I think the real metric should be childhood household income. That transcends race or gender and universally inhibits the child in almost every measurable way.

On the contrary, targeting childhood household income will see representation of the groups you're trying to help drop to nearly zero. Impoverished white children outscore wealthy black children by a significant margin on standardized tests, and there are a lot more poor white children than poor black children.

There used to be programs like that, and they mostly helped the children of Chinese and Vietnamese refugees from communism. Low childhood household income doesn't really have much effect - "low income" in a US context is quite rich in a world context.

"childhood household income. That transcends race or gender"

vs

"targeting childhood household income will see representation of the groups you're trying to help drop to nearly zero"

Did you misunderstand the point? It seems right that if you want to help poor people, you should target poor people, how could that be counterproductive?

I think GP's point is that if the goal is to help those disadvantaged by childhood poverty, assuming similar levels of poverty, it will help white children who are relatively less disadvantaged and not help relatively more disadvantaged black children.

But that should be the goal. Using skin color as a proxy for being disadvantaged works only inasmuch the proxy is precise enough. If it's not, it's just another bias.

If you had a better metric that can be used to help people from marginalized cummunities, wherever they happen to be, you should be using those if the goal is to be more inclusive, more diverse and more equitable.

But the problem is that the very same psychological mechanisms that drive racism are the ones which drive these modern attempts at fixing racism.

I think there are two different but related angles at play:

1. Historical injustice. Racism against black communities in the USA has such a long and disgusting history that when new generations learn about that it's understandable that people want to wash that away and find ways to make amends and counterbalance things.

2. Since we live in a world where skin color is a visible marker that you literally wear on your skin, there is a sense that you're just being disadvantaged for being you and thus you need a more-than-normal counterbalance to set things straight.

We thus ended up in a situation where we destroyed the aspirations of a truly color-blind society. We need to keep reminding ourselves about the fact that color matters.

This is not helping defusing racism. This is feeding racism because despite the best intentions it operates in the worldview of racism.

Of all the words you Americans have purged from the language you kept the word race, a word that post WWII many European nations successfully defused.

You seem to be reasoning from the standpoint that anti-black racism is no longer a factor today.

This is not the case.

Once you understand this, it is easy to see that actual, first-order racism is what destroys the dream of a colorblind society.

I understand that anti-black racism is still a factor today.

I really fail to see how doubling in on the importance and reality of race and skin color in particular (as opposed to culture) everywhere is going to make that problem go away.

Exposure to other races through integration increases understanding and reduces the tendency towards prejudice.

Makes sense?

Skin color is visible, but it is not a marker unless you allow it to be one.

But what if the poor people have the wrong skin color?

...raise taxes on the households of whatever the "correct skin color" is until they qualify for these programs? Obvs. :)

/s, I hope. :/

I don’t know. When Sweden reached 58% women in university, they stopped the gender equality programs. Why would you help men if everyone knows they are advantaged?

(Oh man, please answer, but we’re overdue for an overcorrection, and it might look as dangerous as 1934).

The real metric should be how good looking they are. That transcends household income, race, and gender. /sarc

Generally rich people are better looking, so it doesn't really hold up.

It's telling that culture will instantly lump anyone successful into the "white" category. I feel like this diversity drive was broken from the start

> It's telling that culture will instantly lump anyone successful into the "white" category.

They also do the inverse, insisting that obviously white Arabs and Persians can't be white because they don't live in successful countries. (On the other hand, Russians can be white despite not living in a successful country. Who knows. In this case, it looks like "white" actually means "Christian", except for Middle Eastern or Korean Christians.)

Kim Kardashian was supposed to be non-Caucasian, if you believe Twitter. Her name clearly identifies her as Armenian; you can't get much closer to the Caucasus than that. Although it is true that she's only half Armenian, with the remainder being Scottish and Dutch.

>Russians can be white despite not living in a successful country

Which is especially perverse when one considers how ethnically heterogeneous Russia is as a result of the USSR's policy of integrating ethnic Russians into minority areas and shipping some number of those minorities back to Russia (basically so they don't incite discontent in their native lands).

Where I'm from, racial statistics and profiling are forbidden since they're antithetic with republican universalism ; but even taking the US culture into account, this point of view seems extremely bigoted.

Can you explain why you find it bigoted? I think if you ask a lot of Asians you'll find they agree with the statement.

So... what are the categories then? Black and Everyone Else?! That seems pretty silly on almost every level.