OT: Officer Crowley

[Fencer reregistered]

Double post.

[kevin_405]

The way the prof reacted is normal with regards to how a black man will react to a police officer entering his house with out permission.. Once the police officer got the id of the person checked then he should have just let the whole thing go.. instead the ego of the police officer came in the way..

Both of them were wrong clearly the police officer was the bigger wrong doer by virtue of making a arrest, the situation would have diffused if the officer had walked away.. It was not racism but the police officers ego which came in the way...

[ryaningf]

I'm misusing the book? You don't even know what the book's about. I'd love to hear why the book is intellectually shoddy--but instead of explaining your rationale (which would go along way towards strengthening your argument), you fall all over yourself to point out that Gladwell would absolutely agree with YOU. If you had some face time with the man, I'm pretty sure the conversation wouldn't even get off the ground until he corrected your fundamental misunderstanding of his book...

Yes. Badly. Gladwell's book is concerned with the idea that class, culture, luck and timing play large roles in extraordinary success. You try to twist that into the idea that race is what is holding blacks down. I don't think you can misuse a work anymore then that.

We see this in the example the genius who never amounts to much because of his social deficencies inherited from his poor backaround. <g> Correct me if I am wrong but I recollect that genius was white no?

Subtlety, I guess, doesn't play well on RealGM. For the last time, Pete, I brought the book into my discussion of white privilege because they both use the same METHOD--looking at factors beyond the control of the individual that go into determining one's success in life. I'm aware that Gladwell's book doesn't discuss race--I was only using the METHOD as a starting off point--as in, wake up people there are a lot of things that make people successful and most of those things are products of circumstance.

you fall all over yourself to point out that Gladwell would absolutely agree with YOU

So? Its very easy to agree with the overall 'theme" of a book but at the same time dislike how he glosses over the science and fails to prove some more provocative individual theories. I didn't want to get into that because it would mislead poor thinkers into believing I am disregarding the basic premise behind the book. It's foolish to think that family backaround and culture dont' have a great effect on achievement. Or to ignore that luck and timing play a part.

But its actually quite obvious for those from a good rigourous backaround why it's so shoddy. He is a good writer. But good writers can make weak science seem absolute - or suspect philosophy seem inspiring and life changing.

For example, Gladwell singles out ONE factor - the fact that the beatles played alot for their amazing extraordinary success. When in fact tons of many groups played alot as well. That's intellectually shoddy. Good scientists go through the painstaking and boring process of isolating variables and proving their point. Gladwell just glosses over that dirty work. The fact that you didn't pick up on this is a sign of a weakness in your own backaround. He makes moves like this over and over.

No, you're wrong; the thing about the Beatles, Pete, is that they don't play a big part in the book. There's like one section of one chapter devoted to them (a grand total of 3 pages), and it only details their Hamburg experience. At no point does Gladwell single out the Hamburg experience as the ONE FACTOR that led to their extraordinary success. In fact, the only claim Gladwell makes about the Beatles is this (from page 50):

The Hamburg crucible is one of the things that set the Beatles apart.

The Beatles were one small part of an overall discussion relating to the 10,000 hour rule and whether it was a general rule of success. He points out the Beatles had 1200 live shows under the belts before they hit the US, a # that most bands will never reach in their entire career. Then he points out that this huge reserve of gigging experience at the beginning part of their career was 'one of the things' that set them apart, i.e., led to their success. I see nothing incorrect with the claims made in his book regarding the Beatles. He made a very limited claim which is unassailable on its face.

Another example he talks about the hockey success with the birthdays and the various hockey levels in Canada but neglects to mention that in the classroom the science isn't so strong.

http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1609

He also glosses over variables that don't fit his cause. It IS widely known that OLDER students do NOT dominate schools the way the older hockey players did.

I didn't want to get too much into it because well first it should be obvious for any decent thinker - his work would get ripped apart in the social science community. Its a painful process to defend actual scientific theories but Gladwell doesn't even really try. He just makes broad points from with glib anecdotes.

Pete, WTF? Those studies in the classroom are interesting and backup my personal experience--that the older kids aren't necessarily the smartest. But what does that have to do with Gladwell's book? He was talking about athletics--specifically how an arbitrary cutoff point led to an artificial advantage for kids born in the months Jan. through March. That also backs up my personal experience--i.e., older kids tend to dominate the younger kids on the playground and if you put an older kid in a group of younger and similarly aged kids that older kid is going to be perceived as a good player. The problem with Canada's hockey system is that they make their talent assessments without regard for the natural advantages given to players born earlier in the year.

So, yeah, he didn't go into how the age effect doesn't hold sway in the classroom. You know why? People his claim didn't say, simply, that older kids are better than younger kids in everything. No, he simply said that older athletes are better than younger ones and thus, when formulating the cutoff date, one should take that into account so as to not artificially disadvantage certain groups of people.

I'm seeing a pattern here, Pete. You like to take limited claims and extrapolate them beyond the author's intention to show his shoddy scientific work. You take a limited claim like older hockey players are better than younger hockey players and then criticize it because it doesn't hold true in the classroom where they don't play hockey but instead are judged on intellectual grounds. That's neither intellectually or morally sustainable. In fact, one might go as far as to say that this pattern of exaggeration and diminuation to show fault where no claim was even proffered is "a sign of a weakness in your own background."

But secondly its off topic. Why talk about social science criticism when his work is not relevant?

His basic premise is that - get this that talent alone does not ensure success. That you need luck, hard work, timing to be extraordinarly succesfull is something broadly understood by almost all. So there is no real reason to reference this work.

Is it universally understood? Again, who nominated you social scientist of the year? Or spokesman of the world? You blast Gladwell for claims that he did not make and then turn around and speak of things as being 'broadly understood by almost all.' Gimme a break, Pete.

It seems to me that it's generally understood that 'hard work pays off' and that you can work your way up from poverty if you only work hard enough. That's the American Dream--something that I think it's safe to assume is broadly understood by almost all. Books like "Outliers" actually go against this grain of thought, exposing the myriad of factors that can undermine an otherwise hard-working individual's attempt at success.

Its just something you read (poorly in my view) and your attempting to shoehorn into the conversation. Like i said today skin color is not the significant factor in the lessor achievement of the slave descendant community. Culture, family and class are playing a much larger role. That doesn't mean we should socially ignore those problems. Likewise its very clear you don't need any particular skin color to be incredibly succesfull.

You seem to read alot and read well, Pete, so I'm not going to come at you with my claims of how 'poorly' you read or all these other phrases about my background that you littered in your response. You may have read "Outliers," you may have understood the science included in "Outliers," but I'm pretty sure you missed the entire point of the book. And, with as much as you obviously read, I guess that's something that's easy to do for you...

As for culture, family, and class playing a much larger role in a success--I don't agree. I'd first point out that 'culture' and 'family' are intimately tied up with race and skin color--as a scientist I'm sure you'd agree with that, since science ideally seeks to define it's terms in a manner which fosters empirical testing. I'm not sure you can define 'culture' or 'family' without reference to race or skin color. As such, your basic claim is that class is more important that race. Well, that's your opinion. But I'd have to say that on the surface it seems a lot harder to be a poor minority than to be a poor white person--they'll both be discriminated against because of their class and lack of education--but only the poor minority will be discriminated against because of their race. And that discrimination will be easy to mask because it can be hidden under the umbrella of class and intelligence.

Another thing to think about is this: there will always be class issues. In a capitalist society, there must be a rich and a poor class and unless you want to topple the capitalist regime here and around the world, then there's nothing to be done about the poor--except through government programs that help to provide a minimum quality of life. Class is a function of capitalism and unless you're willing to change the system, class will always be there. So, save me the idealist BS about fixing the class problem in the United States and about how much more important that is as opposed to the race issue. The race issue can actually be fixed, in part, by removing the white and privilege biases that STILL persist and by removing, as much as possible, the institutional and systemic racism that STILL exists. The class issue? I'm pretty sure America will always be capitalists--the consumer culture and materialism that made us #1 in the world will always be an indelible part of the nature of Americans. So, instead of pointing like a child at a problem that can't ever be fixed (there will always be poor people in a capitalist regime), wouldn't it make more sense to actually concentrate on something that can be resolved?

See, there are two components to the white and the privileged--and when forced to confront the problems of race and class, the white and privileged will conveniently point out the one thing that will never change and say, 'see that's the real problem...this race thing is just figment of people's imagination, we gotta do something about the poor people!!!!,' knowing deep down inside that American culture MUST have poor people to make the system work and, thus, by pointing out the class problem, they are actually DOING NOTHING at all. In fact, the argument could be made that they are purposefully perpetuating their white and privileged status by consciously directing their attention to something that will never change. In a capitalist society, there will always be poor people--but there won't always be racism. As such, if it's a question of fixing the race or class problems in the US, it's clear what we should be focusing on....

[goulardi]

the cop arrested a man who was out of control and then released him later once the out of control man settled down.

There are no non-cops saying anything close to that that I know of, from among plenty of witnesses.

There also are no cops giving any details, real or imagined, that would support the claim.

What's more, the details the cop DID give have been proven in a number of particulars to be incorrect, innocently or otherwise.

I.e., you're in Fantasyland x 3.

"The cop should be punished".....you are the welcoming committee in fantasyland. The other cops their support Crowley's acitons. An out of control person of any color giving a cop a hard time when warned repeatedly to cool down is going to run into the same situation...and righfully so.
In your fantasy land, i understand things are different....but, they're not real.

[goulardi]

Firstly, I would love to see the statistics that you have to back up your statement about cops "..almost ALWAYS" being rude first. What nonsense.

Personal experience, which is consistent with the well-known idea that cops are trained to take command of a situation from the getgo, if they can.

so, let me get this straight....the "...well-known idea that cops are trained to take command of a situation from the getgo...." means that they must be rude. Please. You're living in your own world. It's not worth it to keep this up. Enjoy your fantasy world. Come visit sometime the real world.

[wigglestrue]

As such, your basic claim is that class is more important that race. Well, that's your opinion. But I'd have to say that on the surface it seems a lot harder to be a poor minority than to be a poor white person--they'll both be discriminated against because of their class and lack of education--but only the poor minority will be discriminated against because of their race.

The most impactful discrimination or lack of opportunity will be almost entirely class-based. Poor blacks experience only a handful of burdens/deficits that poor whites don't, and none matter as much as, say, the relative inability to feed, clothe, shelter, educate, and protect the health of children. Poor people as a whole 100 years ago were in just as bad shape, face just as many obstacles. Black people as a whole face almost none of the obstacles and discrimination they singularly faced 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago, and the remaining dwindling instances of racism are so infrequent or relatively insignificant that 1) another racial/ethnic minority, Arabs, probably now lays claim to "most aggrieved minority in America", and 2) generations of admirable progressive agitators who used to battle actual oppression have evolved into parrots of dated and nebulous sociology-class identity politics dogma which hasn't yet caught up with the reality that thankfully progressed. Progressed in arguably excessive ways, even, such as the fact that poor minorities are eligible for funds and programs and scholarships that poor whites aren't, both public and private. Maybe that's justified, maybe not. Personally, I think slave descendants are still owed 40 acres and a mule (or its value in contemporary dollars) and should probably also receive civil damages from any still-existing corporation that benefitted from slavery. Anyway, as a poor kid in Boston public schools, I knew poor black kids, most of my classmates early on were black, and I'm fairly certain it's not much harder to be a poor minority. Poor is poor. Ghetto is ghetto. White kids and black kids in poor neighborhoods or projects get exposed to the same crap more or less, and it's just as detrimental.

Another thing to think about is this: there will always be class issues. In a capitalist society, there must be a rich and a poor class and unless you want to topple the capitalist regime here and around the world, then there's nothing to be done about the poor--except through government programs that help to provide a minimum quality of life. Class is a function of capitalism and unless you're willing to change the system, class will always be there. So, save me the idealist BS about fixing the class problem in the United States and about how much more important that is as opposed to the race issue.

That's hilarious.

The race issue can actually be fixed, in part, by removing the white and privilege biases that STILL persist and by removing, as much as possible, the institutional and systemic racism that STILL exists. The class issue? I'm pretty sure America will always be capitalists--the consumer culture and materialism that made us #1 in the world will always be an indelible part of the nature of Americans. So, instead of pointing like a child at a problem that can't ever be fixed (there will always be poor people in a capitalist regime), wouldn't it make more sense to actually concentrate on something that can be resolved?

If there will always be poor people, then all we have to do, if we follow your logic I think, is reduce the percentage of blacks who are poor to reflect their total percentage in the population. Make poverty evenly proportionate. I mean, who gives a **** about poor people, as long as poverty's complexion is balanced. Right? Hey, class is only temporary...

They call this "epigenetics". Thats right you can screw up your genes and generations to come if you live in an inferior enviroment.

...dammit, Pete!

See, there are two components to the white and the privileged--and when forced to confront the problems of race and class, the white and privileged will conveniently point out the one thing that will never change and say, 'see that's the real problem...this race thing is just figment of people's imagination, we gotta do something about the poor people!!!!,' knowing deep down inside that American culture MUST have poor people to make the system work and, thus, by pointing out the class problem, they are actually DOING NOTHING at all. In fact, the argument could be made that they are purposefully perpetuating their white and privileged status by consciously directing their attention to something that will never change. In a capitalist society, there will always be poor people--but there won't always be racism. As such, if it's a question of fixing the race or class problems in the US, it's clear what we should be focusing on....

Okay, THAT pisses me off. Please explain how I am privileged. Be as specific as you can be, even if you have to resort to hypotheticals. In which situations have I benefitted from this supposed privilege? Next, I literally chuckled at the idea that there won't always be racism. Are you ****ing kidding? Of course there will always be racism. Low-grade individual instances of racism. Slurs. People who won't sell their house to a [insert race]. Stereotypes, from the innocuous to the vicious. And you're calling anyone else a BS idealist??? LMFAO. Then again, you somehow think that class problems are untouchable, immutable, and that looking to solve class issues necessarily involves repealing capitalism. What a crock of ****, dude. Seriously.

[Fencer reregistered]

"The cop should be punished".....you are the welcoming committee in fantasyland. The other cops their support Crowley's acitons. An out of control person of any color giving a cop a hard time when warned repeatedly to cool down is going to run into the same situation...and righfully so.
In your fantasy land, i understand things are different....but, they're not real.

If I said something like "will" I'd be closer to Fantasyland.

As for your "rightfully" -- perhaps you're living in the wrong country.

[ryaningf]

See, there are two components to the white and the privileged--and when forced to confront the problems of race and class, the white and privileged will conveniently point out the one thing that will never change and say, 'see that's the real problem...this race thing is just figment of people's imagination, we gotta do something about the poor people!!!!,' knowing deep down inside that American culture MUST have poor people to make the system work and, thus, by pointing out the class problem, they are actually DOING NOTHING at all. In fact, the argument could be made that they are purposefully perpetuating their white and privileged status by consciously directing their attention to something that will never change. In a capitalist society, there will always be poor people--but there won't always be racism. As such, if it's a question of fixing the race or class problems in the US, it's clear what we should be focusing on....

Okay, THAT pisses me off. Please explain how I am privileged. Be as specific as you can be, even if you have to resort to hypotheticals. In which situations have I benefitted from this supposed privilege? Next, I literally chuckled at the idea that there won't always be racism. Are you ****ing kidding? Of course there will always be racism. Low-grade individual instances of racism. Slurs. People who won't sell their house to a [insert race]. Stereotypes, from the innocuous to the vicious. And you're calling anyone else a BS idealist??? LMFAO. Then again, you somehow think that class problems are untouchable, immutable, and that looking to solve class issues necessarily involves repealing capitalism. What a crock of ****, dude. Seriously.

I didn't say you were white and privileged or that you held a white and privileged viewpoint--to be white and middle-class (or above) doesn't necessarily make someone white and privileged. It's both a theory of society and a way of viewing the world and how it operates--it is not necessarily a function of income and skin color.

What I did say is that those who do hold that viewpoint, when forced to confront it, will deflect attention from the race to the class question, knowing that the class question CANNOT be remedied.

As I mentioned in the last post, there are things the government can do to provide a minimum level of comfort to the poorest in our nation, and I personally think A LOT should be done that isn't being done--I'm talking about socialized health care, a civil right that guarantees food and shelter to every American citizen, free college in exchange for a certain amount of community service, etc....--but, as long as we operate under a system of capitalism there will be classes--the classes of the haves and the have-nots. The great rise of the middle class (and commercialism) which began in the 1950s and which has been disintegrating ever since Reagan took office in 1980 was/is the best chance to LIMIT the amount of poor people in the nation--but even then there will be poor people and a poor class. That's the free market system--if there wasn't a poor class or the fear of becoming destitute the mechanics of the system would fail. If you can't understand that, you don't understand anything.

Racism does have a chance of becoming extinct. While it is/was a part of the system, it was never integral to THE system. The institutional/systemic racism still prevalent today was generated by the individual racist attitude of those creating the systems--but that attitude was not necessary to the success of the system. The reality of the poor is NECESSARY to capitalism. So, while you can introduce certain socialist tendencies into the capitalist system, there will always be class with capitalism.

The lessening of racism is also a function of time--i.e., each succeeding generation increasingly lets go of America's racist past. Part is enlightenment, part is culture-based, part is personal experience-based (as in the case of racial intermarriage, as has occurred in my family and in countless others), and part is the continual lessening of systemic racism, something Prof. Gates, amongst others, has dedicated his life to lessening.

In short, what I saying is this: capitalism is intermingled in the essence of what makes America America. We are a free market, democratic society. Racism, while being a major component of what made America America, it's not part of its essence--in fact, it cuts at the heart of what makes Amercia America since racism contradicts the equality inherent in the democratic system. Thus, racism can and should be eradicated. Thus, it should be where our attention is primarily focused.

Problems of class are still problematic and I don't wish to minimize them, only to be realistic about them. To address those problems we need to look deep into the heart of capitalism and see how much we wish to strip ourselves of our national identity. With the way 'socialism' is such a dirty word to some people, I would say we have a long way to go in addressing the class distinctions inherent in capitalism.

[wigglestrue]

The institutional/systemic racism still prevalent today was generated by the individual racist attitude of those creating the systems

Please give some examples of institutional/systemic racism still prevalent today.

[ryaningf]

The institutional/systemic racism still prevalent today was generated by the individual racist attitude of those creating the systems

Please give some examples of institutional/systemic racism still prevalent today.

I'm not your tutor. You're perfectly able to go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism and read about them yourself. In that article, there's an interesting distinction between institutional and structural racism, with structural racialization arguing that one single cause is not to blame and that it's more likely a combination of race and class issues. Or perhaps go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining to learn about discriminatory lending practices. Or perhaps take a class or do some more outside reading (on both sides of the debate).

Most of the examples of institutional racism have been exposed and have been, we can hope, remedied. As such, people tend to assume that institutional racism is no longer with us (because if it's known about it's usually remedied shortly thereafter). I'd argue that there's plenty more of them still lurking, but that's a claim that can neither be proven or disproven. But, whether or not they're still prevalent is not as important as whether or not we're still vigilant in our examination of the systems in play in America---and it's that vigilance that drives people like Prof. Gates to do what they do. And it's only with continued vigilance over multiple generations can we dare to say that institutionalized racism no longer exists.

[wigglestrue]

The only significant example I see is the SSA one, obsolete for decades. Everything else is wholly debatable, and/or related entirely to income/class. Statistical over-representation in certain diseases, okay...but zero evidence that racism plays any part. Seems like an example of working backward from a statistical imbalance with racism-must-be-the-reason-colored glasses. Standardized test results are questionable at their core for a number of reasons, but any gap in scoring is probably just a class gap -- neither a poor white kid nor a poor black kid are familiar with yachts, neither can afford test prep. Used textbooks is obviously a class issue, period. The only thing I can conceive of that resembles institutional racism is racial profiling, and that's on the decline around the nation, with laws being passed against it. Even with private-sector redlining, the problem has mostly disappeared. So, your examples suck. The tireless sacrifice of previous generations has actually had an enormous effect, leaving you with very little to crusade against re: racism, except this phantom institutional subconscious stuff. You should probably turn your attention to destroying capitalism or whatever you think needs to be done to resolve class/caste inequalities.

[wigglestrue]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People's_Campaign



That's where we were headed. It's been 40 years.

[Andrew McCeltic]

That Wikipedia article mentions sports mascots as an example of institutional racism.. seems pretty equal opportunity- the Vikings? the Fighting Irish? the Braves?

[goulardi]

"The cop should be punished".....you are the welcoming committee in fantasyland. The other cops their support Crowley's acitons. An out of control person of any color giving a cop a hard time when warned repeatedly to cool down is going to run into the same situation...and righfully so.
In your fantasy land, i understand things are different....but, they're not real.

If I said something like "will" I'd be closer to Fantasyland.

As for your "rightfully" -- perhaps you're living in the wrong country.

only in your fantasy land "should" the cop be punished......and I am quite happy living in my country which I don't think is wrong. And it's not the only country I've lived in. Maybe you should live in a country where someone can mouth off to cops and expect to get away with it....oh, yes, you do live there...it's in your mind.

[Bill Lumbergh]

The institutional/systemic racism still prevalent today was generated by the individual racist attitude of those creating the systems

Please give some examples of institutional/systemic racism still prevalent today.

...
Most of the examples of institutional racism have been exposed and have been, we can hope, remedied. As such, people tend to assume that institutional racism is no longer with us (because if it's known about it's usually remedied shortly thereafter). I'd argue that there's plenty more of them still lurking, but that's a claim that can neither be proven or disproven. ...

There are sweeping examples of governmental policies and laws that specifically advantage certain groups at the expense of another. On its face, that seems like blatant discrimination, but it all depends on who's being advantaged/disadvantaged. In this case, our government does not regard these actions as discriminatory. It regards them as affirmative... action. Flip the groups as to who is advantaged and who disadvantaged by the policies, and you have Discriminatory Action. It's explicitly racial policy, and it's definitely institutional.

Those are the only kind of explicitly racial policies on the books these days, none of which advantage whites in any way, so it's probably fair to drop the institutional racism line of reasoning now.

Seems like an example of working backward from a statistical imbalance with racism-must-be-the-reason-colored glasses.

That's exactly the working hypothesis. It's the whole basis for "disparate impact" laws. It's a guilty even when no wrongdoing is found premise, only the indictment is against an entire group.

I'm for getting rid of all laws that specifically advantage any group. Discrimination based solely on race is never fair and certainly shouldn't be sanctioned by the government.

I'm not saying we shouldn't help the poor. Just do it based on their being poor, not their race.

[Fencer reregistered]

only in your fantasy land "should" the cop be punished......and I am quite happy living in my country which I don't think is wrong. And it's not the only country I've lived in. Maybe you should live in a country where someone can mouth off to cops and expect to get away with it....oh, yes, you do live there...it's in your mind.

Is it a fair summary of your position to say that if one criticizes the poiice to their face, one deserves to be punished?

How about if one only criticizes them behind their back, but they find out about it. Does one deserve to be punished for that too?

[GuyClinch]

Is it universally understood? Again, who nominated you social scientist of the year? Or spokesman of the world? You blast Gladwell for claims that he did not make and then turn around and speak of things as being 'broadly understood by almost all.' Gimme a break, Pete.

I don't REALLY want to talk TOO much about Gladwell. Because its clear your entirely enamored with his shoddy scientific work. You do realize he isn't a real scientist right? He is a just a guy that attempts to water down and respin various scientific theories that are already out there..

But an EASY enough way to see how people are quite AWARE of "Gladwell's theory" is to merely notice the furor that well to do parents have ALWAYS had to get their kids into superior schools. If people believed that "talent" was the key to everything why work so hard to get your already well off kids into great schools? After all since B.G. we didn't know about how we all that "talent" was the key why bother?

Well we all KNOW the reason why. Great schools provide better opportunties for children with regards to not only more rigorous course work but more exposure to the other factors that influence success. Again its really NOT groundbreaking stuff by Gladwell. I am not unique is saying this - its widely thought to be so in the critical community.

its not much better then those self-help books which encourage you to make more friends and smile when you see people. Yes fine advice - but broadly known by non-morons.. Also good advice - consider not being a glutton or eating when you are depressed..

As far as using a "similiar method" to "prove" his point. Collecting a few studies that are loosely related to his overall point and weaving them with anecdotes is not really a method you want to follow to prove a point. Of course it helps when the "point" isn't really widely debated with in the first place! Like I said who are these people that think all you need is talent. It's clearly NOT the rich people that send their legacy kids to Harvard or Yale.

It does seem to be effective if you want to make a pay day though. It also makes for an interesting read. I'd suggest you write your own book instead..

Anyway back to the topic at hand. As I am sure Gladwell would agree (as of course most people would) the key to fixing these issues isn't to lament the horrors of racism. Its to try to improve the overall enviroment for children growing up poor and disadvantaged today.

Since many of these people are in fact slave descendants its probably something we can agree with.. We know how this can put people in a hole they can't really be expected to recover from....Of course most people knew all this B.G. So can we just ignore the slick writer guy for a bit..<g>?

Of course none of this is really related to the topic at hand.. Please stop trying to shoehorn him into things. It's like your a Chrisitian Fundamentalist of Gladwell.. Instead of God this and that.. It's Gladwell "method" LMAO.

Pete

[ryaningf]

Is it universally understood? Again, who nominated you social scientist of the year? Or spokesman of the world? You blast Gladwell for claims that he did not make and then turn around and speak of things as being 'broadly understood by almost all.' Gimme a break, Pete.

I don't REALLY want to talk TOO much about Gladwell. Because its clear your entirely enamored with his shoddy scientific work. You do realize he isn't a real scientist right? He is a just a guy that attempts to water down and respin various scientific theories that are already out there..

But an EASY enough way to see how people are quite AWARE of "Gladwell's theory" is to merely notice the furor that well to do parents have ALWAYS had to get their kids into superior schools. If people believed that "talent" was the key to everything why work so hard to get your already well off kids into great schools? After all since B.G. we didn't know about how we all that "talent" was the key why bother?

Well we all KNOW the reason why. Great schools provide better opportunties for children with regards to not only more rigorous course work but more exposure to the other factors that influence success. Again its really NOT groundbreaking stuff by Gladwell. I am not unique is saying this - its widely thought to be so in the critical community.

its not much better then those self-help books which encourage you to make more friends and smile when you see people. Yes fine advice - but broadly known by non-morons.. Also good advice - consider not being a glutton or eating when you are depressed..

As far as using a "similiar method" to "prove" his point. Collecting a few studies that are loosely related to his overall point and weaving them with anecdotes is not really a method you want to follow to prove a point. Of course it helps when the "point" isn't really widely debated with in the first place! Like I said who are these people that think all you need is talent. It's clearly NOT the rich people that send their legacy kids to Harvard or Yale.

It does seem to be effective if you want to make a pay day though. It also makes for an interesting read. I'd suggest you write your own book instead..

Anyway back to the topic at hand. As I am sure Gladwell would agree (as of course most people would) the key to fixing these issues isn't to lament the horrors of racism. Its to try to improve the overall enviroment for children growing up poor and disadvantaged today.

Since many of these people are in fact slave descendants its probably something we can agree with.. We know how this can put people in a hole they can't really be expected to recover from....Of course most people knew all this B.G. So can we just ignore the slick writer guy for a bit..<g>?

Of course none of this is really related to the topic at hand.. Please stop trying to shoehorn him into things. It's like your a Chrisitian Fundamentalist of Gladwell.. Instead of God this and that.. It's Gladwell "method" LMAO.

Pete

Hey, Pete, I'll take your nine paragraphs of non-disagreement with my last post as your way of saying that I'm right

As for Gladwell, I take him for what he is: a gifted essayist. I never called him a scientist. I'm not really sure what your animus against him is based on--throughout history, it's been the gifted essayist/philosophers who have synthesized leading scientific thought in persuasive ways, shaping and leading public opinion along avenues of progressive thought. Scientists don't/won't/can't do that. That's Gladwell's role and he's doing a fine job of it. There's a ton of information out there--in fact, we're supersaturated by it in the Internet age--and essayists like Gladwell play vital roles in finding the meaning in that information and transferring it to the general public in easy-to-read books that shape public opinion.

[ryaningf]

The only significant example I see is the SSA one, obsolete for decades. Everything else is wholly debatable, and/or related entirely to income/class. Statistical over-representation in certain diseases, okay...but zero evidence that racism plays any part. Seems like an example of working backward from a statistical imbalance with racism-must-be-the-reason-colored glasses. Standardized test results are questionable at their core for a number of reasons, but any gap in scoring is probably just a class gap -- neither a poor white kid nor a poor black kid are familiar with yachts, neither can afford test prep. Used textbooks is obviously a class issue, period. The only thing I can conceive of that resembles institutional racism is racial profiling, and that's on the decline around the nation, with laws being passed against it. Even with private-sector redlining, the problem has mostly disappeared. So, your examples suck. The tireless sacrifice of previous generations has actually had an enormous effect, leaving you with very little to crusade against re: racism, except this phantom institutional subconscious stuff. You should probably turn your attention to destroying capitalism or whatever you think needs to be done to resolve class/caste inequalities.

Yeah, most of the known institutional racism has been either reversed, minimized, or is in the process of being corrected. My examples don't suck--they only cease to be good examples once they are identified, such is the nature of identifying bad things--once you identify them they tend to be corrected and thus are no longer 'bad.' And that was my point in the first place--just because I can't point to an ongoing example of institutional racism doesn't mean anything one way or the other. It doesn't mean that institutional racism has been eradicated and it doesn't mean that it still exists. It means, simply, that we should be on the lookout for instances where it might crop up. We're in agreement that institutional racism springs forth via individual racist attitudes, right? Then, until every individual racist attitude has been quelled, it makes sense to be on the lookout for more examples of institutional racism that we can correct, right?

As a completely realistic hypothetical, think about this. Let's assume there's a small county mutual insurance company operating in the rural counties of central and northwestern South Dakota, in and around the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation. The head underwriter at this hypothetical county mutual has noticed that, ON AVERAGE, Native Americans have been claiming about 30% more in monetary damages on insurance claims than non-Native claimants over the last 25 years. The underwriter takes this bit of trivia to the general manager over a couple of beers--together they 'hypothesize' why this might be. One guys says that Indians are more reckless and lazy by nature and cites the overwhelming statistics on Native Americans and alcoholism. The other guy talks about the huge Native American problem with suicide and unemployment. Both men then come to the consensus that Indians, because of high rates of alcoholism, suicide, and unemployment, are a race that is naturally more prone to accidents, more prone to insurance fraud, and thus more prone to file insurance claims. Both men then lament the fact that they can't simply raise the rates on Native Americans like they could in the old days. Both men say that with the empirical evidence they have--25 years of data that show that Native Americans have 30% more in monetary damages than non-Natives---would have been justification enough in the 1970s to simply raise the rates on Native American customers but now with the politically correct era they can't do that. Both men go home lamenting to themselves the state of America where, even if it's warranted--because of the empirical data they themselves have collected--they can't raise the rates on a particular segment of the population that tends to be more accident prone (or more prone to filing fraudulent insurance claims).

But later that night the general manager decides that he can do something about it. Each claim request, whether granted or denied, is given to the general manager to sign off on. Since the general manager knows that he cannot put a discriminatory policy in place--because he would eventually get caught by the state insurance department--even if such a policy is empirically justified (he thinks to himself)--what he can do is simply, on a case-by-case basis, be super-vigilant with claims involving Native Americans. Usually, he thinks to himself, he has subscribed to an edict that attempts to make the customer whole again when an act of God or any other accident befalls them--that's what insurance companies are supposed to do--make everything right again after an accident. As such, he had always sought to be as fair as he could when granting or denying claims. Now, with his supposed empirical evidence showing that Native Americans were screwing the system, he decides to be a little more stingy in denying the claims of Native Americans...looking for ANY technicality he can to deny a claim, and sometimes denying good claims because he knows that Native Americans, since they're a minority and suffer great discrimination already at the hands of white people throughout the state, will probably be less likely to file a complaint with the state, and then, if they even get that far, less likely to follow-through and succeed in their complaint. As such, through some 'tough' claim resolution, the general manager is able to 'correct' the empirical discrepancy whereby Native Americans were claiming 30% more claims than non-Natives.

So, there's a perfectly reasonable and realistic example of institutional racism. It's virtually undetectable and almost completely impossible to identify without either being in that insurance company's office or without reviewing their records and connecting the dots or without being in the head of the general manager. This is the kind of thing that could be happening all across America and if we aren't vigilant about detecting it, we'll never know. That's my point--we need to vigilant.

As an aside, the hypotheticals posited above--regarding 30% more claims by Native Americans than non-Natives--are completely within the realm of possibility and it doesn't take a racist assumption to explain them away. They could simply be the product of 3 or 4 large thunderstorms or tornadoes which decimated communities with large Native American populations, while communities with predominately non-Native populations were sparred similar acts of God over the same 25 year period. But, because the insurance men in the hypothetical come from rural America and come from an era where racism was still and is still practiced in the open (especially against Native Americans), their first thoughts, when presented with data discrepancies, was to make assumptions based on race. And that's why we need to be vigilant against institutionalized racism. Guys like this still exist and they're still running many rich and powerful institutions across the country...

[crm0922]

Fascinating discussion.

I'd just like to say on the topic of cops being jerks:

Once upon a time, in Cambridge, I had to call 911 because of a medical emergency. Basically, a very good friend of mine almost died from a prescription drug interaction with a whole bunch of alcohol.

There were two other people with me when the cops came. The cops came right out of the gate accusing every one of us of anything they could think of. Accusing us all of being on drugs, accusing us of providing drugs to my other friend, etc. None of the rest of us had had any drugs or alcohol that night. It was like a Tuesday night or something.

Meanwhile my friend is over there almost dying.

One of my buddies got into it pretty bad with one of these Cambridge pigs who had notice that the front door was damaged, so he dragged my friend outside and yelled at him about the door, accusing him of damaging it. Of course my buddy yelled right back that he had nothing to do with it.

If I hadn't gone out and broken it up, he'd have been arrested for D.C. that night. Over nothing. N O T H I N G.

So I don't find it hard to believe that Crowley was a jackass as well as Gates.

But the bottom line is Gates should have STFU and just let the cops leave rather than stir up this mess.

And race doesn't really seem to have had much of a bearing on what happened, so I'm not sure what the "Teaching Moment" is except that the president should mind his own business.