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I suspect most systemic oppression is a myth. But it's very commonly used as an important concept in America, and I wanna make sure I'm not missing anything - can someone steelman systemic oppression for me - what it means exactly, and if that definition is supported by data?

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Aella

@Aella_Girl

To clarify my position more: I do agree in some cities, explicit racism of those in power do have a noticeable impact on individuals living in that city. Also I am interested in current examples of oppression, not historical explanations.

3:30 PM · Feb 25, 2020

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Also to clarify further, after seeing responses, I'm especially interested in what you mean when you say systemic oppression. Being very clear the sort of thing you're referring to is really helpful

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Being disinterested in the historical context that forms our today makes citing shit difficult, but redlining, heavy policing, longer convictions for the same crime still happen today, in regards to race. Women are more educated and still have less positions of power

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So for the woman one, I suspect the reasons for fewer positions of power is due only in part (sometimes a very small part) to oppression.

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The New Jim Crow is your book! It makes a strong claim: African American men face a totally different legal system than white American men do, which then impacts many other parts of their lives. It then supports that claim with a rather convincing mountain of data.

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The word "oppression" has such strong connotations to me (of something like what happens in North Korea). And I'm not sure I would use the word "oppression" about much happening in, say, the U.S. But "systematic advantages in certain areas of life" is easy to steelman.

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This kind of nullified my response. I think what people call systemic racism is more about the contexts of history that puts some populations at a much greater risk of being born into poverty, which is the real cause of most of the symptoms of inequality.

Computers Never Sleep (Ω, Ω)

@blake41

Feb 25, 2020

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@Aella_Girl

Things that come to mind: stop and frisk, variance in discipline in schools white v black, differences in likelihood of arrest, length of sentence, what your charged with

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Systemic racism lives in historic choices that accumulate over time into institutionalized policy so it's kind of impossible to prove if you're not currently accepting data from the past.

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Limiting yourself to current examples will hinder your attempt at understanding. Wealth/class outcomes often have inter-generational causes.

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I take this to mean you're familiar with Bloomberg's explicitly racialized argument for his stop-and-frisk policy: i.e. (paraphrase) "you can just Xerox the description of male, minorities, 16-25". vox.com/first-person/2