yes, HITLER (1938).
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Actually, what milliefink and I had wasnât really a âdiscussion.â I reasonably asked for evidence to support an assertion and was then notified that the very act of asking for evidence was wrong and that I wasnât worth talking to if I couldnât understand why. So, as thatâs a seriously dysfunctional way to have a constructive conversation, I wouldnât really care if milliefink was a research scientist or a brain surgeon or any other highfalutin professional whatever.
Racism and sexism are pervasive problems in society. Thatâs a fact as true as evolution and climate change. But when you assert that ânearly 100%â of men are sexist and ânearly 100%â of white people are racist, and then respond to an honest request for evidence to support those assertions with condescending dismissal, you donât deserve to be taken seriously.
If there is, indeed, evidence that ânearly 100%â of males are sexist and ânearly 100%â of white people are racist, I would love to see it and would do my utmost to consider it as honestly as I can.
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Upthread, Milliefink linked toward this peer-reviewed analysis of 50 years of research.
Dramatic forms of discrimination, such as lynching, property destruction, and hate crimes, are widely understood to be consequences of prejudicial hostility. This article focuses on what has heretofore been only an infrequent countertheme in scientific work on discriminationâthat favoritism toward ingroups can be responsible for much discrimination. We extend this counterthesis to the strong conclusion that ingroup favoritism is plausibly more significant as a basis for discrimination in contemporary American society than is outgroup-directed hostility. This conclusion has implications for theory, research methods, and practical remedies.
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When you say it like that, it actually diminishes the role of race in picking the object of discrimination. Sounds like how, the KKK used to hate everyone, especially Catholics.
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[quote=âPrestonSturges, post:69, topic:37679â]
When you say it like that, it actually diminishes the role of race in picking the object of discrimination. Sounds like how, the KKK used to hate everyone, especially Catholics.
[/quote] What itâs saying is that giving preferential treatment to people like yourself is a bigger part of discrimination than actively harming people not like you in America at this point in time. Itâs not diminishing the role of race at all, itâs diminishing the role of groups like the KKK in modern discrimination. Pretty much everyone agrees that kind of shit is bad, but itâs harder to see the harm in helping someone out then it is in pushing someone down.
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I think if we can accept that discrimination and bias happen at a systemic and cultural level, it is fair to assume that it might also affect us to some degree (whether we are from a dominant group or not, but itâs particularly easy to miss if we are, in addition to being particularly harmful). If we havenât taken this possibility seriously, it is more likely to be true for us. I donât support calling this racism and misogyny where it is unconscious and unintentional, as this weakens the term where itâs much more deliberate. I also donât like when men or white people are singled out as almost 100% misogynistic and racist, as my experience in other countries suggests that this is a human issue rather than a male or white one (although it is more insidious and damaging in our context from the SWM perspective). Particularly in the west, the idea that SWM are superior is not challenged much by the wider culture, so itâs much easier for a SWM to conclude that itâs true.
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See also:
The gist is that any organization has its âin-groupâ and âout-groupsâ so that anyone in the out-group will be systematically excluded from opportunities and socially isolated. For instance, itâs not unusual for an organization to eliminate a top performer who is unlucky enough to be in the out-group. The in-group may be the people who have office romances and depend on mood stabilizers and Adderall to make it through the day. According to these theories, discrimination is a universal experience.,
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Right, but thatâs about bias within groups. We all have biases, every one of us. Some are negative, some are positive, and some are neutral. This analysis is about how âingroup favoritism is plausibly more significant as a basis for discrimination in contemporary American society than is outgroup-directed hostility.â (emphasis mine) But that applies to all groups and it also seems rather self-evident.
I only asked for evidence that, as milliefink confidently stated, ânearly 100%â of white people are racist and that ânearly 100%â of men are sexist. I donât see that this research comes to that conclusion or even attempts to.
There are ways to make it back into the in-group, though:
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