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Comment by tptacek

When people try to explain why you're coming to broken conclusions due to broken reasoning, they get attacked as radical leftists for using the straightforward terminology we have for describing the phenomenon we're discussing.

Here, you've provided a perfect illustration of why we have the term "structural racism". Structural racism is the emergent discrimination arising from the circumstances that created our status quo. You'd think an audience of computer scientists would have an especially good intuition for emergent systems properties.

Here's a simple explanation for how African Americans can be discriminated against in health care without any of the doctors or nurses involved having overtly racist impulses:

Until the nineteen seventies --- within many of our conscious lifespans! --- African Americans were actively, overtly, deliberately discriminated against in real estate. They were redlined out of white neighborhoods and into low-income neighborhoods. Naturally, once real estate lenders would allow them to buy houses in any neighborhood they wanted, African Americans of means began buying houses anywhere they wanted. Unlike low-income "white" people, low-income "black" people were stuffed into neighborhoods that were first deliberately underfunded, and then further disinvested by the vicious cycle of neighborhood flight ---- like a run on a bank.

The hospitals, doctors offices, pharmacies, and medical service providers available in those neighborhoods are poorer than those in white neighborhoods due to disinvestment.

The unbelievably awful people who designed and executed on redlining are probably long retired by now. Many of them are no doubt deceased. Most of us would recoil from racial barriers in real estate lending. We all believe ourselves to be well-intentioned. Samuel L. Jackson has a retort our best intentions.

parent tptacek 8 years ago

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