'Straight White Male' is the Real World's easiest difficulty setting

jdzappa wrote:

Maybe part of the problem is how in America we only define success as driving a Porsche back to your gated McMansion. I'd argue that a more realistic sign of success would be the standards of the 1950s-70s. Do you have a relatively comfortable home, even if it's 800-1000 square feet big? Or if you don't own, do you live in someplace that's not run by a slum lord? Do you have a car that is reliable (not two cars mind you - one)? Can you put food on the table? Can you afford work clothes, school clothes for the kids and maybe a few extra outfits a year? Can you afford an in-state vacation every summer or maybe the occasional movie or night eating out?

Congrats, you are a success. The second type of success (basic needs met with a few luxuries) is possible for a far larger part of the population than the first type of success. It's also more possible for people of any race or background to accomplish through hard work/smart planning. Part of the problem is Americans have come to see all the trappings - smartphones, plasma TVs, leased sports cars - as necessities rather than luxuries.

When I think of success in those days, I think more along the lines of:

jdzappa wrote:

I'd argue that a more realistic sign of success would be the standards of the 1950s-70s.

Hmm. Well, it's true that real incomes haven't grown since the 1970s. But the US economy as a whole has grown hugely in that time, as has worker productivity--it's just that those gains are no longer being passed along to the people actually doing the work. Rather than asking workers to expect less, maybe we should ask the richest among us to start sharing the wealth, again?

Sorry, I know this is only tangentially connected to the thread topic, but "American workers expect too much!" really pushes my buttons given what's actually happened over the past few decades.

jdzappa wrote:

Nobody commented on my earlier posts that already show women significantly outpacing men in terms of pursuing college degrees, or that women are quickly overtaking men in terms of income. The changing demographics of America only further assure that Mr straight white male is getting the karmic nerf bat. The only thing I'll agree with is historically there was white privelege, but I doubt that trend will continue past the next 20 or so years.

That's because people with more time and resources than I have been debunking that over the place, and I assumed/hoped someone else here would rebut.

According to A Comprehensive Review of Women in the US Economy prepared for the Senate Joint Economic Committee in December of 2010:

"The gender wage gap remains substantial today. Women working full-time, year-round earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, and virtually no progress has been made in closing the gap since 2001. In 2009, the most recent year for which data is available, median annual earnings of women ages 15 and older working full-time, year-round were just $36,278 compared to $47,127 for their male counterparts. New calculations from the JEC show that the gender wage gap is even greater for older women. In 2009, median weekly wages for women over 50 were just 75 percent of their male colleagues’ earnings."

It then goes on to describe how it persists across a wide spectrum of occupations, and across all socioeconomic strata from high powered managers and lawyers down to the lowly retail workers and out into the trades like truck driving. It shows up across all levels of education from high school graduates up through terminal degrees. It's also grows over time - one year out of college women earn 80 of what their male classmates earn. Ten years later, it comes in at $.69 on the dollar. It's not limited to the private sector, either.

Being a mother does affect the numbers, but only to make them worse than the non-mothers. There is a pay gap for childless women, and then a larger one for mothers that effectively doubles the inequity.

Or if that document is too many words in a row, how about this simple chart of the median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by sex and race/ethnicity in 2009:

IMAGE(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/US_gender_pay_gap%2C_by_sex%2C_race-ethnicity.001.png/800px-US_gender_pay_gap%2C_by_sex%2C_race-ethnicity.001.png)

If you want to learn more, this page is a great start with loads of links to authoritative sources from all over the place.

I don't know where you think we're going, but this hasn't gotten much better since the '70s. I don't know why you think the next 20 years have some sort of magical effect.

And I'm sorry, I'm not trying to call you out here. This has been a talking point in the political B.S. that's been flying around lately and not enough people are looking at things for themselves.

Jonman wrote:
John Scalzi wrote:

without invoking the dreaded word “privilege,” to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. It’s not that the word “privilege” is incorrect, it’s that it’s not their word. When confronted with “privilege,” they fiddle with the word itself, and haul out the dictionaries and find every possible way to talk about the word but not any of the things the word signifies.

I think the problem with discussing "privilege" with straight white male guys is that it's all-too-easy to read it as an accusation that as a stright white male guy you:

  • Don't deserve anything you've achieved, because it's all due to privilege.
  • Are, by your very existence, oppressing everyone else who isn't a straight white male guy.
  • Are a douchebag for not pushing back with all your might against the societal structures that perpetuate privilege.

I have a friend who is a staunch feminist academic, and it took me some time to get to the point of being able to hear her talk about privilege without it sounding like an attack. The danger for me is that she see's "privilege" as some kind of Prime Mover, and it sometimes comes across as wilful ignorance to the rest of the variables in a highly complex system. Yes, it has been advantageous to me to be born white and with a penis. It's been far more advantageous to me to be born in a first world society, which is of course, another form of privilege (and ironically, one that she also benefits from having been born to an upper-middle-class family). It has also been advantageous to me that I'm smart, that I've tried hard to make good choices that have, for the most part, worked out. Privilege is definitely part of the equation, but it's not the be-all, end-all.

I agree with this completely. I studied English Literature at a small liberal arts college. I was generally the only male or one of two males in my class. Not that men don't study English, but where I went to school it worked out that way. This school was very liberal, no frats, guys were really mellow and generally smart and even with that there were "Take Back the Night" rallies, an annual gender symposium and on and on. It went far beyond your typical 90s PC culture.

In the middle of all that I was very thankful to be studying English with the women I did. Interacting with mostly women day to day brought me perspective I didn't have coming into college. Especially with regards to all the ways hidden bias completely flies by people like me. I appreciated that perspective and it really helped me to understand and become more empathetic and a more well-rounded person.

Somebody just poke me next time momgamer posts. Those alone are worth coming back to the thread for.

jonstock wrote:
jdzappa wrote:

I'd argue that a more realistic sign of success would be the standards of the 1950s-70s.

Hmm. Well, it's true that real incomes haven't grown since the 1970s. But the US economy as a whole has grown hugely in that time, as has worker productivity--it's just that those gains are no longer being passed along to the people actually doing the work. Rather than asking workers to expect less, maybe we should ask the richest among us to start sharing the wealth, again?

Sorry, I know this is only tangentially connected to the thread topic, but "American workers expect too much!" really pushes my buttons given what's actually happened over the past few decades.

I agree that the excesses at the top need to stop first. That being said, Americans have terrible spending habits and save far too little money. The constant rat race and the American obssession in basing self worth on consumer spending is a big reason what's wrong with the country.

momgamer wrote:

That's because people with more time and resources than I have been debunking that over the place, and I assumed/hoped someone else here would rebut.

Me too! The lazy gamer wins again!

I'm sure I'm not the first to think this, but I haven't seen it actually said, so I'll add it.

What makes the games analogy apt and useful is also what makes it hard to not get defensive when accused of privilege. Heck, it's what makes it hard to break apart one bad apple in a protest from the group they're in (be it protestors, police, or even the press).

Games are systems. Complicated systems. Sometimes biases in those systems are obvious (rock beats scissors), but often they're much harder to grasp and define ("monk is OP!"). Intersectionality (the study of Paleo's matrix) is about studying the systems of issues like gender, orientation and race, because a lot of this stuff isn't about intentional individual bigotry. It's systemic, it's accidental, it's complicated. Some aspects of the system were intentionally crafted, sure, but a lot of it evolved as the product of dozens of countervailing forces pushing and negotiating to create our current rules and viewpoints.

The difficulty settings that Scalzi's talking about aren't just about starting with more or less health. They're far more complicated than picking a profession at the beginning of Oregon Trail to determine your starting cash and a score modifier. And that's the world we live in. Things aren't as simple and straightforward as we'd like to believe (and we do desire that simplicity on a deep, subconscious level — that's part of many of our human irrationalities). And I think that games, especially current, vastly complex games, give gamers more experience with that sort of hopeless complexity. That difference — the evolution from Civilization to Europa Universalis III — introduces us to the infinite complexities that we would hopefully learn to appreciate as part of a current liberal arts degree.

And that's part of the big promise I see in thoughts about how games will be the dominant artistic or cultural form of the 21st century. Different cultural forms promote different modes of understanding. Most can use allegory and metaphor, but some are about visual motion while others are more about sound, or space. Games are about systems, and as such promote an ability to "read" and navigate complex systems. And that's precisely what we need in the 21st century, particularly when it comes to issues of privilege.

When Wordsmythe talks all smart it makes me hot.

There's actually a cat at DePaul's game dev program (José Zagal) who's written a bit on that subject. His (free online) book is called Ludoliteracy.

wordsmythe wrote:

There's actually a cat at DePaul's game dev program (José Zagal) who's written a bit on that subject. His (free online) book is called Ludoliteracy.

And now it's sitting patiently on the Kindle app on my phone for those times I find myself somewhere with nothing to read. Awesome!

Jonman wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

There's actually a cat at DePaul's game dev program (José Zagal) who's written a bit on that subject. His (free online) book is called Ludoliteracy.

And now it's sitting patiently on the Kindle app on my phone for those times I find myself somewhere with nothing to read. Awesome!

Lest you go into it expecting it to be entirely about what I said, it isn't. It uses that sort of discussion as part of the motivation. The book as a whole is more about teaching a deeper understanding of games.

God darnit, Mr. Wordsmythe, you use your tongue purttier than a twenty dollar whore.

Paleocon wrote:

God darnit, Mr. Wordsmythe, you use your tongue purttier than a twenty dollar whore.

Are those inflation-adjusted dollars?

Momgamer, definitely interesting government study, but I'd like to present a counterpoint article that looks at not just the U.S. but also Western Europe. That article makes the case that the amount of hours worked (including the willingness to work the crazy 60-80 hours week corporate America often demands for "success") is still a major factor for the income gap. The article also makes a good point about how the modern economy doesn't make enough allowances for raising children, a point that I totally agree with. That being said, the modern free market has severely punished racism. I therefore can't see how the free market would tolerate sexism for the sake of sexism without there being mitigating economic factors.

From the article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...

One study by the American Association for University Women looked at women who graduated from college in 1992-93 and found that 23% of those who had become mothers were out of the workforce in 2003; another 17% were working part-time. Fewer than 2% of fathers fell into those categories. Another study, of M.B.A. graduates from Chicago's Booth School, discovered that only half of women with children were working full-time 10 years after graduation, compared with 95% of men.

Women, in fact, make up two-thirds of America's part-time workforce. A just-released report from the New York Federal Reserve has even found that "opting-out" by midcareer college-educated wives, especially those with wealthy husbands, has been increasing over the past 20 years.

Activists tend to offer two solutions for this state of affairs. First is that fathers should take equal responsibility for child care. After all, while men have tripled the number of hours they're in charge of the kids since 1970, women still put in more hours on the domestic front. But even if we could put a magic potion in the nation's water supply and turn 50% of men into Mr. Mom, that still leaves the growing number of women with no father in the house. Over 40% of American children are now born to unmarried women. A significant number—though not a majority—are living with their child's father at birth. But in the next few years when those couples break up, which is what studies show they tend to do, guess who will be left minding the kids?

Which brings us to the second proposed solution for the hours gap: generous family-leave and child-care policies. Sweden and Iceland are frequently held up as models in this regard, and they do have some of the most extensive paternity and maternity leave and publicly funded child care in the world.

Yet even they also have a persistent hours and wage gap. In both countries, mothers still take more time off than fathers after the baby arrives. When they do go back to work, they're on the job for fewer hours. Iceland's income gap is a yawning 38%—that is, the average women earns only 62 cents to a man's dollar. Even Sweden's 15% gap—though lower than our 23% one—is far from full parity.

All over the developed world women make up the large majority of the part-time workforce, and surveys suggest they want it that way. According to the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, in 2008 only 4% of the 70% of Dutch women who worked part-time wished they had a full-time job. A British Household Panel Survey interviewing 3,800 couples discovered that among British women, the happiest were those working part-time.

jdzappa wrote:

great stuff

That's some interesting information. And yes, there's a lot of factors in the overall situation. It's intriguing to see that just throwing maternity leave at the problem doesn't seem to solve anything - I see that as yet another point of evidence that being a mom isn't the root problem.

Also, you're comparing apples and oranges here. The numbers in that report I was using take account of as many factors as they can and only compare women working full-time, year round, hour for hour against a man with same education, same age, and doing the same job.

If things were truly fair, those numbers should match, or at least be a damn sight closer than 20-plus percent off across the board.

If Straight White Male is the easiest difficulty setting, the solution is not to nerf straight white men, but to buff everyone else.

That's my thought, too. When I talk about wage equality I'm not suggesting that the male in question isn't worth his salt. I just want the female to be paid the same for hers.

jdzappa wrote:

That being said, the modern free market has severely punished racism. I therefore can't see how the free market would tolerate sexism for the sake of sexism without there being mitigating economic factors.

LOL markets. How many black CEOs of NASDAQ/NYSE companies? Sure, a rather trite rejoiner but seriously.

Also WSJ piece of journalism is not really an unbiased source of information. And if we're talking about this then you need to consider the difference between the adjusted and unadjusted gender pay gap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_...
You can indeed explain much of the difference in what people are paid through simple factors such as a willingness to work 80 hours a week. This would be the unadjusted gap. But when you take into account as many factors as you can (the adjusted gap calculation); say, look only at single people doing the same job and working the same hours per week, then there still remains a gendered pay gap that can't otherwise be explained. It is that one momgamer was refering to, and that one that hasn't changed since the 70s. It is literally Statistics 101 that if you find that women earn less because they work fewer hours then the only valid comparison becomes to compare women to a cohort of men who also work fewer hours and see if the disparity remains.

The idea the the market would equalise pay is pretty laughable. Companies (as a homogenous statistical mass) will attempt to exert a downward pressure on wages, as they can generate greater profits with lower overheads. So you'd largely expect them to exploit (knowingly or unknowingly) any pre-existing social constructs that would enable them to keep wages as low as possible. Markets and companies don't afterall exist in some information perfect equitable void, they are embedded in a society full of foibles and issues.
Slightly more hand waving I'd say that, men's wages remain higher in the face of such downward pressure because they have an implicit point of collective bargaining where they can offer themselves to work 60-80 hour weeks, even when that is at the expense of family and social contact. The social structure of our society certainly forgives and often encourages such choices.

momgamer wrote:
jdzappa wrote:

great stuff

That's some interesting information. And yes, there's a lot of factors in the overall situation. It's intriguing to see that just throwing maternity leave at the problem doesn't seem to solve anything - I see that as yet another point of evidence that being a mom isn't the root problem.

But it does push the gap significantly below the OECD average:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OE...

So I've been listening to old Nerdists and a wild Danica McKellar appears.

Now, as much as I admire McKellar, I have huge problems with an attractive middle class white woman saying "just follow your dreams and the world will make things fall into place for you" without adding the disclaimer "If you're an attractive middle class white woman".

Malor wrote:

If Straight White Male is the easiest difficulty setting, the solution is not to nerf straight white men, but to buff everyone else.

This. Slightly related, but I wish Union bashers would use this same logic: it does no one any good to strip the rights Unions have bled for in order to bring them back down into the muck: that energy should be spent bringing those rights to all workers.

When I talk about wage equality I'm not suggesting that the male in question isn't worth his salt. I just want the female to be paid the same for hers.

I'm sorry, momgamer, that was more a general comment, not aimed directly at you. I should have been clearer about that.

What I see happening a lot in the area of 'privilege' is the idea of forcibly taking things away from people (mostly white) and giving them to other people (mostly other colors), in an attempt to 'repair the damage done'. But all that's doing is causing more damage.

First, it perpetuates the idea that color matters, that your race is important. When society is actively and explicitly giving you things because of your perceived skin color, then that skin color necessarily becomes an important part of your self-identification. When the problem is sorting people based on skin color, the problem is the SORTING, not the ORDER. Sorting in reverse will not get rid of sorting.

Second, it's trying to force the economy into some imaginary state that never could have existed in the first place. The damage done by this sort of thing is immense; Zimbabwe is a good example. You're taking away assets from the people that know how to use them, because of their skin color, not necessarily because they're wealthy, and then giving them to people that probably don't know how to use them. This is just as damaging and terrible as the original racism, purely in economic terms.

Third, it's punishing children for the sins of their parents. That's one of the Big No Nos. You punish the people that committed the actions, you don't take revenge on their offspring. Otherwise, you end up with perpetual war.

The right way to solve these problems is to actually make things equal, so that everyone in the country has the same basic opportunities. Once they do, wealth will equalize across skin colors. It will still show the same bell curve, as you always see bell curves, but the racial distribution of the bell curve will equalize over a generation or two. (we've been digging this hole for 235 years, we can't just wave our hands and have it go away -- it'll take a long time to fix, if we want to actually FIX it, and not just BANDAID it.)

It seems to me that higher taxes on the very wealthy would be a good first step. Wealth concentration is dangerous, terribly dangerous, and we need to stop that from happening to the degree it is. There is a tremendous social good in not allowing truly large amounts of wealth to concentrate in the hands of any one person or corporation. And then we need to fix the justice system, stop the War on Drugs, and start focusing on fixing the inner cities that have been war zones in this country for twenty plus years.

Make no mistake, America has actually been at war with itself for more than two decades, and our inner cities are the major outcome of that. If we want to fix the racism problem permanently, we have to fix those areas, get economic development and wealth into the predominantly black hellholes that were created by the War on Drugs.

And, we have to do that while our economy shrinks in a major way, from our huge excess of debt issuance, and from the competition induced by globalization.

These are the hardest problems we've ever faced, as a country. Even the Civil War looks trivial in comparison.

Second, it's trying to force the economy into some imaginary state that never could have existed in the first place. The damage done by this sort of thing is immense; Zimbabwe is a good example. You're taking away assets from the people that know how to use them, because of their skin color, not necessarily because they're wealthy, and then giving them to people that probably don't know how to use them. This is just as damaging and terrible as the original racism, purely in economic terms.

Thank you. This argument alone is why I cringe when people say big government is the only solution to fixing every problem. After all, Stalinist Russia did such a great job of ensuring personal freedom and opportunity while righting all of societal wrongs.

Some of the fixes to these problems involve not just government intervention but also a huge cultural shift. It's the willingness of people to personally volunteer in their local schools to help underserved kids. It means parents stepping up and taking a far greater role in their children's education so that more disadvantaged kids are able to pursue high paying, high tech jobs. It means changing how girls are socialized. Many of these things need to be changed at the personal and community level, and creating big sweeping national programs are likely going to have limited results.

Stupid double post.

Malor wrote:

The right way to solve these problems is to actually make things equal, so that everyone in the country has the same basic opportunities. Once they do, wealth will equalize across skin colors. It will still show the same bell curve, as you always see bell curves, but the racial distribution of the bell curve will equalize over a generation or two. (we've been digging this hole for 235 years, we can't just wave our hands and have it go away -- it'll take a long time to fix, if we want to actually FIX it, and not just BANDAID it.)

Equalising wealth across racial boundaries is certainly a noble and totally desirable goal but I'm very skeptical that would do a great deal to quench racism. It will certainly go a long way to removing whatever component of racism is motivated by a belief that one's skin colour is the reason for someone success. But there are plenty of rich racists who hate rich people with different coloured skin (or poor people who hate other poor people).

Incidentally wealth distribution isn't and has never been bell shaped, no mater what segment of society you look at. [i]It's not clear to me that with modern capitalism and markets how you could make it bell shaped. Typically it's some kind of pareto or exponential distribution. What you probably could influence is social mobility, if the system was "fair" then people should be able to move freely through the wealth distribution and those with the wealth shouldn't be able to block them.

jdzappa wrote:
Second, it's trying to force the economy into some imaginary state that never could have existed in the first place. The damage done by this sort of thing is immense; Zimbabwe is a good example. You're taking away assets from the people that know how to use them, because of their skin color, not necessarily because they're wealthy, and then giving them to people that probably don't know how to use them. This is just as damaging and terrible as the original racism, purely in economic terms.

Thank you. This argument alone is why I cringe when people say big government is the only solution to fixing every problem. After all, Stalinist Russia did such a great job of ensuring personal freedom and opportunity while righting all of societal wrongs.

If you only consider "big government" to be that sort of thing, I think I can safely say that no one we should take seriously is arguing "big government" is a solution.

DanB wrote:
Malor wrote:

The right way to solve these problems is to actually make things equal, so that everyone in the country has the same basic opportunities. Once they do, wealth will equalize across skin colors. It will still show the same bell curve, as you always see bell curves, but the racial distribution of the bell curve will equalize over a generation or two. (we've been digging this hole for 235 years, we can't just wave our hands and have it go away -- it'll take a long time to fix, if we want to actually FIX it, and not just BANDAID it.)

Equalising wealth across racial boundaries is certainly a noble and totally desirable goal but I'm very skeptical that would do a great deal to quench racism. It will certainly go a long way to removing whatever component of racism is motivated by a belief that one's skin colour is the reason for someone success. But there are plenty of rich racists who hate rich people with different coloured skin (or poor people who hate other poor people).

That's true, but that's also not the problem we're trying to solve. This isn't about solving small-scale, individual instances of racism. This is about solving society-wide, systemic and institutional effects of racism (or even 'effects that are racist in their impact' you could say).

Right, but again, if the problem is sorting due to skin color, the solution is not sorting in reverse. The solution is NOT SORTING, and then addressing the symptoms of the sorting that was endemic to the system for so long.

Don't help people because they're black or Latino, help them because they are poor. You'll automatically have a disproportionate impact on blacks and Latinos without having to be racist at all. And you'll also help poor white people, who are just as deserving of help as any other poor person.

DanB wrote:
jdzappa wrote:

That being said, the modern free market has severely punished racism. I therefore can't see how the free market would tolerate sexism for the sake of sexism without there being mitigating economic factors.

LOL markets. How many black CEOs of NASDAQ/NYSE companies? Sure, a rather trite rejoiner but seriously.

It's important to remember that, while many like to think of the "free market" as rational, it's only correctly assumed to be rational in the way that a physics problem assumes a frictionless environment.

Seth wrote:
Malor wrote:

If Straight White Male is the easiest difficulty setting, the solution is not to nerf straight white men, but to buff everyone else.

This. Slightly related, but I wish Union bashers would use this same logic: it does no one any good to strip the rights Unions have bled for in order to bring them back down into the muck: that energy should be spent bringing those rights to all workers.

The problem, and this can be seen in Malor's comment, is that adding to someone else is seen as taking from "me." And really, in a relative system, that's sort fo true (at least assuming some degree of small-sum within the sort or medium term).

Malor wrote:

Right, but again, if the problem is sorting due to skin color, the solution is not sorting in reverse. The solution is NOT SORTING, and then addressing the symptoms of the sorting that was endemic to the system for so long.

But the problem is not really sorting, it's that systemic effects end up acting like sorting. I'll agree that, ideally, the system would be finely tuned such that it would treat everyone truly equally. But the problem is that "the system" incorporates just about all of human existence. Also, the US government is way better at adding rules than changing or removing old ones — by design, even.