DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... The Implications of Racism

Feel free to be wrong then. An exception to the rule (Even if it is, which I'm not so sure about) does not invalidate the rule.

I call shens. Africa has some rich people in it. There's no poverty in the entire world.

Yet another problem solved.

Vers, I am interested in hearing what you have to say, whether it be in the thread or via PM.

I hope it is more along the lines of actionable steps that can be taken, and not just the results. In Swish's last post, he outlined 7-8 things he would like to see from both whites and blacks as it relates to racial issues. It was a good post and I agreed with almost everything he said. Yet, without an actual plan to affect these changes, it is mostly just meaningless.

Getting away from racial issues and just talking about some problems in society in general, sometimes you hear something like, people need to stop making excuses for themselves and take more responsibility! Ok.... ummm.... I agree. Now how do you make that happen? I see some parallels in this thread with ideas but no clear way to make them happen or at least not make them happen in a fair and reasonable way.

well some of them are straight forward, are they not?

for instance, if blacks want to see change in the justice system and such, wouldn't it start by actually trying to become cops, lawyers, politicians and such?

the problem is education. all of the social issues we have, and not just racial, tie into each other.

we still have an economical and educational mess here in the states. and thats HUGE as it relates to race relations.

Boom! This is what I am looking for.

I won't offer my ideas as of yet, but you and Swish are onto something. I think Florida and Clem can be huge assets as well.

I do have a few ideas, but I selfishly want to learn from this thread and I don't want people to just think about my ideas for solutions. I guarantee that some of you guys---who are way smarter than I am---will come up w/much better solutions than I have. I also guarantee that many of your solutions will match mine, as I am not totally ignorant.

I say we progress rather than digress. Yes, [wow, is there such a thing as an ending alliteration?} we must recognize history and learn from it. Yes, we better see the perils of the present, but most importantly, how do we correct what is wrong and make tomorrow a better place?

Thanks for the kind words Vers. Unfortunately, I don't claim to have any great solutions. In fact, a lot of the posters in this thread have better insight into this than I do. I do see what you are trying to do in this thread as far as seeing the big picture goes and I guess I was just trying to acknowledge that and steer the conversation from gathering ideas towards creating solutions.

here's the thing.

the issue has been going away for a while now. I just have this feeling all thats happening right now is the last desperate attempt of the old ways to try and take control before it and everybody that thinks like that die off.

we got black people dressing like skaters. we got white dudes dressing like Trap lords. both are listening to pop and hip hop.

Man you know what was crazy? i had this white friend back when i was single in 2007. he took me to this country club, and i felt out of place at first.

but its was WILD. it was country music, mostly white people, but the country club played hip hop music too. and people was getting down to it! and we went to a bunch of places like that. I didn't even know country music and hip hop go together. and it wasn't just some radio hip hop, this was like some real trap stuff. (if yall dont know what trap music is, let me know ill explain).

was really cool.

I do not know what trap music is.

Ok.

There's a lot of different types of hip hop.

If you ever heard guys say they only listen to "real" hip hop, they are talking about guys that send actual messages, political statements and such. So it'll be like Kendrick Lamar, eminem, slaughter house, Common. J cole, jay-z, Kanye west. Those types.

Then you got the typical club/top 40 rap. Lil Wayne, drake, Nikki minaj, Tyga. People like them.

Then you got trap music.

So the reason it's called trap music is because it's about the trap. So when you hear people talking about the Trap, they are talking about places in the ghetto/projects that sell/make drugs. The reason they call it the trap is because once you enter that lifestyle, there's usually only one way out.....

So trap music would be Young Jeezy, lil boosie, T.I., Gucci Mane. It's more a southern rapper type feel.

It is hard to argue such generalities. Please offer specific measures, actions, and examples, instead of extraordinarily wide generalities that could, or could not be true and/or accurate.

Referring to all the studies shown that black people (and minorities in general) are not hired due to their race and/or name. There have been numerous studies done about this. Not to mention the income inequality for minorities.

On the other hand .....

There are cases where Black people are hired specifically because they are Black.

In other cases, there may be factors such as communication skills, attitude, education, and similar factors, that play a part.

While I suppose that some hiring directors look at an application and eliminate people based on their name, they probably won't be hiring directors for long if they let better candidates get away while hiring inferior candidates based on their prejudices regarding a name.

I have a friend who did interviewing and hiring for a modestly sized company. He told me about a guy who he was all set to hire, until he was going over information with the guy on his resume, and the guy said, "Oh, my name is spelled wrong on my resume, it is really (this)." It was a really stupid mistake on the resume, I can't remember it exactly, but it was something like the guy spelled his name "Robbert", and it was actually "Robert". He passed on the candidate at that point, because if he couldn't be bothered to check and correct his resume, then how could he trust the guy to double check his work?

There are any number of reasons why one candidate may be hired over another. Personally, I have had candidates swear during an interview ..... leer at a woman who walked into the restaurant ..... speak inappropriately when I asked how their weekend was ..... and many other really shockingly bad interview foul ups. There can be many reasons why a person does not get a job they applied for, and while race may be a reason in some limited cases, experience and many other factors may be the real reason.

I truly do not know how you do a study that takes all of these factors into account.

A lot of it has to do with a blind test where applicants are given the same exact resume, but the name or race is changed. We then see that the minority applicants aren't called back at the same rate as their white counterparts. But feel free to try to throw in some anecdotal evidence about a friend of a friend to try to disprove the multitudes of studies done on this.

Sorry.

As far as whether or not "white apologists" was directed at you, all I can say is it's been a label I've heard Limbaugh and Fox use for a very long time. I've been trying to figure out why you would want me to attach your name to that and how not doing so makes me less of a man.

You took it personal and claimed I was making the issue all about me. I haven't been able to see where I referred to me or you. Occasionally I will attach IMO or jmho like I've seen many people use. I don't see much difference between my posts or others, but a couple of times I've gotten some mildly hostile responses from you and I'm not sure why that's necessary.

As far as twisting I've looked over my posts and I can't find where the twist occurred.

To me the phrase "white apologists" sounds like a political attempt to minimize someone's belief about race in this country in a way that says there's nothing to be concerned about. I also think it's very much the same as calling someone who suggests racism is an over blown issue a "racists".

I don't believe that to be true or valuable to any discussion and maybe the use of the word "idiotic" was a mistake, but on the other hand if someone kept insisting that I'm a racists I might consider them to be an idiot.

As far as black people being confused about my opinions of racism, I can't understand what the color of their skin has to so with whether or not my opinion is less valuable.

I try not to consider you and your opinion of me these days. I know we went at each other on other board, but I'm trying to avoid that on this board because I think most people were weary of us monopolizing threads.

I'm willing to call truce toward hostility, but I can't guarantee I'll post in a way that you won't take personal.

The issue I have with your thought here is that you started, as Ytown said, with a sweeping generality about hiring practices, then someone, Evedawg I think, gave an example that counters your point, and you dismiss it as the exception, then continue about studies while maintaining your general statement.

I don't deny that those studies have shown it happens, but does it happen all the time? 75% of the time, 50% of the time?

Because something exists or takes place, does not mean it is the general rule, again as Ytown said, there are many factors that go into hiring practices.

Sorry to step in, but I agree that it's not a general rule.

I think CHS is only referring to the fact that current research still demonstrates bias - about a lot of characteristics.

The research is true and valid, but I don't think CHS is saying that it happens every where all the time.

I do think he's saying (I could be wrong) that many examples of hiring/renting/loaning/promotion bias are still common toward race, gender and other characteristics. I agree with that and I'm also willing to discuss that bias also creates unfair treatment toward someone more qualified. On the other hand there are also many cases where people more qualified were passed over because of race, gender or other reasons.

A discussion of affirmative action is good because that was the one policy that significantly decreased discrimination toward race and gender and created what's been called reverse discrimination and quotas.

I think good a discussion would be talking about a what happens when a personal characteristic helps to secure a job over someone who may be more qualified. It's becoming more difficult to disregard either side of that discussion.

Do you think it's time to end affirmative action? I don't. I think it may at least be time to start discussing it, but not without including facts about both sides of the bias.

What Eve mentioned is the exception to the rule. Why is it an exception to a rule? She said her CIO was black which means she could have direct influence (hiring other minorities she likes) or indirect influences (her subordinates hiring minorities to get favor from her).

I work in the IT industry and recently connected with 1,900 IT people on linkedin, from developers, UX design, project managers, and I would estimate less then 1% were black or hispanic. My question is why? I have a very common name so soon as I got an interview based on my awesome personality and my skills its pretty much a done deal in Ohio, but if I had another name I doubt I would got call backs.

It has been well documented that the a person's name will automatically get your resume thrown away which affects minorities income and wealth.

This is the question we should be asking. Rather than pointing out that it happens and placing blame, let's find out why.

IMO, it starts with education, as the phrase of the day seems to be, "studies have shown" and "it's well documented" that education in inner cities, where a large percentage of minorities reside, is poor quality.

This then leads to the question of why? Is the teaching quality poor, is the education system badly managed, is there poor learning conditions in these schools, does the lack of family involvement affect a students education.

Then some of the blame lays on the students themselves. you can give them everything they need to succeed, but if they just aren't willing to put in the effort, you can't help them. Which then leads me to ask, is their lack of effort just laziness? I don't think that is always the case, but feel it is more combination of all of the above and a few other unknowns that leads to apathy, and a lack of belief it will provide any benefit.

So, how do we fix that? Where do we start? If we, the general public, want to see equality, then we, not the government, need to find out how to solve these issues, not just put fixes on the surface, but truly fix it at the root.

Even if we start today, we probably won't be alive to see the result, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

You want Solutions, you can't handle solutions. But I feel everything I say will just be ignored like always. I just wish people would at least PM me and say something like "I read your post and it made me think" lol.

Disclaimer
These solutions won't be applied to everyone, everyone is different which means by me saying a solution, I am in fact stereotyping and generalizing. For the sake of this discussion I will.

Government
Take prisons out of private industry. Huge conflict of interests when the lobbyist getting people harsher prison terms because of a financial gain.

Harder welfare laws, if you got all this free stuff, you will need to work for it. Working at Government offices, dusting shelves at the state house, cutting the state lawn ect...

Educate all children fairly, education will help solve proverty, stop letting kids fall through the cracks, increase money and help solve the issue.

For people in Poverty. (black,whites)
Stop littering.
Stop the ignorance and be polite
Read to your children, and teach them respect
Stop eating so much junk food
Don't use your situation as an excuse

Blacks
Before you say racism, think of it logicaly, if person offers you some fried chicken, it might not be because your black.

Support black owned business.

Take education seriously

Whites
Don't sterotype. Yes we all sterotype but understand no 2 apples are the same. The first one might be bad but the 2nd one might be the best apple you ever had. For me this is the root of many problems, people already have their preconceived thoughts and because of them they made their judgement before they met the person. (The big black guy walking towards you is not going to rob you, he is walking to his car) For example, if I go buy a car, I will not get the same enthusiasm as someone else because it its perceived I can't afford the car. True story went to a dealership to buy my Camaro, sales people stood and watched me look at cars for 30 mins and never came out. Went to another dealership bought the car, they missed out on a sale.


Quit this silly affermatitive action stance, fact blacks are 12% of the population, fact blacks are less likely to get hired because of their name, which means that in any given field there will always be less blacks probably less then 5%. The reason why AA was created was to help level the playing field because many companies did not want to hire blacks and only hired whites. This is discriminated and with out it many of these hiring practices will start again, you will see a larger income gap.

I can go more but will stop here.

I know the reason why? I wonder if people are willing to fix the issue rather then just letting the issue get worse.

These IT jobs you need to have a college degree.
How do you get a college degree if you don't have the grades to get into them?
How can you get the grades if the school sucks?
How can you improve the school when teachers are not motivated to teach?
or
How can you improve the school when you are only getting the bad teachers?
How can a teacher be a good teacher if all the students don't care?
How can the students care when they live in poverty?

DING DING DING DING there is your answer fix poverty and most of these issues will solve themself, however it is the best interest of our economy our government and for some racist people to keep people poor. (I don't think people will be happy if their jobs are taking be minorities)

One last thing about names.

I think its silly that we are judged on names, my wife is 100% Nigerian American, she had a very hard time finding jobs in her field and was stuck in dead in jobs for years, it had nothing to do with her education because she has her masters and she has a super duper bubbly personality (people on the board have met her).

This is similar to her real name,

"AderinolaSarah Udumelue Solorain"

Here is the thing her name has meaning, it means "Gods Light". She dropped her first, first name and goes by "Sarah" and now my common last name and guess what happened?

Fix poverty? How do you suggest we do that?

I think you and I are on the same track, but maybe heading opposite directions, unless I am misunderstanding your position. I feel the solution is to fix education.

Or is this a car/job debate? Need a car to get a job, need a job to get a car.

Poor people don't get educated, and you have to get educated to get out of poverty?

I'd rather find a solution to educating the poor, than to just give them money to make get them out of poverty. An uneducated person will most likely not use any money wisely, and remain poor. Give a man a fish and he eats today, teach a man to fish and he eats everyday.

By no means I say give people a blank check.

Create more programs that are designed to help, teach, turtor. Make it incentive and anti incentive based. A person must do xyz in order to get benefits. If they go beyond and above then the can get rewarded.

sorry dude. Sharkeisha. Uniqua and Shaquita are hood names to the fullest. and dumb.

i agree that actual ethnic names like your wife's name shouldn't be discriminated against.

but lets be real, some of those names blacks are naming their kids are utterly ridiculous.

I disagree, I think we are conditioned not to like the names. And frankly from that perspective I consider it self hate.

Why are those black names dumb but names like John, Liam, Henery, Scarlet, Vilot are not?

Shaniqua is so synonymous with being a hoodrat name but it's actual meaning, means "God's Grace". What's different from the name Shaniqua or Asher besides they both honor God? One is African the other is not.

We are taught that those names are bad, we are taught that people who have those names are ghetto and people eat them and build these stero types around them.

Think of it this way, those hoodrat names or no different then any other ethnic name (Korean, German, Russian, Jewish) but our society frowns upon Hispanic and these black names.

j/c

I'm going to wade back in.

I have a hypothetical for everyone. I'm not saying this is what I believe but rather this is a concept. I'm interested to hear the feedback on it.

What if we did away with all types of affirmative action to make workforces reflect diversity more? No more preferential hiring practices to race, sex, creed or physical ability.

Why? Well, if we are talking equality, doesn't it make sense that we look for the purest sense of it? In fact, could one argue that by pursuing affirmative action, employers are actually being racist?

Do we need to be "hands off" and let the whole system balance itself out eventually or do we force diversity for the sake of a representative workforce in certain sectors?

Based on mathematics it will be impossible for minorities to compete with whites without AA. There needs to be a weighted scale or minorities will be at a severe disadvantage.

Population 70% white 12% black so lets so to keep it simple 70 white 12 black.

Lets say the top 20% will eligible for a specific job. 14w 2 black. So for every 1 black person they have to compete with 7 white people.

Based on the studies that prove that black/hispanic names won't get a call back and other studies that say that you have a major advantage getting jobs by networking, black people or minorities, won't get the opportunity.

So if blacks don't have opportunities to these high paying jobs it will create, and income disparity which will increase poverty.

Also, I don't have the time to research but I bet you can find the research before AA was created and what it is now, I bet that less minorites had high paying job then now.

Lets also be clear that AA is really only useful for goverment type jobs. Private sector does not have to follow AA, they can hire/fire who ever they want, so this AA debate is pretty much useless. (which is why I decline to state my ethnicity on job applications)

I wonder how Moon Unit and Dweezil Zappa would do in applying for jobs if their father wasn't a famous personality. Could you imagine a hiring director for a major technology company looking for a person in a leadership position and considering "Moon Unit"? How about a TV news department? "This is Moon Unit Zappa, reporting live from the UN". How about "This is your surgeon. Dr Moon Unit Zappa, and he will be doing your open heart surgery today."?

I do think that names matter, at least to some extent, and probably even more in a professional setting.

Further, sometimes there are pronunciation issues, and no one wants to look stupid trying to figure out how to pronounce some "unique" names.

There are many reasons why candidates might be passed over because of a name .... and not all are because the person doing the hiring is a racist. No one wants to look stupid while stumbling over a name, and trying to figure out how to pronounce it. I bet that this plays as large a part in hiring in many cases as any other factor does.

We can look for "racist" reasons that things happen, and/or "non racist" reasons, and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle of the 2 extremes, on a sliding scale, based on the people involved.

I will also add about AA.

People will say let the best person get the job, again mathematically it will put blacks on severe disadvantage.

Lets say out of that 7/1 (8 total people) must take a test with the max result is 100. Lets say the black person scores a 90 (which is an A) I used a random number generator and restricted the numbers to 70-100 (the assumption is if they are applying for the job they must be somewhat knowledgeable about the job, or they would not reply)

Here are the results

Set #1:
96, 100, 74, 97, 81, 93, 73

Set #2:
100, 96, 92, 83, 77, 97, 86

So from both sets of numbers 4 people will out perform him. This is not factoring other social economic issues and personal, bias, and names.

This one had me a little curious, so I dug up some numbers.


These are per the 2010 census (Civilian non-institutionalized population)


US population: 304.3 million
Whites: 197.4 million (64%)
AA: 38.6 million (13%)
Other: 68.2 million (23%)

Since we are talking about a profession, I started at 20 (plus the census chart had them broken down in this manner, saving me time )
Working Age Whites (20-64): 120.6 million
Working Age AA (20-64): 22.7 million

White Graduation Rate: 81%
AA Graduation Rate: 61%

Graduated Working Whites: 97.7 million
Graduated Working AA: 13.9 million

At this point we are at a 1 to 10 ratio of having the qualifications for the job.

Now factor in math proficiency (important to the IT field and most professions)
Whites: 70% proficiency (29% above basic proficiency)
AA: 30% proficiency (6% above basic proficiency)

Working Age Whites with math proficiency: 68.4 million
Working Age AA with proficiency: 4.2

The numbers seem to show that education is a huge issue, as well as opportunity for those that do get the basic education.

This was actually interesting to me, when I started to break down numbers and percentages, and differences.

I would also guess that lack of computers and internet access in the poorest homes would have an effect on this particular field of work.

I find it interesting that everyone is talking about Black/White issues and how to fix fairness to minorities all the while the Hispanic portion of our population has passed 17 percent as Blacks hover near 13 percent.
The future of America will be consumed with White/Hispanic issues as The Hispanics zoom past the Black percentage of our population and control or demand more of the pie.

Pronouncing names doesn't mean anything. How many Asian or Indians are in the IT Field or are surgeons?

I never said anyone is racist, please reread my post. We have conditioned are selves that black things are bad subconscious or concious. I have posted before about the whole black baby doll experiment where the black child liked the white baby doll better and called it nice, better pretty while the black baby doll, was ugly, dirty and mean.

And when I say WE I mean myself also.

Education is a huge factor for financial success. The problem like I said before, if you are in poverty it makes it harder to get that foundation for schooling. So if everyone in the entire school is behind on math in 3rd grade, how will they ever get the math proficiency in order to become an IT professional? They won't.

Don't remember where I got the trillion dollar number, it could be wrong and I am not looking up the source to see if I misinterpreted it. I'll just assume your numbers are right. Still doesn't change the fact that Swish is wrong in his assertion that we are supporting Israel because of the Holocaust and doing nothing for black people in this country...

I think I answered this the last time you asked it but I will answer it again... either party, whether it's a poor person or a company, that is acting outside the law, is the worst. If a poor person is taking advantage of all of the benefits they are entitled to, it's hard to fault them. Obviously you hope they are working toward being self-sufficient but while they are in need, let them get what is coming to them.

Same for corporations using the tax code to their advantage, if they are within the law, then we should not complain about the corporations... we should complain about the law. I own a home, I have kids, I put money in a 401K, I have tax free investments... I take advantage of every single deduction and benefit I can when I do my taxes so that the government doesn't get a single dime more than they are entitled to, why should I fault a corporation for doing the same?

There was an article on Yahoo a while back about a hispanic dude named Juan who had applied for dozens of jobs with not even a single interview, he changed the name on his resume to John and had 4 interviews in a week.

I do not doubt what you are saying. That is the basis for my rant the other day on the "below the surface" racism that still exists and is actually fairly common.

Hypothecial question:

If 20 years ago, a black man broke into my house, robbed me, raped my wife, and murdered my children, would I be justified in saying that all black men are the reason my life is bad and that the black guy sitting on the bus stop next to me is a murderous rapist???

Because that is what I have seen on some of these post. White people are racist because what happened YEARS ago, but OTHER white people. I am so sick of hearing that African Americans are the only ones with problems, and that their are REASONS that allow some of them to act and do some of the things they do.

I am sorry, but I was raised to the fact that you make your own decisions and choices. What my great grandfather did 100 years ago, has had no effect on my life what-so-ever other than the fact that I came from his tree. Never met the man, cant say I have his views or prejudices either.

As for racism and having to be in power, and Blacks cannot be racist, that is the biggest load of poop I have ever heard in my life.

Thats incorrect. For every 1 person they will compete with 8 other people. Race has nothing to do with it. I am white, if I go into a job with 10 applicants, 3 are black 6 are white, and I am white, I am not just competing with the white people, I am competing against all other 9 people. i have a 10% chance at getting the job.

I used actual numbers based on the percentage of both whites and blacks in this country. To make the math a little easier I just turned the percentage into a whole number.

My numbers are actual real numbers based on the us population. Your numbers are from something you just made up.