CDZ They cannot both be correct...

Solution...Education, Profession, Marriage, Sex.
??? Hugh? I can understand how education (or at least becoming very well informed on the matter of race and race-related "stuff") will help narrow the perception gap. As for the other three, you're going to have to explain to me how they will contribute to that end.
I live near 3 Black neighborhoods and very few residents follow this very simple formula.
It's usually, a bit of school, sex, sex, sex, blue collar job, going to the bar, sex.

Are you going to provide the explication I requested (bold text in my post above) or not? What you just wrote doesn't at all explain how "Profession, Marriage, Sex" will help narrow the perception gap.

If you're not going to, just say so, and we can end our interaction on this line of thought and go our separate ways. I'm certainly not going to feel like I "missed out" because you don't fulfill my request.
People are obsessed with activities that are not conducive to a successful future.
These obsessions are prevalent in lower class area where neighbors have no great aspirations.
It takes an unusually strong person to break away from social peer pressure.
Most people don't succeed.
 
Another thing. . . Someone's membership in a particular racial group doesn't guarantee, or even come CLOSE to guaranteeing, that their perception of "the experience of their group" is accurately reflective of the aggregate reality. I can't believe how often I need to explain this concept, these days. People's perceptions aren't shaped by and only by reality, and this applies to non-whites as well as whites. As human beings, we're far more likely to have our perceptions shaped by the words and opinions of the people we trust and admire than we are to have those perceptions shaped accurately by reality itself. Thus, when large sections of various demographics believe in a narrative that JUST HAPPENS to be the dominant narrative in our pop culture, I remain unconvinced, to put it lightly.


One's experience and perception IS their reality.
One's reality is all there is.

No matter what you and I have in common, it would never ever be possible for me to share your reality.

That's a fine piece of sophistry. YOUR "reality" is not my concern, nor should it dictate government action. Majority opinions by ethnic groups don't dictate what has ACTUALLY happened..

If I, personally, decide that Hawaiians are being murdered en masse by the Mexicans because that's my perception, then my perception is inaccurate and thus NOT THE JOB OF SOCIETY TO FIX. That's my point. If your perception of the plight of your ethnic group isn't an accurate reflection of the aggregate reality, then passing laws to correct for that perception is only going to lead to greater problems.

I pray that there aren't many more people like you who openly declare perception as a reality to be corrected by the force of government authority. That's so fucking insane that I don't have a word emphatic enough to replace "fucking".

TY for correlating your remarks to the theme of the OP. Not many posters seem able (willing?) to do that.
 
Another thing. . . Someone's membership in a particular racial group doesn't guarantee, or even come CLOSE to guaranteeing, that their perception of "the experience of their group" is accurately reflective of the aggregate reality. I can't believe how often I need to explain this concept, these days. People's perceptions aren't shaped by and only by reality, and this applies to non-whites as well as whites. As human beings, we're far more likely to have our perceptions shaped by the words and opinions of the people we trust and admire than we are to have those perceptions shaped accurately by reality itself. Thus, when large sections of various demographics believe in a narrative that JUST HAPPENS to be the dominant narrative in our pop culture, I remain unconvinced, to put it lightly.


One's experience and perception IS their reality.
One's reality is all there is.

No matter what you and I have in common, it would never ever be possible for me to share your reality.

That's a fine piece of sophistry. YOUR "reality" is not my concern, nor should it dictate government action. Majority opinions by ethnic groups don't dictate what has ACTUALLY happened..

If I, personally, decide that Hawaiians are being murdered en masse by the Mexicans because that's my perception, then my perception is inaccurate and thus NOT THE JOB OF SOCIETY TO FIX. That's my point. If your perception of the plight of your ethnic group isn't an accurate reflection of the aggregate reality, then passing laws to correct for that perception is only going to lead to greater problems.

I pray that there aren't many more people like you who openly declare perception as a reality to be corrected by the force of government authority. That's so fucking insane that I don't have a word emphatic enough to replace "fucking".

It appears that you are equating "GOVERNMENT ACTION/AUTHORITY" with "SOCIETY", when they are two completely separate things.
 
How the Pew Research Center makes conservatives sound like jackasses | AmericaWantsToKnow.com

The pew foundation is decidedly liberal. Every bit of their research on fisheries is directly aimed at wiping out commercial fisheries, so forgive me if the constantly rotating ass kissing that goes on between pew, nyt, npr, Huffington post, et al. Is just incest.

Let's just take one of the survey questions. Is there too much emphasis or discussion about race. Are you kidding me. Since I became cognizant that is all we have been talking about. 13% of the population is dominating 87 % of the conversation. Tell me how many people are sick and tired of Colin K or turning to espn and having to be told how racist you are when you just want to watch some football. But of course if you don't want to talk about race you are a racist. Like the article says, the questions are asked to elicit a preordained response and a preordained loathing of white people after you read the survey. If I hear we need to have an honest dialog about race again my head will explode. What is there that hasn't been said. What the hell is there left that hasn't been said? The only new twist to nform this debate is the wholesale brainwashing of our young people by the educational system.

How about this for a survey question? How much more good for this country could we accomplish if we didn't spend so much time talking about race?
A lot
Some
None
 
WASPS in the US hazed the shit out of the Irish, the Italians, etc.
OT:
I got news for you: some of us still do.

For example, my mother made a point of admonishing my daughter about being careful not to get "NOCD-up." What did she mean? She most certainly did not mean "knocked-up." She meant "don't get too closely involved with people who are not our class, dear," which excludes a whole lot of people, though only a few in the environment my daughter was soon to encounter.

That conversation happened roughly 15 years ago. Not very recent, but hardly the distant past.

My daughter told me about it because was pissed off. "What does Granny think I am going to do at school?" she asked me. She thought Momma meant "knocked-up" because she'd never been inculcated that Waspy BS by me, her mother or grandparents. She knew of it from the little sh*ts she went to school with, but, blessedly, I had far more influence on her than they did.

My wife and I, way back when our first born started babbling, told Momma and Dad that if we ever found out they were spewing their classist BS to our kids, they would never see them again. We had the same conversation with her parents. We even repeated it a second time when the six of us were together for my daughter's christening.

Momma also told me about their conversation. She said she'd only told her to be careful and not to get "nocd up." She said wanted to say more than that, but thought better of it, knowing my daughter would likely tell me about the conversation, and I'd, in turn, forbid Momma from seeing her granddaughter. I told Momma it was a good thing she still possessed her better judgment.

She said, "Um, hm. I knew that."

She laughed when I told her what her granddaughter thought she'd meant, but she felt bad about it too. She called her right then and there to apologize saying, "I'm so sorry, sweetie. Your daddy just just me what happened. I didn't mean to imply I thought you would do something like that. I know you wouldn't. I just wanted to tell you to be careful in general. There're all kinds of people everywhere these days."

At that point I gave Momma the "enough" signal. Truly, I think sometimes she just can't control herself even when she knows she must.
 
How the Pew Research Center makes conservatives sound like jackasses | AmericaWantsToKnow.com

The pew foundation is decidedly liberal. Every bit of their research on fisheries is directly aimed at wiping out commercial fisheries, so forgive me if the constantly rotating ass kissing that goes on between pew, nyt, npr, Huffington post, et al. Is just incest.

Let's just take one of the survey questions. Is there too much emphasis or discussion about race. Are you kidding me. Since I became cognizant that is all we have been talking about. 13% of the population is dominating 87 % of the conversation. Tell me how many people are sick and tired of Colin K or turning to espn and having to be told how racist you are when you just want to watch some football. But of course if you don't want to talk about race you are a racist. Like the article says, the questions are asked to elicit a preordained response and a preordained loathing of white people after you read the survey. If I hear we need to have an honest dialog about race again my head will explode. What is there that hasn't been said. What the hell is there left that hasn't been said? The only new twist to nform this debate is the wholesale brainwashing of our young people by the educational system.

How about this for a survey question? How much more good for this country could we accomplish if we didn't spend so much time talking about race?
A lot
Some
None
You know, if you feel you need to discuss race or racism and its impacts, fine, but please connect whatever you have to say in that regard to the thread topic, which, were you to carefully read thread title and my prose, you'll find that race, racism and its effects are not at all the topic.

I've noticed that one member has figured that out and posted accordingly, at least twice. If they can figure it out, so can you. Or can't you? Just give it a try instead of assuming the thread is themed as are so many others.
 
Another thing. . . Someone's membership in a particular racial group doesn't guarantee, or even come CLOSE to guaranteeing, that their perception of "the experience of their group" is accurately reflective of the aggregate reality. I can't believe how often I need to explain this concept, these days. People's perceptions aren't shaped by and only by reality, and this applies to non-whites as well as whites. As human beings, we're far more likely to have our perceptions shaped by the words and opinions of the people we trust and admire than we are to have those perceptions shaped accurately by reality itself. Thus, when large sections of various demographics believe in a narrative that JUST HAPPENS to be the dominant narrative in our pop culture, I remain unconvinced, to put it lightly.


One's experience and perception IS their reality.
One's reality is all there is.

No matter what you and I have in common, it would never ever be possible for me to share your reality.

That's a fine piece of sophistry. YOUR "reality" is not my concern, nor should it dictate government action. Majority opinions by ethnic groups don't dictate what has ACTUALLY happened..

If I, personally, decide that Hawaiians are being murdered en masse by the Mexicans because that's my perception, then my perception is inaccurate and thus NOT THE JOB OF SOCIETY TO FIX. That's my point. If your perception of the plight of your ethnic group isn't an accurate reflection of the aggregate reality, then passing laws to correct for that perception is only going to lead to greater problems.

I pray that there aren't many more people like you who openly declare perception as a reality to be corrected by the force of government authority. That's so fucking insane that I don't have a word emphatic enough to replace "fucking".

It appears that you are equating "GOVERNMENT ACTION/AUTHORITY" with "SOCIETY", when they are two completely separate things.

I am equating those two things. They aren't necessarily the same, but I think in this case they are. How does a society make a concerted effort to do anything in particular but by law? Not rhetorical. I could be wrong, but I honestly can't think of any examples of a "society" all focusing on some homogenous goal. The way it generally works seems to be that the mainstream culture evolves for any number of reasons to decide something is bad, and then the government of said society adjusts the focus of its power to reflect that widely held view point.
 
Whatever. We had a black president for 8 years. You don't get more equal than that.
 
Another thing. . . Someone's membership in a particular racial group doesn't guarantee, or even come CLOSE to guaranteeing, that their perception of "the experience of their group" is accurately reflective of the aggregate reality. I can't believe how often I need to explain this concept, these days. People's perceptions aren't shaped by and only by reality, and this applies to non-whites as well as whites. As human beings, we're far more likely to have our perceptions shaped by the words and opinions of the people we trust and admire than we are to have those perceptions shaped accurately by reality itself. Thus, when large sections of various demographics believe in a narrative that JUST HAPPENS to be the dominant narrative in our pop culture, I remain unconvinced, to put it lightly.


One's experience and perception IS their reality.
One's reality is all there is.

No matter what you and I have in common, it would never ever be possible for me to share your reality.

That's a fine piece of sophistry. YOUR "reality" is not my concern, nor should it dictate government action. Majority opinions by ethnic groups don't dictate what has ACTUALLY happened..

If I, personally, decide that Hawaiians are being murdered en masse by the Mexicans because that's my perception, then my perception is inaccurate and thus NOT THE JOB OF SOCIETY TO FIX. That's my point. If your perception of the plight of your ethnic group isn't an accurate reflection of the aggregate reality, then passing laws to correct for that perception is only going to lead to greater problems.

I pray that there aren't many more people like you who openly declare perception as a reality to be corrected by the force of government authority. That's so fucking insane that I don't have a word emphatic enough to replace "fucking".

It appears that you are equating "GOVERNMENT ACTION/AUTHORITY" with "SOCIETY", when they are two completely separate things.

I am equating those two things. They aren't necessarily the same, but I think in this case they are. How does a society make a concerted effort to do anything in particular but by law? Not rhetorical. I could be wrong, but I honestly can't think of any examples of a "society" all focusing on some homogenous goal. The way it generally works seems to be that the mainstream culture evolves for any number of reasons to decide something is bad, and then the government of said society adjusts the focus of its power to reflect that widely held view point.

While it is true we will never get society to completely focus on a homogenous goal without government action, society's goals can gradually change over time with education and discussion. Not everyone will change, but many will.
 
Another thing. . . Someone's membership in a particular racial group doesn't guarantee, or even come CLOSE to guaranteeing, that their perception of "the experience of their group" is accurately reflective of the aggregate reality. I can't believe how often I need to explain this concept, these days. People's perceptions aren't shaped by and only by reality, and this applies to non-whites as well as whites. As human beings, we're far more likely to have our perceptions shaped by the words and opinions of the people we trust and admire than we are to have those perceptions shaped accurately by reality itself. Thus, when large sections of various demographics believe in a narrative that JUST HAPPENS to be the dominant narrative in our pop culture, I remain unconvinced, to put it lightly.


One's experience and perception IS their reality.
One's reality is all there is.

No matter what you and I have in common, it would never ever be possible for me to share your reality.

That's a fine piece of sophistry. YOUR "reality" is not my concern, nor should it dictate government action. Majority opinions by ethnic groups don't dictate what has ACTUALLY happened..

If I, personally, decide that Hawaiians are being murdered en masse by the Mexicans because that's my perception, then my perception is inaccurate and thus NOT THE JOB OF SOCIETY TO FIX. That's my point. If your perception of the plight of your ethnic group isn't an accurate reflection of the aggregate reality, then passing laws to correct for that perception is only going to lead to greater problems.

I pray that there aren't many more people like you who openly declare perception as a reality to be corrected by the force of government authority. That's so fucking insane that I don't have a word emphatic enough to replace "fucking".

It appears that you are equating "GOVERNMENT ACTION/AUTHORITY" with "SOCIETY", when they are two completely separate things.

I am equating those two things. They aren't necessarily the same, but I think in this case they are. How does a society make a concerted effort to do anything in particular but by law? Not rhetorical. I could be wrong, but I honestly can't think of any examples of a "society" all focusing on some homogenous goal. The way it generally works seems to be that the mainstream culture evolves for any number of reasons to decide something is bad, and then the government of said society adjusts the focus of its power to reflect that widely held view point.
How does a society make a concerted effort to do anything in particular but by law?

Cultural changes certainly can accrue from non-legal action.
That the "sin tax" on smoking/tobacco products increased was merely incidental to the transformation of smoking from being a very cool thing to do to smoking being considered disgusting and becoming anathema to most people.

Another cultural change is that of decreasing formality attendant to myriad genres interpersonal interactions ranging from highly structured/organized/deliberate interactions to serendipitous ones. We see that manifested in a variety of behaviors, one being people dressing informally in the office. The office was, until a few decades ago, the last stronghold of fashion formality. Silicon Valley changed that. How did that happen? The "Nike method;" people just did it, and, over time, increasingly more people followed the trend. It took little other than will. It certainly didn't happen by legal action. [1]

The evolution of an increasingly casual culture affected more than just the way we dress at work. It also changed the way we live at home. Time and time again one encounters outwardly appearing very traditional dwelling the owners have renovated to align the floor plan with the less formal, "open floor plan," way people gather socially. That's even happened with very old historic dwellings. Another example of cultural change toward informality appears in how dating happens, the emergence of the "hook up" culture. A last example I might cite is, of course, the casualness of interactions in venues such as USMB where people unilaterally take communicative liberties with one another that historically one broached only with very close friends and family members, or worse, communicating in ways that one generally is well advised not to in-person. [2]

Above I've illustrated two cultural changes we've watched percolate around the globe. But that such changes have happened doesn't explain how cultural, social change happens. How it happens is vastly more challenging to understand than is simply seeing that it is happening or has, yet how cultural change happens on multiple levels is something social science researchers -- sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and economists -- have studied and largely come to understand. There's even a field of study called "cultural evolution." (The documents linked below are just a small sampling of the "thoughtware" on how cultural changes occur, what catalyzes them, what makes the "chicken" precede the "egg" of change and vice versa, etc. If one asks the right question, and actually go look for it, one will surely find the answer -- if the answer doesn't already exist, well, there's an opportunity for renown and wealth.)
The learnings social scientists have made about how cultural change happens have been applied on a lower level to changing organizational processes and cultures. Firms like Deloitte, Accenture, KPMG, McKinsey, E&Y, BCG, Bain, IBM, Kearney, Hay and others earn billions helping clients effect change of myriad types and on scales ranging from transaction processing to enterprise transformation.
Indeed, the large change in attitudes toward tobacco use was one of the early implementations of the principles of change management -- so early that we hadn't yet coined the term "change management" to describe what we were doing -- to effect cultural change.

The tactical component to effecting change is change leadership, which consists of several things, but the most important is leadership. Rarely is just one leader sufficient. One change "champion" has to coordinate the efforts of a cadre of change leaders, but one person cannot do it alone when the scope of change is that of which I've been speaking in this thread/post. Leaders, no matter how seemingly capable, cannot lead change when the people led don't trust them, and that's where one's character becomes paramount. [3] A key aspect of "world class" leadership is exhibiting what theologians call "humility." In the consulting world it's usually termed as "active listening," which is part of "communication skills." Psychologists call it "empathy." Whatever one wants to call it, it's something at which most folks are lousy. [4] That they are is what makes it hard to identify and emplace apt leaders of change as well as making it hard to implement change.

As a parting thought, I'll note that for reasons I don't fully understand, the human animal is routinely resistant to change. Every other animal on the planet when faced the onus to change, rather than resist it, strives to adapt to it. When humans lost their will and prevailing ability to do that I cannot say. That trait of humanity, reticence for change, reminds me of Karr's wry epigram, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.



Note:
  1. Now that we've for a couple decades substantively ditched our suits and ties at the office, several researchers have performed empirical studies that measure the impact of "formal" clothing on cognitive analysis. The findings are quite interesting.
  2. I think one could include the burgeoning of "acronym-words" and emoji/emoticon "words" as part of the increase in casualness we've experienced over the past quindecennial, perhaps vicennial, period.
  3. Managing/implementing change (process and culture) in multinational organizations is what I spent my career doing. I cannot count the number of times I've had clients -- COOs, CEOs, EVP, etc. -- award engagements to me and my team saying something on the order of, "I don't know really know whether your plan is better than 'so and so's,' but I trust you to put our goals on par with your own, so we're going with your firm."

    I know for fact, I'm only as smart and as capable as my competitive peers in the industry -- especially as go the "hard" skills of managing time, resources, people and activities, being structured and organized, product/subject matter knowledge, detail orientation, etc. -- and I know their plans and tactics are have neither more nor less potential to succeed than the ones my teams and I develop. The fee structures also aren't materially different, though we, and my projects in particular, tend to be a bit more expensive than average. The relationship -- character, unsurpassed integrity and honesty demonstrated by every key member of our team being what established the nature of the relationship -- is what made the difference.
  4. In saying folks are lousy at active listening I'm not criticising them, at least not in this post am I. It's merely attesting to something that, though not wonderful/positive, nonetheless is. It's something to mitigate by taking the theories (science sense) of what makes change happen organically and then applying that knowledge (effecting principles of change management) to deliberately make change happen in instances whereby it otherwise would not have occurred, or would not have occurred as coherently and quickly. (Mind you, "quick," with regard to some scales of change can mean a decade or two. Adoption of recycling is one example.)

    Most people see/hear (seeing is, paradoxically, part of active listening), no matter what's actually said, something that aligns with their "world view." When they don't hear such, if they they think they can, they'll try to fit the "square" they heard, and the source from which the message came, into the "round hole" that is their "world view." Barring that, they simply resist. (I know that reads like a "transactional" statement, but it's not.) The first change that has to happen is getting the person, people, to change themselves into "active listeners." There're many reasons why people do that, but here what's relevant is that they do it.

    There is, of course, an upside to the fact that most people are lousy active listeners: if one is among the comparatively small quantity of people who are very good active listeners, very knowledgeable about theories of change, very capable with converting abstract knowledge into action, there's a good living ("one percenter-anywhere-in-the-country" good) to be made at doing so.
 
Look X, number one as one poster has already attested to you are too long winded. I am not here to read a book, and if you can't get your point across with less wordage you are really just bloviating. Secondly, the first half of the op is a bunch of survey questions done by pew. If pew has a left wing agenda, which I believe it does, then the way pew fashions the questions will elicit certain preprogrammed responses which lead to pre programmed conclusions. If you are using pew survey answers as the foundation for your op then you are starting out with a false premise imo. Likewise, the very assertion that widely divergent views are held by different races in today's environment means that white people are always wrong in their perceptions as well as blatantly racist because they don't totally agree with the opinions of people of color which leads to an environment of artificial outrage which further polarizes both sides and makes the situation worse.

I cited one or two of the questions in the pew survey to support my claims of survey bias, or at the very least survey leading questions.

In a nutshell, my experiences with all the races is that everyone wants a fair shake and a level playing field and any one crying victimhood is just engaging in an academic discussion. Does the Ben Carson or the Seattle Seahawks cornerback(I cannot remember his name but they just did an espn special on him and his mother) not ring true for you. How about the fight this weekend. The black guy made 350 million, the white guy made 100 million. What are we debating about? You can make it if you try. Those constantly talking racism and taking surveys about division are whiners not doers. Your op X will never have a final answer so where is the productivity in engaging in the question?
 
ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch2-08.png


I love articles like this. They start with the foregone conclusion that these differences in wealth, education, happiness, etc, are the results of systemic racism, and that they need to be corrected via "societal" (read: government) action. Then they spend the rest of the article pointing out all the differences between groups.​

What they don't do, fucking EVER, is substantiate the systemic racism claim. In fact, every time I ask some proponent of this sorta shit to substantiate that claim, I get ridicule in stead of an attempt at a logical answer.

Here's the thing: results don't, in and of themselves, prove causality. Until you can point out where these problems are created at the systemic level, and thus are problems that are rightly solved by systemic modifications to our system of governance, I'm calling bullshit. Period.

Indeed. Good general summary.
 
Look X, number one as one poster has already attested to you are too long winded. I am not here to read a book, and if you can't get your point across with less wordage you are really just bloviating. Secondly, the first half of the op is a bunch of survey questions done by pew. If pew has a left wing agenda, which I believe it does, then the way pew fashions the questions will elicit certain preprogrammed responses which lead to pre programmed conclusions. If you are using pew survey answers as the foundation for your op then you are starting out with a false premise imo. Likewise, the very assertion that widely divergent views are held by different races in today's environment means that white people are always wrong in their perceptions as well as blatantly racist because they don't totally agree with the opinions of people of color which leads to an environment of artificial outrage which further polarizes both sides and makes the situation worse.

I cited one or two of the questions in the pew survey to support my claims of survey bias, or at the very least survey leading questions.

In a nutshell, my experiences with all the races is that everyone wants a fair shake and a level playing field and any one crying victimhood is just engaging in an academic discussion. Does the Ben Carson or the Seattle Seahawks cornerback(I cannot remember his name but they just did an espn special on him and his mother) not ring true for you. How about the fight this weekend. The black guy made 350 million, the white guy made 100 million. What are we debating about? You can make it if you try. Those constantly talking racism and taking surveys about division are whiners not doers. Your op X will never have a final answer so where is the productivity in engaging in the question?

Your op X will never have a final answer so where is the productivity in engaging in the question?

If that's sincerely why for and what you see as the nature and extent to which the thread rubric lacks discursive merit, why the f*ck did you even bother responding?

I mean really. Who the hell reads a rubric, thinks "oh, this line of discussion has no productive value because there's no final answer," and then proceeds with attempting to participate in the discussion? Your time must surly be more productively spent elsewhere.
 
Most people see/hear (seeing is, paradoxically, part of active listening), no matter what's actually said, something that aligns with their "world view." When they don't hear such, if they they think they can, they'll try to fit the "square" they heard, and the source from which the message came, into the "round hole" that is their "world view." Barring that, they simply resist.

To wit another thread poster provides a fine illustration (generously, for the second time...the first is on an earlier page) of exactly that....

Look X, number one as one poster has already attested to you are too long winded. I am not here to read a book, and if you can't get your point across with less wordage you are really just bloviating. Secondly, the first half of the op is a bunch of survey questions done by pew. If pew has a left wing agenda, which I believe it does, then the way pew fashions the questions will elicit certain preprogrammed responses which lead to pre programmed conclusions. If you are using pew survey answers as the foundation for your op then you are starting out with a false premise imo. Likewise, the very assertion that widely divergent views are held by different races in today's environment means that white people are always wrong in their perceptions as well as blatantly racist because they don't totally agree with the opinions of people of color which leads to an environment of artificial outrage which further polarizes both sides and makes the situation worse.

I cited one or two of the questions in the pew survey to support my claims of survey bias, or at the very least survey leading questions.

In a nutshell, my experiences with all the races is that everyone wants a fair shake and a level playing field and any one crying victimhood is just engaging in an academic discussion. Does the Ben Carson or the Seattle Seahawks cornerback(I cannot remember his name but they just did an espn special on him and his mother) not ring true for you. How about the fight this weekend. The black guy made 350 million, the white guy made 100 million. What are we debating about? You can make it if you try. Those constantly talking racism and taking surveys about division are whiners not doers. Your op X will never have a final answer so where is the productivity in engaging in the question?

Secondly, the first half of the op is a bunch of survey questions done by pew. If pew has a left wing agenda, which I believe it does, then the way pew fashions the questions will elicit certain preprogrammed responses which lead to pre programmed conclusions.

In the context of this thread, whether Pew is left or right wing is of no consequence.

That said, the way to show that Pew's survey's (or anyone's studies) are biased and unreliable is to show specific flaws and biases -- ones Pew does not mitigate or does not disclose so readers can aptly apply the disclosed info when considering the survey results -- in the methodology. In addition to showing the flaws exist, one must also show that they are material flaws. Merely claiming flaws exist does not count as "showing" they exist. Also, not establishing that shown flaws are material makes pointless one's efforts to show the flaws exist; failing to establish materiality is tantamount to saying "the bull has tits."

There are many ways to challenge a survey's methodology. Some examples of how to to do that are here: The Cameron Group's Survey Studies: A Methodological Critique. If one isn't going to soundly challenge a survey's (or study's) methodology, one has no credible basis for rejecting its results.

If you are using pew survey answers as the foundation for your op then you are starting out with a false premise imo.

The survey questions are not foundational, but rather illustrative of the thread's thesis.

Likewise, the very assertion that widely divergent views are held by different races in today's environment means that white people are always wrong in their perceptions

Who posted that premise and from it drew the noted conclusion? Please point me to their remark to that effect.

I cited one or two of the questions in the pew survey to support my claims of survey bias, or at the very least survey leading questions.

As already noted, even if one accepts as so your claim, for this thread's topic survey bias is irrelevant.

FWIW, if you think there's survey bias, I suggest you review Pew's survey methodology and present your assertions with regard to it. I provided you the link you need to access not only the methodology, but also the survey questions asked.

I cited one or two of the questions in the pew survey to support my claims of survey bias, or at the very least survey leading questions.

You cited one, and you did so inaccurately. That inaccuracy obviates any validity your claim could conceivably have had.

I can't say why you did so, only that you did. I didn't say anything about it because (1) it wasn't accurately described, (2) the way Pew in fact presented question is entirely neutral, (3) the post in which you did so concluded sardonically, and (4) it was clear to me you hadn't at that point grasped the thread topic. Thus, I opted to respond by giving you a hint about the thread topic.

I've only acquiesced to remarking about your "survey bias" question because you seem to think it has enough merit for you to keep pressing about it. It's a "sick dog" you should have let lie.

my experiences with all the races is that everyone wants a fair shake and a level playing field

Of course, everyone wants that. That they do (or even if they do not) isn't the thread topic.

my experiences with all the races is that everyone wants a fair shake and a level playing field and any one crying victimhood is just engaging in an academic discussion.

I accept that your experiences are as you depict them. I do not for a minute think or accept that your anecdotal adventures have statistical significance making them worthy of use for making sound inferences.

Does the Ben Carson or the Seattle Seahawks cornerback(I cannot remember his name but they just did an espn special on him and his mother) not ring true for you. How about the fight this weekend. The black guy made 350 million, the white guy made 100 million.

And? What is the point? Be honest. Did you read the OP? If so, how did you miss the context of the thread? I know you missed or misconstrued the OP's context by the examples you've mentioned. That you've mentioned four specific individuals is how I know you did, and, FWIW, what four you might have mentioned has nothing to do with it.

Having now had a change to read through the thread, it's clear two parties to the discussion absolutely understand what the topic is and their remarks are on-topic and relevant. (Sometimes on USMB, people do share comments that are on-topic, but that are so inane that they thereby are rendered ingermane. That's not happened with the two I've noted.)
 
Another thing. . . Someone's membership in a particular racial group doesn't guarantee, or even come CLOSE to guaranteeing, that their perception of "the experience of their group" is accurately reflective of the aggregate reality. I can't believe how often I need to explain this concept, these days. People's perceptions aren't shaped by and only by reality, and this applies to non-whites as well as whites. As human beings, we're far more likely to have our perceptions shaped by the words and opinions of the people we trust and admire than we are to have those perceptions shaped accurately by reality itself. Thus, when large sections of various demographics believe in a narrative that JUST HAPPENS to be the dominant narrative in our pop culture, I remain unconvinced, to put it lightly.


One's experience and perception IS their reality.
One's reality is all there is.

No matter what you and I have in common, it would never ever be possible for me to share your reality.

That's a fine piece of sophistry. YOUR "reality" is not my concern, nor should it dictate government action. Majority opinions by ethnic groups don't dictate what has ACTUALLY happened..

If I, personally, decide that Hawaiians are being murdered en masse by the Mexicans because that's my perception, then my perception is inaccurate and thus NOT THE JOB OF SOCIETY TO FIX. That's my point. If your perception of the plight of your ethnic group isn't an accurate reflection of the aggregate reality, then passing laws to correct for that perception is only going to lead to greater problems.

I pray that there aren't many more people like you who openly declare perception as a reality to be corrected by the force of government authority. That's so fucking insane that I don't have a word emphatic enough to replace "fucking".

It appears that you are equating "GOVERNMENT ACTION/AUTHORITY" with "SOCIETY", when they are two completely separate things.

I am equating those two things. They aren't necessarily the same, but I think in this case they are. How does a society make a concerted effort to do anything in particular but by law? Not rhetorical. I could be wrong, but I honestly can't think of any examples of a "society" all focusing on some homogenous goal. The way it generally works seems to be that the mainstream culture evolves for any number of reasons to decide something is bad, and then the government of said society adjusts the focus of its power to reflect that widely held view point.

While it is true we will never get society to completely focus on a homogenous goal without government action, society's goals can gradually change over time with education and discussion. Not everyone will change, but many will.

On this, we agree. The reason I specified that "this time" I believe government action and societal action are one in the same is specifically because of what was presented in the graphs. For the most part, they were polls on how blacks vs whites feel about racial relations and treatment. The only hard data graphs that they presented were gaps in income, gaps in poverty rate, and gaps in education. The implication is that, among the things that would constitute "equal rights" for people of color is average income balanced across racial groups, education results balanced across racial groups, and equally proportionate representation in poverty. I think it's safe to assume that the authors of the study aren't convinced that society's views are going to shift to the point that, not only is all bias accounted for, but every individual in every racial group makes choices that cause the numbers to average out evenly by group. Since every demographic is made up by individuals with what might as well be completely random sets of traits across variables that we can't even properly quantify, expecting that such a thing would ever come about is arguably more unrealistic than any myth in the history of mankind.
No, I'm afraid that such a miraculous balance of consequences across relatively arbitrarily set dividing lines (and another fun conversation is why the same anti racists who are constantly reminding everyone that "race" is a concept invented by the white slave owners of early America insist on perpetuating the relegation of each individual into those same groups designed to justify atrocities) is something that a society could only achieve with some serious authoritarianism, right down to the level of assigning employment from the top down.
 
Another thing. . . Someone's membership in a particular racial group doesn't guarantee, or even come CLOSE to guaranteeing, that their perception of "the experience of their group" is accurately reflective of the aggregate reality. I can't believe how often I need to explain this concept, these days. People's perceptions aren't shaped by and only by reality, and this applies to non-whites as well as whites. As human beings, we're far more likely to have our perceptions shaped by the words and opinions of the people we trust and admire than we are to have those perceptions shaped accurately by reality itself. Thus, when large sections of various demographics believe in a narrative that JUST HAPPENS to be the dominant narrative in our pop culture, I remain unconvinced, to put it lightly.


One's experience and perception IS their reality.
One's reality is all there is.

No matter what you and I have in common, it would never ever be possible for me to share your reality.

That's a fine piece of sophistry. YOUR "reality" is not my concern, nor should it dictate government action. Majority opinions by ethnic groups don't dictate what has ACTUALLY happened..

If I, personally, decide that Hawaiians are being murdered en masse by the Mexicans because that's my perception, then my perception is inaccurate and thus NOT THE JOB OF SOCIETY TO FIX. That's my point. If your perception of the plight of your ethnic group isn't an accurate reflection of the aggregate reality, then passing laws to correct for that perception is only going to lead to greater problems.

I pray that there aren't many more people like you who openly declare perception as a reality to be corrected by the force of government authority. That's so fucking insane that I don't have a word emphatic enough to replace "fucking".

It appears that you are equating "GOVERNMENT ACTION/AUTHORITY" with "SOCIETY", when they are two completely separate things.

I am equating those two things. They aren't necessarily the same, but I think in this case they are. How does a society make a concerted effort to do anything in particular but by law? Not rhetorical. I could be wrong, but I honestly can't think of any examples of a "society" all focusing on some homogenous goal. The way it generally works seems to be that the mainstream culture evolves for any number of reasons to decide something is bad, and then the government of said society adjusts the focus of its power to reflect that widely held view point.
How does a society make a concerted effort to do anything in particular but by law?

Cultural changes certainly can accrue from non-legal action.
That the "sin tax" on smoking/tobacco products increased was merely incidental to the transformation of smoking from being a very cool thing to do to smoking being considered disgusting and becoming anathema to most people.

Another cultural change is that of decreasing formality attendant to myriad genres interpersonal interactions ranging from highly structured/organized/deliberate interactions to serendipitous ones. We see that manifested in a variety of behaviors, one being people dressing informally in the office. The office was, until a few decades ago, the last stronghold of fashion formality. Silicon Valley changed that. How did that happen? The "Nike method;" people just did it, and, over time, increasingly more people followed the trend. It took little other than will. It certainly didn't happen by legal action. [1]

The evolution of an increasingly casual culture affected more than just the way we dress at work. It also changed the way we live at home. Time and time again one encounters outwardly appearing very traditional dwelling the owners have renovated to align the floor plan with the less formal, "open floor plan," way people gather socially. That's even happened with very old historic dwellings. Another example of cultural change toward informality appears in how dating happens, the emergence of the "hook up" culture. A last example I might cite is, of course, the casualness of interactions in venues such as USMB where people unilaterally take communicative liberties with one another that historically one broached only with very close friends and family members, or worse, communicating in ways that one generally is well advised not to in-person. [2]

Above I've illustrated two cultural changes we've watched percolate around the globe. But that such changes have happened doesn't explain how cultural, social change happens. How it happens is vastly more challenging to understand than is simply seeing that it is happening or has, yet how cultural change happens on multiple levels is something social science researchers -- sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and economists -- have studied and largely come to understand. There's even a field of study called "cultural evolution." (The documents linked below are just a small sampling of the "thoughtware" on how cultural changes occur, what catalyzes them, what makes the "chicken" precede the "egg" of change and vice versa, etc. If one asks the right question, and actually go look for it, one will surely find the answer -- if the answer doesn't already exist, well, there's an opportunity for renown and wealth.)
The learnings social scientists have made about how cultural change happens have been applied on a lower level to changing organizational processes and cultures. Firms like Deloitte, Accenture, KPMG, McKinsey, E&Y, BCG, Bain, IBM, Kearney, Hay and others earn billions helping clients effect change of myriad types and on scales ranging from transaction processing to enterprise transformation.
Indeed, the large change in attitudes toward tobacco use was one of the early implementations of the principles of change management -- so early that we hadn't yet coined the term "change management" to describe what we were doing -- to effect cultural change.

The tactical component to effecting change is change leadership, which consists of several things, but the most important is leadership. Rarely is just one leader sufficient. One change "champion" has to coordinate the efforts of a cadre of change leaders, but one person cannot do it alone when the scope of change is that of which I've been speaking in this thread/post. Leaders, no matter how seemingly capable, cannot lead change when the people led don't trust them, and that's where one's character becomes paramount. [3] A key aspect of "world class" leadership is exhibiting what theologians call "humility." In the consulting world it's usually termed as "active listening," which is part of "communication skills." Psychologists call it "empathy." Whatever one wants to call it, it's something at which most folks are lousy. [4] That they are is what makes it hard to identify and emplace apt leaders of change as well as making it hard to implement change.

As a parting thought, I'll note that for reasons I don't fully understand, the human animal is routinely resistant to change. Every other animal on the planet when faced the onus to change, rather than resist it, strives to adapt to it. When humans lost their will and prevailing ability to do that I cannot say. That trait of humanity, reticence for change, reminds me of Karr's wry epigram, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.



Note:
  1. Now that we've for a couple decades substantively ditched our suits and ties at the office, several researchers have performed empirical studies that measure the impact of "formal" clothing on cognitive analysis. The findings are quite interesting.
  2. I think one could include the burgeoning of "acronym-words" and emoji/emoticon "words" as part of the increase in casualness we've experienced over the past quindecennial, perhaps vicennial, period.
  3. Managing/implementing change (process and culture) in multinational organizations is what I spent my career doing. I cannot count the number of times I've had clients -- COOs, CEOs, EVP, etc. -- award engagements to me and my team saying something on the order of, "I don't know really know whether your plan is better than 'so and so's,' but I trust you to put our goals on par with your own, so we're going with your firm."

    I know for fact, I'm only as smart and as capable as my competitive peers in the industry -- especially as go the "hard" skills of managing time, resources, people and activities, being structured and organized, product/subject matter knowledge, detail orientation, etc. -- and I know their plans and tactics are have neither more nor less potential to succeed than the ones my teams and I develop. The fee structures also aren't materially different, though we, and my projects in particular, tend to be a bit more expensive than average. The relationship -- character, unsurpassed integrity and honesty demonstrated by every key member of our team being what established the nature of the relationship -- is what made the difference.
  4. In saying folks are lousy at active listening I'm not criticising them, at least not in this post am I. It's merely attesting to something that, though not wonderful/positive, nonetheless is. It's something to mitigate by taking the theories (science sense) of what makes change happen organically and then applying that knowledge (effecting principles of change management) to deliberately make change happen in instances whereby it otherwise would not have occurred, or would not have occurred as coherently and quickly. (Mind you, "quick," with regard to some scales of change can mean a decade or two. Adoption of recycling is one example.)

    Most people see/hear (seeing is, paradoxically, part of active listening), no matter what's actually said, something that aligns with their "world view." When they don't hear such, if they they think they can, they'll try to fit the "square" they heard, and the source from which the message came, into the "round hole" that is their "world view." Barring that, they simply resist. (I know that reads like a "transactional" statement, but it's not.) The first change that has to happen is getting the person, people, to change themselves into "active listeners." There're many reasons why people do that, but here what's relevant is that they do it.

    There is, of course, an upside to the fact that most people are lousy active listeners: if one is among the comparatively small quantity of people who are very good active listeners, very knowledgeable about theories of change, very capable with converting abstract knowledge into action, there's a good living ("one percenter-anywhere-in-the-country" good) to be made at doing so.

I do concede that cultural changes happen all the time without government action being involved, but honestly tobacco is a pretty flawed counterexample. The fact of the matter is that the anti-smoking movement in our culture has, since even prior to my birth, gone hand in hand with authoritative action against the tobacco industry, including television advertising bans as well as advertising bans in various locations for various reasons, and shit tons of anti smoking curricula all throughout K-12 public education (I was part of the Smoke Free Class of 2000!). The sin tax, in my admittedly cynical opinion, is just about grabbing money, but it still came on the heels of growing anti-tobacco sentiment throughout society.

And let's not forget about the public and workplace smoking bans that became all too common in the early 2000's. In Hawaii, they're so Nazi about it that if a cab driver who is, themselves, a smoker, allows a lone passenger to smoke a cigarette in the back of their cab, they can be pulled over and fined in the 4 digits for workplace smoking violations. You can't even smoke on the tarmac on the airport in Hawaii legally, regardless of whether or not there's even another human being within 1000 yards.

At any rate, they haven't banned cigarettes, but smoking is still far and away from being a purely organic movement free of government force being used to perpetuate the will of the cultural mainstream.
 
Black folks and white folks, for the most part, have very different views of the nature and extent of equality in the U.S. The thing is that while black individuals and white individuals can be correct in evaluating and attesting to one's own situation, and perhaps those of a small few others' situations, it's not possible that on the group level the widely held and broadly asserted states of things as averred by blacks and whites are both correct.

ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-overview-01.png


ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch3-01.png


ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch3-02.png


ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch3-08.png


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ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch2-03.png


ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch2-05.png


At least young blacks and whites agree on something. Maybe their agreement can lead to things getting better.
ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch2-06.png


It's no surprise that the folks on the "short end of the race stick" think not enough attention is paid to it. Ditto that folks on the upside of the matter think race gets too much attention. (I included the chart, but I didn't need a study to tell me the below aspect of how the groups generally perceive the matter. LOL)
ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch2-07.png


Given how often I see conservatives on USMB (I don't know if they are Republicans) remark on how the Democratic party is the party of racists, I'd have expected to see a smaller percentage of Republicans attesting to the belief shown below.
ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch2-08.png




ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch1-03-2.png


ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch1-04.png


ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch1-05.png


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ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-overview-07.png


ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-overview-08.png


ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-overview-09.png


ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch1-02.png


ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch4-05.png


ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch5-02.png


ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch6-03.png


ST_2016.06.27_race-inequality-ch6-08.png

The charts above were taken from a Pew study, "On Views of Race and Inequality, Blacks and Whites Are Worlds Apart." Greater detail on selected questions from the study can be found at "How blacks and whites view the state of race in America."


Why extant is the disconnect between the reality and the perception of equality in the U.S? Part of it has to do with differences in perception of what "equality" means.
  • Among the blacks with whom I regularly speak, equality means equality of opportunity, but not necessarily equality of all outcomes. That is, in some genres, congruity of outcomes should exist across races and genders, whereas for other genres congruity of outcomes need not be existential.

    For example, my black colleagues would say that when selecting and or interviewing candidates for a job in the firm:
    • The firm should make the job availability known to potentially qualified candidates of any and all races, which is particularly relevant for our campus (grad and undergrad) recruiting initiatives as that's where most of our "career track" recruiting happens.

      Accordingly, in addition to holding recruitment/interviewing events at "the usual suspects" of schools, we also hold them at HBUs that have strong programs in the disciplines we seek as well as liaising with minority student groups, like Alpha Kappa Mu and Onyx, at "mainstream" colleges and universities.

      The example above constitutes what my black associates consider examples of providing comparable opportunity. I'm okay with this notion of comparability of opportunity because all I really want is high performing employees who, with regard to our performance matrix, consistently meet and exceed expectations.
    • The individuals who interview should be asked comparable questions and have the merit of their responses weighed with a high degree of parity.

      The firm achieves that by using a "team" interview process whereby all our interview teams have multiple minorities and women on them. A typical team, five or six people, has two or three women and minority representation of black, Latino and Asian. (Obviously, certain interviewers "kill two birds.")

      My black associates would say that as for who gets offers, the outcome, the candidates who performed best should get the offers. That may or may not result in minorities receiving offers, and if it doesn't, that's okay so long as when the minorities do interview well, their being minorities doesn't become a reason they don't get offers. While the minority partners in the firm would like to see more minorities join the firm, they are well aware that, absent huge changes beyond the firm's control, there will always be more whites in the firm.

      This example illustrates what my black peers would consider a situation in which an observed difference in outcome is not necessarily a concern they or the firm need to alter. They'd say it may be or may not be, and that more information is needed to know which is so. I don't see their position as unreasonable.
  • Among the whites I routinely talk to, equality of opportunity, in their minds, is substantively consistent across races and genders, but equality of outcomes is not. Some whites I've talked to -- not members of the firm -- see equality of outcomes the same way as my black associates do, and some of them see it as "if a white person is qualified and doesn't get an offer yet a minority person does, something unfair happened."

    I don't know why they think that. (I truly don't because when folks head down that road with me, I just say "okay" and extricate myself from the conversation.) It's as though they imagine that we might give an offer to a minority who isn't qualified and withhold an offer from the white person because they're white. I guess they just can't fathom that the firm's objective is to hire the best people it can-- as opposed to achieving some sort of predefined racial distribution among it workforce -- because that's what advances its profit motive.

    There're, however, no two ways about it: the firm exists to make money, not to hire women, minorities, or whatever. Every decision comes down to whether it is this the "optimal business decision" that we can make given the information we have at the time. That's hiring, firing, promotions, training and career development initiatives, client/engagement selection, where to locate our offices, etc. It's not about anybody feeling good because we have X-many women or minorities. We feel good when we and our people do our jobs well, get well paid, and in our time off, enjoy the fruits of having been well paid.
Part of the difference in the economic status of whites and blacks certainly accrues from real differences in how long blacks and whites have had in the U.S. to achieve the modern status called "middle class." It took a long time for literally millions of people to reach what we consider "middle class." What constitutes "the middle class" in minds of modern Americans didn't exist as a large plurality or majority of the U.S. population until after WWII. [1]



For the 1939 World's Fair in New York, the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. commissions a one-hour film telling the story of an upper middle class family called the Middletons. The Indiana family visits the fair and is won over by the Westinghouse exhibit's futuristic display of middle-class lifestyle and leisure.


What that means is that whites, as a segment of society in America, took from the early 1600s to about 1950 for the majority of the white population to achieve what is today considered middle class status/lifestyle. In contrast, blacks technically have since the end of segregation (that's the point I specify because separate wasn't ever equal and bigotry and its effects didn't disappear overnight with the passage of the Civil Rights Bill) to the present to, as a segment of society in America, do the same thing. To my mind, it's no wonder that blacks have not "caught up" to whites. That blacks, again as a segment of society, have had to try doing so in the face of greater and lesser degrees of ongoing oppression and disdain for their very being did not ameliorate or expedite their achieving that end. [2]

Causes for the discrepancy in perceptions and reality notwithstanding, the fact is that everyone cannot be correct. Some thoughts that come to mind include:
  • It's hard to imagine that people who have 200+ years of history being the objects of discrimination (and worse) are also unable to accurately tell when they are a current object of it. They for sure have far more practice being able to tell than do I. By the same token, whites have had a lot of practice at obfuscating the discriminatory nature of their behavior. (There's also the "PC" thing, which, to my mind serves mostly as a "how to" guide for "pricks" who do not want to seem bigoted, sexist, etc.)
  • When an individual says they were discriminated against and I wasn't present to see it, unless I have good reason to think they lie and fabricate things at the rate and extent Trump does, I don't have any basis by which to tell them they are wrong. I think one must give people credit for knowing when they've been personally discriminated against. At some point, information may come about that shows the error of their interpretation of the matter, but until that data becomes evident, they deserve to be believed.
  • When an individual says they didn't do/say what they said because of their awareness of another's minority status, absent my being there to see the events, I have to believe them. At some point, information may come about that shows the error of their depiction of the matter, but until that data becomes evident, they deserve to be believed.
Now no matter one's race and feelings about the views of other races, one cannot credibly assert that "they're all wrong" or "they don't they're talking about." Even if one does think that, the whole situation is better served by people keeping those thoughts to themselves. Doing otherwise manifests grossly ineffective conflict resolution skills. Quite simply, it will not advance us toward "a more perfect union."



Notes:
  1. Of course, there were and are always people with incomes "in the middle." That's a fact of how a range of number work. .
    -- The Great Compression
    -- Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com
    -- American Incomes 1774-1860
    -- Family Life, 19th-Century Families
    -- Poverty
  2. I know someone will myopically feel obliged to bring up Asians. (I swear, sometimes I wonder what bigots would do without Asians.) I'd buy that to a point, but what folks who mention the Asian phenomenon ignore is that racial disdain in the U.S. has largely been skin-color-based, and Asians, for the most part, don't have brown skin. They're largely fair skinned like white folks are.

    In light of my having included a wage chart that includes Latinos, it's worth noting that the preponderance of non-white Latinos entering the U.S. came after enactment of the Civil Rights Act. That should come as no surprise. Prior to that, quite simply, it wasn't good to be "brown" in America. It should come as no great shock that Latino wages and black wages are about the same. They've, as "brown" people, substantively had about the same period of time to "catch up."

You need to put an executive summary of 5 sentences or less on all this.
 
One's experience and perception IS their reality.
One's reality is all there is.

No matter what you and I have in common, it would never ever be possible for me to share your reality.

That's a fine piece of sophistry. YOUR "reality" is not my concern, nor should it dictate government action. Majority opinions by ethnic groups don't dictate what has ACTUALLY happened..

If I, personally, decide that Hawaiians are being murdered en masse by the Mexicans because that's my perception, then my perception is inaccurate and thus NOT THE JOB OF SOCIETY TO FIX. That's my point. If your perception of the plight of your ethnic group isn't an accurate reflection of the aggregate reality, then passing laws to correct for that perception is only going to lead to greater problems.

I pray that there aren't many more people like you who openly declare perception as a reality to be corrected by the force of government authority. That's so fucking insane that I don't have a word emphatic enough to replace "fucking".

It appears that you are equating "GOVERNMENT ACTION/AUTHORITY" with "SOCIETY", when they are two completely separate things.

I am equating those two things. They aren't necessarily the same, but I think in this case they are. How does a society make a concerted effort to do anything in particular but by law? Not rhetorical. I could be wrong, but I honestly can't think of any examples of a "society" all focusing on some homogenous goal. The way it generally works seems to be that the mainstream culture evolves for any number of reasons to decide something is bad, and then the government of said society adjusts the focus of its power to reflect that widely held view point.
How does a society make a concerted effort to do anything in particular but by law?

Cultural changes certainly can accrue from non-legal action.
That the "sin tax" on smoking/tobacco products increased was merely incidental to the transformation of smoking from being a very cool thing to do to smoking being considered disgusting and becoming anathema to most people.

Another cultural change is that of decreasing formality attendant to myriad genres interpersonal interactions ranging from highly structured/organized/deliberate interactions to serendipitous ones. We see that manifested in a variety of behaviors, one being people dressing informally in the office. The office was, until a few decades ago, the last stronghold of fashion formality. Silicon Valley changed that. How did that happen? The "Nike method;" people just did it, and, over time, increasingly more people followed the trend. It took little other than will. It certainly didn't happen by legal action. [1]

The evolution of an increasingly casual culture affected more than just the way we dress at work. It also changed the way we live at home. Time and time again one encounters outwardly appearing very traditional dwelling the owners have renovated to align the floor plan with the less formal, "open floor plan," way people gather socially. That's even happened with very old historic dwellings. Another example of cultural change toward informality appears in how dating happens, the emergence of the "hook up" culture. A last example I might cite is, of course, the casualness of interactions in venues such as USMB where people unilaterally take communicative liberties with one another that historically one broached only with very close friends and family members, or worse, communicating in ways that one generally is well advised not to in-person. [2]

Above I've illustrated two cultural changes we've watched percolate around the globe. But that such changes have happened doesn't explain how cultural, social change happens. How it happens is vastly more challenging to understand than is simply seeing that it is happening or has, yet how cultural change happens on multiple levels is something social science researchers -- sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and economists -- have studied and largely come to understand. There's even a field of study called "cultural evolution." (The documents linked below are just a small sampling of the "thoughtware" on how cultural changes occur, what catalyzes them, what makes the "chicken" precede the "egg" of change and vice versa, etc. If one asks the right question, and actually go look for it, one will surely find the answer -- if the answer doesn't already exist, well, there's an opportunity for renown and wealth.)
The learnings social scientists have made about how cultural change happens have been applied on a lower level to changing organizational processes and cultures. Firms like Deloitte, Accenture, KPMG, McKinsey, E&Y, BCG, Bain, IBM, Kearney, Hay and others earn billions helping clients effect change of myriad types and on scales ranging from transaction processing to enterprise transformation.
Indeed, the large change in attitudes toward tobacco use was one of the early implementations of the principles of change management -- so early that we hadn't yet coined the term "change management" to describe what we were doing -- to effect cultural change.

The tactical component to effecting change is change leadership, which consists of several things, but the most important is leadership. Rarely is just one leader sufficient. One change "champion" has to coordinate the efforts of a cadre of change leaders, but one person cannot do it alone when the scope of change is that of which I've been speaking in this thread/post. Leaders, no matter how seemingly capable, cannot lead change when the people led don't trust them, and that's where one's character becomes paramount. [3] A key aspect of "world class" leadership is exhibiting what theologians call "humility." In the consulting world it's usually termed as "active listening," which is part of "communication skills." Psychologists call it "empathy." Whatever one wants to call it, it's something at which most folks are lousy. [4] That they are is what makes it hard to identify and emplace apt leaders of change as well as making it hard to implement change.

As a parting thought, I'll note that for reasons I don't fully understand, the human animal is routinely resistant to change. Every other animal on the planet when faced the onus to change, rather than resist it, strives to adapt to it. When humans lost their will and prevailing ability to do that I cannot say. That trait of humanity, reticence for change, reminds me of Karr's wry epigram, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.



Note:
  1. Now that we've for a couple decades substantively ditched our suits and ties at the office, several researchers have performed empirical studies that measure the impact of "formal" clothing on cognitive analysis. The findings are quite interesting.
  2. I think one could include the burgeoning of "acronym-words" and emoji/emoticon "words" as part of the increase in casualness we've experienced over the past quindecennial, perhaps vicennial, period.
  3. Managing/implementing change (process and culture) in multinational organizations is what I spent my career doing. I cannot count the number of times I've had clients -- COOs, CEOs, EVP, etc. -- award engagements to me and my team saying something on the order of, "I don't know really know whether your plan is better than 'so and so's,' but I trust you to put our goals on par with your own, so we're going with your firm."

    I know for fact, I'm only as smart and as capable as my competitive peers in the industry -- especially as go the "hard" skills of managing time, resources, people and activities, being structured and organized, product/subject matter knowledge, detail orientation, etc. -- and I know their plans and tactics are have neither more nor less potential to succeed than the ones my teams and I develop. The fee structures also aren't materially different, though we, and my projects in particular, tend to be a bit more expensive than average. The relationship -- character, unsurpassed integrity and honesty demonstrated by every key member of our team being what established the nature of the relationship -- is what made the difference.
  4. In saying folks are lousy at active listening I'm not criticising them, at least not in this post am I. It's merely attesting to something that, though not wonderful/positive, nonetheless is. It's something to mitigate by taking the theories (science sense) of what makes change happen organically and then applying that knowledge (effecting principles of change management) to deliberately make change happen in instances whereby it otherwise would not have occurred, or would not have occurred as coherently and quickly. (Mind you, "quick," with regard to some scales of change can mean a decade or two. Adoption of recycling is one example.)

    Most people see/hear (seeing is, paradoxically, part of active listening), no matter what's actually said, something that aligns with their "world view." When they don't hear such, if they they think they can, they'll try to fit the "square" they heard, and the source from which the message came, into the "round hole" that is their "world view." Barring that, they simply resist. (I know that reads like a "transactional" statement, but it's not.) The first change that has to happen is getting the person, people, to change themselves into "active listeners." There're many reasons why people do that, but here what's relevant is that they do it.

    There is, of course, an upside to the fact that most people are lousy active listeners: if one is among the comparatively small quantity of people who are very good active listeners, very knowledgeable about theories of change, very capable with converting abstract knowledge into action, there's a good living ("one percenter-anywhere-in-the-country" good) to be made at doing so.

I do concede that cultural changes happen all the time without government action being involved, but honestly tobacco is a pretty flawed counterexample. The fact of the matter is that the anti-smoking movement in our culture has, since even prior to my birth, gone hand in hand with authoritative action against the tobacco industry, including television advertising bans as well as advertising bans in various locations for various reasons, and shit tons of anti smoking curricula all throughout K-12 public education (I was part of the Smoke Free Class of 2000!). The sin tax, in my admittedly cynical opinion, is just about grabbing money, but it still came on the heels of growing anti-tobacco sentiment throughout society.

And let's not forget about the public and workplace smoking bans that became all too common in the early 2000's. In Hawaii, they're so Nazi about it that if a cab driver who is, themselves, a smoker, allows a lone passenger to smoke a cigarette in the back of their cab, they can be pulled over and fined in the 4 digits for workplace smoking violations. You can't even smoke on the tarmac on the airport in Hawaii legally, regardless of whether or not there's even another human being within 1000 yards.

At any rate, they haven't banned cigarettes, but smoking is still far and away from being a purely organic movement free of government force being used to perpetuate the will of the cultural mainstream.
I do concede that cultural changes happen all the time without government action being involved

Cool. Soliciting and securing concurrence that "changes happen all the time without government action being involved" is one of the main goals of post 32.
 

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