
Self-segregation: how a personalized world is dividing Americans - sergeant3
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/13/self-segregation-military-facebook-college-diversity
======
peterlk
One of my friends in the military has described to me the role of "acceptable
racism", and I find it noteworthy. Many stories he has are of people teasing
each other about race. Most of the conversations would be wholly unacceptable
in civilian life, but there is a required camaraderie in the military that
creates an undertone of understanding and respect. That is, the missing
feature of civilian life that prevents this is the implicit understanding that
"if shit happens, I've got your back".

The "media" (in quotes because that term continues to grow in breadth) is
largely to blame for the toxic culture around diversity of thought and respect
for those with different experiences than oneself. It manufactures fear and
outrage. People cling to fear and outrage, and the first step to fixing self-
selecting segregation is to combat uneducated fear and outrage. I don't mean
to say that we all need to love each other and get along, but we do need to
engage, and not use headlines/taglines/tweets to inform our outrage at one
another.

~~~
maxxxxx
We are a pretty diverse group at work and we do a lot of teasing with racial
stereotypes. I think it's a lot of fun as long as there is an underlying level
of respect. This is much better than the thought policing a lot of people do.

Edit: You also learn a lot about each other this way. A Latino person who grew
in an inner city has a different lifestory than someone grew up in the Midwest
and it's nice to hear that.

~~~
iamdave
_I think it 's a lot of fun as long as there is an underlying level of
respect. This is much better than the thought policing a lot of people do._

Fun? For whom???

Even among my closest friends I have no time, nor the patience to entertain or
accept any amount of racism or racist thought. I tend to think of it less as
"thought-policing" and view it more along the lines of "You're my friend and
you're carrying about with behavior born from an established history where the
roots of that _very_ behavior resulted in people like me (Black people) being
treated as second-class at best, sub-human at worst".

A few of them every now and then try to sneak in a black joke when in company
and we're having drinks, joking about various absurdities in the world and
believe it or not but my friends know me well enough to know all I have to do
is _glare_ at them in a certain way-when that glare comes out they know "Okay
that comment crosses a line".

You may consider it extreme or a bit "much" because to you it's "a lot of
fun", and that's certainly your prerogative but after a lifetime trying to
prove not just to myself but people I work with that I am more than my skin
color

...well, any amounts of behavior that bucks against that is not any shade of
fun, and for someone who _embodies_ the spirit of transcending treating race
as something so cavalier, to me it definitely isn't "thought policing". It's
asking to be treated like my lived condition matters as much as yours so as
not to be reduced to a damn punchline.

(Tangent:
[https://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/death+of+a+tho...](https://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/death+of+a+thousand+cuts.html))

~~~
maxxxxx
From my experience most ethnic groups or countries have some quirky traditions
and habits. Germans have weird/funny habits and beliefs, Austrians do,
Hispanic people do and all other groups of people do. I have no problem with
people asking me what's up with Germans running around naked in parks in
Munich or how I feel about the Nazi time and I like to talk to Indians how
crazy I think their traffic is or what the deal is with arranged marriage. To
me that's showing respect because we treat each other like real people and not
some fragile beings that are offended all the time.

~~~
iamdave
_To me that 's showing respect because we treat each other like real people
and not some fragile beings that are offended all the time._

Agreed, and there's definitely a benefit to discussing with members outside of
your ethnic/racial/cultural group their traditions comparatively with yours
for mutual understanding and respect for the benefit of coming closer together
as people.

It's not however the same as "joking" about the delineations between race and
culture or otherwise trivializing them in one way or another; and it should be
noted, that I make that distinction as a counter-point because while I
definitely hear you on this phenomenon and will even go so far as to concede
agreement, your point is very-and uncomfortably-often used as a feigned
concession when a member of a certain ethnic group or minority points out how
instances of out group or members of an out group _x_ talk about unique
aspects _of_ said ethnic group/minority either (A) come up offensively short
of lived reality or (B) are just prima face offensive.

Edit: I'm not saying that's what _you 're_ doing, by the way. That accusation
isn't being lobbied, the behavior is being held to a spotlight however for the
sake of discussing this further-for which I'm privileged to be doing with you
today.

~~~
maxxxxx
I hear you. Just one point: Keep a sense of humor and cut people some slack.

~~~
iamdave
Well I try my hand at stand-up comedy on the weekends, even got a few chuckles
a few times, so no worries there :P

------
lngnmn
I am too dump to get through this hipster's mental constructs.

Segregation is a fundamental principle in societies and even nature in
general. Likes tend to stay with likes, likes attracts likes. Culture, age,
social or professional specialization there are countless ways everything
segregates. And segregation and specialization is good. In the social context
we see castes and chinatowns since the beginning of time, and in the
biological context we see tissues - a homogeneous community of specialized
cells.

The utopists (and mere naive idiots) who believe in some voluntarily
unsegregated society of brothers and sisters, which _never_ emerged by itself
in the history of mankind, are, well, idiots. Even forced unsegregated social
groups does not last and always has tensions and issues.

So, why don't we just accept the fact that some academic humanists and social
theorists are ignorant, naive self-deluded dreamers, who are ignoring certain
aspects of actual reality.

So called self-segregation is a non-term. It is a default, biological norm.
Species who do not live in packs and families are self-segregated. Even inside
the family there are specialization and segregation by age. What these
hipsters are talking about?

~~~
kyleschiller
If every biological norm is a non-term, we might as well stop talking about
desire and fear while we're at it.

I buy you argument that self-segregation is in some ways our default, but this
doesn't mean we can't exacerbate, and potentially ameliorate it, with
technology. Sometimes this has to do with completely new mediums, but even the
specific implementation of existing platforms can have a tremendous impact.

Reddit, for example, is completely capable of designing an algorithm that
clusters articles by viewpoint and penalizes new posts similar to too many
existing ones.

------
lordCarbonFiber
Everytime this gets brought up, I feel it fails to address the question "How
is this overly different than the pre-internet area?". I can understand the
disappointment as to the failure of the Internet to deliver on the utopia we
expected in the 90s, and there's a fantastic lecture on the idea of "the end
of mainstream" (I will edit and add a link if I can dig it up) and how that's
removed a lot of the old universal cultural touchstones (which despite being
universal tended to be very exclusionary which is what fueled the explosion of
niche communities online in the first place).

I wasn't alive to comment, but I can't imagine the second half of the 20th
century a booming time where you interacted with people outside of you
geographic community (which generally shared your political, religious, and
social beliefs). I know many of my parents old friends still live ~20miles
from where they grew up and that's not overly uncommon. Put into that context
it makes theses pieces on divid _ing_ Americans seem a little silly. Divided
is the default state and has been since the nation's inception as a loose
collection of independent governments.

~~~
neogodless
I don't think it is _overly different_ , but that doesn't mean the magnitude
may have changed (and the divide accelerated.)

It's kind of like going from silly Pepsi vs. Coke differences to grouping
everyone and everything in your world into a huge group of "us vs. them" \-
everything is on your side or the other side. Obama and Trump. Second
Amendment. Abortion. It's all "us vs. them" in one big foggy war, and the
stakes are high for all of us.

------
noobermin
I remember learning about how in its early days, Singapore forced integration
in its HDB flats (most of sg's population live in such flats). After attempts
at integration in the US, we had white flight and now this as mentioned in the
article, while sg is probably the model multicultural society.

I hate it because I am anti-authoritarian as most Americans are, but it's
interesting to see the differences in results. Regardless, it's not like
multicultural/diverse America is a failure, we are, for example, much more
diverse and respecting of other cultures as say Japan or Korea.

~~~
splintercell
> I remember learning about how in its early days, Singapore forced
> integration in its HDB flats (most of sg's population live in such flats).
> After attempts at integration in the US, we had white flight and now this as
> mentioned in the article, while sg is probably the model multicultural
> society.

Have you ever met Singaporeans? My best from college was from Singapore (of
Indian origin), from what he told me, it's a very culturally segregated
society. Keep in mind Singapore supports English, Tamil, Chinese and Malay.
Ethnic Malays and Tamils will not learn Mandarin unless they really need to,
and govt push for Mandarin could only lead to more resentment among these
ethnolinguistic minorities.

Singapore is not a democracy, so that's another reason why you can't or won't
see the problems of the society just from the surface.

When the govt forces these measures on the society, the end result is never
pretty. When immigrants come to America, they integrate at their own pace. If
I came to America with my family, chances are I'd have spoken my mother tongue
for a lot longer than I did. I switched to English (speaking, reading,
writing, and thinking) within the first two years. My wife on the other hand
who came here with her family, she spoke a lot of Russian until she married me
(nearly 18 years after being in US). Not just that, her family now speaks a
lot more English (and a lot better).

Whenever govt tries to 'impose' integration, people feel threatened that
someone else is trying to steal their stuff (in this case, their culture,
their identity), whereas under freedom they willingly do things differently,
they willingly adopt other values or give away their identity.

President Charles Heston couldn't have sold as many guns as President Obama
did. Because of Obama, people suddenly feel that Second Amendment is very
precious.

If your son does not have any friends, then by kidnapping some kids from his
class and forcing them to attend your son's birthday party won't make them be
friends with your son, instead it would simply make them resent him more.

~~~
noobermin
My SO is singaporean. I will admit I've never lived there for more than a
month, but I plan on moving there to live with her after I finish my PhD. I
don't know what you mean by "very culturally segregated," my experience there
the couple of times I've been there is it's not as integrated as say it sounds
like it was in the 60's, but it is significantly more diverse and integrated
than it is here in the US. Mostly, people of different cultures do interact
with each other quite a bit and there is a level of comfort the different
races have which each other which is _not_ the case in the US.

This is just me, but I feel more comfortable there. It may sound silly, but
people have a nicer and less judgemental stare than what I get in certain
neighborhoods in the US. Also, regarding their authoritarianism, what I've
learned from my gf is that it just is their culture to be more submissive to
authority. I did not get this sense that everyone was on the edge of their
seats to start a racewar or revolution or that there were issues "beneath the
surface." A couple of people complain about _foreigners_ , but that is mainly
non-singaporeans of all races, not really "those Indians" or "those Malays."

I do agree on cultural ground though that an authoritarian state would be
counter-productive for the US, as I alluded to earlier.

------
maldusiecle
ctrl+f "rural", nothing.

ctrl+f "urban", nothing.

Somehow I doubt this article is going to get into the real drivers behind
polarization in American politics.

~~~
bilbo0s
"...Somehow I doubt this article is going to get into the real drivers behind
polarization in American politics..."

What are they in your view?

Serious question. (Not trying to be snarky. Have a genuine interest in
figuring out what you mean?)

~~~
maldusiecle
The internet isn't driving polarization to any meaningful degree. The
polarization we see in the US is entirely a result of rural/urban polarization
--rural areas vote conservative, urban areas vote liberal. For a while these
political differences shook out differently, but now there's a near-total
overlap between political alignment and geography.

~~~
bilbo0s
I see.

But to the point of the article, what about the polarization that existed
before the rural/urban divide?

I mean we can go all the way back to slavery, and we still see great divisions
recorded in our history. I think people naturally segregate themselves into,
"tribes", for lack of a better word. The internet is just one, in a long line,
of technologies being used to manifest these divisions. Long before the
internet, we had the printing press. Even though we had the printing press and
access to many, many books...

the Bible was a good deal more popular in London than the Koran. And Uncle
Tom's Cabin was far more popular in the Upper MidWest than in the South.

My own opinion is that every technology can be used to make the world a little
bit more personalized. The internet is just another one of those technologies.
People are always segregating along multiple axes and dimensions. Urban/rural
is only one. And not even the main one. For instance, the religious/non-
religious axis is an important one right now. Add to that the fact that all of
the different races are always segregating. Additionally, there is STARK
segregation along the rich/poor axis.

All of our technologies are being used to serve these divisions, but they are
not CREATING the divisions in and of themselves.

At least, that's my two cents.

~~~
maldusiecle
Oh, sure. I don't believe the internet is doing _nothing_. It can accelerate
certain tendencies. But it really does go both ways. I read a number of
bloggers who I strenuously disagree with, for example. I read web forums for
my hobbies that _aren 't_ as segregated politically as, for example, my
neighborhood.

As with most things, largescale demographic and economic changes matter more
than "soft" cultural shifts. Or that's how I see it, anyway.

------
Shivetya
It would be one thing if schools in all parts of the country were held to the
same standards with regards to segregation. I bring it simply because the
article mentioned the landmark ruling to segregate them all while ignoring the
one fact not mentioned, it applied only to select states and mostly Southern
states. Segregation has been alive and well in the North and even Malcolm X
called them out on it.

The number of highly segregated schools still exists and even the constant
hammering of acceptance and "quotas" reinforces the that like people NEED to
stay together. So why wouldn't voluntary systems like Facebook merely play
that out? Groups are stronger than individuals and the easiest group
identification is one that can be seen.

Recent political groups are an example of a media telling us its not only okay
to segregate but that some groups must (think #BLM)

------
ImTalking
Technology is allowing anyone to have a voice. This is a good thing. Whether
you are a human rights advocate or the biggest racist, you can now air your
thoughts and gather a following. Each of us are becoming a political party of
1.

Think of the alternative; North Korea, where the information received by the
masses is controlled by the State. Their lives are no better than un-thinking
robots while the leaders live in absolute luxury.

Of course there are dangers in giving each one the power to affect other
lives, and if it turns out that that power causes irreparatable segregation
then it was a fait de complet anyway. I mean, the ultimate form of democracy
is for everyone to have a voice, and if we are doomed because of it, then it
shows a fatal flaw in the human species.

------
Dowwie
Danah Boyd, the author, leads a think tank known as Data and Society.
[https://datasociety.net/](https://datasociety.net/)

