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what if i told you ... the history and importance of unions in the last 150 years is more than internecine australian squabbling on the irrelevant antipodes of the earth.

Last edited by uziq (2022-08-06 00:46:53)

unions are relevant and are effective now. we're in the age of amazon and starbucks precariat-class workers unionizing for the first time.

i thought you were tuned in to the zeitgeist, dilbs? what happened?

talking about the 1990s? have another moan about blair whilst we're walking down memory lane, why don't you.

unfortunately for you most of the people organizing and promoting unionism among amazon workers are BLM-adjacent people of colour and working-class migrants. can't see puerto rican baristas getting in bed with the management any time soon.

Last edited by uziq (2022-08-06 01:53:46)

and good for them? delivering better working conditions for their workers.

what exactly is your point here? that some people make a career out of unions? lol omg. gotcha!!!!!!!!

Sorry you have to deal with that.

https://twitter.com/tiersaj/status/1556 … fjQUWUB05Q

interestingggg

That aligns with what I'd expect. When I went to school, boys (and in particular, black boys), got in trouble more often for stuff other students commonly got away with. I've talked about this before with peers who had similar observations or experiences.

Each class usually had at least one kid who was completely unsubtle about fighting back or standing up for themselves against their peers. Wouldn't surprise me if their disciplinary record for one grade alone occupied an entire cabinet drawer.

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2022-08-09 13:08:24)

I'd be interested to know if the experiment produces the same results if you insert one girl in a hijab vs all western white people. Or the other way around, a white kid in a group of black schoolkids. My assumption is that it'll be the same; undue amount of fixture on the 'odd one(s)' in a group.

All speculation from my end being tired and not having read much of the above, but I think this might be drilling down to the very core of our identity formation processes, which I believe are to an extent innate/uncontrolled. Perhaps even instinctual. If even pre-schoolers are subject to 'internalised' or 'externalised' cognitive bias based on identity groupings (i.e. racism among other issues), where do you go from there, really.

I'd be interested to read more about the experiment itself, somewhere it's not behind a massive paywall.

uziq wrote:

it’s acquired from the culture and images in circulation. no, it’s not an ‘instinct’ to view yourself as ugly and white people as beautiful. lmao. appealing to the ‘natural order of things’ is cod-scientific white supremacy, larssen.

I'm talking about generalised processes of identity formation, in which race is an added factor that influences these processes. Children especially are extremely sensitive to being or feeling part of the larger group, or feeling left out. There's all sorts of identity markers at play in that dynamic. One of which being our physical appearance. Not just in children: all of us are 'guilty' of everyday identitarianism as we are constantly, consciously and unconsciously, defining ourselves and our groups vs others.

I think it's a stretch to say that 3 year olds already consider themselves ugly and white as beautiful and that our racist culture is to blame. What I think could be happening is that we almost instinctively seek out norms we want to conform to, especially at a very young age, and physical appearance is one of those norm images we absorb depending on what everyone else looks like. On the topic of race groupings and racism; it's literally ubiquitous across all cultures. We like to think of this and other identity issues as historically informed social constructs that are infinitely malleable, but are they really?

It's not like you're immediately flying into the deep end of alt right racist thinking if you posit the notion that we're hard wired to define in/out groups, in which there is a physical factor (be it race or something else). So far many white people like to tell themselves and eachother that we need to 'stop seeing race' and academia keeps tumbling over itself to point out the social/cultural construct of race or racist behaviours. As I'm getting older I don't think it's that easy. Race exists physically, we can't help but notice it, define ourselves and others through it, and have it be a matter of friction in groups. We can strive to minimise that friction, one of the historically more harmful facets being that people tend to associate appearance with behaviour, but we can't erase it. It will fundamentally affect minority kids anywhere in the world growing up now and probably still in a few hundred years' time.

way to miss the entire point by a whole australian country mile.

the point is about underlying cognitive biases and potential perceptions, not about people being actively racist.

if we can recognise the formation of these ideas and the sway they have over our thinking, it's possible to un-think them.

there's nothing 'instinctual' about keeping an eye on the black kid at a table of 4. there's nothing 'natural' about a 5-year-old african-american girl choosing the blonde barbie because she finds it 'more beautiful'. this stuff is learned in an environment, consciously or unconsciously.

as larssen alluded to above, but rather only got half-way there, yes 'race' is an invented category with a material and constructivist basis. of course it still operates as a 'fact' in social life on a day-to-day basis, despite having no logical coherency or scientific, empirical basis. but there is a lot of work that can be done, in a similar constructivist paradigm, of unlearning and unthinking racism. people having different hues of skin or different phenotypes is always going to be a 'fact of reality', but the idea we have to 'fear' one another because they're 'outside of our tribal group' is complete, pseudo-scientific bullshit. 'evolutionary psychology' is not a credited field anymore; may as well pursue phrenology and justify our differences based on the curve of our craniums.

there was a time when the swarthy romans found celtic gingers alien, or when the angles and saxons viewed the blonde nordics beaching a ship on the pebbled shore with terror. are we still jumping boo at each other's differing ethnicities today in society? shall we continue caesar's genocide of the ginger gauls? the world became a smaller place and we learned to cohabit within shared legal and civic frameworks, as equal citizens. and wasn't that the promise of the new american republic?

if dilbert can put aside his timeless and essential (as opposed to material and constructed) 'instincts' to eat meat, acquired through long millenia on the savannah and plains, then i'm sure he can learn to play nice with his indian co-workers.

Last edited by uziq (2022-08-10 03:56:39)