• feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    To clarify, I don’t believe in the creation of any deliberately biased system, but I believe the main societal issue is overwhelmingly one of wealth disparity.

    I’m not assigning a moral value when I use the phrase “disproportionate benefit”. I’m alluding to the disproportionate degree of poverty experienced by African-Americans. Poverty relief should therefore benefit them more. If there was no differential distribution of wealth with respect to race, the benefits of poverty relief would be neutral with respect to race.

    Additionally, the person I responded to is very clearly describing a situation related to a student’s socioeconomic status. I absolutely believe some kind of “blind” application process is necessary to minimise the impact of a number of possible prejudices held by the admissions team.

    • Senal@programming.dev
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      2 days ago

      To clarify, I don’t believe in the creation of any deliberately biased system.

      As in you don’t believe it’s possible for a biased system to exist or you don’t think it’s possible to do it deliberately, something else ?

      but I believe the main societal issue is overwhelmingly one of wealth disparity.

      I agree, and the idea of providing a baseline humanitarian standard of living isn’t impossible it’s just very unlikely without some hefty and painful foundational changes to how societies are currently working.

      I’m not assigning a moral value when I use the phrase “disproportionate benefit”. I’m alluding to the disproportionate degree of poverty experienced by African-Americans. Poverty relief should therefore benefit them more. If there was no differential distribution of wealth with respect to race, the benefits of poverty relief would be neutral with respect to race.

      Additionally, the person I responded to is very clearly describing a situation related to a student’s socioeconomic status. I absolutely believe some kind of “blind” application process is necessary to minimise the impact of a number of possible prejudices held by the admissions team.

      Fair enough, it seems i entirely misunderstood what you meant, my apologies.

      • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        No worries, thanks for replying. When I say I don’t believe in them, I mean I don’t believe we (i.e. society) should create those systems. Unfortunately I absolutely believe we do create them, both deliberately and inadvertently.

        • Senal@programming.dev
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          1 day ago

          That’s an interesting perspective.

          You think they’d form on their own? or we shouldn’t be getting to the point where they are needed or something else entirely ?

          • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            I think some degree of meritocracy (i.e. recognition of a skills hierarchy) is necessary for human advancement, but as it currently stands it’s impossible to separate that out from wealth privilege. If I had the answer, I’d make sure to tell everybody.

            There’s a million other processes by which wealth favours the accumulation of wealth, and it’s largely this “logic of capital” that results in the formation of class hierarchies and entrenched inequality/capital enclaves.

            That’s probably secondary to geography in the first instance, e.g. wealth in the form of agricultural surpluses and the use of grain as a fungible commodity and proto-currency.

            At this point a huge amount of wealth redistribution seems like a good start, and if it all flows back to the top, which I’d expect it to, then it’ll just need redistributing again.