
What Does Modern Prejudice Look Like? - rosser
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/04/22/177455764/What-Does-Modern-Prejudice-Look-Like
======
crusso
I don't typically approve of in-group preferential treatment as discussed in
the article. I've come across it most in dealing with various minority/ethnic
groups where it seems to be okay to admit to it. A colleague of mine who is
Greek was once talking to me about various restaurants and shops he goes to
because the owners are Greek and give him a discount. He saw nothing wrong
with it. I've heard similar comments from other colleagues who were Indian,
Jewish, etc.

I couldn't imagine going to a restaurant and getting a discount because the
owner and I are both white. Even typing this out and thinking about someone
telling me they would give me preferential treatment because I'm white makes
me uncomfortable.

All that said, how is in-group preferential treatment any different than
familial preferential treatment. The article mentioned giving away free
tickets as an example. Is it wrong to give your brother some concert tickets
you have because you should be equally inclined to give them to a perfect
stranger? Okay, how about a third cousin whom you never but you know would
like the tickets? Is giving that third cousin the tickets that much different
than giving them to a neighbor?

~~~
powertower
> Even typing this out and thinking about someone telling me they would give
> me preferential treatment because I'm white makes me uncomfortable.

You need to shake that PC bullshit off. There is nothing wrong with freedom of
association, nor with feeling good about being "white". Neither of those
things is discrimination (or evil).

Not only are you just 8% of the world's population (and on a decline), but
you're also part of a race (if you accept white as meaning of somewhat Eastern
European decent) that has built some of the most impressive civilizations,
empires, and cultures on this planet,... filled libraries with countless works
on all subjects and matters,... ended slavery (a long world-wide practice that
was mosty done by non-whites; and still is),... built and financed just about
every part and institution in America (USA was 90% white even up to 1960; now
about 62-72%),... invented, refined, and progressed just about every modern
technology and field,... actively discriminated against your own race to help
& better minorities,... and did a countless other _exceptional_ things in
abundance.

It's amazing how people will associate the bad things that some people did
(the things that are all easy to do like kill and destroy - that all other
races have done in abundance) to the white race, yet at the same time ignore
all the positive things they did to advance the whole of humanity (things that
are difficult to do - things that require quite a bit of work, self-sacrifice,
intellect, and character/morality).

~~~
anon808
How about just feeling good for being a human? Tribalism is not a virtue.

~~~
powertower
Ideally? Sure, but...

The human condition is complicated, and the human brain is a pattern matching
and association machine.

Humans have been identifying and separating themselves by color/race since the
beginning of time, even before we could talk. It is the first category...
before rich/poor, beautiful/ugly, young/old, etc. It's almost primial.

The context to what I wrote was in relation to the current "white privilege"
PC bullshit that has been indoctrinated into our collective. Nothing more.

~~~
ekm2
>Humans have been identifying and separating themselves by color/race since
the beginning of time, even before we could talk. It is the first category...
before rich/poor, beautiful/ugly, young/old, etc. It's almost primial.

How exactly does proving that something has always existed also show that it
is right?

~~~
powertower
Does it really have to fit in the right/wrong classification?

Can't it just be an evolutionary survival mechanism?... One of the things that
primarily is designed to help people come together and stay away from danger.

I'd imagine at the core of it there is a neural network (that you're born
with) that categorizes things into - "like me" - "not like me".

In of itself, it's not something that's right/wrong in a moral sense, but how
it's further _consciously_ used can be.

------
speeder
I have both good and negative feelings on the subject.

The good feelings, come from the fact that I believe that people for the most
part should be free to help their peers as they want, it is part of nature to
strengthen your group...

Yet, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth, when circles that are supposed to be
fair, and claim to be fair, aren't. It is specially bad when we are outside
those circles...

On my case there are two ones that are particularly striking: One, I am not
related to the US startup scene at all, I did not went to Ivy League
universities, or anything close, I don't know anyone at MIT, Stanford or have
a friend in the whole city of San Francisco...

This mean that getting investment is not easy...

Some people might say: "Oh, but anyone can apply to Y Combinator or to a VC!"
well, yes... You can apply, but if you read around, many times "social proof"
is required, and what is social proof?

Or the other case, is since I make games, I might want to compete for a award,
yet brazillians mostly gave up on IGF, because most of IGF winners (and
judges, and organizers) are somehow related to CMP itself (the organizer
company) or Tig Source (a blog and forum ran by Derek Yu, winner and judge).

But IGF one is not exactly new, every year people bash it because of that, and
every year a flamewar ensues in several forums... And some ex-IGF judges and
founders sent me e-mails claiming that this is the reason they are ex-IGF in
first place.

~~~
pessimizer
>it is part of nature to strengthen your group...

If you find yourself appealing to nature, you're starting down a slippery
slope.

~~~
obviouslygreen
Because nature is... not part of... nature? This makes no sense. If you find
yourself discounting large swaths of reality, you are generalizing.

~~~
pessimizer
No, because everything is part of nature, including not being racist. When you
start to draw a line through human behavior and label one expression of it
natural and the other not, you're creating a norm rather than observing one.

In other words, in labeling some human behavior natural (for example
heterosexuality), or unnatural (for example flying in a plane), you are
immediately discounting large swaths of reality in favor of dressed up
idiosyncratic personal prejudices.

------
happyrock
I'm always reminded of this quote:

"We have never met before, but I instantly know him. One look, one phrase, and
I know where he grew up, how he grew up, where he got his drive and his sense
of humor. He is New York. He is Jewish. He looks like my uncle Louis, his
voice is my uncle Sam. I feel we’ve been together at countless weddings, bar
mitzvahs, and funerals. I know his genetic structure. I'm certain that within
the last five hundred years—perhaps even more recently—we shared the same
ancestor."

\--- Robert Reich, Clinton administration Secretary of Labor, on his first
face-to-face meeting with Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan

That's what kinship _feels_ like. The same psychological effects described in
the OP are every bit as real when it come to racial and ethnic identity. It's
not "fair"—we don't choose our heritage—but then "fairness" in matters of
interpersonal human affairs always was a chimera and a false god. Should
people just not be allowed to meet each other face to face? It's silly.

~~~
derleth
> Should people just not be allowed to meet each other face to face?

In some cases, when making some kinds of selections, this is entirely
reasonable. For example, in auditions for certain orchestras:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audition#Instrumentalists_2>

> In many major orchestras, a cloth screen may be used at some stages of the
> audition process, to protect the audition panel from allegations of
> favouritism or sexism.

So they don't see the musician. They hear the music. Which is what the
orchestra is about, right?

~~~
happyrock
I suppose that is the crux of the issue. If the orchestra is just about the
music, why not listen to a recording instead? The people performing the music
are just as much a part of the performance as the music itself.

~~~
derleth
> If the orchestra is just about the music, why not listen to a recording
> instead?

The social experience. The experience of going someplace special, outside the
normal orbit of your life, and being That Person for a while. That Person
being your mental image of the kind of person who goes to a concert played by
a live orchestra in a concert hall. Maybe, on the other hand, it's a warm and
homey return to a younger time, when your grandfather took you to that one
performance of Mahler which you will never, ever forget.

Lots of reasons, really.

> The people performing the music are just as much a part of the performance
> as the music itself.

But is it vital that they be white? Or Jewish? Or perceptibly taller than
average even when sitting down?

------
incision
I remember being a young man and searching for a word to generally describe
this.

I settled on predilection.

Anecdotally, I'd say it's extremely common. I've confronted a few people about
it and heard the same arguments in each case. It seems to boil down to a
notion that anything which can be phrased in positive terms can't possibly be
bad - quite a handy rationalization.

------
ultimoo
I have a friend of Indian nationality who settled in the valley after
finishing his education in India and has actually done pretty good for
himself. I have heard him mention more than once how prejudice stemming from
alma maters comes into picture at larger technology corporations based in the
valley. From what I understand, for engineers with less than 10 years of
experience and who do not have a degree from a preeminent american university
-- it is definitely an uphill journey into junior or middle management.

------
mtowle
_I'm not saying, I'm just saying:_

Brown man reviews work of brown woman and white (Jewish?) man in favor of
trying to help those outside your group-identity to foster openness and
whatnot. Brown man proceeds to mention brown woman 27 times by name to her co-
author's 6.

I'm not calling him a hypocrite - I don't think it was conscious either. If
there is a point to be made here, though, perhaps that's it: the Morally
Outraged About Extremely Subtle, Subconscious Effects of Involuntary Decisions
have not fully investigated and do not fully comprehend the obligations
they're laying at everyone's feet.

------
twoodfin
Apologies for not having read the book, but is there evidence that unconscious
favoritism is actually at the root of various economic and social disparities
in the U.S.? How does it account for disparities amongst similarly "different"
groups? Asian median income in the U.S. is higher than non-Hispanic-whites
(god I hate these categories...), while Hispanic is lower.

It seems to me that the vast majority of the difference is rooted elsewhere,
because you'd have to tell a pretty good "just so" story to suggest that
"modern prejudice" simultaneously helped Asians and punished Hispanics.

~~~
bcoates
If the theory is in-group favoritism, then the disparity is self-perpetuating:
if one group has more income it presumably has more favor to give
disproportionately within the group, and vice versa.

I'm guessing it's mostly a black-white thing though, for most other US
minorities I would be surprised if the effects weren't dominated by the
differences on quantity and wealth of immigrants.

~~~
twoodfin
I'm inclined to believe that culture matters. A lot. I bet it swamps any
effects of in-group favoritism. Of course, "culture" is hard to define and
even harder to design good controlled experiments to test. On the other hand,
I'd be interested to see the results of something like the authors' IAT
testing, but looking for "hidden" responses to cultural traits (value of work
vs. leisure, family vs. friends) rather than racial images.

------
liber8
>>* we strengthen existing patterns of advantage and disadvantage because our
friends, neighbors and children's classmates are overwhelmingly likely to
share our own racial, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds.*<<

It's interesting that the article (and presumably the researchers) presume
this is a bad thing. This is, in essence, natural selection playing out.
Adopting the behaviors of those closest to us is also how will advance (or
retreat) as a species.

~~~
eightpersimmons
What you are talking about is social darwinism, not simply natural selection,
and I think there has been enough said on why it is problematic that I don't
need to reiterate it here.

~~~
fyi80
It's kin selection, which is regular Darwinism.

"Natural" != "morally right"

~~~
eightpersimmons
Were this an article about how, for example, people's mothers
/sisters/familiar relations favors them, that might be the case.

But it isn't.

And, in case this was a point of confusion, race != family.

------
zeteo
I'm surprised to see two such distinct incidents brought together under a
common heading. The first one (interview granting) is about feeling more
altruistic towards people that we share some experience with. Interesting
phenomenon, but it has nothing in common with a doctor (who probably had no
experience in common with his patient) deciding that the hospital's interests
are best served by providing for a (potentially very influential) Yale
professor extra super special forms of treatment.

------
tuxidomasx
Another issue this creates is the "fight fire with fire" paradigm. Or, in this
case, using favoritism to combat favoritism.

For example, I know I'm much more likely to get favoritism from people who
share my ethnic background partly because there is the common belief within
that group that nobody else is "looking out for us"-- so we have to "look out
for each other."

------
fyi80
That's not "modern" prejudice. That's traditional kin selection / tribalism /
in-group prejudice.

