My employer recently required me to take a training course on privilege, allyship, implicit bias and intersectionality. It was something like 2 hours total spread over 4 trainings.
I found it hard to directly criticize anything they said as the majority of it was common sense and anything objectionable wasn't so egregiously objectionable to warrant any real complaint from me (not that they gave me the option, feedback in the series was suspiciously absent).
The main problem with it as mentioned in the article is the incessant fixation on victimhood. I feel that our culture's relationship to victimhood is no better than the ancients but just in the opposite extreme. Before there were precious few 'celebrated' victims (victims lifted up and supported by society) - they mostly lived and died in obscurity perhaps not even knowing the nature of their victimhood.
Now we want to explore each person's past and expose anything that could possibly be construed as oppression/victimhood and expose it to the world. We end up with the other type of error: people presented as victims who aren't (relative to our perception, of course victimhood is on a spectrum).
No one wants a society full of victims, but we equally can't have a society organized via victim hierarchy (intersectionality).
I've been to one of such trainings that demonstrated what we would call "a struggle session" (using the Mao's terminology). Basically, a few professional "victims" told sorrow stories and explained how they could improve their behavior in the future. The stories were bs and the "victims" were millionaires, but what impressed me was the sad and twisted expressions on their faces. The face expressions were genuine. While watching the show, I was thinking that they looked like "inversed saints": instead of teaching compassion and how attachment to emotions and material things causes misery, they teach to fixate on low-type emotions and minor physical traits and while doing so they demonstrate the mysereble psychological state they've inflicted on themselves.
> I've been to one of such trainings that demonstrated what we would call "a struggle session" (using the Mao's terminology).
Did you have to take part in this in any way or just observe?
I've had to take training sessions that left me feeling ...hateful, to be honest.
In the Chinese-Maoist sense, a struggle session is where you are essentially forced to take part in some ritual denunciations of self or of your friends/family with the threat of violence or violence applied or looming in the background.
In the American version of this today the threat of violence isn't there but firing and shaming by coworkers/friends; And therein career/social death.
Your session doesn't sound like a struggle session per se (unless you had to take part), it sounds like a "training" where the professional victims shared their stories. But yes, it's a growing industry and they're paid handsomely to embellish their stories.
> I've had to take training sessions that left me feeling ...hateful, to be honest.
And that, right there, is how the history books end up filled with horrors like the gassing of Jews. Couldn't happen again? Well, that's the mechanism as to how such things occur. Probably not Jews next time, but some Other; like white men.
I heard an anecdote from a monk once. He knew someone into activism, trying to save something-or-other, I don't remember what. Then, one day, the monk opened a book, and to his utter astonishment there was a picture of the guy. He was in charge of executions.
Great atrocities are perpetrated in the name of righteous anger.
To quote Nietzsche: if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back.
One of the problems is in the framing you gave. Intersectionality is supposed to be a framework of understanding power amongst different groups but often gets applied to an individual basis which is ironically a very much against a sociological way of thinking. One of the prominent ideas in the now controversial (for silly reasons) critical race theory is to emphasize not individual actions or traits but to recognize systems and reckon with those hopefully through policy.
The individualization of racism for example feels like a failure both in how it offends people and also how it leads to policy prescriptions that don't really solve the underlying power relations.
> Intersectionality is supposed to be a framework of understanding power amongst different groups but often gets applied to an individual basis
Intersectionality is about the experience of privilege/disadvantage/discrimination differing, on a way that is not a simple linear combination of effects, by combinations (“intersections”) of group memberships. While it applies to groups, there's no magical lower bound on size for its applicability, and when you consider more axes of differentiation, the size of the groups represented by distinct intersections approaches one.
What I'll say is if your goal is to change society's power relations to make society more egalitarian, then dealing with individuals only is expressly impotent to bring about change because atomized individuals, disconnected from each other, cannot bring about change.
>Intersectionality is supposed to be a framework of understanding power amongst different groups but often gets applied to an individual basis which is ironically a very much against a sociological way of thinking.
Marx subscribed to this way of seeing individuals as mouthpieces for the collective. So did people like Marcuse. You know, one of the influential thinkers from "Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School of Marxism". Name sound familiar? You are giving these people more credit then they deserve.
CRT as it's applied is very much a performative extension of how people are reading Frankfurt thinkers. Your reading is out of sync with the orthodoxy not mine.
One solution to this dilemma is to refuse to consider oneself to be a victim, while simultaneously completely ignoring whether other people make the same refusal.
"Our Culture"? Your posting on an internationally available forum, available to many different cultures, countries, and even different cultures within countries. I have no idea what "your" culture is? If you're going to talk about "our culture", please have a bit more specificity.
Out of curiosity: did they actually prefixed 'privilege' with 'white' during the training just like online activists do? Because this one of these imposing Americanisms which has no relation to reality whatsoever in some other parts of the world, like in Russia, for example.
> The main problem with it as mentioned in the article is the incessant fixation on victimhood. I feel that our culture's relationship to victimhood is no better than the ancients but just in the opposite extreme. Before there were precious few 'celebrated' victims (victims lifted up and supported by society) - they mostly lived and died in obscurity perhaps not even knowing the nature of their victimhood.
One of the problems with the discourse right now is that white liberals amplify those who wallow the most in their own victim hood. The vast majority of Hispanics and Asians, for example (70-80% according to a study linked in this article) say they “never” or “rarely” experience discrimination.
But all the XYZ studies professors and activists marinate in feeling discriminated against. You can’t get tenure in an American university saying “yeah racism sucks but it’s actually quite rare.”
It's weird, the way you wrote this. The vast majority of Hispanics and Asians say they rarely experience discrimination. Yes... go on...
For what it's worth, Pew says that roughly half of Latinos have reported experiences of discrimination. But that's not the point. The most polarizing political slogan of the last several years wasn't "Latino lives matter". In the airless vacuum of a message board, I guess it makes a sort of sense to appeal to the experience of Asians and Latinos as summative of the experience of non-white people in general. But obviously, that's not how the world actually works.
> For all racial and ethnic groups represented in the data, the majority reported experiencing either none or infrequent discrimination.
The majority of non-white people are Latinos and Asians. The discourse has recently pitted whites versus non-whites.
Over the last few years, I’ve seen media outlets and academic institutions amplify the most aggrieved (and frankly weird) Asians as part of the general “people of color” discourse. Hence my comment above.
You must not be a DC Comics fan? It's often useful to the plot for the protagonist to be separated completely from normal concerns (and support systems). In our crowded modern world, the hero's journey can't really be into the wild. Of course we'd all like less hackneyed plots, but it's not a perfect world...
Um, what? Victimhood has become THE status symbol of the left. If you aren't a victim you're an abuser, so anyone looking for status reaches for whatever victimhood they can get.
Victimhood is also a potent weapon - if anyone disagrees with you, you can claim they are oppressing you, denying your victimhood, gaslighting you, and so on.
Victimhood is the ultimate passive aggressive weapon in a culture that has seemingly forgotten that everyone lies.
I’d say the left was pretty damn vocal about cancel culture between the mid-60s to the mid-aughts. Of course it wasn’t called “cancel culture” but it was very much the same thing, without a social media component.
You obviously misunderstood what I said. The left wasn’t doing the canceling, the “moral” and religious right was…and the left was vocal and griping about being the ones canceled.
When I started my career in the ‘80s, I worked at a large metro daily newspaper. There were certainly gays and lesbians who worked there (probably a hundred or more), but you wouldn’t know it because not a single person that I recall out of nearly a thousand people was “out”. Why do you suppose that was? It was because people were afraid of ostracism and losing their jobs and livelihoods. If that wasn’t the equivalent of being cancelled…tell me what the hell was it?
Also, fast forward 40 years—do you think you could find a news organization in the US today with no one out? Attitudes have changed and they have changed because the left was vocal and had political power enough to change culture.
Perhaps you don’t believe that, or you wish it happened faster. But don’t denigrate the progress that liberals made over the last 50 years, while it may be slow progress it’s progress that will stick.
The new host of Jeopardy was cancelled just today over nothing.
A few weeks ago, the brilliant young lady Alexi Mcammond was cancelled as the new editor of Teen Vogue due to some arbitrary Tweets she made while she was 16 years old (She's now 27). Career ruined, age 16.
A few months ago we saw Harry and Meghan make unspecific claims of behaviour that caused her to have 'suicidal thoughts' (while living possibly the most privileged life imaginable) - while at the same time her own staff and entourage had accused her of bullying, and a lot of information coming out didn't maker her look very good.
The next day, a popular television presenter in the UK essentially disputed some of her claims in slightly terse, but nevertheless polite terms.
The presenter lost is job immediately - which should be very distressing.
If a person claims victimhood - the emotionality of the situation creates a hyper sensitivity such that their story must be in and of itself treated as absolute moral authority.
Tears = Truth.
Merely to disagree publicly with someone's claim is now 'cancel worthy' in polite culture, that's how far we've come.
This is weaponized by individuals, and amplified by some sectors of the press for various reasons, some ideological, some commercial, and then of course the 'reaction' of the 'other side' is weaponized as well ... ad nauseaum.
I feel sorry for Lizzo, the American entertainer, because almost everything ever written about her concerns highly defensive and aggressive posturing by generally leftist press, declaring her victimhood.
I'm not cherry-picking here - this is the most recent article about here in The Guardian (i.e. left wing press) [1]
" They made her into a global star – but also opened her up to extreme and often conflicting attacks beyond anything that Eilish or Lorde might experience owing to being a visible, confident, Black, fat woman: subject to racism as well as arguments that she panders to a white gaze; fat-shamed but also criticised for sharing her experiences of a juice cleanse."
It's always about her victimhood and never about her music. It's predictably comedic, a little sad.
Why does this happen?
I think that some people believe there's too much at stake in the grander scheme i.e. 'racism and police aggression do exist' - ergo - 'this story must presented as evidence of this fact irrespective of the actual nuances and facts'.
In an age where everything is politicized in an ugly way (i.e. climate change, vaccines), I believe that the emotionality of gender and racial issues elevates such things to the level of 'national urgency' and we end up in useless wars over it.
Nobody is arguing over Epstein and Weinstein ... that's not the issue.
But the issue is the perpetual fodder of these issues creeping into our media, culture and institutions without objective thought, dispassion etc. with which they should be approached.
I always believe that 80% of people are quite willing to hear issues of legitimate grievance and 'things they can do to help' but that this goodwill is ruined pretty quickly by irresponsible claims and heavy-handed activism.
I’m not trying to write an essay tonight but I don’t think they’re wrong about there being a victim/abuser dichotomy. Have you been in lefty spaces? Room is always made for the most oppressed to speak. Which isn’t a bad approach but it does make victimhood a status thing.
Sure, but you often hear it being talked about in terms of a victimhood hierarchy or “oppression Olympics” which is a mischaracterisation that is used to stake out a position against listening to people who are being marginalised.
In my experience, it’s an effort made to listen to people whose needs aren’t being met, because whatever policy or design is being discussed either forgot them entirely or designed something inappropriately. Easiest non-political example I can think of is an office bike locker where I worked which had hanging bike racks — as people started using e-bikes, that worked out badly, because e-bikes are heavy and the people using them didn’t all have the strength to hoist them. They weren’t the majority of cyclists, but they were causing the majority the problems of bikes being left in awkward or unsafe places. Turns out some regular cyclists struggled to lift their bikes too, so we installed floor racks (and power outlets) - clutter solved and back injuries hopefully avoided.
That effort to listen is definitely misused by some people who (in my respectful opinion) thrive on attention, but I think you’d find lefties talking about the project in terms of equality and inclusion.
It is wrong to entirely discount a tale of woe, just as it is to entirely credit it. The right dismisses and demeans, and the left is credulous and unquestioningly supports. Both are wrong, and there's a wide swath of reaction possible between these two extremes, which is where I try to be.
And in addition, both the left and right extremists like to misrepresent the other, and demean them, which is also wrong. The problem here is that someone in the middle, like me, is happily pigeon-holed as an extremist by either side, as you do in your comment. I did not, and have never, demeaned the leftist error as "oppression Olympics" because this throws the baby out with the bathwater. Racist policy has momentum and it's foolish to deny it. What I stand firmly against is the credulity with which every allegation of misconduct is accepted from anyone that has certain characteristics. Privilege is real, but that doesn't imply that everything the underprivileged say is true, or that they would never be tempted to use the power of allegation to achieve personal ends.
> Victimhood has become THE status symbol of the left.
This is a ridiculously broad statement. It is not an argument in good faith. It does not contribute beneficially to the discussion. GP needs to do better.
There's nothing wrong with fixation on victimhood that actually exists: one person wronging another begets an oppressor and a victim. However, a fixation on victimhood to the extreme can lead to error with negative consequences.
For example, many forms of microaggressions mentioned in the article do not (in my opinion) lead to victimhood. To say otherwise runs the risk of making victims that don't exist. Being offended for example does not _necessarily_ make you into a victim.
It's pretty harmful psychologically to see yourself as a victim, no matter how much you really are or not. There is something wrong with fixation on it, it's self-destructive. It also destroys relationships because the victim sees their partner as an oppressor and finds a way to blame them for everything they don't like.
As far as I know, it is part of a long-term D&I initiative which has much more aspects to it. For example, your review weights your D&I performance as important as your technical performance.
To me, this screams that you are in an organization where technical performance is not critical to the success of the organization.
I mean, look, I don't want to return to the days where if you were technically good, you could be a sexist jerk or a racist jerk or just generally a jerk. I don't want to work in that kind of an organization. But... equal weighting? Your organization isn't fighting for its life on technical merit, I suspect...
So what? I would argue that most companies don't live and die on their technical merit. I don't think that Toyota cares if they're using the latest JS framework or if their devs are 10% slower than the SV ideal. I for one struggle to think of a single company that is where it is only because of it's technical superiority, and not because they also knew how to sell that technology, how to talk about it, how to relate with people who should use it.
The person working on the engine should be the best qualified person to do so. And similarly for the other technical areas.
Nobody said anything disparaging about the need for sales, communication, or relationships. Only that in those respective fields you would also probably want the person who is most qualified, no?
>> Yet, white college students and graduates were significantly more likely than the average black or Hispanic respondent to brand these statements as “offensive.” This effect was especially pronounced among white highly-educated respondents who identified with the left.
This is what is called Cancel Culture. It is really not OK to be offended on behalf of someone else. When people do this, they are infantilizing (is that a word?) the supposedly offended and some of them don't like that behavior.
But go ahead and change your git repository to "main" instead of "master" just in case someone thinks it's some kind of slavery reference (everyone will update all their documentation and tutorials right?). Next we can work on your cars brakes (master cylinder), anything that involved master templates, certain golf tournaments, and what on earth are we going to do with all those masters degrees?
First, someone can be offended but not targeted. My dad's racist rants offend me, that's not cancel culture. And it's not on behalf of the group he's ranting about, it's because he's a savage. I'm offended by his lack of effort, empathy, and curious conversation.
Second, surely you can appreciate the difference between master in a master-slave configuration and master as in, good at something. A masters degree doesn't imply a slave degree.
>> There is some nuance here you're glossing over.
No, I'm not the one glossing over anything. git repositories don't have "slave" branches, just a "master' as in template or origin. It's other people who think every code repository needs to be renamed because they don't understand the difference. Or worse, since like the article indicates it's mostly highly "educated" white people that want this, they are implicitly saying other people don't understand the nuance (I wouldn't even use that word, since the situation is so far removed from slavery).
> This is what is called Cancel Culture. It is really not OK to be offended on behalf of someone else. When people do this, they are infantilizing (is that a word?) the supposedly offended and some of them don't like that behavior.
The Cancel Culture term is one that is thrown around as if it is only something that leftists do. And with respect to projecting offense to perceived racism, the left certainly has that market covered. But what about projecting offense to veterans when someone takes a knee to the national anthem?
The rush to define Cancel Culture is just as politically motivated and politically applied as the rush to define racism.
> We absolutely cannot agree on that, speak for yourself only please.
Sure, offensiveness is subjective, it is true that there is no "offensive" term that everyone would find problematic. It is up to individuals and institutions to determine what they find acceptable or not on a case by case basis.
A question for you: Is there any term in common use that you would find offensive and want changed? Is there any acceptable standard method by which that change could occur?
>> Masters degree is fine
> Why?
In my opinion mastery of a subject is not related to being a slave master. However, in the previous example, we are talking about subject that has horrific connotations.
> Is there any term in common use that you would find offensive and want changed? Is there any acceptable standard method by which that change could occur?
Yes, no and no. There are plenty of terms that I find distasteful and would not use personally, but I do respect everybodies right to talk as they wish and will not force my opinion on people over such subjective matters. Change will occur when people decide they want to talk some other way, trying to force them will make them annoyed and irritated.
> However, in the previous example, we are talking about subject that has horrific connotations.
And trying to change that language will not make the situation of actual slaves any better. The master slave relationship of the master branch to its slave branches is an objectively correct description of the state of affairs, in addition to it being widely recognized technical jargon. There's nothing to be gained except satisfying the lust for power of people who seem to dedicate their lifes to being professional victims on twitter.
This is all that's being achieved here, really. Fighting actual enslavement happening right now would be way too uncomfortable I guess, better to harass people online to make some subjectively bad words go away.
The key phrase is identity politics - I hope internet discourse begins to move away from this framework, but as of now politics is entirely focused on the nouns - who, what, when. The immutable states of ones’ person. The answer is to move to a verb-based politics: what does this person do? What have they done? What do they say? What do they think? Are the dialectics good? Is the methodology sound? Does it make sense? Does it help? Does it hurt?
People will say “listen to black people” while simultaneously dehumanizing all black people into a monolithic and tokenized opinion-vessel. I personally know black people, gay people, trans people, disabled people, who are exhausted of being that vessel. Of being a walking textbook for other people to memorize. The truth is that black people, and all people of color, are diverse culturally, emotionally, and intellectually and in order to be a good ally you have to not only listen to All of them, as well as your own heart, and you must use your critical thinking skills to determine what you personally think is correct - and act on it. You must be active and competent, and you must not regurgitate. At the end of the day there will be black people who agree with you and black people who disagree with you, but you can hope your efforts at activism will help both groups regardless.
> as of now politics is entirely focused on the nouns - who, what, when. The immutable states of ones’ person. The answer is to move to a verb-based politics: what does this person do?
A sociology teacher I had at UMich said a lot of things I disagreed with but one idea that I'll never forget is that prior to the 20th Century, there were no homosexuals. Humans haven't changed- there were homosexual acts, which individuals may have practiced at varying levels according to the time and place in history. But it wasn't something that came to define one's identity until very recently in history.
> People will say “listen to black people” while simultaneously dehumanizing all black people into a monolithic and tokenized opinion-vessel. I personally know black people, gay people, trans people, disabled people, who are exhausted of being that vessel.
Well everyone loves their boxes, don't they?
It's so neat and easy to put everyone in one of those and finding the right box for someone just requires a glance at them or maybe some exchanged words. And suddenly all that persons problems and motivations are understood, and it is known wherever what they say should be praised or ignored.
Any simple solution regarding gender or race will be discriminatory, because one forget to treat people as human individuals.
There's no box to "tick", done, but you might try to get to know different kinds of people. Yes, they come in different kinds, even different personalities (did you think in colour again?).
Identity politics is a very convenient power framework. Dealing with a nation of billion intelligent individuals is an arduous task. Instead, they could be boxed into 5-6 groups, every group gets assigned viewpoints that its members must adhere to, and suddenly you only need to deal with 5-6 individuals. We call it abstraction and encapsulation in software. The only problem is enforcing the in-group behavior, but it turns out groups can do it themselves: the "crab mentality" makes people pull down anyone who tries to climb out of the box. This arrangement of 5-6 boxes with crabs is very stable, but whether one can downgrade a well established and intelligent society into this state is a big open question.
This is highly salient and should not be downvoted. People who have opinions outside the framework in the ostensible the majority of that group have formed their opinions, are often marginalized.
'Latino Republican' is a really common identity for example that 'breaks the mould' and it's not a voice you're going to hear from very often.
Haha, am I like literally the only black person here? I'm serious, I've been scrolling down and I don't see anyone else?
Anyway, to try to summarize it all; Nothing surprising about the article; the difficulty comes in where very well meaning people try to come up with concrete/discrete "solutions" to racism, which is difficult. My take on most of them is, yeah, a lot of them are awkward and clumsy, but a hell of a lot better than nothing? It's a conversation.
Anecdotally, I'm remembering a thing where at my alma mater they wanted to change the name of a title from "House Master" to "Faculty Dean." Fundamentally, like, who cares either way? It's really not important..but
For me, the most telling thing wasn't so much the name itself (which me and my friends had a ton of jokes over), but how much people appeared to be invested in keeping the old name, as if it were that special, i.e. -- as people tried to defend the old name and just had terrible arguments for doing so, it became clear that the cause was "something else," i.e. if the old name was "House Leader" or something, I'm 100% certain those same people would NOT have been fighting that hard.
1) They are secretly racists and the House Master was a racist term, so they liked it (this is what you seem to imply?)
2) Accepting the change would mean accepting that they were formerly acting in a racist way in using the term House Master (since they are implicitly accepting that 'master' is a racist term)
3) They felt that the House Master was a small but important part of their cultural heritage and continuity as members of / alumni of X University, and now that is now being taken away.
4) They want to draw a line on this kind of change (the give an inch and they'll take a mile theory), rather than be subjected to future demands to change X, Y, and Z also.
"Blue", "Not guilty" and e.g. "House Master" are ENTIRELY fundamentally different types of concepts and there's no reason to much compare them.
Different cultures call different things blue, and some don't even have blue. Frequently subjective.
"Guilty," as you are likely using it -- is emphatically not an objective description of an event that happened in the real world. It is a description of a judge or jury's best evaluation of such given certain evidence. Again, also subjective.
The principle that I think you're invoking is something like "prescriptive" (as opposed to descriptive) language, which tends to be useless at best and a dangerous tool that keeps powerful people powerful at worst.
So those are good points, but I think you're missing the meaning of the term 'Principled' possibly given distraction by the examples that I gave.
We can make populist, emotional, political, purely rational and technical appeals, but 'principled' is the approach that I believe should be taken.
It shouldn't even be remotely controversial to say that.
While 'Blue' is less subjective that 'Guilty' we have 'Principled' ways of assessing those things outside the context of hyperbole.
While 'guilty' has much more broad meaning that simply the notion of 'legal guilt' as you're implying, even within that context we can absolutely make objective determination (or try to) given legal parameters aka: Murder is illegal, we have a video of a man shooting someone and killing them, he's admitted to doing it ergo -> he is 'guilty' in a very objective sense.
A 'principled' approach would involve trying to assess if there's material objectivity to the degree something is offensive, weighing the gravity of the change, listening to those who are personally aggrieved and trying to determine why, contextualizing the information and making an assessment etc..
An 'unprincipled' approach would be making a decision that appealed so some kind of populist emotion, virtue signalling (in either direction), placating the powerful, ignoring facts, appeasing the loudest voices, doing what 'Twitter' is pressuring to do, caving to threats, applying oddball ideologies, over representing or poorly contextualizing information etc..
I'm reading your examples of what is principled and unprincipled and I don't find them very convincing; mostly owing to how easy it is to paint genuinely "principled" attempts as being "unprincipled," and perhaps vice-versa? I've seen A LOT of that before.
People also don't like change, especially when it seems nonsensical. In your specific case I could see some friction against the term "Dean" as it has a connotation that might but apply here.
When I was in University they changed the logo. There was a huge uproar. Mainly it didn't make much sense. If course, now, decades later I love it.
But just because people don't want to change doesn't always mean racism is involved.
Right -- but of course you're bringing up the HUGER issue of "what is racism?" - where the binary of "racist" or "not racist" is hugely deficient and frequently unhelpful.
The easiest way I can think to explain it: e.g. Any white person who openly calls me the n-word is very likely a harmless loser to me.
More likely to harm me and others; a more powerful person who's intelligent enough not to use it, but may wield language strategically, like perhaps while trying to get elected, denigrates the black opponent by saying "let's not monkey this up." That person might actually like black people, and was being strategic to get racists votes through the dog-whistle, since they have plausible deniability.
The second guy feels "less racist," right? BUT HE'S MUCH WORSE THAN THE FIRST GUY in my opinion.
> My take on most of them is, yeah, a lot of them are awkward and clumsy, but a hell of a lot better than nothing?
As the article points out, research shows that fear of racism hurts minorities. Insofar as these “solutions” cause minorities to perceive racism where there isn’t any, without effecting real change, that may be worse than nothing.
> It's a conversation
It’s usually not.
> but how much people appeared to be invested in keeping the old name, as if it were that special
People get antsy when flimsy reasoning is used to change things around them. The “master” as a label for school heads dates back at least to 15th century England, long before Britain participated in the slave trade. But that doesn’t matter and it makes people mad that it doesn’t matter.
I can't read minds, but it reminds me about when people lost their shit when Pluto was declassified as a planet. I try to remember to give people the benefit of the doubt, mainly for my benefit.
I feel that it's not so much about fighting the change itself, but disagreeing with the Why. Agreeing with the change would mean agreeing with those people's views. It means giving them the power of interpreting the world the way they want and allowing them to force that interpretation on others.
I’ve often heard the argument that we need to change all GitHub repos from master to main because master has etymological origins in the concept of slavery, and is therefore a racist term. But I’ve always heard this argument made by white people. I wonder what percentage of black people working in technology find the term so offensive that it should be changed in every context.
It's virtue signaling. That use of "master" is just tiny compared to all other uses in history. "Master record", "master of science", "master artisan". Should conductors no longer be called maestros? It's dumb, and should be ridiculed, if not called out for the deliberate harm of detracting from the real issue of institutionalised racism. If you feel something should be done, this isn't it, and we shouldn't get to feel better by renaming a git branch.
- statues of people who held what is today racist views
were actually a problem, why wouldn't they actually keep them around as examples.
I mean: we really want to remember Churchill, both because he lead Europe out of World War II but also because of the rest of what he did say and do; he is a very good example that people can do good things and still not be saints.
In the same way regarding master/slave setups it is good - I think - from time to time to be reminded about our past, and not only during black history month?
But of course, I'm neither leftist nor sociologist, I'm just someone who tries to make a difference.
At least until he was bullied enough on Twitter to take a more "maybe it was, maybe it wasnt- it was along time ago"-type of stance so folks would leave him alone about it.
Is there? Have the actual black people, with opinions representative of black population in general, suggested to eliminate master-slave metaphor from use, or are you just assuming it for them? The article is literally asking to stop doing this.
I've literally never seen/heard the phrase "virtue signaling" be used in a context that actually persuaded me to agree with the user of said phrase. It's just a magical shibboleth that is completely unprovable.
I find the same thing for 'dog whistle'. When people tell you who they are, believe them except I can read their minds and this is their actual intent.
> The Court of Master Sommeliers, which "sets the global standard of excellence for beverage service within the hospitality industry," will stop using the term "master sommelier."
We must purge those words from all of our vocabulary in all contexts, for they can only mean one thing.
Chess colors and the rules around them will probably change at some point. What's worse is that people will act like the prospect is utterly ridiculous while the idea is in its infancy. Then, after FIDE or some other Chess organization release a statement about planned changes, people's tune will change to "It's inconvenient but if it helps even one more Black person feel good about playing Chess then it was worth it".
I'm already starting to believe it. Do we really play a game with white and black pieces where white always goes first? Where black loses more games than white? Not everybody knows the history of Chess. To some new players, especially from less privileged groups, it may seem like just another example of leftover oppression. Even to those who know that the history of the colors predates white European enslavement of black Africans, it nonetheless serves as a painful reminder due to the meanings of those things in a modern context.
When "slavery" is mentioned in this context (wrt. black/white), it's reasonable to assume the person means it predates the Atlantic slave trade, which was not the only form of slavery, but it was the largest (and most visible) form of slavery involving predominantly white people owning predominantly brown people.
I make no claim over the validity of "white going first" predating the Atlantic slave trade, however. I simply don't know.
Because just like shaming the use of drinking straws, it’s a low effort (and in my view mostly inconsequential or even misguided) change that gives you a feeling of moral superiority.
Actual sacrifices are hard and uncomfortable. Who wants that?
> Can't we do both the hard and easy? Neither precludes the other. How are you helping by obstructing either?
Probably not? That would assume people have infinite time and energy, and unlimited political and social capital to urge other people and organizations to change, which I don't think is true
And it's not like white people have never been enslaved; every person in the world is a product of slavery. The fact that your great grandfather from the year 1000 AD was a slave could very well have meant you were born to a difficult upbringing now. The fact that it's difficult to trace back that far does not mean it was monumentally important for your circumstances today.
People choose a starting point of history that is convenient for their narrative.
I think changing master/slave terminology is justified, but to me master branch suggests something like master key or master prints. That which is the superior and definitive example of the collection from which it comes.
I am fine replacing Master/Slave terminology where it shows up. I just think Master alone is fine just like Masters degree, Master craftsman, Master/Apprentice, Master of ceremonies, hell Master brand hand tools.
Not to mention that the timing of GitHub embracing the name change made it an oftly convenient distraction from all of the bad press they were getting about their contract with the Customs and Border Patrol.
Who wouldn't hop on that positive PR bandwagon in their position? /s
But I’ve always heard this argument made by white people.
Are you actively seeking a diverse range of people to listen to? The majority of prominent people in tech are white men, so it's not particularly likely you'll hear non-white people's opinions unless you actually seek them out.
That is an important point. My mind too went in the direction of "this is just white people hiding their privilege in an offshore account." But then I realized that I hardly know any black people.
It's important to consider the complication that there are few black people in technology who you could ask. Inevitably, most people talking about Github are white.
One example of hearsay from someone somebody on a message board knows is not evidence, and it doesn't change my point: If people are talking about Github, they probably are white.
Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? You've done it a lot, and it's not what this site is for. This thread may not be great but your comments are standing out as more flamey than the rest. This is the opposite of how we want comments to go here.
what name did I call someone? I strive to specifically not use ad hominem-type insults when discussing things, and I don't see it here?
should I just stop posting any thoughts I have that run contrary to the general sphere of accepted thought here? should I take downvotes to mean "we don't want to hear what you have to say"? if I post something that others find disagreeable and reply to it saying as such, should I just abstain from responding?
The word "disgusting" at the end of the flamebait sentence in your GP comment counts as calling names in the sense that the HN guidelines use the term: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
You don't have to stop posting contrary thoughts, but you definitely have to stop posting flamebait. Teasing those two things apart isn't always easy, especially when the nervous system is running high with strong feelings (I'm not talking about you, but about all of us). Those sort of comments are not what HN is for, regardless of how conformist or contrarian they are. What we want is curious conversation. If you can comment from that place, then it's fine, and as a bonus, your comments will be more likely to engage curiosity in others. It all requires a much lighter touch.
I see, thank you. I believe I understand, finally (including retroactively for recent posts). the only thing I'm fuzzy on is where the line of "flamebait" is drawn. was this whole thread flamebait, or just my flagged post specifically?
if someone is advocating for changing language for everyone to protect the feelings of $MINORITY, without actually knowing any $MINORITY that objects to said language (or being one themselves), then disregards anecdotal instances of $MINORITY not objecting to said language, then the result is a belief that you know what changes to society should be made on behalf of $MINORITY, thus infantilizing them, portraying them as someone who can't speak up for themselves and portraying yourself as someone who knows better than $MINORITY what is best for $MINORITY.
What percentage would be enough for you to support the change?
BTW, the argument isn't as simple as "because master has etymological origins in the concept of slavery" because "master" has many varied meanings (see https://www.etymonline.com/word/master ), the slavery one was not the first, and at most only a tiny fringe want to change terms like "master's degree" or "master mariner" to something else.
Also, like every other human, you want to fit in. Not only is it a fundamental human instinct (think of the awful things people do in order to fit in), it's necessary for your day at work, your current job, and your career. You can be mediocre at your job and work for a long time. But we know what happens to troublemakers or whistle-blowers.
> Lastly, the bar for fixing past injustices isn't "is the term so offensive that it should be changed in every context". It's "Is the term offensive enough that it wouldn't be INTRODUCED today?".
Excellent idea, and I will use it.
> Yes, mistakes can happen: See the whole LatinX debaucle, which Latino/a people think is idiotic.
If true, it's mostly harmless to err on the side of being respectful. Erring on the side of discrimination does a lot of harm.
>the responsibility of white people to help fix past injustices
Not that I disagree with the overall sentiment of your post, but let's leave this "sins of the father" bullshit in church where it belongs, especially when the majority of those "fathers" didn't even take part in those injustices.
I think I know what you're getting at - these concepts evolved over time. Irish and Italians didn't used to be considered "white". They do now.
But the answer is statistics. Broadly speaking, in western society, "White people" are the ones that have privilege to be not discriminated against in the court system, with housing, with job applications, with police brutality, etc.
We are the ones that get treated as the "default". This is why "white-passing" is a term that exists.
> Justice is built on the principle of individual responsibility for a reason, collective punishments don't have a place in just society.
That's the whole point - we still do have collective punishments that need to be negated. Black people DO get disproportionately higher prison sentences for the same crimes. Black people DO experience disproportionately more police brutality for the same behaviour. etc.
> But I'll indulge the thought that white owe collectively some kind of reparations... So, what's the amount, and to whom do I pay to be free of the burden? Do I get a certificate after I pay? After wich percentage of payment from the whites can we start removing poc subsidies in job and education?
Since I didn't bring up actual financial reparations, let's leave that discussion for another day.
Fixing injustices and issues of privilege doesn't require those with privilege to pay anything. For those used to privilege equality can feel like oppression, but it doesn't have to.
The goal is to build society based on merit, not racial assumptions. When black people get beat by the police the same amount as white people, that's when we're done, for example.
Your white responsibility for example, is that when you hear about an instance of police brutality is not to have the first question you ask be "What did the victim do to deserve it?"
Master/journeyman/apprentice were the terms in the middle ages when your parents sold you to master as indentured labour for a 7 year term. I'm of the mind that that was a form of slavery.
Peter Grimes in the George Crabbe poem murders apprentices and get off Scot free until an eventual comeuppance.
To be fair, there was only one item on the list of microagressions that didn't have at least 1/5 of all african-americans classify it as something other than "not offensive" (not sure what the other options are).
If a black person is answering "Is this offensive to me" and the white person is answering "Is this offensive to some black people" the numbers make total sense.
One approach might be to argue that relatively well-off and highly-educated liberal whites — by virtue of their college education and higher rates of consumption of ‘woke’ content in the media, online, etc. — simply understand the reality and dynamics of racism better than the average black or Hispanic. I would strongly advise against anyone taking a stand on that hill.
I'd advise against that wording, which I think the author tailors to sound as preposterous and obnoxious as possible.
I always wanted to know where does this put me in the American race war:
- I come from Eastern Europe
- my ancestors were enslaved, bought and sold for hundreds of years as far as we know
- my family was raped, prosecuted and killed by NKVD, KGB and has been through gulag
- my family always struggled with poverty and only hard work and education of multiple generations got me where I am
- I’m white and didn’t see a person of color until I went abroad
- I emigrated to US 10 years ago
Company trainings are obviously a wrong place to ask this but: what is my place in the racism discourse? Why am I lumped with all the white people group and forced to “accept” white privilege? How do I get out of this madness without hurting myself?
"The power to define is the most important power that we have. He is master who can define." -Stokely Carmichael
So the question is crucial. It is lost within most debates and within most legal judgments, yet it is the foundation of argument. Muzzy definitions provoke disagreement without the participants' understanding.
Clear definitions are the bedrock of reasonable conclusions. The article doesn't specify the answer either. It appears to enter into a circular argument: that because "woke" leftist white people habitually get the nod, they do here too. There is something fundamentally wrong here but I cannot put my finger on it.
While the article makes some good points, I find the quoting in the article highly problematic and I expect much better from an academic.
There are multiple examples were the sources actually do not say what they are being quoted for, for example the citations about the harmfulness of the perception of race, or the argument on the non exist ant connection between implicit and actual racism (the cited sources say that the test hasn't lived up to scientific standards, which does not necessarily mean that implicit racism doesn't exist). They also compare numbers in different studies to each other which really doesn't work.
I do agree that we need to have a discussion about how we deal with racism and be careful to ever expand its definition, but we should be have this discussion evidence based and not try to resort to strategies of selective quoting.
This isn't actually about the content, but I will say I find this style of using external links really annoying to read. If you're going to sprinkle so many links through your article at least give me an idea of what they're about.
"Racism is not dead, but it is on life support — kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as 'racists.'"
Aside: (that's an excellent quote and logical point) - I read the Wikipedia article on the author of that essay, and got an extremely strong impression of being told how to feel about him, more so than being presented with facts about him.
That's a pretty strained comparison. Lenin was talking about the economic struggle for dominance between two mutually exclusive ideologies, of which only one could win. There was no implication of being branded with an epithet for political dominance.
I feel like the author dismisses the other explanation too easily. I might be wrong, but I don't really know if it's "educated whites" more than just "educated people" who yes, unfortunately skew white. If there is evidence educated POC also take this stand then I suppose I stand corrected. For example, a lot of "woke stuff" I hear or see from activists or sociology educated creators on youtube or twitter are people of color.
A very controversial analogy I can give which I hope is not in misunderstood is analogous in degree is child sexual abuse. I forget where I read it but because children are innocent, they don't often feel hurt from the initial abuse. However, from growing and becoming aware what had happened does the nature of the abuse become apparent to them after which the trauma begins to become real. Hopefully in this case it is clear that "not being aware x is bad" is not a sufficient argument for "x is not really bad." I feel like on some level that is well below this analogy in terms of severity and mere obliviousness to the overall connotation of what might be happening (as we're talking about adults who are merely oblivious to facts of history or power relations in society) lie acts or systems of racial discrimination. For example, perhaps a black person trying to get financing to buy a home in the 60s wasn't aware of redlining and instead might merely interpret it as being how things are. It does not mean that that obliviousness meant it was okay and that such harm crept into other areas that were more apparent and directly felt (like lower rates of wealth for blacks, and thus more exposure to crime and neglect in communities). The average poor person of color would be cognizant of the more apparent ills of ghettos while not really being aware (and thus offended) by the deeper structural causes of the more apparent ills.
Another example, a new refrain amongst some activist is that urban highways are a legacy of racism. This is a true fact if you look at the history, urban highways often demolished poor parts of a city and divided the remaining poor neighborhoods from well-off neighborhoods, intensifying segregation and its ills. If you ask an average poor person if they think urban highways are a source of ills for them today, they'd probably say no even though it is a fact that it was. Even for someone without a car who is more likely to be a victim of road fatality (poor POC are more likely to be victims of pedestrian fatality from car drivers) they may know life is harder for them in general without a car but they simply are unaware of it being a system of power (car culture) that has a lot of roots in history and isn't merely the state of nature.
Anyway, while I feel like it is good for academics to be tempered by the groups they want to understand (that's fair and should be a key consideration, of course), people really should not discount sociologists and their research, especially as not all of them are white and some do in fact experience said systems of power they critique and have in addition tools and knowledge of history to put said analysis in context.
Racism is when people believe falsehoods about genetics and heritability, particularly when they believe that humans form multiple races. It's that simple. We should require sociologists to take an introductory course in molecular biology so that they grok this part of human nature.
Edit: Downvoters should be required to also take a molecular biology course.
Very few people care about genetics and heritability with respect to "race". In the spirit of charity I'd like to assume that no one commenting here cares about that.
I have bad news for you, then. Search "white people", "asian people", or "black people" with your search engine of choice, and use syntax like "site:news.ycombinator.com" to limit it to just our community. In the spirit of charity, I'll assume that you haven't done this search, and are blissfully unaware of the racist comments that tend to flow through this site.
However, since we're relying on (Gricean) charity, let me point out that you're not following up with the maxim of relevance. The headline and article are centered around the question of the definition of racism, not whether the amount of racism exceeds some particular benchmark.
The racism under discussion here concerns social categories, not biological ones. That someone could in good faith fail to notice this strains credulity.
The loudest voice gets to define what things mean. In other cases, the voice that is able to silence and/or censor other voices gets to make those calls.
I would also add that sometimes the voice that "sounds the most reasonable" while requiring low cognitive reasoning.(Which in turn, turns into your 'loudest voice').
Notice that this means that that voice might not be correct, it's just that often people don't bother with good explanations of what/when/etc., they just whats something that validates their own view(which sadly often times leads to a negative outcome, especially when that view has been influenced before).
I'd contend that BigTech commissars currently get to define it, as they also define volume of a voice. They are more powerful than governments, and due to their downstream effects, they can bully even BigMedia.
The evidence is that a US President [1], however unpopular, and a US Senator [2], and multiple Congressmen/women have been censored [3] , and numerous other people, or messaging attached to their communications [4] . In some cases, unpopular causes, or causes contrary to a BigTech interest have been censored [5]. At the same time, certain terrorists have been permitted to distribute their messaging unhampered [6]. Although a national platform can be an issue, that hasn't stopped BigTech from stooping down to censor unpopular local govt [7] .
In some cases, governments have colluded with BigTech to censor their political rivals [8] or to flag content that a state government found undesirable [9]
Please provide your evidence to the contrary to disprove the truth of it.
Would you please stop it with the tedious name-calling, and also with the supercilious sneering at the community? I don't know how many hundreds of comments you've posted like this, but it's predictable enough to resemble a tic, and after god knows how many years of it, it's gotten really old. It's also trollish.
Also, please don't get into any more flamewars. It's not what this site is for.
I don't believe I called anyone names or sneered at the community in this thread and I think your description of me is uncharitable. The vast majority of my comments here have been positive, and I take far more abuse from this community than I give.
If you're talking about my comment in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28260455, that's humorous criticism of the community in a thread about criticism of the community, and every part of it is accurate. If you want tedious "tics" to call out, there's a list.
Being able to see the faults in a community and laugh at them is healthy. Far more so than the vituperative, contrarian snark this community expends on everything outside. And I'm not placing myself in a position above anyone here in doing so - I'm a part of this community so criticizing it is criticizing myself.
That said, I admit I got a bit overheated attacking what I thought was a bad comment here, let myself get too emotionally involved and made a bad situation worse, so mea culpa. Sometimes this place just makes me angry, and I resort to snark as a means of catharsis when really I should probably just step away for a while.
I wasn't talking about any comment in particular but the fact that you do this so often. Perhaps you don't mean it to come across as supercilious, but I would say it does.
I appreciate your reply though, because I was too harsh (I regretted it later and almost got up to edit it but was too tired). Sorry!
There seems to be a recursive aspect to this. Accusations of racism are used to silence (censor) voices.
From the article:
Charges of “racism,” for instance, are primarily deployed against the political opponents of upwardly-mobile, highly-educated progressive white people. Even to the point of branding prominent black or brown dissenters as race-traitors (despite the reality that, on average, blacks and Hispanics tend to be significantly more socially conservative and religious than whites).
> This won't be true no matter how many times you repeat it. "As a white person", I have been accused of racism. My response was to apologize and attempt to do better in future. I have largely been successful in those better attempts. When I have fallen short, I have apologized again.
Your experiences as a white person is not universal. The line you quoted is to accuse them -- your response seems to imply that you admit that when accused you were being racist?
The problem is that it is absolutely not okay to have to denounce yourself if you have done nothing wrong. Nowadays the accusations fly at a moment's notice, people jump to the most uncharitable of interpretations.
It would be better if the world followed some aspect of HN's guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
" it is absolutely not okay to have to denounce yourself if you have done nothing wrong."
There are cases where offence is highly subjective and in some of those scenarios it's just polite to say sorry and move on. Not as admission of having done anything wrong, but just as a matter of recognizing the other persons position.
Obviously we don't want to get caught up in individuals aggravated and systematic abuse of that, i.e. to see everything as a slight, but it's definitely worth considering.
I speak a little bit too loudly - not too much but a bit.
Rarely someone will ask me to be more quiet on a plane. Sometimes rudely. I just say 'sorry' and move on. There's principle here other than just getting along. If it was 'removing a statue' I would think a little bit harder about it.
... your response seems to imply that you admit that when accused you were being racist?
I admitted that, I apologized for it, and I wasn't immediately struck dead by lightning. My nonwhite friends or coworkers wrinkled their noses for a moment, then continued as if they had forgotten about it. It's not as though I had surprised them. White Americans of a certain age (say... 14?) who claim never to have done or said anything racist might be fooling themselves, but they aren't fooling anyone else.
Even more scandalously, in addition to apologizing for momentary racism as described above, I've apologized before when I wasn't convinced I had done or said anything wrong. I didn't get struck by lightning then either!
Not only did I suffer no adverse consequences from these episodes, but it's certain that very few white Americans have suffered any adverse consequences from similar episodes. (If e.g. a teacher in a public school recites the Ku Klux Klan Kreed while beating a minority student with a stick, she might get fired, but I would consider that a different level of racism.) TFA pretends for a moment that some relatively innocent whites have suffered due to this phenomenon, but no actual examples are given or linked. Then TFA quickly transitions to a complicated argument about unanimity.
When we're young, it seems like a great injustice to set aside our own point of view in order to validate someone else's point of view. In a sense, it is a sort of injustice. However, injustice is common in this world. The reason so few people get angry about stupid rude shit like "You are so articulate!" (to use an example TFA apparently considers harmless) is because that would be a recipe for getting angry all the time. Going through life having to regularly just swallow that shit is a burden. If all I have to do to lighten that burden just a bit is to occasionally apologize and try to improve, I don't see why I shouldn't. TFA denies that reality, so it makes life in USA worse.
If someone called you a thief, would you apologize?
And then apologize again for not proving well enough that you're not a thief?
Anyone who does something bad i.e. racism or theft - should apologize.
But we're arguing about the nature of the crime, whether or not there is crime etc., that's the whole point.
If you can be put on your heels arbitrarily, without any objective credence ... well then it's going to be hard for you. When groups impose that variation of social justice on others, then it's going to be a real problem.
There is no essay entitled "who gets to define what's ‘theft?’" Theft is a well-defined crime, at least with respect to material property.
Actually, your confusion is understandable, because racism is also quite well-defined. Racism is a property of our society, that 1.1% of black Americans are incarcerated, compared to 0.02% of white Americans. (even worse, more than 1 in 25 black men between 25 and 44 years old are incarcerated) [0] Racism is a property of our society, that the average white household holds ten times the wealth of the average black household. [1] Racism is a property of our society, that CIA and other executive-branch officials who created and profited from the 1980s crack epidemic will never answer for their crimes. [2]
Racism is that property of our society, that any attempt to somewhat balance these tilted scales is always drowned out by sophomoric false equivalences, like the idea that white people suffer as much from accusations of racism as BIPoCs do from racism itself.
The pathetic whinging recorded on this page makes clear that all of this is much harder for those who worry about who gets to "define" racism, than it is for me.
Also, I object to your 'sophomoric' view that racism is 'well defined' by the fact that 1.1% of the African American population is in prison etc..
The more likely reason is that African Americans commit significantly more crime, which is consistently validated by the somewhat more objective victimization surveys which correlate quite well with rates of incarceration.
We can then get into structural arguments about inequity which 'cause' said crime, but those points also have to stand up against the fact that other marginalized people (i.e. non African American PoC) are considerably less likely to commit crime, and that although poverty does correlate with crime, it's only a soft correlation, whereas the African American composition of a neighbourhood, unfortunately, has almost an absolute correlation with high crime.
That said, racism does exist, but the 'pathetic whinging' of those who somehow think that the term 'Master' really has anything to do with it, is ironically killing real hope for progress by discrediting their own Social Justice movements as virtue signalling pedantry.
How about we let Barack Obama, first African American President define what is 'racist'. We'll see some reforms in the Justice System - some of it more controversial than others, but we definitely won't be worried about the term 'Master Bedroom' or 'Master Branch', thankfully.
It would be plausible to imagine that the average black person commits say, three times the crime the average white person commits. (Plausible, but probably not true.) It would be a form of insanity, however, to think they really commit 55 times the crime, which would be in line with those incarceration figures. One name for that sort of insanity would be "racism".
And you have not? I suppose I might believe you’ve never used “gypped” (c.f. Gypsy, which is itself a derogatory term for Roma)—if you’re quite young or don’t live in North America. I know I used it, up until I learned of its origin; now I try to avoid using it.
You misunderstand me, that's on me I should've been more clear. It is racist for sure - I would never deny that. But it isn't what I'd describe as an _episode_ of racism.
That does strike me as a bit odd. I don't think I've ever experienced anything like that nor have I met anyone else prone to do that.
I hate to assume, and i mean no offence by this, but is something like this indicative of a mental illness? I can't imagine why else someone would be prone to have something like that happen to them.
Yes that was explained in the immediately preceding paragraph: "As a white person", I have been accused of racism. Off the top of my head, I can think of three instances over the course of my life; there may have been others.
Yeah, I know a white person and he says he hates it when people like this make him out to be the victim.
It's just virtue signalling, pretending you care about white people being called racist when really most white people just want them to shut up about it all instead of forcing them into victimhod.
Can you elaborate? You seem to be invoking "race" in a metaphysical sense. Implicit in your statement is that you do not "believe in" race. What is it that you do not believe in?
Or are you suggested "race" does not denote a category of superficial predicates relating to extended family, genotype, phenotype, ethnicity, etc.?
> Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning.
I don’t believe in race. I think it’s a dumb and harmful social construct detached from reality. I consider anyone who does believe in race a racist.
While massive structural disadvantages for those who aren't perceived as "white" still exist, your attitude might not be "racist" per se, but it's still privileged and shitty.
Your idiosyncratic definition is fine-tuned to capture both KKK and BLM as "racist". Clearly you haven't suffered the racism of modern American life that gave rise to BLM [0]. If anyone other than yourself used this definition, it would prolong that racism. You have only "confused" yourself. If you meant something else, you should have said something else.
> Your idiosyncratic definition … is privileged and shitty
So you’re not saying it’s wrong, you’re just saying it’s offensive?
It’s not that idiosyncratic [0], though even if it were, appeal to the masses is a fallacy.
> If anyone other than yourself used this definition, it would prolong that racism.
I disagree. I don’t see how you can fight for race and fight against racism at the same time. I also don’t understand why you would want to - science is the ultimate ally.
It's the belief that you are your body and that one body model is better than another body model. The first belief is considered a self-evident truth today because questioning it is "unscientific". The second isn't really wrong, but when it's mixed with the first idea, it turns into racism.
I understand your comment as suggesting that body models are races, but I take a different view.
Maybe, other things being equal, some heritable traits are good. People possessing them might have superior body models. However, I think racism needs two more beliefs:
1) that race objectively exists
2) that race correlates with superior/inferior body models
Race as the body type exists in the same sense car models exist. Some could argue that SUVs are superior to sport cars.
Whether race exists objectively is another question. Per some schools of buddhism, material things don't exist objectively because they lack their own substance.
Many. Asians, Africans and Europeans are three notable subtypes. But again, if this makes you feel agitated, that's because of the belief that body is a permanent extension of the human's true self. Once this "scientific" idea is analysed and rejected, the clouds of emotions will clear.
I found it hard to directly criticize anything they said as the majority of it was common sense and anything objectionable wasn't so egregiously objectionable to warrant any real complaint from me (not that they gave me the option, feedback in the series was suspiciously absent).
The main problem with it as mentioned in the article is the incessant fixation on victimhood. I feel that our culture's relationship to victimhood is no better than the ancients but just in the opposite extreme. Before there were precious few 'celebrated' victims (victims lifted up and supported by society) - they mostly lived and died in obscurity perhaps not even knowing the nature of their victimhood.
Now we want to explore each person's past and expose anything that could possibly be construed as oppression/victimhood and expose it to the world. We end up with the other type of error: people presented as victims who aren't (relative to our perception, of course victimhood is on a spectrum).
No one wants a society full of victims, but we equally can't have a society organized via victim hierarchy (intersectionality).