Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[Gavagai]

I would ask why you would want to harm poor people? And I wouldn't believe your claim that race had nothing to do with it. I'd suggest that if you do some self reflecting to find out why want to harm poor people, and once you have that answer, ask yourself why that is, and so on.

19th-century British truancy laws are a paradigm example of a policy which specifically targeted the poor and they had nothing to do with racism as British population was almost exclusively white at that time. This example shows that one can support laws against the poor while being indifferent to their race. Ergo, your refusal to believe that my hypothetical example is plausible is unfounded and my questions still stand.

We were talking about the context of US politics. The US has an above-average disdain for the poor I'd say by first-world Western standards, and racism, both blatant and subtle, are a large part of that here. I'm not 100% sure what your background is, but I don't think you live in the US? Correct me if I'm wrong.

That said, a law that is trying to keep kids in school is not an example of attempting to harm poor people, regardless of whether it did or not. It's clearly attempting to help, regardless of whether it actually helped or hurt.

"Disdain" is not the only possible motivation to harm a certain category. In fact, the most obvious motivation for such laws would be to create an incentive for people to leave unwanted category. Like, we create laws intended to harm criminals because we want people to stop being criminals. This is why legislative intent to harm the poor is much more believable than a similar intent to harm the black. You can sort of argue that someone can be "forced" from being poor (not that this argument is necessarily accurate) but it is simply insane to believe that someone can be forced from being black. The motive to harm the poor can be rationally reconstructed but you cannot do that with the motive to harm the black. This is why the idea that hurting the poor is only a way to hurt the black is counter-intuitive. It only seems plausible if you already assume that racism is a dominant motivation of lawmakers but for an observer who has no preconceptions about racism in modern American society this idea is bizarre. And this is a general problem with all arguments which intend to support the claim that racism is widespread in the USA: they are only convincing if you have already assumed their conclusion to be true.

[Gavagai]

My general point, however, is that if one labels a policy as "racist" only because it has the disadvantage of a certain racial group as one of its consequences, one makes it possible to create racist policies without racist intent. More importantly, it is entirely possible for such policy to also have some beneficial consequences which may outweigh racial inequality it creates. These facts, taken together, strip the "racist" label of all moral power: it does not show that you have racist beliefs and it does not even show that what you are doing is bad.

[AdrienIer]

So you think it's pure chance that there have been so many policies in the US that target black people even in the past couple decades ? Like the expanded medicaid in Michigan that was only in certain counties that happened to be predominantly white.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mic...2d69cea93c

[T-hawk]

Yes, and most of Canada's recent immigrants are brown, so no, that is not what is keeping Trump and the Republicans from having a coherent immigration policy.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-qu...2b-eng.htm

The number of accepted immigrants isn't a sufficient data point to establish this; you also need the number or percentage of rejections. If 90% of accepted immigrants are brown but 99% of applicants are, then the merit correlates against people that are brown.

[Gavagai]

So you think it's pure chance that there have been so many policies in the US that target black people even in the past couple decades ? Like the expanded medicaid in Michigan that was only in certain counties that happened to be predominantly white.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mic...2d69cea93c

The most obvious explanation here is that a Republican politician tries to channel government funding to areas in which the most of his voters live. His political opponents push back against him by playing "racist" card (successfully) and you naively take this petty political bickering to be a sign of deep cultural undercurrents.

[T-hawk]

The most obvious explanation here is that a Republican politician tries to channel government funding to areas in which the most of his voters live.

I really like that sentence, it cuts to the heart of the matter.

If you enact a policy whose benefits correlate to your voters, who themselves correlate to any variable such as race or class or religion, does that constitute a racist or classist or religionist policy?

[Mr. Cairo]

Yes, and most of Canada's recent immigrants are brown, so no, that is not what is keeping Trump and the Republicans from having a coherent immigration policy.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-qu...2b-eng.htm

The number of accepted immigrants isn't a sufficient data point to establish this; you also need the number or percentage of rejections.  If 90% of accepted immigrants are brown but 99% of applicants are, then the merit correlates against people that are brown.

That's not really how it works. You basically fill out a form and say what your qualifications are; skill, education, experience, languages, and are awarded points. If you have enough points you get to come. A non-white person with enough points is just as likely to get in as a white person with enough points.

But to get to my original point, in Canada, a (relative to the US) liberal and progressive county, a merit-based immigration system is not decried as racist, and has survived both Conservative and Liberal governments. So why can't Trump get that done, if that's what he wants? Because the GOP is too divided on immigration, and many of them in Congress would oppose a points-based system. Public outcry is not what prevented the GOP from dismantling Obamacare, so it's not a legitimate excuse as to the reasons why Trump can't get his preferred immigration system.

The most obvious explanation here is that a Republican politician tries to channel government funding to areas in which the most of his voters live.

I really like that sentence, it cuts to the heart of the matter.

If you enact a policy whose benefits correlate to your voters, who themselves correlate to any variable such as race or class or religion, does that constitute a racist or classist or religionist policy?

Well, historically speaking, the Republicans made a deliberate choice after the Civil Rights Act to appeal to racist white voters in the south. Whether that decision was in and of itself racist, is largely beyond the point. Their voters were racist, so they enacted racist policies to appeal to them. Whether they personally held racist beliefs is moot, since they carried out racist actions.

The national Republican party had in recent years tried to reject that particular image 2005, (RNC chairman apologised at NAACP meeting: http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/ar...rman_says/) whether they were successful is pretty obvious.

[T-hawk]

That's not really how it works. You basically fill out a form and say what your qualifications are; skill, education, experience, languages, and are awarded points. If you have enough points you get to come. A non-white person with enough points is just as likely to get in as a white person with enough points.

Yes, but that's not what I was getting at.  I'm saying that those qualifications and thus whether you have enough points may be correlated with ethnic origin.  To confirm or disconfirm that requires the data for rejections, not just acceptances.  I suspect it is correlated (lesser skills and education is what makes the third world the third world) but flies under the radar in Canada, but wouldn't in the hyperactive media frenzy of the US.  This is speculation and I haven't looked at hard data.  If there is such a correlation, then the policy will be decried as racist, and that's too toxic for Republicans to risk supporting, even the ones trying to appeal to a racist base.

(Of course, not that anyone is doubting this, the Dems don't want merit-based immigration because the lowest-merit immigrants will vote D.)

[Mr. Cairo]

That's not really how it works. You basically fill out a form and say what your qualifications are; skill, education, experience, languages, and are awarded points. If you have enough points you get to come. A non-white person with enough points is just as likely to get in as a white person with enough points.

Yes, but that's not what I was getting at.  I'm saying that those qualifications and thus whether you have enough points may be correlated with ethnic origin.  To confirm or disconfirm that requires the data for rejections, not just acceptances.  I suspect it is correlated (lesser skills and education is what makes the third world the third world) but flies under the radar in Canada, but wouldn't in the hyperactive media frenzy of the US.  This is speculation and I haven't looked at hard data.  If there is such a correlation, then the policy will be decried as racist, and that's too toxic for Republicans to risk supporting, even the ones trying to appeal to a racist base.

Well, yes, people from the third world are less likely to have enough points than Germans, for example. But that isn't because of race, unless you're suggesting that the third world is the third world because they're not white, which I doubt. The third world is the third world because of history. Switzerland is a richer country than Poland, so the average Swiss would have more points than the average Pole. But they're both "white". Clearly race is irrelevant in this comparison, why should it be in a comparison of Swtizerland and Nigeria?

(Of course, not that anyone is doubting this, the Dems don't want merit-based immigration because the lowest-merit immigrants will vote D.)

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. Even under a merit-based system, most immigrants to the USA wouldn't be white, and non-white people tend to vote D (for reasons I mentioned before). Not only that but under a merit-based system, immigrants tend to be better educated (post-secondary and post-graduate) who also tend to vote D. So by all appearance, a points-based system would be just fine for the Dems.

I'd also like to point out that this system in Canada only applies to economic migrants. Family members of Canadian residents can also apply, and there are refugee programs.

[T-hawk]

Well, yes, people from the third world are less likely to have enough points than Germans, for example. But that isn't because of race

It isn't because of race -- but the hyperactive frothing media will frame it as if it is, that anything that ranks Germans over brown people will get slapped with the racist label.

It's possible this is reaching, but I think it's the truth -- Republicans can't support merit-based (or any other reform) immigration because it will be labeled as racist.