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Originally Posted by Acajack
Not saying that it's inaccurate but the idea that there actually are "uncivilized" places inhabited by humans in the world is anathema to lots of people, and even seen as racist by some.
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It depends on how it's worded. If it's worded that the places are uncivilized so as to imply somehow the people there are innately prone to uncivilized behavior that can't change, then yeah, it's obvious that will be taken as racist. But if it's worded as the system/structure is bad/uncivilized, not the people, then it's taken a different way.
For example, most people would agree that China is undemocratic and authoritarian, and Somalia is chaotic, war-torn and anarchic, without implying that the Chinese and Somalians are bad people whose political habits somehow run in their veins.
Plus, we know places can change really quickly -- for example how people saw Japan in the earlier 20th century (war-like and brutal) obviously differs from how people see Japan today (peaceful and not a violent society at all etc.). It even wasn't too long ago when the western world and places we find familiar would have been extremely uncivilized by our standards (eg. like the North American settler frontier or Old Europe of centuries back), but these are critiques of the system or the society as it was, not the innate attributes of the races of people who inhabited them (though used today as a statement, "X people are incapable of building a good society under the current conditions", is sometimes ambiguously vague as to if it's implying innate badness or cultural badness and thus can be taken for racism).
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Originally Posted by kwoldtimer
Trump has been advocating a system along the lines of Canada's, but the opposition considers it racist.  |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
A transition to a Canadian-style points system might disproportionately penalize the groups that have traditionally and still do comprise a huge share of newcomers that come to the U.S. from certain specific regions.
I guess that's their point.
My view is that if your immigration policy is going to be colour-blind or nationality-blind, it has to be like that "both ways".
In that in terms of colour, origin, religion, etc. if we're not gonna say "we don't take these types of people", then we shouldn't alternatively be saying "we absolutely need to take these types of people" either.
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Well, a Canadian style points system would probably reduce Latin American immigration but if you think about it, would also increase diversity by raising the share of Africans and Asians. If you gave especially the language requirement much weight (in Canada Francophone and Anglophone points favor African countries who speak those colonial languages, not necessarily Europeans), you would actually probably get lots of educated Africans like English speaking Nigerians (alongside Asians of course like English speaking Indians since Asia is huge).
But that would actually increase the diversity by raising the percentage of Black Americans alongside Asian Americans, even if it also gets educated Europeans, and a drop in Latin American immigration from direct cross-border movement.
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Originally Posted by PBruge
Yet the group who should be the most vehemently anti-immigrant of all - Aboriginals - are not.
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Are there stats or opinion polls on anti vs. pro-immigrant support by demographic -- eg. Aboriginals, white or visible minority, or views by generation (eg. first gen-immigrants, versus children of immigrants vs. multigenerational non-Aboriginal Canadians vs. Aboriginals). I'd be curious how it would look.
On the one hand, I could see some argue that the farther back one's own immigration experience is, the less one relates to newcomers or sees them as competition. On the other hand there's also the phenomenon of new Canadians disliking newer Canadians even if one didn't immigrate that long ago in time from the other in a "close the door behind you" mentality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
I have a few things to say on this.
First of all, in the western world, progressive policies have been the mainstream since the end of WW2. Yes there have been setbacks but overall progressivism has carried the day more often than not. It's a three steps forward one step back scenario. This is even true in the United States BTW.
The postwar era is actually a very short timeframe to assess the impacts (positive or negative) of these progressive policies. To a large degree we're simply living with them for better or for worse. Without really thinking of their good or bad sides. Like a fish not knowing that water is wet.
So none of us alive today is likely to be able to judge whether we had it right or if we got it all wrong. This will be done after we are all dead.
Another thing is that because progressivism has generally had the upper hand in our societies, stuff gets labelled as progressive even though it's not 100% clear cut that it actually is. A good example of this is mass immigration which all progressives are called upon to support unequivocally but which actually favours big corporate interests more than anything by providing them with less expensive labour and increasing the domestic consumer base for their products much more than the natural increase (births) would normally do. And the jury is still out on whether it hurts domestically-sourced labour.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Architype
This all seems reasonable, except, can you actually identify examples of progressive change that had definitive bad results?
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For cases where movements, and policies that were labelled "progessive" in the 20th century but in hindsight were disavowed, two that come to mind were prohibition and eugenics.
Both were considered "progressive" from the point of view of their proponents and even by many elements of the public (eg. prohibition of alcohol as a means to improve society and remove the problems alcoholism causes, and eugenics also was proposed to be progressive in ways its proponents sought to improve public health of the populace by selectively breeding healthy babies, but obviously then became associated with terrible things like forced sterilization and racism/ethnic cleansing).
In neither case do either of these things evoke a "progressive" label today though.
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