No, I'm saying that your cousin indulges his prejudices by discriminating (ie, not hiring blacks) only because he is willing to pay the economic costs involved. In other cases where the economic costs would be too high (eg, not selling to blacks) he doesn't indulge his prejudices by discriminating.

His prejudices are the same in either case. The choice he makes as to whether or not to actually discriminate is entirely made on the basis of economic incentives. Perhaps if you asked your cousin, he'd say he wishes he could afford not to sell to blacks...but his desires don't change the economic incentives, nor the real choices available to him.

Now, this is an example of where economic incentives prohibit discrimination that might otherwise exist - your cousin is a racist but he can't afford to discriminate. What I'm suggesting goes further than this (and I think this is what drachefly has trouble swallowing) - that (racial) discrimination can and does exist, even if there are no racial prejudices to be indulged, if the economic incentives line up in the right way. In other words, people with no racial prejudices at all can and will practice racial discrimination if "the price is right", as it were.

Therefore, my contention is that there is no correlation between racism and racial discrimination.

I contend that there is a positive correlation of less than one. Not every racist discriminates, not every discriminator is a racist*, but being a racist makes you more likely to discriminate and not being one makes you less likely to do so.

Moreover, I would point out that in a free market, discrimination by people who can afford it creates an economic environment that encourages discrimination by others, whether those others are biased or not. For instance, if a a third of your potential customer base are Blues who refuse to eat in a restaurant with Greens, and only a quarter of the population are Greens... that "No Greens Allowed" sign is likely to go up in a hurry. Indeed, it's likely that every restaurant in town will make the same decision, except for a few specialty niche restaurants that (effectively) serve only Greens. Likewise if a third of the people on the block are Greens who will move out if a Blue moves into the neighborhood.

And then there's the more subtle second order effects: if some lendors do refuse to give loans to Blues, Blues wind up congregating in low-cost tenements and the like where they can actually afford to live without the loans. But those same tenements are in high-crime areas with inferior schools, and aren't convenient to the best jobs. Ten or twenty years later, you may find yourself wondering why so many Blue teenagers join gangs, have unstable home lives, and can't hold down a steady job... and, in turn, are likely to be refused when they apply for loans.

________

*OK, "racially discriminates, racial discriminator." You know what I mean.

So, I've demonstrated examples of situations where people who have some racial prejudice or bias may fail to actually practice discrimination when the cost is too high. drachefly, however, has reasonably pointed out that I haven't yet provided examples of situations where those with no racial prejudices do actually practice racial discrimination. In fact, there was an implicit example in the discussion of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank study, where I noted that the entire 6% residual difference in black vs white mortgage approval rates was caused by exactly one bank owned by blacks. The implication, of course, would be that blacks discriminating against blacks tautologically could not be caused by racism.

But presumably more explicit examples are called for. So let's look at the Irish in America.

At one time, it was common for employment advertisements to say "No Irish Need Apply". Such ads began to disappear after Irish immigrants were acculturated to American societal norms to a sufficient degree. It was once that acculturation had happened that the benefit of sorting Irish applicants for jobs individually exceeded the cost of doing that sorting. What is at issue is the high cost of generating knowledge and the high cost of making a wrong decision. In such cases, race may be used as a sorting device, even by people who are themselves not racists or harbouring racial prejudices. In fact, such sorting may even lead members of the same groups to discriminate against other members, as in the example of black vs white mortgage approval rates in Boston. Or in the case where taxi drivers, including black taxi drivers, avoid picking up black male passengers at night.

So, race may be used as a sorting device, even by people who are not themselves racist, because it may be far less costly than other available sorting devices - this is the economic incentive part of it.

Now, I said that I'd avoid wading back into the black vs white issue because of it's emotional implications for Americans...but I'm going to anyway, because I think there is a valuable example worth mentioning. A study of employers who routinely check for prison records among there job applicants found that those employers hired black males more often than did other employers. THe reference is Holzer, Raphael and Stoll, "Perceived Criminality, Criminal Background Checks, and the Racial Hiring Practices of Employers", Journal of Law and Economics, Oct 2006. Racism cannot explain the differences between the two groups for two reasons. First, it's statistically unlikely that racism among employers would correlate with a tendency to use criminal background checks (although this isn't absolute - it's possible that racists might deliberately avoid using criminal background checks because they subconsciously know such checks would undermine their perceptions of black criminality). But secondly, and more importantly, the hiring differences only applied to (younger) black males. There was no difference in the hiring practices when black females or older blacks of either sex were involved. I say this point is more important because it means that racism cannot explain the differences (unless someone wants to posit that the employers studied were also ageist and reverse-sexist...).

The difference is that those employers using prison records checks to screen employees already had a more accurate sorting device in place (albeit a more costly one) for employee screening in general that precluded them from needing to rely on race as a general sorting device. The difference is one, again, of economic incentives. Some employers may be reluctant to hire young black males because they are aware that a higher proportion of them may have been arrested or imprisoned, practising racial discrimination even if they have no prejudice against blacks (and willingly hire black females and older blacks), because the economic incentives favour such discrimination. On the flip side, those employers with other economic incentives (such as those who already have to use prison record check for applicants in general) have no need to use race as a sorting mechanism or practice racial discrimination.

Economic incentives. No doubt there have been many blacks who were never criminals hurt by such behaviour, just as there were many sober, hard-working Irishmen hurt during the period when employers had signs saying "No Irish Need Apply". However, the fact that such discrimination exists does not automatically allow us to derive racism as the causative source of the discrimination.

Of course, the issue is complicated because even in cases where racial discrimination per se isn't at issue because race isn't used as a sorting device, other sorting devices may have different impacts on members of different races anyway. An example could be the disqualification of applicants convicted of a felony, or of applicants lacking a university degree, if felony convictions or university degrees are not equally distributed among various groups. Which, of course, they aren't. But again, this doesn't support racism as a causative source of discrimination.

To suggest that racism necessarily causes discrimination, rather than economic incentives, is as fallacious, not to mention wrong, as saying that racism was the cause of slavery in the United States.

This sentence, and others like it, confuse me. How is evaluating a person based on guys who look like them, rather than individual characteristics, not an example of prejudice? Even if you're discriminating based on real statistics about different groups, you've already made a pre-judgement about which groups to apply to a person.

Besides, there's economic incentive not to hire obese people for a number of jobs, but I've never heard of a job posting saying "no chubs allowed". Why were Irish handled differently, if not racism?

Along the lines of what Leo is saying, "sorting device" sounds like a euphemism for "racial discrimination" to me, not an alternative.

Really? I've had a number of jobs who list amongst their requirements "Capable of operating efficiently in tight spaces." Treating people differently on account of race is not a meaningful definition of racism. Unless racism implies some animosity toward the group in question, then the term is not being used correctly by any of you in this thread. That is the Crow's point. Discrimination on the basis of race is not proof of animosity toward the disadvantaged race, and in fact animosity toward the disadvantaged race almost always falls in the face of economic incentives.

Contend all you like; the empirical evidence doesn't support your contention, however.


You do realize that this is exactly the point I'm trying to make - that discrimination is caused by economic incentives to discriminate...I honestly can't tell whether you agree with me or not. Your premise suggests that you don't, but your example suggests that you do. Could you clarify your position? I hate it when I can't figure out if I'm arguing with you or not.


Because the evaluation has nothing to do with what the evaluator believes about the group(s) and everything to do with the cost of evaluating the group being lower than the cost of evaluating the individual.


If the legal regime were the same now as it was 100 years ago (ie, no civil rights law suits) then there would be such signs. The cost of litigation, fines, and so on are also economic incentives. And the Irish weren't handled differently; unassimilated Italians, Jews and Southern Blacks (at least insofar as the North was concerned) were all the subject of discrimination.

I think that you just don't like the moral implications of my argument. A world where discrimination is only practised by bad people and good people don't discriminate no matter what because it's wrong is easy to understand and satisfying. A world where anyone might or might not discriminate regardless of their moral character because it's more beneficial is capricious and uncertain.

Sadly, the world is capricious and uncertain.

Exactly. Thank you.

Hell to the no. Racism implies no animosity, period. Good people can be racists, Good actions can be racist. This doesn't necessarily make those action or those people bad, but it does limit the amount of Good that those actions or people can do. A Positive racial stereotype may provide positive benefits, but the fact that the stereotype is planted firmly in the idea that a person's group attributes are more important than their individual attributes will limit the level of positive effect it can have.

And I think that's where I find I'm most against OldCrow's arguments here - There's this idea that without malice ("just business", as the saying goes), there's no harm, when it's quite clear that harm can happily emerge even from good or neutral intentions, and that these intentions can, in and of themselves, be racist.

A good example of these sorts of things is in disability. We are a compassionate society to those with disabilities, especially visible ones. We consider it heinous that people with disabilities are brought to harm, being, in our eyes, among the most vulnerable. But we do a lot of screwed up stuff in our attempts to "protect" the disabled. We deny them sexual agency. If someone's being pushed around on a wheelchair, we'll rarely talk to the person in the wheelchair, we're far more likely to talk to the person pushing them around, because of specific assumptions on what people in wheelchairs are like. This, by the way, can reach ludicrous levels - my boyfriend has gone into a pharmacy to acquire some bandages, specifically initiated a conversation with the attendant, and the attendant starts talking to his girlfriend! Even when my boyfriend keeps continuing the conversation, the attendant won't talk to him, only to his girlfriend pushing the wheelchair, even as his girlfriend points out that she has no clue, and is just pushing the wheelchair around, and that the attendant really needs to talk to the person in the wheelchair.

These actions are done with no malicious intent - but they still cause serious harm to those they affect, and they are a direct result of our internalised ideas of group identities.

No, I think your argument is separating things along false lines. Simon's example - banning Greens from a restaurant because Blues won't eat there - is a case in point. It's clearly a matter of economic incentives, but it's also very clearly a result of prejudice, from society at large if not from the business owner himself. In treating the two as mutually exclusive, you won't recognize this as a type of dependency.

I was referring to a different problem, so let me give another example. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, airports started screening Arab passengers. Seeing as how the attackers came from Arabia, you could argue that makes sense in terms of "security incentives", since our main threat came from that category of people. But they also started screening people from Morocco to Indonesia, places that had little to do with anything, on the assumption they fall into the same category. Whereas if Irish had attacked us, I don't think there'd be an incentive to screen Italians, because we all know they're different enough.

In other words, even if incentives determine when people apply their prejudices, the resulting discrimination can still be expressed in terms of them. Which is another type of dependency you won't recognize if you look at when but not how discrimination happens. All in all, your argument sounds very incomplete.


I was thinking of cases where it wasn't a necessity, like salesmen and waiters. There's certainly selection in hiring, but how often is there the equivalent of "no Irish" up front? Again, I think the form of discrimination is different because of different prejudices involved.

Your goal of getting all people to treat all other people as individuals rather than as members of certain groups is a fools' dream. I don't do it, you don't do it, and neither does anybody else. Humanity is simply not wired that way. If a term is to have any relevant meaning to describe people or actions, then it must distinguish those people from other people. If your definition of "racist" includes the entire human population, then it has no more meaningful definition than "human."

You're mistakenly seeing agency where none can exist - prejudice by "society at large" does not and cannot exist. Societies are not people and have neither intentions nor opinions. Societies do not take actions. I don't recognize that sort of dependency, as you put it, because it doesn't exist. The only prejudice that matters is that of the business owner, because he's the only one in the equation capable of having prejudice.

But your airport example is interesting, if not for the reason you think it is - airport security (or TSA to be precise) is a government agency. As such it's specifically sheltered in myriad ways from all sorts of economic incentives that affect the rest of us. So I'm hardly surprised that TSA demonstrates more discriminatory behaviour...I'd actually be surprised if it wasn't the case. In fact, I suspect (although there's no way of knowing) that if the airlines were responsible for providing their own security, and not the government, that you would then see less discrimination because the cost/benefit incentives would lead to airlines towards more refined and accurate security procedures.

Also, had the Irish attacked on Sept 11, it's entirely possible that the English and the Scots would have been subsequently screened along with the Irish by TSA. You're falsely assuming skin colour and religion as the sources of racism and prejudice. Would you prefer to discuss Japanese/Chinese animosities instead and break out of the stereotypes you implicitly assume? Because right now your arguments very much seem to be focused on (American) WASPs as the source of all prejudice and discrimination. If you have trouble getting past that, we can find all sorts of examples of both that have nothing at all to do with white people.


But you still haven't explained the situations where discrimination exists even when prejudice clearly isn't the cause. Employers who discriminate only against young male blacks, for example, but not blacks in general. Or black owned banks that discriminate against blacks. Or even black taxi drivers who won't pick up black passengers at night. I can only assume that you don't believe such things occur (despite the references I provided) that the references are wrong (either innocently or deliberately) or that the occurrences are outliers that don't "really" reflect reality. Or would you care to propose an alternative explanation?


I'm not sure you understand the concept of economic incentives, since you're confusing them with "just business". And I certainly never said, nor implied, that without malice there is no harm done. I'm guessing that you're confusing the concept of economic incentives with deliberate choices. People rarely, if ever, consciously choose their reactions to incentives. It's a systemic process, not a rational choice.

Of course, this probably means that you and LeoChopper (and a number of others) have fundamentally different assumptions about human nature than me and Grillick (and many others) and we'll all be doomed to talk past each other forever.

I don't care if it never becomes universal, I just want it to happen more. We clearly have the capacity to modify our thoughts and actions in regards to group bias, and we have the capacity to look beyond group attributes. Even if we do not do this 100% of the time, I would consider it favourable if we simply did this more than we currently do. It's an unreachable goal that I think has dividends even if we fall short of it forever.


My definition of "racist" does not include the entire human population, because it's not supposed to apply to humans. That would, again, be placing a group identifier above the individual, would it not? My conception of the term "racist" applies to actions performed by individuals, not necessarily to the individuals themselves. Any use of "racist" applied to people is more shorthand for "people who perform racist actions". Otherwise, yes, my conception of the term doesn't seem to be overly meaningful.

No, we merely substitute other groups that are considered less invidious. Instead of grouping Blacks together, or even Black Males, we discriminate against felons, ignoring the fact that a huge number of felons are actually harmless and perfectly capable of being productive members of society. Or we discriminate against those who lack a university degree, ignoring the fact that many millions of people without university degrees may in fact be more well-suited to most given positions in a company.

Humankind lacks the capacity to analyze individuals as individuals, because every descriptor we use places them into categories about which we make assumptions.

Again, this is clearly untrue. We can make exceptions in schemas, and identify when a person is not like their group, and we can accept when people break assumptions, and incorporate them into our schema of that specific person. We do acknowledge that people exist independent of their groups, we simply don't most of the time. Hell, our Monkeyspheres are pretty much there for the express purpose of holding individual impressions of people. We fill in what we don't know with assumptions, but we can certainly overcome those assumptions with additional information. This is basic, first-year psychology stuff.

We can break our own programming, with effort. Again, even if it's not possible 100% of the time, it's clearly possible some of the time, and I think it would be to the benefit of our society to work at improving the value of "some".

The other people and obvious source of prejudice are the customers who'd prefer not eat next to Greens. If there are only a few like that, it will be ignored, but if there are enough of them it creates the economic incentive the owner is bowing to. His discrimination presumably isn't based on a personal prejudice, but it's based entirely on how common a prejudice is among people in general.


I'm not assuming that at all. My point is simply that some uninvolved people will be screened (Irish, very possibly English and Scots) and others won't (Italian). I'd argue the difference between the two has less to do with the incentive to do sorting between categories, and more to do with how those responsible set up the categories in the first place. I'll accept private airports might have handled things differently.

If you want to bring up other examples, please feel welcome, but I think both points apply in general. For instance, I'd imagine Chinese businesses are more likely to discriminate between Mandarin and Cantonese speakers than Japanese businesses, even in the same business environment, because they're less likely to treat them as a single category. I'll admit I'm not certain of that example - I picked one familiar to American whites because, for some reason or other, it happens to be familiar to me.


No, because I haven't said discrimination can't exist without prejudice. Correlation doesn't mean things happen together all the time, it means that when one happens the other is more likely. Your references correlate discrimination with economic incentives, but I'd need more evidence than a few picked examples to conclude those aren't correlated with prejudices.


"Selfish" and "unreasonable" apply to everyone, but still end up being useful in describing people and actions.