quote:

Me, I’m worried about secretly racist white people. There is less animosity in this country toward Asians, so let’s exploit that.

Cindy, I'm going to ask a delicate question out loud. Your remark here got me to thinking about past experience.

How important is shade within the African American community? I saw that in action on a school board advisory committee I served on. A very serious Black member (often wore African clothing to the meetings) tore into the head of the Gifted program for putting a picture on the brochure of three children, one White, one Asian, and one Black. The Black child wasn't Black enough, and this was a very serious issue for him. The poor head of the committee was in tears afterward! She thought she had tried so hard to be fully inclusive, and she was blindsided by degrees of blackness.

The reason for asking, of course, is because Kamala Harris is mixed race, like Obama, and of lighter color. I'm guessing most Black people don't care, but is there a (hopefully small) core of people who would sit out the election because the shade of the Black candidate sends signals to them, signals that other people either don't notice, don't care about, or don't read in the same way.

quote:

The fact that I’m not a fan of Harris isn’t indicative of sexism. The fact that you might see dislike of her of sexism suggests that it’s impossible to dislike a female candidate without you waving the “Sexism!” banner.

Quirt, I don't think this is right way to think about it.

Your criticism of Harris is not necessarily the same as someone else's criticism, and Cindy's points about the way Harris is criticized (for ex. in the media) are about the focus/content of the criticism.

It rings of sexism to me as well. There are a lot of gender norms wrapped up in how female politicians are depicted in the media and treated by their male colleagues, I trust you're not disagreeing with that?

quote:

Originally posted by ShiroKuro:

quote:

The fact that I’m not a fan of Harris isn’t indicative of sexism. The fact that you might see dislike of her of sexism suggests that it’s impossible to dislike a female candidate without you waving the “Sexism!” banner.

Quirt, I don't think this is right way to think about it.

Your criticism of Harris is not necessarily the same as someone else's criticism, and Cindy's points about the way Harris is criticized (for ex. in the media) are about the focus/content of the criticism.

It rings of sexism to me as well. There are a lot of gender norms wrapped up in how female politicians are depicted in the media and treated by their male colleagues, I trust you're not disagreeing with that?

I totally agree with that. However, if a person ... any person, me or anyone else ... has several favorite candidates, all of whom are women, one of whom was ambitious enough to be the (maybe?) third place finisher in the Democratic primary ... not particularly liking one female candidate is not, to me, per se indicative of sexism.

Which, to me, is unrelated to whether female politicians receive equal and fair treatment in the media and from their colleagues. And I don't think any of us have much of a basis for judging how they are treated by their colleagues, we aren't, as Lin-Manuel Miranda would say, "in the room where it happens." But the media, we see that right in front of us all the time, and there's no question that some elements of the media are good on this score, and other elements less good, and others outright bad. It's a spectrum.

That may not be a politically correct answer, but I believe it to be true.

I was a fan of Hillary for decades but I was heavily critical of Warren.


It's not because I'm sexist, I just can't stand Indians.

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Quirt, no one is saying you are sexist. This is because, in this discussion, you haven’t said anything sexist. You are evaluating the female candidates you mentioned using the same standard you would apply to men.

Some in the media have criticized Harris for her ambition, and they do not level that criticism against men.

Do you see what SK and I are saying?

Yes, and I think that would be true if someone disliked any female candidate who showed ambition.

There was an article that crossed my feed yesterday from someone, might have been in the Atlantic, who said that Biden is looking for a woman who will stay off to the side, essentially invisible ... a prop. If that were true, and if he would not be looking for that in a male candidate, that would be sexist.

However, as far as Harris goes, I think it's dangerous to make assumptions based on a sample size of one. Some people find her off-putting, and maybe that's because she's overtly ambitious. But some people feel the same way about Ted Cruz.

I'm just saying that criticism of Harris because of her ambition isn't necessarily an indicia of sexism. To make a reasonable judgment, you'd need a larger sample size, and you'd need a comparison group.

You shouldn't need a large sample size to spot racism or sexism. You do need some understanding of past bias leveled against that group, and when you hear a critique that repeats that past bias, you should be alert to the possibility of racism or sexism.

There has been historic bias against black people in many areas, but for now let's zoom in on the bias that black people are dumber than white people.

Say you go to a hospital, and the doctor they send out to treat you is black. You have a sample size of one black doctor. If you say, "You know, my medical issue is really tricky, so I need a skilled physician. I would prefer not to have that black doctor treat me. I'm not sure he is up to the job."

You have a sample size of one. Your objection fits a common biased view about black people being not smart. Would you really need to see if this person rejects additional black doctors to think there is racism at work? How many would this patient have to reject?

You are saddling black folks with one heck of a burden. Racism against you will be dismissed until you have found additional victims. And don't forget to find a control group.

Try this instead. Educate yourself about historic racism and sexism -- after all, you can't spot it if you don't know what it is.

Then when you see it, don't automatically excuse it or cast about for other ways to dismiss it (e.g. quibbling about sample sizes). Just say, "Oh, wow. Women have historically been criticized for things that are praised or tolerated in men, and 'amibition' is one of those things. That criticism of this woman for being ambitious is sexist."

And for what it is worth, "ambition" is not what many people find intolerable about Ted Cruz.

quote:

Originally posted by Cindysphinx:
You shouldn't need a large sample size to spot racism or sexism. You do need some understanding of past bias leveled against that group, and when you hear a critique that repeats that past bias, you should be alert to the possibility of racism or sexism.

There has been historic bias against black people in many areas, but for now let's zoom in on the bias that black people are dumber than white people.

Say you go to a hospital, and the doctor they send out to treat you is black. You have a sample size of one black doctor. If you say, "You know, my medical issue is really tricky, so I need a skilled physician. I would prefer not to have that black doctor treat me. I'm not sure he is up to the job."

You have a sample size of one. Your objection fits a common biased view about black people being not smart. Would you really need to see if this person rejects additional black doctors to think there is racism at work? How many would this patient have to reject?

You are saddling black folks with one heck of a burden. Racism against you will be dismissed until you have found additional victims. And don't forget to find a control group.

Try this instead. Educate yourself about historic racism and sexism -- after all, you can't spot it if you don't know what it is.

Then when you see it, don't automatically excuse it or cast about for other ways to dismiss it (e.g. quibbling about sample sizes). Just say, "Oh, wow. Women have historically been criticized for things that are praised or tolerated in men, and 'amibition' is one of those things. That criticism of this woman for being ambitious is sexist."

And for what it is worth, "ambition" is not what many people find intolerable about Ted Cruz.

That’s explicit bias, not implicit bias. Not the same thing at all. You are engaging in the logical flaw of going to an extreme, proving that the extreme is wrong, and then attempting (and, unfortunately, failing) to apply that same logic to the far less extreme case currently at issue.

To be clear, this was the issue: a situation where a woman is criticized for demonstrating a characteristic that a man supposedly wouldn’t be criticized for demonstrating. Not a woman being criticized for being a woman.

For example, if I were to say, I don’t like woman X because she uses the word “folderol”, but I have no objection to any man using the word, that’s sexism. If I were to say, “women can’t use the word ‘folderol’, it offends me,” then you wouldn’t need a larger sample size. I’d have made it clear that my objection was solely to women using the word, and that’s sexism.

However, if I don’t like anyone using the word “folderol”, regardless of gender, that’s not sexism.

Can you understand the difference?

That’s why you need a sample size greater than one. When the specific reason for the dislike isn’t tied to a particularly female characteristic, and isn’t phrased as “I don’t like women with this characteristic,” you need a larger sample size, because it’s possible to dislike one female candidate without that dislike being based on sexism. When the dislike isn’t directly tied to gender, you need to establish a pattern. A single instance isn’t a pattern.

And for the record, ambition is one of the things people do not like about Ted Cruz. Certainly not the only thing, but one of them. I could have picked Jim Jordan, or Josh Harley, but you’d make the same criticism.

My objection to Harris isn't that she's ambitious. It's that she comes across as very hard-nosed and unsympathetic. She isn't warm. She is prosecutorial in her manner. I find it alienating.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
I was a fan of Hillary for decades but I was heavily critical of Warren.


It's not because I'm sexist, I just can't stand Indians.

Lol.

You seem to be taking your own personal views (you don't mind that a woman is ambitious) and thinking it's true for all, or most, people. I also assume that you don't mind that a man is ambitious, so for you your views about ambition are gender neutral. But your views, I can assure you, are not representative of the majority of people, both men and women.

Here's a really nice HBR article that discusses whether and why women lack ambition. It's behind a paywall, so the take-away is this:

"Studies have demonstrated that the daily texture of women’s lives from childhood on is infiltrated with microencounters in which quiet withdrawal and the ceding of available attention to others is expected—particularly in the presence of men.

Women refuse to claim a central, purposeful place in their own stories, eagerly shifting the credit elsewhere and shunning recognition.

It’s tempting to conclude, as many have, that women aren’t actually deferring to others when they remove themselves from the spotlight; they’re just intrinsically different in their needs and style. Women, after all, may just be less interested in personal attention than men. Or maybe they simply don’t care about the types of recognition that men strive for. It has been suggested, for example, that women have a greater capacity for empathy than men, making it more painful for them not to gratify the wishes of others or relinquish coveted resources. (And recognition is nothing if not a coveted social resource.)

The belief that women’s deferential behavior with regard to recognition is “natural” has not held up in the extensive research on gender that has been conducted since the 1970s."

The underlying message is a societal one: overall, girls and women are taught to avoid direct recognition for their accomplishments. They "got lucky," they are taught to share their accomplishments with the rest of the team, they should refuse to accept individual accolades. Women who don't behave in this expected manner are pushy, aggressive, and "ambitious," and people don't like those traits in women. It is a sexist attitude, whether you feel that way personally or not.

quote:

Originally posted by Piano*Dad:

quote:

Me, I’m worried about secretly racist white people. There is less animosity in this country toward Asians, so let’s exploit that.

Cindy, I'm going to ask a delicate question out loud. Your remark here got me to thinking about past experience.

Fire away.

quote:

How important is shade within the African American community? I saw that in action on a school board advisory committee I served on. A very serious Black member (often wore African clothing to the meetings) tore into the head of the Gifted program for putting a picture on the brochure of three children, one White, one Asian, and one Black. The Black child wasn't Black enough, and this was a very serious issue for him. The poor head of the committee was in tears afterward! She thought she had tried so hard to be fully inclusive, and she was blindsided by degrees of blackness.

The reason for asking, of course, is because Kamala Harris is mixed race, like Obama, and of lighter color. I'm guessing most Black people don't care, but is there a (hopefully small) core of people who would sit out the election because the shade of the Black candidate sends signals to them, signals that other people either don't notice, don't care about, or don't read in the same way.

I would say this is a complicated question because black people are not of one mind about this or much of anything else.

Historically, there has been tension between light-skinned blacks and dark-skinned blacks. Light-skinned blacks sometimes took advantage of the opportunity to "pass" as white or, sadly, internalized messages from whites that lighter skin is better than darker skin. Light-skinned blacks felt rejected and sensitive to charges that they were not "really" black.

Nowadays, there is much less of that, if it persists at all. Blacks have made real progress in appreciating our own beauty and worth.

That said, I can see why a black person would notice whether the one black child was visibly black. After all, if she had light skin, she could be mistaken for Latino or Indian. But the more important message in the context of a brochure for a gifted program is that we want the brochure to send the message that it is open to all races. If all three children depicted have light skin (Asian, White, light-skinned black), that message doesn't come through as clearly as it might.

Now, I say this with full knowledge that light-skinned blacks in media and the arts are very frustrated that they can never be cast as anything. The script says white, so they are out. Or the script says black, but they don't look black enough, so they are out.

Regarding Harris or Obama being mixed . . . I think the black community will usually accept someone who identifies as black so long as they are not totally making it up (e.g. Dolezal) and not playing both sides of the aisle (claiming to be black when they think it advantageous but claiming to be something else when it isn't).

I think, however, that Obama would not have had the support of the black community had it not been for Michelle. If Michelle had been white, I think the black community would have taken this as a sign he was a late-comer to embracing his black identity (not to mention how hostile some whites are when a black man marries a white woman). Harris, on the other hand, is married to a white man. Personally, I wonder if she would be doing better with the black community had she married a black man.

quote:

Originally posted by Nina:
You seem to be taking your own personal views (you don't mind that a woman is ambitious) and thinking it's true for all, or most, people. I also assume that you don't mind that a man is ambitious, so for you your views about ambition are gender neutral. But your views, I can assure you, are not representative of the majority of people, both men and women.

I'm willing to believe that SOME people don't like women (and only women) who are ambitious. I'm also willing to believe that some people are like me, and don't find it to be a problem. I have no way of putting percentages on it.

I'm not a fan of "studies have demonstrated." It's a more intellectual version of Donald's Trumpism that "many people are saying." I'd like to see the studies, or at least see who's talking about the studies.

Well, there's this things called google, and inside are two interesting things: google scholar and jstor.

Knock yourself out.