Race..Culture..Non pc Question

All it requires for civilization to flourish is a respect for property rights.

Compare the societies that are beginning to see an increase in their welfare with those that have an already high degree of welfare that are beginning to see their welfare diminish. What is the common thread holding it together?

The multicultural “training” I have received in my line of work tells me that having a multicultural workplace will perform better than one of people who are experts in their field. So now when I need to hire someone, their cultural background is more important than the skills they have for the job. While I agree that people from other cultures can bring new ideas or whatever to a group, that does not make them quailified to do the job. If they are they should be hired on that merit.

On a different note, what is cultural? Race, nationality, social class, education, religion? There are 3d and 4th generation arabs living in the US, are they not Americans? What about black Canadians (I don’t think they call them African/Canadians do they?) Give it a rest. You are what you are, your heritage is just Genealogy.

[quote]limburg wrote:
The multicultural “training” I have received in my line of work tells me that having a multicultural workplace will perform better than one of people who are experts in their field. So now when I need to hire someone, their cultural background is more important than the skills they have for the job. While I agree that people from other cultures can bring new ideas or whatever to a group, that does not make them quailified to do the job. If they are they should be hired on that merit.

On a different note, what is cultural? Race, nationality, social class, education, religion? There are 3d and 4th generation arabs living in the US, are they not Americans? What about black Canadians (I don’t think they call them African/Canadians do they?) Give it a rest. You are what you are, your heritage is just Genealogy.[/quote]

I am afraid that your training has not quite taken.

You need to be re-educated, preferably on a farm with lots of hrad work in the clean air and no destractions but the nightly public self assessments and group critique.

Ok Orion, you train me. How does all this muiliculticrap supposed to work?

[quote]limburg wrote:
Ok Orion, you train me. How does all this muiliculticrap supposed to work?[/quote]

It does not matter, it matters that you hold the state sanctioned opinion.

Ah, but if the state sanctioned opinion is wrong, do I just shut up and color?

[quote]limburg wrote:
Ah, but if the state sanctioned opinion is wrong, do I just shut up and color? [/quote]

Of course!

This is about the overarching theme that our wise and benevolent overlordsw are always right and have our best interest in mind.

Subversive use of indiviual brain power can and will not be tolerated, after all you are a mere mortal and they have experts.

Panels of experts even.

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]Bambi wrote:
byzantine clerics[/quote]

You do realise these are Christians? And, you do realize that both Judaism and Catholicism (and a tiny bit Protestantism) are oriental in nature? Just wondering…[/quote]

They were the ‘wrong’ enough christians for the fourth crusade to burn constantinople down.

But yes I see your point

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]limburg wrote:
Ah, but if the state sanctioned opinion is wrong, do I just shut up and color? [/quote]

Of course!

This is about the overarching theme that our wise and benevolent overlordsw are always right and have our best interest in mind.

Subversive use of indiviual brain power can and will not be tolerated, after all you are a mere mortal and they have experts.

Panels of experts even.

[/quote]

Wow! How did that Kool-ade taste?

Bump

And notice that several of you here, trod this uneven ground in the past

I’m reading through this. Thanks for the bump, Treco.

Worth the book recommendation. I’m going to have to read Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies.

@Cortes - Just trying to ring you up. Are you lurking us at all? You’re missed.

@smh_23, I know you’ve been taking a break since the election, but you need to come back. I saw that you at least logged in, maybe ordering protein powder but I looked! I want to get into history and foreign affairs more in 2017. It would be good to be able to talk to you. PS, the old avatar is better. I’m assuming the new format made you slightly switch your username? It seems like that happened to a few people.

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Hey Puff.
I put this in the other thread, but don’t think anyone read it.
I’m not a believer of apes to man evolution. But I find this subtle change within a species as plausible. Ex tall crossed with tall begins to create more talls in height until it starts becoming fixed as the trait.

Hey, thanks treco. I’m part way through the Time article. I’ll come back to this with more thoughts. It’s just a fascinating topic.

In terms of culture and biology, @EyeDentist said, [quote=“EyeDentist, post:1363, topic:223365”]
Put simply, when comparative genetic studies are done, there is vastly more variation within so-called races than there is between them.
[/quote]

So much of what we see is socioeconomic and cultural. We have close friends next door who are of Chinese ancestry. Their children have tons of shared experiences with my kids, and we share similar income and educational levels. They have more in common with my children than with any kids raised in China, and my kids have more in common with them than they would some poor white kids from Appalachia. That would be true on all kinds of dimensions.

We could take me and @MoreMuscle. We’ve both been to graduate school, work in the helping professions, like BBing, like talking politics. Lets guess that we both have middle-class backgrounds. I may have much more in common with him in terms of worldview, intelligence, a number of factors than I would have with a poor white woman from Appalachia, and he might be more like me than he would be like a poor, uneducated black man raised in a Chicago housing project. That would be true about all kinds of things, right?

I just bring these examples up because we talk about the female experience, or the Black experience, or whatever. These subgroups, as if they share certain views or traits. The geology department wants an African-American perspective, or a female perspective. What that perspective is exactly is unclear to me, since we vary so much within groups. If they are implying that I think about sedimentary rock in uniquely feminine ways, I’d like to know what that means.

I wanted to read the entire article before I responded. Interesting article for sure…You’re probably right, we likely have more in common with each other than with the respective examples you named. Those two people (A poor white woman from Appalachia and a poor black man from Chicago) likely have more in common with each other as well…but political tactics such as the Southern Strategy were instrumental in splitting the poor Blacks and Whites from uniting against the upper middle class --which led to The Great Migration and many of the prejudices and biases we currently exhibit. Even if we have a ton in common, if you or I are terribly prejudice against one another, we will never co-exist successfully, which is one reason why integration failed. If we fail to acknowledge one another’s individual experiences - (which continues to happen regularly today whenever we dismiss complaints of sexism, racism, etc without any sort of investigation) we will never co-exist successfully.

It seems SJW’s have swung the pendulum in the other direction where they are terribly biased, and prejudice against conservative white men and anyone that wont roll over to their message. While I can understand an extreme response to extreme circumstances, ultimately it continues to divide us into our respective echo chambers. I

You’re right on here. When one group takes a monolithic view to another…we once again dismiss each individual experience. Psychology shows that when we first meet people, we initially judge them based off the schema or stereotype we have in our minds.

For example: In college I had a teammate in who grew up in a pretty segregated area and upper middle class. He told me I wasn’t Black…I said "Why? Because I don’t sag my pants, slur my speech, and had like “gangsta?” He had no idea what to say, and shut down. This pre-conceived notion prevents any sort of relationship from being built.

It can work in the opposite direction as well…when I first started working at my current hospital, which covers a ton of cancer patients that are 80+ years old, I would let thoughts creep into my mind of “what if this patient is racist and doesn’t want to talk to me?” which ultimately could have affected how I treated that patient. But once again, we vary heavily between groups

Ultimately I think when people want a “different perspective” it is an effort to avoid the group-think that takes place in homogeneous groups. In my opinion, different groups of people take different approaches to solving problems - but I have no clue how to demonstrate this objectively. I think you can notice this in your personal relationships with your spouse. Why wouldn’t you want to extrapolate that to the workplace?

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Thanks for such a thoughtful post. I enjoyed reading your thoughts so much. Please do not imagine that I think we are post-racial. [quote=“MoreMuscle, post:74, topic:161524”]
If we fail to acknowledge one another’s individual experiences - (which continues to happen regularly today whenever we dismiss complaints of sexism, racism, etc without any sort of investigation) we will never co-exist successfully.

It seems SJW’s have swung the pendulum in the other direction where they are terribly biased, and prejudice against conservative white men and anyone that wont roll over to their message. While I can understand an extreme response to extreme circumstances, ultimately it continues to divide us into our respective echo chambers. I
[/quote]

That was a very nice way of putting that.

Thanks. That’s very true.

I see some generational differences in attitudes just looking back a couple of generations. I know you see variations among people, and racism may be more prevalent in some pockets but these changes are hopeful. You expect more open attitudes from the younger generations. I see that in my own experience.

Yes. And there’s something legitimate in that, but sometimes we look at diversity based on these ideas of race or gender and ignore socioeconomic class. For example, I live in a very diverse neighborhood with a lot of very accomplished, high achieving people. Lets say we produce 15 kids from the local high school who all get into top tier schools. Let’s say they are distributed evenly according to gender. A couple are Black or Biracial, several Asian kids, a few kids with European ancestry, a couple kids from India or Pakistan, a couple of kids are Jewish, Hispanic. You get the idea. The colleges are telling themselves that they have a very diverse group of students. The truth is, they aren’t so diverse. Those kids are all part of a friend group where they share socioeconomic status and high parental educational achievement. They all know each other, and date each other within that group. If the idea of race is more of a social or cultural thing, these kids share a tremendous amount of cultural effects. None of these kids are coming from “disadvantaged groups” in that regard. They have very little in common with kids growing up in poverty. None of these kids have grown up with food stamps, etc… I know this isn’t everywhere, but that is the reality of my son’s high school years.

A gay friend of mine once told me “It’s a little bit like patting yourself on the back for having gay friends, when your gay friends are likely just like you in every way except sexual orientation.” Funny, but true.

“The race gap in education and achievement has been shrinking in America for 60 years, whereas the class gap has been rising, particularly since the 1980s. It is now twice as large as the black-white race gap, by some measures.” - Haidt.

With regard to biology, we continue to adapt and change according to environment. It becomes really hard to tease out what’s going on, but it’s just fascinating to see how very fast humans do evolve and change. The female brain undergoes measurable changes just in response to pregnancy hormones, or the medical student’s brain puts on more gray matter from studying intensely for a few months. It’s remarkable, and also a little bit scary. Of course kids who are growing up without proper nutrition, or who have homes where there is very little language or literacy will not develop to their potential, and over time humans certainly change and evolve in response to these kinds of conditions. This kind of thing is concerning and it effects poor kids regardless of race.

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Oh, I forgot this!

Some of this drives me a little crazy because the people on the far left want to emphasize group identity over the individual, all while telling us that there are no really biological differences between these groups. There’s no biological reason that women aren’t in STEM fields with parity to men, for example. We’ve seen Scandinavian countries encourage that for many years and they still have a gap there, so it’s interesting and it’s hard for us to see the effects of culture vs biology. The part that bothers me is the feminist rational that my brain is just like yours in terms of aptitude, intelligence, etc… Nothing that I can’t do equally as well, right? BUT I have some uniquely feminine perspective or way of thinking that is really valuable if we want diversity. My status as part of an oppressed group gives me some special knowledge. It’s a little weird to see this argued both ways. We see the same thing with regard to race, considering what we were talking about with regard to within group differences.

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When someone joins a religion is it a reflection of hard coded genetic behaviors?

Will a naturally violent person find themselves more attracted to Islam?

Will a pacifist tend towards Buddhism?

Will a man who will never be satisfied with monogamy find mormonism attractive?

I love having conversations like these so I’m more than happy to talk with you…and you’re making me rack my brain a little bit as we explore this rabbit hole. Maybe some other perspectives will chime in.

No I think this is very accurate and I overlooked it. I’m not sure how rectify something like that. What we find right now is funding schools in poor areas with more money than rich or suburbian areas does not lead to better testing outcomes. But when we talk about the evolutionary aspect, it leads me back to the comparison of Malthusian England to Industrial Revolution England.

When your family has been in poverty for years generally you’re not focused on doing well in school, you’re trying to survive.
There is research out now that shows living in poverty makes you more likely to make poor long term decisions to feel better in the short term.

I see this in my little brother sadly, he is married, has a child, recently moved back into my parents’ house. Prior to moving out of his apartment, he and his wife (who are both 21 year old, middle managers at McDonald’s and make 10.50ish an hour) bought a new jeep. His rationalization ‘we don’t have to pay rent so I can buy this’ when they already had 1 car payment and a truck that had 190k miles on it but was running just fine. I’m like WTF. But he consistently makes decisions like this.

LOL makes sense to me. I’m the only Black person in my Dept. and 1 of 2 males. I don’t think they treat me any differently and I was offered the job before applying but do you think they go to Dept meetings and say “We are diverse!” because of me? probably haha. Meanwhile I’m not that different as you said.

There are a lot of factors that play into this. Is the class gap widening because of the shift in our economy, and increases in automation?
Or are people simply lazier, more dependant on the system, not working?
Lastly, what impact does our current levels of illegal immigration have on it?

I really don’t know the answer. And studies show that illegals coming in essentially keep prices lower and take jobs Americans don’t want to work, but damn if all those Americans took those jobs, what would the gap look like?
I’d like to think an increase in automation has an impact as well. I really don’t know about #2…but it is a narriative you hear from time to time.

Biology is definitely scary in that aspect. But, I wonder if I see it playing out in my family right now. 2 out of 3 of my Uncles on my mom’s side are pretty well off, along with my Grandad who was a Vet, retired from the Army as an E9, and retired from Dupont while also pastoring at a Church. He also gets a check from the VA for Agent Orange Induced Parkinsons. They all came from pretty poor beginnings and now just buy shit if it’s “on sale.”

My Grandad is literally towards the end of his life and is just buying clothes and things. If you come from an upper middle class family, or upper class, they would be investing in stocks and property to pass on to the following generation. But I hypothesize that our family coming from poverty in rural VA has had that sort of biological effect, moving from a place of scarcity to abundance. My mom and my other uncle don’t have that consumerism habit, but also don’t make as much money…so that could say…they just have poor financial habits, but it is interesting to ponder.

I see what you’re saying, and I agree that I believe women can do absolutely anything a man can. I tend to lean more towards culture and socialization vs. biology in that aspect.
Why don’t we give little girls snap together circuit boards? Why do little black boys idolize basketball and football players vs people like Neil DeGrasse Tyson?
I feel like when society reinforces the message that “you should be this”, or “you’re supposed to be that” it becomes internalized. Then when you venture out into the real world and see this reflected, it shapes your reality.

If we grew up in a world where women ran the STEM fields and men were 95% of nurses it would be the exact same dilemma. So our job now is to create environments like the ones the Scandinavian countries have even with the gap still there. Ultimately it’s a long-term game vs short-term. Our cultural paradigms have shifted rapidly in the past 50-60 years from the father that works, the mother that is the homemaker, etc. It will only progress forward, if we have open minded people that encourage it.

In terms of the unique perspective as a person of an oppressed group…that is an interesting stance to take. We’re the same but I have a unique perspective - definition of cognitive dissonance lol. Once again, I’m not sure how to verbalize it, and maybe it’s all just crap? Maybe diversity is there simply to encourage opportunity for everyone in a society where White Men own most of the businesses.

It kind of reminds me of the two sides of affirmative action - some people believe you are lowering the bar to allow oppressed groups in – while others (like myself) believe you are providing opportunities where they were previously prevented from access.

Research reflects that people who are hired via AA don’t perform any worse than those who are hired normally but still the stigma remains (he/she just got the job because of AA - that diversity/perspective quota)…which basically undermines that person’s expertise and credibility.

It is weird to see it argued both ways…and the far left will say “well if you’re against diversity you’re racist or sexist etc.” Rather than say, if we are all the same, then there is no reason to value one group vs another.

But my last point, it is a relatively new problem. Most African, Asian, Middle Eastern and
,Eastern European countries are all homogenous groups already. Diversity is not as large of an issue – outside of the male:female ratio in the workplace.

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As to “joining” or religious conversion I don’t know. Lots of people convert to a new religion because they marry someone of another faith, that sort of thing. Talking from a purely social science perspective here, not as someone with religious faith. There are multiple theories about why religious behavior occurs, and evolves in the world. Some are focused on individual religious behavior, and maybe fewer are focused on group dynamics. I don’t know much about the psychology of religion related to conversion. In general, I’ll go with Durkheim who said that religion is a way for people who do not share kinship bonds to establish community. That’s actually quite profound when you think of it.

That might depend on what version of Islam a person is exposed. Radical Islamic groups like ISIS look pretty different to me than the thousands of Persian immigrants who have been living in peace in my area since the time of the Shah. I have many Muslim friends and neighbors.

We’ve had lots of people motivated by peace look at Eastern religions and meditation, so this wouldn’t surprise me at all. I’m not Buddhist but I have kept Batchelor’s Buddhism Without Beliefs on my nightstand or desktop for years, and I started attending a Buddhist meditation practice last fall because I wanted to learn how to meditate and was having trouble on my own. People are drawn to Eastern philosophies, and Western religions for lots of reasons.

If so, he’s more than 125 years too late, Raj! Not everyone has a lot of exposure to Mormons, so I’ll give just a bit of history here. The LDS practice of polygamy involved a small percentage of members from the early 1840s until 1890. FYI, during the 1800’s there were more than 200 religious groups in the US attempting various types of communal living, holding property in common, attempting to care for the poor, and so forth. The Shakers and the Oneida community are two notable examples. Back to polygamy, from the 1860s to the 1880s, the US began passing law to make this religious practice illegal. These laws were eventually upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the church complied with the law. We are a law abiding people.

FYI, some of my ancestors fleeing for their lives across the Rocky Mountains had much less to do with polygamy, than with a large influx of Northerners and people from the UK and Scandinavia moving into slave states and creating a voting block that threatened local political sentiments. There are still a few fringe groups who practice polygamy, but they are no longer part of the LDS church.

In answer to your question, I think very few people would seek that out, since there are far easier, more socially acceptable ways to have multiple partners without the sacrifice that would go along with joining a fringe communal religious group. You could ask Hugh Hefner. Ha!

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Thanks so much for the thoughtful post, and for giving some personal background. Please know I’m thinking about it. That deserves more than a couple of sentences so I’ll come back when I have more time. If we can figure this out, we should get the Nobel Peace Prize. I like it when people will just be themselves here. It helps us put our experiences into context. Ha!

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