The difference between judgement and racism
Love Walter Williams take on this. And he absolutely nails it.
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"If you said it’s the behavioral reputation of that demographic as a group, you’d be absolutely right."
Here's a personal experience as an example:
I went to the store with my wife and one of my daughters. She was probably three or four at the time. Her personality is bubbly and infectious and she has never met a person she didn't know she didn't like. We got up near the checkout stand with our few items and immediately ahead of us was a man in probably his 50's or 60's - white hair, long mustache and beard, covered in tattoos and dressed in the denim and leather of a biker gang and sporting a bandana cap. He was a big guy, too, but not overweight. I'm 6'4" so I don't look up at too many people, but while he wasn't as tall as I was, I wasn't eager to bump into him on a dark street, if you catch my drift.
My daughter, however, for some reason unknown to me, went up to this gentleman and tugged on his leather jacket. I watched in terror as he turned to look at her. She gave him a kind of impish grin, and crooked her finger at him. He bent down and she wrapped her arms around his neck and planted a kiss on his fuzzy cheek. And the guy just melted. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes that he blinked away, then he stood and turned to me and my wife and told us of his granddaughter who was about her age that he hadn't seen in quite some time. He told us how that simple gesture from my unassuming daughter had really cheered him up and made his day.
What Williams pointed out in his article is exactly the same differences in reaction between myself and my daughter. Being associated with the reputation of biker gangs and such, I had one initial reaction when seeing this man. My daughter, lacking any such reputational knowledge, came to a completely different conclusion.
I do not see the point of the article though. Is it just that we all make snap judgements, pre-judgements, that sometimes lead us to distrust people because of their physical traits? This seem obvious to me, although maybe it would not be if I hadn't read Blink and things like it.
The point of the article was to point out that there is a real difference between judgment calls (based on association) and racism and that too many people lump any call they don't like into racism. Should we all try to be less judgmental? Probably. But those initial reactions aren't based on anything we control - they are based on our experience to a given situation.
I believe that this is what Williams was pointing out: that if people want to see fewer negative reactions, they ought to first look to see if the collective experience that leads to those reactions has a basis in fact. If so, it isn't racism but rather an earned reputation. And the only way to change reputation is to change behavior.
Look at the different focuses of ethnic groups. Where is rap music lauding cop-killing most prevalent? Where is the highest rate of juvenile delinquency and incarceration? Where is the highest rate of poverty? Lack of education? They all have the same answer. And those cultural problems aren't getting better, but worse.
post judice is judging after facts in evidence - earned reputation
reverse racism is trying to correct a situation by creating the same situation in another segment of society. Most of whom were not part of the problem but as a result become part of it ex post facto post judice.
the original problem then becomes 'deserved.' Less judgemental how about more judgemental including judging ones own self?
And I agree that we ought to primarily be concerned with ourselves first. If we, ourselves, correct what we need to, we'll then not only be more prepared to suggest change for others but better able to exemplify how to make those changes effectual.
The only way to negate these bad experiences is to have good ones to offset them. But that isn't necessarily under our control. That's the whole rub the author is talking about: that these various ethnic groups need to take control of building a positive reputation so that people have a positive first impression rather than a negative one.
Now does that mean that we can't control our response? No. We can't control the initial reaction, but we can override the response if we concentrate, but it isn't going to be the natural response.
Your out-group mistrust thing is just another example. Yes, we are tempted by this thought process. But it leads us to the wrong answers.
We cannot wait for various cohorts, whether it's identity groups or circuits assembled on a certain day, to point us to the right answer. People will continue getting serious diseases right after getting a flu shot and have a feeling it must be chance. People will keep having bad experience with various identity groups. If we wait for this to stop, it means forever giving into illogical thinking. We must use critical thinking to step out of what seems right intuitively.
Overcoming this natural inclination toward fallacy is a cornerstone of what I took away from the two Rand books I read.
Not necessarily. Usually reputations are earned and well-deserved. And that is the author's point. Until these specific groups decide to change their actions, they will continue to perpetuate the reputation they have fought and striven for. Again, people keep equating reputation with racism and THAT is the fallacy.
One only has to look at the heroes of the various cultures to see how those choices directly lead to reputation. I look at (c)rap music in particular, which glorifies lawbreaking, mistreatment of women (and others), and disrespect for authority. I look at the fact that all of the major "artists" intentionally spent time in prison to build their "street cred". And then I look at the demographic which supports this genre and I am not surprised one bit in the reputation of their followers simply because of whom they choose to emulate.
"Your out-group mistrust thing is just another example. Yes, we are tempted by this thought process. But it leads us to the wrong answers."
Let's look at this from a scientific standpoint of hypothesis, testing, and confirmation. Reputation is expectation or hypothesis. And when you have a group that has confirmed a given hypothesis through repeated actions/testing, I think you would be disregarding logic not to pay attention to all that previous testing! The difference in this situation is that the hypothesis is ultimately mutable because it is based on human choices which are also mutable - rather than say the gravitational constant of the universe.
Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills by Dr. Steven Novella
The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
Waiting for groups to dedice to change their actions to understand reality is unacceptable. We must approach the world based on observation and reason. That means treating people as individuals and not getting caught up in this group identity crap. The source of it is partly our natural out-group-aversion, and politicians expoit that by trying to get "women's vote", "rural male vote", "African American vote" instead of appealing to individual citizens' reason. This group identity politics is just out-and-out wrong.
As I have already pointed out, there is nothing un_reasonable about reputation. Can individuals defy the reputation and expectations of their particular ethnic or social group? Absolutely. But that has nothing to do with the _initial reaction we have - which is spawned from our intellect's attempt to fill in a distinct gap in knowledge based on inference. We have zero control over that initial reaction. What we choose to do afterward we can to some degree control, but that initial reaction is a result of ignorance - for which the only cure is knowledge. And knowledge comes after the fact - not before.
Why do we generalize? Why do we rely on reputation, etc.? Because it is physically impossible for us to know enough ahead of time about any particular thing to do anything else!