What you call "systemic racism" has been known simply as "racism" in academic circles for the past few decades. Put succinctly, in research circles, racism is the property of a society that results in grossly unequal distribution of power among social groups viewed as different races; sexism is analogous. There is no assumption of ill intent or negative feelings, as those associated with xenophobia (or misogyny). There are very good reasons why this definition is much more useful to study this phenomenon.

The only thing that's changed in recent years is that the public at large has been exposed to those well accepted, well studied academic terms, while misinterpreting them to mean something else. Here's a recent article about this: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...

It's not that all whites are racist by the academic definition, but that our society is racist, and so people in it who intentionally or not further the racist social dynamics can be said to carry out racism. Those people are both black and white, but as it's mostly whites who have more power in society, it is statistically correct to say that whites are more racist. It's just that "racist" doesn't necessarily mean what you think it does.

First, social scientists are overwhelmingly liberal. Normally, I don't have a problem with an appeal to "academic circles" as I'm in them. But this is a legitimate reason, I think, for conservatives to be skeptical of the motivations and reasoning here in such a politically-fraught topic.

Secondly, redefining words with existing meanings is a bad idea that only leads to confusion. A crude analogy: imagine I redefine the word "moron" to mean "an uninformed consumer of news". Then, I go around calling people "moron", and am surprised when they are offended, and are not placated when I tell them the word's new meaning. They might wonder: might I not have chosen that particular word to make uninformed consumers of news appear worse than they really are?

I think it is disingenuous to blame the public for "misinterpreting" what is meant by "racism" in this context, even though all you say about its academic meaning is true.

It is a legitimate reason to be skeptical, but not a very interesting starting point for a discussion if one side isn't even interested in rigorously studying the subject at all. There's a vast knowledge gap between the two sides.

> Secondly, redefining words with existing meanings is a bad idea that only leads to confusion.

In the case of racism it's not clear which definition came first. In the case of sexism, the situation is clearer: the academic, feminist definition came first, and has indeed been continually misinterpreted.

> I think it is disingenuous to blame the public for "misinterpreting" what is meant by "racism" in this context

I'm not blaming the public for the misunderstanding at all, but many people are actively hostile to even trying to understand the more well-researched point of view, so I'm not sure you can blame the academics, either.

After all, people who have not studied psychology, sociology, anthropology or history find it hard to accept how social dynamics and prejudice work through them without them being aware of it, just as it took 300 years for people to accept that some disease is caused by invisible microbes. Sadly, we do not yet have a simple, self-evident experiment like Pasteur's to demonstrate the existence of racism (and even after Pasteur's experiments, it took a couple of more decades for most people to become convinced). So you cannot deny the active resistance to the idea.

"Sexism" was coined by analogy to "racism" in the 1960s, within an academic context, but had not yet acquired the additional connotation you're talking about (the "systemic" part). The first occurrence in print defines it thusly: "Sexism is judging people by their sex when sex doesn't matter." No apparent mention of institutional or systemic effects; those probably came later.

So what we have here is a word, "racism", which acquired a well-known public meaning c. WWII that meant what we would now call "extreme, overt racism", and a word, "sexism" defined by analogy to it in the 1960s. It seems plain to me that much of the public is still going by these older definitions.

The fundamental problem is that, under the old definitions, calling someone "racist" (and probably "sexist"), is a very serious accusation. There is a reason Nazis seemingly come up in every discussion about racism: they are the ones who gave the word its modern, common meaning. In some ways, calling someone "racist" is therefore a direct, linguistic analogy comparing someone to a Nazi.

Academics later refined and repurposed these words. If they, and media surrogates explaining their ideas to the public, had stuck to terms like "(institutional) bias/prejudice", we wouldn't have nearly the degree of problems we have. Certainly it is important to distinguish between implicit, explicit, and systemic biases, which is exactly why we shouldn't use the same word for all of them. And if the goal is progress and understanding, we probably shouldn't use an emotionally charged word that gained its modern definitions from the Nazis.

We cannot realistically expect the public to read academic publications before voting. I'm in biology, and it would surely be nice if voters would read my papers so that they understand issues in medicine better (maybe they would increase NIH funding!), but that's completely unrealistic. No, it is up to academics and media to communicate clearly with the public, and I am arguing sociologists have failed miserably in this regard.

People believe (mostly) in modern medicine not because of our fancy jargon, or our explained logic about why the cell does this or that, but because it obviously works.

I am a liberal living in a conservative state, with many conservative friends and family. I can assure you that many of them have never heard the reasoning and arguments you're referring to. Sure, you can find it on Slate. But they don't read Slate.

But if and when these conservatives are confronted with these arguments, they will mostly agree that implicit bias exists, and accept data about unconscious associations, police profiling, etc.

But they do NOT accept the conclusion drawn from it -- that we are all therefore "racist". Because to them that term is as much or more a political tool for moral condemnation as it is a description of objective reality. And we liberals (I assume) would be kidding ourselves if we didn't admit it has been used this way frequently.

And they also tend to resist the conclusion that we ought to do this or that about it -- because science, if sociology claims to be one, never does or can tell us what we ought to do, only what is reality (the is-ought problem). Once we start talking about what we should do, we are completely outside the realm of science.

> One group yells "women belong in the kitchen; blacks are inferior" or whatever.

I, and even most conservatives, would have absolutely no problem calling that racism or sexism. Those are overt, direct statements meeting the popular definitions of those terms.

I am assuming we are debating the more expansive definitions that are more under public dispute.

> saying that the term is just a tool for moral condemnation serves their interest of resisting the facts behind it

I agree, as long as it can be established that it does indeed have a useful purpose as a descriptive term.

> classifying actions as racist isn't prescriptive but descriptive, and is certainly under the purview of science.

I find the assertion that it isn't prescriptive, especially when you later admit that it does serve at least partially as a tool for moral condemnation, unconvincing.

But it could be both prescriptive and descriptive, so how about that?

You are surely aware that one fashionable definition of racism, with some academic support, is that it is equivalent to power or privilege, and therefore no member of a disadvantaged group can be racist, and all members of a privileged group are by definition racist.

In addition to being needlessly provocative and drawing attention away from "real", intentional racism, this kind of definition is utterly useless from a descriptive standpoint. After all, if it is completely equivalent to power/privilege, why not use those words?

And if racism occurs completely without choice on the part of the accused, is it not paradoxical to use it as a term of moral condemnation, since morality presumably requires choice?

Another common usage is the idea that racism is a set of power structures in society that promote unequal outcomes. If abstract, nonhuman entities (societies, governments, etc) can be racist, apart from the racism of their constituent members, how can the same term be used as a term of moral condemnation?

Note that I am not objecting to the idea that privilege, implicit bias, or self-perpetuating power structures exist. They certainly do.

But I am arguing that conflating these things with overt racism (or anything involving conscious choice, and therefore subject to moral condemnation) is intellectually muddled, counterproductive, and is at the heart of why conservatives are so angry about this issue.

But it does. The definition has become more refined in order to be more useful. This is commonly done in science.

> You are surely aware that one fashionable definition of racism, with some academic support, is that it is equivalent to power or privilege, and therefore no member of a disadvantaged group can be racist, and all members of a privileged group are by definition racist.

This is very inaccurate. The "fashionable definition" you're is really a very simplified, catch-phrasy shorthand for something much more subtle, which is this: Racism is the property of a society or social dynamics that create and perpetuate an unfair distribution of power between groups viewed as races. It is this definition that is shortened to be "discrimination plus power". Obviously, groups that are powerless in a society cannot shape it to withdraw power from themselves, which is why we say, as shorthand, "blacks can't be racist". But it is important to understand that in either case the word does not refer to individuals and certainly not to their sentiments, but to the way they are a vessel for social dynamics. Blacks, by being less powerful, are not as strong conduits for social dynamics, and hence they are not the mechanism for the perpetuation of racism, and hence "they" "are" not racist.

> In addition to being needlessly provocative and drawing attention away from "real", intentional racism, this kind of definition is utterly useless from a descriptive standpoint. After all, if it is completely equivalent to power/privilege, why not use those words?

This is perhaps better called xenophobia, just as "intentional sexism" is better called misogyny. I don't think it is more or less real than the academic definition, but it's not as useful because research has shown that the main mechanism by which racism is perpetuated has little to do with people's conscious intentions. You want to use the description of the main effect, not secondary ones that are perhaps more emotionally obvious but far less influential in practice.

> And if racism occurs completely without choice on the part of the accused, is it not paradoxical to use it as a term of moral condemnation, since morality presumably requires choice?

Without intent does not mean without choice. When I smoke a cigarette I don't intend to make myself sick, but if I know that is the likely outcome, then by smoking I choose to increase my likelihood of getting sick even though it is not my intent. The "moral condemnation" of smoking is effective in reducing smoking by drawing attention to this unintentional choice.

> If abstract, nonhuman entities (societies, governments, etc) can be racist, apart from the racism of their constituent members, how can the same term be used as a term of moral condemnation?

This is related to my smoking analogy. Once you know that your actions are part of an unwanted social dynamics, you can choose to change them.

> But I am arguing that conflating these things with overt racism (or anything involving conscious choice, and therefore subject to moral condemnation) is intellectually muddled, counterproductive, and is at the heart of why conservatives are so angry about this issue.

Right, but as in my reply to 794CD01[1], the difference is what you view as the main issue. Conservatives may view the issue as merely ethical, and when it comes to ethics, intentions matter a lot. The left cares a lot more about the result, and it turns out that what you call "overt racism" has very little effect on the result, and it is racism in the broader sense that is much more important. The left wants to draw attention to what it views as the bigger problem.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12981522

The top 1% is general perceived as having most power in society as a single group, and much more than white skinned people counted as one group. Individuals of the top 1% has significant more power than the average individual of people with white skin.

Then we have politicians and CEO's, which as a group has power somewhere in the middle between the previous two when counted as one group, but as individuals might very much have more power in average than anyone of the top 1%.

We also got convicted criminals that by law, are made powerless and removed from the voting pool. Surely they as a group holds no power to perpetuate an unfair distribution of power.

If we want to keep the definition of "discrimination plus power", what amount of power and how do we measure it? How do we measure a groups ability to be vessels for social dynamics? Do we only count the quantity of power, or the average power per individual?

It seemed to me that he was clarifying what those who believe A) mean, but personally goes with B) more. Which is good, because for the reasons you mention, A) is more extreme.

Not exactly, because the academic definition does not apply directly to individuals anyway (as opposed to xenophobia, which is a personal trait). Racism, like every social dynamics, is a statistical phenomenon. Also note that even even within the bottom, say, 5%, white people still have more power than blacks. But you are correct that racism generally works through people with more power.

> The top 1% is general perceived as having most power in society as a single group

First of all, we are not interested in quantifying exactly what share of racism does every individual or a slice of society hold. It is implied that racism works through power, so you can do the math.

Second, you mentioned "a single group", so I'll raise a point I find interesting. In social research, there are several kinds of groups we're interested in. Groups that are merely statistical set (how much money does the 1% have etc.), groups that have cohesion and common interests, and groups that are perceived to have cohesion and common interests whether they do or don't. The top 1% are certainly a group in the first sense, possibly a group in the second sense, but probably not a group in the third sense, although that may be changing as some politicians and political groups are trying to make people view them as such.

> Surely they as a group holds no power to perpetuate an unfair distribution of power.

That's true (although they may hold some power in their local communities).

> If we want to keep the definition of "discrimination plus power", what amount of power and how do we measure it? How do we measure a groups ability to be vessels for social dynamics?

It's not very easy and it's not very precise, but it doesn't have to be. We're trying to understand the basic mechanics; predictions are impossible anyway due to intractability. You can measure power in several ways. One is to measure it through proxies like money or positions (e.g. average income, or how many women CEOs there are). Another is to measure its effects, like whose groups interests are best served by legislation (at the various legislative levels).

> Do we only count the quantity of power, or the average power per individual?

Whichever is more useful for whatever it is we're discussing, but when we talk about groups, it is often the total power, rather than "power per capita" that counts.

It reminds me of a dilemma regarding to voting power. Germany has the most seats of any country with a total of 13%, while Luxembourg has 0.8%. Clearly Germany has more power, and when it comes to influence power in EU, one should go there to cause change. However, a Luxembourg citizen vote counts as 10x more than a german vote as a result of degressive proportionality, which mean by efficiency, any campaign would gain more influence per unity of work going after Luxembourg citizen. So where should the effort go to cause social change in the EU, and whose citizens deserve being blamed for faults?

> That's true (although they may hold some power in their local communities).

During the time of the Black Panther Party, one could easily see how they held a lot of power in local communities, caused by the massive race segregation that existed and still exist to some degree. If we also drag into this discussion some psychology, almost every person in the world has a local space for which they are in control and got highest power. Its a survivability trait in order to regulating stress levels against an otherwise threatening environment.

Looking at the local level seems as a poor method to study the mechanics of racism, and even worse for making predictions. Reductionism is a popular academic method, but it also widely criticized for lacking the ability to make predicts from a theory and thus verified the validity of said theory. The lack of verification is where science normally leaves and cultural, religious or political believes begin.

> even within the bottom, say, 5%, white people still have more power than blacks

Do you have data that shows that homeless people with black skin have less power than homeless people with white skin? I find it generally implausible that people who can't fulfill the lowest level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs has any distinguishable level of power in their subgroups. My best guess would be a proxy like police policy, but then we are entering the area of people being "acted on", and that is generally not considered as an aspect of power. Left politics is quite active in advocating that "acted on" is the opposite of power, regardless of the benefits that the acted on gets.

First you need to explain whether by "use" you mean in social science (as an explanation) or in politics (as a strategy). I think that either case doesn't work well. Obviously, all sorts of trivial sets are the causes of everything, but a useful model must be more refined to provide insight on the mechanics of the process (and as a strategy, that's just hard).

> So where should the effort go to cause social change in the EU, and whose citizens deserve being blamed for faults?

I don't know. I'm not a political strategist (I'm not a social scientist, either, but I studied some).

> it also widely criticized for lacking the ability to make predicts from a theory and thus verified the validity of said theory. The lack of verification is where science normally leaves and cultural, religious or political believes begin.

That's not quite true. Social science, as well as biology and computer science to some degree, deal with intractable dynamical systems. On a large scale, it is a mathematical impossibility to make predictions about biological systems, computer programs and social dynamics. Biologists can't predict evolution -- only explain it retroactively -- but that doesn't mean they don't understand the mechanics. Likewise, social science can only make predictions in very constrained conditions, like those studied in social psychology. If science were restricted to studying only tractable processes, we wouldn't get very far. Also, the word "science" may not be the best word to describe social research, anyway, but that doesn't mean that the knowledge gathered there is religious or political.

> Do you have data that shows that homeless people with black skin have less power than homeless people with white skin?

I wasn't quite talking about homeless people. Unless a homeless person denies access to food and shelter to people of other races, I won't call them racist. But as to data, how about this[1]. In the US, blacks are more likely to be incarcerated than whites of even much higher economic status:

What's more, even young black people who follow the rules and are never incarcerated are less likely than similar white people to accumulate wealth as they get older. As of 2012, the median household wealth of black participants in the study who had never been incarcerated at some point in their lives was $16,200. Those who had been incarcerated had zero wealth at the median.

Among white participants who had never been incarcerated, however, median household wealth was $192,000 by 2012. The median white participant who had been incarcerated reported wealth of $5,000.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/23/poor-...

To take a few examples, female and male identity is defined by the same culture. A man will apply male identity as defined by culture, but also be expected (and enforced) to do so by both men and women in that culture. When we look at groups and define men as having more power as a group, it doesn't address if they have more power to change the cultural rules. The power a man has to voluntarily wear women clothing should be a hint towards that aspect, and if they have more power to do so than a woman wearing men clothing.

Similar, in the caste system, people from all castes shared and enforced the culture. People of high caste supported it, and people of low caste supported it as that meant that they themselves were not at fault. In the end it took a common effort to remove it from law in places like India, but as a cultural values it is yet to fully be eradicated.

> In the US, blacks are more likely to be incarcerated than whites of even much higher economic status:

Well, I did ask this before. Is "acted on", even if beneficial, a power? A lot of feminism theory when looking at movies and story telling criticize that being "acted on" diminish a person identity and power. Even if its a beneficial outcome in the case of incarceration, the person involved can't affect it or control it.

Looking at it from a cultural (and using the trivial set), we can easily see how such outcome can happen. I recall a test where actors, a white man, a white woman, a black man, and a black woman acted as if they stole a bike in broad daylight. The outcome matches perfectly the cultural expectation, with only the men drawing negative attention. The black man got the worst, while the white women got positive attention in that bystanders went and actually helped her to cut the protective chain of the bike. From a cultural perspective, society collectively define thieves as white women < black women < white men < black men, as least to most likely.

If we tried to predict this result using perceived power of each group, we would get something like W/M < W/F < B/M < B/F, with the potential to switch W/F and B/M depending if we regard race or gender as the more powerful sub group. Regardless, neither provide an accurate prediction, as white males end up second to worst when looking at the actual result.

From a cultural perspective, where we define it as controlling what power each group has, it does make sense that not all groups have the same power in all situations. It also make sense to define that the group that culture defines as having power, are themselves not able to control culture. At most, the group can proportionally affect culture, similar to that of a large sub group of citizens can affect the election result without the group having a majority.

If you're talking about political strategy, then there's not much I can say, as I have no idea what is the best strategy to dismantle a caste system. But if you're talking about a descriptive model, then I don't think cooperation is the same thing as support. The definition of power is exactly the ability to get others to serve your interests. The fact that a group with less power (the influenced) cooperates with a power structure that serves the powerful (or the influencers) is no indication that the interests originate there, too.

> If we tried to predict this result using perceived power of each group, we would get something like W/M < W/F < B/M < B/F

I think that you're assuming that power (or lack thereof) manifests itself in precisely the same way in every situation (male/female or while/black). It is, I believe, an incorrect assumption. Because men are dependent on women in many ways, it is not in their best interests to have women incarcerated more. My expectation would be that in every scenario, the outcome would be the one that best serves the interests of the group with power, regardless if they happen to coincide with the interests of the less powerful group in that particular scenario. Also, social dynamics that shape social perception are, of course, statistical and work globally. Locally we can get behavior that doesn't tell the whole picture. For example, if you only considered how men and women behave on dates, you may wrongly conclude that women have more power because men pay for them and open the door for them.

> it does make sense that not all groups have the same power in all situations

That may be true, but on the scale any researcher who studies social structures who isn't a psychologist is interested in, the more powerful group gets its way in almost every case. It's just that social dynamics that perpetuate such large-scale power are usually not visible on a small scale.

And if we allowed such concept to enter the calculations, every other power indication must be put into questioning. Social science commonly make a point of gender distribution in the work environment. We naturally conclude that since more men are in CEO/higher pay position, that must be a result of power. However, a Chinese study showed that >80% of women won't consider dating a man if he doesn't own his own apartment and earn above a cultural set amount. 50% even consider it wrong for man to be outside if not earning that amount, as he should stay inside and work until he has increase his earning. Does this mean that women in such culture are the one in power, and that they just happen to give up power in the work force since its in their best interest to have men with high income?

If we are to include such relations, and from my perspective, results that are not Nash equilibrium, we end up with an impossible high burden of proof on social science. The researcher would basically have to prove the non-existence of such relationships.

> if you only considered how men and women behave on dates, you may wrongly conclude that women have more power

Its not easy comparing two asymmetrical reproductive strategies and asking which one are in more control, but a general consensus seems to be that whoever invest most are the party that are more discriminative and more selective. Where humans end up depend generally on the one studying it, and the methodology used, and local extremes.

> the more powerful group gets its way in almost every case

Depend on the time scale. If we look at an elected party, they will by definition get their way in almost every case until next election. At that point, their power, which was given by society as a whole, can be removed. The question is then, where that power ever part of the group or was it just granted?

Going back to cultural values, it doesn't change as rapidly. By allowing groups to have different power in different situation, it is also less rigid in its predictions. If the same cultural values are kept over time, you also get the effect that groups gets their way consistently over time as per the culture. The thing that would disprove culture as the culprit of power, is if a group had power to change such culture. Do you know of any such case?

I don't understand what you're referring to.

> However, a Chinese study showed that >80% of women won't consider dating a man if he doesn't own his own apartment and earn above a cultural set amount... Does this mean that women in such culture are the one in power, and that they just happen to give up power in the work force since its in their best interest to have men with high income?

But that is the whole point of the power discourse. Power shapes social norms.

> Its not easy comparing two asymmetrical reproductive strategies and asking which one are in more control

I think it is fairly obvious that men have more power in most cultures.

> The question is then, where that power ever part of the group or was it just granted?

The power is "a part of the group", but it ebbs and flows. Government is a mechanism that interacts with power (like all social mechanisms). If the government structure is binary, i.e. only one party can be in control at any one time, then this will naturally amplify power fluctuations because that's how binary mechanisms work.

> it is also less rigid in its predictions.

It's very hard (or even impossible) to make predictions in an intractable dynamical systems. That's just a mathematical reality. That's why social science doesn't try to make predictions on a large scale and over long durations, because that's just mathematically impossible. Similarly, biologists are unable to make predictions about evolution. They have no choice but to be content with retroactively explaining the dynamics.

> The thing that would disprove culture as the culprit of power, is if a group had power to change such culture. Do you know of any such case?

Plenty. The French revolution has dramatically changed cultural perception of aristocracy and hereditary power. More recently, feminism has changed cultural norms dramatically. It was once believed that women don't have the (biological) mental faculties to be good doctors or lawyers. The deeper and more internalized cultural norms are, the longer the process. There is an amazing book called The Civilizing Process[1] by Norbert Elias that chronicles the gradual social development of disgust. It shows how things we perceive to be visceral are actually the product of social processes.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Civilizing_Process

The swirling mustached man who in western culture symbolize evil and criminality. If men as a group has all the power, why would men as a group allow men to be incarcerated in higher rate than women? We have similar situation with the phrase "women and children first". Why would the group with power sacrifice their life for members of a less powerful group?

> I think it is fairly obvious that men have more power in most cultures.

In the context of dating? Social science looks at outcomes, and women are more discriminative and have more decision of the outcome. Outside of some extreme local situation where some elderly religious male leader decides whom a woman will form a religious bond with, which in my country is highly illegal and carry prison sentence, I can't say there is much signs that men decide the outcome of dating. Looking at proxies for dating culture (ie romantic movies), that impression is further reinforced that women decide the out come of dates and men only have the option to try date enough women until one will accept him.

But any conclusion must come with the consideration that men and women has asymmetrical strategies when it comes to dating.

> Power shapes social norms.

Or social norms shapes power. If men must be bread earners in order to be successful in reproduction rituals, those who are more inclined to do so will reproduce at an evolutionary higher rate than others. Such incentives should, through not guarantied, impact the power balance in the work force. In cultures that do not have such culture should as a result have a distinct different power distribution in the work force. I would guess (since I don't have the data) that Chinese society has a more extreme gender segregation in the work force than countries where income has a lower impact on dating.

> Government is a mechanism that interacts with power

One could easily think that it is the citizens that control the government that votes a party into power. The common phrase, S/He who pays the piper calls the tune, implies a power relation. Naturally, a political party has power, but revolutions general happens to parties that travels too far from the cultural structure. Somewhat ironically, cultural changes often happen in the turmoil.

> Plenty. The French revolution has dramatically changed cultural perception of aristocracy and hereditary power.

I might be mistaken, but it wasn't aristocracy and hereditary power that was in control of the French revolution. It seems that the group in power did not get their way, and the cultural changes came from the less powerful groups working together.

Old style feminism did change cultural norms, and most what I have read and seen was caused by the goal to create change by targeting cultural values. They were not the group with power, and the change was not cause by getting the most powerful group to change culture. Instead culture was changed from within by changing gender norms and expectations. There is plenty of old Swedish movies that illustrated 1980s parents that attempted to eliminate gender identity as a concept, switching or removing gendered clothing and toys.

New feminism, which is a style of feminism I strongly oppose, is the idea that men and women have different strengths, perspectives, and roles in society. Difference feminism success seem to mostly be about pinning groups against groups and causing what people call the gender war. Old feminism advocated that everyone are human and differences in society is caused by a harmful culture, one that they had a good track record in fixing. Since everyone are human, they even managed to make the word feminism to be a synonym to the word equal, which seems quite hijacked by new feminism.

The Civilizing Process sounds interesting and valuable read, but not sure how it links back to the concept that a powerful group shapes society and culture. Going back to racism, the initial proposition was that the group with most power deciding what the culture is. My view is that the culture decide the power balance of groups and culture is formed by everyone in society. In order to fix a bad culture, one need to change society norms and expectations, and you can't do so by only addressing the most powerful group.

I'm not sure I understand the premise. The fact that a group is powerful (and therefore serves itself) does not imply that the members of the group are necessarily allies. Even shared interests do not imply alliance. In fact, the more powerful each member of the group is, the less reason there is for them to be allies. Powerful groups usually become allegiant to one another only when threatened by a large accumulation of less powerful groups (that together have a lot of power).

> In the context of dating?

Maybe not, but this is getting into very specific contexts. I'm generally talking about social, or political power, in the context of distribution of resources. This is what most social scientists mean when they say "power" and don't qualify the context. Dating is quite special anyway in that the dynamics usually involves a very small number of people, so there can't be interesting alliances.

> Or social norms shapes power.

It's not either or. Nearly all dynamical systems involve feedback. But from a political point of view, what matters is that social norms are malleable. I won't go so far as to say that biology plays no role in social norms, but I don't think we have any reason to believe that our society today is anywhere near the boundary of biological forces.

> If men must be bread earners in order to be successful in reproduction rituals, those who are more inclined to do so will reproduce at an evolutionary higher rate than others.

Regardless of my previous statement (feedback etc.), I should warn against relying too much on behaviors attributed to a prehistoric past, which is largely unknown. We're not sure exactly about the different roles men and women had in prehistoric society.

> One could easily think that it is the citizens that control the government that votes a party into power.

Yes, but one citizen does not vote a party into power. Lots of citizens have lots of power.

> It seems that the group in power did not get their way, and the cultural changes came from the less powerful groups working together.

Less powerful groups working together is precisely a way to gather power. That's why capitalists hate unions. A worker alone has far less power than the capitalist. But combined, they are quite fearsome. It is a very crude and simplistic description, but the power of the rich is in their money, and the power of the poor is in their numbers. It's just that it's much easier for a rich man to yield his power than for a large group of poor people, because they must coordinate.

> New feminism,

I don't like this distinction. Feminism is simply the ideology of having women attain the same power as men. Feminists simply have different strategies of attaining those goals. When people start talking about "new" vs. "old" feminism, I get the sense that they really cherry pick some feminist strategies that they like and some that they don't.

> The Civilizing Process sounds interesting and valuable read, but not sure how it links back to the concept that a powerful group shapes society and culture.

Only indirectly. The thesis is that the top echelons of society want to distinguish themselves from the hoi polloi by adopting behavior that is more refined. Eventually, the lower classes want to resemble the high classes, and mimic the same behavior, and the cycle starts again. What is interesting is how internalized things have become that we can literally throw up when seeing behavior that was once common place. I mentioned it as an example of social dynamics shaping norms.

> and you can't do so by only addressing the most powerful group.

Ah, maybe that's the source of the misunderstanding. The most powerful "group" does not necessarily hold most of the power. Power is spread, just not equally. To give a simple example, to change policy in an aristocracy, you could either convince one king and thirty noblemen, or 100,000 peasants that would revolt. In modern society, power is not that concentrated, and I don't think it's ever enough to convince just one group (although we may be getting there) no matter how powerful it is.

> Powerful groups usually become allegiant to one another only when threatened by a large accumulation of less powerful groups

Such groups are very temporarily in coherency, and don't seem to match the concept of "white men" when described as a cause for ism's. If anything, grouping people based on race or gender without a very specific context seems to loose all the attributes of a allied group with aligned interests and goals.

> Nearly all dynamical systems involve feedback ... Eventually, the lower classes want to resemble the high classes, and mimic the same behavior

I think studies done by Robert Sapolsky on social ranking in baboons to be quite enlightening on this. He showed that if you group individuals by ranking, number 3 competes with 2 and 4 but not with 1 and 5. To theorize, I think that when individuals of a class mimics the behavior of whoever is at top, they do so in order to primarily compete with the nearest ranking members of the same class. The power relation between the top and those at the bottom becomes very indirect and largely unintended through this mechanism.

> I should warn against relying too much on behaviors attributed to a prehistoric past

Fully agree, and mostly bring it up as a point where we tend to view men as powerful because some nation forbids unmarried women to be outside, while we have similar situation in nations where unwealthy men are also not allowed outside. The variation in culture has a much bigger impact on power distribution and liberty than gender has on a global scale.

> [New feminism]. I don't like this distinction. Feminism is simply the ideology of having women attain the same power as men. Feminists simply have different strategies of attaining those goals.

If we look at the left and right politics, both strive to attain economical progress and prosperity. The distinction is in the strategies of attaining those goals, the values behind it, and from that a lot of effort and energy is expended to fighting each other. A think a major factor in this is when two strategies conflict with each other, you end up with two opposing ideologies with the same goal.

To take a few example, Difference feminism encourage and promotes diversity, and have a large undertone of biology in their message. A company should strive 50% women and 50% men because men and women are different and brings different values. The older feminism movement want to eliminate the defining aspect of diversity, and have companies only see the humans behind the applicants for which the natural result should be, spread over enough companies, 50/50.

To bring a second area of conflicting strategies, lets bring up domestic violence. A key statistics that new feminism commonly brings up is that 80% of reported perpetrators are men and 20% are women, often witch explicit implication of testosterone as a biological cause for violence. A common phrase used by feminist is "men violence against women". However, if we look for supporting evidence in homes where there is two men living together, or two women, we don't get the expected result of higher and lower violence based on gender. What we find is that regardless of the genders, the amount of domestic violence is identical.

New feminism reaction to that data can be read in several papers and reports, released in the last 20 years. The full title, often cut in half, is now days "Mens violence against women and violence by people in same-sex relationships", perfectly matching the data and (in my view) completely missing the point. Looking from the perspective that we are all humans, wouldn't it be better to ask why 80% of the time men are implicated as the perpetrator in heterosexual relationships? I would even go as to say that the strategies should simply focus on reducing the human behavior of turning verbal arguments into physical confrontations, rather than focus on gender.

> to change policy in an aristocracy, you could either convince one king and thirty noblemen, or 100,000 peasants

To change culture in an aristocracy, I don't think its enough to convince one king and thirty noblemen. They can influence peasants to mimic the higher class behavior with incentives of higher social status, but that will inherently be within the constraints of existing culture that defines the social structures. If someone want to attain change outside of those, the only method that historically has worked (as far as I seen) is by getting those 100,000 peasants to align with the new values. Wealth and power can help or slow that progress, but it can't force or stop it (although we may be, as you say, getting there, which is a very scary thought).

To go back a bit and talk about racism, if we want to stop racism we can't only talk about white men. Having people to see humans rather that skin color takes a value change, and it is currently very ingrained into everyones mind. The black panther movement was by my interpretation an reflection of the white supremacy movement, putting skin color as an defining feature in create the in-group and out-group. Similarly, new feminism is doing a similar thing to gender.

Just click on any of the comments to make them the root.

> If anything, grouping people based on race or gender without a very specific context seems to loose all the attributes of a allied group with aligned interests and goals.

But "allied group" and "aligned interests" are very different things. When we study groups, we don't always care what one person in the group feels towards others in the group, or whether person X and person Y are business competitors. X may really want Y to fail, but even the opposite outcome is better to X than a communist revolution. Anyway, it is a fact that white men have been more powerful than white women or black men in the West, at least for the past few hundreds of years.

> The distinction is in the strategies of attaining those goals, the values behind it

I think that different values result in very different goals, and I think that conservative and white Americans have very different notions of how they want the world to look. Jonathan Haidt has a nice talk about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b86dzTFJbkc

> often witch explicit implication of testosterone as a biological cause for violence

I don't think that's the implication at all. It's unlikely that feminists would emphasize a biological cause, and besides, I don't thing they (should or do) care what the cause is.

> I would even go as to say that the strategies should simply focus on reducing the human behavior of turning verbal arguments into physical confrontations, rather than focus on gender.

I don't know.

> if we want to stop racism we can't only talk about white men.

Again, I don't know how to stop racism, and I must admit that I haven't closely followed the political messaging by different advocacy groups, so I'm perfectly willing to accept that the messaging was wrong.

> But it is important to understand that in either case the word does not refer to individuals and certainly not to their sentiments, but to the way they are a vessel for social dynamics.

> the main mechanism by which racism is perpetuated has little to do with people's conscious intentions.

Yep, I understand this, and this is key to the disconnect between academia and the public. Academia is saying, "it's not individuals, it's institutions, social habits, etc". That's a perfectly legitimate and important point to make.

But the public hears "you're racist" (by which academia and their surrogates mean, "you're a participant in these phenomena"), and understands it to mean "xenophobia" (implying intentionality). And you cannot fault the public for this misunderstanding because that is the common and historical meaning of the word.

> The left cares a lot more about the result, and it turns out that what you call "overt racism" has very little effect on the result, and it is racism in the broader sense that is much more important. The left wants to draw attention to what it views as the bigger problem.

As they should. I think we agree on just about everything except the question of whether repurposing an existing word is an unhelpful confusion-causing conflation or not. I do not question the motives of academia or the left on this issue, only their linguistic methods. They are the ones trying to make the change, so they are the ones responsible for clear communication.

More concretely, I am arguing that this confusion has cost the left dearly in this election on the very goals they claim to be working towards.

> Once you know that your actions are part of an unwanted social dynamics, you can choose to change them.

Just to be clear then, it is possible for a person, even a white person, not to be racist assuming they take appropriate actions? If so, I think we are very close to resolving our disagreement.

> Without intent does not mean without choice. When I smoke a cigarette I don't intend to make myself sick...

A decent analogy. I think however when we shift from the popular to the academic definition of racism, we have made a crucial shift from a "negative ethical obligation" (an obligation not to do direct harm to another) to a positive one (an obligation to take direct action to fix problems you didn't directly cause). Generally positive obligations are weaker and more dubious than negative ones, so this could be seen by conservatives as a bit of a bait-and-switch.

Think of controversial topics such as tobacco, climate change, anti-vaccination, GMOs. Skepticism is great, healthy, and necessary. When those who are honest about the role of skepticism, what "theory" means, and the limits of what they're able to show meet with those who are willing to politicize the debate and speak in absolutes, or at least disingenuously widen the gaps of doubt beyond what's reasonable, who's likely to win that argument in a television sound bite?

Couple this with false balance in reporting, and you have a culture of people who don't know who to believe, and understandably may default to believing evidence that confirms what they already do.

This of course is not a criticism of your comment. This is a situation that I see playing out every day, and it honestly scares me. I don't know how we come back from this.

> trying to understand the more well-researched point of view

Sokal affair demonstrated full rigor of humanities 'research' quite well, I believe

Using the method is nice, but let me know when they learn to reliably predict anything, such as election outcomes.

Contrast that with loud aggressive types who will call someone racist and demand that we agree unequivocally, because they know better. That is, until someone higher in their pecking order comes up with even more ridiculous redefinition of dictionary words.