Posts that masquerade as “legitimate dissenting opinions just not getting a fair shake from the left by golly” but which really seek to undermine structures by which systemic racism can possibly be called out and held accountable for harm (like the framework of microaggressions) deserve to be flagged and shut down. They don’t serve any free speech or intellectual honesty purpose to preserve discourse and the psychological safety to disagree, and they are roundly disingenuous tools for filibustering actual legit discourse and progress. It’s just taking crass tools of hate groups and dressing them up with five dollar words and armchair discussion of academic freedom of expression, when really it’s just hostile noise jamming against progress.
Flamewar comments and personal attacks are not cool and will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended.
Systemic _anything_ is that thing perpetuated through systemic effects. In the case of racism it's a structural effect that lasts long after the prolonged and intentional oppression of certain minority groups. Things like a lack of generational wealth, de facto segregation, racial profiling in policing and so on.
The thing with systemic effects in general is that they're not perpetuated intentionally, but are emergent properties of relationships within a complex system. There are ways to unpick and understand why these problems are occurring and prevent their continuation, but I'm sorry to say that I'm just not seeing that coming from the progressive movement at the moment. I care deeply about systems theory and its applicability in solving some of our pressing social problems, but I'm not seeing its use in social activism. Instead the tactics of corporate D&I seem actively designed to look good while not really doing anything. Same with microaggression and unconscious bias training; all they're going to do is put well meaning people on the defensive when interacting with marginalised people for fear of saying something offensive, and that's not going to help anybody.
> a lack of generational wealth, de facto segregation, racial profiling in policing and so on.
That's what's always bugged me about people saying "systemic racism". They never could tell me what it is. You are the first person I have read who can actually say something concrete, something I can actually understand.
I had assumed that, because nobody could actually say what it is, that it was just a nebulous term being tossed around to make whites feel guilty. Now I'm going to have to re-think that.
So, congratulations. You made me think. That's about the highest compliment possible on HN...
FWIW sometimes I'm not sure that the people using the term know what it means either. They often use it but then the attempted solution is basically to call out perceived racism in individuals, which will obviously do nothing to help these problems. The root self perpetuating problem is the poverty trap, combined with the racial aspects of segregation and profiling.
Systemic solutions would be things like investing more into inner city schools than the national average, targeted educational and entrepreneurial assistance for enterprising people from poor black backgrounds (I have a sneaking suspicion that many of the current progressive outreach programs are taken up by already-middle-class black people, which doesn't help solve the problem, but I hope I'm wrong) and other measures designed to provide ladders out of poverty to a large number of people at once. You basically need to provide elevated opportunities.
That you feel you are identifying solutions, or even a definition, not understood or pursued by people creating things like microinequity training, just reveals your ignorance.
I think my earlier comment which you described as a “no u” comeback was actually really apt and crystal clearly accurate based on your follow-ups.
You have not provided any evidence for this claim. And in fact, the very concept of "microinequity" (whatever that might mean) is at the opposite end of the spectrum from anything systemic.
