
Color film was built for white people. Here's what it did to dark skin - jtr1
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/18/9348821/photography-race-bias
======
coldtea
Yeah, it was optimized for the market segment that was expected to have money
for film and cameras at the time.

There are far worse things to complain about that happened to black people at
the time (from Jim Crow to the KKK and seggregation) to make film
optimizations anything else than an aside to the whole story.

~~~
dalke
Yeah, there are Syrian refugees dying trying to get to safety, so complaints
about a story on vox are little more than aside to the real suffering in the
world.

Snarky sarcasm aside, I believe the point was exactly what you just said -
white people have a privileged position in US and therefore world culture. As
it comments at the end, the built-in assumption that "users" == "white"
_still_ exists. The examples of face tracking systems that doesn't work for
black faces, or images of black people getting miscategorized as "gorillas",
imply it's not a distant historical artifact.

In order to prevent issues this in the future, developers need to either be
aware of either implicit cultural biases, or be able to recognize explicitly
racially-motivated discriminatory practices. This includes secondary effects;
black people are more likely poor, in part because of historical explicit
social and government policies that made it harder for black people to acquire
wealth.

One way to spread that awareness is with video content, drawing examples from
history and the present. Which is what this does.

And after all, HN readers complain daily about things which are far more
trivial. To revive an old meme, "Leave Brittany alone."

~~~
coldtea
> _Yeah, there are Syrian refugees dying trying to get to safety, so
> complaints about a story on vox are little more than aside to the real
> suffering in the world._

Only my argument was quite different, and applies to the Syrian refugees too:
if one is to focus on suffering (to provoke outrage, affect change etc), they
better focus on its really bad characterstics.

The equivalent to the film story would be someone writing that the free
sandwitches on rescue ships weren't up to par.

~~~
dalke
Yes, your argument was like my parents saying I shouldn't complain about
something because there are starving children in Africa.

It's like saying that we shouldn't complain about smog in the air in LA
because the smog in Beijing is even worse. Or to not complain about the
quality of dinner because my Scandinavian ancestors left Sweden to avoid
poverty and starvation.

Your statement is that it's to "better focus on its really bad
characterstics".

That's not correct. The focus is on how to improve things. If the video were
all about what the KKK did in 1965 then what am I supposed to do about that?
Sit here and feel guilty about things that happened before I was born?

The difference is that _we are developers_. There is a positive action I can
do in response to this information. Should I work in face tracking, or image
recognition, or other similar software for the future, then I can actually
make a difference by including a more balanced training set. Should management
say that we use our target audience, I can remind them of the implicit racism
in that statement.

So things may change with this information, while focusing only on more severe
information will likely do diddly-squat to make things better.

I have no idea how your 'free sandwiches' comment is relevant. Surely a better
example is an article like
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/29/syrian-
refugees...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/29/syrian-refugees-
sweden-new-life) where a refugee from Syria now in Sweden says "I feel like
shit ... The only good thing is that I am safe."

Do you want him to shut up because things were worse? Do you want the Guardian
to not publish articles like this and only focus on the people dying in
transit, or those being bombed and shot back at home?

Because that's what your argument sounds like they should be doing.

While my argument is while people might not be able to help the drowning
refugees, they may still be able to help others in less of a direct plight.

~~~
coldtea
> _Yes, your argument was like my parents saying I shouldn 't complain about
> something because there are starving children in Africa. It's like saying
> that we shouldn't complain about smog in the air in LA because the smog in
> Beijing is even worse._

Nope, you misread the argument. What you're missing is that the harm in both
cases described in my argument are to the SAME people (blacks), at the same
era.

So, to adjust your examples, it's like your parents saying "you shouldn't
complain about something" because there was something far more serious going
on at your househould (e.g. you shouldn't complaint about not getting an
iPhone for Xmas, because your father was just fired from his job".

Or that we shouldn't complain about smog in the air in LA when there's a
tsunami of radioactive waste coming down Santa Monica. We should focus on
solving THAT first.

> _Your statement is that it 's to "better focus on its really bad
> characterstics" That's not correct. The focus is on how to improve things.
> If the video were all about what the KKK did in 1965 then what am I supposed
> to do about that? Sit here and feel guilty about things that happened before
> I was born?_

If the focus is on how to improve things (to which I agree) then we should try
to improve things that really make a difference. As developers we know that
from profiling and Amdahl's law.

Fixing (or fixating on) the film issue wouldn't make an iota of a difference
for blacks. Exposing (no pun intended) the problems with seggregation and Jim
Crow laws at the same era, would make much more difference.

And its the same when we're talking about history. At best the article is a
curiosity: "back when they routinely lynched blacks and they couldn't even get
a room at a hotel or eat in a restaurant with whites, film wasn't really
tailored to their skin tone either".

That's nice to know when you have exhausted the other historical issues with
racism. If not, it's mostly useless trivia, compared to what people should
know about the era.

------
RUG3Y
I can't believe anyone takes vox.com seriously.

