I'm going to come this from the other (probably less popular!) direction.
I see no evidence of racial bias in your description. Of course I wasn't there and can't judge it, but to me it seems like you describe a straightforward disagreement between classmates. I would be very careful about raisi...
I completely agree, just because two people of a different skin color did not get along with someone of another skin color does not imply racial bias. They might not like their personnalities, style, way of doing things, there's hundreds of explanations that comes before "racial bias".
@KonradRudolph Statistically speaking, most comments starting with "statistically speaking" (this comment included) aren't based on reliable statistical study. If your comment is based on a reliable study, would you mind sharing it?
@KonradRudolph This seems very culturally dependent. Judging from the OP's use of terms such as "Caucasian" and "racial minority female", this is taking place in the US, where racial identity is very trendy and racial bias is a significant issue. In much of the world these are fringe concepts though.
@Servaes They may be "fringe concepts" in many places, but I'm extremely skeptical that there is significantly less racial bias. Rather, such biases are just more likely to be considered acceptable, which is really not a better state of affairs. As others have mentioned though, whether or not there is real bias here is a difficult thing to prove or show in either direction. The opinions of the remaining two group members may carry significant weight in this situation, were they treated significantly differently and if so, was it because of race or their contributions...
@ttbek Whether bias exists and how it is expressed likely also depends on culture and environment, not just how acceptable it is considered. Of course, I'm an engineer, not a behavioral scientist, so that's just my own speculation as well.
@JAB In the general sense, I would agree. I would disagree if you're speaking of a particular instance of bias, it will not exist more or less or change in expression retroactively based on the culture and environment. That is, one often can observe many examples of that same acts that are considered biased in the US in other places (e.g. Russia) but there seems to be more of them claiming it is a uniquely US problem and doesn't happen in Russia even as they partake in it, it just isn't considered biased in their narrative. Rather, they consider it being pointed out to be the problem.
@JAB Not to say that there aren't places that are genuinely more egalitarian than the US average, but in most of those places things like racial bias are definitely not fringe concepts. We could be pedantic and try to quantify all of this, but I'm also not involved in research in the social sciences.
@Discretelizard I’m honestly baffled that the pervasiveness of racial bias is not only questioned on this site, but that this gets substantial upvotes. I’m sorry — what!? On the off-chance that this was a misunderstanding, this is all I meant: explicit and implicit racial bias is pervasive. This is a well-characterised and well-known phenomenon that shouldn’t need to be backed up by references (but if you want some, reviews on the evidence of the pervasiveness of racial bias are very easy to find online).
@Servaes “In much of the world these are fringe concepts though” — You must be joking.
@KonradRudolph It's a predictable pattern. A user posts a question where the premise is that they're being discriminated against for gender or race. The question becomes popular, and appears in the hot questions sidebar. Dozens of drive by commenters and voters appear to question whether the asker was truly a victim of discrimination, and demanding impossible evidence. Statistically, the vast majority of these people will be white men. The asker gets some useful advice, but mostly gets gaslit about their experience, and goes with their already damaged confidence in education further dented.
@KonradRudolph I thought that was what you meant. And that is why I questioned it. If 'disfunctional behaviour' due to racial bias is common in general it doesn't necessarily follow that 'disfunctional behaviour' within the additional context of study groups is likely caused by racial bias. As one user commented, " "bad group project dynamics" seems to be a pretty universal experience." So, something considered independent of other factors such as race. The question then is what effect is more 'relevant' here, racial bias or group projects being awful in general.
Therefore, I was asking for statistical evidence for the specific situation involved: evidence of racial bias being a key factor for group projects behaving disfunctionally. In other words, merely because something is common it doesn't follow that it correlates with everything or causes everything.
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@MJeffryes I'm not sure if you are implying that I question the legitimacy of someone being a victim. If so, that was not my intention. All I intended to do was to question the usage of statistics here, as I thought it might be applied fallaciously. In other words, I don't necessarily agree or disagree with the conclusion (I don't think I have the relevant data to see whether it is likely), but I do disagree with the method that leads to the conclusion, as it seemed like incorrectly applying statistics to me.
@Discretelizard I think this comment thread is suffering from too much math applied to a social situation. user3399 is technically correct that bias is not logically implied by this situation, but that does not rule out the existence of bias. KonradRudolph probably does not have statistical evidence derived from exactly this situation, but reasonable people will admit that the U.S. has many incidents that are confirmed to be driven by racial bias. I don't think anyone thinks they can prove the facts of this case with given info. Thus, we take the bias as a premise and work from there.
@Discretelizard You are inaccurately describing the situation, as is common in such cases. As MJeffryes pointed out (this is what the “gaslighting” refers to), the question isn’t about a generic case of bad group dynamics. It’s about a case of bad group dynamics with a racial component. But predictably, the racial component is being questioned here (including, by you). Funny how the rest of the group dynamic isn’t questioned, only the racial aspect of it. You and others are accepting OP’s judgement in other regards, but not when it comes to judging the racial component.
… so my initial comment was in that context: a description of bad group dynamics with a racial component is, statistically, quite likely actually indicative of racism. Questioning this is, prima facie, entirely fine. The constant second-guessing in this comment thread, on the other hand, is unnecessary and appalling.
@Konrad Rudolph, I think you're misunderstanding the lizards intent. They aren't questioning anything about the racial component, merely the issue with an argument that states statistical backing without providing any statistical evidence. I'm sure the lizard would (i sure would) have the same exact question if someone stated "well, statistically speaking, it's quite likely that this has to do with the fact that the two aggressors described are sleeping with each other." It's poor form.
@mettle I was about to reply at length, but you've basically said what I wanted to say. Indeed, all I questioned was the argument, not the conclusion nor the premises.
@mettle But, again, these situations are not at all comparable. I’ve no idea as to the fraction of accusations of fraternisation that turn out to be true. But it’s well established that accusations of racism tend to hold up, and are systematically disregarded and downplayed. Again, this is a simple Google query away and asking for evidence on something that should be so completely uncontroversial, frankly, shows bad faith.
@Konrad Rudolph forgive my lack of knowledgeability in this area, but I for instance, have never seen a scholarly article or scientific experiment to back up what you're saying in any quantifiable/ statistical way. I googled "racism claims tend to hold up study" after your comment and found no such study. Again, I'm not disputing that such a study exists, but it's not trivial to find, so some sort of citation would be helpful. I don't think this shows bad faith at all. In fact, it would help strengthen you argument if you provided such a citation, something that's I would be delighted with.
I'm aware of the pervasiveness of racism, and as a minority, I'm aware of it's impact. I would love to have such a study to bolster my own discussions outside of just this one stackexchange page :)
@WanderingChemist Credo OP. That is, if OP were to sue someone, yes, she would have to prove her claim. But (the way I read her initial question), she believes there was bias involved, and we should answer her question from there. cag51's answer is useful while skeptical, but I think user3399's answer introduced a strawman, that then got set on fire.
@KonradRudolph The problem is that most "evidence" of racism merely looks at aggregate statistics and assumes that uneven/unproportional representation is evidence of racism, without ever considering other possible causes. The evidence has been pretty clear for a long time: youtu.be/Y021WAdUlW8. Racism, when not instituted by actual laws, is rarely a dominant force in determining economic outcomes. (It's not even the determining factor in some cases when it is blatant in laws.) As a result, we not should be quick to assume it.
@jpmc26 A lot of empirical evidence since that interview in 1981 confirms that racism (and other bias) exists. Here's a 2016 economics handbook chapter summing up field experiments on discrimination. The takeaway is: "Overall, this literature offers staggering evidence of pervasive discrimination against minority or under-represented groups all around the world."
@cactus_pardner I think most of the studies cited in this review make the same basic error Sowell complained about: in the absence of being able to think up another explanation for these differences, they assume the differences are racially or sexually motivated. It is really not possible to uniquely determine any specific motive from aggregates; at best we can rule some out.
Take the waiter/waitress one. It has the interesting property that women are heavily favored in lower end restaurants, which suggests to me that perhaps we are not simply dealing with sexism. Allow me to speculate an alternative: perhaps women tend to be more social and friendly than men on average.
In a low end restaurant, this is gold; your customers will feel more welcome and enjoy their experience more. However, higher end restaurants tend to be snootier. They are looking to exude a more stoic professionalism, and a tendency toward social interaction would work against this. It's well known that women and men differ strongly in personality traits, but this facet does not appear to have been examined. I'm sure we could come up with more unchecked possibilities if we tried.
Women are also known to be less assertive on average than men on average. I could very easily see how this would impact car price negotiations. Why there might be some variance racially is a little harder to explain, but black people are less economically stable than white people on average. Perhaps that trend is somehow reflected in the pricing. It's of course possible that racism plays a role, but how do we know if only aggregates are examined?
And there's a sort of underlying question involved, too: if a person working for a business observes trends and averages based on sex/race and these become incorporated into their practices, is that simply sexism/racism? Or is it something more complex and less malicious? Can we really blame people for acting on actual observations they have made, or is this simply a reflection of their incomplete experience in life?
Later on, the review talks about a study on "discrimination against the unemployed," but that really isn't some kind of unfounded bias. Hiring an unemployed person is objectively more risky. The person may be unemployed because of inability or poor behavior. These aren't certain, but they are risks that an employer has to consider carefully when investing in a new employee. The employer has no way of being sure.
The bottom line is that I'm not seeing a strong case that these studies necessarily reflect raw prejudices or that they successfully eliminate the effects of underlying realities in the culture. I'll grant that the thing being 110 pages long, though, I do not have time to read it thoroughly. So if you want to point out any particular studies for discussion, feel free.
@jpmc26 to add, look at the Question we are answering. With the evidence presented in front of us, the *only* hint of racism comes from the questioner.
Sure the group dynamics sucked and there are clear communication (and likely behavioral problems) but rather than address them head-on, the context of racism was added. Not only does this fail to address the actual problem, but actually removes power from the OP. After all, you can't change your skin color, therefore you are not to blame and are powerless (barring the 'ban hammer' of administration).
@KonradRudolph But surely you see the threat inherent in treating every bad experience that is likely to be because of racial bias as if it actually is because of racial bias. Imagine you are a member of a minority - now every bad interaction you have is likely to have been bad because of racial bias. Does that mean you should think that everyone that's impolite to you is a racist?
@NPSF3000 I tend to agree. Ultimately, you can't forcibly change people's biases, even if you send them to "anti-bias training" (and that sort of "re-education" approach is an immensely dangerous precedent to set). So the best answer even if it is racially or sexually motivated may well be to just address the problematic behavior directly in many or perhaps even most cases.
Proving your competence is the best way to fight bias, so the thing to do is make sure you are given the same opportunity to do so as people of other groups. Social competence tends toward dealing with behaviors you can show objectively, rather than demanding punishments for assumed motives.
Especially so in professional settings, and academic settings are either already professional settings or are meant to be preparatory for them.
Discussion on answer by cag51: Do uni…
Discussion on answer by cag51: Do uni…