Race matters in House

[TomCollins]

I agree.

Please join me on my quest to end the obvious racism of the NFL against whites in their underrepresentitiveness.

[bisonbison]

It makes perfect sense if you're riddled with white guilt. Logic and reason won't play much of a part.

Oh please. Leave the condescension to your betters.

[John Kilduff]

[ QUOTE ]
It is fallacious to presume that all differences in group achievement must necessarily derive from externally imposed handicaps or from externally conferred benefits.

It's dumb to presume a lot of things. If I presume the world is round without evidence, I'm making the exact same error as someone who presumes that the world is flat without evidence.


To address your larger argument: of course there's no objective standard by which the propriety or suitability of representation should be measured. It's a subjective judgment - what should an elected official in a representative democracy represent about the voting populace? But in the US, with congressional and senatorial representation a first past the gate, district by district matter, the elected populations has been monolithic - white men, mostly protestant. A reasonable person might ask whether the perpetual underrepresentation among elected officials, sheerly in terms of pop %s, of certain groups has, perpetuated certain non-genetic hardships that these groups have endured, and by extension, perpetuated their own underrepresentation.

In 230 years, the US has elected 5 black senators and 35 female senators. If all of those senators were alive and serving now, they would be (by strict population %s) underrepresented by ~8% and ~16% respectively.

I'm not looking for equal outcomes here, but let's not pretend that vastly unequal outcomes should be presumed to be fair.

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Who said anything about "fairness"? Different groups will usually produce different results. Yes, there may be some lingering effects of lack of privilege even generations later, but at what percentage do AA advocates say: "Ok, it's level enough now"?

It is fallacious to expect outcomes to ever be equal, so using unequal outcomes or unequal representation as justification for unequal treatment (which AA is) would likely ensure that AA-type social engineering band-aids would have to be applied forever, even long past the time when lingering traces of previous disadvantages have been dissipated.

The 8% and 16% you cite: how much of that gap is due to past injustices, versus how much is due to group differences? We simply do not know! And there is no way to know at this point. Yet if the only thing that will satisfy AA proponents, is equality of outcomes, they will amost surely have to wait forever and will never see their ideal translated into reality, because that's just not the way the world, or different groups, works. And it will always be assumed (fallaciously) that there is some unjust cause of different outcomes, so the struggle to remedy such things will continue and will never find a satisfactory conclusion.

I'm not saying that there are not still lingering effects of past injustices; there could well be, but we can't automatically attribute all different outcomes, to that.

Suppose 500 or 1,000 years from now, group "A" still outperforms group "B" in many fields. Would you still then claim that it all harks back to injustices perpetrated in approximately the 19th century?

[Bicycles_Biatch]

California white-middle-class-males are in desperate need of a caucus... we are the minority

[iron81]

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California white-middle-class-males are in desperate need of a caucus... we are the minority

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[TomCollins]

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California white-middle-class-males are in desperate need of a caucus... we are the minority

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When is having multi-million dollars middle class? I suppose it might be in Cali though.

[bisonbison]

Who said anything about "fairness"? Different groups will usually produce different results. Yes, there may be some lingering effects of lack of privilege even generations later, but at what percentage do AA advocates say: "Ok, it's level enough now"?

Well, I'm guessing it's not now. Maybe when there's more than one black senator in the US senate, more than 16 women senators, more than 2 hispanic senators, and more than 2 asian senators. But hey, I'm just a white guy, so it must make sense that that 80% of our senators are white men. That's equal enough for me!

It is fallacious to expect outcomes to ever be equal, so using unequal outcomes or unequal representation as justification for unequal treatment (which AA is) would likely ensure that AA-type social engineering band-aids would have to be applied forever, even long past the time when lingering traces of previous disadvantages have been dissipated.

Did I bring up affirmative action? We're talking about a congressional caucus.

The 8% and 16% you cite: how much of that gap is due to past injustices, versus how much is due to group differences? We simply do not know! And there is no way to know at this point. Yet if the only thing that will satisfy AA proponents, is equality of outcomes, they will amost surely have to wait forever and will never see their ideal translated into reality, because that's just not the way the world, or different groups, works.

That 8% and 16% gap isn't comparing the current senate to the population percentages. It's plucking every black and female senator out of the past, and using them to populate a 100 person senate. They still fall short.

And it will always be assumed (fallaciously) that there is some unjust cause of different outcomes, so the struggle to remedy such things will continue and will never find a satisfactory conclusion.

Again, just because assuming the world is round is fallacious doesn't make the world flat.

Suppose 500 or 1,000 years from now, group "A" still outperforms group "B" in many fields. Would you still then claim that it all harks back to injustices perpetrated in approximately the 19th century?

You mean like if the Irish lag behind the English for 1000 years? That's gotta be genetic.

[TomCollins]

One time I was playing poker and played 2652 hands. I got AA 5 times. Clearly the deck must be stacked since it is underrepresented. There is inherit bias towards 27o, which I got 18 times instead of 16.

[iron81]

Tom, are you really arguing that blacks are underrepresented in Congress, in college, in high paying jobs, etc. because they are unlucky? The sample size we are talking about isn't 2652 hands, its millions of people.

[John Kilduff]

[ QUOTE ]
You mean like if the Irish lag behind the English for 1000 years? That's gotta be genetic.


[/ QUOTE ]

See? You are not taking into account all variables; you are adopting an either/or approach: it's either due to genetics OR it's due to oppression. But that is the fallacy at work: there can be other factors as well. The disparity could be due to part oppression, part myriad cultural factors, perhaps even part average amount of alcohol consumed, perhaps part dietary differences, perhaps part God-knows-what: the Irish and the English didn't develop all the same exact customs or culture either, you know. So, while not discounting any actual effects of past oppression, who's to say that certain cultures do not have characteristics that tend to make them more (or less) suited for success in certain fields? Of course they do. Likewise, some cultures may simply emphasize certain pursuits more than others. You can't just expect that different groups will represent equally--even in the absence of oppression. The world just doesn't work that way.

Nigerians are "overrepresented" among best sprinters in the world. Kenyans are "overrepresented" among the best distance runners in the world. What oppression led to that disparity of results??? How were Nigerians oppressed so that they developed as the best sprinters but not the best marathoners? And what strange oppressive mechanism caused Kenyans to become the best marathoners but somehow held them back from becoming the best sprinters? Which was it: genetics OR oppression? Gotta be one or the other, right? Or...maybe it was culture? Or...maybe a little of genetics and some cultural preference too? Or...maybe some combination of factors, including oppression, and maybe some factors we don't even know about? Maybe a little randomness thrown in as well, for good measure?

I don't think you can rightly claim that the absence of a proportional representation in Congress proves any group is still oppressed in the USA today. Yet you seem convinced that a significant disparity of seats is proof of continued oppression or long-term effects of past oppression. While it could well be to some extent, you can't then expect that in the absence of oppression, that group will eventually have a proprtional number of seats. I don't expect that 100 years from now, Kenyans and Nigerians will close the gap in their respective running specialties (even if there are no genetic differences involved; though I do think there is probably some difference of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscles involved. But even if there weren't any physical difference: would you really think that in 100 years it will have all evened out between Nigerians and Kenyans in their respective running dominances? Culture does play a bigger role in average group preferences than many would casually imagine.)