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The right/good racism


Asex

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Are we going to fix racism with racism?

... this Oscar thing, if the academy is not going to award the best movies then let's close it and use the money to save lives or something...

I mean if the academy is full of racists, why bother filling it with an equal amount of racists from all the different races?

If it's not going to perform what it supposed/designed to perform (like awarding the best movies) then it is not to exist.

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Could you elaborate a bit on your post? Are you saying that the academy awards does not give oscars to PoC, or that they're ruining the point of the awards by giving them especially to PoC?

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Neither of the two.

What I am saying that the scope of the academy is artistism not racism.

Me posting this thread is a reaction to ideas like race-quotas in the academy jury.

If some eventual equally race distributed jury is going to vote based solely on whether the race of the actors matches their own then we might end up with absolutely equal amount of awards between all the races and yet this would have nothing to do with the movies deserving the awards actually getting them.

There would be some racist diplomacy and maneuvers among the various race circles (like "we'll support you in this category, you'll support us in that") but there will be nothing about artistry acknowledged.

As a person of morality I ask - Is there a way to actually tell were the academy nominations justified/objective or no?

If yes then what are we waiting for- let's figure it out and if it proves true then get it fixed, I mean isn't there in the entire USA a single person that can manage with the task to do it regardless of whether their race matches the race of the people in the movie?

Is the only way to get racially unbiased awarding to have a jury consisting of members that are all racially biased but from different races?If yes - that has nothing to do with artistry, it might be called success of inter-racism diplomacy, a celebration of various racisms...a victory for racism, a nominee for sustainability prize in the field of racism, our descendants will inherit from us the second best to a fusion reactor

...sad...sad...sad...

I mean we are all in conflict of interests constantly, but that's why we are human- we are not interests only.

Machines are to be feared when in conflict of interests for they are hardware and software only...

...if we've reached the point that we explicitly have to be driven by a specially engineered conflict of interests in order to act as humans, then what I have to say, in the order I have to say it, is:

Humans we are not

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That's a really interesting way of looking at it.

Are people always biased towards people of their colour? If yes, by increasing greater diversity to the Academy I agree that we are effectively fighting racism with racism. If no, we should probably focus on finding impartial judges, rather than ones who have the right skintone.

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Maybe we should stop looking for equality in an industry that's been racist and misogynist since it was created and is solely driven by money. (I'm not actually saying to give up on it, rather I'd prefer if people realized exactly how bad Hollywood is and just how little the Oscars matter.)

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I don't agree. It's a rush to judgement to say that new members of an organization, selected for their inclusion in some minority community, are necessarily going to nominate in ethnicly, racially, or whateverly way would be driven by their minority community. That is not fair, nor is it the point. The point I'd not exactly who gets the trophy; the point is who's voices are being heard all along the way, including the people involved in the nomination and award selection process. What we see is only part of that process, but it's what we see so we look to it as an indirection source of information. How likely is it that this profession and its award winners is dominated by a single category of person? Unless that category is Member of Said Profession, it is not probable. It is not laws of nature that govern who participates and who wins; it's people. So we can look there and consider the problem we can see as a secondary effect of another problem that came before.

It is widely acknowledged that diverse perspectives along multiple dimensions is an awesome defence, if not the best, from groupthink (which is one process that will limit the scope of decision making and its outcomes). It is also true that when a person feels unheard and attributes that to their group membership (your example has been ethnicity), they will usually place more focus and more emphasis on this group in ways that they hope will bolster the rights, freedoms, and power of that group. If someone does not have this sense of being unheard, though, or if they notice improvement, they will feel more able and be more open to supporting those in other communities. If you put those both together, then you can see potential for those in majority groups to be remembering and considering the roles and contributions of people in different groups; then, stemming from that, those with minority memberships doing the same in the opposite direction as a result of feeling they are more listened to, more valued and more respected. That's the hope. If this were to happen within the academy, then we would expect to see a diversity of characteristics in award nominees and winners as we do, roughly, amongst all members of the filmmaking community.

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Here's an article on The Economist with numbers comparing the Oscar wins and the American population. Black people are only slightly over represented, while other races are underrepresented.

The thing is, this might not be caused by racism in the Academy Awards. There are more white people in movie roles, which naturally increases the number of winners. Is this caused by Hollywood racism, or that Americans prefer white people in movie roles? What if PoC simply aren't as good at acting? These are some other possible factors besides "all white jury".

In my opinion, there should never be a "race quota". The academy awards should be about recognizing good acting, not earning "diversity points".

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Ah, this is the same kind of argument generally used by opponents of things like affirmative action, yes? Couple things.

First, to get it out of the way, privately sponsored media awards ceremonies are maybe not the best litmus for . . . anything. Awards ceremonies like these are entertainment products, just like the films or shows or whatever that the awards are given out for. So basically, the goal is only to get you to watch them. If appearing fair will get you to watch them, they'll try to appear fair. If appearing to give out awards based on artistic merit will get you to watch them, they'll try to appear that way. This is how media works in capitalist economies.

I assume that you are trying to make a point about racism writ large, and not just the problems inherent in giving out "merit based" awards as a form of entertainment. So let's take the classic case of affirmative action: giving increased degrees of assistance/representation to underprivileged minority groups. The argument, as I understand it, is that this constitutes a kind of "reverse racism" which defeats the whole point of trying to eliminate racism from our society.

The response is this: While in a perfect world, we wouldn't need things like affirmative action, our world is not yet perfect. Privilege begets privilege, and money begets money, so even if there were literally zero instances of racism today impacting people's opportunities, the harms (and benefits) of racially biased institutions and cultural mores are inherited from the previous generation. The child of a wealthy, well-adjusted family has far more opportunity than the child of a poor, outcast family. This means that the wealthy family's children will be more likely to be wealthy and well adjusted, and so on. So even if the original bias is completely eradicated, future generations still feel its effects.

If you want to actually stamp out those lingering effects (again, assuming that you've actually completely removed all bias), you have to do one of two things. First, you could separate all children from their parents at birth, and have them all raised the same way with the same resources. This removes the effects of bias for or against a child's parents from the child. Most people don't like this idea, for a number of reasons. So we take the only option really left to us, which is to try and give underprivileged groups more of a space at the table. It's certainly a bit artificial and forced, and calculating the exact degree of advantage to try and "give back" to make up the difference is basically impossible.

There are no good solutions to the basic problem of "life isn't fair." That doesn't mean we should just shrug and do nothing about it though.

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GIF-Britney-Spears-confused-doubtful-fur

I think they are racist, our society is racist... but awards should go to the "best." No quota. But that doesn't mean it always happens that way. There will never really be an answer for that in my opinion. I think bias in competition is innate.

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Sapphire Rose

Gonna disagree. Quota and affirmative action is necessary in even giving minorities a chance. Without it, the bias will remain and they will never be treated as equals.

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Gonna disagree. Quota and affirmative action is necessary in even giving minorities a chance. Without it, the bias will remain and they will never be treated as equals.

Which assumes that the jury is incapable of voting objectively, and that there actually are that many good PoC actors. If you don't trust the jury to vote without racial bias, then you really shouldn't be trusting the awards at all.

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Sapphire Rose

I don't, therefore this is why I think that it's necessary.

Not only that, but I think it's rather unfair for us white people to sit around debating the fairness to the minority when we're not even part of them and can't really relate to what their going through.

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I don't, therefore this is why I think that it's necessary.

Not only that, but I think it's rather unfair for us white people to sit around debating the fairness to the minority when we're not even part of them and can't really relate to what their going through.

And my point is, if you can't even trust them to vote fairly towards minorities, how could you trust them to vote fairly towards all other biases like movie genre, language, or whatever. You might as well distrust the entire awards system.

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Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!
There is a "Start New Topic" button in the "Philosophy, Politics and Science" section of the forum and in other forum sections too.
This topic is about racism, the academy being accused of "Oscars too white" and some people claiming "But we are rarely recognized for our artistic accomplishments. Should people of color refrain from participating all together? (pt 2)"

So we are also to be focusing on the ability of recognizing people for their artistic accomplishments.

"I don't agree. It's a rush to judgement to say that new members of an organization, selected for their inclusion in some minority community, are necessarily going to nominate in ethnicly, racially, or whateverly way would be driven by their minority community. That is not fair..."


Here is how the situation is:
We have some accusation Oscar Nominations were made not in accordance with artistry but racism.
We have a proposed solution of including people of other races in the jury.

What logic says:

either

A: People of other races will vote in favor of other races and this is how we will end up with a "less white" Oscar nominations.

or

B: People of other races are somehow superior to white people and thus when it comes down to Oscar nominations, as if they are better in overcoming their racist impulses or as if they lack racist impulses or as if only white people can be racists.

I have something to say about "A" and here is how it goes:

I find no virtue in some oppression event being hold, where all the different races would get equally oppressed by some balanced racism.

I also would like a very clear distinction to be made whether some people complain of injustice and oppression because they find injustice and oppression wrong or they are complaining only because they are not the ones who get to oppress.

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Here is how the situation is:

We have some accusation Oscar Nominations were made not in accordance with artistry but racism.

We have a proposed solution of including people of other races in the jury.

What logic says:

either

A: People of other races will vote in favor of other races and this is how we will end up with a "less white" Oscar nominations.

or

B: People of other races are somehow superior to white people and thus when it comes down to Oscar nominations, as if they are better in overcoming their racist impulses or as if they lack racist impulses or as if only white people can be racists.

I have something to say about "A" and here is how it goes:

I find no virtue in some oppression event being hold, where all the different races would get equally oppressed by some balanced racism.

I also would like a very clear distinction to be made whether some people complain of injustice and oppression because they find injustice and oppression wrong or they are complaining only because they are not the ones who get to oppress.

I understand what you have been saying, but to repeat what I said, I don't see the A and B you have just provided as the only logical ways to understand the inclusion of a greater variety of people in the Academy. My other option is to consider that the way the new members vote to be less relevant than the simple fact of their voice being heard. This is not to say that they are going to vote in a racially motivated way; it is not to say that that is how representation amongst Oscar winners is going to be balanced out. There may well be much more subtle effects of balancing representation within the selection committee. The effect that we might hope for is that a change to the group would help suppress conscious or unconscious biases so that we may truly find people voting according to artistic merit. I provided some reason for that in my original post--starting at groupthink, and moving through to considering the personal motivations and needs of those who are voting. In general, it has been found that changing the structure of a group--in children and adults--can have very powerful effects on how those groups make decisions. How the group makes decisions is the most important consideration, not what the individuals or the group as a whole decides. More bluntly stated than that is you can have a new black woman voting for a white man in a certain instance and still in the larger scope find that the groups final body of decisions has shifted from the usual pattern.

I've said this also, but I say it again too, it's not that we should be seeing a minimum amount of winners who are in the group we call "minority"; it's that it is highly improbable to not see them at all. The degree of ethnic homogeneity in Oscar nominees and winners over the years is wildly improbable if voting is based on artistry alone.

Now, with all that said, this is the ideal view of the situation and it doesn't mean that the vision is going to be implemented in a beneficial way. Almost certainly, it would take quite some time to know that for sure, though.

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You might as well distrust the entire awards system.

Which is the most rational thing to do.

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