Race/Class/Gender/etc. Do they still matter?

[mrstickball]

Games4Fun said:

mrstickball said:

No, not really.

It matters only when people want to take it as a problem.

For example, your statement about men/women making different money is totally wrong. It's been proven for awhile that men and women, provided they do the same work, will get paid the same.

As for your claim about race and drugs, the bureau of Justice disagrees. As per their statistics, many more blacks are jailed for drug dealing because there are simply more black drug dealers than whites in comparison to users. http://www.jrsa.org/ibrrc/using-data/data_quality/data_elements/drug/drug_examples.shtml

As per their data, 69% of all incarcerated for drug offenses are by whites. But for dealers, its a 50/50 split between blacks and whites.

In the end, the reason (I think) they are still issues are because people still push them as problems, and complain about them. When we stop seeing people as male/female/black/white/straight/gay, we can judge people based on quality and character, which is a far more useful metric for defining worth.

Unfortunetly race does indeed still matter for the States as a whole. Now, thats not to say ever single person is racist as that is far from the truth but lets have a small look at the income levels of different races.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0689.pdf

look at the difference in thoose that make less than 15k now look over at the median income between black and whites. That is a huge difference it shows race is still a problem on at least this level. Why are there such big differences among the different races in pay?

....Because education among blacks is worse, and education heavily correlates with ones' income and pay inequality?

The table you show proves this assumption. Education among blacks was on the rise until the past 10 years, which has been stagnant (also the same can be said for whites), which was also when they had the lowest percentage of people making under $15,000 per year.

The issue is more of a cultural issue than a racial one. Some cultures breed educational problems, mostly caused by horrible government educational systems (e.g. forced districting to failing schools) and bad parenting, spurred by the proliferation of single parents.