A Response to Roaming Millennial's "People of Color: You Are Not Oppressed"

hello everyone today I'd like to take a look at a video from a youtuber by the name of roaming millennial entitled people of color you are not oppressed and wouldn't that be nice that's right new subscribers from the cop had video I usually talk about politics and history and all that boring stuff I feel the need to apologize here okay so for everyone else who was still with us who is Roman millennial well she's one of the youtubers in the I'm not a racist but vain you know so she's not a racist okay acknowledged she's not a racist but she's got a few questions you know so I'm gonna do my good deed for the day here and provide the answers to those questions just one youtuber helping another youtuber out so what is roaming Millennials video about well I would encourage you to watch the whole thing and I'll put a link in the description yeah but I'll show a couple of short clips here just to get us started off so in this video in the hopes of healing this headache of imaginary oppression that is going around the social justice sphere we're gonna be talking all about oppression what it means to be a press and how in the United States and then the rest of the Western world no people of color you are not oppressed so to start let's go over the definition of oppression and yes I know this is super super basic but after hearing those students protest I really do feel that cracking and dictionary open is necessary so the definition of oppression is really quite simply prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control now with this definition I think it is perfectly clear to say that in the past people of color and more specifically african-american people were oppressed by societies in the United States and the West in general I'm not gonna argue against that however the issue here is that these Evergreen students and so many social justice warriors out there are not just arguing for the idea of past oppression but for current and ongoing oppression and really that is just a completely inaccurate analysis of the world that we live in obviously in the United States there are no legal rights that a white person possesses that a non-white person does not and there are no laws on the books that reference an individual's race in any way right I mean our legal system our entire system of government is not one that is racially coded okay so he is the main thrust of roaming millennial arguments oppression may have happened in the past and that's good she concedes that much at least but today we have legal equality so that means suppression is not happening at all now the first mistake she's made here is a rather basic one and it's one you see a lot online roaming millennial is only considering the legality she showed the dictionary definition of oppression prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control at what appears to have misread its legal rights are not mentioned here oppression can still happen even with an illegal system that is on paper completely equal and just because the system isn't perfect of course it's made up of individuals or with their own beliefs and biases and the some of those beliefs and biases can add up to a system that appears fair on the surface but delivers unfair results but will loop back around to this in a second for now let's watch the next part of roaming Millennials argument where she attempts to address these unfair results and while in my opinion equal standing in the eyes of the law and equal standing before government is a pretty clear indication that oppression is not happening some critics might say no what are you talking about there's no equal standing there are huge racial disparities when it comes to the legal system especially the criminal justice system just look at how much more likely black people are to be incarcerated than Hispanic or white people I mean obviously that's the result of oppression okay so to answer the question of oppression in relation to the criminal justice system which comes up a lot we first need to return to our definition of oppression to repeat once more oppression is prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control so what this definition means for our discussion here is that black people being more likely to be incarcerated is not evidence in and of itself to prove that they are oppressed oppression refer specifically to unjust treatment or unjust punishment so for oppression to be happening black people would need to be incarcerated unjustly at a higher rate than other races right because it wouldn't be oppression if these people were being justly arrested and prosecuted for crimes that they actually did commit so while many social justice activists try to paint the large black prison populations in the US as evidence of oppression the fact is that black people are more likely to commit crimes than other races so with this being the case it is not unjust and therefore not oppressive for the racial makeup of prison populations to be representative of the racial makeup of people who commit crimes the question here isn't are there proportionately more black people in prison than white people because obviously that's the case the question is why is it because prejudice causes more black people than white people to be convicted of crimes that they did not commit or is it because on average a black person is more likely to commit a crime than a white person and therefore more likely to go to jail for what they've done statistics would indicate the latter statistics would indicate the latter apparently well we'll see now then roaming Mulaney will make several errors in this section some are errors of mathematics some errors of omission and a couple of contradictions of logic there too I don't know where to start really to be honest but how about we start with this statement of roaming Millennials for oppression to be happening black people would need to be incarcerated unjustly you see her point here is that black people are more likely to commit crimes than other races so it makes sense for them to be a larger percentage of the prison population err so first of all here what she does not examine possibly on purpose is whether or not these percentages match up because that's important and I'll give you two scenarios here so scenario one let's say one group of people are ten percent more likely to commit crimes than other groups of people and also make up 10% extra of the prison population now that's what you'd expect in a fair system at least without factoring wider society into our little example here anyway now scenario two one race of people are ten percent more likely to commit crimes than other races will make up 30% extra of the prison population now that's unfair and unjust treatment even accounting for that hypothetical groups higher relative criminality do you understand so returning to reality which of our little scenarios they're more accurately reflects the criminal justice system in the United States well one way to answer this question is to look not now certain groups are treated within the system but how individuals belonging to those groups are treated so let's do that and here's a study from 2013 from the Yale Law Journal entitled mandatory sentencing and racial disparity assessing the role of prosecutors and the effects of Booker and I'd like to read you a few lines from that conclusion we agree that the high rate of incarceration of black men is a serious social problem and that examining the possible contribution of disparities in the criminal justice system is important our research suggests that in the federal system disparities in the post arrest justice process contributes to this problem after controlling for the arrest offense criminal history and other prior characteristics sentences for black male orestes diverged substantially from those of white male orestes by about 10% on average while this disparity does not seem to be growing it is persistent so did you like that study because here's another this is a United States Sentencing Commission report entitled report on continuing impact of United States v Booker on federal sentencing and what did that find the commission's updated multivariate regression analysis showed among other outcomes that black male offenders have continued to receive longer sentences and similarly situated white male offenders and how much longer were their sentences this is from later in the report for example sentence length for black male offenders exceeded sentence length for white male offenders by 19.5% and I should note here that I found both of these reports in an article responding to roaming millennial on Paseos com which I will link in the description so that's fairly clear-cut there I think on an individual level controlling for all the factors except race black men still get longer sentences than white men and because they get longer sentences than white men they will on average be in prison for longer and therefore at least some part of their over-representation in the prison system is accounted for by this unfair sentencing any argument for this to be fair that mentions black people's increased relative likelihood of being criminals with hafted therefore argue that individual black people deserve longer individual sentences relative to other races and this is without considering that the very metric we're using to declare black people's increased relative criminality is frequency of occurrence in the criminal justice system which we've just proven is biased against them and it's not just on the prosecution and that black people get screwed over one fact I like to bring up here is that black people are several times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession even though black people and white people smoke weed at similar rates it's all well and good to have a fair and just system on paper but that doesn't mean the system necessarily delivers fair and just results for oppression to be happening black people would need to be incarcerated unjustly said roaming Millenial and she's correct they are so therefore it is if you follow so to move on here roaming millennial there mentions the black crime rate as justification for a relatively high incarceration rate compared with other races and I'd like to ask a question here what would throwing millennial argue is the cause of that higher crime rate and there's only two answers really there's the genetic slash racist argument you know black people are inherently by birth more likely to be criminals and there's the societal argument you know the disparity is explained by a combination of cultural and socio-economic factors alongside the aforementioned bias in the justice system and that's a little aside here one annoying thing you tend to see online is someone who secretly favors the genetic argument but fears saying it out loud so they just dismissed the societal factors one by one as being irrelevant without ever actually committing to the genetic argument and that can be a little exome anyway which argument does roaming millennial put forward and I'll read a couple of Twitter conversations here roaming millennial says minority communities on average have more crime than mixed or majority white communities that leads to increased cop encounters and a twitter user called flying volvo sees really makes you think about what causes it doesn't it almost like there's some underlying causes of crime in africa American communities to which roaming millennial response poverty and culture so it appears here that roaming millennial favors the socio-economic argument you know poverty is linked with crime after all and increased poverty in predominantly african-american areas would explain the disparity in the crime statistics however with regards to our oppression argument here we necessarily have to consider the causes of that poverty because it's entirely possible that the poverty argument is simply the genetic argument again but one step removed from what will get your band off Twitter if the poverties causes are unexamined an audience might assume that black people are genetically more likely to be in poverty due to possessing some inherent poverty related characteristics and therefore by proxy more likely to be criminals now we know that roaming millennial is previously stated that oppression existed in the past so the question here is could that past oppression have contributed to creating the current poverty so I guess we have to ask how far in the past is roaming millennial talking when she says oppression existed and returning to Twitter again a Twitter user called hip-hop is knowledge said my parents weren't even allowed to drink from water fountains in public you don't [ __ ] a twitch roaming millennial response no one's denying institutionalized racism / oppression existed in the past literally no one but that's not indicative of current policies now this exchange indicates that roaming millennial considers the Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in the United States to be examples of institutionalized racism and oppression very good and with her on that now these laws were in place until the mid 1960s so from the Declaration of Independence up until roughly fifty years ago according to Roman millennial there was institutionalized racism and oppression in the United States so accepting that it would be very bizarre indeed to then go on to claim that's such a long period of racism and oppression would have zero effects whatever on current society you know if you enslave a given race of people and prevent education and break families and confiscate all their belongings and deny them the vote and then subject them to a post slavery period where for generations they're forbidden by law from attending the best schools and all the other rights afforded the majority all these things have lasting effects black people in poverty in the United States are in a poverty that was in part created by this history of oppression and that's unfair and unjust isn't it and as a brief side note about culture here which roaming millennial sites as another reason for the crime rate disparity one particular culture is only one side of the coin we also have to consider how that culture is perceived on the outside now an individual black person might be subject to discrimination based on that perception and any one average individual has a minimal effect on that culture as a whole people can't always choose how they're perceived you know you can criticize a culture as a whole but you can't hand-wave away longer prison sentences for individual black people because of it that's unfair and unjust let's take a look at another argument of roaming Millennials now the asian-american arguments and something that I'd like to mention which really debunks the idea that non-white people in the u.s. are oppressed is the fact that there are non-white groups out there who on average do better than their white counterparts in terms of education and finances and yes felony charges - so then people of color can't be oppressed because Asian Americans on average are better educated and have a higher average income than white Americans now does this therefore prove that oppression is now a thing of the past and has no bearing at all on modern society well I would argue quite the opposite in fact a larger percentage of asian-americans being educated and having a higher average income stems directly from discrimination against Asian people and stick with me now it's kind of a counterintuitive oneness I understand you know how can discrimination against the group lead to them being on average better off down the line and another question here before I answer that one am in the graph of average household incomes that roaming millennial showed why doesn't the Asian data go back as far as the others and these answers are linked as you'll see so I'm gonna throw a few data points your way now and we'll see if we can later draw some conclusions from them so first of all in 1960 the Asian population of the United States was less than 1 million they comprised around 1/2 of 1% of the population and this is compared to there being over 18 million black people in 1960 to give you a sense of the scaler today there are around 20 million Asian Americans so why were the so few relatively in 1960 and why are there comparatively so many more today point number 2 in 1882 the United States Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibiting Chinese immigration into the United States are making the Chinese migrants presence in the United States at the time permanent aliens by excluding them from the possibility of US citizenship a point number three the Immigration Act of 1917 also known as the Asiatic barred Zone Act barred immigration from large parts of Asia completely point number four the Immigration Act of 1924 including the Asian exclusion act but not to be confused with the Chinese Exclusion Act imposed strict quotas on how many people of a particular nationality could be resident in the United States at the time and barred completely everyone who was ineligible to become a United States citizen fifth and finally here at the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 which removed the racial and national barriers that were previously in place which restricted immigration from Asia so then why in 1960 whether a relatively small number of Asian people in the United States and that's because immigration from Asia was massively restricted by a series of discriminatory laws and then after those restrictions were lifted immigration from Asia skyrocketed relatively anyway now the vast majority of Asian American population growth in recent decades has been due to immigration so then we need to ask who can move to a different country and primarily of importance here is people who can afford to move to a different country and this is particularly true of a country very far away with which you do not share a land border you know the average Chinese laborer cannot say oh I'm not feeling this really I think I'll just move to America and buy a house and go to college you know you see my point here the United States is not seeing an accurate representative economic cross-section of people from those Asian countries that immigrants are arriving from the immigrants of those that can afford to move and afford to pay for college and this is reflected in the average income statistics the disparity in average incomes present in the United States today is rooted in the history of these discriminatory laws for a comparative example imagine transplanting all the african-americans in the United States outsider and then only allowing back in those that had the resources to make the move and if you did that the average household income for african-americans in the United States would increase dramatically not because they're actually any richer remember but simply because you'd be excluding all the poor people I mean poverty obviously still exists in Asia doesn't it anyway let's wrap up here I feel like I've pitched enough answers to roaming millennial there for her to think about for one day now this is a video I would actually like to see a response to i want to know what roaming millennial or hair fans think about what I've said and how they would answer me you know I anticipate getting a fair amount of insults here obviously it but I want to see arguments you know if you think I'm wrong try and prove me wrong if you think the studies I referenced came to incorrect conclusions prove it you know the balls in your court I'm eager for responses here since I feel like the right are just chasing their tails on this issue and I want to try and move the conversation on thanks a lot for watching everyone do you have a particular video or topic you'd like me to take a look at you can send me it over on curious cat and I'll take a peek I have enough projects to last for months here but occasionally something will jump the queue if I think it's a particularly good fit for a video thanks as always to my supporters over on patreon who are not scrolling by right now the credits finally got silly enough for me to drop them in the form they were in anyway Airport don't worry credits fans tune in next time for the return of the credits

Channel: Shaun

Views: 600,235

Rating: 4.7987375 out of 5

Keywords: roaming millennial, people of color, oppressed, shaun

Id: wayFC5560lw

Length: 20min 8sec (1208 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 30 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/PasteeyFan420LoL]

Oh wow another "the law doesn't say fuck niggers so it can't be racist" video. Imagine being so stupid that you actually think like that. It's akin to the people who say Nazism was actually national socialism so it's left wing not right wing.

[u/bonerang]

Oh great, another skeptic is here to push the bog standard GOP talking points about racial prejudice.

Thanks Roaming Millennial!

[u/ComradeZooey]

Basically her argument is that "The law in it's magnanimous equality forbids all men, rich or poor, from sleeping under bridges. Therefor the poor are not treated unequally."

I mean, just the fact that the drug war disproportionately targets African-Americans is enough to show that there is systemic inequality, regardless of the word of the law.

[u/Kaepernick12]

Roaming Millennial is a self-hating half-asian american woman who seeks constant acceptance from alt-right white nationalists.

[u/ctrl_alt_ARGH]

"I am eager for a response from a vacuous alt-righter who landed on a winning formula to make a lot of money: be cute and re-package reactionary talking points to spoon feed them to a gaggle of incels on youtube"

[u/CountPikmin]

What percentage of Roaming's viewers will actually watch this and not completely shut down in the face of evidence, I wonder?

Even if it doesn't achieve the coveted goal of changing minds, at least it gives very coherent/logical, and not feels based arguments.

[u/DegenerateWaves]

Thank god the white women are here to tell minorities about their place in society. Just once I'd like to see these skeptics talk to Ana Duvernay or Kendrick about oppression.

[u/guatemalianrhino]

Oh vey, another

[u/Reinhart3]

People like me are supposed to listen to people like you, chatter on about this... oppression. It doesn't exist.

If you think oppression exists in America you're living in a fantasy land.