I grew up in the Midwest and moved to Silicon Valley. I think that people here don't understand what this author describes as "Midwestern history is a study in racial quarantine." I would go as far as to say that racial is the wrong word to describe what happens in the Midwest.
I think that communities in the Midwest have tighter cultural restrictions on what it means to be "one of us." This can be affected by where you live, where you work, where you go to church, where your kids go to school, what kind of car you drive, what you do for fun, how you dress, even how you talk. Midwesterners are happy to accept someone who matches them in all these areas regardless of skin color. This is why you get backlash from them when you call them racist because the criteria they use is not skin color its all the other stuff.
Yet on the other hand, most PoC in the Midwest have a culture that is different on most of the above. So when a white Midwesterner doesn't treat a black Midwesterner that speaks, dresses, even walks differently as a part of the community is it racism? I would say no since it isn't about race but is about culture. But on the other hand, when most white people do this to most black people, it sure does start to look like it.
This puts the Midwest in a really hard place because just about any white person can claim (truthfully) they are not being racist. Yet, the outcome of the collective actions of all of them end up with a pretty strong divide that is mostly along racial lines.
Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix this? One option would be to have the cultures integrate so there are not sub communities for PoC. This doesn't seem to have worked. But the other option is that you expect Midwesterners to treat people from outside their community the same as people inside their community. That isn't going to happen. So it seems like it is an impossible situation.
The modern left-wing view of racism is as a systematic, structural power relationship between races. Individual decisions branching on skin color is neither necessary nor sufficient to get there, although it can and historically has contributed.
For example, divesting from your neighborhood out of concern for your property value when PoC start to move in does not necessarily reflect an individual racial bias. It could be a purely rational economic calculation based on other people’s biases. It’s still the bread and butter of the system of racism.
Just like discrimination that branches on culture or class and only incidentally produces outcomes along racial lines.
> The modern left-wing view of racism is as a systematic, structural power relationship between races.
Incorrect. More correct would be: the dominant modern left-wing view is that there exists now in much of the world, and has historically, a systematic structural power imbalances between groups identified as “races”, that this disproportionately harms some of those groups, and that this is bad thing.
That the confluence of all those things is the proper referent of the label “racism” rather than that label referring to racial bias which is a component of all that is far more controversial even within the left.
> For example, divesting from your neighborhood out of concern for your property value when PoC start to move in does not necessarily reflect an individual racial bias. It could be a purely rational economic calculation based on other people’s biases. It’s still the bread and butter of the system of racism.
Uh, yes, because it's a product of someone's racial biases, it's still a part of systemic racism even by the simpler and more common definition of racism, because its a product of racial biases within the social system.
The point is, structural disadvantages are perpetuated and worsened by people and behaviors that are not specifically discriminatory or hateful themselves. Of course the mechanism is usually related to discriminatory or hateful views held by someone at some point.
I don’t like the conflation of terms either. But I see a lot of people talking past each other (“racism isn’t a big deal because most people aren’t racist anymore,” and “racism is a major problem in America because of structural inequality”). Parent got close to explaining how these statements are true at the same time, and I wanted to point it out.
The statements aren't true at the same time. Racism—of the personal kind—is very common (nigh universal), even if much of it is subconscious.
There are vast piles of research showing that personal racial bias manifesting through discrimination, whether or not it is conscious/intentional, is pervasive in America.
Structural racism is real, but it is not independent of personal racism—it is produced by and perpetuates personal racism.
I'm of the impression that most racial bias research depends on the implicit associations test, which hasn't been shown to actually measure bias and is apparently plagued by several other weaknesses including low reproducibility. I'm curious to know more.
A lot of what I've seen is based on tests of behavior toward others in scenarios where factors other than indicators race (skin tone in photos or illustrations, race-stereotypical names in case files, etc.) are identical. These are direct measures of bias that manifests in discrimination, bypassing any problems with the IAT.
The problem with this view is that it describes correlates instead of causes, and worse--that it confuses the two: most people understand racism to mean something like "differences caused by race", and thus something that is morally reprehensible. Your example is one that is caused (though indirectly) by racism, but others examples are not causal but correlated (or at least so indirectly causal as to be meaningless)--for example, that midwesterners appear racist because they have a lower threshold for cultural differences, which is caused by the correlation between culture and race.
Besides this, the left-wing view is easily confused with the popular notion of racism, which is widely considered to be immoral, and I think often the proponents of this viewpoint abuse the confusion, deliberately accusing skeptics and dissenters of "racism" without being clear that they mean the probably-benign "systemic racism" instead of the clearly immoral "racism". Further, many of these proponents also tend to consider "questioning systemic racism theory" to be an act of (systemic) "racism" because it inhibits the consensus required to combat (systemic) "racism".
TL;DR I think the marketing was deliberately obfuscatory, and this has had a huge detrimental impact on our national racial.
I believe the reason that the root post is the top-voted comment is that it poses a helpful question: how do we fix this?
My suggestion is that people stop being so damn concerned about their moral status and start caring more about actually fixing things.
A system with de facto separate and unequal schools is just as bad as a system with de jure separate and unequal schools. Whether that's the result of an emergent phenomenon or explicit planning has little effect on the people stuck in the system.
If someone's fragile moral ego gets in the way of an accurate description of the problem... well, that person's ego is the problem.
FWIW you see the same problem in flailing engineering projects.
> My suggestion is that people stop being so damn concerned about their moral status and start caring more about actually fixing things.
This is silly. Moral status is a necessary component of political capital. The entire reason the progressive left stuck to their confusing "systemic racism" term is because it conveniently allows them to strip dissidents and critics of the political capital necessary to implement their fixes or even advance the national discourse. Of course, we could think wishfully about a world where politics were irrelevant (as I sometimes do), but that's not productive.
What alternative term would you use to refer to racially disparate outcomes that are the result of how large systems operate?
The term "systemic racism" was coined and stuck because it's evocative of the actual idea, not as some sort of grand conspiracy to strip you of your honor.
But I don't care. We can call it "silly putty" if it means we can actually talk about it instead of closely defending our honor. And if you have an alternative name that is evocative of the underlying problem and doesn't offend you, I'd love to hear it.
> This is silly
It is my experience that when people disarm themselves, productive conversations are possible.
Perhaps I'm wrong. But if so, then there's no solution anyways. So we might as well try.
It's hard to believe you care about advancing the conversation when you respond with straw men and ad hominems. Of course, I'm used to it because I challenge positions like yours a lot. Still, the constant need to redirect these bad faith rebuttals is exhausting.
To be clear, I don't care much for "my honor". Like I said, I care about making good outcomes politically tenable. As for conspiracy theories, that's literally what "systemic racism" is. And we could talk about it if it weren't for all of the weasel words and slander.
If you cared about the conversation, you'd be trying to get rid of the weasel words instead of attacking the people who call them out.
> It's hard to believe you care about advancing the conversation when you respond with straw men and ad hominems
You're right. Chalk it up to frustration in a different thread. My apologies.
> As for conspiracy theories, that's literally what "systemic racism" is
I mean, that's clearly hyperbolic, right? Systemic racism is a real thing -- see red lining or Jim Crow. We can at least agree that the concept is useful and refers to a real phenomenon, even if we're going to debate the severity/degree of that phenomenon in the present.
> you'd be trying to get rid of the weasel words
I don't think systemic racism is a weasel word. I think it's a well-chosen, evocative, and just damn accurate noun for the concept it represents.
> You're right. Chalk it up to frustration in a different thread. My apologies.
Thank you for the apology; I understand the cumulative frustration bit. Hopefully I wasn't the cause of the frustration in the other thread.
> Again, do you have an alternative word?
I would say "disparate outcomes that correlate with race" or some such. I don't object to "systemic racism" when it specifically means "disparate outcomes caused by racism" (e.g., redlining and jim crow); however, it's often used as a blanket term for any racial disparity whether or not there is evidence that it's actually part of the system and not simply the result of different choices made by different groups, or an artifact of documented historical oppression. In the latter case, its effect is to shut down any conversation about the actual cause of the disparity, because anyone who questions the systemic racism explanation is guilty of endorsing racism.
So if that's not a weasel word, it's something similarly nefarious and inhibitive of dialog.
I really think all parties (or at least those who aren't threatened by advancing the dialog) are better served by clear, meaningful terms, and I don't think that's what we have with "systemic racism". Insofar as it means what you say, then it's grossly and widely misused, which has the same effect as if the word were meaningless to begin with.
I don't think the line you're trying to draw is easy -- or even possible -- to draw.
What about cities that were originally segregated via red-lining, but now remain extremely segregated along those same geographic lines today even after those policies have been eliminated? Is that systemic racism?
In almost all cases, systemic racism is caused by a complex mix of historical racism, contemporary racism, and rational economic choices that aren't taken with explicit racial intent but none-the-less help sustain the inertia of the system.
> What about cities that were originally segregated via red-lining, but now remain extremely segregated along those same geographic lines today even after those policies have been eliminated? Is that systemic racism?
Disclaimer: This is mostly exploring a society where racism (as it is traditionally defined) has been completely removed. This isn't what we have (we both agree on this point), but the exercise is still useful in theory.
Assuming all such policies are removed, I would confidently say "no" for lots of reasons. Firstly, integration doesn't happen the moment racist forces are removed. Minority groups can and often do self-segregate for reasons that no reasonable person would identify as anti-minority racism (e.g., the social stability in a shared culture, hatred for people who look like historical oppressors [I guess this one is racism, but not one that is talked about under the rubric of 'systemic racism'], etc). Secondly, all else equal, a system in which wealth grows linearly would still see a growing disparity between disparate races even apart from racism; this is not desirable, but it's still not "systemic racism" in any meaningful sense. Thirdly, there are economies of scale to be had by participating in the majority culture, privileging those who've integrated over those who haven't--if you remove barriers to integration and some minority groups haven't integrated, they're at a disadvantage. Some might argue that this is systemic racism because the system privileges one group over another, but it's only related to race insofar as races tend to correlate with cultures, and also because it is a universal cultural reality completely divorced from any racist motive. Lastly, (by definition) different cultures make different decisions in different distributions--if some cultures make decisions that lead to poorer outcomes even if those cultures are the manifestation of historical oppression, it's still not systemic racism if all active forces of racism have been removed from the system.
Of course, all of this goes out the window if "the system" encompasses minority cultures and "racism" is allowed to mean "any disparity between races"; however, no one uses it in that sense, or at least every time a moderate or conservative brings up one of these "different choices -> different outcomes" possibilities, legions of university professors and other esteemed progressives shout them down, "no, it's systemic racism!" implying that "systemic racism" excludes cultures that choose their own disparities.
Of course, this whole semantic exploration is testament to the ambiguous nature of the term.
It absolutely is, but most of our population lacks a cursory familiarity with rhetoric to the gain of these progressives and other predatory groups. :(
>which is caused by the correlation between culture and race.
Why do you think there's a correlation between culture and race? Could it have something to do with people of color being explicitly excluded from white society as a matter of public policy until, like, 50 years ago?
My personal way of saying this is "we all do racist things, but very few of us are racist." Very often the most pragmatic choice in a situation also happens to be racist. Just own the racist things you do, and try to change the world for the better so you are no longer pushed into doing racist things.
I don't buy that. Moving out of an area due to declining property values is not inherently racist. It's a mix of economic, cultural, and class issues.
Calling that racism is to potentially miss the root cause of much of this stuff, and it has to do with poverty. The poor of any ethnic group or race are treated badly.
> we all do racist things, but very few of us are racist
That's confusing because you're using two different definitions of the word "racist" in the same sentence. At some point we should do everyone a favor and use two words when we mean two things.
I'd say instead that a PoC can be negatively affected by racism that isn't the result of a racist act by someone else. This is why it's so easy for people who don't experience it to minimize or otherwise feel that racism is less of a problem than it actually is. We don't feel like racists and we (probably correctly) assume that others are mostly like us. And so if we and most others like us aren't being racist, racism must not be much of a problem.
Aside from the property values example someone else listed, here's another one. If a well-off community decides to impose a tax on their residents to help fund the local schools, that doesn't feel racist. Everyone is just trying to ensure a quality education for their children. But what that does is allow the underfunded public school system to remain underfunded. If everyone's children were receiving substandard educations, there would be more pressure on the state to fix the situation for everyone in the state. But when only the poor communities are underfunded thanks to the wealthier communities kicking in those extra funds, you end up with those poor, primarily PoC students having lower-quality schools.
In that way, overt racism from previous eras created a status quo that, through non-overt racism, gets perpetuated going forward.
> ...a PoC can be negatively affected by racism...
> ...that isn't the result of a racist act...
Here, again, the words "racism" and "racist" mean two different things. I'm not sure why there's so much hesitance to just call the different things by different names.
Also, nobody has minimized anything. I don't think clarity in communication promotes injustice or ignorance. On the contrary, actually.
No, they don't mean two different things any more than food means two separate things when describing broccoli and ice cream. It's a broad term that covers many more nuanced concepts. I was attempting to cover the difference between overt racism and systemic racism. There's your two separate terms but both are absolutely forms of racism and to say that systemic racism isn't is just an attempt to rid it of the stigma that rightly gets associated with the term racism.
> ...is just an attempt to rid it of the stigma that rightly gets associated with the term racism.
What am I attempting? Why shut down the conversation like that? We can be more civil and reasonable here.
I do think missing demographic goals in hiring does not deserve the same stigma as sending Jewish families to gas chambers. Both deserve distinct stigmas and should be described with distinct terms.
It's not "nuance" to use the same word in different ways in the same sentence. The problem with the word "racism" is that it clouds nuance, so if communicating nuance is your goal, better descriptive language should be attractive.
Of course the word racist isn't specific...that was my point. It's a generic term that occupies a higher level of abstraction from the more concrete terms like overt racism/racial prejudice, systemic racism and genocide (since you brought up the holocaust). They are, in programming terms, subclasses/implementations of an abstract type. Using the word racism in two different ways in a single sentence is just polymorphism. You're only concerned with the properties of the more abstract concept and not those of the concrete type. Nuance isn't specificity.
I was merely pointing out that it's not wrong to do that, it's just less precise, and often intentionally so. But often times readers demand extra precision under the guise of avoiding terms that are rightly stigmatized. Your "missing demographic goals" obviously can't be equated with the holocaust...that's nonsensical. But by avoiding any connection with the word racism, it doesn't validate the employment discrimination that's felt by PoC. Just because that discrimination may start years earlier during the education process doesn't change the fact that it's still experienced. In fact it may be completely legitimate and entirely not the fault of the business choosing not to hire (or even interview) the diversity candidate. The last link in the chain doesn't have to, on its own, be wrong.
And that's a great example of the original point. Not hiring an under-qualified candidate doesn't feel wrong to most reasonable people. But the fact that that under-qualified candidate didn't have access to the schooling necessary to become qualified can still represent a system that is, overall, discriminatory against PoC. Hence my original statement, "a PoC can be negatively affected by racism that isn't the result of a racist act." The act of not hiring them wasn't discriminatory and yet they still experienced systemic discrimination.
The overall point is that there are a lot of people that want to minimize the effects that PoC feel from racism (generic term encompassing all forms) because either they don't like feeling like racists or they actually are racist. What I think the original poster was trying to get at and what I tried to rephrase was that just because PoC feel those effects is not an indication that anyone is personally responsible. You can validate those experiences without there needing to be someone to blame. And we'll have more productive discussions on how to move forward and diminish the effects of racism if people aren't worried about being blamed.
They’re the same word describing different things. Many white people are aghast at being accused of doing something racist because it implies that they themselves are racist. It shouldn’t, and it hampers the conversation to imply it does (the same logic can be applied to sexism and most other isms as well).
Not saying there aren’t racists out there (lol tiki torches), but most people don’t fall into that category.
Surely you see the issue when the same word describes perhaps the worst atrocities in human history and something people can't help being or doing. The implication is that people can't help but be the scum of the earth.
Two words for two concepts would decrease the stakes of the conversation and perhaps make room for some actual understanding and progress.
Right, so like the parent said, it would be better if people didn't coopt an existing word to mean something else. Especially when "something else" is often merely "disagreeing with someone".
The point isn’t to find an adjective for the communists, but to describe the society they live in, and whether specific actions or policies make it more or less that way.
You'd need a damn broad definition of Marxism for that to make much sense.
Economy and class are so central the Marx's philosophy that saying "Just s/<insert anything here>/class" doesn't make any sense. You can't just go into Capital and s/<insert anything here>/class and end up with anything that makes any sense. The entire analysis needs restructuring.
At some point, if Marxism is defined that way, you might as well just call any materialist philosophy "basically Marxist". Which is silly.
Tangentially, I've seen a lot of "so basically (cultural) Marxism" type comments lately about anything and everything left-leaning in the US. Something memetic is going on there.
You'd need a damn broad definition of Marxism for that to make much sense.
You have groups vying for power, with one group systemically oppressing another, and the morality of the situation adjudicated at that granulatiry. How does that not work? Can you reply with a specific?
Tangentially, I've seen a lot of "so basically (cultural) Marxism" type comments lately about anything and everything left-leaning in the US. Something memetic is going on there.
The memes (in the academic Richard Dawkins sense) which stick around are often the ones which have the strength of truth behind them.
> You have groups vying for power, with one group systemically oppressing another, and the morality of the situation adjudicated at that granulatiry
You've just described thousands of years of history prior to Marx and hundreds of years of history after Marx across every single axis of the political spectrum.
This is more a description of "effective political messaging" than a description of "Marxism".
Has there ever been a great politician -- good or evil -- who didn't believe they had the weight of morality on their side? Who didn't tap into feelings of oppression, real or perceived?
Even Hitler cast his politics in terms of an oppressed people with a moral right to rise up. And if Mein Kampf is Marxist then you've got one hell of a definition of Marxism.
> The memes (in the academic Richard Dawkins sense) which stick around are often the ones which have the strength of truth behind them.
Well, anything popular taps into some truth, usually about the audience with whom the popular thing resonates.
But tapping into some truth and actually being true are two very different things.
Interpreted any other way, your claim is silly. Mutually exclusive ideas achieve this sort of memetic status (with different subpopulations) all the time.
You've just described thousands of years of history prior to Marx and hundreds of years of history after Marx across every single axis of the political spectrum.
Which is precisely what Marx claims to do, with essentially the model which Marx claims does so.
Well, anything popular taps into some truth
It's pretty obvious that Postmodernism is homomorphic to Marxism. It's also well documented that Postmodernism has intellectual roots in Marxism. Marxism is also outwardly and openly claimed by many in the current day political left in the US, in particular, the part which originates and most vigorously promotes Intersectionality.
> Which is precisely what Marx claims to do, with essentially the model which Marx claims does so.
Again, no. Marx's characterization is much more concrete than that, and really cannot be separated from notions of class and capital and commodity-form without rendering the term "Marxist" nearly meaningless. Or at least synonymous with much less politically-charged ideas like "materialism" or even just "politics". Separating Marx from those things is like separating Jesus from Christianity.
The next two criticism are more tangential and obvious, but hopefully more illustrative of the problem with the way you're trying to re-define Marxism
1. A capitalist operating as Marx would predict is not himself a Marxist, so your statement is especially confusing for more than one reason.
2. Plenty of non-Marxist -- even conservative economists -- tap into various Marxist ideas. And even more tap into the same ideas that Marx was himself building on (e.g., the effectiveness of providing moral justifications on the basis of oppression... not a Marxist innovation!). So drawing any tangential connection to Marx and labeling anything connected by that tangent as "Marxist" implicates 100% of economists. Which, again, makes the label "Marxist" kind of silly and pointless.
If you strip Marxism of Marx's actual core ideas, then "Marxism" ceases to mean anything. And class is a central component of those ideas.
At some point referring to something as "Just Marxism s/.../class" begins to occupy the "you are an idiot" box in on the PG argument hierarchy.
> It's pretty obvious that Postmodernism is homomorphic to Marxism
This seems mostly off-topic... you'll have to draw out the connection for me. (edit: Obviously, plenty of postmodernists critique closeparen's post and plenty of non-postmodernists would agree with closeparent's post. Are you sure you mean postmodernism?)
really cannot be separated from notions of class and capital and commodity-form without rendering the term "Marxist" nearly meaningless.
The Intersectional claim is basically that inherent markers like race have become a functionally like a marker of class.
Separating Marx from those things is like separating Jesus from Christianity.
You just keep on asserting this without specifying why -- probably because you find it particularly embarrassing. So you're saying there's something magically special about the very specific formulation? Many atheists have noted that Jesus has many similarities to many other religious/mythical figures. The principles are usefully generalized. As is the with religion, the fact that there are these patterns is significant in itself.
"Marxism" in such broad-brush terms is certainly not meaningless in any case. Use "collectivist" if you like. Anyone who throws individual rights under the bus in favor of the interests of the group and says phrases like "By any means necessary" or "all power comes from the end of a gun" is a party to ideologies which have played out in the deaths of tens of thousands to tens of millions of people, across different cultures, in different times, again and again throughout history.
> The Intersectional claim is basically that inherent markers like race have become a functionally like a marker of class.
Hm. Unless closeparen edited their comment, I've very confused, because that's not at all the claim that closeparen made.
In fact, the "all racism is really just a form of classism" is more common in conservative circles than leftist circles.
> So you're saying there's something magically special about the very specific formulation?
No, not at all. It's just one more idea. And it has a name. That name is Marxism. Use each name for the thing that it refers to, and nothing else.
> "Marxism" in such broad-brush terms is certainly not meaningless in any case.
Not really. Marxism refers to the political philosophy laid out in Capital and popularized in texts like the Manifesto. It refers to Marx's synthesis of a bunch of specific ideas -- Hegel's dialectics, materialism, the labor theory of value, commodity form, class warfare, markets, etc. -- some of which were unique to Marx and some of which pre-dated him by centuries. Marxism refers to, you know, Marx's system of thought.
I submit that whatever alternative definition you're proposing is silly and confusing.
> Anyone who throws individual rights under the bus in favor of the interests of the group
It's all fine and well that you're a traditional liberal, but calling everything that's "not you" a Marxist is pretty lazy.
Hm. Unless closeparen edited their comment, I've very confused
I wasn't specifically referring to closeparen's comment at that point. What are you trying to pull?
And it has a name. That name is Marxism.
Sounds like your intoning some kind of quasi-religious exceptionalism.
Marxism refers to, you know, Marx's system of thought.
Which historically results in one group of people violently seizing stuff from another group of people using some collectivist morality because individual rights means nothing to them. Nothing confusing about that.
calling everything that's "not you" a Marxist is pretty lazy.
I'm calling everything collectivist that has resulted in the above Marxist. Historically, most everything collectivist that has gained control of a society has resulted in the above and has called itself "Marxist."
Because frankly Marx was not broadly concerned with discussions of morality and oppression of 'groups' in a general sense as you seem to be implying. He was quite strictly concerned with an economic analysis of capitalist exploitation, and not necessarily exploitation in our contemporary moral sense (as in child explotation) but more in the sense that we talk about exploiting nature, or a tool. Marx's analysis was almost purely an economic one, where he pointed out that the economic model of capitalism and our modern notion of private property created a class division based around the extraction of profits ('surplus value') from labour through the ownership and control of the tools of production. All 3 volumes of Capital are about this, and he spends little time discussing power or domination in a general way and basically almost none on racism, sexism, or colonialism except as they tie into capitalist exploitation.
The phrase 'cultural Marxism' only betrays how little right wing pundits who use this phrase actually understand of Marxian theory and postmodern cultural studies generally, since frankly the vaguely left wing strains of academic cultural theory spent the last 50 years _critiquing_ Marxism from the vantage point that it did not pay enough attention or have a meaningful theory to talk about these issues. Postmodernism and Marxism generally have been somewhat 'at war' within academia, though generally you'll find that the 'founding fathers' of cultural studies and postmodernism (say, Adorno, or Derrida, Foucault) themselves express admiration or sympathy for Marx himself though they rarely considered themselves Marxists per se. "Cultural Marxism" is kind of a misnomer -- they'd be better off saying "left wing postmodernists" or "liberal cultural relativists" or something, but those don't sound as boogeyman, do they?
Because frankly Marx was not broadly concerned with discussions of morality and oppression of 'groups' in a general sense as you seem to be implying...Marx's analysis was almost purely an economic one
Your point ascribes to me a sense of morality to me as a sneaky way of putting words in my mouth. "as you seem to be implying." In reality, I need no more than the Marx's subsumed sense of morality/justice in Marx's analysis for my point to stand.
"Cultural Marxism" is kind of a misnomer -- they'd be better off saying "left wing postmodernists" or "liberal cultural relativists" or something
Not a misnomer at all. Many who fall under the banner openly proclaim themselves Marxist, or subscribe to those ideas in their writings. For those who don't, there's still the matter of the homomorphisms between Marxism and Social Construction.
Look you're free to use language (and downvotes) however you want, but I and others are merely pointing out that you are applying a very broad brush which basically amounts to "I can see similarities here, so I'll just call them the same thing" -- Marx may have had a 'subsume[d] sense of morality' in his analysis of capitalism but that doesn't mean anybody who has a similar sense of morality about another topic is now a Marxist.
Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, not all mortals are Socrates.
Look you're free to use language (and downvotes) however you want
I've not downvoted you, at least in this thread. HN doesn't let you downvote in threads you participate in.
"I can see similarities here, so I'll just call them the same thing"
Isn't that how it works, especially with ideologies and models?
Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, not all mortals are Socrates.
Yes, but I'm talking about specific principles, not just species membership. Socrates spoke greek. He lived in Athens. Not all mortals are Athenian, but Socrates surely was an Athenian. There is a specific problem when one deals with people as groups, as in race and class, in that one tends to throw individuals under the bus for not towing the line of the group. Historically, this can number in the tens of thousands or the tens of millions.
> Isn't that how it works, especially with ideologies and models?
No. Ideologies are labels that have meanings, sometimes very specific meanings. And even though there are overlaps between some ideologies and others, conflating terms is still disingenuous and unhelpful.
Marx believed in profit-motive, to be sure. That doesn't make Marx a Capitalist. Calling all "collectivists" Marxists is similarly silly.
> Yes, but...
Your parent was making a comment about the flawed logic in your argument justifying your misuse of the term "Marxism", not your overall opinion on identity politics.
Your response is totally irrelevant to that criticism.
Ha. Marxism adopted terms like "class struggle" from older, Classical political economic theory that came before it.
What the parent said is only the tip of the iceberg. Racism is a system to divide people so they are easier to control. So it hurts both black and white and other POC by making whites and browns fear downward mobility by making examples out of blacks and other out groups.
If you look at any of civil rights leaders who were killed (MLK, Malcom X f.e.), you will see that the worst punishment (assassination) is reserved for those who realized that it's not about just racism. It's about dividing people against each other. Trump has done this spectacularly by making whites fear P.O.C. all over again when it's his class, the plutocrats, who gain the most from sowing this division.
> Racism is a system to divide people so they are easier to control.
For a historical example, in early American colonial history it was common to have indentured and/or enslaved servants of all races, and the focus on exclusively black slavery only happened after multiracial revolts by the poor against the rich. Dividing poor white and poor blacks drastically reduced the number of revolts attempted by either group.
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but that's correct under the explanation of racism given by the parent comment (which is not merely the left-wing view, but the consensus academic view).
The example about divesting from a neighborhood due to concerns about property value is spot-on. In a systematically racist society, it is rational to behave in ways that produce racist outcomes even one does not personally have racist beliefs. Racism ends up being perpetuated even if most people don't think of themselves as racists or believe they are doing anything to promote unfair racial outcomes.
> which is not merely the left-wing view, but the consensus academic view
This follows only because academics (in relevant fields) are a strict subset of the left-wing (and generally the extreme left wing), and the relevant fields are in the middle of a reproducibility crisis largely due to their political confirmation bias. These fields are very open about their commitment to activism over objectivity (and many in these fields consider objectivity and reason to be "tools of white supremacy" or some similar nonsense). We shouldn't confuse "sociologists believe in X" with "X is true or even falsifiable".
> the relevant fields are in the middle of a reproducibility crisis largely due to their political confirmation bias.
As someone who works very closely with academics (specifically sociologists), I would love to see some evidence for this baseless mud-slinging. All of science is having a reproducibility crisis
Do you have a knowledge of the field? Or do you just disagree with their conclusions? I would be happy to be proven wrong so I can let my sociologist friends know that they are doing such a thing.
EDIT: There's also this really neat nature article detailing some of the responses to the current reproducibility crisis in all of science. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-016-0021 Based on this article, it looks like the social sciences are actually the ones spearheading the effort for more reproducible science. One of my colleagues is actually investigating how the typical formulation of ideas with the scientific method can implicitly lead to biases and errors in the science actually performed.
You’re right. Which isn’t to say sociology isn’t a hostile environment for anyone who isn’t avowedly left wing, or that sociologists (or social psychologists, or anthropologists) don’t discriminate against people they know are right wing. But nothing I’ve read suggests that politics before truth is the majority position in sociology. It’s clearly a position, and not a fringe one, but it’s weaker than in the 60’s. Cultural anthropology is a writeoff though.
I would hope the social sciences are leading the charge on reproducibility. If you want to learn more on that topic read Andrew Gelman’s blog.
I think you're missing a familiarity with a good chunk of the history of systematic racism in the U.S.
There are reasons homogeneous communities form in the U.S. A few of those reasons have to do with city planning and legislation. City planning can be racist in nature and promote exclusionary communities. Redlining, while not typically state legislation, is a good example of practices that contributed to the formation of primarily white communities.
You mention people making distinctions based on where you go to work, where your kids go to school, what kind of car you drive, how you dress, etc.. If I'm black and couldn't afford college for various reasons, I'm going to have a hard time getting a job that would allow me to buy the kind of car, dress in the clothes, send my kid to the schools, buy a house where the other people who had a _systematically_ easier go at life would.
My point is; When people think of those who are in and outside of their community there is latent racism. Why can't we treat people from outside our community as the same as people inside? If we better understand and critique what a community is and how it forms I think it's possible.
What you're missing is that growing up there simply _weren't_ people outside my community/culture. It was much less about systematic racism and much more about who chose to immigrate to specific regions in the late 19th century.
What you're talking about are things that happened in larger cities, but that's not the whole world and that doesn't match the history of much of the midwest.
The parent was right, if there is discrimination it's about culture not color. There were a few adopted children with heritage from different parts of the world and as far as I could ever tell, they were treated the same as anyone.
The discrimination you did see to any degree was on a protestant/catholic split and whether you lived in a relatively richer part of town.
I just didn't see racial hatred growing up. Actual racism was a foreign concept until I left. Something you saw on TV, not in real life. I'm aware that it isn't necessarily something I would have always seen... but I have seen racism since I left in a way that I definitely did not before.
The absence of other people outside your community was not an accident. Members of the government, of financial institutions and urban planning departments made deliberate choices to exclude certain types of people:
Once again, you just don't have the context to be making that argument.
One article is about the south and the other one is about racist policies in the 30's. In the 30's there were essentially no people to be racist against in my community.
You're talking about urban planning departments, the concept is ludicrous in my home town which you could walk across in an hour surrounded by towns which you could walk across before finishing a sandwich.
It can be an interesting exercise to look at the census demographics for a county between 1900 and now. My home county had more black residents in 1920 than in 1990.
Which I am sure is true for some places, but not all.
The census count for "black" in my county in 1920 and 1900 was 5. Not 5%, 5. It was 99.97% white.
It's a fact that people seem to have quite some trouble with. Much of the midwest is nearly entirely white (and at that a pretty narrow subset of northern europeans) because only a small set of people had any interest in settling there.
But, thought experiment: Suppose that 5 to 10 black families decided to relocate to Gedanken, Kan. (pop. 2000) in 1920?
I think the threat of race-based violence would have made this very difficult. One family, perhaps, but a little neighborhood? Not OK -- I'm thinking specifically about the Tulsa riots of 1921 and other racial violence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unr...).
(Grew up in suburban Kansas and spent plenty of time hanging around towns like the fictional Gedanken.)
This exact situation happened around 1850 in Iowa, a small group of free black families settled in Fayette County. I wish I could find more than a passing reference to pass on what I've read.
Iowa has a history of progressivism. For example in 1851 it was the second state to legalize interracial marriage. In 2009 it was the forth state to legalize same-sex marriage (and not through any change of the laws, the Iowa supreme court decided it was legal)
I know the culture I experienced was not pervasive in the whole midwest. I'm also not saying that there weren't bigots, but it was certainly very much different than a lot of other places in this country.
My point is that there is a reason there weren't people outside of your community/culture. Looks at maps used for redlining https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=5/37.510/-9... and tell me you don't see a concentration of them in the midwest. These policies were effective during a timeline that would strongly influence and limit the diversity you saw growing up.
Cultural conditions created an environment that was welcoming to white people and hostile to PoC.
Look at the history the history of the KKK in my home state of Indiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Klan and tell me you don't see widespread organized racism in it's past.
We didn't see racial hatred growing up because our grandparents and their parents contributed to the conditions where there simply were not people of color. That and because subtle racial prejudices were more easily normalized by a distinct lack of larger communities of color.
I look at the emails I get from representatives in Indiana and I'm baffled by the issues they present: undocumented citizens, Islamic terrorism, etc... Communities in the midwest intentionally isolate themselves from people they perceive as "others". How is that anything other than racism?
You are not comprehending the facts behind what the poster is saying. There are large parts of the midwest that were settled almost exclusively by communities of central and eastern European settlers in the late 19th century. These communities are culturally homogeneous because it was virgin agricultural country before these groups of immigrants settled there. No one else has ever tried to move into these areas, largely because it isn't that attractive to anyone but members of these communities. Most people that live there today are direct descendants of the original immigrants. There was no redlining, racism, etc -- that would kind of require that someone other than these people ever lived in these communities.
I've lived in the midwest in a small farming town where virtually everyone, mostly only excluding my family, was directly descended from people that moved there from the same small part of what is now the Czech Republic at around the same time. It was incredibly homogeneous culturally.
Well, I think both sides of this conversation talk past each other a bit.
What you're saying is true.
But it's also the case that some those homogenous, snow white communities worry about jihad, even though there aren't any Muslims within a hundred mile radius of their house.
And it's especially true that when these small, homogenous communities diversify -- due to refugee placement or just economic growth and sprawl -- the latent racism becomes not-so-latent.
And the point that was originally being made was that it wasn't racism so much as just normal xenophobia, a sense of somebody from an external culture popping in. See also city-slickers, carpetbaggers, etc.
Redlining is a characteristic of cities. I'm not talking about cities, I didn't grow up anywhere near one. People keep beating this racism topic and can't seem to fathom something which shouldn't be surprising – there was very little desire for migration to rural upper midwestern farming communities outside of European immigrants from farming communities of similar climate.
When non-whites did migrate to the area they did so to cities to find work and they weren't always met warmly or treated fairly, but those cities were a world away from the culture and environment of my youth.
I can relate to this, but at the same time I think the lack of diversity does foster a lot of sort of abstract dislike and discrimination, especially combined with religion and the media. The two examples I have in mind are Middle Easterners and homosexuality. In lots of the midwest you won't find anyone openly admitting to be either, and only negative stereotypes or feelings.
[This leads to a stereotypical kind of storyline where a biased individual gains a friend or family member of the given type (perhaps a child comes out as gay or so on), and once the issue becomes real and personal for them, changes their mind.]
>Why can't we treat people from outside our community as the same as people inside?
Because millions of years of evolutionary biology tells us that people outside our community are dangerous. There are rituals an outsider must undergo in order to join the community and become safe.
This kind of evolutionary baggage can't be undone by just waving a magic wand and wishing it away. I think we are trying to direct our evolution towards not having communities, but this kind of things take a long time (and by a long time I'm thinking on the order of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years).
Great point, but I don't think "directing our evolution towards not having communities" is a desirable goal. This would make people heavily reliant on the largest corporations and that power dynamic would probably turn out terribly for the common person.
There are reasons homogeneous communities form in the U.S.
According to Thomas Sowell, the norm when groups migrate, all throughout history, across cultures, all over the world, is for people to form highly homogeneous cultural communities. This seems to be borne out by history.
When people think of those who are in and outside of their community there is latent racism.
There is always latent tribalism and prejudice. It's hard to fully know this, unless you are a complete outsider -- a minority of one. Also, unless one has had such an experience, it's hard to know how Sisyphean a task it is to directly tell another about it. In fact, I'll even come out and say it's inadvisable. In teaching, one comes to realize that there are some lessons which are best learned indirectly.
If we better understand and critique what a community is and how it forms I think it's possible.
One of the lessons of history, is that shared interests that cut across ethnic groups are the most effective means of overcoming prejudice. This is why I see many of the Postmodernist and Social Construction viewpoints as fundamentally harmful, because they take the seductive half-right position and often declare discourse between groups to be inherently impossible, and so go on to cut off the best means we have of remedying the situation. Competition, commerce, and all forms of engaged interaction are the best remedies. It's isolation of one form or another that makes things worse. It's isolation that makes a subgroup vulnerable to oppression and exploitation.
The past did contain city planning that was racist and had redlining. Those are past problems that do need some form of correction and I would support correcting them if you have specific actionable ideas.
I would like to point out that race isn't the only reason you couldn't afford college. Do you see any problem with race blind admissions and race blind aid? That way everyone who is disadvantaged when it comes to being able to pay for college gets a helping hand?
It's still common for people of color to not be shown properties that are shown to white people by landlords, real estate brokers, etc. Sometimes it's unequivocal (i.e. lying about what's available), sometimes it's softer, e.g. making assumptions about ability to pay, or "culture fit" (on behalf of the PoC or potential neighbors).
> Do you see any problem with race blind admissions and race blind aid? That way everyone who is disadvantaged when it comes to being able to pay for college gets a helping hand?
It sounds like you're describing need-blind admission. Few universities have the funding for that, they depend upon a certain percentage of students paying most or all of the tuition. Harvard, which has very strong financial aid and is officially a need-blind, still admits a high percentage of "legacies," who are much less likely to need a lot of financial aid.
Courts have decided that it's legal for universities to consider race as one of the factors when deciding who to admit. After centuries of bias, you can't just say "anyone can apply" and expect better outcomes to just happen, it requires more active effort. That doesn't mean taking someone who is unqualified but of the pool of qualified people, you don't just pick the "top" people based on quantitative measures.
I'm not sure how you made the jump from race-blind admission to need-blind...
I agree that more would need to be done than just saying "anyone can apply" but I don't think that the University should be doing most of the work, I think that we should work in the communities that need help to improve education so that more people are encouraged to apply and those that apply are more qualified.
>you don't just pick the "top" people based on quantitative measures.
Please be careful how you say this, some people will hear "We should pick PoC over more qualified white people." This gives the alt-right the opportunity to fan flames that should die.
> I'm not sure how you made the jump from race-blind admission to need-blind...
That was in response to you mentioning race blind aid. Need-blind admission helps combat the affordability problem that's more likely to affect people of color. If you're saying there shouldn't be scholarships exclusively for black people or some other group, I disagree but those make up a trivial amount of the aid available.
The biases baked into school systems are a bigger problem but there universities don't have a wait a generation for someone else. It's not about admitting unqualified students, universities shouldn't and I believe generally don't admit unqualified students (when they do, I suspect it's more for legacies than people of color). Part of what a university can do is recognize that a student who's the first in their family to go to college or who didn't go to a preparatory high school may not come in with knowledge and skills that will help them succeed; matters that are not taught in any classroom. There are white students with those needs as well and who should get such help, but they're less common.
> some people will hear "We should pick PoC over more qualified white people."
Tough, sometimes that's the way it's going to look if all you're looking at it grades and standardized tests; that's the basis for a lawsuit on behalf of Asian American applicants to Harvard. That group has twice the representation within Harvard than it does in the US but they're still suing because other students with lower scores are sometimes admitted instead of an Asian American applicant with higher scores.
It's always been about socioeconomic classes, but the best proxy for it is race (or how you look...). If there were something more obvious, such as giant face tattoos or being obese and wearing mismatched/sloppy clothing, then we could use that too to infer which socioeconomic classes they are in and how they are likely to act.
Perhaps, I'm sure it's not a one size fits all type thing, but I would bet that humans (and all animals) are wired to create heuristics for things that could impact their safety, and for more advanced species, heuristics that could indicate something that could help them. And probably throw in some power or ego issues in there too, which might not have any other reason other than to pump up one's self worth.
People tend to be quite capable of judging someone else's social class at a glance, though, or at least after a few words have been spoken. Racial cues are a pretty small part of it.
>Why can't we treat people from outside our community as the same as people inside? If we better understand and critique what a community is and how it forms I think it's possible.
Your point is basically that we should destroy the very concept of community and ethnic identity. Groups and their corresponding identities are defined entirely by who is not in them.
The midwest is not a place where you really strike it rich. It's a place where you have a shot of having a good family arrangement. You can easily surround yourself with relatives, and other folks like you. You're rarely forced into considering other points of view. There's a really strong sense of "being in your place" there, in many ways. I think the folks with a genuine curiosity about the world end up leaving.
It was really interesting to me watch the debate and discussions surrounding the Amazon HQ2 when I was travelling through the midwest and the south. Folks from those areas really want the economic growth from a new HQ, and were quick to point out progressive changes that happened in their city. They would never talk about those progressive changes in a positive light if big tech were not moving to their neighborhood.
So, one solution to some of this is money and jobs. I was impressed at how quickly that opened people's minds there.
Folks from those areas really want the economic growth from a new HQ, and were quick to point out progressive changes that happened in their city. They would never talk about those progressive changes in a positive light if big tech were not moving to their neighborhood.
In a wider context you are probably correct, but it's worth pointing out that the urban areas in the South are pretty damn progressive.
> it's worth pointing out that the urban areas in the South are pretty damn progressive
The urban areas everywhere tend to be pretty progressive. The political and cultural distinctions between any given state's urban and rural areas are a lot more profound than the distinctions to be made based on West Coast, East Coast, South, or Midwest.
Chapel Hill, NC... Atlanta, GA... Austin, TX... New York City,NY
Yes, are all despised by their rural neighbors. And vice-versa. But the bias is bidirectional: Those in the cities look at the rural folks with just as much contempt and disgust as those folks in the country look at the cities. Perhaps more.
You'll still find a much stronger sense of liberal values in the metropolitan cities vs rural in the midwest.
E.g. While Trump won the state of Nebraska, Hillary did win the counties of Douglas and Lancaster, the two counties that house the two largest cities in the state (Omaha 446K, Lincoln 280K).
>Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix this? One option would be to have the cultures integrate so there are not sub communities for PoC. This doesn't seem to have worked. But the other option is that you expect Midwesterners to treat people from outside their community the same as people inside their community. That isn't going to happen. So it seems like it is an impossible situation.
From my outside perspective, this is bloody ridiculous. I live in a coastal metro, and routinely expect to encounter people from "cultures" more than a few towns over. Bostonians would laugh at you if you treat someone from Medford differently from someone from Milton. They'd nod if you treat Medford different from Malden, but that's because Medford is white-ethnic while Malden is black and Chinese -- they're just being racist and everyone knows it.
Let alone if you tried treating Medford different from Somerville! I mean, hell, what's next, holding up signs on the Common saying, "Californians go home"?
Worse, by my tastes, Bostonians are already a bunch of provincial chauvinists. I'm from New York. In New York, if you said that a Park Slope-er in Brooklyn just has a different culture from a native of Flushing, Queens, well, you're going to get somewhere between dirty looks and threats (I'm picking where my parents had me versus where my mother grew up). It's got too many ethnic and racial implications. Hell, you're expected to work every day with people commuting in from as "far away" as New Jersey, and we all know that New Jerseyians are degenerate douchebags with no culture, amirite?
(Yeah I grew up in New Jersey too.)
I mean, let alone talking about "where you go to church" in New York. If you can't cope with Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Evangelicals, and Catholics (of various ethnicities each) living in the same neighborhood and each having their houses of worship within a few blocks of each-other, look, don't move to New York.
So the protestation that Midwesterners just have to draw ingroup/outgroup distinctions about your particular church, neighborhood, school district, and choice of automobile comes across as yuuuuge levels of special pleading to justify levels of xenophobia that we'd think of as the stuff of stand-up comedy.
So, you are arguing that New Yorkers don't make a distinction between themselves and not-New Yorkers? I've never lived in New York; what about all those sitcom references to the differences between Manhattenites and Brooklyners? Or the Bronx?
How can I, as a random Texan, tell the difference between someone from Gramercy Park and someone from New Jersey? (The part of me that wants to watch the world burn would like to see the flames between Bostonians and New Yorkers.)
It's worth noting that "non-New Yorkers" are few and far between in NY. Regardless of accent, skin color, socio-economic status, or where you lived last year,
you're a New Yorker if you've taken the subway without looking at the map or yelled at that cabby that inched just too much into the crosswalk.
I was born in Manhattan, I grew up in Westchester, I've lived in Manhattan as an adult, and I currently live in Brooklyn. I have many friends without
US citizenship that I refer to as New Yorkers. The only people I truly consider non-NYers, are people who don't actually want to be here or take
advantage of what it has to offer. I have a co-worker from North Dakota who, after 3 years living here, still hasn't stepped foot outside Manhattan. Those are
the non-New Yorkers.
It's also worth contrasting that with my sister who has lived in Raleigh for almost 10 years now. They still call
her a "Yankee".
We don't really make distinctions between fellow New Yorkers based on the kinds of tiny differences described. Our distribution has much more variance, so we need to go "further out" before we actually care.
Like, New Jerseyans think New Yorkers are snobby, New Yorkers think New Jerseyans are sleazy and uncultured, but you'd never, ever expect people to have a problem working or living together because of the difference. Everyone is so mixed-up that "stick to your own kind" becomes nearly impossible. Saying that we live in the same neighborhood and send our kids to the same school, say, but attend a different church, and so we're not really members of a common community, would just not make sense. If you tried that, you'd run out of "people like us" in about five minutes.
> Everyone is so mixed-up that "stick to your own kind" becomes nearly impossible.
This is about 180 degrees from all of my experience with NYC and New Yorkers. I find New Yorkers to be extremely tribal, and many of them are also extremely efficient at identifying folks from other tribes who may kind of look like them (at least from an outsider point of view).
To be fair, much of this tribalism may not be based on things like race or religious/church affiliation -- as you mentioned, that would make living and working in NYC extremely difficult.
That said, things like career field, social status, and how you spend your free time seem to matter quite a bit.
As a simple example, take your random high SES resident of the Upper East Side and have them go into a grocery store in a low SES neighborhood (race doesn't matter) and strike up a casual conversation with the cashier. It will be extremely awkward, and everyone will be looking at them. Flip the script and have someone from that same low SES neighborhood go to a grocery store in the nicer parts of the Upper East Side and do the same -- this will also most likely be awkward with everyone looking at them.
The example above uses two fairly extreme examples, but this happens along much finer lines as well. Where did people go to undergrad/grad? Where do people shop? Where do they go out? What neigborhood/building do they live in? What do they do in their spare time? All of these things are hyper-efficient shibboleths in NYC that largely do not matter in a random small town in the Midwest -- that is, you probably didn't go to college (one of the two state Us if you did), you shop at the only store in town or the nearest store if there are more than one, etc.
> But there are large cultural differences between urbanites and suburbanites.
Globally, yes, but these suburbs are different because many of these people have lived in the city. NYC has fantastic commuter transportation. People move to manhattan for a job, get married, have a kid, move to the suburbs, and continue to work in manhattan. Their children grow up going to the city on the weekends and move there when they graduate college. The manhattan population is 1.6m, but on any given weekday there are 4m people on the island. 750k people go through grand central every day (Westchester/Fairfield), Penn station another 300k (Long Island). The PATH has another 200k (New Jersey). This is all while excluding the drivers.
> I imagine this has influence on hiring.
I'm not sure how I could convince you, but I've lived here my entire life. There is absolutely no difference between people in the suburbs and in the city because they are the same people.
> and choice of automobile comes across as yuuuuge levels of special pleading to justify levels of xenophobia that we'd think of as the stuff of stand-up comedy.
I assume by the italics you really think that part's ridiculous. But car culture here is very, very different than other parts of the US where public transportation or locality makes them unimportant.
You can think something is ridiculous all you want, but that doesn't make it inaccurate. You feel it's all a proxy for racism? Fine. Tell me, then: between an F-150 and a Silverado, which one is the "white" truck?
I commented above about car culture here vs other parts of the US which tend to have better transportation or locality options. (Forget truck culture).
It's one of only a few things I've found a lot of non-Midwesterns don't get. And honestly, it probably is pretty ridiculous.
But when housing is affordable, high-paying jobs are abundant, and schools overall are great; the car becomes the deciding factor, as the square footage of a mansion and a historic bungalow aren't really reflected in their prices differences.
I'd guess the Silverado. However, really the comparison between Silverado and F-150 really has to do with the color of your collar; not the color of your skin.
I don't think it's a proxy for racism. I think it's its own form of xenophobia. I don't care which one is the "white" truck, I care that someone's drawing major social distinctions on the difference between one truck and another.
Well if the truck is your work then obviously people are going to draw distinctions over it. Which operating system shows you're smart: Windows or Linux? Is it "xenophobic" to prefer linux people?
Also, Milton "ked" here. Of course I'd treat somebody from Milton differently, we share a whole unique culture which you clearly don't understand. You're the one being culturally ignorant: speaking of Milton and Medford as equivalent because of skin tone is the same as comparing a Sikh to Arab, cause you know, the funny hat and facial hair and stuff right?
>Also, Milton "ked" here. Of course I'd treat somebody from Milton differently, we share a whole unique culture which you clearly don't understand. You're the one being culturally ignorant: speaking of Milton and Medford as equivalent because of skin tone is the same as comparing a Sikh to Arab, cause you know, the funny hat and facial hair and stuff right?
My wife is from Milton. She has nothing but nasty things to say about its "whole unique culture" ;-).
My first thought is how we need to start developing a better working vocabulary around having racist attitudes.
Like the big-R Racist is the white power asshole who wants to create a white ethnostate--that's one that's easy to spot, and most of us can say we're not that.
The real pernicious damage to communities of color comes from the little-r racism that SO SO MANY people carry around totally unthinkingly. Like even my pretty progressive sister will spout off something like "well if they'd just work harder, or get a better job," when in reality there's a well-documented bias against hiring people with "black" names.
The big-R Racism is easy to defeat, because most of us see it as pretty noxious.
The little-r racism is so much tougher, because it's encoded into laws in innocent-seeming ways, it's encoded into algorithms in software (e.g. charging various rates by zip code, but zip code in many places ends up being a proxy for race, and who in this decade checked to make sure the assumptions you've encoded aren't just screwing over minorities), in a lot of unconscious biases (e.g. that AAVE is an uneducated form of english, not its own dialect).
How do you call people's attention to that little-r racist stuff?
Well, I don't know. The thing I do, and it feels like water dripping on stone, is I call out small assumptions whenever I see them, and I always, always draw attention to communities of color as being people, citizens, deserving of all equal opportunities (and pointing out how some law, algorithm, or assumption is denying them one).
It's a real gentle advocacy, but it's also easy to stick to because it's absolutely the right thing to do once you see how stacked against CoC the system is.
I don't buy into this big-R, little-r racism but "well if they'd just work harder, or get a better job," and "they" refers to black people, that's racism.
> Racism is very much a matter of intent.
No. Unconscious bias, which by definition does not include intent, can still be a form of racism.
I do agree that sometimes other forms of bias or prejudice is taken for racism. Many times it's a class issue; many richer people want to avoid poor people but if people of color are far more likely to be poor, they're more likely to be avoided.
> Unconscious bias, which by definition does not include intent, can still be a form of racism.
I think there's little utility to this version of racism outside of discussions about sociology. In particular, there's no real way to show someone is not racist given this definition. So if someone was determined to be unconsciously racist, there's nothing really to do be done about it since there's no way to get a "clean bill of psyche".
I think you're missing my point, which is that without an objective way to identify "racism", it becomes an exercise in exerting power more than an impartial pursuit of fairness and equality.
I think you are talking about something different. The parent is saying that little-r racism isn't the result of one single person deliberately trying to be racist towards someone, it's the aggregate of things people do collectively without thinking about it that are racist. For example, someone named DeQuan is less likely to get an interview callback compared to John, even if they have the same resumes. Or instead, a black teenager is a lot more likely to have the cops called on him for walking down the street in a residential area than a white teenager. It has less to do with intention and more to do with implicit biases that collectively result in systemic discrimination
Say you're a nice, white mother in the 1950s, and the subject of desegregation comes up. You have no problem with black people, but you don't think the disruption would be good for your daughter's educational experience, so you favor maintaining segregation. You can say, 'I'm not racist. I'm just thinking of my daughter,' but guess what? The Poc negatively impacted by your stance don't give two shits, and they shouldn't. It's racist.
Of course, we don't have to go back in time at all to see this sort of thinking, but, for the sake of the example, I thought it worked better.
Can't you continue that line of thinking to include, "I have no problem with black people but slavery is my family's means of economic security, I'm not being racist, just selfish"?
Just because the people in these examples claim they aren't motivated by racism doesn't mean they aren't (at least partly) motivated by racism, maybe even unconsciously.
If I care about the suffering of my own race, but not those people over there because they're a different race - that's discrimination. That's my point about intent, the mother may feel she is just "indifferent" but the impact is certainly racist.
I didn't create the mother example but it's the same with the slaver holder. Even with a non-racist intent, supporting and participating in a racist system is still racist - no matter the justification or motivations.
I think you are defining racism so narrowly it only defines people who state "I'm superior to this race" where their actions alone can never be racist unless they say that.
I already replied to the tornado comment but weather can't hold beliefs, it's a non sequitur that doesn't support your argument.
You have to think about the effects of what you are saying.
Let's say you have the "non-racist" slave owner. No matter what they personally believe about the equality of individual humans, they create a world where the people who come after will believe fundamentally different things about races.
You can't say, slavery IS wrong, but we are going to do it anyway because we are selfish. The act is racist, because the people who come after you will justify your decisions and cement a racial worldview that you contributed to.
Racism is a set of beliefs. Tornados, door knobs, planets, these things can't have beliefs - only people can - which is why the argument makes no sense.
I really hope you read this CNN article in full but here is a quote that I believe directly applies to your argument:
> "When some whites talk about racism, they think it's only personal -- what one person says or does to another. But many minorities and people who study race say racism can be impersonal, calculating, devoid of malice..."
Tornados can't have beliefs nor do they target specific neighborhoods because of the people that live there obviously. Separate but equal schooling had good intentions, doesn't make the impact less racist.
I think you are on the right track to try to develop a better vocabulary about racist attitudes. But it needs to be more nuanced than the Racism/racism distinction you draw.
Lets flesh out the pricing algorithm example. Lets say a home security company want to provide per zip code prices. The inputs they use are population density, crime rate, and availability of installers. This will lead to black neighborhoods being charged higher rates (since they statistically have higher crime rates).
Even though they have instituted a policy systematically favors one racial group over another I don't think your little racism is the right term because at no point did they consider race. In fact, the world is so backwards that they would have to either purposefully overcharge white people or undercharge black people to not charge the two groups differently.
They are literally damned if they do and damned if they don't. Either way they are racist by a legitimate definition of the word.
The best solution I can think of is to try and make the world as race blind as possible while trying to improve disadvantaged communities. So we should remove names from the hiring process when people. Yet, your sister has a point, CoC need to develop a culture of education and hard work. Its a tough problem that needs help from everyone.
It's the term itself. You can differentiate between Racism and racism, but as soon as you call someone a racist, you've labeled them as an evil bigot. Racism is bigotry, but bigotry exists in tons of forms. It's hard to recount the absurd, prejudiced attitudes even intelligent and moral people will have about things like nationality, religion, programming languages...etc.
Well, I don't know. The thing I do, and it feels like water dripping on stone, is I call out small assumptions whenever I see them, and I always, always draw attention to communities of color as being people, citizens, deserving of all equal opportunities (and pointing out how some law, algorithm, or assumption is denying them one).
It's a real gentle advocacy, but it's also easy to stick to because it's absolutely the right thing to do once you see how stacked against CoC the system is
There's nothing wrong with this, in fact it is probably the correct thing to do, but you can really quickly become that guy. Oh, there's Johnny again, acting like we're all a bunch of racists and we don't understand the daily struggles people have. You can get tuned out really quick, if it's presented in terms that compare one group to another, the implicit assumption that because you're not in that group, you've had it easy. When people feel confronted in that way and they know they haven't had it easy, they're less likely to care whether they are racist. That's the impression I get from the groundswell of support for someone like Trump. The small-racists aren't supporting him because they hate other people, they supporting him because he act like he cares about them and at least rhetorically will stand up for them.
I guess what I'm saying is, it's important not to lose sight of the fact that the goal must be to stand up for all groups of people and to deny bigotry in all of its forms.
I think that communities in the Midwest have tighter cultural restrictions on what it means to be "one of us."
What I've seen in SF is a lot of tribes with very tight restrictions on being "one of us." What's more, is that this tribalism seems to be mostly pattern matching as opposed to being based on principles. Back in the day, musicians would at least pay lip service to judging fellow musicians on their music, as opposed to how they dressed. It's only after I came to SF, that I encountered musicians talking about how doing so was some kind of good idea.
Even the tech community has pockets of people who think like this. So now my key question, when it comes to evaluating people at the most fundamental level, is to ask, "Do they put principles before tribe or tribe before principles?" The former group tends to be a slim minority in SF, where the rarity is proportional to the trendiness. I guess that's just how it's always been, everywhere money and power are concentrated.
(It's worth noting that, while this sort of thing comes up a lot in the context of the midwest, the midwest isn't special in this regard.)
> I think that communities in the Midwest have tighter cultural restrictions on what it means to be "one of us."
The genetic basis for delineating "races" is sketchy at best. The cultural aspects are as important as skin color to the definition of race, which is why either the first or second definition of "race" in any reasonable dictionary refers to all these things aside from "melanin content".
So at some point, segregating oneself from people who worship differently, go to different schools, play different sports, ... -- especially in communities where many of these divisions are inspired by geography distributions that were intentionally created along racial lines less than a century ago -- is more than just "unhappy coincidence".
But let's set that aside for a moment and take your assertion as fact.
> This puts the Midwest in a really hard place because just about any white person can claim (truthfully) they are not being racist. Yet, the outcome of the collective actions of all of them end up with a pretty strong divide that is mostly along racial lines.
Indeed. Sometimes, the consequences of aggregate social behavior are more important than individual intent. (Actually, I'd argue almost always.)
A community in which wealth is disproportionately divided along racial lines is a racist community, even if no one in that community harbors individual and purely racially motivated prejudice.
> Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix this?
Teach people how to think dispassionately about systems.
I'm not sure that there is a way to fix this without switching from a "nominally typed" definition of racism to a "structurally typed" definition of racism.
Such a definition already exists. And by happy coincidence, the programming analogy works especially well because this notion is already called "structural racism".
> So it seems like it is an impossible situation.
At least for the current generation, for whom anything short of direct and violent prejudice on the basis of a few phenotypes is the only thinkable definition of racism, and for whom "racist" is a stinging moral and personal indict rather than a statement of fact about an emergent phenomenon that may or may not have anything to do with the content of any particular individual's character.
> At least for the current generation, for whom anything short of direct and violent prejudice on the basis of a few phenotypes is the only thinkable definition of racism, and for whom "racist" is a stinging moral and personal indict rather than a statement of fact about an emergent phenomenon that may or may not have anything to do with the content of any particular individual's character.
This is so well said, I think it deserves to be singled out
So many people get personally offended when one is discussing these matters.
Yeah, I describe this as "exotic-ism", many midwesterners don't really like different things from them, except in a tourist sort of way. However, I think that even if someone in their town is the same as them except for skin color, they'll still treat that person a little different. It's a stretch to say they are colorblind except for cultural differences.
What you're describing generally fits under the umbrella of xenophobia. You can qualify it as "cultural xenophobia" if you want to distinguish from dislike of aliens in particular.
I said nothing about friendship or lack thereof. I never said treat everyone like your friends. I said don't treat people differently because they come from a different community. Whether that's their race, religion, citizenship, income, what neighborhood they grew up in or whether or not they were born on one side of the river or the other.
There are interesting agent-based models that explore segregation based on the relatively innocuous idea that people have a tendency to want at least some portion of their neighbors to be similar to themselves (across some dimension). In those models, segregated populations are found to occur with frequency far exceeding what one might think would emerge without explicit intent.
http://nifty.stanford.edu/2014/mccown-schelling-model-segreg...
As a Midwesterner, this is incredibly accurate. I personally don't like multiculturalism, and I don't know of many people in my area that do. In my opinion and experience, multiculturalism in society makes a sense of community very difficult if not impossible to create. Having standard methods of communication, standard social and moral norms, and standard goals and beliefs makes empathizing with my neighbor so much easier than it is in big cities.
There's also a question of how much a culture influences a persons behavior. Multiculturalism in school and work pushes the idea that all cultures are made equal, yet different cultures are represented unevenly in our society. There has been a significant amount of racism against Asians and Jews, yet both groups have significantly higher average incomes and college attainment rates than other groups. Personally, I don't believe that's a coincidence, and is due to their cultures that emphasize self-discipline, self-improvement, and consideration for their fellow man. There are some cultures formed by chronic stress and poverty(white trash, ghetto cultures) that don't have those traits, and so their people don't make it as far in life. That's not because of racism, that's because of poverty and chronic stress.
I'm pretty sure it was the offspring of people who "don't like multiculturalism" who beat me up in middle school for being part of geek culture rather than the prevailing rural culture of my hometown.
I personally am a big fan of respecting others despite cultural differences.
> I'm pretty sure it was the offspring of people who "don't like multiculturalism" who beat me up in middle school for being part of geek culture rather than the prevailing rural culture of my hometown.
Any ideology taken to a violent extreme is bad. There are people who are getting beaten up for believing there should be a southern border wall. Those people beating them up are in the wrong, but that doesn't mean their opinion is baseless, merely their method of expressing their opinion is wrong.
> I personally am a big fan of respecting others despite cultural differences.
Yet there are bounds to what is acceptable, is there not? If someone walked down the streets naked, would you not think they're crazy? If a man wanted to stone a gay person, or shun a woman for exposing her hair, would you not look at that person with disdain?
Given that there are bounds in variance for acceptable behavior, then why shouldn't there be regional differences in acceptable variance?
Devaluing those who don't conform to local cultural norms destigmatizes violence against them. If you promulgate the belief that cultures should not mix, you cannot disavow blame for violence committed against those of a minority culture just because you personally didn't raise a hand against them.
> If someone walked down the streets naked, would you not think they're crazy? If a man wanted to stone a gay person, or shun a woman for exposing her hair, would you not look at that person with disdain?
You are conflating laws with culture to make a strawman. GP specifically talked about black culture, not violent-religious-fundamentalist-nudist culture.
> If you promulgate the belief that cultures should not mix, you cannot disavow blame for violence committed against those of another culture just because you personally didn't raise a hand against them.
This is a slippery slope fallacy, saying any sort of action in one direction will lead to or promote violence. A lot can be accomplished without violence.
> You are conflating laws with culture to make a strawman.
No, I'm not. Those are laws because they are social norms that have been deemed unacceptable to break, thus are enforced. Regardless of whether or not you call the cops, you would still think they're crazy for walking around naked, because our cultural norms say that anyone walking around naked is crazy, not because they're breaking the law.
> GP specifically talked about black culture, not violent-religious-fundamentalism-nudist culture.
Where did I mention a violent-religious-fundamentalism-nudist culture? Be honest, would that _really_ be the first thing you think about when you see someone walking naked in the middle of the street?
> Where did I mention a violent-religious-fundamentalism-nudist culture?
By mentioning "stoning", "shunning", and "nudism" as "examples" of different cultures. That's absurd, as absurd as my joke combining the three.
Let me reword your hypotheticals. If someone walked down the street in a hijab, would you think they're "crazy"? If someone celebrated different holidays than you, prayed to different gods, or spoke a minority dialect of English, would you look at that person with disdain?
Because many people do. Many of the same ones who "don't like multiculturalism". And that's the racism that minorities encounter in this country, day in, day out.
And, regarding "slippery slope", consider that desire for cultural homogeneity has no history of correlation with violence in this country. [1] [2] [3]
> You did. By mentioning "stoning", "shunning", and "nudism" as "examples" of different cultures. That's absurd, as absurd as my joke combining the three.
You're twisting my words in an attempt to delegitimize my statements. Those are real facets of different cultures, and acting like each doesn't happen somewhere in the world is disingenuous.
> if someone walked down the street in a hijab, would you think they're "crazy"? If someone celebrated different holidays than you, prayed to different gods, or spoke a minority dialect of English, would you look at that person with disdain?
There is a spectrum of responses. I personally wouldn't look at them with disdain, but I would also have no desire to interact with them. I don't understand why they would go to an area of the world with a fundamentally different worldview from themselves.
> You are living in a hole if you think that belief in anti-miscegenation (which, let's be honest, is really what "not liking multiculturalism" is) and violence have no history of correlation in this country.
First, you're conflating race and culture, which are very different things. Race is determined by genetics and ancestry and can't be changed, while culture is a way of life, and determines their view of right and wrong and how to interact socially.
Second, just because there is a history of extremism doesn't mean any opinion in that direction is ridiculous. Nazis killed millions and nearly took over the world. Does that mean Republicans, who are also right-wing, should be banned? There have been black extremists who have done terrorist acts in the name of equality. Does that mean racial inequality should just stop being considered? No!
I'm not saying that nonconformists should be rounded up and murdered, but I also don't think that having social standards or social pressures to conform are bad either. Like everything, it needs to be done in moderation.
Culture has always played a part in what we call "racism" and it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise. Especially it is disingenuous to claim that racism is rare, yet that it alone, and not anti-multiculturalism, was responsible for white flight.
> Culture has always played a part in what we call "racism" and it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
You are right. There is generally a correlation between the two, and historically the line has been blurred. They are, however, significantly different things, and I always take care to differentiate the two. The idea that genetics and skin color determine superiority is racism, and is ignorant of the facts. A culture, though, determines basic things like family structure and the definition of right and wrong. Do we really want to argue that there is no right and wrong way to live life?
> Especially it is disingenuous to claim that racism is rare, yet that it alone, and not anti-multiculturalism, was responsible for white flight.
We weren't discussing white flight. I never made that claim.
Don't liking multiculturalism and respecting people different than you are two different things. You can be respectful and still wish to live in a more homogenous community.
For example - I can respect my neighbors (with the same default respect I give to all human beings who aren't assholes etc.), but don't like the fact that they can't speak the country's language.
This is a question of which came first the chicken or the egg?
Is the fact that cultures are represented unevenly in society the fault of the non-dominant cultures or the dominant culture?
Is poverty and chronic stress cause by culture or is it caused by racist systems?
It might be a cycle but if people weren't racists then it might be easier to break the cycle.
Personally, I love multiculturalism. Being a white guy growing up in an almost exclusively white area gets to be monotonous. Dealing with people from other cultures is a lot more fun than dealing with people like me.
> This is a question of which came first the chicken or the egg?
Oh, I absolutely believe that the uneven distribution of certain races in those poverty cultures is due to historic racism. I'd have to be deluded to not believe that. When an entire race was suppressed just a couple generations ago, it makes absolute sense that that race would continue having an issue with poverty.
However, I don't think race is the issue anymore. I think the issues are culture and poverty, with poverty being the much more significant of the two.
Proof of this IMO is in the white trash culture. White people born and raised in poverty in a culture of hopelessness tend to have terrible college graduation rates, low average income, and high crime rates. There's no systemic racism keeping them down, yet they don't succeed.
> Is the fact that cultures are represented unevenly in society the fault of the non-dominant cultures or the dominant culture?
Jewish and Asian cultures are non-dominant, yet they succeed in our country. Dominance isn't the issue here, I don't think.
> Personally, I love multiculturalism... Dealing with people from other cultures is a lot more fun than dealing with people like me.
That's great! I don't have an issue that some places and people think like that. I just don't see why that kind of mentality needs to be brought to places that think differently. There are always acceptable limits of variance within a culture. Some cultures disallow women from showing their hair, others stone gay people. Neither of those aspects of a culture would be allowed here. Why shouldn't different regions of the country have different bounds for allowed cultural variance?
Add me on the list that loves multiculturalism. It is so much more interesting and I find a desire for anything else hard to understand. What I am most curious about is why something a cherish so strongly others dislike.
I am a foreigner and I lived in for my last year of high school in Virginia (I was the exchange student of the school).
I remember how people that said they were "atheist" were demonized (and chastised socially). These kids were smart, hard working, yet people would discriminate against them (socially), for not sharing the same religion.
I remember I had to say "I am agnostic", in order not to be chastised myself.
So, that "your culture is different", can extend to religion, ethnicity, last name, being vegan, etc.. etc... Lets call the spade a spade, it is a form tribalism and bigotry at the end of the day.
I would like to add there is racism everywhere. Midwestern folks are not the only guilty ones. Have you not watched the recent world series between Dodgers and Astros?
A few weeks ago I was in a rural Minnesota bar watching the Packers only to hear some guy start making jokes about black female anatomy and picking cotton. He got some laughs and kept rolling from there. Jokes about menstruation/tampons/cotton picking fall pretty squarely in my "overt racism" bucket.
Yep.. I've lived on both coasts as well as Chicago and it's much easier from my personal experience to run into people making idiotic racist remarks in the midwest. Now granted, there are racist people everywhere but the frequency was much higher.
Here is the SPLC's interactive map of 'hate groups' in operation. Though the density seems, to my eyes, correlate strongly with population, there are still a fair few assholes out here.
While I think their definition of "hate group" is sometimes too expansive (e.g. religious groups that are mostly about something else but disagree with gay marriage), SPLC is still credible.
That's the point here. The parent comment is leveraging the credibility of the SPLC to smear a community/region based on the organization's subjective definition of 'hate groups'.
An interactive 'hate map' seems to encourage this form of stereotyping. It's all about the branding. It works because there's always a kernel of truth in stereotypes (I'm sure there are true hate groups in Indiana), but that raises larger questions about stereotyping regions or races or religions or anything for that matter.
I don't think they're smearing. There is a cluster of white nationalist groups in southern Indiana but I don't think that means people are generally more racist there than say, Ohio.
The two things I take away from looking at the map are 1) it's not just a southern thing (which I think is a misconception they're explicitly trying to correct) and 2) the hate group density correlates with population centers pretty well (which is often the case for maps of people).
Because there are people in the SLPC who are abusing the reputation of the organization as a political weapon. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an ex-muslim who wants to reform the society she came from and Majid Nawaz is a muslim reformer. Labeling what they are doing and saying as "hate speech" is intellectual dishonesty.
No offense, but I'm going to believe the SPLC in general all the same. They have a pretty good track record over the decades. Yeah, if they screwed up 2 things, that's not good and they should fix it. But, a 99.9% 'correct' rate is pretty damn good all the same.
You should email them and tell them though, I'm sure they would want to correct anything they are wrong about. Smearing people incorrectly is something I imagine they would want to make right.
They have a pretty good track record over the decades.
They seemed to have taken a "hockey stick" turn in the past several years.
Yeah, if they screwed up 2 things, that's not good and they should fix it.
There's more than just those two things.
You should email them and tell them though, I'm sure they would want to correct anything they are wrong about.
There's already a lawsuit.
Smearing people incorrectly is something I imagine they would want to make right.
I've had pretty much the same thought, but my conclusion is that their definition of "right" has become essentially tribal, and that they feel justified in using their reputation as a partisan weapon, because in their minds, their ends justify those means.
The Midwest still has residential schools, using a token weekly class to claim it's not perpetuating the cultural genocide. Sadly, it's often better than the alternative, living through a brutal winter with a wood stove and no running water.
Once, when visiting my father's extended family in Missouri, an older man killed the dinner conversation stone dead by suggesting that the police should have just killed that ------ Rodney King. That remains the most racist thing I have ever personally witnessed.
My spouse's family in Wisconsin is more racist than my family in Indiana, disguising it somewhat by talking about "the chodnies" (derived from the Polish czarny). And my sister-in-law's husband puts the most obnoxious crap out on Facebook and Twitter. It isn't exactly "we're glad that black kid is dead", but rather "we support the police; hero hero, protect and serve, rah rah rah!" which is implicitly the same thing, when the cops seem to hardly ever kill any white people while they're out gunning down members of the community and their dogs.
There's a reason why Wisconsin instituted citizen review boards. "We investigated ourselves and cleared ourselves of all wrongdoing" works great for the cops when everyone on the local force is racist, but not so much for minorities. The hand that Black Lives Matter claps against is racism in police forces, and racism-by-proxy by refusing to hold the cops accountable for it.
It isn't always orthodox color-based racism, either. It's more like identity-based tribalism. The different "black" cliques didn't always get along at my high school. For instance, one calls the other "stuck-up boujie", and the other responds "thugs and chickenheads". They would definitely use that unmentionable slur on each other. The Jews would often hang out together because they already knew each other from Saturday School, and anti-Semitism is still a thing in the Midwest. I'd occasionally hear about fights that started with racial slurs, but never actually saw one. One of my friends got called "chink" sometimes.
What I saw from where I sat was hostile enough, and I suspect it was probably worse in the places I was not.
Mainly, you hang out in your own groups, and avoid those that don't like you. That keeps your group somewhat homogenous, which may coincidentally make it look like your group is racist. And that might be true, but a lot of it is surrounding yourself with people who think and act like you, and not just people that look like you. In my groups, racism was not part of the group identity, and the racism that occurred elsewhere was simply ignored whenever possible. All that mattered was that it didn't happen among ourselves. If it happened to one of us elsewhere, that was awful and pitiable, but the best we could do was to not add to it. It's a sort of head-in-the-sand approach, which works for a lot of social problems in the Midwest. If you pretend it isn't happening, it's only a problem for the people it's happening to.
I spend most of my time in Ohio and WV. Ohio might as well be in Canada and WV split from Virginia to join the union. Still confederate flags flying in both states. It's not about "heritage" at that point.
I went camping in French Creek PA , about 40 miles west of Philadelphia. Tons of confederate flags in that area. I guess it was about "history" for those folks too :/
The midwest was simultaneously the home of some of the finest soldiers in the Union army (the Iron Brigade and others), and a hotbed of the "copperhead" movement of pro-slavery, secessionist northerners.
I grew up in South Africa from 87-92, I have lived in Detroit since 2011. In terms of this being an impossible situation, I think truth and reconciliation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_reconciliation_commi...) might be one way of addressing the racial segregation that persists here. (https://demographics.virginia.edu/DotMap/index.html). At the very least I was surprised and glad to see a comment about the racism that the article elucidates at the top here on HN.
>Yet on the other hand, most PoC in the Midwest have a culture that is different on most of the above. So when a white Midwesterner doesn't treat a black Midwesterner that speaks, dresses, even walks differently as a part of the community is it racism? I would say no since it isn't about race but is about culture.
That would explain the slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynching, and segregation...
I think this discussion is geared a lot more towards the Upper Midwest, not the South as a whole. As many are saying, the climate of discrimination is very different between the two.
Wow. As someone still in the Midwest, this is a really clear explanation of what I see going on all around me (and that I try to fight within myself).
Travel helps. However, you can't count our annual mass migration down to the gulf coast for spring break because it's just a temporary transplant, and during it you're really only meeting other Midwesterners.
>Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix this? One option would be to have the cultures integrate so there are not sub communities for PoC.
I find it a bit insane that people think that this is even something that needs to be fixed - why can't different ethnic groups live among themselves, instead of being required to lose their ethnic identity and become part of the larger group? Do you seriously think that's what they actually want? What you're advocating for is the destruction of their ethnic identity. I think that's wrong.
Why does living next to someone else destroy an ethnic identity? Does a chinese family moving into an italian neighborhood all of a sudden mean that no one can open an italian restaurant? If there is a German festival one weekend, does that mean they can't have a Scottish highland festival the next weekend in the same venue? Does a Russian family moving in next door mean that I have to start drinking Vodka instead of Rum?
No, of course not ... all of those are ridiculous statements, because the truth is that the only reason you would not want to live near someone else, is because you (not you personally, in the general sense) don't like that someone else.
Clamoring on about "maintaining your ethnic identity" is just a dogwhistle ... and masks the true underlying racist/xenophobic underpinnings of that person's mindset.
So the actual issue here is that the 'pure' bloodline might be tainted? Oh boy. The cat is out of the bag.
If this was actually about 'culture', we'd have a different discussion here. Nothing prevents a chinese/italian family from making dumplings and home-curing some pancetta. If anything that seems like a pasta/noodle dream-team of family. The cultural elements that make up an ethnic identity are remixed over time, and the ones that work tend to stick around.
Is there some creative destruction that happens there? Sure. But that's the norm, not the exception. Plenty of great stuff comes out of it. We wouldn't have chicago-style deep-dish if all the italians had to stay in Italy and use fior di latte and mozzarella di bufala exclusively.
I give the guy credit for at least admitting his point of view, disgusting as it is. We can down-vote him on HN and wish extinction upon his mindset, but the scary reality is, at least in the U.S. that his mindset is now spreading, after a long period of time where it was declining.
It's not enough to hope that it's extinguished--you have to actively fight it.
If you ethnic identity is so weak that the only way to preserve is to make babies and indoctrinate them and hide them away from all other ethnic ideas, then maybe your ethnic identity is obsolete.
>I find it a bit insane that people think that this is even something that needs to be fixed - why can't different ethnic groups live among themselves, instead of being required to lose their ethnic identity and become part of the larger group? Do you seriously think that's what they actually want? What you're advocating for is the destruction of their ethnic identity. I think that's wrong.
Probably because segregation leads poorer conditions for PoC.
>In 2015, 17.3% of blacks in Milwaukee were unemployed compared to 4.3% of whites, the report found. And many blacks in the city were earning much less than whites. According to the report, the median household income for blacks in Milwaukee was $25,600 compared to $62,600 for whites.
>Among 20- to 24-year-olds, the Chicago area's employment rate is 47 percent for blacks, the lowest among the big cities, and 73 percent for whites, which is among the highest. Only Philadelphia comes close to that gap, with a 48 percent employment rate for blacks and 66 percent for whites.
> In a 2015 essay for Slate, “The Rust-Belt Theory of Low-Cost High Culture,” reporter Alec McGillis marveled at the cheapness—and, it seems, the mere presence—of good orchestra and museum tickets in interior cities:
One fact of history that’s often overlooked is that patronage has left an incredible legacy in places like Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etc. For example, one of the finest collections of French Impressionism in the US is not in New York or San Francisco, but Philadelphia. The art museums in Pittsburgh are amazing, easily worth the (very affordable) trip out to see them.
We tend to define these cities by the decline of their industrial economic base, but we forget their history. The age of the industrialists started in about 1860. By 1900, Cleveland, Buffalo, Cincinatti, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Pittsburgh were among the 15 largest cities in the country (the top 15 also included Philadelphia and Baltimore—two cities which have phenomenal culture compared to what you’d expect based on their present economies). Cleveland, with its famous orchestra, was one of the ten largest US cities from 1890-1970.
Another thing that's often overlooked is that those cities are still quite large when defined by their MSAs. When the people "left" places like Detroit, they didn't all go to a different region; they went a few miles from "Detroit" to the Detroit suburbs, which we consider to be different cities mostly for irrelevant historical reasons.
Detroit (14), St. Louis (20), Pittsburgh (26), and Cincinnati (28) are all still in the top 30 metropolitan areas. Even Buffalo -- the smallest on your list -- is today the country's 50th largest MSA.
Detroit is twice as large as much hipper (and vastly more talked about) places like Austin (31) and Portland (25). St. Louis is quite a bit bigger than both of those, as well.
By the way, to your original point, I'm quite worried about the impacts of corporate consolidation on the legacy you describe. When Anheuser-Busch is purchased by a foreign conglomerate, it's not just the jobs of a few thousand St. Louisans that are at stake. It's the entire patronage infrastructure that such a large corporate citizen brings with it.
Anheuser-Busch did great things for St. Louis, presumably, because the executives at AB gave a shit about St. Louis. They lived there. Their kids went to school there.
That's not an assumption we can make about Belgian ownership.
I mentioned Philly and Baltimore because although they’re on the east coast, they are port cities that suffiered along with the decline of the rust belt and never recovered. Philly is one of the poorest large cities in the US, but used to be very rich.
Most of the East Coast, once you get far from the largest metros, is actually Rust Belt. The entire canal system running from Chicago to New York was once shipping and manufacturing, so was New Jersey, so were parts of New England, Pittsburgh was steel, etc.
Nice read! My wife and I just moved to Urbana/Champaign Illinois 4 months ago for my new job, and the Midwest really is different (from Arizona and California where we lived before). People are really nice, food is great, very inexpensive place to live, and there is real natural beauty here if you look for it. Anyways, we are delighted with this area.
Congrats on the move. I grew up in Champaign. I wanted to get out of there by the time I was 18, but now I get back at least once a year and have a new appreciation for the place. Go to Papa Dels pizza if you haven't been. Get the deep dish. It will change your life.
I've been preaching the goodness that is Papa Dels since I was out there for a conference and programming competition at UIUC in the very early 2000s. Happy to see I'm not the only one.
Just be aware, a slice of the deep dish is pretty much a meal by itself.
> People are really nice, food is great, very inexpensive place to live, and there is real natural beauty here if you look for it. Anyways, we are delighted with this area.
You probably shouldn't talk like that if you want it to stay that way...
Denver is a warning, not a template.
(I say this with partial sarcasm, obviously you can't fight change to some extent but being conscious of it and careful management to guide it's direction can prevent a lot of problems)
Former UIUC student... just wait till it starts snowing ;).
But in all seriousness: the town(s) do have their charm. And if you're bored, its only a hour drive to Chicago. The affordability was actually what attracted me as a student: I had a rather high standard of living for the money I was living on.
Of all the things I appreciated about the Champaign-Urbana area, the food was not one of them. But do check out the downtown Urbana area, it's a great place!
Whenever we drive nearby, the spouse and I wonder if the people from Normal are really just a bunch of freaks, and they just named the city that as a ruse. Obviously, all the "normal" people must therefore live in Bloomington.
> ...humility is one of those words, like authenticity or (lately) resistance, that serves mainly to advertise the absence of the thing named...
Humility is having a realistic view of your own abilities and worth while being OK with it. It's not a vacuum of self-worth or something. We have other words for that.
To illustrate, it's not humble for LeBron James to say he's bad at basketball. It would be humble for him to claim his ability while internalizing his limitations, both on the court and off.
So, to bring this back to Midwesterners, a Midwestern might say, "Yeah, I'm a great programmer, but it's not like I'm going to change the world through constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility. Pass the green bean casserole, please."
I see humility as having a proper understanding of your own ability without arrogance. If I am at Thanksgiving dinner and my mom tries to brag that I am the best programmer in the state it is humble to correct her in saying that even though I have a great job, there are a lot of things I still cannot do.
But look at the context. "Authenticity" has been made meaningless, so any mass-produced focus-grouped consumer product can be called "authentic". And it's now the same with humble, which mean that it should describe something small, frugal, or at least not-ostentatious. But now big, splurgy things or places call themselves humble.
Speaking as a Midwesterener, it was a valiant attempt to examine the Midwest without descending into contempt and cliches, but alas, it ultimately failed, and failed hard. Partial credit given for making it for a few paragraphs before descending into the usual trite analysis.
Speaking also as a Midwesterner, I would disagree. I was born and raised in Michigan, and have not really left much other than to couch hop and envy the lives of my friends who've moved out to the coast. I feel that the contempt the author descends into is self-inflicted, and may representative of the culture and authors midwestern upbringing.
From what I've observed, midwesterners are brutally humble, almost to a fault, probably stemming from the deeply rooted conservative values. Being midwestern, to me, is not its own identity, but rather a lack of the other negative identities of the regions. Speaking in terms of stereotypes I hear here (not trying to discredit these regions) the vibe is: I'm NOT a no-patience jerk like on the east coast, I'm NOT lazy and pretentious like on the west coast, I'm NOT shallow and two-faced like in the south, therefore, as a midwesterner my strongest identity is defined by a lack of those negative associations.
Midwesterns choose not to be defined by what they are, which I see as no-nonsense and generally pretty authentic and genuine, but rather by what they are not. "We are not all of those bad things those other people in those other places are, and that's our best quality." But through my travels I've learned that not all people in those places are like that, and not all midwesterners are nice, but in general they prefer to be viewed as collective lack of bad things, rather than a collection of good things. This, plus an underlying more conservative and humble perspective, I feel gives light to the lack of regional identity that is perceived by people both inside and outside of the Midwest.
>From what I've observed, midwesterners are brutally humble, almost to a fault, probably stemming from the deeply rooted conservative values. Being midwestern, to me, is not its own identity, but rather a lack of the other negative identities of the regions. Speaking in terms of stereotypes I hear here (not trying to discredit these regions) the vibe is: I'm NOT a no-patience jerk like on the east coast, I'm NOT lazy and pretentious like on the west coast, I'm NOT shallow and two-faced like in the south, therefore, as a midwesterner my strongest identity is defined by a lack of those negative associations.
Thanks for letting us know that some people think it's humble to be xenophobic. Funny thing: my in-laws are from the Midwest, and they've never spoken like this.
I am from the Midwest, currently living in the South, and I think "shallow and two-faced" may actually be putting it too mildly. The idea that these assholes may actually elect Roy Moore after he unconstitutionally rammed his religion down other people's throats in an official capacity is bad enough, but after mounting credible evidence of him habitually creeping on 14-year-old girls as a grown-ass adult man? No f'kin' way.
Jared Fogle (the Subway creep) went to my high school in Indiana, and if he showed up to a reunion after getting out of the pokey, he would not get the same reception as Roy Moore currently gets in Gadsden, Alabama. Fogle couldn't win an election for county roadkill remover, much less senator for the whole state.
We don't rag on other regions as a matter of course, but we do judge them by their perceived shortcomings, even if we don't call them out on it.
And Midwesterners are stereotyped. We're small-minded, prudish, unfashionable, uncultured, suspicious, avoidant, passive-aggressive, and boring. We drink pop and weak beer and eat fried cheese. Didn't you know?
Although I don't agree with all the negative identities the parent posted on the different regions, you twisted the parent's comment. "a lack of the other negative identities of the regions" doesn't mean they're xenophobic.
This is an excellent analysis. The author hints at something similar in the article: "['flyover country' is] a stereotype about other people’s stereotypes". Which I thought was also really an excellent description turn of phrase
The part the I think was closest to the truth is that the Midwest does not have a strong collective culture like the East, South, West, or Southwest. They are much more likely to identify as part of their state or city more than the Midwest as a whole.
Part of it's the size of the area in which the inhabitants consider themselves Midwestern, and the lack of unifying landforms (a mountain range, an ocean) to give them common experiences, I think.
For instance, it seems like when the Midwestern region comes up[0], people usual mean the upper midwest and especially the Lakes states, which is weird to me as someone who's lived in Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Iowa, because down here we don't really mean to include Lakes states when we say "Midwestern". I mean, there's stuff there. Outdoors stuff. That's worth doing/seeing. That you can reach in less than one entire day of travel by car. Doesn't seem too Midwestern to me, or to have much to do with my experience of Midwesterness (I gather they'd disagree, which is my point). The Lakes states, including Minnesota and Michigan and at least the northern 1/3 of Illinois (and certainly anything East of Illinois) are a Western extension of the East from our perspective.
[0, EDIT] by which I mean when the region comes up in articles, or on the Internet generally.
I had a very bitter argument about whether Kansas was Midwestern or not. An important distinction is that what's now considered the "Midwest" used to be just called the "West", and that the Great Plains formed a natural barrier of relatively lower rainfall that settlers headed out to Oregon or California would be crossing over before they hit the Mountain West. As a result, settlers in Kansas had lots of natural connections to Missouri, which is fairly clearly in the Midwest.
I always thought that the Missouri river was kind of the western border to the midwest. So Kansas City, which straddles the river is still in the Midwest, and a very large chunk of Kansas' population lives there and are midwestern, the western chunk of the state is much different.
Yeah, the Midwest or Midwestern culture extends well into places that get identified with other regions. Plenty of people from Oklahoma and Missouri that fit it. What's more Midwestern than being called the "Show Me State"?
I am humble unlike all those full-of-faults lower being from other regions. My identity is defined my my lack of faults, unlike other regions. And that attitude is no nonsense, because we are truly better then them.
It seems more like fake humblesness more then really being humble.
Others' stereotype of us: Who is there to have a stereotype about? Nobody lives there. Not "nobody" like "nobody lives in the Midwest", really nobody, like "total population: 0". Just a collection of ghost towns.
Our stereotype of ourselves: Rather close to the Midwesterners, minus the emphasis on agriculture. (Yes, we grow what we can where we can, but lack of water means that there isn't much. Agriculture doesn't dominate the way it does in the Midwest.) We say that we are self-reliant, independent, friendly (except maybe to outsiders), down to earth. We're fairly well educated, but we still have good common sense.
An observation ... just the fact that many here treat the "midwest" as one place in their comments speaks of maybe misunderstanding/ignorance or even arrogance. As a person who has lived in Wisconsin (suburban and rural), Minnesota (urban and suburban), and Chicago, there is an absolutely astounding difference in people, attitude, and culture in all 3 areas. Granted none are really like the east or west coasts, but they are all vastly different places to live.
I'm deeply offended that you decided to lump in my town in the Bay Area with the rest of the West Coast. There's an astounding difference in culture between it and San Diego. /s
Seriously, though, at some point we have to group regions together. All American cities have more similarities than differences. Regions do share some commonalities.
I'm not sure what you expect from this piece. The author mentions that there are differences between the various cities in the region, contrasting Detroit with Cleveland. Should he have gone into more detail?
I have lived in Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.
They are very different to us, but they are more like each other (and Ontario) than they are like the other places I have been. I can definitely see how outsiders might consider them to be indistinguishably similar without actually living in multiple regions of the Midwest.
Yeah, the whole idea of "midwest" is pretty flawed. Like a lot of places you really need to look at the migration patterns that made up the communities (including what tribes got shoved where). I've often said that all these scifi maps about the breakup of the US that have ND and MN in the same country just don't get how far the area has diverged. Heck, the difference between St. Cloud MN and Minneapolis MN is amazing.
St. Cloud actually has nice people who get mighty offended when you won't let them help you. I reserve derogatory comments for some of the Twin City suburbs.
I found this piece to be interesting, but rather odd too. For example from the middle;
I took the first option. As a child, I accepted without thinking that my small town, a city of 9,383 people, contained within it every possible human type; if I could not fit in here, I would not fit in anywhere. (“Fitting in” I defined as being occupied on Friday nights and, sooner or later, kissing a girl.) Every week that passed in which I did not meet these criteria—which was most of them—became a prophecy. Every perception, every idea, every opinion that I could not make immediately legible to my peers became proof of an almost metaphysical estrangement, an oceanic differentness that could not be changed and could not be borne. ... I knew that cities existed, but they were all surely just Michigan farm towns joined together n number of times, depending on population. Owing to a basically phlegmatic temperament, and the fear of hurting my parents, I made it to college without committing suicide; there, the thing solved itself. But I worry what would have happened—what does often happen—to the kid like me, but with worse test scores, bad parents, an unlocked gun cabinet.
This sounds like the general lament of an intelligent, intellectually curious person growing up than anything specific to the midwest. Of course ones ideas aren't understood, and if too many big words are used then one marks themselves as "talking funny". There are a great many under the 75th percentile after all.
The one thing I found missing from the present article was the nearly total absence of oppurtunity in all these rural midwestern towns. A whole lot of my peers put a trailer on Mom/Dads (or Grandma/Grandpa's) land, and eked lives somehow. I honestly don't know how. The poverty, the grinding hopelessness is endemic for the region. So yeah, there's nothing else to talk about, so you talk about the neighbors, or that strange kid at school who wear's the sweater with puff balls. And don't by any means be different lest you be gossiped about as well.
That part about the 10k person town containing every type of person really resonated with me. There was a real sense of isolation in the small midwestern town I grew up in simply because it was pre-internet and there just wasn't a decent way in most cases to see that the greater world existed.
But that has little to do with being in the Midwest. You'd meet a bigger variety of people in Cincinnati than 29 Palms, CA. People seem to conflate "small town America" with Midwest while overlooking their own rural backyards and ignoring Midwestern cities.
>>> ... and eked lives somehow. I honestly don't know how.
Drugs? Or some other invisible economy? I had the same impression of late-90s Vancouver. No real growth outside of real estate, but lots of people with piles of cash and a huge population who never seemed to work but still made rent each month. In BC pot brought in, by some estimates, more money than forestry and mining combined. Now it's purely real estate.
It's probably a combination. Truckers often live in small towns because it's cheap and has a culture they like. Multigenerational rural families often have plenty of farmland and a large positive net worth. There's still some manufacturing jobs in many of these areas, though most places are still continuing to decay due to outsourcing and globalization.
Seems odd to do an analysis of Midwestern culture and not bring up its religious differences with the rest of America, especially the South, which is generally more Baptist and charismatic.
"reporter Alec McGillis marveled at the cheapness—and, it seems, the mere presence—of good orchestra and museum tickets in interior cities"
I'm always impressed that foreigners (I'll call them that, since they tend to think the same of us) discount art from the heartland simply by being shocked it even exists.
Flatness is mentioned five times. Not where I grew up and there are certainly days in the warm months when I struggle to ride my bicycle up hills that I wish all of the midwest was flat.
I'm from Kansas, I get so sick of hearing how flat it is here. Florida and Illinois are both much flatter, and oddly enough I hear how flat Kansas is from residents of both.
Nobody carries on about Texas being flat and boring, yet it's only marginally less flat than Kansas.
<i>Nobody carries on about Texas being flat and boring...</i>Well then, you heard it here first. What's the worst thing about Texas? There's so much of it.
While you probably have a point, this isn't a very professional or productive way of expressing your opinion.
edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? Is "This nerd doesn't know shit" really the kind of dialog that we want to promote on this site?
I didn't downvote you, but calling him out on his language is significantly less interesting than the thing the parent said. If your quote was the only thing he said you'd be right. I think the quote added a lot of context and information his message though.
> born and raised in michigan, lived all over the state. I hope i die here.
That statement on its own communicates he likes Michigan, has no interest in moving.
> This nerd doesn't know shit
Adding this sentence modifies my interpretation of the first. This guy _loves_ Michigan. He feels strongly about his community and the contents of the article offend him. We can nitpick the insult on the end or the language he used, but I think what he had to say about Michigan was "putting himself out there" a little bit that makes it harder to do. It didn't feel like trolling to me, felt like a genuine dude with genuine things to say.
> We can nitpick the insult on the end or the language he used, but I think what he had to say about Michigan was "putting himself out there" a little bit that makes it harder to do.
I didn't say he was trolling. In fact, I said "While you probably have a point," emphasizing the fact that there may be a substantive post within the comment.
However, it says in the Hacker News Guidelines[1], "Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." His comment contained too much snark and not enough civility to be a productive post. If those kinds of comments are left to multiply, this site may lose its capacity for substantive, nuanced discussion of topics that many people disagree with.
> born and raised in michigan, lived all over the state. I hope i die here.
You really think this adds "a lot of context and information" to his message? You must be joking. It's a knee-jerk reply consisting of two short sentences, not even properly capitalized.
> This nerd doesn't know shit
> felt like a genuine dude with genuine things to say.
Michigan is very pretty, and has lots of nice areas, especially around Lake Michigan. I like to visit when I get the chance. I imagine the winters would be pretty rough there though. I live near Chicago and they get pretty bad here, usually.
Outside the lake effect snow belts, the weather isn't all that different from Chicago, the lakes really moderate the cold. Most of Michigan stays warmer than Central Wisconsin or Minnesota. I guess a large area gets lake effect snow though.
Strahler and Strahler's college text charted how people like their own region and dont like others as much. Perceptions are strong
Having 50% midwestern life and 50% east coast, i size up the people first before i say im from (midwest state) or (eastern state).
Also, rent a car with same-state plates when you move into a new house from out of state. Most of your neighbors will make assumptions about you if the state plate is different. Once you get cars registered put on the new plates and return the rental.
Where are the new neighbors from?
"New York"
"Montana"
"Florida"
"Massachusetts"
"Iowa"
"Utah"
"California"
Pushy,outdoorsy,poor or old, liberal, farmers, Mormon, nutty
I grew up in the Midwest (Kansas City) .The first problem is no one knows who is being described.
"Midwestern" - It's a term used by the media. They tell us it includes Oklahoma and North Dakota (which are insanely different?). It's supposed to include Chicago, Milwaukee, Omaha, and Topeka?
Half of the West coast thinks "midwest" includes the South?
Just moved out of the midwest.. I was originally from the East coast and moved back.
I'll just say this, being a minority, I was shocked at how much contempt people had towards middle-easterners and black people. On numerous occasions people have said they've been "dirtying up the neighborhoods which is why they moved to another burb... they need to take better care of their lawns, etc". Out of all the companies that I've worked in the midwest, I've ever had a co-worker that was a black software engineer. People are put down in unfortunate ways. it's really fucking hard to climb up the corporate ladder than either coasts
Pay is crap.. people have been clamoring that the midwest is going to be the next silicon alley.
There's a reason why Chicago was the only major city to drop in population the last couple of years. There aren't that many interesting projects happening, it's not conducive to start-ups. i've had more arguments in the midwest with people that think tesla is a POS company for not following the rules. there's a lot of people averse to change.
Out of all the companies that I've worked in the midwest, I've ever had a co-worker that was a black software engineer.
The only black software engineer I’ve worked with (as in, on my team and writes code) since moving was the guy I hired. And I live in Seattle and I’ve worked at Microsoft. It’s a big shock moving from Indiana, where I’d had several black coworkers over the years. So I’ll see your Midwestern Rednecks anecdote, and raise you a Coastal Snobs Shocked That Midwest Has Internet.
i've had more arguments in the midwest with people that think tesla is a POS company for not following the rules.
Buncha rubes, not going gaga over an unprofitable company getting Federal subsidies so that rich people can buy new toys. So you’re saying you absolutley lack the ability to fathom why someone might not share your enthusiasm?
|So you’re saying you absolutley lack the ability to fathom why someone might not share your enthusiasm?
Also I can empathize why people are against Tesla, it's just the general mindset in the midwest when it comes to new technologies. There's no wrong or right it's just the way life is out there.
One -27F January day, I looked at my wife and said, “this is America, and we don’t have to live like this.” So we moved to North Carolina, then eventually got a gig with Microsoft. Haven’t worked at Microsoft in twelve years, but Seattle area suits us so we never left.
Also I can empathize why people are against Tesla, it's just the general mindset in the midwest when it comes to new technologies.
Chicago politics are not conservative; it is one of the country's most stalwart Democratic bastions. (Politics here are problematic for other reasons).
Chicago politics are dominated by Democrats, but it's far more conservative than some of the crazy granola stuff on the West Coast. Rahm Emanuel would be considered a right wing demagogue in San Francisco.
When it is -27F outside, what do you do? Do you go to work? Do you crank up the furnace and huddle under an electric blanket and wait for it to get above 0F again?
At the time I got on the internet and gave this new website called monster.com (stupid name for a job board, it’ll never last) a shot, narrowing my search parameters to “charlotte, nc”. True story.
But seriously, you stay inside if at all possible. Cars often don’t start, and as a consequence businesses don’t open. If you must go somewhere in the car, dress like you’ll be walking. If you don’t, and your breaks, you can die. OTOH, that’s Indiana. Whitehorse, Yukon, they probably shrug their shoulders with a “feels like it might be warming up, eh?” And sub-zero F temps didn’t stop from playing outside as kids. We just didn’t stay out long. Cover every exposed body part, layer on the insulation, won’t kill you right away. Hell, I’ve gone on a nice, brisk training run when it’s -10F. Again, don’t skimp on the clothing, file a flight plan with the spouse/SO/roommate (these days I just carry a phone), tell your friends later about your epic run this morning.
Though extreme cold can probably kill you faster than extreme heat, like anything else if you just use some sense and respect the fact that you can die in such conditions, you’ll be fine.
You do the midwest thing: just go about your business and pretend everything is fine.
You warm up your car 20 minutes before leaving. You throw on your layers that are reserved for the negative double digits (flannel jeans, extra thick wool socks, fur hats, massive scarf, thick mittens), check that the emergency kit and blankets are still in the back seat, and head out into the world and go about your day. In the city it isn't all that big of a deal, but it could mean danger if you get stranded in the countryside.
One of my favorite things about the super cold is how warm the house parties and social gatherings can get. It's so cold that you can't be outside for more than a few minutes at a time, so it really feels like an accomplishment when you make it to a friends house or a blizzard happy hour (that is, if it isnt too cold for snow).
> i've had more arguments in the midwest with people that think tesla is a POS company for not following the rules. there's a lot of people averse to change.
That is, in contrast, what I love about the Midwest. The other day, I was snaking around the line barriers at the airport security, even though it was empty. At the end, there was a man and his young son waiting for me. He explained somewhat embarrassed that his son had wanted to walk under the guide ropes, which they did, but then they waited because he didn’t want to cut me in line. Being from DC, where people treat trying to merge as a personal insult, that made my day.
>There's a reason why Chicago was the only major city to drop in population the last couple of years. There aren't that many interesting projects happening, it's not conducive to start-ups
I would say it has more to do with the Illinois rather than the city itself. People are leaving Illinois, not just Chicago. Also, the startup culture is different in Chicago but to say there there aren't that many interesting projects happening is entirely subjective. Also, startups aren't the only companies doing interesting work as well. There is a ton of interesting work in the finance sector. There are also a bunch of very interesting startups such as Uptake and Tempus.
>Pay is crap.. people have been clamoring that the midwest is going to be the next silicon alley.
Cost of living is also significantly lower as well.
> Cost of living is also significantly lower as well.
Especially outside of Chicago. Literally any midwest 'burb. Most of us have no problem driving 30 minutes to work. That vastly opens up the options, even working in a city.
|There is a ton of interesting work in the finance sector.
I agree.. and I'd probably recommend any friends who were planning on moving to Chicago to focus on that area as there are a ton of really good financial companies.
"i've had more arguments in the midwest with people that think tesla is a POS company for not following the rules. there's a lot of people averse to change."
People are averse to change that might negatively their impact livelihood, such as taxi drivers not being great Uber fans. Since most of the innovations in recent years have meant less jobs and worse condition for the area, it is understandable they might have such a position.
>I'll just say this, being a minority, I was shocked at how much contempt people had towards middle-easterners and black people. On numerous occasions people have said they've been "dirtying up the neighborhoods which is why they moved to another burb... they need to take better care of their lawns, etc". Out of all the companies that I've worked in the midwest, I've ever had a co-worker that was a black software engineer. People are put down in unfortunate ways. it's really fucking hard to climb up the corporate ladder than either coasts
Welcome to any "nice" suburb on the east coast for that matter.
Also it sounds like you moved to the Chicago area. Large metropolitan areas are generally their own culture bubbles (and resented by the rest of the state/region but that's a different discussion).
I've worked in the Chicago area most of my career. I've had multiple Indian, Asian, Black, and Women developers on my teams. My current team has two Indian people, one woman, and one Asian guy, and we only have 7 people on our team right now.
I agree that the pay and number of opportunities aren't that amazing here, though. I've been fighting that for a long time.
> There's a reason why Chicago was the only major city to drop in population the last couple of years.
It's because it's a shithole. Expensive, but salaries are midwest-grade; weather sucks almost year-round; the government is as corrupt as a two headed snake; one of the most segregated cities in the world; and has a huge violent crime problem.
I hope you're not comparing it to San Francisco where I'm 1.2x as likely to be jumped with a deadly weapon, 1.3x as likely to have my house broken into, 2.3x as likely to have my phone stolen and 2.2x as likely to have my car stolen.
And the best part is the worst neighborhoods in SFBA aren't even in San Francisco, and it's still scary as shit.
Let me know when they finish cleaning all the human shit out of the escalators on the train.
It's "expensive" relative to the rest of the midwest, but far less expensive than SFBA or NYC. It's a huge city with all of the features of a huge city where you can get a nice apartment in a trendy neighborhood for $1500.
It's not a place to live if you want SFBA weather patterns, that's true.
I watched with amusement at my own midwestern family who thought moving south was the same as practicing racism and then later became quite racist as their own neighborhoods became more diverse.
I watches with less amusement as the evangelical right wing stuff eventually made its way into their thinking and churches as well.
I thought Homegrown Democrat by Garrison Keillor was a nice exploration of the demise of the midwest "culture".
A little too much liberal hogwash for my taste - e.g trying to explain as much as possible with skin-color identity politics. But glad others liked the article.
I appreciate the effort the author put into this (and he/she is clearly a good writer), but as a Wisconsinite I can't help but chuckle at the length and type of content - it's thousands of well-chosen words in an academic voice describing... the Midwest. To me, nothing is more definitively a real metaphor for "boring" than my home.
The author here implicitly assumes the truth of the descriptions of the Midwest and Midwesterners that he discusses. Further, also assumes that nothing changes, nothing happens in the Midwest. (I particularly liked the intro; now try describing the Midwest to someone who doesn't actually love there.) Everyone is from the Midwest or describing the Midwest, no one seems to be living there.
Here's a hint: there is no Midwest. That should be obvious; it's roughly twice as far from Oklahoma City to St. Louis as from London to Paris.
If you want to read about the past of the central part of the US, can I suggest a brilliant writer who isn't mentioned in the article: Walter Prescott Webb. See The Great Plains or The Frontier.
What I'd like to know is if any other place is substantially different. I lived in Texas for a while, and met relatively few people who behaved like stereotypical Texans.
I live in Wisconsin, and it is a divided state. There is heavy racial segregation, plus strong red/blue and city/rural divisions. That makes it pretty hard to identify a single unifying culture.
I moved to Minneapolis last month after working as a software developer in NYC for twelve years. It still feels like I'm on vacation in comparison, with all this space and a reasonable cost of living. My main concern is career development with the thinner tech scene out here (Chicago didn't seem bad when I looked, although I'd prefer somewhere smaller).
Chicago born, moved to Minneapolis for school and work. Lived there 8 years. While everyone was nice, found it very weird that any conversation that started spontaneously (Stores, parks, etc) always seemed to be with people from somewhere else. The running joke was people are nice, but they are just not taking applications for friends at this time.
the tech scene isn't very broad, but there is a lot of depth in the medical device scene. Also, surprisingly, a lot of developer jobs with some of the bigger banks and the insurance companies.
Housing prices on the Minneapolis side of the river are much better than the St. Paul side. Sadly, living on the opposite side of the river from your job is just horrible.
I was raised in Mitchell, South Dakota, a midwest town of about 15,000.
The vast majority were white, a small number of Native Americans (we all called them Indians back then) and just one black family. The black family's father was elected mayor, he was popular.
There was some racism, not as much as people seem to think. IMHO, I've seen more racism in bigger cities.
Growing up in Indiana, I thought my home was backward and boring, and wanted to see what the rest of the world had to offer. After spending 10 years in a variety of cities across the world, I was relieved to find that Indiana houses were still cheap enough that I could buy one and move back.
I think that communities in the Midwest have tighter cultural restrictions on what it means to be "one of us." This can be affected by where you live, where you work, where you go to church, where your kids go to school, what kind of car you drive, what you do for fun, how you dress, even how you talk. Midwesterners are happy to accept someone who matches them in all these areas regardless of skin color. This is why you get backlash from them when you call them racist because the criteria they use is not skin color its all the other stuff.
Yet on the other hand, most PoC in the Midwest have a culture that is different on most of the above. So when a white Midwesterner doesn't treat a black Midwesterner that speaks, dresses, even walks differently as a part of the community is it racism? I would say no since it isn't about race but is about culture. But on the other hand, when most white people do this to most black people, it sure does start to look like it.
This puts the Midwest in a really hard place because just about any white person can claim (truthfully) they are not being racist. Yet, the outcome of the collective actions of all of them end up with a pretty strong divide that is mostly along racial lines.
Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix this? One option would be to have the cultures integrate so there are not sub communities for PoC. This doesn't seem to have worked. But the other option is that you expect Midwesterners to treat people from outside their community the same as people inside their community. That isn't going to happen. So it seems like it is an impossible situation.