Racism

September 30, 2020 Saagar Pateder

For obvious reasons, comments are not going to be allowed on this post. If you’d like to send me a link, or your thoughts, feel free to email / text / call / FB Messenger / send a carrier pigeon to me.

I’m not diving into the racism debate directly. I think that doing so would be massively unwise for me, for many reasons, but primarily because at the current moment I’m procrastinating studying for my two midterms tomorrow for classes that I honestly don’t feel very comfortable in. What I will do, however, is to post a few links that I’ve found quite thought provoking, or at the very least quick reads that employ solid logic accessible to the average person that isn’t deep into the academic community of race relations and African American Studies. They are not all together on the same “side” (whatever that means) of racism, and so I’d encourage you to read them all. I’ve included a quote from every article, but please don’t assume that the quote summarizes the entire thing.

scott alexander | AGAINST MURDERISM🔗

A fantastic, thought-provoking read that talks about racism and discourse. Be prepared for multiple run-throughs. Thanks to David for sending this my way.

The article discussing the “ban the box” policy is here.

Here I would point out that this is pretty much the demographic that elected Nikki Haley (birth name, Nimrata Randhawa; daughter of two Punjabi immigrants) as governor, and that supports her so fervently that she remains one of the most popular politicians in the country. Also the demographic that loved Ben Carson, making him the only candidate to briefly displace Trump for first place in the 2016 Republican primary polls. One plausible explanation is that the South Carolinians don’t like blacks and immigrants because they view them as having foreign values – specifically, Blue Tribe values (it may be relevant here that 90%+ of blacks usually vote Democrat). If someone like Nikki Haley or Ben Carson proves that they share Red beliefs, they become part of the tribe and will be fiercely defended. Maybe this is more like the daycare situation than it looks – people using race as a proxy for something they care about, until they get direct information. To be clear – I am not saying that racism doesn’t exist, I’m not saying that we should ignore racism, I’m not saying that minorities should never be able to complain about racism. I’m saying that it’s very dangerous to treat “racism” as a causal explanation, that it might not tell you anything useful about the world, and that’s a crappy lever to use if you want to change behavior.

gillian white | The Data Are Damning: How Race Influences School Funding🔗

The article was written back in 2015, and it only really talks about school district funding for Pennsylvania. That said, it’s one of the few articles that I’ve come across so far that shows graphs/data that account for poverty. Controlling for poverty, less white school districts were receiving less state funding than whiter ones. I’d love to know if that ever got fixed.

District Funding, by Racial Composition and Poverty Level

Sendhil Mullainathan | Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions🔗

Also written back in 2015. Overviews a number of studies and findings where race is (with great difficulty) isolated from other variables.

shree paradkar | Intentions in racism don’t matter. Impact does 🔗

I don’t think that Paradkar’s and Alexander’s points are incompatible. Racism by consequences, as Alexander describes it, seems more focused on broader impact, whereas Paradkar focuses more on our individual actions. Here’s a really solid quote from her: