Not all, but some. And there are no laws in this country prohibiting Jews from doing normal things such as seeking employment where they like, marrying people of any race, and no quarantining of Jews to certain areas. So therefore there is no institutionalized discrimination of Jews in America, especially considering the enormously powerful positions of many of us.
There was only one situation in which I believe I was discriminated against for being Jewish or white-appearing. That was for a food service director/RD position in the South Bronx. Though I might be wrong though, I believe it was blatantly obvious from the cdeapeak I believe they gave me. Again, I might be wrong.
But that would not be a case of institutionalized racism, only discrimination of one individual for a job interview. There’s no law prohibiting Jews from certain professions as there were in Europe a long time ago.
I went to see a comedian live who was born in Cameroon to American parents. He was liquid paper white and did a whole skit about being pulled over because he was African American. Most Africans are very quick to tell you that they’re immigrants (from cabbies to professors). I don’t know if they want to avoid a perceived AA stigma or if they think being born and raised on America is bad.
The yamaka, fat wallet, and clandestine world domination meetings are a dead give away. (Kidding)
@BrickHead you are lucky you didn’t get that South Bronx job. Maybe the hiring manager was trying to protect you.
Myself? Not good. But if you were to drop a few hundred indians into the Bush I have no doubt an Indian settlement would very quickly become more advanced than a Pygmy one.
Now tell me what have Pygmies contributed to world culture?
If I buzz my head I get mistaken for being black even by other south Asians. I’ve lived off and on in the states and I can’t say anyone has oppressed me either
Exactly. Many tests of general intelligence are highly biased to what the testing culture considers valuable.
Throughout our history man has spent far more time assessing survival threats than he has using abstract reasoning. In a hunter-gatherer culture, the need is skills that will hunt, gather, and assess threats in the environment as well as environmental tools most effectively. In a medieval lower class environment the valued traits are similar–handcraft, woodsmanship, tool making, building, hunting, herbalism, etc.
The upper class spent time doing abstract reasoning, but the lower classes–although generally more densely populated than tribes–still survived on similar or related skill sets. They were considered lesser in both status and intelligence by the ruling classes as well, but most likely the explanation is simply that they needed different skills. These skills were cultivated because they were necessary and were therefore the metric of what they would consider valuable or intelligent.
Bingo. And the “testing culture” tends to be of the moneyed, classroom-educated, cognitive-worker sort that puts a premium on what might be called ‘abstract reasoning.’ And the cognitive skill-sets that garner high scores on their intelligence tests reflect this fact.
Further, note that the concept of “general intelligence” assumes facts not necessarily in evidence:
As an aside, there have been many attempts at developing ‘culture free/fair’ IQ tests. Depending upon who (and how) you ask, these have met with varying levels of success. For example:
I agree. Even the Romans seemed to understand this. Even when they conquered your ass, you got to keep your culture so long as you didn’t threaten Roman rule and you paid Caesar on time. And let them setup statues. I reckon it’s why they were so successful for so long.
Until this little sect called the Christians showed up. That pissed them off, but to even the Roman’s, Nero was out of his gourd.
If a C-suite executive tells the hiring manager to stop hiring Black people as in @thunderbolt23’s example above..is that institutionalized? That becomes the institution’s culture. Top-down.
In that case..would you not..on first glance at the interview..have an advantage over myself in getting that job? Especially if my name was Tyrone or Montre or something other than William…then maybe I don’t even get an interview. Even if our qualifications are the exact same.
That’s how instutionalized racism works. It’s not everywhere..but it is present.
I’d like to add that most people do not understand what real repression even looks like. N. Koreans are oppressed, woman in Saudi Arabia are repressed, gays in the ME are repressed. People who lived behind the Iron Curtain were repressed.
Our ‘repressed’ looks like a blessing to a lot of people in the world.
Is “repression” not best used in reference with people in the same culture? If being more repressed than North Korean citizens is the bar to label a group “repressed” then I’d dare say repression outside of N Korea doesn’t exist anywhere on the planet.
I would agree how we evaluate intelligence is highly flawed when it comes to application outside the culture in which it was created. There is no way to remove cultural bias from it. We use representations of objects we are familiar with to evaluate a persons ability to process. Things other cultures may not be familiar with, especially in poorer, more removed nations.
I don’t know how to make such a test universally fair. I don’t think it’s possible.
People use abstract thinking all the time, but the figures that represent that thought is different from place to place.
I think it more a question of fairness, than repression. But it’s also important to keep perspective, which is why you need to keep examples like N. Korea in mind when talking about such things. Because, people get worked up about shit that really isn’t important, too many times. And a ‘repressed’ outlook is very destructive if not kept in check. If you see everybody as an enemy, then you have no friends.
Agreed, I just don’t want people to underestimate the impact of racism because “other countries have it worse” (not saying that’s you).
Also agreed, but I think the main reason “repressed” outlooks become so destructive is due to so many people refusing to acknowledge it exists. People spend so much time in their little bubbles that they draw high level conclusions from their very very low level information.
I have some questions about the cultural bias of IQ tests.
Why is it that people who take IQ tests and score well on them are rarely if ever only good at IQ tests? Because IQ reliably predicts someones educational achievement, what sort of occupation they end up in (doctor vs custodian etc), whether they’ll stay married, their chances of getting in trouble with law and much more. Also IQ has shown to not be particularly manipulated by environmental factors and usually leads to complete failure whenever attempts have been made (see the $7 Billion Obama spent to fix schools).
why are there visible physiological correlates with IQ, such as head and brain size, as well various anatomical features of the brain, such as cortical thickness? We are also now seeing a 0.72 correlation between prediction based on imagery and test-measured IQ.
Why don’t East Asians freshly landed in the West do not suffer from “cultural bias” when taking IQ tests? I mean why do they reliably score 105 (higher than whites)?
Why does IQ tests over-predict of individuals from lower-scoring groups such as blacks? If the claim is that IQ tests are culturally biased against Blacks, for example, then they should perform worse on the intelligence test relative to their “true” intelligence. If so, then IQ tests would under-predict their real-world performance relative to Whites. But we see exactly the reverse! Blacks do worse in real-life than you would expect from their IQ scores alone. Cultural bias cannot be an explanation.
Like everything else, balance, moderation and correct, clear thinking has to exist. Like I said I think it’s more an issue of fairness, but the word ‘fairness’ does not convey the weight of what people feel when they experience it.
Like that poor bastard that was beaten and dragged off that United flight was certainly being treated unfairly. The gravity of his experience makes the word sound inadequate, but that’s really what it was. A lack of fairness, common decency and respect.
And certainly there are those feeling the effects of being treated unfairly because of their race, but the weight of what they feel sounds worse than merely being unfair.
I think the key to all of this is polite, respectful conversation where people are being listened to. It sounds so easy, but it’s so hard for people to hold their damn tongues and just listen sometimes that things escalate out of control very quickly. The key to human relations is always conversation. So easy, yet so hard.