"Steve, if you cannot avoid taking the following personally as being about you, please stop reading here."
Okay, we're going to sort this out now. Because I find this almost unbelievably rude and condescending. I'm not sure why it's happened, I think there was one conversation in particular when we really couldn't stop misinterpreting/tal…
"Steve, if you cannot avoid taking the following personally as being about you, please stop reading here."
Okay, we're going to sort this out now. Because I find this almost unbelievably rude and condescending. I'm not sure why it's happened, I think there was one conversation in particular when we really couldn't stop misinterpreting/talking past each other, and it seems to have coloured our interactions ever since, but this is as far down the slope as we're going to go.
Let me say right up front that I'm not claiming I'm blameless here, more on that at the end, but there are a couple of things I want to make very clear.
A) You are a guest here. A very welcome and valued guest. But a guest. I don't expect or want deference. I welcome thoughtful pushback. I do as little policing of people's expression as possible, but I do expect a very basic degree of respect. If you think you're about to write something I don't want you to write here, don't write it, or at least think carefully about how best to write it. It's not your place to tell me to stop reading and just write it anyway.
I'm not a child, I have difficult conversations for a living and generally navigate them just fine. I'm quite good at judging intent. But if you're aware, as you obviously are, that the way you phrase things leads to potential misunderstandings or offence, stop phrasing them that way. Unless you're physicaly unable to stop your fingers from moving, every word you type is a choice.
B) As for your frustration that some people "push your points into justification for disadvantages," please seriously consider the possibility that you may have some responsibility for their reaction. Or, in fact, that your biases might be, in part, creating the "racial competition" they're responding to. Your arguments are pretty much unfailingly biased towards questioning the influence or significance of racism.
A commenter mentions, as an aside, that they believe the African slave trade may have been the most brutal form of slavery, and it's a multi-day debate simply because I believe, with no real conviction, that it's possible that that's true.
People like Charles Murray and Nicholas Wade speak in obviously race essentialist terms, and we're quibbling about the exact wording of a sentence as if we can't understand context.
I state the well known fact that affirmative action has benefitted white women more than any other demographic (https://time.com/4884132/affirmative-action-civil-rights-white-women/), and you ask me, as you do irritatingly often, if I'm just blindly repeating what I've heard somebody else say instead of confirming it for myself (you understand that I have thousands of people critiquing what I say on a regular basis, right? I'm not in the habit of saying things I haven't verified).
And in each of these cases, I'm pretty sure (and in some cases have seen evidence), that you wouldn't have the same quibbles in the reverse case. If somebody claimed that the Atlantic Slave trade *wasn't* the most brutal form of slavery, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't feel the need to debate their assertion for days on end or at all.
If somebody said that the accusations of racial bias levelled at Chales Murray were baseless, I'm not convinced you'd offer any pushback at all, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be the same degree (this despite the critiques of many good-faith, well educated, people who have read his work carefully and work in his field).
If somebody said affirmative action benefitted black people more than any other demographic, even though there are no studies that support this, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have asked for one.
To be clear, other than it being a bit exhausting at times, I don't particularly mind this. As a writer, it's valuable to have people keeping me on my toes. I don't want you not to ask me for verifcation of my claims if they're new to you (although a quick Google search of your own might be in order first). And as my bias is more towards the idea that racism is still a meaningful problem in many ways, it's good to have pushback. I'd be disappointed (and bored) if everybody here thought the same way I do.
But instead of telling people not to react to the things you write, maybe consider modifying the way you write. Consider that biases often come across even if you don't intend them to and even if you aren't aware of them. I'm not saying this to suggest I'm perfect in this regard, I'm certainly not. But if you're repeatedly getting this feedback from people's reactions, it's probably going to get you further to look within than to criticise what keeps happening from without.
As I said up top, I'm not pretending I'm blameless with regards to the friction and misunderstandings we're finding in our interactions. I've definitely allowed past irritation to influence later conversations, and I apologise. I'm going to do my very best to reset. It will be enormously helpful for me to do that if you stop caveating about emotionality or telling me what you're "not accusing me of but..." But regardless, I'll make a conscious effort to err on the side of assuming the best of intentions and to be polite and generous in my future responses.
OK, let's do our very best to reset as you say. I'm enthusiastically agreeing. I will try to stop caveating, and we will both make a conscious effort to err on the side of assuming best intentions and being polite and generous - and we'll both attempt to avoid seeming condescending, OK?
Practice topic: Are white women the primary beneficiaries of Affirmative Action? Let's do our best. I choose this in part because, as I said previously, "I don't have any vested interest in either answer, I have no position to defend on this one." Let's have a civil and productive discussion.
SQJ> "As a writer, it's valuable to have people keeping me on my toes."
My purpose in writing is to seek the truth about the issue (including to be kept on my own toes, if my assertions go beyond the data), but if this discussion helps you in that manner I would be pleased to so contribute.
SQJ> "I'm not in the habit of saying things I haven't verified"
SQJ> "I state the well known fact that affirmative action has benefitted white women more than any other demographic"
I used to accept that as likely true myself, because I had seen it asserted *many* times, though I had not investigated for myself. However, when I eventually looked into that for myself, I found that most of the popular sources were from blogs or journalists of questionable neutrality, who did not appear to be, for example, considering confounding factors which might run the risk of disconfirming their intended point. They were not surveys of differing opinions on the matter, so much as polemics.
One might as well survey the mainstream press about the question: "Was George Floyd's killing a hate crime". Easy to discover the popular consensus, but not much depth of examination.
Seeking something more substantial, I did find a peer reviewed article in the Journal of Social Sciences which examined the question scientifically - complete with academic bibliography, references, methodology, statistics and analysis. I cited it, summarized it's conclusions, and directly quoted four paragraphs from it. I welcome your reading it and discussing it's strengths and weaknesses with me, in the context of other studies.
The core conclusion was that while white women have had more gains over the time period, those gains were not linked to affirmative action, because they entered the workforce with greater skills and experience and thus on the whole did not need AA to get jobs in an growing market needing their labor. (Separately, one might argue that this greater preparation on their part was in substantial part due to the effects of past racial discrimination, but that's not the question under discussion - ie: how much they were benefitted by Affirmative Action specifically).
Often blogs and the popular press fail to consider such confounding factors. They often conflate "women advanced" and "women advanced based on AA" as if they are one and the same. Science needs to be more precise than that.
One article does not definitively answer the question. I put that out as one meaningful datapoint for starting a discussion; perhaps you were influenced by more comprehensive analyses; as you said above, you tend to verify before speaking.
So I said "I would be very interested in some links to the sources you found best analyzed and most persuasive."
And I'm still interested. I am *very* persuadable on this, by evidence and analysis. My first view was that it was probably true. That shifted after some preliminary investigation I'm somewhat leaning the other way, but only slightly; mostly it's not conclusively answered in my opinion. There is enough doubt that I would no longer repeat that assertion myself, because I'm unsure that it's true after early research. Going back to believing it true is not a big shift for me; I just need the evidence and decent analysis.
It should be obvious from my comment that I have already done some searching. But if you have already verified for yourself that the assertion is indeed a fact, it's not unreasonable to politely ask which sources you found most persuasive so I can read them as well.
Thank you for responding, with your link to an article from the popular press, which in turns cites, for example, a blog entry in the Chronical of Higher Education, and other sources.
At this time, I do not find them as persuasive as the peer review scientific article I cited. They do not refute it's assertions, so much as embody the problems it cites with naive analysis. For example, the Chronical blog argues:
> "After IBM established its own affirmative-action program, the numbers of women in management positions more than tripled in less than 10 years. Data from subsequent years show that the number of executives of color at IBM also grew, but not nearly at the same rate."
Notice that this makes no attempt to distinguish (as the scientific journal article does) between advancing, and advancing due to AA. That's exactly the kind of fuzzy thinking (or "motivated reasoning" that the scientific article is trying to avoid.
Please note that I have *never* asserted that it's a "fact" that white women did NOT receive more benefit. I've explicitly said that the question seems not yet conclusively answered in my mind (with a small and reversible leaning towards disconfirmation based on the *science* I have seen to date.) Since it's not yet clear to me what the truth is, I was asking for links to more evidence (from a writer who generally verifies their asserted facts).
I've done some quick research which caused me to no longer believe (at this point in time) that the factuality of the assertion (that white women are the largest beneficiaries of AA) has been objectively proven factual; and since you are convinced that it is indeed factual, I asked for your best sources so I could consider them as well and perhaps be persuaded as well.
As I say, I have no agenda in this except to seek the truth. I would not be upset in the least, whichever way the evidence leads. I was not uncomfortable when I tenatively believed it, I did not research it for years because I assumed it was true. I am assuming that you also have no pre-set conclusion or agenda other than the truth, and that you have been persuaded of the factuality of that statement through your previoius review of the science. I'm asking in good faith for links to that science. Given how science works, I assume there are (almost) always published counter-arguments to consider - but rather than start from scratch, I'm asking what analysis *you* found most convincing. I trust your judgement far more than I trust the average journalist or activist, Steve.
I appreciate the journalistic piece you link in Time, but I would guess that you have based your opinion of factuality on something more solid than that for "verification". If I'm wrong, in that guess, just say so. No harm, no foul. I'll drop it for now, but perhaps if someone else I respect makes the same assertion a year from now, I'll ask them what convinced them.
Side issue: I have tried to be respectful, and to make my own "conscious effort to err on the side of assuming the best of intentions and to be polite and generous" in this response. I've avoided caveats, and condescension, as best I can perceive. If I have failed in that, please help me improve; I will listen. I honestly look forward to the scientific evidence upon which you based your assertion of factuality, to be presented and received in that same spirit. Thank you.
"One might as well survey the mainstream press about the question: "Was George Floyd's killing a hate crime"."
Yeah, this is the problem with the press in general. But it's also a problem with our own biases. I saw this problem absolutely everywhere during COVID (although it's worth pointing out that AA and white women is a statistical claim whilst claims about George Floyd are purely subjective).
There were "data" to confirm whatever you might want to believe about vaccines and masks and myocarditis during the height of COVID. So it is with all research. There will always be that one study that casts doubt upon the consensus. There is simply no sociological data that you can't look at and say, "sure, but what if you control for X variable on Thursday evenings?"
Don't get me wrong, skepticism is vital. But if you spend all of your time on skepticism, simply because a conclusion doesn't quite fit your preexisting biases, if you spend all your time "proving" everything beyond any possibility of doubt or objection, you don't leave any time to actually do anything about the problem. Toni Morrison expressed this well years ago:
"The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.
Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing."
Some people get this balance very wrong. A single piece of data hinting in the direction they want to go and the matter is settled as far as they're concerned. But in the case of affirmative action, if the worry is that we've not completely verified whether these women advanced as a result of AA or not, why are we not equally worried about whether African Americans advanced as a result of AA or not? Implicit in the question is the assumption that white women likely advanced on their merits but African Americans didn't, no?
As for the conclusion of the study you linked, the conclusion seems to assume that we live in a meritocracy where AA was only about making sure the people with the best grades got the best jobs. An extraordinarily naive reading, no? From the paper:
"So why haven’t white women been helped by affirmative action? The success of white female workers suggests they need no help. White women, compared with most blacks and Latinos, have greater education credentials and higher levels of required job skills, both of which make them more qualified in today’s job market"
Well, black people did need help! Not necessarily because they were less qualified, but because study after study shows that some employers will take a mediocre white person over a good black person. I have no problem believing that the average white woman was better educated than the average black person back then (in fact, I believe that's still true today).
But even the most well educated black people would have had comparative difficulty being hired over their white peers. AA incentivised employers to hire black people in defiance of this bias. And was only partly successful. Unfortunately, it was extremely successful in planting the idea in people's heads (including Charles Murray's head) that black people only succeeded because of AA and white women succeeded on merit. Murray was magnanimous enough to be "extremely pleased" when black people "proved" they were competent of course...
When I research a topic, I do so to a degree that allows me to talk about it intelligently. If I spent all of my time researching every nuance of every piece of data, I'd never actually write anything. Or, more to the point, I'd be a social scientist.
So if the entire lynchpin of an article was that white women had benefitted more from affirmative action than black people, I'd certainly dig into as much nuance as I could, carefully presenting the data for and against and explaining why I considered one more reliable than the other. But this was just an aside to a reader about Charles Murray's pretty blatant racial bias.
So yes, the data that I'm basing my claim on is the research detailing the relative rise in employment, income, managerial positions etc between white women and black people over the years of affirmative action. And the paper you linked doesn't attempt to prove that the claim is incorrect, it simply casts the possibility of doubt as a complete causative explanation (I tend to assume no one factor is a complete causative explanation of anything). But there is absolutely no statistical or scientific evidence for the inverse claim that black people benefitted more from affirmative action than white women. Even though it's widely assumed. If there were, and it were relevant to something I was writing about, I'd look at it with an open mind. I'm always interested first and foremost in the truth.
Can I politely "keep you on your toes" as you invite?
I know that AA was not a lynchpin of your article and I was addressing one assertion in isolation rather than as an attack on your article. That being the assertion that white women were the main primary beneficiaries of affirmative action, treated as a standalone topic.
I will often in this reply use "the assertion" to mean that.
As I have noted, I have no agenda other than truth in exploring that assertion. I was never unhappy in the least during the years when I assumed it was probably true because I had heard it often, I did not actively seek out disconfirmation, and I will not be unhappy if the weight of evidence in the end leads back to that conclusion. Or the other direction. I am equally happy to receive scientific links leading in either direction. I have no ideology which benefits or suffers from the true answer to that, either way. That may not be true of everybody on the internet.
I truly *do not care* which way the conclusion goes. If people of color needed AA relatively more and benefitted relatively more from it, then it was well targeted. If women needed AA relatively more and benefitted relatively more from it, then likewise well targeted. If the need and the benefit were exactly equal, likewise. I have no preference between these conclusions. I do have a preference to the truth, tho.
I cited one academic paper just to suggest that the factuality of that assertion is not (yet) a scientific consensus, but my point was to solicit the best scientific counterpoint, not to stop there. I noted that the paper was one peer reviewed data point to weigh, but not definitive - it opens the question rather than closing it. My point was to gather the best info in all directions before making any conclusions. I defended taking the paper seriously rather than dismissing it on superficial grounds; the best counterpoint if it was wrong would be a better scientific analysis, not rhetorical attacks.
It's not a key issue, so I have not researched it much; but when you so strongly asserted it as fact, I figured I had stumbled upon a possible source for links better scientific counterpoint, and took the opportunity to explain why it had recently come into question, and ask about your basis for asserting it as established fact. I fully expected that you might have links to good science supporting the assertion, and welcomed that.
In that light of balanced and scientifically grounded investigation, I think the degree to which you elaborated on racially biased agendas for trying to disprove the assertion was uncalled for. It's not relevant to the scientific question behind the assertion, so I will let it go, but I will call to our attention that this kind of "smear by association" may not be consonant with our intentions.
> "There is simply no sociological data that you can't look at and say, "sure, but what if you control for X variable on Thursday evenings?"
I do not think that is a fair restatement of the issue. At question was how much of women's increased presence in the workforce can accurately be attributed to AA. Many articles in the popular press completely ignore that question, and assume that 100% of the statistical increases in female participation is due to AA hiring, and have nothing to do with changing roles of women; it also assumes that 100% of advancement for people of color is due to AA. We know that both those assumptions are false, and also that there is no reason that the percentage due to AA would automatically be the same for all population groups. That's a glaring problem at the heart of the issue, not a peripheral distraction of looking for an obscure hidden variable with near zero influence I think your reframing mis-portrays the significance.
> "But if you spend all of your time on skepticism, simply because a conclusion doesn't quite fit your preexisting biases,"
Steve, this does not strike me as being in the spirit of fostering a more respectful interaction. It's imputing disreputable motives rather than addressing the objective question.
> "I have no problem believing that the average white woman was better educated than the average black person back then... But even the most well educated black people would have had comparative difficulty being hired over their white peers. AA incentivised employers to hire black people in defiance of this bias."
That is very reasonable. But does that contradict the concept that white women didn't get as much benefit from AA because they did need as much help, or reinforce it? To my mind you are arguing for the latter - you are saying people of color needed AA more and thus benefitted more from it, more often getting positions they would not have otherwise gotten. Which side of do you think that argues for?
I think I may see some of the underpinnings here. Aha, finally. If somebody weighing in on this issue were to say "white women's gains in employment were largely due to merit and did not require AA" (which by the way I am NOT asserting myself, if you read my full position), it would be easy (but not accurate) to conclude that it follows that "people of color needed AA only because of their lack of merit". That does NOT automatically follow. They could also have needed (and benefitted from) AA based on their merit not having been recognized.
I never say the core intention of AA (for those who benefitted from it) as being "hiring/promoting those who do not merit hiring/promoting" but as "compensating for a historical and ongoing disadvantage which unfairly holds back some people, to the detriment of those people and society as a whole".
Nowhere in that statement was there any assumption that "disadvantage" is the same thing as "lack of merit"!!! But some, possibly including yourself, could be responding to that assumed conflation.
So even if white women and people of color had exactly equal education and job experience (as proxies for merit in this context), AA could have benefitted people of color more because they needed it more due to the factors you mention; without AA they might not have gotten the jobs, while the women might have. Of course, we not talking about 0% / 100% binary differences, but about different rates of employment. And as you note, the white women did on average have more education, which would also reduce the degree to which they would not need AA.
Sigh. My exploring the logic of this, pointing out that *your* logic above is more supportive of people of color benefitting more then white women from AA (for good and appropriate reasons), may be taken as *my* advocating that. Is it not, I've been clear that my current assessment is "unproven", and I currently don't consider the assertion or the counter-assertion to be "facts". I can still observe the logic of arguments in either direction, tho.
> "the data that I'm basing my claim on is the research detailing the relative rise in employment, income"
Well, we can let it drop here if you wish. I do not accept that "rise in employment" is a reliable scientific proxy for "rise in employment due to AA", and you do.
If the assertion were "white women have had a higher increase in employment and advancement than people of color (in past decades)" I would easily agree. Since instead its "white women have benefitted more from AA than have people of color", I have no firm conclusions yet.
But I am open to solid science in either direction, and I have no fixed agenda or confirmation bias to support on this issue, other than seeking truth. I'm concerned about the rise of ideology trumping science today, so I prefer the latter as our guide, but on this issue I'm completely content with any direction that the science leads. Our discussion has been illuminating, but I have not seen any science in either direction emerge from it, other than the one paper I cited.
"Steve, this does not strike me as being in the spirit of fostering a more respectful interaction. It's imputing disreputable motives rather than addressing the objective question."
I have a habit, which I will be conscious of as we work through our "reset," of using "you" when I should probably use "one." "One" sounds pretentious to me, which is why I avoid it, but while I *do* think you have a bias towards minimising or failing to consider racism, I wasn't trying to implicate you here. Obviously I see how my wording might have made you feel that way though. Sorry about that.
But yes, it's a question of how far one is willing to dig and how much time one is willing to spend in order to have an assertion "proved." As I said, there will always be a study that casts doubt on a consensus (I think it's fair to say that there *is* consensus given that, as I pointed out, there is zero "solid science," including the study you linked, showing that black peple were the primary beneficiaries of AA despite their smaller gains. A single paper doesn't break consensus).
So it comes down to the standard of "proof" you (I do mean you in this case) are willing to accept. I'm asking in all sincerity, what level of proof would assure you without any shadow of doubt that the gains experienced by white women were due to AA in smaller proportion than the smaller gains for black people? Because it seems that this one paper, that focuses exclusively on 6 small cities in the South, and doesn't disprove "the assertion" is the sole source of your doubt.
And while you say that you're indifferent one way or the other, if I'd said that racial income disparities are due to higher rates of single parenthood, or that black culture is a significant factor in black criminality, or that black people don't emphasise education for their children to the same degree as other ethnicities, do you think you'd have asked me for studies to back those assertions up? Do you think the data backing up these assertions is airtight?
And I don't think your logic holds with regards to the impact of AA if black people and white women had equal education, because it discounts the influence of racism.
If black people and white women are equally employable by every metric, and a racist employer (I suspect there are one or two of them living in small cities in the American South) has to employ a woman or a minority in order to fill his AA quota, obviously he'd hire the white woman, no? So she'd be a beneficiary of AA in that instance. Our hypothetical racist employer could get away with this even if the black employee were *more* qualified.
So while all things being equal, one might expect things to work in a meritocratic way, with the best candidate eligible to be hired under AA getting the job, all things are not equal. Even the paper you linked notes that white women were perceived by most employers to be good workers. Why? Is this racial bias? The paper doesn't say anything about how black people were perceived. Which seems like a pretty major oversight given the subject matter no?
There will always be these fuzzy areas that can't be captured perfectly. Especially when the study authors don't seem to have thought to even consider them. And certainly not by the single question;
"Do you personally support affirmative action as a policy to give preferences to blacks and females in hiring and promotion?"
that the researchers asked the employers. It in no way even attempts to account for bias or to examine the realities of the hiring practices. Just looks at the end results and hand waves the stark difference in the employment fortunes of white women and black women as "intense competition." I honestly chuckled when I read that.
In the end, where one stands given the data available depends on how seriously one takes the impact of racism. Or whether one belives it's significant. The word racism or racial discrimination doesn't appear once in the entire paper. I don't see how one can perform a meaningful anaylsis of the relative impact of AA between a white and black cohort without seriously considering racism.
I just wanted to clear up a few things, which may be helpful on other topics in the future.
Reading through the discussion, I get the feel that we have different framings regarding factuality of "the assertion".
You *appear* to frame it as being known to be "factually true" or "factually false"; to question one of those (or ask for sources) is pretty much the same as asserting the opposite.
In my world there is an important middle ground: "uncertain" - as in I personally do not yet have enough information to draw a conclusion. That's where I am in regard to this assertion.
I have repeatedly tried to explain this, but some of your writing appears to assume that if I'm questioning the factuality of the assertion (eg: by asking if you have some sources to share), then I must be convinced of the opposite, and thus that my goal in discussing it must be to disprove the assertion.
For example, when you ask the following, it tells me that you are misunderstanding where I'm at and what I'm interested in:
> "So it comes down to the standard of "proof" you (I do mean you in this case) are willing to accept."
I have never asked for "proof", I just asked for any links you had to studies supporting the assertion that white women were the primary beneficiaries of AA. My goal was to gather information in either direction, to see where the preponderance of studies leads. If you had based your assertion of factuality on even just having read a single scientific paper, I would have appreciated a link to it and thanked you for it. I never asked you to "prove" anything; I'm just interested in evidence, in either direction.
Social science rarely produces "proof", but hypothesis can have strong or weak evidence. I noted that the one paper I cited could hardly be considered definitive, but it does call into question my previous acceptance that the assertion was likely true because I had heard it often. So before I personally would repeat it, I would want to assess the evidence on all sides.
I DO NOT HAVE A PREFERRED ANSWER to support or defend. If I question the *certainty* of one answer, that does not imply I want (or believe) the opposite to be true.
> "if I'd said that racial income disparities are due to higher rates of single parenthood, or that black culture is a significant factor in black criminality, or that black people don't emphasise education for their children to the same degree as other ethnicities, do you think you'd have asked me for studies to back those assertions up?"
If you had asserted any one of those things explicitly as a fact, yes I would have.
More relevant tho is this: If you had asserted as a fact that "white women have NOT been the main beneficiaries of AA (the opposite of the actual assertion in question)", would I have asked for any sources you had which had convinced you of that?
Absolutely YES.
Since I'm deferring making any conclusion, I'm open to hearing the evidence for either side, from those who believe they do have enough solid evidence to conclude one way of the other (if I trust them).
If you can just believe me that I'm not trying to prove, or to disprove, but just seeking evidence, you will understand my writing more accurately.
I want to say that I understand how it could seem as if I'm "on the other side" - like when I cite a study which comes to a different result (within its scope). That can easily be understood as coming from the opposite certainty, rather than from neutrally seeking truth starting from the middle: uncertain.
So if you or someone else had asserted that "the assertion" was factually false, I would have asked for sources to support that - again, from my position in the middle (unsure).
If you were to reread my words with the assumption that I'm uncertain of the truth and seeking information from anybody on either side (if I casually happen upon an advocate I respect), I think they will make more sense. You appear to be interpreting my words through the filter of assuming that I believe that assertion to be false, or that I'm hoping for it to be false, and that misleads your understanding of me.
Let's try to "reset" the impression you keep saying that you have of me, that I'm trying to dismiss or minimize any impact of racism, and that everything I write is likely part of that motive. It has felt to me that this imputation of motive has distorted several of our interactions, and it has the dynamic of building on itself - each new interpretation based on that suspicion seems to confirm the pattern, making you even more suspicious the next time.
How to reset? If you imagine that I'm dismissing racial bias as a plausible hypothesis in some situation - ask me what I think, give me a chance to nuance my views (which often do not fit into a common stereotype), rather than assuming this it just another example of the pattern. Or if you think I'm try to prove the opposite of your assertion, ask if that's the case.
Summary. Regarding the assertion "White women are the primary beneficiaries of AA":
* I am currently uncertain and would not pass it on without more review of evidence
* you are certain and feel it's fact you can pass on
There's another dimension tho - whether one WANTS it to turn out true or false, whether one would feel bad if the truth did not turn out to fit our preferences
* I don't care which way it turns out, I just want to respect the truth either way
* I'm uncertain about you.
Are you "rooting for" it to be true? If the scientific literature hypothetically turned out to be "no consensus" or "false", would that feel uncomfortable in any way? If so, why? Would you consider it a bad thing if research showed that POC had in fact benefitted more than white women? Or what? I don't want to assume, so I'm asking.
My impression (right or wrong) is that many neo-progressive activists (a group in which I decidedly DO NOT place you, Steve!) do have a bias - they want it to be true, because they want to use it to reinforce their message of grievance. White women are prime customers for the narrative of guilt they are selling, so there are implications for identity politics. They are not interested in neutrally evaluating evidence on either side, they just want a talking point consistent with their ideology and tools. This is the group with also pushes a narrative that "nothing much has really changed since Jim Crow", that is, greatly minimizes progress and highlights problems, because that narrative what their power is based on. If somebody point out the benefits of AA, they want to dismiss that by saying that white women gained more, so AA can be uses yet another grievance rather than as evidence of progress.
I'm not sure if there is a substantial group which has nearly as much payoff for it not to be true (ie: hoping that POC have benefitted more than white women).
"Let's try to "reset" the impression you keep saying that you have of me, that I'm trying to dismiss or minimize any impact of racism"
I just realised that I didn't address this point. This might be partly due to something you pointed out earlier which is that you're more likely to comment, certainly at length, when you disagree, but the impression I have is just based on the fact that almost all of our discussions (and the discussions I see you having with other readers) are based on you questioning some comment about the mistreatment of black people or the scale of the impact of racism in a particular situation. And never when I make a comment acknowledging that black culture or some other explanatory factor could be to blame for a particular racial disparity, for example.
People inclined to blame racism for *everything* (and I come across plenty of those), exhibit the opposite pattern.
I wouldn't say you're "trying" to minimise racism (if I phrased it that way earlier I was being imprecise), just that you seem to have a tendency to do so. It's a bias that may well be unconscious, or that might be a mirage I'm seeing based on the aforementioned fact that we're all more likely to comment when we disagree. I'm absolutely not saying this makes you a racist or anything even close. But it's hard not to notice it.
"In my world there is an important middle ground: "uncertain" - as in I personally do not yet have enough information to draw a conclusion. That's where I am in regard to this assertion."
Yeah, maybe this is where we're tripping up. I hold almost all specific claims in the "uncertain" category. Certainly all claims in the social sciences. Because almost all information could be "disproved" or cast into doubt by new evidence or more careful analysis.
But once there's *enough* evidence to satisfy me (multiple sources, logical conclusions, zero claims of the inverse), they move to the "more likely than not to be true" end of that spectrum. As I said earlier, it's about how much time one is willing to spend digging into every piece of data on a single assertion in order to "prove" it.
If a single piece of research claims the opposite, I note it, but that single data point probably won't move me very much unless it presents something compelling. Especially if it appears to me to have fairly serious flaws (to be clear, this conversation has moved my confidence in the assertion back toward "uncertain", just not very much). Again, COVID is an excellent example of how futile it is to try to prove something beyond any doubt. And that's far harder science than this.
If I'm writing an article, I'll never base my argument on a single piece of research or a single data point. Precisely because if that research is cast into doubt, the entire thesis falls apart. So I'll cite numerous independent pieces of evidence, all pointing to the same conclusion, and say, "All of this together is why I believe X to be true."
My attachment to the "factuality" of a single piece of data therefore, is usually pretty loose. I'm convinced enough by "the assertion" that I'm happy to use it in an aside to a reader in a comment section. But I'd never use it as the cornerstone of an article. I'm not even using it as the cornerstone in my argument that Charles Murray is racially biased.
So yes, while I think it's wise (and sadly rare), that people keep information in the "uncertain" category, it's paralysing if we don't accept some information as "likely enough" to be true for a particular purpose. If everything you said had to be true beyond any possible shadow of disagreement, you'd never say anything. I mean, look at how many people (including many fellow experts in his field) claim the findings in Charles Murray's book aren't true.
So yeah, if there were definitive evidence that black people were the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action (or that white women and black people benefited more or less equally), it wouldn't change anything for me, because a) lots of people already assume that to be the case (all without *any* evidence) and b) none of my ideas rest on it being false. But some of Charles Murray's arguments about affirmative action *do* seem to rest on it being true.
And the wider point is that grievances about racism don't rest on things like this single assertion being true. Or, for example, on the Atlantic slave trade being the most brutal form of slavery. Neo-progressives aren't wrong to feel aggrieved, they're wrong in what they suggest is done about those grievances. And in implicating all white people as the source of those grievances. But there is soooo much indisputable evidence of the cruel, deliberate, and state-sanctioned oppression of black people in America, that these assertions being proven wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt wouldn't move the needle.
Good points, Steve. In particular, I agree with your final paragraph, and many of your points about evidence and "proof".
(Well, I might question some of the specific points or degrees of grievance used by neo-progressives, but I do agree that many of the grievances are valid and that their prescriptions are the bigger issue).
I'm glad that we agree that absolute proof is not available, and that neither of us expects that. That seemed like a red herring, so it's good to take it off the table.
As I've said, for years I had (without discomfort) put "the assertion" into the "likely true" category. But I had done zero real research (since it didn't seem to have big operational implications), I was just lazily assuming it was probably true, because I had heard it many times, and had never heard anybody dispute it. I didn't seek out information about it.
Then *relatively recently*, I heard somebody dispute it, so I did a cursory search and after filtering, the first peer reviewed paper I found came to a contrary conclusion, and also described the flaws in superficial analysis. I explicitly did not take that as definitive, but as enough to raise some questions of factuality, and as raising the right questions (unlike the popular press).
So for me, the currents status my knowledge about "the assertion":
* mainstream popular sources: near universal belief, cited by activists as another grievance; I find most activists to be deeply into confirmation bias and cherry picking, so this consensus is not convincing and I try to look for better sources
* scientific sources: 0 sources supporting it, 1 source questioning it, not nearly enough evidence to make any conclusion, but enough to consider it "needs more investigation". I do not know if this paper is part of a consensus, or a rare exception to a consensus, or if there is n scientific consensus.
If I relied entirely upon the sources which also consider it to be established "fact" that the George Floyd murder was obviously due to racism, then "the assertion" would be a no-brainer; we know that the popular press is very much in favor of the assertion, when it comes up. But is that because they neutrally assessed the evidence, or (once again) because it fits the same narratives which support their George Floyd "factual" conclusions?
I figured that if your research into the matter had established that there was indeed a scientific consensus supporting the assertion, then you could easily pass on a few links to the best of them, opportunistically bootstrapping my low-priority research. As I've said, I would have asked the same from somebody certain of the opposite conclusion. I don't have a dog in this race, other than seeking truth.
Science is not immune to ideological or other biases, but it typically does at least consider major confounding factors and avoid the worst abuses of process that the popular press often commits. Like assuming that 100% of the increases in female and POC employment is based entirely on AA, and then citing statistics which have meaning only if you accept that assumption as fact.
What I took away from the paper I cited was (1) they defined the issue more carefully, (2) they acknowledged the difficulty of determining factual truth, (3) they noted the major confounding factors which needed to be taken into account in any serious study, and (4) within their limited scope, their analysis actually disconfirmed "the assertion" with much more care than the popular press. Because it's only one paper of limited scope, #4 has little weight in isolation - but note that points 1-3, which are still very valid in understanding the deep conceptual flaws in many journalistic or activist "analyses". We should not think that #4 was the only thing of value in the paper.
TL;DR: The paper did not establish any "scientific consensus" by itself, but it did identify why non-scientific analyses may be deeply flawed, by noting things which absolutely *must* be accounted for in a serious study.
So far, you are asserting that science has come to consensus supporting the conclusion so that the only peer reviewed study I have seen *must* obviously be an outlier, which thus can be summarily dismissed as having little weight compared to that established broad scientific consensus.
However, you haven't provided even one citation of a (science) journal article you has used in forming your conclusion, much less any indication that your previous research had established that there actually *is* such a scientific consensus - based on your having reviewed many such scientific papers and found a consensus among them (with the paper I cited being the first and assumed only exception to come to your attention).
> "I'm convinced enough by "the assertion" that I'm happy to use it in an aside to a reader in a comment section. But I'd never use it as the cornerstone of an article."
Fair enough. Good practice.
> " if there were definitive evidence that black people were the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action (or that white women and black people benefited more or less equally), it wouldn't change anything for me, because a) lots of people already assume that to be the case "
Steve, are you saying that you both that (1) you know that lots of people assume that black people rather than white women are the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action, and (2) you know of zero claims of the inverse of the assertion? ("there's *enough* evidence to satisfy me (multiple sources, logical conclusions, zero claims of the inverse)"?
Oddly, I had never run into anybody asserting that POC were the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action until fairly recently, as I've described. I had ONLY run into "the assertion", which I have seen many, many times. And that asymmetry makes sense; "the assertion" is part of the narrative of ongoing pervasive oppression, but the opposite (that POC have benefitted more) does not lend itself to any common narratives. We won't find angry far right folks asserting that it's a known (and implicitly outrageous) fact that white women have received fewer benefits from AA than POC. This is not ideologically symmetric, the incentives for confirmation bias are not equal in both directions.
Obviously, we read different places and our experience will differ, but I do think that most of the mainstream media is on the side of assuming "the assertion" to be a known fact, as you believe, and while you may believe that "lots of people" assume otherwise, I suspect that lots *more* people assume the assertion true than false.
Let's be careful here not to mis-frame the question. That is, one cannot assume that the assertion must be factually true, UNTIL and UNLESS somebody can provide "definitive evidence" that the opposite is true; there has to be room for "the evidence known to me is mixed, not yet sufficient to form a factual conclusion". (Which happens to be my current estimate, pending more research).
One can question whether an assertion has accumulated enough solid evidence to be called a known "fact", without needing to counter-assert that enough evidence has accumulated to establish it's opposite as a known "fact". Sometimes your framing of this does not appear to acknowledge this.
And before I close, I will note that there is a lot of sloppiness in the popular press (including the one you cited) between using statistics about "women" versus statistics about just "white women". I noticed that immediately; did you? Reread the article and see how often they refer to each. In general, women of color can get grouped in on either side of the statistics, depending on what the journalist wants to "prove".
And I'm still wondering if you think there is anything wrong if white women (or women in general) actually had benefitted more from AA than POC (assuming that both needed it to overcome previous stereotypes). Since you are not generally trying to reinforce a grievance narrative, does it even matter to you, beyond curiosity and respect for truth? Do you have any preference for assertion to be shown true or false?
Good discussing this with you, Steve. If we can discuss things well, we can help refine each other's views, on the relatively few points where we disagree.
"If I relied entirely upon the sources which also consider it to be established "fact" that the George Floyd murder was obviously due to racism, then "the assertion" would be a no-brainer;"
Yeah, as demonstrated by my recent conversation about the Atlanta, an assertion of racist motivations in the popular press is worth next to nothing. But that's quite different to a statistical analysis of employment and income advancement during affirmative action. It's not really fair to compare the two.
Also, there is scientific "evidence" insofar as the assertion is based on scientific research. We could debate the quality of that research, but it's untrue that there is 0 evidence. There is research claiming that the assertion is true, there is a paper saying the assertion might not be true, but there are 0 papers claiming that the inverse of the assertion is true. Sorry, I thought there were links to the research in the TIME article I originally linked. This one has some (https://www.vox.com/2016/5/25/11682950/fisher-supreme-court-white-women-affirmative-action).
Interesting that you say you've never heard of anybody who questioned the assertion. I hadn't even heard it until about 5 years ago. Until then, all I'd ever heard is the stereotypes that are spun from the narrative that black people are the primary (or even in many people's minds the *only*) beneficiaries of AA. In his interview with Coleman, Charles Murray states this extremely clearly (https://youtu.be/wCJFr6zB2NM?t=457):
"The reality of aggressive affirmative action, which nobody wants to say, is (but everybody kinda knows), whites widely consider that any time there is a new black face in the office, that's an affirmative action hire. That's the default assumption."
This absolutely matches my experience in talking about the issue or hearing people talk about it. But I know of no *evidence* of the claim. Just the culturally accepted assumption that AA is a "black" thing.
No, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong if AA benefitted white women more than POC. No meaningful preference for the assertion to be true or false (I'd find it funnier if the racists who use AA as a cudgel for POC were proven wrong I suppose). but yes, the grievance aspect is non-existent as far as I'm concerned. I wouldn't feel aggrieved if the assertion were proven false. Women *do* deserve more opportunities in the workplace. But if a new female face pops up in the workplace, especially a new white female face, the assumption is not that she's an AA hire. This the issue.
> "But that's quite different to a statistical analysis of employment and income advancement during affirmative action. It's not really fair to compare the two."
In terms of the *possibility* of a relatively neutral scientific analysis, I agree that they are quite different. In terms of popular sources potentially having a bias which could inspire cherry picking of only that which supports a pre-set narrative and not considering off-narrative hypotheses, they can be very similar. It depend on what facet one is referring to.
I did not assert that there was 0 scientific support for "the assertion"; I strongly suspect there is some (and it's quite possible that you are correct that there is a "consensus" in favor of it, for all I know). I was just summarizing that, at my current level of research (including what had been referenced here), I have not yet encountered a scientific paper supporting it - reflecting my own lack of knowledge of the field.
Prior to a few years ago, I had not heard anything much about which groups were benefitting from AA, period. I had of course heard that Black folks, Latinos, American Indians, and women all benefitted, but I do not recall anybody making a point in any direction about "who gets more benefit". It just wasn't an issue. So I never heard "AA is benefitting Black people more than white women" in those days, nor the reverse - I just didn't hear any comparisons at all in general discourse.
Then a few years ago I began hearing frequently that white women benefitted more; that idea spread rapidly and persisted, and I passively assumed it was likely true (because I heard it frequently, it seems plausible, and I did not hear any counterpoint) until recently. I do not see that emergence as countering a then prevailing narrative that "Blacks benefit more than women"; it's more like the beginning of comparing benefits between competing identity groups.
---
I take your point about assumptions regarding AA hiring of women and Blacks (and Latinos, etc).
However, I think it depends on the field. You may be right about office workers, but among firefighters, police, combat soldiers, welders, masons, etc it's going to be the reverse - women are going to be more suspected of being an AA hire than are Black men. In the US, Black police officers are approximately proportionately represented, but female officers are not even close. So the degree of wariness has a lot of it has to do with how common vs unusual the new face is. (And some may be reality based, as it's not unreasonable to think that males more often can carry people out of burning building than females, statistically).
In my experience with workplace dynamics, the main concern I have observed is hiring of somebody who is less competent and who will not hold up their share of the job, making other's work harder (or less successful or more dangerous, etc). This would be true for the boss's nephew, or the manager's squeeze, but today AA is one of the possible causes for such wariness. But if over time the new person shows themselves as competent and easy to work with, they will be welcomed; if not, there is also the fear that they cannot be terminated without a mess. It's important to distinguish these basically rational fears, from irrational hatred or antipathy.
The ideal concept of AA is that when two candidates are equally competent, we should choose the one from the more marginalized group. If it had always worked out that way, AA would likely not have nearly as much pushback. Alas, in the real world this is not always the case; sometimes the difference being bridged to meet a goal is not insignificant. I have personally encountered frankly incompetent people hired under AA, so I know it exists. Alongside those are many AA hires who turn out to be competent and good co-workers, so I'm not saying that's typically the case, I'm not saying that the concept of AA is wrong, and I definitely abhor pre-judging anybody - but it does happen and pretending it doesn't, just alienated people.
All that acknowledged, it's unfair that somebody who is or might be an AA hire may face more caution and scrutiny than other newcomers, due to no fault of their own. For any AA category.
Some people buck up and show their mettle under that kind of pressure of feeling watched, but it can cause others to fail ("stereotype threat"). Humans vary.
I'm not sure how to intervene and reduce that dynamic. Well, eliminating AA would do it, but other than that. Heavy handed interventions, I believe, are likely to make the problem worse - increasing distrust and suspicion (of both management and the new hire), even if overt expression thereof is successfully suppressed. My tendency would be to emphasize the concept of judging people on the content of their character rather than their skin color (literally, or metaphorically in the case of non-race based AA). That is - judge each new coworker as an individual, give everybody the fair chance that you would want, treat them as you would wish to be treated if you were a new hire, allow them a fair chance to show their stuff. Perhaps urging a bit more slack, as they may feel under more pressure as described above.
Alas, this "treat everybody the same, judge their competence not their superficial traits" concept has been demonized among neo-progressives. The latter tends to strongly promote stereotyping and differential treatment - but only politically approved stereotypes and treatment. I do not think that produces the outcomes they claim to want (back to the criticism that neo-progressives often prescribe bad strategies even for real problems).
I strongly believe in not stereotyping (which for my purpose I define as assuming that some group trait - whether said trait has a high or low correlation with the group - can be meaningfully applied to every individual in the group). Some group stereotypes are plain out false, like if the trait is actually no more common in the group than average. Others may have some degree of truth to them, like the trait could actually be significantly more common in the group. But in either case, each individual can be typical or atypical of that population group, so I advocate starting with a blank slate of no pre-suppositions, and learning about that person as a unique individual rather than as an interchangeable unit of the group identity. By population group I mean Latinos, males, engineers, Catholics, whatever group may be associated with stereotypes, false or with some statistical level validity.
Do you have better ideas on dealing with wariness of new hires based on AA? Whether due to race or to sex or whatever.
"Some people buck up and show their mettle under that kind of pressure of feeling watched, but it can cause others to fail ("stereotype threat"). Humans vary."
Yeah, I think this is a key source of irritation amongst minorities and women. I absolutely resent the implication (not saying this is your implication, but it certainly exists in society generally) that we need to "buck up" when people make assumptions about us based on some immutable characteristic. That doesn't mean we won't or can't, it means we shouldn't need to. The frustration is about having to do this thing we shouldn't have to do, and which an entire class of people *never* has to do, in addition to the ordinary frustrations and mistreatments of life that we all deal with. It's like running a race where there's an extra hurdle only in your lane.
I won't fail because somebody believes that I'm less capable because I'm black. But that in no way diminishes the irritation that I should need to "prove myself" to the satisfaction of my white colleagues as Murray put it. And for the people who *will* fail under that pressure, it's absolutely wrong that they should face it for no reason other than some facet of how they were born.
And yeah, while eliminating AA would reduce this dynamic, it would also leave in place the dynamic that AA was intended to solve. All those people who would assume that POC and women are less capable would continue to make that assumption and so would hire/promote them less often. This, in turn, would leave the employment and opportunity disparities in place.
After all, the purpose of AA wasn't to hire POC who were less capable, instead, as you say, it was to give POC who *were* capable a fairer chance in the employment market. Maybe AA wasn't the best way to do this. Or wasn't implemented in the best way. There are smart people on both sides of that debate. But other than some kind of conscious intervention, I'm not sure how it would be possible to break the hegemony that was already in place. I don't think we'd see the degree of diversity we see today in the employment market without AA and diversity programs, for example.
I think the reason the assumption around "affirmative action hires" arose is that too many people really couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that pretty much every single president, CEO, movie star, etc. being a white man wasn't just a coincidence or a simple question of merit. They saw the challenge to the monopoly as preferential treatment for minorities and women, while failing to realise that people with their immutable characteristics had enjoyed preferential treatment since forever.
So I guess the best way to reduce the dynamic, though sadly by no means easy (and almost endlessly frustrating), is to encourage the people who hold this mindset to really examine the world from a perspective other than their own. And this, in turn, means learning to talk about racial and sex-based bias in ways that are honest and clear without being divisive or accusatory. There's a lot of talk about how white people get defensive in discussion about race. And it's true. But I think a fair amount of that defensiveness has been generated by the demonising way we talk about it.
"OK, let's do our very best to reset as you say. I'm enthusiastically agreeing. I will try to stop caveating, and we will both make a conscious effort to err on the side of assuming best intentions and being polite and generous - and we'll both attempt to avoid seeming condescending, OK?
Practice topic: Are white women the primary beneficiaries of Affirmative Action? Let's do our best." And later "Let's have a civil and productive conversation."
I'm smiling as I write this, I'm not annoyed at all, and I certainly don't think you're doing this on purpose, but the above is a great example of the tone I'm talking about. Do you see how this might read as:
"Let me reassert that we'll both attempt to do the thing you've already said you were going to do. OK?"
Or:
"Let's have a civil and productive discussion. Even though you've just said that you're going to attempt do that in future."
This is one aspect of the caveating I'm talking about. Comments like these feel as if I'm being gently guided by the hand by an encouraging parent because I can't handle a civil discussion without that guidance. Which doesn't feel so great coming from a stranger on the internet when you're an adult. As I said, I'm going to do my best to ignore this in future, but I'm trying to point out that you might be contributing to the reactions that are frustrating you.
Steve, this experience is nearly unique in my life.
I realize that I've on occasion expressed frustration at how my words (and those of many others, even you) can be twisted by others, no matter how carefully we attempt to avoid that - whether in honest misunderstanding or bad faith pretense of misunderstanding. I'm sure you have observed the same thing.
However, that is NOT what happens between us here. I highly value your insights and trust your sincerity and intelligence. I almost never in my life have had the kind of dynamic I've had here with anybody else with those characteristics. I can see how one might conflate the two, but my occasional experience of impatience with foolishness or bad faith, and the way you and I seem to trigger each other, are quite distinct for me. And the experience with you is a rare opportunity for me.
I think the issues between us are more due to our similarities. That's one reason (besides my respect for your writing) that I've bothered to respond to these issues. I see it as something I can learn from, a mirror. Not in the sense that you have sometimes seemed to take it - that it's your mission to repeatedly tell me what's wrong with me. I'm getting better at ignoring the tone of that as a distraction from the possible learning; I can see now that I have sometimes done poorly at that in the past. Being defensive does not serve me. The learning I'm getting about myself is more from your need to treat me the way you do, and from your not being aware of that - I see myself in that, I see that I have some similar flaws. I do not feel superior; there is no flaw I've observed in you that I do not see in myself. And if we can be civil, I can learn from that.
One of the differences I observe in myself, is that when you treat me condescendingly (as I perceive it), it got under my skin more than usual precisely because of the high regard I have for you. It's like being harshly criticized by somebody whose esteem one values, not just some internet rando. That's not a frequent experience for me. It has taken some reflection to observe this in myself.
Whether you learn something about yourself and your part (or perceive any opportunity to do so) is up to you and not my concern. I am not trying to fix you.
> "Comments like these feel as if I'm being gently guided by the hand by an encouraging parent because I can't handle a civil discussion without that guidance. "
I hear that you feel that way, and I can see how that could be unpleasant. That however is not the emotion nor intellectual perspective I experience, however. I've heard your interpretation,
can I share mine? The comments you apparently interpret as talking down to you, were not so intended. I meant to affirm our mutual positive intentions. We are trying to break some habits, and in my life, when I'm trying to do that, it has been helpful to keep reaffirming the new perspective as part of avoiding falling into a familiar rut. It's easy to slip into defensiveness. I am speaking as much to myself as to you, and trying to be allies in making a shift. My reflection is not turning up, so far anyway, the kind of talking down (parent to child, etc) energy which you appear to be reacting to
And the reaction you have to the words from me (in my previous post), is very unusual in my life. Really. In that mode (not speaking about every mode in which I write, sometimes I am less conscious and more reactive), most people hear me as reaching out as an equal, seeking a mutually respectful interchange between imperfect but well intentioned people. My experience is that it usually de-escalates and reassures. It has worked *many times*.
In this case, something else is going on. It feels to me thus: if there is any possible way to interpret my words as talking down to you, you will seize upon that interpretation and not give consideration or weight to any more benign interpretation. And that you are expecting me to phrase things in ways that cannot possibly be so interpreted, and holding me responsible for your reactions. I don't see much slack, or presumption of good will and intention, in your choice among plausible interpretations of my words.
SQJ> "Do you see how this might read as: "Let me reassert that we'll both attempt to do the thing you've already said you were going to do. OK?"
That strikes me as the most negative interpretation possible, not as a generous one. I can see how my words could be so interpreted, but it doesn't seem to be the only possible interpretation, the most accurate interpretation, or the most generous one. It seems as if it's looking for something negative, rather than (even tentatively) assuming the best.
And in light of what I said about mirroring, at this point I'm seeing that as an opportunity to reflect upon the times when *I* may be unconsciously looking for a putdown (whether or not that is true of you now). Right now, I'm feeling pretty reflective and humble. But other times in some of our interactions, I'm realizing that I was feeling defensive and attacked without being very conscious of that, and that unconsciously influenced the tone and framing of my responses. I'm owning that, not blaming you for it.
And I apologize for my lack of awareness in those times. I can understand how those reactions may have crystalized some of your current propensity (as I perceive it) towards dark interpretations of even my most conciliatory outreaches. You have some reason for that, I was not being conscious enough.
But I'm ready to change that. I am sincerely ready for a reset and reframing. I don't think the "reset" has yet penetrated fully for us, there are some priors still influencing our interactions, influencing our interpretations of each other (we are humans after all). But I'm feeling patient with us. We can dig ourselves out. I'm becoming less reactive (albeit always imperfect).
It would help if you could read my words a second time when you feel I'm talking down to you, and ask "How would this land if I believed PGBR was trying to connect as an equal?". Or at least think about more than one interpretation, including some benign ones.
"if there is any possible way to interpret my words as talking down to you, you will seize upon that interpretation and not give consideration or weight to any more benign interpretation."
Let me start by saying that on reflection, I shouldn't have added that bit about "the reactions that are frustrating you." I see how that could easily be interpreted as a snipe. I apologise.
I think a significant part of this reset, at least for me, will be to stop analysing past disagreements or misinterpretations. We obviously have our own ways of communicating and view the words we read through our own lenses, so as you say here, the best way forward is just to assume good intent from each other.
Even if I wasn't already convinced of your sincerity, which I was, your reply here underlines your desire to move forward more positively. A desire which I absolutely share.
My only real quibble is with the quote above. I can promise you that there is no intent or desire to interpret your words as talking down to me. And I don't think the interpretation has anything to do with anything in our past. I believe I'd interpret them the same way even if this was the first time I'd seen them and they were directed at somebody else. Again, to be clear, not as deliberately condescending, they just come across as kind of patronising. I 100% believe that isn't your intention, and that settles the matter as far as I'm concerned.
Having all your interactions with somebody be as words on a screen removes all of the nuance that would, I'm sure, immediately resolve these misunderstandings. And often, we don't even write the same way we speak, so more scope for misunderstanding presents itself. I really appreciate your reply. If you're happy to, I'm ready to close the door on this and be internet buds.
I have great appreciation for you and the products of your amazing mind. Even if I disagree at times, much more often I agree with at least the main points, maybe everything.
(Alas, I do realize that I spend more words on trying to describe and explain the disagreements, while just briefly noting the agreements - so it could seem as if I'm mostly at odds with you. It's more that when I agree, there us usually much less to say! If you nailed it; I don't have to go over that point by point; at most I might add some additional facets at times. But if I disagree, even with 1/20 of what you wrote, I try to explain *why*, the shape of it. I can see how that might give a distorted view).
I would be honored to be internet buds. I'd likely enjoy being in person buds even more if you were local, with the greater richness of communication compared to "words on a screen", as you say.
Can you try to understand this from my perspective as well?
I hear that I have tended to overly caveat my statements because of past interactions. From now on, I will review any post I make here, looking for anything which might be interpreted as condescending. I plead guilty for not having done that well enough, for letting my reactivity shape my tone too much. I will strive to do better. I will strive to be less affected by (my perception of) your tone. And you are welcome to say "Hey, that last post slipped a bit into the territory we've agreed to avoid, let's be more mindful". I will hear that.
Let's reset, and let's practice the new approach starting with the issue of affirmative action. In another post.
Thank you for engaging constructively. I hear and respect your underlying positive intention.
And rather than our similarities making us more oversensitive towards each other, perhaps they can help us cut each other the same slack that we want for ourselves.
"Steve, if you cannot avoid taking the following personally as being about you, please stop reading here."
Okay, we're going to sort this out now. Because I find this almost unbelievably rude and condescending. I'm not sure why it's happened, I think there was one conversation in particular when we really couldn't stop misinterpreting/talking past each other, and it seems to have coloured our interactions ever since, but this is as far down the slope as we're going to go.
Let me say right up front that I'm not claiming I'm blameless here, more on that at the end, but there are a couple of things I want to make very clear.
A) You are a guest here. A very welcome and valued guest. But a guest. I don't expect or want deference. I welcome thoughtful pushback. I do as little policing of people's expression as possible, but I do expect a very basic degree of respect. If you think you're about to write something I don't want you to write here, don't write it, or at least think carefully about how best to write it. It's not your place to tell me to stop reading and just write it anyway.
I'm not a child, I have difficult conversations for a living and generally navigate them just fine. I'm quite good at judging intent. But if you're aware, as you obviously are, that the way you phrase things leads to potential misunderstandings or offence, stop phrasing them that way. Unless you're physicaly unable to stop your fingers from moving, every word you type is a choice.
B) As for your frustration that some people "push your points into justification for disadvantages," please seriously consider the possibility that you may have some responsibility for their reaction. Or, in fact, that your biases might be, in part, creating the "racial competition" they're responding to. Your arguments are pretty much unfailingly biased towards questioning the influence or significance of racism.
A commenter mentions, as an aside, that they believe the African slave trade may have been the most brutal form of slavery, and it's a multi-day debate simply because I believe, with no real conviction, that it's possible that that's true.
People like Charles Murray and Nicholas Wade speak in obviously race essentialist terms, and we're quibbling about the exact wording of a sentence as if we can't understand context.
I state the well known fact that affirmative action has benefitted white women more than any other demographic (https://time.com/4884132/affirmative-action-civil-rights-white-women/), and you ask me, as you do irritatingly often, if I'm just blindly repeating what I've heard somebody else say instead of confirming it for myself (you understand that I have thousands of people critiquing what I say on a regular basis, right? I'm not in the habit of saying things I haven't verified).
And in each of these cases, I'm pretty sure (and in some cases have seen evidence), that you wouldn't have the same quibbles in the reverse case. If somebody claimed that the Atlantic Slave trade *wasn't* the most brutal form of slavery, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't feel the need to debate their assertion for days on end or at all.
If somebody said that the accusations of racial bias levelled at Chales Murray were baseless, I'm not convinced you'd offer any pushback at all, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be the same degree (this despite the critiques of many good-faith, well educated, people who have read his work carefully and work in his field).
If somebody said affirmative action benefitted black people more than any other demographic, even though there are no studies that support this, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have asked for one.
To be clear, other than it being a bit exhausting at times, I don't particularly mind this. As a writer, it's valuable to have people keeping me on my toes. I don't want you not to ask me for verifcation of my claims if they're new to you (although a quick Google search of your own might be in order first). And as my bias is more towards the idea that racism is still a meaningful problem in many ways, it's good to have pushback. I'd be disappointed (and bored) if everybody here thought the same way I do.
But instead of telling people not to react to the things you write, maybe consider modifying the way you write. Consider that biases often come across even if you don't intend them to and even if you aren't aware of them. I'm not saying this to suggest I'm perfect in this regard, I'm certainly not. But if you're repeatedly getting this feedback from people's reactions, it's probably going to get you further to look within than to criticise what keeps happening from without.
As I said up top, I'm not pretending I'm blameless with regards to the friction and misunderstandings we're finding in our interactions. I've definitely allowed past irritation to influence later conversations, and I apologise. I'm going to do my very best to reset. It will be enormously helpful for me to do that if you stop caveating about emotionality or telling me what you're "not accusing me of but..." But regardless, I'll make a conscious effort to err on the side of assuming the best of intentions and to be polite and generous in my future responses.
OK, let's do our very best to reset as you say. I'm enthusiastically agreeing. I will try to stop caveating, and we will both make a conscious effort to err on the side of assuming best intentions and being polite and generous - and we'll both attempt to avoid seeming condescending, OK?
Practice topic: Are white women the primary beneficiaries of Affirmative Action? Let's do our best. I choose this in part because, as I said previously, "I don't have any vested interest in either answer, I have no position to defend on this one." Let's have a civil and productive discussion.
SQJ> "As a writer, it's valuable to have people keeping me on my toes."
My purpose in writing is to seek the truth about the issue (including to be kept on my own toes, if my assertions go beyond the data), but if this discussion helps you in that manner I would be pleased to so contribute.
SQJ> "I'm not in the habit of saying things I haven't verified"
SQJ> "I state the well known fact that affirmative action has benefitted white women more than any other demographic"
I used to accept that as likely true myself, because I had seen it asserted *many* times, though I had not investigated for myself. However, when I eventually looked into that for myself, I found that most of the popular sources were from blogs or journalists of questionable neutrality, who did not appear to be, for example, considering confounding factors which might run the risk of disconfirming their intended point. They were not surveys of differing opinions on the matter, so much as polemics.
One might as well survey the mainstream press about the question: "Was George Floyd's killing a hate crime". Easy to discover the popular consensus, but not much depth of examination.
Seeking something more substantial, I did find a peer reviewed article in the Journal of Social Sciences which examined the question scientifically - complete with academic bibliography, references, methodology, statistics and analysis. I cited it, summarized it's conclusions, and directly quoted four paragraphs from it. I welcome your reading it and discussing it's strengths and weaknesses with me, in the context of other studies.
The core conclusion was that while white women have had more gains over the time period, those gains were not linked to affirmative action, because they entered the workforce with greater skills and experience and thus on the whole did not need AA to get jobs in an growing market needing their labor. (Separately, one might argue that this greater preparation on their part was in substantial part due to the effects of past racial discrimination, but that's not the question under discussion - ie: how much they were benefitted by Affirmative Action specifically).
Often blogs and the popular press fail to consider such confounding factors. They often conflate "women advanced" and "women advanced based on AA" as if they are one and the same. Science needs to be more precise than that.
The journal article: https://spia.uga.edu/faculty_pages/rbakker/pdfs/affirmativeAction.pdf
My comment: https://steveqj.substack.com/p/i-expected-a-racist-diatribe-from/comments#comment-9456317
One article does not definitively answer the question. I put that out as one meaningful datapoint for starting a discussion; perhaps you were influenced by more comprehensive analyses; as you said above, you tend to verify before speaking.
So I said "I would be very interested in some links to the sources you found best analyzed and most persuasive."
And I'm still interested. I am *very* persuadable on this, by evidence and analysis. My first view was that it was probably true. That shifted after some preliminary investigation I'm somewhat leaning the other way, but only slightly; mostly it's not conclusively answered in my opinion. There is enough doubt that I would no longer repeat that assertion myself, because I'm unsure that it's true after early research. Going back to believing it true is not a big shift for me; I just need the evidence and decent analysis.
It should be obvious from my comment that I have already done some searching. But if you have already verified for yourself that the assertion is indeed a fact, it's not unreasonable to politely ask which sources you found most persuasive so I can read them as well.
Thank you for responding, with your link to an article from the popular press, which in turns cites, for example, a blog entry in the Chronical of Higher Education, and other sources.
At this time, I do not find them as persuasive as the peer review scientific article I cited. They do not refute it's assertions, so much as embody the problems it cites with naive analysis. For example, the Chronical blog argues:
> "After IBM established its own affirmative-action program, the numbers of women in management positions more than tripled in less than 10 years. Data from subsequent years show that the number of executives of color at IBM also grew, but not nearly at the same rate."
Notice that this makes no attempt to distinguish (as the scientific journal article does) between advancing, and advancing due to AA. That's exactly the kind of fuzzy thinking (or "motivated reasoning" that the scientific article is trying to avoid.
Please note that I have *never* asserted that it's a "fact" that white women did NOT receive more benefit. I've explicitly said that the question seems not yet conclusively answered in my mind (with a small and reversible leaning towards disconfirmation based on the *science* I have seen to date.) Since it's not yet clear to me what the truth is, I was asking for links to more evidence (from a writer who generally verifies their asserted facts).
I've done some quick research which caused me to no longer believe (at this point in time) that the factuality of the assertion (that white women are the largest beneficiaries of AA) has been objectively proven factual; and since you are convinced that it is indeed factual, I asked for your best sources so I could consider them as well and perhaps be persuaded as well.
As I say, I have no agenda in this except to seek the truth. I would not be upset in the least, whichever way the evidence leads. I was not uncomfortable when I tenatively believed it, I did not research it for years because I assumed it was true. I am assuming that you also have no pre-set conclusion or agenda other than the truth, and that you have been persuaded of the factuality of that statement through your previoius review of the science. I'm asking in good faith for links to that science. Given how science works, I assume there are (almost) always published counter-arguments to consider - but rather than start from scratch, I'm asking what analysis *you* found most convincing. I trust your judgement far more than I trust the average journalist or activist, Steve.
I appreciate the journalistic piece you link in Time, but I would guess that you have based your opinion of factuality on something more solid than that for "verification". If I'm wrong, in that guess, just say so. No harm, no foul. I'll drop it for now, but perhaps if someone else I respect makes the same assertion a year from now, I'll ask them what convinced them.
Side issue: I have tried to be respectful, and to make my own "conscious effort to err on the side of assuming the best of intentions and to be polite and generous" in this response. I've avoided caveats, and condescension, as best I can perceive. If I have failed in that, please help me improve; I will listen. I honestly look forward to the scientific evidence upon which you based your assertion of factuality, to be presented and received in that same spirit. Thank you.
"One might as well survey the mainstream press about the question: "Was George Floyd's killing a hate crime"."
Yeah, this is the problem with the press in general. But it's also a problem with our own biases. I saw this problem absolutely everywhere during COVID (although it's worth pointing out that AA and white women is a statistical claim whilst claims about George Floyd are purely subjective).
There were "data" to confirm whatever you might want to believe about vaccines and masks and myocarditis during the height of COVID. So it is with all research. There will always be that one study that casts doubt upon the consensus. There is simply no sociological data that you can't look at and say, "sure, but what if you control for X variable on Thursday evenings?"
Don't get me wrong, skepticism is vital. But if you spend all of your time on skepticism, simply because a conclusion doesn't quite fit your preexisting biases, if you spend all your time "proving" everything beyond any possibility of doubt or objection, you don't leave any time to actually do anything about the problem. Toni Morrison expressed this well years ago:
"The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.
Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing."
Some people get this balance very wrong. A single piece of data hinting in the direction they want to go and the matter is settled as far as they're concerned. But in the case of affirmative action, if the worry is that we've not completely verified whether these women advanced as a result of AA or not, why are we not equally worried about whether African Americans advanced as a result of AA or not? Implicit in the question is the assumption that white women likely advanced on their merits but African Americans didn't, no?
As for the conclusion of the study you linked, the conclusion seems to assume that we live in a meritocracy where AA was only about making sure the people with the best grades got the best jobs. An extraordinarily naive reading, no? From the paper:
"So why haven’t white women been helped by affirmative action? The success of white female workers suggests they need no help. White women, compared with most blacks and Latinos, have greater education credentials and higher levels of required job skills, both of which make them more qualified in today’s job market"
Well, black people did need help! Not necessarily because they were less qualified, but because study after study shows that some employers will take a mediocre white person over a good black person. I have no problem believing that the average white woman was better educated than the average black person back then (in fact, I believe that's still true today).
But even the most well educated black people would have had comparative difficulty being hired over their white peers. AA incentivised employers to hire black people in defiance of this bias. And was only partly successful. Unfortunately, it was extremely successful in planting the idea in people's heads (including Charles Murray's head) that black people only succeeded because of AA and white women succeeded on merit. Murray was magnanimous enough to be "extremely pleased" when black people "proved" they were competent of course...
When I research a topic, I do so to a degree that allows me to talk about it intelligently. If I spent all of my time researching every nuance of every piece of data, I'd never actually write anything. Or, more to the point, I'd be a social scientist.
So if the entire lynchpin of an article was that white women had benefitted more from affirmative action than black people, I'd certainly dig into as much nuance as I could, carefully presenting the data for and against and explaining why I considered one more reliable than the other. But this was just an aside to a reader about Charles Murray's pretty blatant racial bias.
So yes, the data that I'm basing my claim on is the research detailing the relative rise in employment, income, managerial positions etc between white women and black people over the years of affirmative action. And the paper you linked doesn't attempt to prove that the claim is incorrect, it simply casts the possibility of doubt as a complete causative explanation (I tend to assume no one factor is a complete causative explanation of anything). But there is absolutely no statistical or scientific evidence for the inverse claim that black people benefitted more from affirmative action than white women. Even though it's widely assumed. If there were, and it were relevant to something I was writing about, I'd look at it with an open mind. I'm always interested first and foremost in the truth.
Can I politely "keep you on your toes" as you invite?
I know that AA was not a lynchpin of your article and I was addressing one assertion in isolation rather than as an attack on your article. That being the assertion that white women were the main primary beneficiaries of affirmative action, treated as a standalone topic.
I will often in this reply use "the assertion" to mean that.
As I have noted, I have no agenda other than truth in exploring that assertion. I was never unhappy in the least during the years when I assumed it was probably true because I had heard it often, I did not actively seek out disconfirmation, and I will not be unhappy if the weight of evidence in the end leads back to that conclusion. Or the other direction. I am equally happy to receive scientific links leading in either direction. I have no ideology which benefits or suffers from the true answer to that, either way. That may not be true of everybody on the internet.
I truly *do not care* which way the conclusion goes. If people of color needed AA relatively more and benefitted relatively more from it, then it was well targeted. If women needed AA relatively more and benefitted relatively more from it, then likewise well targeted. If the need and the benefit were exactly equal, likewise. I have no preference between these conclusions. I do have a preference to the truth, tho.
I cited one academic paper just to suggest that the factuality of that assertion is not (yet) a scientific consensus, but my point was to solicit the best scientific counterpoint, not to stop there. I noted that the paper was one peer reviewed data point to weigh, but not definitive - it opens the question rather than closing it. My point was to gather the best info in all directions before making any conclusions. I defended taking the paper seriously rather than dismissing it on superficial grounds; the best counterpoint if it was wrong would be a better scientific analysis, not rhetorical attacks.
It's not a key issue, so I have not researched it much; but when you so strongly asserted it as fact, I figured I had stumbled upon a possible source for links better scientific counterpoint, and took the opportunity to explain why it had recently come into question, and ask about your basis for asserting it as established fact. I fully expected that you might have links to good science supporting the assertion, and welcomed that.
In that light of balanced and scientifically grounded investigation, I think the degree to which you elaborated on racially biased agendas for trying to disprove the assertion was uncalled for. It's not relevant to the scientific question behind the assertion, so I will let it go, but I will call to our attention that this kind of "smear by association" may not be consonant with our intentions.
> "There is simply no sociological data that you can't look at and say, "sure, but what if you control for X variable on Thursday evenings?"
I do not think that is a fair restatement of the issue. At question was how much of women's increased presence in the workforce can accurately be attributed to AA. Many articles in the popular press completely ignore that question, and assume that 100% of the statistical increases in female participation is due to AA hiring, and have nothing to do with changing roles of women; it also assumes that 100% of advancement for people of color is due to AA. We know that both those assumptions are false, and also that there is no reason that the percentage due to AA would automatically be the same for all population groups. That's a glaring problem at the heart of the issue, not a peripheral distraction of looking for an obscure hidden variable with near zero influence I think your reframing mis-portrays the significance.
> "But if you spend all of your time on skepticism, simply because a conclusion doesn't quite fit your preexisting biases,"
Steve, this does not strike me as being in the spirit of fostering a more respectful interaction. It's imputing disreputable motives rather than addressing the objective question.
> "I have no problem believing that the average white woman was better educated than the average black person back then... But even the most well educated black people would have had comparative difficulty being hired over their white peers. AA incentivised employers to hire black people in defiance of this bias."
That is very reasonable. But does that contradict the concept that white women didn't get as much benefit from AA because they did need as much help, or reinforce it? To my mind you are arguing for the latter - you are saying people of color needed AA more and thus benefitted more from it, more often getting positions they would not have otherwise gotten. Which side of do you think that argues for?
I think I may see some of the underpinnings here. Aha, finally. If somebody weighing in on this issue were to say "white women's gains in employment were largely due to merit and did not require AA" (which by the way I am NOT asserting myself, if you read my full position), it would be easy (but not accurate) to conclude that it follows that "people of color needed AA only because of their lack of merit". That does NOT automatically follow. They could also have needed (and benefitted from) AA based on their merit not having been recognized.
I never say the core intention of AA (for those who benefitted from it) as being "hiring/promoting those who do not merit hiring/promoting" but as "compensating for a historical and ongoing disadvantage which unfairly holds back some people, to the detriment of those people and society as a whole".
Nowhere in that statement was there any assumption that "disadvantage" is the same thing as "lack of merit"!!! But some, possibly including yourself, could be responding to that assumed conflation.
So even if white women and people of color had exactly equal education and job experience (as proxies for merit in this context), AA could have benefitted people of color more because they needed it more due to the factors you mention; without AA they might not have gotten the jobs, while the women might have. Of course, we not talking about 0% / 100% binary differences, but about different rates of employment. And as you note, the white women did on average have more education, which would also reduce the degree to which they would not need AA.
Sigh. My exploring the logic of this, pointing out that *your* logic above is more supportive of people of color benefitting more then white women from AA (for good and appropriate reasons), may be taken as *my* advocating that. Is it not, I've been clear that my current assessment is "unproven", and I currently don't consider the assertion or the counter-assertion to be "facts". I can still observe the logic of arguments in either direction, tho.
> "the data that I'm basing my claim on is the research detailing the relative rise in employment, income"
Well, we can let it drop here if you wish. I do not accept that "rise in employment" is a reliable scientific proxy for "rise in employment due to AA", and you do.
If the assertion were "white women have had a higher increase in employment and advancement than people of color (in past decades)" I would easily agree. Since instead its "white women have benefitted more from AA than have people of color", I have no firm conclusions yet.
But I am open to solid science in either direction, and I have no fixed agenda or confirmation bias to support on this issue, other than seeking truth. I'm concerned about the rise of ideology trumping science today, so I prefer the latter as our guide, but on this issue I'm completely content with any direction that the science leads. Our discussion has been illuminating, but I have not seen any science in either direction emerge from it, other than the one paper I cited.
"Steve, this does not strike me as being in the spirit of fostering a more respectful interaction. It's imputing disreputable motives rather than addressing the objective question."
I have a habit, which I will be conscious of as we work through our "reset," of using "you" when I should probably use "one." "One" sounds pretentious to me, which is why I avoid it, but while I *do* think you have a bias towards minimising or failing to consider racism, I wasn't trying to implicate you here. Obviously I see how my wording might have made you feel that way though. Sorry about that.
To be clear, the assertion didn't appear in the article at all. It's not just that it wasn't a lynchpin, it played no part. It was just an aside in a reply to another reader here in the comments (https://steveqj.substack.com/p/i-expected-a-racist-diatribe-from/comment/9156563).
But yes, it's a question of how far one is willing to dig and how much time one is willing to spend in order to have an assertion "proved." As I said, there will always be a study that casts doubt on a consensus (I think it's fair to say that there *is* consensus given that, as I pointed out, there is zero "solid science," including the study you linked, showing that black peple were the primary beneficiaries of AA despite their smaller gains. A single paper doesn't break consensus).
So it comes down to the standard of "proof" you (I do mean you in this case) are willing to accept. I'm asking in all sincerity, what level of proof would assure you without any shadow of doubt that the gains experienced by white women were due to AA in smaller proportion than the smaller gains for black people? Because it seems that this one paper, that focuses exclusively on 6 small cities in the South, and doesn't disprove "the assertion" is the sole source of your doubt.
And while you say that you're indifferent one way or the other, if I'd said that racial income disparities are due to higher rates of single parenthood, or that black culture is a significant factor in black criminality, or that black people don't emphasise education for their children to the same degree as other ethnicities, do you think you'd have asked me for studies to back those assertions up? Do you think the data backing up these assertions is airtight?
And I don't think your logic holds with regards to the impact of AA if black people and white women had equal education, because it discounts the influence of racism.
If black people and white women are equally employable by every metric, and a racist employer (I suspect there are one or two of them living in small cities in the American South) has to employ a woman or a minority in order to fill his AA quota, obviously he'd hire the white woman, no? So she'd be a beneficiary of AA in that instance. Our hypothetical racist employer could get away with this even if the black employee were *more* qualified.
So while all things being equal, one might expect things to work in a meritocratic way, with the best candidate eligible to be hired under AA getting the job, all things are not equal. Even the paper you linked notes that white women were perceived by most employers to be good workers. Why? Is this racial bias? The paper doesn't say anything about how black people were perceived. Which seems like a pretty major oversight given the subject matter no?
There will always be these fuzzy areas that can't be captured perfectly. Especially when the study authors don't seem to have thought to even consider them. And certainly not by the single question;
"Do you personally support affirmative action as a policy to give preferences to blacks and females in hiring and promotion?"
that the researchers asked the employers. It in no way even attempts to account for bias or to examine the realities of the hiring practices. Just looks at the end results and hand waves the stark difference in the employment fortunes of white women and black women as "intense competition." I honestly chuckled when I read that.
In the end, where one stands given the data available depends on how seriously one takes the impact of racism. Or whether one belives it's significant. The word racism or racial discrimination doesn't appear once in the entire paper. I don't see how one can perform a meaningful anaylsis of the relative impact of AA between a white and black cohort without seriously considering racism.
I just wanted to clear up a few things, which may be helpful on other topics in the future.
Reading through the discussion, I get the feel that we have different framings regarding factuality of "the assertion".
You *appear* to frame it as being known to be "factually true" or "factually false"; to question one of those (or ask for sources) is pretty much the same as asserting the opposite.
In my world there is an important middle ground: "uncertain" - as in I personally do not yet have enough information to draw a conclusion. That's where I am in regard to this assertion.
I have repeatedly tried to explain this, but some of your writing appears to assume that if I'm questioning the factuality of the assertion (eg: by asking if you have some sources to share), then I must be convinced of the opposite, and thus that my goal in discussing it must be to disprove the assertion.
For example, when you ask the following, it tells me that you are misunderstanding where I'm at and what I'm interested in:
> "So it comes down to the standard of "proof" you (I do mean you in this case) are willing to accept."
I have never asked for "proof", I just asked for any links you had to studies supporting the assertion that white women were the primary beneficiaries of AA. My goal was to gather information in either direction, to see where the preponderance of studies leads. If you had based your assertion of factuality on even just having read a single scientific paper, I would have appreciated a link to it and thanked you for it. I never asked you to "prove" anything; I'm just interested in evidence, in either direction.
Social science rarely produces "proof", but hypothesis can have strong or weak evidence. I noted that the one paper I cited could hardly be considered definitive, but it does call into question my previous acceptance that the assertion was likely true because I had heard it often. So before I personally would repeat it, I would want to assess the evidence on all sides.
I DO NOT HAVE A PREFERRED ANSWER to support or defend. If I question the *certainty* of one answer, that does not imply I want (or believe) the opposite to be true.
> "if I'd said that racial income disparities are due to higher rates of single parenthood, or that black culture is a significant factor in black criminality, or that black people don't emphasise education for their children to the same degree as other ethnicities, do you think you'd have asked me for studies to back those assertions up?"
If you had asserted any one of those things explicitly as a fact, yes I would have.
More relevant tho is this: If you had asserted as a fact that "white women have NOT been the main beneficiaries of AA (the opposite of the actual assertion in question)", would I have asked for any sources you had which had convinced you of that?
Absolutely YES.
Since I'm deferring making any conclusion, I'm open to hearing the evidence for either side, from those who believe they do have enough solid evidence to conclude one way of the other (if I trust them).
If you can just believe me that I'm not trying to prove, or to disprove, but just seeking evidence, you will understand my writing more accurately.
I want to say that I understand how it could seem as if I'm "on the other side" - like when I cite a study which comes to a different result (within its scope). That can easily be understood as coming from the opposite certainty, rather than from neutrally seeking truth starting from the middle: uncertain.
So if you or someone else had asserted that "the assertion" was factually false, I would have asked for sources to support that - again, from my position in the middle (unsure).
If you were to reread my words with the assumption that I'm uncertain of the truth and seeking information from anybody on either side (if I casually happen upon an advocate I respect), I think they will make more sense. You appear to be interpreting my words through the filter of assuming that I believe that assertion to be false, or that I'm hoping for it to be false, and that misleads your understanding of me.
Let's try to "reset" the impression you keep saying that you have of me, that I'm trying to dismiss or minimize any impact of racism, and that everything I write is likely part of that motive. It has felt to me that this imputation of motive has distorted several of our interactions, and it has the dynamic of building on itself - each new interpretation based on that suspicion seems to confirm the pattern, making you even more suspicious the next time.
How to reset? If you imagine that I'm dismissing racial bias as a plausible hypothesis in some situation - ask me what I think, give me a chance to nuance my views (which often do not fit into a common stereotype), rather than assuming this it just another example of the pattern. Or if you think I'm try to prove the opposite of your assertion, ask if that's the case.
Summary. Regarding the assertion "White women are the primary beneficiaries of AA":
* I am currently uncertain and would not pass it on without more review of evidence
* you are certain and feel it's fact you can pass on
There's another dimension tho - whether one WANTS it to turn out true or false, whether one would feel bad if the truth did not turn out to fit our preferences
* I don't care which way it turns out, I just want to respect the truth either way
* I'm uncertain about you.
Are you "rooting for" it to be true? If the scientific literature hypothetically turned out to be "no consensus" or "false", would that feel uncomfortable in any way? If so, why? Would you consider it a bad thing if research showed that POC had in fact benefitted more than white women? Or what? I don't want to assume, so I'm asking.
My impression (right or wrong) is that many neo-progressive activists (a group in which I decidedly DO NOT place you, Steve!) do have a bias - they want it to be true, because they want to use it to reinforce their message of grievance. White women are prime customers for the narrative of guilt they are selling, so there are implications for identity politics. They are not interested in neutrally evaluating evidence on either side, they just want a talking point consistent with their ideology and tools. This is the group with also pushes a narrative that "nothing much has really changed since Jim Crow", that is, greatly minimizes progress and highlights problems, because that narrative what their power is based on. If somebody point out the benefits of AA, they want to dismiss that by saying that white women gained more, so AA can be uses yet another grievance rather than as evidence of progress.
I'm not sure if there is a substantial group which has nearly as much payoff for it not to be true (ie: hoping that POC have benefitted more than white women).
"Let's try to "reset" the impression you keep saying that you have of me, that I'm trying to dismiss or minimize any impact of racism"
I just realised that I didn't address this point. This might be partly due to something you pointed out earlier which is that you're more likely to comment, certainly at length, when you disagree, but the impression I have is just based on the fact that almost all of our discussions (and the discussions I see you having with other readers) are based on you questioning some comment about the mistreatment of black people or the scale of the impact of racism in a particular situation. And never when I make a comment acknowledging that black culture or some other explanatory factor could be to blame for a particular racial disparity, for example.
People inclined to blame racism for *everything* (and I come across plenty of those), exhibit the opposite pattern.
I wouldn't say you're "trying" to minimise racism (if I phrased it that way earlier I was being imprecise), just that you seem to have a tendency to do so. It's a bias that may well be unconscious, or that might be a mirage I'm seeing based on the aforementioned fact that we're all more likely to comment when we disagree. I'm absolutely not saying this makes you a racist or anything even close. But it's hard not to notice it.
"In my world there is an important middle ground: "uncertain" - as in I personally do not yet have enough information to draw a conclusion. That's where I am in regard to this assertion."
Yeah, maybe this is where we're tripping up. I hold almost all specific claims in the "uncertain" category. Certainly all claims in the social sciences. Because almost all information could be "disproved" or cast into doubt by new evidence or more careful analysis.
But once there's *enough* evidence to satisfy me (multiple sources, logical conclusions, zero claims of the inverse), they move to the "more likely than not to be true" end of that spectrum. As I said earlier, it's about how much time one is willing to spend digging into every piece of data on a single assertion in order to "prove" it.
If a single piece of research claims the opposite, I note it, but that single data point probably won't move me very much unless it presents something compelling. Especially if it appears to me to have fairly serious flaws (to be clear, this conversation has moved my confidence in the assertion back toward "uncertain", just not very much). Again, COVID is an excellent example of how futile it is to try to prove something beyond any doubt. And that's far harder science than this.
If I'm writing an article, I'll never base my argument on a single piece of research or a single data point. Precisely because if that research is cast into doubt, the entire thesis falls apart. So I'll cite numerous independent pieces of evidence, all pointing to the same conclusion, and say, "All of this together is why I believe X to be true."
My attachment to the "factuality" of a single piece of data therefore, is usually pretty loose. I'm convinced enough by "the assertion" that I'm happy to use it in an aside to a reader in a comment section. But I'd never use it as the cornerstone of an article. I'm not even using it as the cornerstone in my argument that Charles Murray is racially biased.
So yes, while I think it's wise (and sadly rare), that people keep information in the "uncertain" category, it's paralysing if we don't accept some information as "likely enough" to be true for a particular purpose. If everything you said had to be true beyond any possible shadow of disagreement, you'd never say anything. I mean, look at how many people (including many fellow experts in his field) claim the findings in Charles Murray's book aren't true.
So yeah, if there were definitive evidence that black people were the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action (or that white women and black people benefited more or less equally), it wouldn't change anything for me, because a) lots of people already assume that to be the case (all without *any* evidence) and b) none of my ideas rest on it being false. But some of Charles Murray's arguments about affirmative action *do* seem to rest on it being true.
And the wider point is that grievances about racism don't rest on things like this single assertion being true. Or, for example, on the Atlantic slave trade being the most brutal form of slavery. Neo-progressives aren't wrong to feel aggrieved, they're wrong in what they suggest is done about those grievances. And in implicating all white people as the source of those grievances. But there is soooo much indisputable evidence of the cruel, deliberate, and state-sanctioned oppression of black people in America, that these assertions being proven wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt wouldn't move the needle.
Good points, Steve. In particular, I agree with your final paragraph, and many of your points about evidence and "proof".
(Well, I might question some of the specific points or degrees of grievance used by neo-progressives, but I do agree that many of the grievances are valid and that their prescriptions are the bigger issue).
I'm glad that we agree that absolute proof is not available, and that neither of us expects that. That seemed like a red herring, so it's good to take it off the table.
As I've said, for years I had (without discomfort) put "the assertion" into the "likely true" category. But I had done zero real research (since it didn't seem to have big operational implications), I was just lazily assuming it was probably true, because I had heard it many times, and had never heard anybody dispute it. I didn't seek out information about it.
Then *relatively recently*, I heard somebody dispute it, so I did a cursory search and after filtering, the first peer reviewed paper I found came to a contrary conclusion, and also described the flaws in superficial analysis. I explicitly did not take that as definitive, but as enough to raise some questions of factuality, and as raising the right questions (unlike the popular press).
So for me, the currents status my knowledge about "the assertion":
* mainstream popular sources: near universal belief, cited by activists as another grievance; I find most activists to be deeply into confirmation bias and cherry picking, so this consensus is not convincing and I try to look for better sources
* scientific sources: 0 sources supporting it, 1 source questioning it, not nearly enough evidence to make any conclusion, but enough to consider it "needs more investigation". I do not know if this paper is part of a consensus, or a rare exception to a consensus, or if there is n scientific consensus.
If I relied entirely upon the sources which also consider it to be established "fact" that the George Floyd murder was obviously due to racism, then "the assertion" would be a no-brainer; we know that the popular press is very much in favor of the assertion, when it comes up. But is that because they neutrally assessed the evidence, or (once again) because it fits the same narratives which support their George Floyd "factual" conclusions?
I figured that if your research into the matter had established that there was indeed a scientific consensus supporting the assertion, then you could easily pass on a few links to the best of them, opportunistically bootstrapping my low-priority research. As I've said, I would have asked the same from somebody certain of the opposite conclusion. I don't have a dog in this race, other than seeking truth.
Science is not immune to ideological or other biases, but it typically does at least consider major confounding factors and avoid the worst abuses of process that the popular press often commits. Like assuming that 100% of the increases in female and POC employment is based entirely on AA, and then citing statistics which have meaning only if you accept that assumption as fact.
What I took away from the paper I cited was (1) they defined the issue more carefully, (2) they acknowledged the difficulty of determining factual truth, (3) they noted the major confounding factors which needed to be taken into account in any serious study, and (4) within their limited scope, their analysis actually disconfirmed "the assertion" with much more care than the popular press. Because it's only one paper of limited scope, #4 has little weight in isolation - but note that points 1-3, which are still very valid in understanding the deep conceptual flaws in many journalistic or activist "analyses". We should not think that #4 was the only thing of value in the paper.
TL;DR: The paper did not establish any "scientific consensus" by itself, but it did identify why non-scientific analyses may be deeply flawed, by noting things which absolutely *must* be accounted for in a serious study.
So far, you are asserting that science has come to consensus supporting the conclusion so that the only peer reviewed study I have seen *must* obviously be an outlier, which thus can be summarily dismissed as having little weight compared to that established broad scientific consensus.
However, you haven't provided even one citation of a (science) journal article you has used in forming your conclusion, much less any indication that your previous research had established that there actually *is* such a scientific consensus - based on your having reviewed many such scientific papers and found a consensus among them (with the paper I cited being the first and assumed only exception to come to your attention).
> "I'm convinced enough by "the assertion" that I'm happy to use it in an aside to a reader in a comment section. But I'd never use it as the cornerstone of an article."
Fair enough. Good practice.
> " if there were definitive evidence that black people were the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action (or that white women and black people benefited more or less equally), it wouldn't change anything for me, because a) lots of people already assume that to be the case "
Steve, are you saying that you both that (1) you know that lots of people assume that black people rather than white women are the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action, and (2) you know of zero claims of the inverse of the assertion? ("there's *enough* evidence to satisfy me (multiple sources, logical conclusions, zero claims of the inverse)"?
Oddly, I had never run into anybody asserting that POC were the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action until fairly recently, as I've described. I had ONLY run into "the assertion", which I have seen many, many times. And that asymmetry makes sense; "the assertion" is part of the narrative of ongoing pervasive oppression, but the opposite (that POC have benefitted more) does not lend itself to any common narratives. We won't find angry far right folks asserting that it's a known (and implicitly outrageous) fact that white women have received fewer benefits from AA than POC. This is not ideologically symmetric, the incentives for confirmation bias are not equal in both directions.
Obviously, we read different places and our experience will differ, but I do think that most of the mainstream media is on the side of assuming "the assertion" to be a known fact, as you believe, and while you may believe that "lots of people" assume otherwise, I suspect that lots *more* people assume the assertion true than false.
Let's be careful here not to mis-frame the question. That is, one cannot assume that the assertion must be factually true, UNTIL and UNLESS somebody can provide "definitive evidence" that the opposite is true; there has to be room for "the evidence known to me is mixed, not yet sufficient to form a factual conclusion". (Which happens to be my current estimate, pending more research).
One can question whether an assertion has accumulated enough solid evidence to be called a known "fact", without needing to counter-assert that enough evidence has accumulated to establish it's opposite as a known "fact". Sometimes your framing of this does not appear to acknowledge this.
And before I close, I will note that there is a lot of sloppiness in the popular press (including the one you cited) between using statistics about "women" versus statistics about just "white women". I noticed that immediately; did you? Reread the article and see how often they refer to each. In general, women of color can get grouped in on either side of the statistics, depending on what the journalist wants to "prove".
And I'm still wondering if you think there is anything wrong if white women (or women in general) actually had benefitted more from AA than POC (assuming that both needed it to overcome previous stereotypes). Since you are not generally trying to reinforce a grievance narrative, does it even matter to you, beyond curiosity and respect for truth? Do you have any preference for assertion to be shown true or false?
Good discussing this with you, Steve. If we can discuss things well, we can help refine each other's views, on the relatively few points where we disagree.
"If I relied entirely upon the sources which also consider it to be established "fact" that the George Floyd murder was obviously due to racism, then "the assertion" would be a no-brainer;"
Yeah, as demonstrated by my recent conversation about the Atlanta, an assertion of racist motivations in the popular press is worth next to nothing. But that's quite different to a statistical analysis of employment and income advancement during affirmative action. It's not really fair to compare the two.
Also, there is scientific "evidence" insofar as the assertion is based on scientific research. We could debate the quality of that research, but it's untrue that there is 0 evidence. There is research claiming that the assertion is true, there is a paper saying the assertion might not be true, but there are 0 papers claiming that the inverse of the assertion is true. Sorry, I thought there were links to the research in the TIME article I originally linked. This one has some (https://www.vox.com/2016/5/25/11682950/fisher-supreme-court-white-women-affirmative-action).
Interesting that you say you've never heard of anybody who questioned the assertion. I hadn't even heard it until about 5 years ago. Until then, all I'd ever heard is the stereotypes that are spun from the narrative that black people are the primary (or even in many people's minds the *only*) beneficiaries of AA. In his interview with Coleman, Charles Murray states this extremely clearly (https://youtu.be/wCJFr6zB2NM?t=457):
"The reality of aggressive affirmative action, which nobody wants to say, is (but everybody kinda knows), whites widely consider that any time there is a new black face in the office, that's an affirmative action hire. That's the default assumption."
This absolutely matches my experience in talking about the issue or hearing people talk about it. But I know of no *evidence* of the claim. Just the culturally accepted assumption that AA is a "black" thing.
No, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong if AA benefitted white women more than POC. No meaningful preference for the assertion to be true or false (I'd find it funnier if the racists who use AA as a cudgel for POC were proven wrong I suppose). but yes, the grievance aspect is non-existent as far as I'm concerned. I wouldn't feel aggrieved if the assertion were proven false. Women *do* deserve more opportunities in the workplace. But if a new female face pops up in the workplace, especially a new white female face, the assumption is not that she's an AA hire. This the issue.
> "But that's quite different to a statistical analysis of employment and income advancement during affirmative action. It's not really fair to compare the two."
In terms of the *possibility* of a relatively neutral scientific analysis, I agree that they are quite different. In terms of popular sources potentially having a bias which could inspire cherry picking of only that which supports a pre-set narrative and not considering off-narrative hypotheses, they can be very similar. It depend on what facet one is referring to.
I did not assert that there was 0 scientific support for "the assertion"; I strongly suspect there is some (and it's quite possible that you are correct that there is a "consensus" in favor of it, for all I know). I was just summarizing that, at my current level of research (including what had been referenced here), I have not yet encountered a scientific paper supporting it - reflecting my own lack of knowledge of the field.
Prior to a few years ago, I had not heard anything much about which groups were benefitting from AA, period. I had of course heard that Black folks, Latinos, American Indians, and women all benefitted, but I do not recall anybody making a point in any direction about "who gets more benefit". It just wasn't an issue. So I never heard "AA is benefitting Black people more than white women" in those days, nor the reverse - I just didn't hear any comparisons at all in general discourse.
Then a few years ago I began hearing frequently that white women benefitted more; that idea spread rapidly and persisted, and I passively assumed it was likely true (because I heard it frequently, it seems plausible, and I did not hear any counterpoint) until recently. I do not see that emergence as countering a then prevailing narrative that "Blacks benefit more than women"; it's more like the beginning of comparing benefits between competing identity groups.
---
I take your point about assumptions regarding AA hiring of women and Blacks (and Latinos, etc).
However, I think it depends on the field. You may be right about office workers, but among firefighters, police, combat soldiers, welders, masons, etc it's going to be the reverse - women are going to be more suspected of being an AA hire than are Black men. In the US, Black police officers are approximately proportionately represented, but female officers are not even close. So the degree of wariness has a lot of it has to do with how common vs unusual the new face is. (And some may be reality based, as it's not unreasonable to think that males more often can carry people out of burning building than females, statistically).
In my experience with workplace dynamics, the main concern I have observed is hiring of somebody who is less competent and who will not hold up their share of the job, making other's work harder (or less successful or more dangerous, etc). This would be true for the boss's nephew, or the manager's squeeze, but today AA is one of the possible causes for such wariness. But if over time the new person shows themselves as competent and easy to work with, they will be welcomed; if not, there is also the fear that they cannot be terminated without a mess. It's important to distinguish these basically rational fears, from irrational hatred or antipathy.
The ideal concept of AA is that when two candidates are equally competent, we should choose the one from the more marginalized group. If it had always worked out that way, AA would likely not have nearly as much pushback. Alas, in the real world this is not always the case; sometimes the difference being bridged to meet a goal is not insignificant. I have personally encountered frankly incompetent people hired under AA, so I know it exists. Alongside those are many AA hires who turn out to be competent and good co-workers, so I'm not saying that's typically the case, I'm not saying that the concept of AA is wrong, and I definitely abhor pre-judging anybody - but it does happen and pretending it doesn't, just alienated people.
All that acknowledged, it's unfair that somebody who is or might be an AA hire may face more caution and scrutiny than other newcomers, due to no fault of their own. For any AA category.
Some people buck up and show their mettle under that kind of pressure of feeling watched, but it can cause others to fail ("stereotype threat"). Humans vary.
I'm not sure how to intervene and reduce that dynamic. Well, eliminating AA would do it, but other than that. Heavy handed interventions, I believe, are likely to make the problem worse - increasing distrust and suspicion (of both management and the new hire), even if overt expression thereof is successfully suppressed. My tendency would be to emphasize the concept of judging people on the content of their character rather than their skin color (literally, or metaphorically in the case of non-race based AA). That is - judge each new coworker as an individual, give everybody the fair chance that you would want, treat them as you would wish to be treated if you were a new hire, allow them a fair chance to show their stuff. Perhaps urging a bit more slack, as they may feel under more pressure as described above.
Alas, this "treat everybody the same, judge their competence not their superficial traits" concept has been demonized among neo-progressives. The latter tends to strongly promote stereotyping and differential treatment - but only politically approved stereotypes and treatment. I do not think that produces the outcomes they claim to want (back to the criticism that neo-progressives often prescribe bad strategies even for real problems).
I strongly believe in not stereotyping (which for my purpose I define as assuming that some group trait - whether said trait has a high or low correlation with the group - can be meaningfully applied to every individual in the group). Some group stereotypes are plain out false, like if the trait is actually no more common in the group than average. Others may have some degree of truth to them, like the trait could actually be significantly more common in the group. But in either case, each individual can be typical or atypical of that population group, so I advocate starting with a blank slate of no pre-suppositions, and learning about that person as a unique individual rather than as an interchangeable unit of the group identity. By population group I mean Latinos, males, engineers, Catholics, whatever group may be associated with stereotypes, false or with some statistical level validity.
Do you have better ideas on dealing with wariness of new hires based on AA? Whether due to race or to sex or whatever.
"Some people buck up and show their mettle under that kind of pressure of feeling watched, but it can cause others to fail ("stereotype threat"). Humans vary."
Yeah, I think this is a key source of irritation amongst minorities and women. I absolutely resent the implication (not saying this is your implication, but it certainly exists in society generally) that we need to "buck up" when people make assumptions about us based on some immutable characteristic. That doesn't mean we won't or can't, it means we shouldn't need to. The frustration is about having to do this thing we shouldn't have to do, and which an entire class of people *never* has to do, in addition to the ordinary frustrations and mistreatments of life that we all deal with. It's like running a race where there's an extra hurdle only in your lane.
I won't fail because somebody believes that I'm less capable because I'm black. But that in no way diminishes the irritation that I should need to "prove myself" to the satisfaction of my white colleagues as Murray put it. And for the people who *will* fail under that pressure, it's absolutely wrong that they should face it for no reason other than some facet of how they were born.
And yeah, while eliminating AA would reduce this dynamic, it would also leave in place the dynamic that AA was intended to solve. All those people who would assume that POC and women are less capable would continue to make that assumption and so would hire/promote them less often. This, in turn, would leave the employment and opportunity disparities in place.
After all, the purpose of AA wasn't to hire POC who were less capable, instead, as you say, it was to give POC who *were* capable a fairer chance in the employment market. Maybe AA wasn't the best way to do this. Or wasn't implemented in the best way. There are smart people on both sides of that debate. But other than some kind of conscious intervention, I'm not sure how it would be possible to break the hegemony that was already in place. I don't think we'd see the degree of diversity we see today in the employment market without AA and diversity programs, for example.
I think the reason the assumption around "affirmative action hires" arose is that too many people really couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that pretty much every single president, CEO, movie star, etc. being a white man wasn't just a coincidence or a simple question of merit. They saw the challenge to the monopoly as preferential treatment for minorities and women, while failing to realise that people with their immutable characteristics had enjoyed preferential treatment since forever.
So I guess the best way to reduce the dynamic, though sadly by no means easy (and almost endlessly frustrating), is to encourage the people who hold this mindset to really examine the world from a perspective other than their own. And this, in turn, means learning to talk about racial and sex-based bias in ways that are honest and clear without being divisive or accusatory. There's a lot of talk about how white people get defensive in discussion about race. And it's true. But I think a fair amount of that defensiveness has been generated by the demonising way we talk about it.
"OK, let's do our very best to reset as you say. I'm enthusiastically agreeing. I will try to stop caveating, and we will both make a conscious effort to err on the side of assuming best intentions and being polite and generous - and we'll both attempt to avoid seeming condescending, OK?
Practice topic: Are white women the primary beneficiaries of Affirmative Action? Let's do our best." And later "Let's have a civil and productive conversation."
I'm smiling as I write this, I'm not annoyed at all, and I certainly don't think you're doing this on purpose, but the above is a great example of the tone I'm talking about. Do you see how this might read as:
"Let me reassert that we'll both attempt to do the thing you've already said you were going to do. OK?"
Or:
"Let's have a civil and productive discussion. Even though you've just said that you're going to attempt do that in future."
This is one aspect of the caveating I'm talking about. Comments like these feel as if I'm being gently guided by the hand by an encouraging parent because I can't handle a civil discussion without that guidance. Which doesn't feel so great coming from a stranger on the internet when you're an adult. As I said, I'm going to do my best to ignore this in future, but I'm trying to point out that you might be contributing to the reactions that are frustrating you.
Steve, this experience is nearly unique in my life.
I realize that I've on occasion expressed frustration at how my words (and those of many others, even you) can be twisted by others, no matter how carefully we attempt to avoid that - whether in honest misunderstanding or bad faith pretense of misunderstanding. I'm sure you have observed the same thing.
However, that is NOT what happens between us here. I highly value your insights and trust your sincerity and intelligence. I almost never in my life have had the kind of dynamic I've had here with anybody else with those characteristics. I can see how one might conflate the two, but my occasional experience of impatience with foolishness or bad faith, and the way you and I seem to trigger each other, are quite distinct for me. And the experience with you is a rare opportunity for me.
I think the issues between us are more due to our similarities. That's one reason (besides my respect for your writing) that I've bothered to respond to these issues. I see it as something I can learn from, a mirror. Not in the sense that you have sometimes seemed to take it - that it's your mission to repeatedly tell me what's wrong with me. I'm getting better at ignoring the tone of that as a distraction from the possible learning; I can see now that I have sometimes done poorly at that in the past. Being defensive does not serve me. The learning I'm getting about myself is more from your need to treat me the way you do, and from your not being aware of that - I see myself in that, I see that I have some similar flaws. I do not feel superior; there is no flaw I've observed in you that I do not see in myself. And if we can be civil, I can learn from that.
One of the differences I observe in myself, is that when you treat me condescendingly (as I perceive it), it got under my skin more than usual precisely because of the high regard I have for you. It's like being harshly criticized by somebody whose esteem one values, not just some internet rando. That's not a frequent experience for me. It has taken some reflection to observe this in myself.
Whether you learn something about yourself and your part (or perceive any opportunity to do so) is up to you and not my concern. I am not trying to fix you.
> "Comments like these feel as if I'm being gently guided by the hand by an encouraging parent because I can't handle a civil discussion without that guidance. "
I hear that you feel that way, and I can see how that could be unpleasant. That however is not the emotion nor intellectual perspective I experience, however. I've heard your interpretation,
can I share mine? The comments you apparently interpret as talking down to you, were not so intended. I meant to affirm our mutual positive intentions. We are trying to break some habits, and in my life, when I'm trying to do that, it has been helpful to keep reaffirming the new perspective as part of avoiding falling into a familiar rut. It's easy to slip into defensiveness. I am speaking as much to myself as to you, and trying to be allies in making a shift. My reflection is not turning up, so far anyway, the kind of talking down (parent to child, etc) energy which you appear to be reacting to
And the reaction you have to the words from me (in my previous post), is very unusual in my life. Really. In that mode (not speaking about every mode in which I write, sometimes I am less conscious and more reactive), most people hear me as reaching out as an equal, seeking a mutually respectful interchange between imperfect but well intentioned people. My experience is that it usually de-escalates and reassures. It has worked *many times*.
In this case, something else is going on. It feels to me thus: if there is any possible way to interpret my words as talking down to you, you will seize upon that interpretation and not give consideration or weight to any more benign interpretation. And that you are expecting me to phrase things in ways that cannot possibly be so interpreted, and holding me responsible for your reactions. I don't see much slack, or presumption of good will and intention, in your choice among plausible interpretations of my words.
SQJ> "Do you see how this might read as: "Let me reassert that we'll both attempt to do the thing you've already said you were going to do. OK?"
That strikes me as the most negative interpretation possible, not as a generous one. I can see how my words could be so interpreted, but it doesn't seem to be the only possible interpretation, the most accurate interpretation, or the most generous one. It seems as if it's looking for something negative, rather than (even tentatively) assuming the best.
And in light of what I said about mirroring, at this point I'm seeing that as an opportunity to reflect upon the times when *I* may be unconsciously looking for a putdown (whether or not that is true of you now). Right now, I'm feeling pretty reflective and humble. But other times in some of our interactions, I'm realizing that I was feeling defensive and attacked without being very conscious of that, and that unconsciously influenced the tone and framing of my responses. I'm owning that, not blaming you for it.
And I apologize for my lack of awareness in those times. I can understand how those reactions may have crystalized some of your current propensity (as I perceive it) towards dark interpretations of even my most conciliatory outreaches. You have some reason for that, I was not being conscious enough.
But I'm ready to change that. I am sincerely ready for a reset and reframing. I don't think the "reset" has yet penetrated fully for us, there are some priors still influencing our interactions, influencing our interpretations of each other (we are humans after all). But I'm feeling patient with us. We can dig ourselves out. I'm becoming less reactive (albeit always imperfect).
It would help if you could read my words a second time when you feel I'm talking down to you, and ask "How would this land if I believed PGBR was trying to connect as an equal?". Or at least think about more than one interpretation, including some benign ones.
Warmly, PGBR
"if there is any possible way to interpret my words as talking down to you, you will seize upon that interpretation and not give consideration or weight to any more benign interpretation."
Let me start by saying that on reflection, I shouldn't have added that bit about "the reactions that are frustrating you." I see how that could easily be interpreted as a snipe. I apologise.
I think a significant part of this reset, at least for me, will be to stop analysing past disagreements or misinterpretations. We obviously have our own ways of communicating and view the words we read through our own lenses, so as you say here, the best way forward is just to assume good intent from each other.
Even if I wasn't already convinced of your sincerity, which I was, your reply here underlines your desire to move forward more positively. A desire which I absolutely share.
My only real quibble is with the quote above. I can promise you that there is no intent or desire to interpret your words as talking down to me. And I don't think the interpretation has anything to do with anything in our past. I believe I'd interpret them the same way even if this was the first time I'd seen them and they were directed at somebody else. Again, to be clear, not as deliberately condescending, they just come across as kind of patronising. I 100% believe that isn't your intention, and that settles the matter as far as I'm concerned.
Having all your interactions with somebody be as words on a screen removes all of the nuance that would, I'm sure, immediately resolve these misunderstandings. And often, we don't even write the same way we speak, so more scope for misunderstanding presents itself. I really appreciate your reply. If you're happy to, I'm ready to close the door on this and be internet buds.
Absolutely.
I have great appreciation for you and the products of your amazing mind. Even if I disagree at times, much more often I agree with at least the main points, maybe everything.
(Alas, I do realize that I spend more words on trying to describe and explain the disagreements, while just briefly noting the agreements - so it could seem as if I'm mostly at odds with you. It's more that when I agree, there us usually much less to say! If you nailed it; I don't have to go over that point by point; at most I might add some additional facets at times. But if I disagree, even with 1/20 of what you wrote, I try to explain *why*, the shape of it. I can see how that might give a distorted view).
I would be honored to be internet buds. I'd likely enjoy being in person buds even more if you were local, with the greater richness of communication compared to "words on a screen", as you say.
If we stumble, let's pick ourselves up.
That sounds good. Let's do that.
Can you try to understand this from my perspective as well?
I hear that I have tended to overly caveat my statements because of past interactions. From now on, I will review any post I make here, looking for anything which might be interpreted as condescending. I plead guilty for not having done that well enough, for letting my reactivity shape my tone too much. I will strive to do better. I will strive to be less affected by (my perception of) your tone. And you are welcome to say "Hey, that last post slipped a bit into the territory we've agreed to avoid, let's be more mindful". I will hear that.
Let's reset, and let's practice the new approach starting with the issue of affirmative action. In another post.
Thank you for engaging constructively. I hear and respect your underlying positive intention.
And rather than our similarities making us more oversensitive towards each other, perhaps they can help us cut each other the same slack that we want for ourselves.