Race
- Thread starter 57Brave
- Start date
acesfull86
Well-known member
https://unherd.com/2022/09/the-american-medias-racism-fantasy/
It was the kind of correction you love to see. The story that originally broke in the final days of August, about a young black athlete being racially heckled in front of a crowd of thousands at Utah’s Brigham Young University, was not just exaggerated but completely false. The n-word was not shouted, let alone repeatedly, at Duke volleyball player Rachel Richardson when she went up to serve. A crowd of more than 5,000 people did not stand idly by during an act of malignant racism. The United States is not, apparently, a socially backwards hellscape where people openly scream slurs at packed sporting events without compunction or shame.
Unfortunately, it’s a correction that many people are probably never going to see — or if they do, they won’t believe it.
Like many stories of its oeuvre, this one began on Twitter, when Richardson’s godmother Lesa Pamplin claimed in a series of since-deleted posts that the young volleyball player had been subject to racist abuse throughout the game: “My Goddaughter is the only black starter for Dukes [sic] volleyball team,” she wrote. “While playing yesterday, she was called a [n-word] every time she served. She was threatened by a white male that told her to watch her back going to the team bus. A police officer had to be put by their bench.”
Pamplin hadn’t been at the game herself, but the claim was incendiary. The story was soon picked up by mainstream outlets, which treated the alleged harassment — and discovery of its perpetrator — as verified fact. From USA Today: “Brigham Young fan banned after directing racial slurs toward Duke volleyball player.” The Washington Post: “BYU bans fan, relocates volleyball match after racist slurs, threats.” The New York Times: “Racial Slur During College Volleyball Game Leads to Fan Suspension.”
Additionally, readers were warned that failing to believe this story, or even asking questions about it, was simply not an option. An op-ed from USA Today columnist Mike Freeman declared any doubts about Richardson’s veracity to be a “Right-wing conspiracy theory”, like QAnon or Pizzagate or 9/11 trutherism. Ditto the suggestion that she might have made a mistake: “The other conspiracy theory is that she misheard the word. That is a word you don’t mishear. You certainly don’t mishear it more than once.”
And yet, despite Freeman’s insistence to the contrary, not only is this a word that people do mishear, it has been only a year since the last high-profile incident in which someone misheard it in a similar context: in a raucous crowd at a sporting event, and, yes, more than once. In this case, the culprit was a man trying to get the attention of the Rockies mascot, whose name is “Dinger.”
It was the kind of correction you love to see. The story that originally broke in the final days of August, about a young black athlete being racially heckled in front of a crowd of thousands at Utah’s Brigham Young University, was not just exaggerated but completely false. The n-word was not shouted, let alone repeatedly, at Duke volleyball player Rachel Richardson when she went up to serve. A crowd of more than 5,000 people did not stand idly by during an act of malignant racism. The United States is not, apparently, a socially backwards hellscape where people openly scream slurs at packed sporting events without compunction or shame.
Unfortunately, it’s a correction that many people are probably never going to see — or if they do, they won’t believe it.
Like many stories of its oeuvre, this one began on Twitter, when Richardson’s godmother Lesa Pamplin claimed in a series of since-deleted posts that the young volleyball player had been subject to racist abuse throughout the game: “My Goddaughter is the only black starter for Dukes [sic] volleyball team,” she wrote. “While playing yesterday, she was called a [n-word] every time she served. She was threatened by a white male that told her to watch her back going to the team bus. A police officer had to be put by their bench.”
Pamplin hadn’t been at the game herself, but the claim was incendiary. The story was soon picked up by mainstream outlets, which treated the alleged harassment — and discovery of its perpetrator — as verified fact. From USA Today: “Brigham Young fan banned after directing racial slurs toward Duke volleyball player.” The Washington Post: “BYU bans fan, relocates volleyball match after racist slurs, threats.” The New York Times: “Racial Slur During College Volleyball Game Leads to Fan Suspension.”
Additionally, readers were warned that failing to believe this story, or even asking questions about it, was simply not an option. An op-ed from USA Today columnist Mike Freeman declared any doubts about Richardson’s veracity to be a “Right-wing conspiracy theory”, like QAnon or Pizzagate or 9/11 trutherism. Ditto the suggestion that she might have made a mistake: “The other conspiracy theory is that she misheard the word. That is a word you don’t mishear. You certainly don’t mishear it more than once.”
And yet, despite Freeman’s insistence to the contrary, not only is this a word that people do mishear, it has been only a year since the last high-profile incident in which someone misheard it in a similar context: in a raucous crowd at a sporting event, and, yes, more than once. In this case, the culprit was a man trying to get the attention of the Rockies mascot, whose name is “Dinger.”
57Brave
Well-known member
Nome
@NomeDaBarbarian
·
Sep 23
An unarmed Black neurodivergent teenager, who committed
no crime and did nothing wrong, was murdered with Ketamine by
Aurora police and paramedics for walking home while Black.
And then they sent riot cops to break up his violin vigil with
batons and tear gas.
@NomeDaBarbarian
·
Sep 23
An unarmed Black neurodivergent teenager, who committed
no crime and did nothing wrong, was murdered with Ketamine by
Aurora police and paramedics for walking home while Black.
And then they sent riot cops to break up his violin vigil with
batons and tear gas.
acesfull86
Well-known member
https://seas.yale.edu/news-events/news/donation-bungie-foundation-supports-anti-racist-graphics-research-yale
Imagine creating a character in your favorite video game and, despite the numerous options and customizations of facial features available, you are unable to generate an avatar that truly resembles you. This feeling of exclusion is something that many experience far too often and a result of prejudice inherited by modern computer graphics technologies.
It is widely assumed that the algorithms used to generate virtual humans are based in biological underpinnings that accurately reflect all races and ethnicities. In reality, however, these algorithms are deeply biased and based on predominantly European features. With a $1 million gift from the Bungie Foundation as part of Yale's For Humanity campaign, Theodore Kim aims to develop new tools and algorithms to bring inclusivity to the digital screen.
"This research will serve as an example of how to identify the products of systemic racism in computer graphics and demonstrate how to take concrete steps to ameliorate their harm," said Kim, associate professor of computer science and co-lead of the Yale Computer Graphics Group.
One of the physical characteristics that is most revealing of algorithmic bias is the representation of human hair. Computer graphics research has historically favored the simulation and rendering of straight hair, which is racially coded as European or Caucasian hair. The tools and algorithms that digital artists deploy treat this form of hair as the baseline. No equivalent model has been developed for naturally kinky hair – also known as Type 4 hair – a characteristic that most commonly occurs in Black communities.
Kim will lead a group that will investigate the algorithmic representation of Type 4 hair as a uniquely anti-racist problem. By developing new techniques for accurate representation, Kim intends to dismantle – at a fundamental technical level – the perpetuating prejudices that are baked into the technology.
——————
That’s one way to spend your time (and a million dollars), I suppose.
Imagine creating a character in your favorite video game and, despite the numerous options and customizations of facial features available, you are unable to generate an avatar that truly resembles you. This feeling of exclusion is something that many experience far too often and a result of prejudice inherited by modern computer graphics technologies.
It is widely assumed that the algorithms used to generate virtual humans are based in biological underpinnings that accurately reflect all races and ethnicities. In reality, however, these algorithms are deeply biased and based on predominantly European features. With a $1 million gift from the Bungie Foundation as part of Yale's For Humanity campaign, Theodore Kim aims to develop new tools and algorithms to bring inclusivity to the digital screen.
"This research will serve as an example of how to identify the products of systemic racism in computer graphics and demonstrate how to take concrete steps to ameliorate their harm," said Kim, associate professor of computer science and co-lead of the Yale Computer Graphics Group.
One of the physical characteristics that is most revealing of algorithmic bias is the representation of human hair. Computer graphics research has historically favored the simulation and rendering of straight hair, which is racially coded as European or Caucasian hair. The tools and algorithms that digital artists deploy treat this form of hair as the baseline. No equivalent model has been developed for naturally kinky hair – also known as Type 4 hair – a characteristic that most commonly occurs in Black communities.
Kim will lead a group that will investigate the algorithmic representation of Type 4 hair as a uniquely anti-racist problem. By developing new techniques for accurate representation, Kim intends to dismantle – at a fundamental technical level – the perpetuating prejudices that are baked into the technology.
——————
That’s one way to spend your time (and a million dollars), I suppose.
acesfull86
Well-known member
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/10/the-us-has-low-rates-of-hiring-discrimination.html
There have now been lots of resume-audit studies in which identical resumes but for the “minority-distinct” name are sent out to employers and callback rates are measured. A meta-study of 97 field experiments (N = 200,000 job applicants) in 9 countries in Europe and North America finds there is some discrimination in every county but, if anything, the USA has one of the lower rates of discrimination while France and perhaps also Sweden have very high levels. These result’s aren’t that surprising to those who travel but they run counter to the narrative that the US is uniquely or especially discriminatory because of its history of slavery and capitalism. Capitalism, in fact, is likely to predict less discrimination.A picture summarizes. The US is here defined as 1 and these are relative levels after controlling for some basic differences across studies:
The authors make a number of interesting points:
…national histories of slavery and colonialism are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for a country to have relatively high levels of labor market discrimination. Some countries with colonial pasts demonstrate high rates of hiring discrimination, but several countries without extensive colonial pasts (outside Europe), such as Sweden, demonstrate similar levels. Likewise, the lower rates of discrimination against minorities in the United States than we find for many European countries seem contrary to expectations that emphasize the primacy of connection to slavery in shaping the contemporary level of national discrimination. These results do not suggest that slavery and colonialism do not matter for levels of discrimination, rather they indicate that they matter in more complex ways than suggested by theories that posit simple, direct influences of the past on current discrimination.
There have now been lots of resume-audit studies in which identical resumes but for the “minority-distinct” name are sent out to employers and callback rates are measured. A meta-study of 97 field experiments (N = 200,000 job applicants) in 9 countries in Europe and North America finds there is some discrimination in every county but, if anything, the USA has one of the lower rates of discrimination while France and perhaps also Sweden have very high levels. These result’s aren’t that surprising to those who travel but they run counter to the narrative that the US is uniquely or especially discriminatory because of its history of slavery and capitalism. Capitalism, in fact, is likely to predict less discrimination.A picture summarizes. The US is here defined as 1 and these are relative levels after controlling for some basic differences across studies:
The authors make a number of interesting points:
…national histories of slavery and colonialism are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for a country to have relatively high levels of labor market discrimination. Some countries with colonial pasts demonstrate high rates of hiring discrimination, but several countries without extensive colonial pasts (outside Europe), such as Sweden, demonstrate similar levels. Likewise, the lower rates of discrimination against minorities in the United States than we find for many European countries seem contrary to expectations that emphasize the primacy of connection to slavery in shaping the contemporary level of national discrimination. These results do not suggest that slavery and colonialism do not matter for levels of discrimination, rather they indicate that they matter in more complex ways than suggested by theories that posit simple, direct influences of the past on current discrimination.
cajunrevenge
Well-known member
I am not sure how one quantifies racism. Then you also have to clarify if you mean racist in the liberal sense that it cant happen to a white person or the literal sense which is going by the literal definition of racism.
sturg33
I
Yet again never got an answer
cajunrevenge
Well-known member
I predict the opposite. More people trying to identify as a minority to up their victim score. I just know any year now we are going to get trans racial people suing not being treated as a minority regarding some benefit.
cajunrevenge
Well-known member
And it worked on you, who voted for Obama while the supposed stupid people were supporting America First and anti-war candidates like Ron Paul.
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