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Notes -
What makes sexism more tolerable than racism?
So I was watching a video the other day about being a woman in NYC. And something this women said stuck out to me, and this something I notice In liberal/Progressive circles when it comes to Men specifically:
There is often deep talk in many feminist circles, and society, generally, about how scary it is to be a women, and how fearful women are of Men. Im not here to argue that this fear is unjustified - I understand it fully, but here is what I think is a bigger problem with this: It is, by definition, prejudice. Thats honestly not the problem I have with it, the problem is a perceived double standard between prejudices.
Im sure everyone here is aware of the not so secret that Men as a group commit more violent crime than women - Mass Shootings, Rape, ect. As a response people are more fearful and more cautious of men as a whole. And for the most part, it seems that we consider this prejudice justifiable. No one would really refer to this as "Sexism"
Yet, with race & religion (and fascinatingly enough, this young women herself, despite being very liberal, is prejudice against her own race) we would reject this very reasoning. For example, according to the Global Terrorism Index, at least 75% of global terrorism comes from Islamic Groups. Yet, if some one says that they fear Muslims, or don't think they should be able to migrate into the country, many of these liberal types would revere this as a form of "racism", after all, not all Muslims are terrorist. Same for Black Men, they have a disproportionate amount of criminality, yet if you said what this young lady said as police officer, and that you profile Black Men more often because they are more likely to do it, you'd be cooked alive.
The obvious intuitive response someone could give here is that, Men & Women are obviously different in a way that people of different races and religions are not (unless you are a race realist). We know biologically that males are more aggressive, so them engaging in more criminality and being the scarier sex overall should be no surprise, thus, this prejudice isn't wrong. But the issue here is that this is obviously not a very progressive explanation, as these progressives typically believe that differences between the sexes are due to the social construct of gender, and that society is largely responsible for this difference. But this merely mirrors the same beliefs about differences we see between races and religious groups, no? If all these differences were indeed, socially constructed, and a product of patriarchy - white supremacy, etc, Than why wouldnt it follow that this prejudice is wrong too? Is it not sexist to believe that someone is inherently more likely to kill and rape you due to a immutable and arbitrary characteristic, like gender, in the same way believing that black people are Muslims are more likely to kill and rape others because of their faith & skin color, and treat individuals within these groups accordingly based on that? Its not something inherent about men (or muslims, black people) that make them more likely to be violent, society is to blame!
So the question here is this: Why is prejudice based on sex tolerable, but prejudice based on race & religion, not?
The problem of our modern age is that even very smart people are not very good at divorcing the “group dynamics” from the “individual dynamics”. Motte and Baileys specifically also don’t help here.
There are stereotypes, and many of them are rooted in truth. You may justifiably take some actions that reflect these stereotypes and that’s fine. What’s not fine is the small subset of people who seem to have no sense of tradeoffs - they turbocharge stereotypes with seemingly no upper bound to how powerful these stereotypes are.
Then there are your actions on a personal, individualized level. Meaning usually the recipient of these actions and attitudes. This is the crux of the disconnect. It might be fine for me as a salesperson to avoid marketing to, say, Hispanics. But if a specific Hispanic customer comes in, I shouldn’t treat them differently. Why? Well the most powerful piece is that I consider their identity as a human being to trump their identity as a Hispanic by at least an order of magnitude if not more. The second piece is that we want to live in a society that treats people fairly and sometimes it requires locally suboptimal choices to achieve a globally optimal result. This requires a degree of personal ethics.
If my neighbor goes on a rant about how Black people are bringing in all kinds of crime to the area, I might think it’s uncharitable, or maybe factually incorrect, and I might even think a little less of them… these are societal tensions that are understandable though, in the general sense. I’m not going to treat my neighbor way different based only on that. But it’s a degree of magnitude worse (or maybe two) if my neighbor then deliberately gives the cold shoulder to a Black family that moves in on our block.
Do you see what happened? He crossed the boundary line from stereotyping to personal racism. Which has a word: discrimination. This is a serious moral failing. Whereas the act of stereotyping is relatively speaking vastly more neutral. Discrimination is an action. Sure it might be sourced from an attitude, but there’s a big step there.
The waters get muddied because bad actors (and also overly defensive otherwise good people!) often retreat to the Bailey here. Some might assume that a stereotyper will also discriminate based purely on the presence of a stereotypical belief they hold. This is, well, understandable but bad, a lesser form of the same pattern of discrimination. It also provokes hard feelings because words like “racist” or “sexist” are pretty charged. On the other side of the coin sometimes a discriminator will defend their behavior by pointing to the stereotype as truth. I wish to call this out as bullshit. They are different things with different moral stakes.
And then you have a small handful of people who react to approbation with extremism. Not only are all these stereotypes true, they think, they are strong, they are universally applicable, and individualized discrimination is sometimes not even just a necessary evil but somehow good or wise. There are a few of them on this forum. Only IRL experience can pull them back from the brink, so words can’t really reach them. Usually this is a race thing, but you see the same pattern with the most notorious of incels. Think Elliot Rodger. They take some (maybe rooted in truth!) belief about women but then apply it with such a broad brush to individuals in their lives that it creates a cycle of unhappiness (on top of being unethical).
Anyways, your particular case is a classic. I would argue the woman on the street is fundamentally in a group-dynamic, stereotype paradigm. She is not levying an individualized discrimination. She’s being realistic about a mostly-true stereotype. If she were to follow up her statement with “and so as a rule I don’t date Black guys” then we have a problem. That’s discrimination because it ignores the humanity of individuals (and also creates hard feelings that are often counterproductive on a societal level). I realize this is not always cut and dry (what if she says “and so I’m reluctant to date Black guys?”) but I strongly believe we should save the vast majority of the moral approbation for this kind of specific individualized behavior. Kindness is a bit of a skill.
We (as a society, but particularly this is directed at liberals and moderates) need to (relative to current effort) speak up stronger against discrimination and not so strongly against garden variety stereotypes. It may be true that one leads to the other by tendency and in chronological order, but the focus should be on weakening the link. Conservatives by the same token (relative to current effort) need to call out those individuals that cross the line away from “mere” stereotypes and into outright discrimination better and not hide them behind a shield of persecution, victimhood, circling the wagons, or playing the Bailey card.
Why is gender “better” at avoiding discrimination? Because the link between stereotypes and individual behavior is weaker, as it should be. Women who spout off frustration at “men” as a category are one thing (common), women who treat specific men in their life like dirt because of those frustrations are another thing (thankfully less common and less accepted as morally fine). Simple as that. We should learn from this model and apply it to other areas where discrimination is problematic.
It’s late at night. You are looking for a street parking spot. Nearby an open spot, there are a group of young black men loitering. Is it wrong for you to avoid that spot and try to find another spot?
If it is wrong, then I question why being moral is even worthwhile.
I think this you're missing @EverythingIsFine 's whole point because you present this situation as a counterargument to his "we should care more about discrimination than stereotyping" spiel, but in your situation no one is actually being discriminated against. Is having a car parked next to you a public good?
If you were interviewing for a job and trashed their resumes in the basis if their race, then there would be something to talk about. But while having a particular negative attitude about some identifiable group is not necessarily a good thing (and indeed may in fact be a bad thing), the OP was very specifically saying that society should be less concerned about that than it is.
... And in any case, I think "black" is far from the most predictive factor here. "Young" and "men" are hugely predictive, and treating people differently based on their age and gender is good, actually (🇻🇦). But what decides my perception of (other) young men as safe is primarily their presentation of class status and upbringing. I would feel plenty safe around any group of young men wearing suits, carrying college textbooks, holding hobby objects (e.g. skateboards, cameras, basketballs), engaging in a church event, etcetera. I would feel about equally unsafe regardless of race around a group of young men that are drunk, smoking pot in public, blasting loud music, wearing excessively baggy clothes, etcetera. If you pressed me, I would admit that I probably felt slightly more unsafe around a low-class afroamerican group than a low class white or latino group, but race genuinely does not rank very high in my factor analysis.
No. There is a massive difference between a group of young Asian guys and black guys hanging out. Basic stats will tell you this.
Yes there are other indicators (eg if they were all wearing suits you’d feel more comfortable). But if you understand crime stats, being black is highly predictive in the same way being male is.
Do you see young Asian guys loitering in the hood often?
I wasn’t in the hood
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...Yes? Asians are tightwads, so they live in the hood, and they stay up real late and like to go out and about.
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