> all it takes is the current players acting in their own self interest to keep perpetuating an extremely unfair and totally rigged system
I’ll entertain this topic
Lets take a yellow cab driver in Manhattan not wanting to pick up a black passenger. If you ask them, they’ll assume its because the black passenger lives in Brooklyn or some other not-Manhattan place and that the driver wont get a good tip and wont be able to get fares at the destination, making it less economical.
The cotton and tobacco trade was also economical.
Economics is never a good reason to make an exception for discrimination.
But an individual may not have specific feelings about race, while they perpetuate a system of discrimination regardless.
It still requires empathy to be able to relate to all parties in an articulate way, to see what needs to change to provide service and access to everyone.
(To the person I replied to, there is nowhere that I’m disagreeing with you, in case you’ve been conditioned to look for that)
> Lets take a yellow cab driver in Manhattan not wanting to pick up a black passenger.
A good example for folks on news.yc, instead, would be to look at hiring in tech: In particular gate-keeping by screening in only the traditionally White/Asian universities: https://twitter.com/shaft/status/1355696154990628864 Such institutionalised behaviour has ripple effects of all kinds including people from under-represented backgrounds finding it increasingly difficult to make it in tech.
Coming back to Robinhood, it isn't far-fetched to really view their decision, subsequent lying, and the follow-up CMA stories to be construed as "don't care about the little guy as much as the big guys" behaviour.
That's the very problem, in this case, it _did_ benefit the institution -- the hedge funds. By restricting buys, retail was unable to drive the demand and put shorts into margin calls (we discuss the ethics of this until the cows come home). In this very case, an unknowable amount of money should have been transferred from hedge funds to retail investors but didn't because buyers were unable to buy.
Robinhood is just one part of stock retail demand, and overall a tiny one. And institutional demand is huge, I guarantee you there were Hedge funds buying GME hoping to provoke margin calls for the shorts too.
There is no monolithic blocks here. The conspiracy crap is doo doo.
yeah, in the US it is ironic as the intelligence and defense agencies and contractors do recruit software engineers from other universities, including universities made that were originally made for minorities, most of which are closer to the capitol. this results in encryption standards proliferation and exploits and much more, which shows competence.
"big tech" keeps saying "pipeline problem" while not even touching the universe of possibilities.
You have to solve this problem at a higher level. Why are black passengers more likely to live in poor and far away places?
Obviously it will take time to resolve that. Generations at the least. But we have to do something in the mean time, or we'll be perpetuating the negative effects of social bias. We should change the short term economics using taxes and regulation as much as possible, while clearly telling people why we're doing that.
the older article is practically supplanted by the newer bloomberg article
your bloomberg article starts off with nothing nearly as extreme as “at all”, specifically using “egalitarian in some ways” such as in the case of exactly the problem I detailed
Introducing new problems and shifting where the bis occurs and for different populations than just people of color
Thank you for the insight, good to know about. I have never thought about overlaying social causes in my profile picture at all let alone on ride hailing apps, but I can see many people doing that
> Lets take a yellow cab driver in Manhattan not wanting to pick up a black passenger. If you ask them, they’ll assume its because the black passenger lives in Brooklyn or some other not-Manhattan place and that the driver wont get a good tip and wont be able to get fares at the destination, making it less economical.
This isn’t an example of institutional racism, just regular racism. Institutional racism would be something like legacy preferences for college admittance. Most universities and colleges either explicitly or implicitly banned or discouraged black students from attending for many decades. So, a disproportionate number of legacy students are white because a disproportionate number of past generations allowed to attend were white. Giving preference to legacy students disadvantages black students, not because anyone is being explicitly racist, but because the system is set up in a way that ends up disadvantaging them. No is looking at a black applicant and saying they don’t want them or a white applicant and saying lets pick this person, but the pattern of passing down preferential admittance to the children, grandchildren, etc. of whites who were able to attend because they were white is institutional. Legacy students are just acting in their own self-interest by using the preference system. The school is acting in self-interest by promoting the legacy system as a benefit to attending that will benefit your future children.
Both of our examples highlight the exact same thing that all it takes is the current players acting in their own self interest to keep perpetuating an extremely unfair and totally rigged system.
this is the most productive aspect to highlight than semantical distinctions that will dilute how much anybody cares.
I would disagree that it is nothing more than semantics. Your example is someone seeing a black person and applying negative stereotypes to them. That is easily recognized as racist. My example does not require anyone to even know the race of anyone involved. Explicit racism is obvious to anyone around it and is low hanging fruit. Institutional racism can often only be identified through actual study of complex interconnected systems and their history.
> This isn’t an example of institutional racism
> Never said it was
You responded to a comment saying “it's similar to something like institutional racism. There probably are very few people who are openly and unashamedly racist at the highest levels of power (although sadly not zero) - but all it takes is the current players acting in their own self interest to keep perpetuating an extremely unfair and totally rigged system”, clearly saying they are not talking about explicit racism, but people acting in self interest not related to race or racial stereotypes. Then you respond with an example of someone that is explicitly racist. That is not what was being talked about and is not a relevant example of what the commenter you are responding to was saying. Discriminating against others, racial or otherwise, for economic self interest is racist and bad. But the point of institutional racism is it can happen without any individual discriminating against anyone based on race.
I’ll entertain this topic
Lets take a yellow cab driver in Manhattan not wanting to pick up a black passenger. If you ask them, they’ll assume its because the black passenger lives in Brooklyn or some other not-Manhattan place and that the driver wont get a good tip and wont be able to get fares at the destination, making it less economical.
The cotton and tobacco trade was also economical.
Economics is never a good reason to make an exception for discrimination.
But an individual may not have specific feelings about race, while they perpetuate a system of discrimination regardless.
It still requires empathy to be able to relate to all parties in an articulate way, to see what needs to change to provide service and access to everyone.
(To the person I replied to, there is nowhere that I’m disagreeing with you, in case you’ve been conditioned to look for that)