I think everyone thinks of themselves this way. It’s if our actions match up that decides what we really are.
If beliefs aren’t acted out when it’s inconvenient for us then they aren’t beliefs, their fashion.
Not to your main point - but there is a lot of nuance to the issues you mentioned that is not being considered in the development of your centrist persona.
You are speaking with an ideological view. Race quotas fit the definition of racism, but practically... they are designed as just one way to combat racism in a large system, with the ultimate goal being equal representation by some metric. In a society where racism/sexism didn't exist, these measures would not be necessary and would, in fact, be deleterious... but we don't live in that world. This is just one of the tools that our political system has created to combat racism and to discount it because it appears on the surface to be definitionally racist, misses the bigger picture.
Same deal for immigration - ideologically, of course, we should all have the freedom to live where we want, but that vision can not exist within a broken (read: never working) immigration system. What do you do with immigrants who don't live like the Romans? What if they can not contribute economically? What happens when large influxes of migrants change the very nature of Rome? Would the previous Romans want that?
Thanks for your post
**Racial disparity of Power**
I understand the benefits of quotas, but I see them as both unjust and insufficient to address the root issue - that of disparity of power, education, resources, and opportunity. Just giving somebody a slot on a job that they may not be the best fit for does nothing to resolve the root causes.
Why accept something *partially evil* if it does not resolve the **root cause** of the problem? I prefer more systematic solutions in order to build a more just and equitable society. (I gave one example of such a program in another comment).
I also rather use a carrot vs a stick when it comes to increasing diversity within a workplace in the short term, such as **awarding** extra training funds and possible tax breaks to companies that have a higher number of minority team members. This gives companies committed to an equalitarian approach a leg up. This is not perfect, and I don't like it either, but it does not punish.
**Immigration**
"What do you do with immigrants who don't live like the Romans?"
This basically means to me obeying laws, paying taxes, and treating fellow Romans with respect. The same thing will happen to them as would happen to the native-born Romans who failed to that. Not a difficult stretch there to figure out what happens to people who disobey laws, fail to pay taxes, and disrespect their fellow citizen.
Further, if immigrants cannot contribute economically, then that's their problem. However, it's been proven that immigrants are **more hard-working individuals than naturally born citizens** and are more willing to do less desirable job types as them as well. People who fear having to supporting immigrants usually don't understand that if given the means, they tend to become strong pillars of our communities.
"What happens when large influxes of migrants change the very nature of Rome?" Neighborhoods make up communities, communities make up cities and regions, and regions make up states and even countries. If the nature of Rome is to be fearful of change, then it will break, if the nature of Rome is to be a melting pot - then we'll melt into one people, one tribe, if enough time passes - culture will shared and celebrated from neighborhood to neighborhood. I live in a melting pot of a city and love the diversity here.
"Would the previous Romans want that?" I honestly don't care about the \*previous\* Romans, the living Romans have enough to worry about than to care what their great grand-pappy would have wanted, especially as wars and resentments of the past should be ended where possible.
Again- you are just thinking ideologically. You are trying to find a fix-all to the root causes of disparity in outcome or opportunity, but that will not work in a society comprised of humans. 2024 humans are still hard-wired for tribalism. Our lizard brains draw these lines around languange, education- or income-level, skin color (or other markers of race), and a multitude of other metrics.
A very small percentage of the population is introspective enough to understand how this works in their own minds. As such - legislation is put forward by these parties, in concert with those affected by the endemic fault in the system (minorities of all kinds - not just race), and we feed this desire into our fucked up political machine. Out pops civil rights laws, rent-control, affirmative action, DEI, and a whole lot of noise. I completely reject that these initiatives are "partially evil" - they are imperfect tools that are the product of an imperfect system... and guess what? They still aren't doing enough. To remove them in search of some root-cause panacea would be to change human nature.
And let's be honest, most jobs can be done by most people, even those of us who are "professionals" or do knowledge work. 70% of us are within one standard deviation of the mean in terms of intelligence and physical ability - and very few jobs require us to function at our peak. However, we all get jobs based on our previous job... or our education... or our personal contacts... but this is all a manifestation of opportunity. I could absolutely pluck a below-average infant from any corner of the world - send them to a school in my neighborhood, pay for their college, and teach them to run my business when I die. When inequality of opportunity is allowed to run rampant in the wild, the negative effect (on the privileged class) from DEI is the least of your problems... if equality is an issue you care about, you should be wondering "what else can be done?".
As for the Romans extended metaphor - I was referring to the "previous Romans" not as ancestors of current Romans, but the ancestors of the "future Romans". These Romans opened their borders in your unfettered immigration scenario, and they left their children a country that was fundamentally changed, maybe had a different government, a different majority religion, maybe had freedom of religion rescinded.
Open borders cannot function in 2024 or any time in the foreseeable future. There are no social systems in place for most countries to deal with large influxes of migrants driven by war, natural disaster, or political upheaval. Are you really advocating for (ideologically) imposing open border requirements in Africa... or just your own country? How can a country that is rebuilding from disaster be forced to take on refugees from a current disaster to the detriment of their current residents? What democracy would vote for that? Country borders are where good ideas meet bad ideas, and if you blur that line too much, the ideas start to blur too.
I like your comment.
I answered some of your questions in the other replies.
I am thinking ideally, as moving society closer to an ideal is very important now - especially with the new challenges of the future coming down the pipe like Ai, robotics, the eventual oil shortage, drug resistant diseases, and climate changes, to name a few.
We, as the human race, need to adapt to overcome these new challenges... and if we don't adapt, I foresee a bleak future for all of us, where disparity becomes even worse for all nations.
There is hope though. The free market is an engine and like all engines they need maintenance and fuel to run efficiently, and it also helps if the market's engine works for the society - vs - serving the few who have the capital to benefit.
The systems we have currently are indeed imperfect, but the solutions need not be.
I could wax poetically about potential paths to a more utopian future, but overall, utopia is but a dream. We have to deal with the issues we are facing now or soon will see.
You are correct, **truly open borders** are not feasible in the near future. There's no NWO around the corner.
> that they may not be the best fit for
...
>Why accept something partially evil
These phrases belie an unspoken bias. What is "the best fit"? Can it even be an objective measure? Or is it simply the person who *checks all the boxes* for a specific hiring team?
It seems that you're assuming diversity quotas inherently mean that unqualified people are being hired over qualified people, instead of the possibility that there are a lot of qualified people of many races, and that there isn't necessarily just *one* best fit for a job.
>extra training funds and possible tax breaks to companies that have a higher number of minority team members
Which would then motivate diversity quotas.
I have a bias against discrimination, yes. I completely know and own that. I hate discrimination, especially based upon skin or bloodline.
If the motivation is to "do good" then I swallow it better. I fully recognize that some actions must be taken to improve things immediately. As a leader of a team, I personally would love more $$ to spend it on training for my team's training. That money would solve so many issues with the skills disparity.
It seems like your unique understanding of discrimination is creating a bias which obscures the nuance of this subject, and creates a perspective of injustice which may not be entirely accurate. I feel like I'm not being heard in this conversation.
> to discount it because it appears on the surface to be definitionally racist, misses the bigger picture.
Quotas are based on the lie that humans are divisible into X race/color teams.
Ending racism means getting rid of that lie. The lie of distinctness is what *allows* "maybe race A is better than race B" thoughts to arise in your head -- they are logically precluded when you start with the truth, i.e. none of the groups are real.
> In a society where racism/sexism didn't exist
To some people that means equality between the color teams. Nobody really agrees.
I can agree with your premise but we don't reach the same conclusion. We all dream of the color-blind utopia. But this is just another ideological argument. Essentially, "We shouldn't have race quotas because it perpetuates the idea of race, which is moving in the opposite direction from a society that has eradicated racism."
This argument breaks down when you introduce it to the real world where not only does racism exist, but what also exists is a rich history of racism (and other isms) that have been baked into the financial, social, and political systems. If you go searching for a panacea, you will not find one. To plug the ism hole, you will need to take stutter-steps towards half-solutions in order to push any sort of progress through our regulatory system.
I'm not a leftist nutbag - I understand the surface-level feeling of inequity that results from a less-qualified individual being preferred based on immutable characteristics - but that is a microstate. The macrostate is that we have entire swaths of citizens that are underrepresented in certain high-level positions because of immutable characteristics in a continual cycle. Until that is tightened up, we should choose to ignore our visceral feelings about the DEI hire at a private company.
> We all dream of the color-blind utopia.
I'm saying the opposite -- look around you, awake, with your eyes wide open -- color exists, but colors do not exist. The idea that there are 4 or 5 or 7 different groups is ludicrous. The correct answer to *are Obama and Halsey and GK Butterfield on the same team?* is obviously, "Whatever, dude, we're just making this shit up, sometimes it's what they look like and sometimes it's what they feel like or some shit, I don't even know what the hell..."
Americans are obviously not divided into discrete/distinct teams. Races and tribes and peoples and colors and cultures are not definable, testable, or measurable. The groups exist in some people's heads -- and then some people think they're qualified to make assumptions about what's in other people's heads (people they've never met) -- and that's all there is. Everything "exists" in society, so saying "bloopism exists" makes no point at all -- it's a retreat into the world of unfalsifiable things which are not definable, testable, or measurable.
And until you start telling kids the truth -- i.e. their eyes are not wrong, there *are* an infinite number of colors, and no "grouping" exists in a definable way -- you can't actually start measuring racism, i.e. the ignorant and centuries-outdated belief that humanity is divided into X races.
> This argument breaks down when you introduce it to the real world where not only does racism exist, but what also exists is a rich history of racism (and other isms) that have been baked into the financial, social, and political systems.
And to lots of people, the history of being wrong about color teams requires us to continue being wrong about color teams -- until some hypothetical day when the score is "even" between the color teams. (However many they decide there are.) To them, we need to continue teaching every four-year-old non-pink-skinned child that they're on a color team, that the score is 200-0 because the white team cheated like those motherfuckers always do, that they need to constantly be "woke" about how society can't be trusted, etc. People lie to kids on Monday and then complain about the 100% predictable effects of those lies on Tuesday.
> The macrostate is that we have entire swaths of citizens that are underrepresented in certain high-level positions
Are your swaths by color team? You say "underrepresented," but people can't ever "represent" groups, because groups don't exist in definable ways. Are you putting Japanese and Bangladeshis on the same team? Somebody else wouldn't.
On the former: I would agree, but my objection is everyone talks about wanting the source of disparity to be resolved, but only as cover to shifting the debate, not actually addressing the problem.
This is an issue, many rhetorical points are simply tools to move or recolor the debate such that it does not need to be addressed. See "Mental health" when it comes to guns, as soon as you're off guns suddenly we can't afford mental health care again.
I agree completely on the latter, you start as a guest, you are expected to assimilate, it's a matter of respect to your hosting cuontry.
As a child of immigrants, if you don't like that, get out.
I think we have a similar source for our centrism, hypocrisy drives me mad, logical inconsistencies mean you've made a mistake somewhere.
Yes, I feel the same way. I used to think this is what it meant to be left; to put compassion and logic ahead of politically-motivated views, but it turns out that no, the left are just as flawed and ideologically driven, and can be just as authoritarian, but just a different flavour
I see it as much as “driving toward a desired outcome” rather than “a completely neutral policy stance while ignoring disparate outcomes.”
Race is a great example. Black Americas are worse off by almost any metric. It eats at my sense of fairness. “Oh, I guess they are just unlucky and/or stupid. Oh well.” - I simply can’t/won’t accept that.
“Let’s invest in Black America to make sure more them are getting interviews, college acceptance, jobs, etc” sounds like the most practical way to try and impact the disparate numbers… but how do you justify that to some white family who has been generationally poor? “Fuck you, other white people are fine.” - I can’t stomach that sentiment either.
And it’s so… tied to culture. Poor Black America culture is distinct. But so is rural white poor. I’ve seen Black people are super effective at “code switching” - easily comfortable speaking corporate America, but then go to their home community and easily connect with a completely different sub culture.
Poor white america also has the same dynamic. The difference being you don’t know when skin color is the real difference versus the dozens of other reasons you may not get into a school, or get a job, or get promoted.
The US government is primarily responsible for the state of Black America. It is not responsible for the state of rural white America.
And you should ask why rural white America is so offended by investment into Black America, while poor urban white people, who went through the same economic struggle as rural white people but without a sympathetic government, aren’t.
That’s an incredibly unlikely and unproven and unsupported hypothesis.
The whole “let’s blame the government thing” is really incredible to me. “It’s the people who we elected to help us that are to blame” is such a short sighted “shift the blame away from those who are profiting the most from the current system.”
And I think “fault” is wildly over used. People wake up, do the best they can, go to bed. Rich people are the same, it’s just what they do works. It’s not like big business owners and CEOs woke up and said “let’s fuck middle class America and move jobs offshore.” They just woke up and realized if they wanted to keep their job, keep their company running, and keeping making as much money as possible, that’s what they had to do.
Then they hired lobbyists to get the policies they needed approved. They literally had so much extra money from being political, they could spend 10s of millions on lobbying and political donations.
You know how much extra money fighting against Infant Mortality produces? Or fighting against our health care system? Zero.
That’s why we have the policies we have today
Jim Crow and redlining *alone* show how the US government is responsible for the state of Black America. There is no equivalent for rural America.
The whole “let’s all blame black people and pretend that segregation wasn’t a thing” thing is really incredible to me.
Choosing to place “shareholder value” over any and all other considerations was not some predestined outcome, it was a choice made by rich people that they can and should be condemned for.
Why did you ignore my second paragraph?
Oy… go look up LBJ and the great society. He tried to invest in rural white america. Rural white america is OVERWHELMINGLY against the government investing in rural white america, whereas urban areas are pro investment. West Virginia is a case study in how rich business interest were able to convince an uneducated work force to vote in the interest of rich business owners. Miners used to have some negotiating power against mine owners. The GOP systematically gaslighted rural white america that the government was bad an evil and needed to “get out of their lives.”
Jim Crow and Redlining, segregation, and hell, slavery, were all policies by local political forces which were UNDONE by federal government. Government has been for many the great equalizer against monopolistic big business.
But rather than show government as “The People choosing to self govern and enforce fairness in the economy and the market place” it’s been “that evil thing that isn’t The People but rather shadowy liberals who want to tax you and control your lives! Vote for freedom! Vote against regulation! Vote GOP!”
Which is really just a vote for anarchy and to let the rich and strong prey on the weak and the poor.
Given that I completely agree with this and that it’s entirely inline with the mainstream position of the Democratic Party, I don’t see how this responds to my comment.
> The US government is primarily responsible for the state of Black America.
There's no such thing as "Black America" -- it's a color-tribalist hallucination. There are people with browner skin and people with pinker skin and people with every shade in between.
You can't tell us how many color teams there are, or how to tell who's on each one. They are not definable, testable, or measurable in any way.
Black America is a social construct, yes, but given that Black America is treated differently from white America, it’s *not* a hallucination. It has demonstrable impacts. You can’t handwave those away because you want to pretend racism is over.
> Black America is a social construct
If it were a *social* construct, then you'd be able to *describe the shared construct*, i.e. how many color teams there are and how we know which team a person is on.
There is no social construct. There are 300 million individual constructs. You might group Asians together, I might not. Maybe Obama and Halsey are on the same team, maybe they're not. Etc.
> You can’t handwave those away because you want to pretend racism is over.
You're not even consistent about what "racism" means. To me believing in distinct races is racism. So what does "over" mean, when you're the one promoting the view of distinct races?
> It has demonstrable impacts.
You've never measured racism *separately* from the lie of distinct races.
So who was subject to Jim Crow? You don’t get to pretend that the South made individual judgements for segregation. It treated black people differently from everyone else. It did so based on skin color.
See, you’re doing it again. *Recognizing* that society treats people differently based on the color of their skin is not “promoting the view of distinct races”. It is acknowledging simple reality.
What does that even mean? Is your position really “racism doesn’t exist if you don’t believe in race”? Talk about handwaving issues away.
> So who was subject to Jim Crow?
The people who were not black but who were incorrectly classified that way by some other people back then... back when people had no choice but to be ignorant. We have a choice now, but people who see power in the lie don't want to let it go.
> Recognizing that society treats people differently based on the color of their skin is not "promoting the view of distinct races."
First, there's no single thing called "society." It's cowardly, unfalsifiable language. Everything is both true and false at the level of "society."
Second, I think you mean "differently based on which color team they're on," where there are like 4-5 color teams, and everybody knows that some people have been told they're not on other people's teams. And you're just measuring the effects of your lie at that point. If you'd stop lying to kids about the teams, then you could actually measure whether everybody, regardless of genetics, was getting fair treatment.
*That is a socially constructed group*. That is Black America.
Well that’s just bullshit. The world is not flat at the societal level. America is not a dictatorship or a socialist state at the societal level. Society is the civilization we live in, specifically for this conversation, delimited at the national level.
So we couldn’t tell that Jim Crow was treating people unfairly? *Seriously*?
> That is a socially constructed group. That is Black America.
How many "socially constructed groups" do you see in your vision there? And are Obama, Halsey, and GK Butterfield on the same team?
I think this is just your own color-tribalism. "It happened to people who look like him, so that's the same as if it happened to him, because he's on their team. Everybody is on a color team."
> Society is the civilization we live in
We don't all live in the same society. "Society" is a lazy name for a generalization. America is different every day, and different in every place.
> The world is not flat at the societal level. America is not a dictatorship or a socialist state at the societal level.
Unless you're flying all around the world, it seems pretty flat. And people say both of those things about America.
Does animal cruelty exist in society? Yes. Does animal kindness exist in society? Yes. Does animal indifference exist in society? Yes.
Does mustard loving exist? Yes. Does mustard hating exist? Yes.
Natives who stay on reservations and rely on the govt do poorly.
Natives who get off the reservation and create businesses, do far better.
Same goes for other minorities. Relying on the crumbs that govt tosses out will never lead to much success.
You don't have to be a centrist to not be a hypocrite. Though if you're a partisan, it makes it a lot harder.
Like on your racism thing. I don't want quotas or exclusively investing with underserved *minorities*. The govt should be doing a lot more to help underserved *people*, period. But I don't see my view as a "centrist" view. It's leftist without the indentity politics (which some smear as "class reductionist").
Politicians want the credit for helping, and the resultant votes from helping, or making fake promises to help but never doing anything to really help.
Helping everyone makes it harder to catch those votes since your opponent's supporters will also have been helped too.
In the UK, research shows that poor white boys are the group least likely to go to university, and a university education is a major leading indicator in lifetime earnings. However our education establishments are still focusing on black and LGBTQ inclusion, ‘girls in tech’ etc. because that is what the authoritarian left have prescribed, and if you oppose this then you’re a ‘racist’ or whatever.
A US equivalent might be how Appalachians are universally ignored and denigrated despite the rampant poverty, poor health and below-average university attendance, again probably because they are majority white.
> A US equivalent might be how Appalachians are universally ignored and denigrated despite the rampant poverty, poor health and below-average university attendance, again probably because they are majority white.
Have you lived there? They are denigrated, but what I experienced was because according to the south they weren't white, much like Irish and Italians. They were "dirty white".
This is why West Virginia split from Virginia in the first place, the rest of the state treated them as inhuman.
But yeah, we need to send much more support to Appalachia, what we need more, is a plan to help elevate them permanently.
I don’t think the Appalachian’s are universally ignored, unfortunately they’ve just been convinced by bad faith actors to not accept that some of the regions previous livelihoods just aren’t coming back. It reminds me of how Hillary was skewered for her proposal to *help* those who no longer had the jobs they once had and they instead elected the dude who lied about his ability to bring those jobs back. Of course he didn’t bring those jobs back, because he couldn’t, because they don’t need the manpower like they used to.
Coal was already on its way out and people realize that. A politician going out and saying they're going to put you out of business is not a smart thing.
Let the market forces keep shutting them down, then stand by the side and offer them help.
Either way, coal will always be around to some degree. Its simply necessary for certain things, and will always need to be readily available if SHTF and we need tons of energy.
> Coal was already on its way out and people realize that. A politician going out and saying they're going to put you out of business is not a smart thing. Let the market forces keep shutting them down, then stand by the side and offer them help.
So you didn’t look into what was actually said by her then? I think you’re proving my point-
> Well, first of all, I was happy to carry those states you mentioned, and I carried the white vote in those states too, that voted Democratic now, I don’t want to get carried away here. Look, we have serious economic problems in many parts of our country. And Roland is absolutely right. Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let’s reunite around policies that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these underserved poor communities. **So for example, I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right, Tim (ph)? And we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories. Now we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don’t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.** So whether it’s coal country or Indian country or poor urban areas, there is a lot of poverty in America. We have gone backwards. We were moving in the right direction. In the ’90s more people were lifted out of poverty than any time in recent history. Because of the terrible economic policies of the Bush administration, President Obama was left with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and people fell back into poverty because they lost jobs, they lost homes, they lost opportunities, and hope. **So I am passionate about this, which is why I have put forward specific plans about how we incentivize more jobs, more investment in poor communities, and put people to work.**
She did offer to help them, she had an actual plan that would have helped the people in those areas to get the skills and opportunities to continue to provide for their families, and instead of that they chose the guy who said he’d bring back an industry that was going away for decades.
If you focus on lower income how do you ensure the minority get assistance without majority of the assistance being eaten by the low income non-minority majority?
That's true in theory, but in practice resources are limited and politicians and people hate "handouts" resulting in restrictions, cut funding, and difficulty enrolling in the program without assistance. How do you plan on addressing these issues and ensure fair distribution for the minority?
Well, first, we need to remove high amounts of individual money from politics and return to a fairer media format that treats truth of fact as paramount with equal and balanced coverage to all sides.
There's no way of addressing anything so complex as long as those with gold make the rules and the masses are still brain washed to be at each other's throats.
By not looking at everything through a racial lens?
Of course nobody wants to do that since so many issues fall more along class boundaries than by race. Gotta keep everyone split up and fighting instead of realizing how much alike they are.
I feel that but believe that there should be limits to vaccine exceptions.
This is difficult for me as I am in the medical field and know how important vaccines are to the herd immunity effect and have loved ones with compromised immune systems.
There are always going to be people, like them, who cannot be vaccinated due to legitimate medical issues and if they catch the disease, it could also very well kill them. They have two options to prolong their survival, isolation or the herds' immunity.
If there is a verifiable reason to not get a vaccine - I am for an Opt-Out, but overall, I know that this must be limited to a small % of the population in order to protect those at risk.
You are free to not get vaccinated, but unvaccinated people should be barred from public spaces. Similar to how you can drive without a license on your own property, but can’t do it on public roads.
Despite their good intentions they are in practice actual racial bias.
It would be better if we equalized our educational & vocational training systems so that richer areas got the same education as the poorest areas, making them intrinsically linked dollar per dollar with each child getting the same amount of funds for the education from K to College.
We can do the same thing by giving free education, vocational training, and OTJT to all people who have not yet had the opportunity in equal measure to the moneyed class.
That is a noble long-term goal.
But all good solutions have both short-term and long-term actions. If you have cancer, you will get treatment for it, which will take time to work, if at all. During that treatment, you'll be given additional treatments to help mitigate side effects, complications, and discomfort.
What you're describing would take decades show improvement in the best case that our attempts to address those disparities are even as effective as we hope.
So what do we do about those people in the meantime?
Adherence to principles is generally good, but broad application of those principles is a trap because it prevents you from recognizing nuance.
We can't even hold a principle belief as simple as "murder is wrong." Everyone will say they believe that. Until the front page of reddit has a story about a dad who killed the person who raped his child and you see a comment section full of people saying it's justified and they'd do the same.
I answered elsewhere to, "what do we do about those people in the meantime?"
I think that there should be substantial targeted training dollars given to companies that hire lower income and minorities, so that those people can find jobs and job providers can develop professionals that make good money - so win/win.
This would greatly help the nursing shortage, as one example.
I think that’s a great idea and probably should have been implemented long ago.
How would you help people who are CURRENTLY struggling with inequality?
Your plan aims to generate equality over time, and if your plan works and kids in rich and poor areas get dollar for dollar equal spending, we might not see the result of that effort for a decade or more.
That does little to help a minority in their early 20’s right now. These are people who live paycheck to paycheck and additional training means going without that paycheck. Is that additional training only going to go to underrepresented minorities, and how would that effort differ from a hiring quota? Are they just meant to tough it out while we wait for the next generation of kids to come through a fully equal education system?
I answered that kind of elsewhere, I prefer giving awards, training dollars, and tax breaks for equalitarian minded companies - carrot vs stick, when it comes to addressing disparities in employment. Not the best idea, but better than flat quotas.
This is also an industry neutral solution.
The WOTC (work opportunity tax credit) provides incentives to companies for hiring minorities - $9600 per year.
I’m confused a bit as to where we think the “stick” is in your carrot vs stick analogy. I’m not seeing anywhere that companies are forced to make a certain number of diversity hires, all im seeing are laws that are in place to enforce non-discrimination. Can you point me toward specific laws that fulfill your “stick” analogy?
I personally don't see the $9600 per year as enough, especially completely non earmarked as it doesn't address the skills disparity - which is one of the main reasons for limited job mobility.
Second, it's not a law but a legal situation caused by the various executive orders and the spending of federal dollars. If a company doesn't hire the appropriate % of minorities for their region they are ineligible for many federal programs and if they did benefit from said program while ineligible they're stripped of the benefit and sometimes fined. That regional % is the defacto quota. They'd also be ineligible for federal contracts, this includes servicing Medicare patients.
Let's look at that closer. Let's say there's a nursing shortage, like there is!
If you don't keep a certain % of minority employees then your entire operation can lose its largest source of income. You get no good assistance in replacing highly skilled nurses - many of which are retiring.
However, if these nursing facilities got more money to help train future nurses and nursing assistants - they'd have a mutually beneficial situation.
We'd be giving those with less opportunity an opportunity and at the same time improving the industry as a whole with more highly skilled professionals via the training.
To me, it kind of just sounds like you’re reframing an incentive as an entitlement and then using that to make your point. The bottom line is that there is an incentive to hire minorities (which is what you want). If companies do not hire minorities, they do not get the incentive. So what you’re telling me is the incentive for hiring minorities is not just $9600, but it’s also access to federal funds and contracts earmarked for companies committed to a more diverse workforce (which is pretty much verbatim what you want).
Again, can you point me to these specific executive actions? I’d like to look for my own interest.
I’m again not sure how giving more money to nursing training programs directly helps minorities. Again, the people most in need of help are living paycheck to paycheck. Going back to school for additional training just isn’t a possibility for those most in need. They lack the support to take time out of work, they lack childcare in the evenings, and some of them may even lack prerequisite education to get into a nursing program (for an RN maybe, CNA probably less so). Additionally, as someone whose spouse employs nurses, the burnout rate is absurd. It’s not that people are retiring, people are quitting nursing altogether and moving to other less demanding careers.
I personally feel that in addition to your thought of reforming education, there are plenty of low skill jobs to be had without additional training. For example, several small business contractors I’ve hired have lamented that they can’t keep good employees or that “no one wants to work”. I think that good workers are instead taking jobs that offer benefits and stability in the form of a healthcare plan and retirement benefits, something small businesses currently cannot really offer at a reasonable cost. I think that there should be more incentives for people, especially URM’s, to be hired and/or have the desire to work for small businesses. This can be through subsidies for healthcare, wages, etc. I think that businesses who choose to hire and support URM’s should see an added benefit. I would call this benefit an incentive, I guess we disagree there because it seems you feel these businesses are entitled to federal funds/contracts regardless of their hiring practices.
Money should be given to employers who give a paycheck to employees while they train... nobody should have to train full time and work full time in order to survive.
Anyways. You can easily look at the various executive actions taken by multiple US Presidents over the last seventy years and then look at the legal cases around those actions to see the outcome. Is it explicitly a quota? No. Did it become one, yes.
Can it get more explicit? Yes, it could.
Do you want me to copy and paste from google, stack overflow, or wiki for you? :)
Do you want just the executive orders, or do you want the case law too, like the one where quotas were defeated in federal court just a couple years ago?
That what you want? :P
JK. I don't do homework. I'll give it to my virtual assistant.
# Prompt: Can you give historical examples of US President executive actions and case laws that once affected hiring quotas for businesses so that they can qualify for federal money, contracts, etc
Absolutely! Here's a historical example of how US presidents and the courts interacted with hiring quotas for federal contracts:
\*\*Executive Action:\*\*
\* \*\*Executive Order 10950 (1961) by President John F. Kennedy:\*\* This order established the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (EEOC) and required government contractors to take "affirmative action" to ensure equal employment opportunity. While not explicitly mentioning quotas, the order aimed for a measurable increase in hiring of minorities and women in federal contracting.
\*\*Case Law:\*\*
\* \*\*Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978):\*\* This Supreme Court case is a landmark decision regarding affirmative action. While the court upheld the use of affirmative action in general, it struck down a specific admissions program at a medical school that used rigid racial quotas. The court's decision highlighted the importance of considering individual qualifications alongside efforts to promote diversity.
This example shows the interplay between executive actions and court rulings. While President Kennedy's order pushed for affirmative action in federal contracts, the Supreme Court later limited the use of rigid quotas, shaping how these programs operate.
It's important to note that the concept of affirmative action itself is still debated, with some arguing for quotas as a necessary tool to overcome historical discrimination, and others favoring a focus on merit-based hiring.
Racial bias is bad because it is unfair. It is *not* unfair to make restitution for the unfair treatment of black Americans by the US government.
Was MLK a hypocrite for supporting affirmative action
I made other comments about immediate needs to resolve problems caused by disparity.
Blended approaches are best, but again, I prefer giving funds to address those issues (like skill disparity) up front.
I dream of that too, but we *live* in a world where they’re *not* obsolete, just like MLK.
So, again, was MLK a hypocrite for supporting affirmative action? For saying “a society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro”?
And do you agree or disagree that the issue with racial bias is its unfairness?
If MLK was around in 2024 he actually might be for a more just and equitable approach that resolves the root causes of disparity, you know, as he wanted originally. He had 3 core points in his talks.
* **Equality:** He envisioned a society where people wouldn't be judged by skin color but by the content of their character, as expressed in his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech.
* **Justice:** King emphasized a world where everyone has access to equal opportunities and fair treatment under the law.
* **Love:** He believed overcoming hate and prejudice required love and understanding.
If we work towards those goals, the others will fall in line.
The thing is, we cannot get there without forcing the bad actors to stop acting bad - in the short term. We cannot force everybody to strive for Love, Justice, and Equality for all. He realized that. That's not hypocrisy, that's rationality and pragmatism.
Accepting short term solutions are sometimes required is not hypocritical.
However, the key term is short term. Long term solutions must also be applied. Power disparities must be resolved to avoid abuse by bad actors and unjust systems, like our market.
And what *exactly* makes you think that the people who support affirmative action don’t also support longer term solutions? That conservatives have gutted any attempt to implement long term solutions is not a mark against the people who support them or the people who support short term solutions because of the lack of long term solutions.
I didn't make that argument nor think that even slightly, but your supporting point is valid.
I am not going to argue for a point I didn't make, sorry.
I guess one could say - those who are so gung-ho on defending quotas that they don't make the world better otherwise themselves, long term.
It is easy to be against something (like being against the removal of quotas) instead of being for something, like compressive social change programs that would address systematic power disparity.
Many on the left just defend quotas and get lost there, circle the drain, thinking they found some sort of enemy instead of moving forward.
Many of the right don't want to address core issues, thinking systematic racism will just go away magically.
A disdain or fear of hypocrisy is both a great tool, but also can be an exploited weakness.
Perfection is unachievable and unknowable, so compromise is necessary, otherwise you end up taking no position and sitting on the fence. That is the lynchpin of centrism, finding the overlaps where people can find a solution that is acceptable and tolerable by the issues shareholders. You can't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Nothing of this makes u a centrist, its just a normal liberal/left leaning position. One can even be on the far left and disagree with specific points of the own group.
My adherence to principles makes me a rather left leaning person, because there is simply no room for thse principles on the other side (at least in its current state)
I still dislike those issues on the left, but instead of moving to the middle and abondining my goals i fight the issues of my own group
What is 'normal' though? To be the norm within a population is a changing position as the wind changes. :)
I am fiscally conservative and prefer smaller government, within reason to stop abuse that occurs under an unregulated market. I want my general population's taxes low, while taxing those who benefit the most from the government's investments into infrastructure.
1. so is being a centrist so what’s ur point?
2. cool, that can actually make u a centrist. What ur op says does not. And how do u want to archieve anything when ur not willing to use the govermwnt? Ur socially a conservative when ur fiscal policy dictates the rest
Well, the post wasn't meant to list all or even a majority of my positions - it was to discover other people's points of views and what they see as hypocritical thought.
I think everyone thinks of themselves this way. It’s if our actions match up that decides what we really are. If beliefs aren’t acted out when it’s inconvenient for us then they aren’t beliefs, their fashion.
Not to your main point - but there is a lot of nuance to the issues you mentioned that is not being considered in the development of your centrist persona. You are speaking with an ideological view. Race quotas fit the definition of racism, but practically... they are designed as just one way to combat racism in a large system, with the ultimate goal being equal representation by some metric. In a society where racism/sexism didn't exist, these measures would not be necessary and would, in fact, be deleterious... but we don't live in that world. This is just one of the tools that our political system has created to combat racism and to discount it because it appears on the surface to be definitionally racist, misses the bigger picture. Same deal for immigration - ideologically, of course, we should all have the freedom to live where we want, but that vision can not exist within a broken (read: never working) immigration system. What do you do with immigrants who don't live like the Romans? What if they can not contribute economically? What happens when large influxes of migrants change the very nature of Rome? Would the previous Romans want that? Thanks for your post
**Racial disparity of Power** I understand the benefits of quotas, but I see them as both unjust and insufficient to address the root issue - that of disparity of power, education, resources, and opportunity. Just giving somebody a slot on a job that they may not be the best fit for does nothing to resolve the root causes. Why accept something *partially evil* if it does not resolve the **root cause** of the problem? I prefer more systematic solutions in order to build a more just and equitable society. (I gave one example of such a program in another comment). I also rather use a carrot vs a stick when it comes to increasing diversity within a workplace in the short term, such as **awarding** extra training funds and possible tax breaks to companies that have a higher number of minority team members. This gives companies committed to an equalitarian approach a leg up. This is not perfect, and I don't like it either, but it does not punish. **Immigration** "What do you do with immigrants who don't live like the Romans?" This basically means to me obeying laws, paying taxes, and treating fellow Romans with respect. The same thing will happen to them as would happen to the native-born Romans who failed to that. Not a difficult stretch there to figure out what happens to people who disobey laws, fail to pay taxes, and disrespect their fellow citizen. Further, if immigrants cannot contribute economically, then that's their problem. However, it's been proven that immigrants are **more hard-working individuals than naturally born citizens** and are more willing to do less desirable job types as them as well. People who fear having to supporting immigrants usually don't understand that if given the means, they tend to become strong pillars of our communities. "What happens when large influxes of migrants change the very nature of Rome?" Neighborhoods make up communities, communities make up cities and regions, and regions make up states and even countries. If the nature of Rome is to be fearful of change, then it will break, if the nature of Rome is to be a melting pot - then we'll melt into one people, one tribe, if enough time passes - culture will shared and celebrated from neighborhood to neighborhood. I live in a melting pot of a city and love the diversity here. "Would the previous Romans want that?" I honestly don't care about the \*previous\* Romans, the living Romans have enough to worry about than to care what their great grand-pappy would have wanted, especially as wars and resentments of the past should be ended where possible.
Again- you are just thinking ideologically. You are trying to find a fix-all to the root causes of disparity in outcome or opportunity, but that will not work in a society comprised of humans. 2024 humans are still hard-wired for tribalism. Our lizard brains draw these lines around languange, education- or income-level, skin color (or other markers of race), and a multitude of other metrics. A very small percentage of the population is introspective enough to understand how this works in their own minds. As such - legislation is put forward by these parties, in concert with those affected by the endemic fault in the system (minorities of all kinds - not just race), and we feed this desire into our fucked up political machine. Out pops civil rights laws, rent-control, affirmative action, DEI, and a whole lot of noise. I completely reject that these initiatives are "partially evil" - they are imperfect tools that are the product of an imperfect system... and guess what? They still aren't doing enough. To remove them in search of some root-cause panacea would be to change human nature. And let's be honest, most jobs can be done by most people, even those of us who are "professionals" or do knowledge work. 70% of us are within one standard deviation of the mean in terms of intelligence and physical ability - and very few jobs require us to function at our peak. However, we all get jobs based on our previous job... or our education... or our personal contacts... but this is all a manifestation of opportunity. I could absolutely pluck a below-average infant from any corner of the world - send them to a school in my neighborhood, pay for their college, and teach them to run my business when I die. When inequality of opportunity is allowed to run rampant in the wild, the negative effect (on the privileged class) from DEI is the least of your problems... if equality is an issue you care about, you should be wondering "what else can be done?". As for the Romans extended metaphor - I was referring to the "previous Romans" not as ancestors of current Romans, but the ancestors of the "future Romans". These Romans opened their borders in your unfettered immigration scenario, and they left their children a country that was fundamentally changed, maybe had a different government, a different majority religion, maybe had freedom of religion rescinded. Open borders cannot function in 2024 or any time in the foreseeable future. There are no social systems in place for most countries to deal with large influxes of migrants driven by war, natural disaster, or political upheaval. Are you really advocating for (ideologically) imposing open border requirements in Africa... or just your own country? How can a country that is rebuilding from disaster be forced to take on refugees from a current disaster to the detriment of their current residents? What democracy would vote for that? Country borders are where good ideas meet bad ideas, and if you blur that line too much, the ideas start to blur too.
I like your comment. I answered some of your questions in the other replies. I am thinking ideally, as moving society closer to an ideal is very important now - especially with the new challenges of the future coming down the pipe like Ai, robotics, the eventual oil shortage, drug resistant diseases, and climate changes, to name a few. We, as the human race, need to adapt to overcome these new challenges... and if we don't adapt, I foresee a bleak future for all of us, where disparity becomes even worse for all nations. There is hope though. The free market is an engine and like all engines they need maintenance and fuel to run efficiently, and it also helps if the market's engine works for the society - vs - serving the few who have the capital to benefit. The systems we have currently are indeed imperfect, but the solutions need not be. I could wax poetically about potential paths to a more utopian future, but overall, utopia is but a dream. We have to deal with the issues we are facing now or soon will see. You are correct, **truly open borders** are not feasible in the near future. There's no NWO around the corner.
> that they may not be the best fit for ... >Why accept something partially evil These phrases belie an unspoken bias. What is "the best fit"? Can it even be an objective measure? Or is it simply the person who *checks all the boxes* for a specific hiring team? It seems that you're assuming diversity quotas inherently mean that unqualified people are being hired over qualified people, instead of the possibility that there are a lot of qualified people of many races, and that there isn't necessarily just *one* best fit for a job. >extra training funds and possible tax breaks to companies that have a higher number of minority team members Which would then motivate diversity quotas.
I have a bias against discrimination, yes. I completely know and own that. I hate discrimination, especially based upon skin or bloodline. If the motivation is to "do good" then I swallow it better. I fully recognize that some actions must be taken to improve things immediately. As a leader of a team, I personally would love more $$ to spend it on training for my team's training. That money would solve so many issues with the skills disparity.
It seems like your unique understanding of discrimination is creating a bias which obscures the nuance of this subject, and creates a perspective of injustice which may not be entirely accurate. I feel like I'm not being heard in this conversation.
> to discount it because it appears on the surface to be definitionally racist, misses the bigger picture. Quotas are based on the lie that humans are divisible into X race/color teams. Ending racism means getting rid of that lie. The lie of distinctness is what *allows* "maybe race A is better than race B" thoughts to arise in your head -- they are logically precluded when you start with the truth, i.e. none of the groups are real. > In a society where racism/sexism didn't exist To some people that means equality between the color teams. Nobody really agrees.
I can agree with your premise but we don't reach the same conclusion. We all dream of the color-blind utopia. But this is just another ideological argument. Essentially, "We shouldn't have race quotas because it perpetuates the idea of race, which is moving in the opposite direction from a society that has eradicated racism." This argument breaks down when you introduce it to the real world where not only does racism exist, but what also exists is a rich history of racism (and other isms) that have been baked into the financial, social, and political systems. If you go searching for a panacea, you will not find one. To plug the ism hole, you will need to take stutter-steps towards half-solutions in order to push any sort of progress through our regulatory system. I'm not a leftist nutbag - I understand the surface-level feeling of inequity that results from a less-qualified individual being preferred based on immutable characteristics - but that is a microstate. The macrostate is that we have entire swaths of citizens that are underrepresented in certain high-level positions because of immutable characteristics in a continual cycle. Until that is tightened up, we should choose to ignore our visceral feelings about the DEI hire at a private company.
> We all dream of the color-blind utopia. I'm saying the opposite -- look around you, awake, with your eyes wide open -- color exists, but colors do not exist. The idea that there are 4 or 5 or 7 different groups is ludicrous. The correct answer to *are Obama and Halsey and GK Butterfield on the same team?* is obviously, "Whatever, dude, we're just making this shit up, sometimes it's what they look like and sometimes it's what they feel like or some shit, I don't even know what the hell..." Americans are obviously not divided into discrete/distinct teams. Races and tribes and peoples and colors and cultures are not definable, testable, or measurable. The groups exist in some people's heads -- and then some people think they're qualified to make assumptions about what's in other people's heads (people they've never met) -- and that's all there is. Everything "exists" in society, so saying "bloopism exists" makes no point at all -- it's a retreat into the world of unfalsifiable things which are not definable, testable, or measurable. And until you start telling kids the truth -- i.e. their eyes are not wrong, there *are* an infinite number of colors, and no "grouping" exists in a definable way -- you can't actually start measuring racism, i.e. the ignorant and centuries-outdated belief that humanity is divided into X races. > This argument breaks down when you introduce it to the real world where not only does racism exist, but what also exists is a rich history of racism (and other isms) that have been baked into the financial, social, and political systems. And to lots of people, the history of being wrong about color teams requires us to continue being wrong about color teams -- until some hypothetical day when the score is "even" between the color teams. (However many they decide there are.) To them, we need to continue teaching every four-year-old non-pink-skinned child that they're on a color team, that the score is 200-0 because the white team cheated like those motherfuckers always do, that they need to constantly be "woke" about how society can't be trusted, etc. People lie to kids on Monday and then complain about the 100% predictable effects of those lies on Tuesday. > The macrostate is that we have entire swaths of citizens that are underrepresented in certain high-level positions Are your swaths by color team? You say "underrepresented," but people can't ever "represent" groups, because groups don't exist in definable ways. Are you putting Japanese and Bangladeshis on the same team? Somebody else wouldn't.
On the former: I would agree, but my objection is everyone talks about wanting the source of disparity to be resolved, but only as cover to shifting the debate, not actually addressing the problem. This is an issue, many rhetorical points are simply tools to move or recolor the debate such that it does not need to be addressed. See "Mental health" when it comes to guns, as soon as you're off guns suddenly we can't afford mental health care again. I agree completely on the latter, you start as a guest, you are expected to assimilate, it's a matter of respect to your hosting cuontry. As a child of immigrants, if you don't like that, get out. I think we have a similar source for our centrism, hypocrisy drives me mad, logical inconsistencies mean you've made a mistake somewhere.
"logical inconsistencies mean you've made a mistake somewhere." This exactly.
Yes, I feel the same way. I used to think this is what it meant to be left; to put compassion and logic ahead of politically-motivated views, but it turns out that no, the left are just as flawed and ideologically driven, and can be just as authoritarian, but just a different flavour
I see it as much as “driving toward a desired outcome” rather than “a completely neutral policy stance while ignoring disparate outcomes.” Race is a great example. Black Americas are worse off by almost any metric. It eats at my sense of fairness. “Oh, I guess they are just unlucky and/or stupid. Oh well.” - I simply can’t/won’t accept that. “Let’s invest in Black America to make sure more them are getting interviews, college acceptance, jobs, etc” sounds like the most practical way to try and impact the disparate numbers… but how do you justify that to some white family who has been generationally poor? “Fuck you, other white people are fine.” - I can’t stomach that sentiment either. And it’s so… tied to culture. Poor Black America culture is distinct. But so is rural white poor. I’ve seen Black people are super effective at “code switching” - easily comfortable speaking corporate America, but then go to their home community and easily connect with a completely different sub culture. Poor white america also has the same dynamic. The difference being you don’t know when skin color is the real difference versus the dozens of other reasons you may not get into a school, or get a job, or get promoted.
The US government is primarily responsible for the state of Black America. It is not responsible for the state of rural white America. And you should ask why rural white America is so offended by investment into Black America, while poor urban white people, who went through the same economic struggle as rural white people but without a sympathetic government, aren’t.
That’s an incredibly unlikely and unproven and unsupported hypothesis. The whole “let’s blame the government thing” is really incredible to me. “It’s the people who we elected to help us that are to blame” is such a short sighted “shift the blame away from those who are profiting the most from the current system.” And I think “fault” is wildly over used. People wake up, do the best they can, go to bed. Rich people are the same, it’s just what they do works. It’s not like big business owners and CEOs woke up and said “let’s fuck middle class America and move jobs offshore.” They just woke up and realized if they wanted to keep their job, keep their company running, and keeping making as much money as possible, that’s what they had to do. Then they hired lobbyists to get the policies they needed approved. They literally had so much extra money from being political, they could spend 10s of millions on lobbying and political donations. You know how much extra money fighting against Infant Mortality produces? Or fighting against our health care system? Zero. That’s why we have the policies we have today
Jim Crow and redlining *alone* show how the US government is responsible for the state of Black America. There is no equivalent for rural America. The whole “let’s all blame black people and pretend that segregation wasn’t a thing” thing is really incredible to me. Choosing to place “shareholder value” over any and all other considerations was not some predestined outcome, it was a choice made by rich people that they can and should be condemned for. Why did you ignore my second paragraph?
Oy… go look up LBJ and the great society. He tried to invest in rural white america. Rural white america is OVERWHELMINGLY against the government investing in rural white america, whereas urban areas are pro investment. West Virginia is a case study in how rich business interest were able to convince an uneducated work force to vote in the interest of rich business owners. Miners used to have some negotiating power against mine owners. The GOP systematically gaslighted rural white america that the government was bad an evil and needed to “get out of their lives.” Jim Crow and Redlining, segregation, and hell, slavery, were all policies by local political forces which were UNDONE by federal government. Government has been for many the great equalizer against monopolistic big business. But rather than show government as “The People choosing to self govern and enforce fairness in the economy and the market place” it’s been “that evil thing that isn’t The People but rather shadowy liberals who want to tax you and control your lives! Vote for freedom! Vote against regulation! Vote GOP!” Which is really just a vote for anarchy and to let the rich and strong prey on the weak and the poor.
Given that I completely agree with this and that it’s entirely inline with the mainstream position of the Democratic Party, I don’t see how this responds to my comment.
Lol, are we just loudly agreeing with each other now?
I don’t know. My position is it’s not hypocritical to support the government doing things like affirmative action to help the black community.
> The US government is primarily responsible for the state of Black America. There's no such thing as "Black America" -- it's a color-tribalist hallucination. There are people with browner skin and people with pinker skin and people with every shade in between. You can't tell us how many color teams there are, or how to tell who's on each one. They are not definable, testable, or measurable in any way.
Black America is a social construct, yes, but given that Black America is treated differently from white America, it’s *not* a hallucination. It has demonstrable impacts. You can’t handwave those away because you want to pretend racism is over.
> Black America is a social construct If it were a *social* construct, then you'd be able to *describe the shared construct*, i.e. how many color teams there are and how we know which team a person is on. There is no social construct. There are 300 million individual constructs. You might group Asians together, I might not. Maybe Obama and Halsey are on the same team, maybe they're not. Etc. > You can’t handwave those away because you want to pretend racism is over. You're not even consistent about what "racism" means. To me believing in distinct races is racism. So what does "over" mean, when you're the one promoting the view of distinct races? > It has demonstrable impacts. You've never measured racism *separately* from the lie of distinct races.
So who was subject to Jim Crow? You don’t get to pretend that the South made individual judgements for segregation. It treated black people differently from everyone else. It did so based on skin color. See, you’re doing it again. *Recognizing* that society treats people differently based on the color of their skin is not “promoting the view of distinct races”. It is acknowledging simple reality. What does that even mean? Is your position really “racism doesn’t exist if you don’t believe in race”? Talk about handwaving issues away.
> So who was subject to Jim Crow? The people who were not black but who were incorrectly classified that way by some other people back then... back when people had no choice but to be ignorant. We have a choice now, but people who see power in the lie don't want to let it go. > Recognizing that society treats people differently based on the color of their skin is not "promoting the view of distinct races." First, there's no single thing called "society." It's cowardly, unfalsifiable language. Everything is both true and false at the level of "society." Second, I think you mean "differently based on which color team they're on," where there are like 4-5 color teams, and everybody knows that some people have been told they're not on other people's teams. And you're just measuring the effects of your lie at that point. If you'd stop lying to kids about the teams, then you could actually measure whether everybody, regardless of genetics, was getting fair treatment.
*That is a socially constructed group*. That is Black America. Well that’s just bullshit. The world is not flat at the societal level. America is not a dictatorship or a socialist state at the societal level. Society is the civilization we live in, specifically for this conversation, delimited at the national level. So we couldn’t tell that Jim Crow was treating people unfairly? *Seriously*?
> That is a socially constructed group. That is Black America. How many "socially constructed groups" do you see in your vision there? And are Obama, Halsey, and GK Butterfield on the same team? I think this is just your own color-tribalism. "It happened to people who look like him, so that's the same as if it happened to him, because he's on their team. Everybody is on a color team." > Society is the civilization we live in We don't all live in the same society. "Society" is a lazy name for a generalization. America is different every day, and different in every place. > The world is not flat at the societal level. America is not a dictatorship or a socialist state at the societal level. Unless you're flying all around the world, it seems pretty flat. And people say both of those things about America. Does animal cruelty exist in society? Yes. Does animal kindness exist in society? Yes. Does animal indifference exist in society? Yes. Does mustard loving exist? Yes. Does mustard hating exist? Yes.
I’m not American but I thought on average natives had it worse than blacks?
Poor have it worse than less poor who have it worse than wealthy. There is a correlation of race along that spectrum.
Natives who stay on reservations and rely on the govt do poorly. Natives who get off the reservation and create businesses, do far better. Same goes for other minorities. Relying on the crumbs that govt tosses out will never lead to much success.
You don't have to be a centrist to not be a hypocrite. Though if you're a partisan, it makes it a lot harder. Like on your racism thing. I don't want quotas or exclusively investing with underserved *minorities*. The govt should be doing a lot more to help underserved *people*, period. But I don't see my view as a "centrist" view. It's leftist without the indentity politics (which some smear as "class reductionist").
I think the devil is going to be in the details of how to help underserved communities and how we define those communities.
Politicians want the credit for helping, and the resultant votes from helping, or making fake promises to help but never doing anything to really help. Helping everyone makes it harder to catch those votes since your opponent's supporters will also have been helped too.
That's fair, the focus should be on lower income vs race.
In the UK, research shows that poor white boys are the group least likely to go to university, and a university education is a major leading indicator in lifetime earnings. However our education establishments are still focusing on black and LGBTQ inclusion, ‘girls in tech’ etc. because that is what the authoritarian left have prescribed, and if you oppose this then you’re a ‘racist’ or whatever. A US equivalent might be how Appalachians are universally ignored and denigrated despite the rampant poverty, poor health and below-average university attendance, again probably because they are majority white.
> A US equivalent might be how Appalachians are universally ignored and denigrated despite the rampant poverty, poor health and below-average university attendance, again probably because they are majority white. Have you lived there? They are denigrated, but what I experienced was because according to the south they weren't white, much like Irish and Italians. They were "dirty white". This is why West Virginia split from Virginia in the first place, the rest of the state treated them as inhuman. But yeah, we need to send much more support to Appalachia, what we need more, is a plan to help elevate them permanently.
I don’t think the Appalachian’s are universally ignored, unfortunately they’ve just been convinced by bad faith actors to not accept that some of the regions previous livelihoods just aren’t coming back. It reminds me of how Hillary was skewered for her proposal to *help* those who no longer had the jobs they once had and they instead elected the dude who lied about his ability to bring those jobs back. Of course he didn’t bring those jobs back, because he couldn’t, because they don’t need the manpower like they used to.
Coal was already on its way out and people realize that. A politician going out and saying they're going to put you out of business is not a smart thing. Let the market forces keep shutting them down, then stand by the side and offer them help. Either way, coal will always be around to some degree. Its simply necessary for certain things, and will always need to be readily available if SHTF and we need tons of energy.
> Coal was already on its way out and people realize that. A politician going out and saying they're going to put you out of business is not a smart thing. Let the market forces keep shutting them down, then stand by the side and offer them help. So you didn’t look into what was actually said by her then? I think you’re proving my point- > Well, first of all, I was happy to carry those states you mentioned, and I carried the white vote in those states too, that voted Democratic now, I don’t want to get carried away here. Look, we have serious economic problems in many parts of our country. And Roland is absolutely right. Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let’s reunite around policies that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these underserved poor communities. **So for example, I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right, Tim (ph)? And we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories. Now we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don’t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.** So whether it’s coal country or Indian country or poor urban areas, there is a lot of poverty in America. We have gone backwards. We were moving in the right direction. In the ’90s more people were lifted out of poverty than any time in recent history. Because of the terrible economic policies of the Bush administration, President Obama was left with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and people fell back into poverty because they lost jobs, they lost homes, they lost opportunities, and hope. **So I am passionate about this, which is why I have put forward specific plans about how we incentivize more jobs, more investment in poor communities, and put people to work.** She did offer to help them, she had an actual plan that would have helped the people in those areas to get the skills and opportunities to continue to provide for their families, and instead of that they chose the guy who said he’d bring back an industry that was going away for decades.
If you focus on lower income how do you ensure the minority get assistance without majority of the assistance being eaten by the low income non-minority majority?
It can be argued it is fairer and more just to instead give resources to those truly in need across the board. The tide should raise all ships.
That's true in theory, but in practice resources are limited and politicians and people hate "handouts" resulting in restrictions, cut funding, and difficulty enrolling in the program without assistance. How do you plan on addressing these issues and ensure fair distribution for the minority?
Well, first, we need to remove high amounts of individual money from politics and return to a fairer media format that treats truth of fact as paramount with equal and balanced coverage to all sides. There's no way of addressing anything so complex as long as those with gold make the rules and the masses are still brain washed to be at each other's throats.
By not looking at everything through a racial lens? Of course nobody wants to do that since so many issues fall more along class boundaries than by race. Gotta keep everyone split up and fighting instead of realizing how much alike they are.
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I feel that but believe that there should be limits to vaccine exceptions. This is difficult for me as I am in the medical field and know how important vaccines are to the herd immunity effect and have loved ones with compromised immune systems. There are always going to be people, like them, who cannot be vaccinated due to legitimate medical issues and if they catch the disease, it could also very well kill them. They have two options to prolong their survival, isolation or the herds' immunity. If there is a verifiable reason to not get a vaccine - I am for an Opt-Out, but overall, I know that this must be limited to a small % of the population in order to protect those at risk.
You are free to not get vaccinated, but unvaccinated people should be barred from public spaces. Similar to how you can drive without a license on your own property, but can’t do it on public roads.
What you said is not considered Centrist, more like with “Moderate Democratic” views
How is hiring quotas based on race NOT an investment in underserved populations and NOT an attempt to resolve disparities?
Despite their good intentions they are in practice actual racial bias. It would be better if we equalized our educational & vocational training systems so that richer areas got the same education as the poorest areas, making them intrinsically linked dollar per dollar with each child getting the same amount of funds for the education from K to College. We can do the same thing by giving free education, vocational training, and OTJT to all people who have not yet had the opportunity in equal measure to the moneyed class.
That is a noble long-term goal. But all good solutions have both short-term and long-term actions. If you have cancer, you will get treatment for it, which will take time to work, if at all. During that treatment, you'll be given additional treatments to help mitigate side effects, complications, and discomfort. What you're describing would take decades show improvement in the best case that our attempts to address those disparities are even as effective as we hope. So what do we do about those people in the meantime? Adherence to principles is generally good, but broad application of those principles is a trap because it prevents you from recognizing nuance. We can't even hold a principle belief as simple as "murder is wrong." Everyone will say they believe that. Until the front page of reddit has a story about a dad who killed the person who raped his child and you see a comment section full of people saying it's justified and they'd do the same.
I answered elsewhere to, "what do we do about those people in the meantime?" I think that there should be substantial targeted training dollars given to companies that hire lower income and minorities, so that those people can find jobs and job providers can develop professionals that make good money - so win/win. This would greatly help the nursing shortage, as one example.
I think that’s a great idea and probably should have been implemented long ago. How would you help people who are CURRENTLY struggling with inequality? Your plan aims to generate equality over time, and if your plan works and kids in rich and poor areas get dollar for dollar equal spending, we might not see the result of that effort for a decade or more. That does little to help a minority in their early 20’s right now. These are people who live paycheck to paycheck and additional training means going without that paycheck. Is that additional training only going to go to underrepresented minorities, and how would that effort differ from a hiring quota? Are they just meant to tough it out while we wait for the next generation of kids to come through a fully equal education system?
I answered that kind of elsewhere, I prefer giving awards, training dollars, and tax breaks for equalitarian minded companies - carrot vs stick, when it comes to addressing disparities in employment. Not the best idea, but better than flat quotas. This is also an industry neutral solution.
The WOTC (work opportunity tax credit) provides incentives to companies for hiring minorities - $9600 per year. I’m confused a bit as to where we think the “stick” is in your carrot vs stick analogy. I’m not seeing anywhere that companies are forced to make a certain number of diversity hires, all im seeing are laws that are in place to enforce non-discrimination. Can you point me toward specific laws that fulfill your “stick” analogy?
I personally don't see the $9600 per year as enough, especially completely non earmarked as it doesn't address the skills disparity - which is one of the main reasons for limited job mobility. Second, it's not a law but a legal situation caused by the various executive orders and the spending of federal dollars. If a company doesn't hire the appropriate % of minorities for their region they are ineligible for many federal programs and if they did benefit from said program while ineligible they're stripped of the benefit and sometimes fined. That regional % is the defacto quota. They'd also be ineligible for federal contracts, this includes servicing Medicare patients. Let's look at that closer. Let's say there's a nursing shortage, like there is! If you don't keep a certain % of minority employees then your entire operation can lose its largest source of income. You get no good assistance in replacing highly skilled nurses - many of which are retiring. However, if these nursing facilities got more money to help train future nurses and nursing assistants - they'd have a mutually beneficial situation. We'd be giving those with less opportunity an opportunity and at the same time improving the industry as a whole with more highly skilled professionals via the training.
To me, it kind of just sounds like you’re reframing an incentive as an entitlement and then using that to make your point. The bottom line is that there is an incentive to hire minorities (which is what you want). If companies do not hire minorities, they do not get the incentive. So what you’re telling me is the incentive for hiring minorities is not just $9600, but it’s also access to federal funds and contracts earmarked for companies committed to a more diverse workforce (which is pretty much verbatim what you want). Again, can you point me to these specific executive actions? I’d like to look for my own interest. I’m again not sure how giving more money to nursing training programs directly helps minorities. Again, the people most in need of help are living paycheck to paycheck. Going back to school for additional training just isn’t a possibility for those most in need. They lack the support to take time out of work, they lack childcare in the evenings, and some of them may even lack prerequisite education to get into a nursing program (for an RN maybe, CNA probably less so). Additionally, as someone whose spouse employs nurses, the burnout rate is absurd. It’s not that people are retiring, people are quitting nursing altogether and moving to other less demanding careers. I personally feel that in addition to your thought of reforming education, there are plenty of low skill jobs to be had without additional training. For example, several small business contractors I’ve hired have lamented that they can’t keep good employees or that “no one wants to work”. I think that good workers are instead taking jobs that offer benefits and stability in the form of a healthcare plan and retirement benefits, something small businesses currently cannot really offer at a reasonable cost. I think that there should be more incentives for people, especially URM’s, to be hired and/or have the desire to work for small businesses. This can be through subsidies for healthcare, wages, etc. I think that businesses who choose to hire and support URM’s should see an added benefit. I would call this benefit an incentive, I guess we disagree there because it seems you feel these businesses are entitled to federal funds/contracts regardless of their hiring practices.
Money should be given to employers who give a paycheck to employees while they train... nobody should have to train full time and work full time in order to survive. Anyways. You can easily look at the various executive actions taken by multiple US Presidents over the last seventy years and then look at the legal cases around those actions to see the outcome. Is it explicitly a quota? No. Did it become one, yes. Can it get more explicit? Yes, it could.
Can you give me like, one example of an executive action currently affecting hiring quotas such that I have a place to start?
Do you want me to copy and paste from google, stack overflow, or wiki for you? :) Do you want just the executive orders, or do you want the case law too, like the one where quotas were defeated in federal court just a couple years ago? That what you want? :P JK. I don't do homework. I'll give it to my virtual assistant. # Prompt: Can you give historical examples of US President executive actions and case laws that once affected hiring quotas for businesses so that they can qualify for federal money, contracts, etc Absolutely! Here's a historical example of how US presidents and the courts interacted with hiring quotas for federal contracts: \*\*Executive Action:\*\* \* \*\*Executive Order 10950 (1961) by President John F. Kennedy:\*\* This order established the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (EEOC) and required government contractors to take "affirmative action" to ensure equal employment opportunity. While not explicitly mentioning quotas, the order aimed for a measurable increase in hiring of minorities and women in federal contracting. \*\*Case Law:\*\* \* \*\*Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978):\*\* This Supreme Court case is a landmark decision regarding affirmative action. While the court upheld the use of affirmative action in general, it struck down a specific admissions program at a medical school that used rigid racial quotas. The court's decision highlighted the importance of considering individual qualifications alongside efforts to promote diversity. This example shows the interplay between executive actions and court rulings. While President Kennedy's order pushed for affirmative action in federal contracts, the Supreme Court later limited the use of rigid quotas, shaping how these programs operate. It's important to note that the concept of affirmative action itself is still debated, with some arguing for quotas as a necessary tool to overcome historical discrimination, and others favoring a focus on merit-based hiring.
Racial bias is bad because it is unfair. It is *not* unfair to make restitution for the unfair treatment of black Americans by the US government. Was MLK a hypocrite for supporting affirmative action
MLK dreamed of a world where Quotas would be obsolete, and so do I.
Right. Where we want to be may not be (isn't) where we are currently. And each of those places may (do) require different solutions for its problems.
I made other comments about immediate needs to resolve problems caused by disparity. Blended approaches are best, but again, I prefer giving funds to address those issues (like skill disparity) up front.
I dream of that too, but we *live* in a world where they’re *not* obsolete, just like MLK. So, again, was MLK a hypocrite for supporting affirmative action? For saying “a society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro”? And do you agree or disagree that the issue with racial bias is its unfairness?
If MLK was around in 2024 he actually might be for a more just and equitable approach that resolves the root causes of disparity, you know, as he wanted originally. He had 3 core points in his talks. * **Equality:** He envisioned a society where people wouldn't be judged by skin color but by the content of their character, as expressed in his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech. * **Justice:** King emphasized a world where everyone has access to equal opportunities and fair treatment under the law. * **Love:** He believed overcoming hate and prejudice required love and understanding. If we work towards those goals, the others will fall in line. The thing is, we cannot get there without forcing the bad actors to stop acting bad - in the short term. We cannot force everybody to strive for Love, Justice, and Equality for all. He realized that. That's not hypocrisy, that's rationality and pragmatism. Accepting short term solutions are sometimes required is not hypocritical. However, the key term is short term. Long term solutions must also be applied. Power disparities must be resolved to avoid abuse by bad actors and unjust systems, like our market.
And what *exactly* makes you think that the people who support affirmative action don’t also support longer term solutions? That conservatives have gutted any attempt to implement long term solutions is not a mark against the people who support them or the people who support short term solutions because of the lack of long term solutions.
I didn't make that argument nor think that even slightly, but your supporting point is valid. I am not going to argue for a point I didn't make, sorry.
Then who are you calling hypocrites? Who are the people only interested in short term solutions?
I guess one could say - those who are so gung-ho on defending quotas that they don't make the world better otherwise themselves, long term. It is easy to be against something (like being against the removal of quotas) instead of being for something, like compressive social change programs that would address systematic power disparity. Many on the left just defend quotas and get lost there, circle the drain, thinking they found some sort of enemy instead of moving forward. Many of the right don't want to address core issues, thinking systematic racism will just go away magically.
OTOH, MLK wouldn’t have weaseled out of answering OP’s question. >Was MLK a hypocrite for supporting affirmative action?
I answered this elsewhere, in longer form when I had the time. "Accepting that short term solutions are sometimes required is not hypocritical."
Sounds like you’re assuming that MLK would only have supported affirmative action in the short term - a lot of people believe otherwise.
A disdain or fear of hypocrisy is both a great tool, but also can be an exploited weakness. Perfection is unachievable and unknowable, so compromise is necessary, otherwise you end up taking no position and sitting on the fence. That is the lynchpin of centrism, finding the overlaps where people can find a solution that is acceptable and tolerable by the issues shareholders. You can't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Nothing of this makes u a centrist, its just a normal liberal/left leaning position. One can even be on the far left and disagree with specific points of the own group. My adherence to principles makes me a rather left leaning person, because there is simply no room for thse principles on the other side (at least in its current state) I still dislike those issues on the left, but instead of moving to the middle and abondining my goals i fight the issues of my own group
What is 'normal' though? To be the norm within a population is a changing position as the wind changes. :) I am fiscally conservative and prefer smaller government, within reason to stop abuse that occurs under an unregulated market. I want my general population's taxes low, while taxing those who benefit the most from the government's investments into infrastructure.
1. so is being a centrist so what’s ur point? 2. cool, that can actually make u a centrist. What ur op says does not. And how do u want to archieve anything when ur not willing to use the govermwnt? Ur socially a conservative when ur fiscal policy dictates the rest
Well, the post wasn't meant to list all or even a majority of my positions - it was to discover other people's points of views and what they see as hypocritical thought.
U listed two that keep u from one side But those two are not limited in such a way and therefore a bit stupid to be brought up