The Gaming Den

virgil wrote:

deaddmwalking wrote:

virgil wrote:How the hell do you respond to people who brazenly state that there's no discrimination or racism issue in the States (specific events are treated as anecdotes)?

If there is no discrimination or racism, there is no reason not to support legislation to eliminate it. If the discrimination is non-existent, the laws will never be used. If the discrimination does exist, it will be. Even if there are no murders, you still want to keep that illegal, right?

Yeah, that won't work on them. They're already firmly in the camp that those laws are being abused; using anti-murder laws on jaywalkers, as it were.

Go with statistics.

Question 1) Are Blacks/Women/[Insert Minority Here] Naturally inferior? If they answer yes, then they're racist/sexist/[Insert Minority]ist and your job is done.

Assuming that they answer no, you use statistics to show that the minority in question has bad outcomes more often than whites/men/[insert majority].

If they respond that that's simply because [Insert Minority] tends to make worse choices, you loop back to Question 1. Either they make worse choices because they're inferior, or they make worse choices because they're not given the opportunity to make better ones. This lack of opportunity need not be intentional, and is likely to be the unintentional, the aggregate of many unintentional negative factors.


Then move on to the fact that these negative factors can be self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating. If you steal a loaf of bread because you're hungry, that theft conviction will make it much more difficult to find a job, for example.

And while addressing these negative factors specifically would be ideal, it might not be practical or realistic. Affirmative action is a blunt instrument, but it works, more or less, and that's better than nothing.

Affirmative action 'works' in what way, exactly?

Occluded Sun wrote:Affirmative action 'works' in what way, exactly?

Affirmative action is a process in which diversity of population is considered as a factor. All else being equal, any pool of applicants should reflect the population demographically. Ie, if 2% of your population is American Indian, you'd expect 2% of your applications to be American Indian.

When you apply a strict 'highest test scores' rubric without regard to anything else, you might find that while your American Indians represent 2% of the population and 2% of your applications, they'd represent 0% of your admissions/hiring/whatever.

It can be inferred that there is an institutional disadvantage if that population is consistently excluded based on the merit metric that is used.

Affirmative action recognizes that and helps ensure that applications address that because when two otherwise equal candidates are being selected between, the demographic minority is given preference. These programs have increased enrollment/hiring of minorities to more closely resemble applicant populations.

It is possible to largely achieve the same effect without regard to race or religion. California has been successful in largely achieving the aims of affirmative action by giving preference to low-income individuals or the first in their family to attend college. Since poverty and fewer educational opportunities correlate highly with minority status, that can largely achieve the same goal.

Keep in mind, provable actions to deprive minorities of opportunities are not hard to find. Redlining was used very widely prior to the Fair Housing Act. This meant that minorities were forced into the poorest performing schools that were supported by the lowest tax bases on purpose at least until 1968. Perhaps unsurprisingly, violations of that law happen routinely.

George Wallace's 'segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever' was in 1963. There are a lot of people alive today who were alive in 1963 - about 1/3 of the US population. Considering that it can take a long time for attitudes and behaviors to change, we're a long way from eliminating racism.

Must of the racism that exists today - especially espoused by people like you - is based off of creating an uneven playing field and then blaming the victims when they don't win or tie. The few that do well are pointed to as examples of how the system isn't broken. You might find it strange that even in South Africa at the height of Apartheid had 'token' blacks that were permitted a middle-class existence as 'proof' that the system wasn't rigged.

For a decent book on that subject, I recommend the autobiography of Mark Mathabane titled Kaffir Boy.

If I felt that this was a meritocratic society where only the hard working and talented get ahead I'd object against affirmative action as well. As it is I don't care, before I flunked out of community college I was actually planning on going to a predominately black college because affirmative action would have paid for a huge chunk of it. Couldn't hack my studies though, I technically passed but my GPA wasn't high enough to transfer.

If I recall correctly, the purpose of Affirmative Action was to provide a temporary boost, in order to counter the lingering disadvantages of legal racial discrimination. The metaphor memorably tossed around was that you wouldn't take leg irons off a child and then expect them to be able to complete in a footrace.

Exactly how many generations must be propped up by a 'temporary' crutch before we conclude the intervention has failed? (Or more precisely, before you acknowledge that failure.)

Oh look at that, he's refusing to define "failure" or "success" when complaining that, maybe, two to three generations isn't enough to undo the structural disadvantages of literal centuries of literal slavery.

The correct answer of course is that affirmative action is a band-aid to treat the symptoms (namely that existing "meritocratic" data is skewed by an uneven playing field in which black folks don't get to make optimal choices) and isn't meant to directly address the underlying cancer, so we shouldn't expect it to quickly address said underlying cancer.

Occluded Sun wrote:If I recall correctly, the purpose of Affirmative Action was to provide a temporary boost, in order to counter the lingering disadvantages of legal racial discrimination.

If.

Here's the original executive order. Let me know if you find 'temporary' or any synonyms in there.

Alas, one cannot determine what a law was meant to do by reading it. Because lawmakers tend to suck at writing laws.

I commend to you Wikipedia's article on the topic, which covers different ways the concept is considered in various countries.

I don't see the word temporary in that article either. Care to quote a relevant passage for me? Or provide any goddamn evidence for your position at all besides vague recollections?

Occluded Sun wrote: Exactly how many generations must be propped up by a 'temporary' crutch before we conclude the intervention has failed? (Or more precisely, before you acknowledge that failure.)

Ooh! Ooh! My turn. Tag me in.

The reason I thought you bowed out of this one is that the New York Times published an article on 8/24 (available here if you have a subscription or haven't hit your monthly quota) talking about how redlining (refusing to grant mortgages to minority applicants for certain areas forcing them into less desirable areas) had a measurable effect still being felt today!

It turns out that these government-supported policies (until they were removed by government action) are still responsible for the 'wealth gap'. Even as incomes have become more-or-less even (huge caveat there because we're talking people in the same careers which doesn't account for lack of educational opportunities and such which results in a Racial Wage Gap between different demographic groups), whites have consistently become wealthier.

Now, if you weren't a disingenuous fuck-wit we could talk about what positive things affirmative action has achieved and where it hasn't had great success. If you think Affirmative Action is giving minorities an advantage (which, it is admittedly designed to do), why would you eliminate it if Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago.

Do you think affirmative action has gone too far? I don't. Remember, it only requires that you choose a minority when choosing between two otherwise equal individuals. It does nothing to ensure or encourage that two individuals will be otherwise equal - it doesn't really address systemic inequality and economic disparity at all.

And EVEN THEN, it's not actually applied in most circumstances. Here's an article from 2015 showing that 'Connor' is more likely to get an interview than 'Jamal' with an IDENTICAL resume.

I could go on and on because this is a pretty cut-and-dried issue. It turns out that there are no performance differences between members of different races all else being equal. It's the 'all else' part that we as a society continually struggle to get right.

One hundred and fifty years ago virtually every African-American was a former slave.

Fifty years ago virtually every African-American was denied the free exercise of their democratic civil rights.

How long does it take to 'even the playing field'? Maybe it wouldn't take long if we made a serious effort to address poverty and its causes. But it hasn't happened yet. As a society, we've consistently taken the absolute bare minimum step and the whole time shit-stains like you insist that it's JUST TOO MUCH.

You know, Martin Luther King, Jr is celebrated as an inspiring orator. His most famous speech, delivered at the feet of Abraham Lincoln's memorial included this paragraph:

Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote: As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

It looks to me like we have a ways to go, yet.

And if you need a reminder, MLK Jr was gunned down for peacefully leading a movement to achieve equal rights that were promised under the Constitution.

There are all sorts of flaws one could point out in Affirmative Action, it's a clumsy band-aid solution. But that's only a reason for doing away with it if a less flawed solution is found.

What would the conditions need to be for a city in the States to grow from "not much" to "rivals other metropolises in the country" from the '60s to the early '00s?

Massive influx of population followed by continuing investment in infrastructure. Boom towns are a thing both before and after 1960. If the town already has a solid infrastructure, it can help the town to persist after the Boom.

Atlanta is included on the wikipedia lists of Boomtowns because it grew so fast after the Civil War. Phoenix was America's 29th largest city in 1960 and is now #5. The population has doubled twice (from 400k to 800k to 1.6 million).

Random question that occurred to me today: What did Thomas Jefferson do about his plantation and slaves while he was in France? I imagine he had someone watching them to, you know, keep his slaves enslaved. But, that implies he hired a fucking slave-sitter? Or I guess he had a foreman? Seriously, I have no clue what he did, or how a slave owner would have managed his slaves when away on business for such a period of time.

I mean... Thomas Jefferson probably didn't beat people up personally for running, or personally chase them down with dogs if they ran either, or personally whip them for slacking.

As a general rule, people who own slaves probably have people who's job it is to enforce the work of the slaves and stuff for them. Like.... all big businesses, slave plantations operate at basically 100% of normal efficiency when the owner who never does work leaves.

Kaelik wrote:As a general rule, people who own slaves probably have people who's job it is to enforce the work of the slaves and stuff for them.

Were not the large plantation owning types the minority and most slave owners wouldn't be wealthy enough to avoid having to run them themselves?

Jefferson called the position specifically in charge of his slaves the 'Overseer of Monticello.' Four guys held the position over time: Gabriel Lilly, Edmund Bacon, Richard Richardson, and Great George.

People who couldn't afford to hire one or several dudes to watch their slaves usually left a family member in charge when they traveled: wife, adult child, sibling, whatever.

Thaluikhain wrote:

Kaelik wrote:As a general rule, people who own slaves probably have people who's job it is to enforce the work of the slaves and stuff for them.

Were not the large plantation owning types the minority and most slave owners wouldn't be wealthy enough to avoid having to run them themselves?

More than 50% of all slave owners owned more than 5 slaves. If you owned more than 5 slaves, you definitely hired people to do your beatings and chasing runaways for you, because you absolutely could not handle five with your own family.

Kaelik wrote:More than 50% of all slave owners owned more than 5 slaves.

Huh, I didn't know that, thanks.

Ah, that's kind of what I figured, thanks

I have been trying to go to the Green Ronin websites for over a week now, and I've been met with nothing but failure. Well, specifically, I've been met with ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT. I have used different browsers, machines, networks. I have cleared my cache, changed my DNS, and all that. Nothing works - except my phone. It can still access the site, but I am completely unable to post on the Story Hour subforum, going straight to the forum when I press "Submit Reply". I tried using my phone as a hot spot so I could use my laptop, and it worked for a bit until I tried to post through it, which made even the phone revert to that ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT issue with the site(s) for about half a day.

I may have asked this before because this sounds like something I would have asked. If so, my apologies because my brains are pretty scrambled at this point and I honestly don't remember.

Anyway, let's say I decide I want to sell my shitty D20 system adventures in digital format. Assuming I just want to get the job done without a bunch of other people that might want to get paid, what am I looking at? I'm assuming I can figure out the technical parts (illustrations, maps, layout, etc. I'm assuming there's tons of resources out there for any PDf program I can find), I just don't know what's involved to sell PDFs. I'm assuming the various game websites won't just let me sell my PDFs for free because that'd be nuts.

EDIT: Also I thought of something, is the OGL easy to work with? I actually have a good legal plan that will cover most of the cost for something like this so if I need a lawyer I can get one with a few phone calls.

Publishing PDFs on DriveThruRPG to have them sell for you is relatively painless, they just take a full-sized publisher's cut and let you go on through.

Really? Ouch. That's kind of bullshit for what little drivethru does to sell products. Bigger name stuff shows up in emails sometimes, and that's about it.