Christian Persecution vs Persecuted Christians

[Ovinomancer]

Baseline is "a line serving as a basis", "a basic standard or level; guideline:", "a quantity, value, or fact used as a standard for measuring other quantities, values, or facts". So, choice of the baseline is somewhat arbitrary.

However, one would not usually use the *top* of what you want as the baseline, though - that's an goal or aspiration, not the baseline experience of people. As a practical matter, it is common to take an average position as your baseline for comparison. When you consider that women + minorities outnumber white men, not suffering under these burdens is probably not the average or base experience of Americans.

When speaking of how you want something to be, you baseline at that point and track deficiencies. Unless you don't want society to be free from racism, I fail to understand why your baseline wouldn't be no racism. That's a coherent and desirable baseline, and it retains usefulness even prior to reaching it because you can track defects and address them. Privilege theory, on the other hand, establishes a baseline that is, essentially, everyone suffers from some racism. Then it uses that baseline to look for deficiencies and surpluses. It then labels surpluses as as undesirable as deficiencies. Given that the surplus in this case would be a state of suffering no racism, that's a broken concept.

Well, the word "privilege" has existed for a very, very long time. That we have a word for it is not enough to prove that some form of privilege exists in the world?

After acceptign taht there are some people who are privileged, and who is not, it comes down to quibbling over *who* is privileged, and who isn't.

Having higher salaries, not being nearly as subject to police scrutiny, and so on is not enough to prove that white men generally sit in a place of privilege, to you?

Please, tell us what proof would be required - no moving goalposts.

Again, I don't argue that people can be privileged. The rich and politically connected are certainly privileged over everyone else with respect to the law. However, I steadfastly reject that being a non-victim is a privilege.

 

[Ovinomancer]

No, my baseline is to demonstrate what the average is, so that variations can be clearly seen from said average. I never said that it was a goal. It's merely a recognition of what is. If one group can be seen to be receiving more than this baseline while another receives less, when adjusted for population, then there's a reason for it. Standard statistical analysis.

Then I would say that your baseline has no merit. Further, if you're relying on statistical analysis, you're usually averaging across the sample to achieve a mean, which would result in everyone suffering some level of racism even if your data has non-victims and victims of racism. Statistics is a poor choice when you can look directly at the data and note who suffers racism and who doesn't. It's pointless to use statistics to achieve a mean state of 'all suffer some racism' so that you can then use that mean to see which people suffer more or less racism when you could just look at the data to begin with. Statistics is just offering the pseudoscience of 'but I did math, so it must be true,' which, come to think of it, is one of the major ways statistics is misused and misunderstood. But that's beside the point.

And the idea that such a thing would be "everyone suffers some racism", rather than the 'dominant' group receiving the same as does everyone else, demonstrates the very privilege that I'm talking about. Equal opportunity for equal ability isn't racism.

Unless you're suggesting that the dominate group should suffer racism because the less dominate group does, how is your statement anything other than a restatement of my 'no one should suffer racism' as a goal to achieve? And how would rejecting the idea that privilege = non-victim mean that I show my non-victim status when I say that no one should suffer from racism?

And, of course equal opportunity isn't racism. Where did that come from?

 

[Kramodlog]

Again, I don't argue that people can be privileged. The rich and politically connected are certainly privileged over everyone else with respect to the law. However, I steadfastly reject that being a non-victim is a privilege.

Wait. You say the rich have a relative immunity from the law and that is a privilege, but you deny that white people who enjoy a relative immunity from racial discrimination is a privilege?

That is a double standard.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You assign "homework" now? I must say I enjoy the irony.

It is little surprise that you still fail to understand what assigning homework means. It means that you cannot demand that I do work to support or understand your position. Asking you to 'do the work' to show that you support your positions isn't assigning homework -- it's the expectation that you can actually articulate your position and do the necessary work to get from point A to B. You haven't done that, you've just stated your position and declared it unassailable.

Privilege as already been established. That you deny it doesn't mean it wasn't done.

No, it hasn't been established, it's been claimed. The work that needs doing is showing that it is, indeed, a privilege to not be a victim.

Could be. Underrepresentation can be a sign of discrimination. If only there was an article with more examples showing Asians are underrepresented at the top.

And still you waffle. This is indicative of your entire discussion form -- you refuse to actually stake a position yourself, because that would mean that you could actually be engaged and possibly shown wrong.

Again, if you want there to be more Asian partners, which other group do you suggest should have fewer partners? It's a simple question, yet I predict that you'll either pretend it does not exist or refuse to answer it.

I must say, I find ridiculus how stubborn denial of privilege can get. And I'm impressed how much denial can veer a conversation away from the initial subject to focus on discrimination of a group in one profession. But I guess when a group is losing (illegitimate) power "death throes" are to be expected.

Huh. I'm not impressed by how much you resort to attacking your interlocutors when you find yourself on uncomfortably shifting ground, as you do with the Asian lawyers argument.

Tell you what, if you completely drop the argument that Asians are discriminated against in the law profession, I'll agree to stop pointing out how badly wrong you are on that point. I'm a magnanimous guy like that.

Why? It seems you do not respect your own (sudden) standard of establishing things. Again, the irony is enjoyed.

Instead of engaging the argument that your statement makes a false equivalence the the supposed existence of a glass ceiling must mean that a bamboo ceiling also exists you choose to pivot and make a personal attack on me -- not any of my points, but me. Classy.

In case you failed to follow, the argument that one thing existing must mean that a similar thing exists is not a good argument. For instance, horses and unicorns are extremely similar. They are identical in form except that a unicorn has a horn. The noted existence of horses says absolutely nothing about the existence of unicorns. It would be wrong to say 'if you believe that horses exist, why would you not also believe in unicorns.' That's the level of argument you made, that's the level of argument I called out, and you respond with a 'you do it, too' argument, when I've clearly never made such an argument here (I've made that argument before, but I was young and foolish).

 

[Ovinomancer]

Wait. You say the rich have a relative immunity from the law and that is a privilege, but you deny that white people who enjoy a relative immunity from racial discrimination is a privilege?

That is a double standard.

In what way is it a double standard? The rich and and politically connected do not face the same law that I do, not because the law is applied unfairly to me but because their money and power can buy them a more lenient law. That's privilege. On the racism hand, I don't get a better form of racism applied to me because of my money or power, I just do not suffer from being a victim of racism. Not being a victim is not a privilege, unless you first assert that everyone should be a victim. Granted, I am taking it as given that no one is asserting that, and I would be badly wrong if people do assert that as their argument, but given that I believe that no one is making the argument that people should suffer from racism, then I have no privilege by not suffering from racism.

People that suffer from racism are victims, and that needs to stop. Stopping racism is not helped, in any way, by asserting that it's a privilege to not suffer racism. That's actively harmful to the intent.

Privilege theory was originally used to look at how racism continues to exist through the lens of how people see or don't see racism. I will freely admit that by not being a victim, I am less disposed to notice minor transgressions of racism. That's trivially true, and freely granted. And privilege theory was perhaps useful, in the sense that someone needed to write a paper on something obvious by making it unobvious (a common issue with social sciences), to show that this is a factor in the continued existence of racism. However, that it is a factor (and no arguments that it is a factor in the continuance of racism) it is not the largest or most important factor. However, some enterprising social warriors got ahold of it and realized that it could be used to justify victim-status seeking behavior by painting white people as having more than not-white people. This was accomplished by using the word 'privilege' which is a word with loaded connotations, especially against the backdrop of identity and class politics. Into this arena privilege theory metastasized into it's current incarnation, which is just used as an excuse for people to label whites as privileged and needing to be taken down a notch so that they are no longer privileged. This has poisoned the racism debate by making non-victimhood something to be ashamed of and/or something that is unfairly taken, while elevating victimhood to a more normal state. It's okay that you're poorly treated, because it's those privileged white people that did it. It just explains away the problem into something that you can be angry at all white people for instead of the jerk that actually was racist towards you, or the organization that was racist towards you. You no longer direct anger towards the appropriate targets, but instead embrace victimhood by spreading out the blame and anger at the 'privileged'.

Now, have I said or done things that were racist because I didn't understand that it could be taken as such? Absolutely. I'm human and I make mistakes. But at least I try to understand what specifically led to my mistakes and try to correct that rather than decrying that I'm privileged and engaging in false penance by checking my privilege. But I still refuse to believe that it's in any way helpful to label non-victims as privileged.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Why? They are inextricable. White privilege is, in essence, the lack of racist oppression and the attendant inability to notice. Privilege isn't something outside of racism, it was conceived as a tool to study institutional racism.

Again, they're related, but not the same. Privilege is the penumbra of racism,

Racism is conscious and intentional discrimination, privilege, generally speaking, is not.

No, that's racism. Privilege would be that whites don't have to worry about racism.

Which is what I descibed in what you quoted- Caucasian buyers have no worry that they will be rejected as customers out of hand whereas most blacks do.

To be correct, Gates was arrested for lipping off to the officer. While I'll agree that still reeks of racism, it's important to get the particulars correct, else you open yourself to specious arguments based on your factual misrepresentations.

First, I checked the actual arrest report, and you're correct on the charge. My media source upon which I relied for the story made a factual error. Still, the underlying facts speak pretty loudly.

Second, let me caution you equally: Don't assume bad intention when simple mistake is sufficient to account for an assertion in a discussion; phrases like "factual misrepresentation" carry a context of deliberate misleading, which can be inflammatory.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

First this:

I couldn't tell a real suit of value from a knockoff. The same goes for fancy watches. I have also known people to invest in a nice suit for church, interviews, etc., but who couldn't afford a car at all. When huge numbers of a race have economic difficulties, it's unfortunate, but the rest tend to be caught up in that profiling.

And this

That's still economic profiling, which is fairly accurate. I don't for a minute believe that that many people are so blatantly racist that they are ignoring you guys based solely on skin color. Some probably are, but the majority of those salesmen are trying to make money and if they thought that black people were as a whole, as economically sound as white people, you wouldn't be getting ignored like that.

Are mutually incompatible: you can't profess to use accurate economic profiling if you are unable to distinguish between the various visible hallmarks of economic success. The fact that people are overspending on their clothing (or other consumer goods) in order to conceal their actual wealth is a known occurrence in all forms of mercantile activity.

But to discount those hallmarks out of hand when the person before you is non-Caucasian is problematic for society in general at the very least, and will personally cost you sales as a salesman. So it behooves the salesman that he at least learn the fundamentals of what those hallmarks are- the better he is at it, the better he'll do.

See my statement above. Oh, and I do dress up when I go looking at cars. I don't want to be ignored while the salesmen go help people dressed up more nicely than I am. Given the choice of white guy in tennis shoes, jeans and a casual button down shirt, or a white guy in a suit, tie, slacks, etc., the salespeople go for the white guy who is dressed up. They profile for economic reasons.

(Emphasis mine)
See mine. Even when I do dress for car shopping, I get bypassed for the white guy in jeans & sneakers with depressing regularity. They're NOT economically profiling, at least, not with any accuracy. They're discounting persons of color despite having the trappings of wealth.

There are reasons other than privilege for all of that.

Those are excuses, not reasons.

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

So your baseline, ie the goal to normalize, is that everyone suffers some racism? Surely you can't actually mean that?

Or is it that you're taking baseline to be the average of everyone today? That's not usually how baseline is used -- it means the expected, what things are built to. That would make me much happier if that's the disconnect.

That's not usually how a baseline is used, especially in the social sciences, which this topic would fit into. What field are you getting your baseline definition from?

 

[Ovinomancer]

That's not usually how a baseline is used, especially in the social sciences, which this topic would fit into. What field are you getting your baseline definition from?

Firstly, the dictionary. Secondly, every discipline that attempts to build toward something sets the baseline design at the desired goal and then measures descrepancies against it. I'll admit that you're correct in that some people use baseline to describe the here and now, but that goes directly to my point that privilege theory, if it uses that baseline of 'some racism', isn't a useful tool to correct the racism. Only by setting the acceptable baseline as 'no racism' can you begin to track deviations from that baseline and move to correct them. Setting the baseline as 'some racism' only labels 'no racism' as a defect from the baseline.

 

[Kramodlog]

In what way is it a double standard?

Because you consider immunity to be a privilege only when fits your narrative. Immunity is a privilege or it isn't.