pretty hot if you've ever been the target of actual racism, which includes getting beaten up for wearing a headscarf, not getting an apartment rented out because your last name sounds weird or being rejected by your parents in law, or fucked over by the police.
I know HN doesn't like heated language and so on but if you think a bunch of intellectuals getting their book tours cancelled and online commentators getting their twitter blocked compares to the lived racism of minorities you have to have your head up your own ass.
I've had a few of the things you listed happen, including getting beat up for my race, not getting an apartment rented out because of my weird name, and rejected by my mother in law. (I'm an arab by the way, and my wife is chinese).
I've also not gotten a job because I was considered "white". The hiring manager was a friend, so he let me in on the "social justice" that was going on behind the scenes.
These are both "actual racism" to use your terms, and I revile them equally.
I'm surprised by the number of people who don't get jobs due to reverse racism and then find out for a fact this was the case. Generally with 'classic' racism you're left guessing.
It seems implausible to me. Perhaps "its political correctness mate" is the go to excuse when your acquaintence fails an interview.
HN seems to generally agree hiring is broken, so it shouldnt surprise people that good candidates dont get picked, but maybe we need a specific reason to feel better about it.
I received a written rejection from a software company stating that they would only consider non-males for junior dev roles. It seems like a lot of people just think this sort of thing is acceptable so they have no problem telling people about it.
You should contact Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division. If what you say is true and you have this on paper, you should be able to get some actual justice on this. You can start filing a report here: https://civilrights.justice.gov/
I would implore you to do this — we have unfortunately allowed this kind of thing to happen in our industry for far too long. My condolences.
The DFEH received an argument from the company along the lines of "The applicant did not fill out the official application on our web site, therefor they did not apply, therefor we did not discriminate against them" and agreed with it. So it's ok then for employees of the company to advertise an opening, to tell people that the way to apply for the opening is to email them directly, and to reply to the emails with rejections on the basis of gender, as long as some other part of the company also has some other application process!
I have not followed up on the issue because my disability means that I have extremely limited capacity for this sort of thing and spending enormous amounts of that capacity for a minuscule chance at like $10,000 seems like a bad use of resources. I'm also no longer able to follow up on it! I understand that if I wanted justice, I had to get it within 18 months.
Edit: I filled out the form at the DoJ. It would be sweet if something came of all this, even if I don't personally benefit.
DFEH is understaffed by about 10000x because private attorneys do almost all of the enforcement. Get your right to sue letter, google “employment lawyer” and see if you have a case. They will do infinitely more than any government agency will.
I talked to a handful of these and they said I had a case and they hoped I could find someone else to take it. I really don't have the capacity to talk with a dozen lawyers to start a process that will take months and give me negative value. Also, my rights have expired.
I do not think rights in discrimination suits ever expire, for reasons you have cited exactly — the discriminated are usually in a disadvantaged position, don’t have the resources, time or the willingness. If an attorney told you your rights expire, was it your attorney? As in — were you paying them or was someone else doing the paying? Until you hear an attorney you pay say this, you probably have non-expiring rights.
This can't be too common, because all the anecdotes I hear are of the "I knew someone in the company and they confirmed it" kind, which would seem a bit unneccessary if people were regularly sending out "Sorry but you are too white and/or male to be employed" letters to people.
I stood at an all hands meeting and heard the VP of HR say “if you know of any women or minorities who want to work for us, let me know and we’ll find them a role”.
This is a Fortune 50 company.
Clearly the same effort wouldn't be expended for either males or whites.
I was taken aback by how blatant they were being. And the statement was likely illegal.
> I'm surprised by the number of people who don't get jobs due to reverse racism and then find out for a fact this was the case. Generally with 'classic' racism you're left guessing.
What is implausible about that? What you call the 'classic' type of racism has not been acceptable for half a century. Those racists have to hide or they are pushed out, sued, targeted by governments, boycotted, etc.
The new "good" flavor of racism is openly pushed, celebrated, encouraged by governments and academia and politicians. Of course many racists will openly boast about their racism, and they will be praised for it.
It's easy to dismiss this, but it's real. He showed me slide decks where they explicitly call out prioritizing certain classes of people, and would only fill certain roles with those classes due to the team being "imbalanced". I've known this person for a long time and trust them to not weave an elaborate fabrication including creating fake documents to make me feel better. This is a FAANG company btw.
Discrimination against Asians isn't “reverse racism” (to the extent that phrase is ever meaningful), in any sense, unless maybe it's in an environment where Asians historically hold disproportionate social power and have used it to systematically discriminate against non-Asians.
I’m sorry you’re ignorant of history. There used to be laws like “Chinese Exclusion Acts” that were straight up racism based on a theory of racial inferiority of Asians. Now they are being punished for being academically superior in the name of equity, hence the reverse.
Though I agree with you the phrase is mostly meaningless, to the extent it has meaning it’s exactly what I’ve described. Which you seem to agree with, so I’m not sure why you’re flaming me.
Then what was your point? So, now there is such a thing as reverse racism? I think you just wanted to pick a fight. Be gone. It's reverse racism because they're being punished for their perceived or real superiority as I pointed out. If you can't at least understand that distinction in good faith, you're just arguing for the sake of it.
The parent is trying to say that it’s just regular old racism. Competent Asians are disadvantaged because this serves the elite better.
I think the reason underperforming minorities are so prioritized by the media and the elites is simply that the elites don’t feel much competitive pressure from them, and using them to distract the masses, they can then conveniently screw the minorities that are actually threatening their interests. Another reason is to delegitimize standardization of merit (e.g., standardized comprehensive exams). This allows them to use a subjective (“holistic”) approach that obviously favors themselves.
"Just a bunch of intellectuals getting their book tours cancelled" is a strawman that people use to trivialize an increasingly hostile environment that is seeing regular, non-famous people getting silenced and having their careers destroyed. Here's a Twitter thread compiling some examples of instances other than book tours and twitter blocks:
Sure, nobody is getting lynched yet. If you want to hold an oppression Olympics, minorities still win. Does that make you feel better? Do we have to wait until people are getting murdered to care about it?
Honestly, I read the first 8 or so and found most to be appropriate social backlash when taking full context into account.
1. White cafeteria workers serving Kool Aid and watermelon-flavored water for Black History Month, while lying to a student who took offense, saying "black people put this menu together."
2. A yoga studio who was already in the red going under after many of their teachers quit and protested due to workplace complaints.
3. I couldn't find the original source video for this, but feeling obligated to publicly post a video mentioning "overall crime rates of black Americans compared with white Americans" in an attempt to discredit BLM can get you fired. I don't see that as cancel culture, but an employer using their discretion on who they want interfacing with the public.
4. This one I find the most compassion for. If we were to hold everyone and their parents accountable for the things they or their children said when they were 14, we'd be in a lot of trouble. NPR did a good article about this story: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/07/28/891829285...
5. This was a private school, not a public school, published by the National Post without any details about the individual who was fired, and uncorroborated by other, less biased news sources.
6. Two white women admit tactlessly that they were stealing recipes from Mexican taco ladies. People didn't like that, and decided not to support their business.
I could go on, but I don't see what there is to be outraged about here.
"Stealing" recipes from taco ladies? Come now, the recipe for a burrito is not intellectual property. You can learn traditional Mexican cooking on Youtube if you understand a little Spanish. Burritos arguably aren't even Mexican, for crying out loud! Go a hundred miles south of the US border and there's nothing that even vaguely resembles what Americans call a burrito. It's a border region phenomenon.
As if only brown people are allowed to use tortillas? The act of accusing someone of "cultural appropriation" is segregation, pure and simple.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Make a burrito (or taco, or nasi goreng, or pad thai, or whatever) and enjoy it guilt-free.
I completely agree with a lot of your points here. I've been making enchiladas for years, and I've incorporated a lot of recipes into my approach. I suspect that very, very few people would take issue with me enjoying the food of another culture.
But I think this misses a very big point of discussion, which is what are the conditions that makes capitalization of another person's and culture's effort ethical? A big part of what made people feel uncomfortable with the taco truck story was, I suspect, that these recipes were not freely shared. Instead they were reverse-engineered.
> "I picked the brains of every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever," Connelly tells Willamette about a trip the pair took to Puerto Nuevo, Mexico. "They wouldn't tell us too much about technique, but we were peeking into the windows of every kitchen . . ."
If these women were just finding out how to make the best taco possible for their own enjoyment, that would be one thing. But given American's history of white folks making money off of the efforts of People of Color, I don't find it particularly unusual that people are taking issue here. One article[1] fairly notes that "it's unclear whether the Mexican women who handed over their recipes ever got anything in return."
I don't think the lines of what does and does not constitute cultural appropriation in food are well defined. I do think that it exists though.
> A big part of what made people feel uncomfortable with the taco truck story was, I suspect, that these recipes were not freely shared. Instead they were reverse-engineered.
Just as a thought experiment. If they went to Italy and did the same thing to learn how to make pasta, then opened their own Italian restaurant, would anyone care? If they went to France and spied on pastry shops to learn how to make the perfect croissant, would anyone care?
If two Mexican ladies went to North Carolina and stole the secrets of BBQ and opened their own BBQ joint in Guadalajara, would anyone care? Would we be questioning their ethics?
If you read the original profile[1] it's a pretty standard foodie piece about people who really enjoyed a food, learned how to make it themselves, and wanted to bring it back to where they're from.
The parasitic clickbait mic.com article pulls a few quotes out of context, then Russell Conjugates[2] the narrative to cast the pair as evil villains who exploit helpless minorities. Note how they're not just telling the story of what inspired them to start a taco truck, now they are bragging about stealing recipes. This is a hit piece that is engineered to direct online vitriol towards them, for the crime of being white people selling tacos.
Free speech, of course. People can write whatever they want. But I think it's important to ask ourselves, who is this helping? What is being accomplished here? Were these two ladies really such evil villains that deserved everything that comes with being the target of an online mob? (harassment, death threats, loss of livelihood, lifelong fear of anyone ever Googling your name...) Is this a great victory against systemic racism? Was the life of a single person of color, or anyone, improved by this? I mean, I guess it improved the bottom line of the publishers of Mic, but it's hard to see what else.
I'm not going to litigate every example, suffice to say I don't think that's a fair characterization of any of those, except for 4. And in that case, you don't find it outrageous that a family's livelihood was destroyed, along with that of all of their employees for what is essentially some teenage edgelord posturing? You find that to be a perfectly fine and fair thing to happen? Nothing to be outraged about?
1. Whatever it is, it’s not depriving dozens of people of a livelihood.
2. I’m a thinking person with the capacity to form opinions and am as entitled as anyone to decide what I consider appropriate? What sort of answer are you looking for here? I’m saying what I think and giving reasons why, instead of refuting those reasons your response is to assert that I’m not allowed to think about certain things? What gives you the right to determine what people are allowed to have opinions about?
Actions have consequences in society, and public actions moreso. That's part of the cost of being in one. I don't think it's particularly outrageous to expect that people who say and do hurtful things, either intentionally or out of ignorance, should pay consequences.
> What gives you the right to determine what people are allowed to have opinions about?
What indeed? It seems on one hand you're expressing outrage against other people's expression of their own opinion, while preventing yourself from similar scrutiny. You can't have it both ways.
I appreciate this conversation, for what it's worth. It's echoed one that I've had to myself for a while. At the end of the day, I think we mainly disagree on whether or not these are proportional responses to the level of harm caused. Personally, I think the vast majority of these dozens are either justified, or they're outliers.
Literally everything is a consequence. If you cut someone off in traffic, one consequence might be that they hunt you down and kill you. If you pass counterfeit money in a convenience store and then fight with the cops, one consequence might be that you get choked to death while being restrained. Hey! It’s just consequences! What’s the problem? People who do something wrong should pay consequences, right?
Just because something is a consequence doesn’t mean that it’s good or appropriate or that it creates a successful and thriving society if we allow that particular consequence for that particular infraction.
Yes, we definitely disagree on what is an appropriate response. If you think that someone being ignorant or momentarily insensitive means they should be destitute for the rest of their life, then, yes, I very much disagree.
> It seems on one hand you're expressing outrage against other people's expression of their own opinion, while preventing yourself from similar scrutiny. You can't have it both ways.
Getting someone fired or starting a public campaign to destroy their business is not “expressing an opinion”. And how exactly am I preventing myself from similar scrutiny? I’m literally posting on a public forum where anyone is free to respond directly to me. That is the exact opposite of preventing scrutiny.
> I don't think it's particularly outrageous to expect that people who say and do hurtful things, either intentionally or out of ignorance, should pay consequences.
I think that it outrageous that you not only completely neglect the motivation and give a pass to anyone that feels hurt. It isn't hard to see the problem of course, not only in cases of miscommunication or any kind of conflict. This would cause problems, solve nothing and would immediately create toxic relations.
With your quick acceptance of condemnation, you are just helping real racists.
You have a low threshold for outrage, then. I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I'm making quick judgments or somehow neglecting people's motivations, but all I can say is that you're wrong.
And who exactly is going to determine who the "real racists" are, exactly? Why does everything have to exist in black or white where there are "real racists" and everyone else. Does that give someone a free pass to be ignorant, because they meant well? Sorry, no.
I think it would be much more reasonable to have conversations about the _degree_ of punishment that occurs when people make mistakes. But instead I have to argue with folks like you who want to pretend like an offense never happened. That's not productive, and frankly it'll be a further waste of my time to continue this.
Not all forms of discrimination fall along lines of race. You have no idea the kind of discrimination I have had to claw my life back from.
Edit: During my schooling I developed a rare form of progressive vision loss. It also makes me extremely light sensitive, and thus it's difficult to conceal. After 1500 job applications I wound up as a construction worker doing hard labor. Since then I have managed to work my way back up to a fairly successful ML engineer, although that never would have happened if I hadn't gone to extreme lengths to conceal the state of my eyesight from my employers.
Don't ever imply I don't know what discrimination is like.
This is a genuine question, and I apologize in advance if this ever comes across as ableist. Would you still have taken the job knowing that your vision issues might (hypothetically) endanger yourself and others in the line of work?
This is the question I have been asking since I watched the movie GATTACA. Without spoiling it for anybody who has not seen it, the movie depicts a predicament somewhat similar to your situation. In the end, the hero was able to emerge triumphant and achieve his life goal through plenty of perseverance plus some deception on the side. The film is hailed as seminal critique against ableism and eugenics among other things. However I could never shake the feeling that the story put the hero in a position way above his physical capability and it is very likely going to end in disaster for everyone involved. I really want to agree with the message of the film, but the plot only seems to undermine it.
In a more relatable example, is there any justification in revoking drivers license for senior citizens on the basis that they much more likely to cause accidents, whilst knowing that their quality of life will suffer greatly as a result? This question affects me personally in some way and I still have no good answer for it.
The ableism you faced is terrible. I will ask you how that relates to the post though as it says "discrimination based on racism is worse than being 'cancelled' by the woke mob"
I don't think many in HN would deny these racist events, but is the answer the current "anti racism wokeness"? Arguably not... It seems to be causing more problems than its solving.
As usual in a decaying society, Jews are the canary in the coal mine. Traditional racists don’t think we’re white. The Woke think we’re super white. Yet per capita, Jews are the most likely to be victims of hate crimes. Yet I don’t see “Jewish Lives Matter” anywhere.
The whole thing is bullshit and just based on the guilty feelings of rich white progressives and their ordering of the universe.
It’s also increasingly incoherent as people mix. I’m part Hispanic, I’m Jewish, and gay. But I’m a cishet white male as far as anyone cares any more. It’s all fake.
People who are worried about racism. There seems to be a growing acceptance of racially-charged policies in institutions.
Even if we accept the occasionally-made argument that meritocracy is an illusion, explicitly racist policies seems like a step down from at least attempting to evaluate individual merit. Attempts at race blindness in the institutions are much better ideas than the ideologies that currently seem to be incubating.
> explicitly racist policies seems like a step down from at least attempting to evaluate individual merit.
It is a result of the observation that the usual methods for evaluating individual merit are themselves racially biased and, therefore, require a correction factor applied.
> Attempts at race blindness
This ignores the environment factors around the development of minority individuals that impact the measured merit.
> It is a result of the observation that the usual methods for evaluating individual merit are themselves racially biased and, therefore, require a correction factor applied.
What exactly causes these methods to be biased in favor of Asians over whites, and in turn biased in favor of whites whose ancestors did not speak Spanish over whites whose ancestors did speak Spanish?
The observation is cool and all, but the remedy is silly. If the observation is that some people have entrenched advantages because of their race, locking in entrenched advantages based on race is, making them official, socially accepted and broadcasting them ... it is difficult to describe how unhelpful that is.
We could try to make the problem smaller, rather than permanent.
It's a problem for civilization at large when there is flailing trust in institutions.
I used to trust most mainstream media outlets almost infallibly.
I trust none of them now.
I'm suspicious of every headline involving sensitive issues, and I believe that they are mostly manipulated to some extent.
In fact, when I watch the news, I'm now mostly curious about how they have spun the story, the nature of their bias, why they would spin it (i.e. personal view, relationships, audience, editorial, corporate sponsorship / pressure, 'election season', producers, click bait, playing for audience, emotional reasons etc..)
Erosion in trust of public institutions is a problem that can be measured in the 'division of the country' and likely even issues with vaccine uptake.
A headline in 2002 about something negative would have evoked my sympathy, but essentially I 'don't believe them anymore' and I'm not sympathetic until I've done my own due diligence to learn about a story.
Specific to this article: I have noticed this editorial problem as well. I used to read SA as a kid and was inspired by it, even if I never really understood it. Some of the editorial positions have been disturbing. It makes me doubt the integrity of the institution. I don't know if it is or not, but there's a cloud of suspicion in my mind.
As a brown boy in the post-9/11 bible belt, I've was subjected to bullying (including physical violence) as well as racial profiling for my race.
I was also discriminated against in university admissions because somehow my race makes me privileged and/or non-diverse when it comes to academics in the US.
I feel like "cancel culture" is a thing but when people make statements like "it's reverse racism, BLM are the REAL racists" I lose all sympathy for their arguments. It is also a bit difficult to feel sorry for people who are the focus of news articles and opeds who are the victims of "cancel culture" who are honestly often wealthy people who as you said get their book tour cancelled. I mean sure, it's difficult and we can talk about it (similar to this article which is about a well-known geneticist's legacy, I think this blogpost is worthy of discussion!), but this need to equate it with what I feel are obviously worse harms make me loathe to continue the conversation.
It reminds me a little bit like Godwin's Law, equating some harm which is worthy of its own discussion to an obviously worse harm which just does the job of cheapening the worse at the expense of elevating the minor injury.
OP is saying that 'reverse racism is similar to racism'.
It's not unreasonable at all.
Casual bigotry is the populist form of racism, and it's now accepted on 'one side', even publicly.
While affirmative action may help in some ways, it also allows people with institutional power to let lose their bigotry and justify it, with the full blessing of the powers that be.
For example, I believe the author of this SA article is a blatantly hateful, bigoted racist, clear as day judging by this article, and her comments and Tweets.
Some people don't seem to have any self awareness about this, it's disturbing, or rather, they take a more perverse view: that bigotry can only come from a position of power, that they will define at will, therefore hateful, bigoted rhetoric towards someone who ostensibly comes from a supposed 'position of power' just 'doesn't count', which is ridiculous.
If true, that's a violation of the fair housing act, for which you can and should sue. But taken in conjunction with your other post in this thread, I'm a bit skeptical.
I don't think it's illegal where I live. I can send you the email I received from Thoughtworks when I was based in the USA if you like. You don't seem to have an email in your profile though.
I don’t want to claim equivalence, but book tours and online commentators are missing the point here. The source post includes a reference to an article Scientific American published, arguing that a particular person was a bad choice to be the White House science advisor because the advisor shouldn’t be a white male.
Having worked in the prison system as a counselor. I've seen plenty of white people attacked violently for the color of their skin. It's pretty prevalent there at least.
These people were also told that it wasn't a racist attack by other counselors who went through social justice esque programs because they were white, and racist attacks cant happen to white people. This was back in the Obama era, so this has been going on for awhile.
The current state of anti racism takes that a step further. Those people deserved to be attacked and the results of that attack were justice because of their ancestors.
Entire world has perpetrated racism/casteism for 1000s of years, including blacks. The aim of bashing out few who we can find ties to racism decades ago is not useful to anyone.
I really don't think we talk enough about how much plain old racism, not "reverse-racism", is actually happening to non-traditional races (I.e. White and Asian people). It's seeped so much into the culture that we don't even notice it, and on top of it, we dismiss it because it's detracting and detrimental to social reform for "real" racism.
Racism is a huge problem. Suppression of truth in the service of advancing a political agenda is also a huge problem. The latter is, indeed, a most convenient tool that the ruling elite has to leech off others. Look at any system where some people are exploited, and you’ll find an integral component is distorting the truth.
Another point that is pertinent is that incentives matter a lot. A person who is by prejudice unable to, e.g., rent a house, is suffering an injustice, but it’s not like they can do much about it. A scientist, who is enjoying respect and prestige, on the other hand, can very easily be swayed by some rather small pressure to take up some politically expedient lies to preserve their lifestyle. So while the pressure on scientists might indeed be trivial compared to what minorities suffer, the effects of this pressure can be society-wide still.
Well, both seem to work on the principle of “cancellation” (one being purely abstract social, the other firmly physically social.) But the mechanism remains very very similar.
Admittedly I'm European, never heard of that case... but holy fuck if that is not a well-deserved "cancelling" I don't know what is. Literally calling for the extermination of Jews, PoC and fat people [1] - it's hard to get worse verbally.
In June 2020, when Minneapolis was rattled by the brutal custodial murder
of George Floyd and consequent Black Lives Matter protests, the Wadis
became avid supporters of the movement. They even showed their solidarity
by flaunting BLM banners from their stores as well as donating food
for free to demonstrators. In fact, Lianne herself marched in the BLM
protest rallies. However, Lianne's tweets from 2012, which she had even
deleted long back, mysteriously resurfaced around that time. The highly
offensive tweets portrayed racist sentiments against Black people and
the Jewish community. Some of her tweets were also blatantly homophobic
and body-shaming.
I dunno if it was well-deserved or not (what did the father do that merited the loss of 69 jobs?), but didn't someone famous say "The left always eats its own"?
The problem with the woke movement is that it's dominated by the extreme members[1], and the non-extreme members aren't allowed to speak up against the excesses of the movement anyway.
There is no forgiveness, there is no compromise, there is no leeway for nuance of thought. All together, that's a very dangerous movement; it's a movement where thought is forbidden, and we all saw how that turned out multiple times in history.
[1] Probably a very vocal minority, but with large impact when it comes to effects on people.
Please make an effort to understand the case properly, and the full ramifications. Yes her tweets (that she made as a teenager several years prior to her cancellation) were awful. But perhaps her father doesn't deserve to lose his livelihood along with dozens of his employees because of it.
Alex Jones is restricted from most mainstream media platforms; he is unlikely to ever attain a significant following again. He is unlikely to be able to purchase Internet access for his business, if it ever got big again. He is permanently consigned to irrelevancy.
The same goes for Donald Trump. After being banned from Twitter, Facebook, and any other platform, there is no chance of him ever being elected again. If he ran in 2024, the total information dominance his opponent would have is simply too strong.
Superficially yes, but I think modern anti-racism is basically classism: a tool privileged whites use to shame and dominate lower classes, and to signal and fight status wars between them.
Which is also why accusation of "privilege" more often than not comes from whites (and a smaller assortment of careerists in activism, journalism, and academia) themselves actually privileged career/money/status-wise, and is non-ironically directed towards people less privileged that them!
Then again, old-style racism was basically classism too: a way justify keeping blacks as slaves or, after the civil war, as cheap laborers. It's only after blacks became integrated that racism became an ideology apart from serving an active function of maintaining privilege (and by then, the ideology was shared with far fewer, the kind of "white power" scum that are quite rare statistically speaking).
Racism is far more complicated than that. Giving an oppressed group a safe space is not the same as excluding that group. That is completely missing the point of why racism is a problem.
Racism is not anything that takes race into account.
No, it doesn’t and it’s not. It is possible to reason about morals without subtlety deceitful language games.
I’d also like to point out that your comment likely uses the very same tactics that GP is complaining about.
Clearly when saying “manipulation”, GP meant that they are upset with language designed to foster a foregone conclusion.
So you either:
1. Think that is acceptable, which it’s not.
2. Are changing the definition of “manipulation” to mean something more like “use”, which was clearly not intended here.
Neither option is conducive to honest moral discourse. If you want to reinforce your current beliefs, go ahead and continue the same way. If you are interested in an honest debate, give GP the best interpretation possible, and see if you position still holds up.
As a final point of why these language games are not conducive to honest debate, you did not address the latter points that GP brought up.
I'm open to arguments that the benefits of such safe spaces outweigh the negatives, however pretending that this isn't race-based discrimination is disingenuous.
"prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized." is what I get. There are a lot more words in there, and those words are pretty important.
I am not. I gave you a dictionary definition. It is superficially similar to what you seem to think the definition is, but it differs in very important details. You can not just ignore those details.
I found all these studies showing that actual racism causes measurable disadvantages for people of color. Can you show me where antiracism causes anything close to a similar negative effect on society?
[1] Police stop black drivers significantly more than white drivers when the sun's up and they can see the driver is black, but not at night when they can't see the drivers race. Meaning race is often the determining factor for why someone is pulled over or not.
[2] Unarmed black people are 3.49 times as likely to be killed as unarmed white people. Local crime rates have zero effect on this statistic.
[3] Black and white police use force at similar rates in white neightborhoods, but white cops use force significantly more than black cops when responding to calls in minority neighborhoods.
[4] Police in oakland find contraband at the same rate regardless of race, but search black drivers 4x more often.
[5] The more white a suspect appears to be the less likely police are to use force. The more black a suspect appears the more likely it is that police will use force.
[6] Black police are more likely to be shot by their fellow officers than white police.
[7] Oaklad police disproportionately handcuff blacks at stunning levels in all areas of the city.
[8] In San Francisco, “although Black people accounted for less than 15 percent of all stops in 2015, they accounted for over 42 percent of all non-consent searches following stops.” This proved unwarranted: “Of all people searched without consent, Black and Hispanic people had the lowest ‘hit rates’ (i.e., the lowest rate of contraband recovered).”
[9] The DOJ investigation into Ferguson PD, found “a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct within the Ferguson PD that violates the 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, and federal law.” The scathing report found that FPD was targeting black residents and treating them as revenue streams for the city by striving to continually increase the money brought in through fees and fines.
[10] In Chicago, a 2016 report found that “black and Hispanic drivers were searched approximately four times as often as white drivers, yet Chicago PDs own data show that contraband was found on white drivers twice as often as black and Hispanic drivers.”
[11]2014 ACLU analysis of Illinois DOT data found: “Black and Latino drivers are nearly twice as likely as white drivers to be asked during a routine traffic stop for ‘consent’ to have their car searched. Yet white motorists are 49% more likely than African American motorists to have contraband discovered during a consent search by law enforcement, and 56% more likely when compared to Latinos.”
[12] Black people are more likely to be wrongfully convicted and more likely to be framed for a crime they didn't commit.
[13] Black kids are more likely to be tried as an adult.
[14] Black people get 20% longer prison sentences for the same crimes even controlling for criminal history.
[15] Black students are more likely to be arrested at school. A function of increased security at predominantly black schools. Not because black students commit crimes at school at higher rates.
[16] Security levels in schools are determined by how many black kids go to the school and not crime levels.
[17] Predominantly black schools are chronically underfunded compared to predominantly white schools.
[18] An identical resume with a white sounding name like Stephen or Susan is twice as likely to recieve a call for a job interview compared to the same resume with an ethnically black sounding name like Jamal or Latisha.
[19] Minorities who alter their resumes to seem white get more job interviews.
[20] Banks targeted black homeowners for predatory homeloans and refinancing in the lead up to the 2008 crisis. Causing black families to be disproportionately harmed by the forclosure crisis.
[21] owner-occupied homes in black neighborhoods are undervalued by $48,000 per home on average, amounting to $156 billion in cumulative losses. This study controls for crime rates. Neighborhood amenities like schools, parks, walkability, and public transportation. The size and age of homes etc.
[22] In an experiment landlords responding to emails treated Blacks, Arab males, Muslims, and single parents unfavorably.
[23] Almost twice as many non-Hispanic Black children have lead levels at or above 2 micrograms per deciliter compared to non-Hispanic White children.
[24] People of color are much more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air. People in poverty are exposed to more fine particulate matter than people living above poverty. “results at national, state, and county scales all indicate that non-Whites tend to be burdened disproportionately to Whites.”
[25] Black children are taken into foster care at a disproportionately high rate, and stay in the system longer before they’re adopted or reunited with their parents.
For example, you claimed that "Unarmed black people are 3.49 times as likely to be killed as unarmed white people. Local crime rates have zero effect on this statistic." This is false for two reasons. First, this is an analysis of police-involved killings alone, and is not the society-level indictment you suggested. Second, the data for police-involved killings comes solely from those reported on by the media. Since the media overreports on police killings of black Americans (e.g., George Floyd) and underreports on police killings of white Americans (e.g., Timothy Coffman, Tony Timpa), this is highly suspect.
You also claimed that it's "actual racism" that... the ratios of stops that turn up contraband and stops that don't turn up contraband occur "at the same rate regardless of race." How is it "actual racism" not to target a racial minority out of proportion to genuine suspicion?
You claim that disproportionate cross-racial shootings of off-duty police officers is due to "actual racism," but the study you cite says the disparity is likely due to unconscious biases rather than racial animus. Problems of fear-conditioning and P200/N200 overmatch are problems, but they have a different solution than the problem of police departments filled to the brim with racists.
I was interested by the stereotypically black name versus stereotypically white name study, but was deeply disappointed that it didn't study that question. Instead, it seemed as though the study were deliberately trying to blur the lines between race and class. Why compare "Jamal" to "Emily" or "Greg" instead of "Dakota"?
You say anti-racism is all OK, nothing to worry about.
Why is race above all other factors the criteria for which we judge discrimination? Why ignore the differences between people of the same race and emphasize differences between races? By choosing race as the primary lens you discriminate against other kinds of injustice and oversimplify the real problem.
Anti-racism is placing ideology above reason, a tactic also used by nationalism, communism and inquisition. Don't want to give up the right to think differently, but anyone can try to persuade me if they have the arguments.
I'd love if anti-racists would stop spreading the idea that people of different origins can't be trusted and that everything is twisted and biased against your group, that's very damaging to society. It doesn't acknowledge that races collaborate and share a lot of what they have best, it tries to undermine communication itself.
"Why is race above all other factors the criteria for which we judge discrimination?"
It isn't. Religious discrimination is no less abhorrent. Racial discrimination just happens to be the most pervasive kind of discrimination in the United States.
"Why ignore the differences between people of the same race and emphasize differences between races?"
I don't. I'm actually a whole person. One conversation isn't the entirety of my identity or existence. I'm actually very concerned differences between classes.
"By choosing race as the primary lens you discriminate against other kinds of injustice and oversimplify the real problem."
Race is a lens. It happens to be the lense through which this discussion is taking place. You don't know whether it's the "primary" lens through which I interpret the world so why are you assuming this? Also don't say that it "ignores the real problem" if you arent going to say what the "real problem" is.
"Anti-racism is placing ideology above reason"
No anti racism is just basic human decency. You're either anti-racist or you're a piece of shit. I don't see a middle ground there. You can be anti-racist, racism-neutral, or pro-racism. Only one is acceptable.
"a tactic also used by nationalism, communism and inquisition."
How convenient for you to lump me in with those terrible things. I'm sure it makes sense somehow and you didn't just feel it makes sense. I'll just go ahead and assume that I'm like the inquisition even though you did nothing to support your outlandish statement.
"Don't want to give up the right to think differently, but anyone can try to persuade me if they have the arguments."
Nobody is trying to take away your right to think differently. Nobody is persecuting you.
"I'd love if anti-racists would stop spreading the idea that people of different origins can't be trusted"
That's actually the opposite of what people opposed to racism believe. Not sure what planet you're living on.
"and that everything is twisted and biased against your group"
Everything may not be biased against black people but enough things are that it constitutes a real barrier to success. Not sure why anyone would want to fight against dismantling racial discrimination. You okay?
Meanwhile huge numbers of white conservatives think there is a conspiracy to replace them with non white immigrants to benefit the Democrats. A literal american neo nazi conspiracy theory, but really trying to bring about legit racial equality is the problem nowadays. Lmao
"It doesn't acknowledge that races collaborate and share a lot of what they have best."
It doesn't huh? I love collaboration between races. Are you saying I don't? What about the melting pot of racial identities who turned out for the black lives matter protests? Do you discount that?
"it tries to undermine communication itself"
I just see it as separating two groups. People who are cool with the inequality + discrimination and people who aren't. The people who want to fight inequality and discrimination come from every background including white. The people who want to keep the status quo and think black people should suffer in silence are mostly all white. So it isn't racial separation coming from anti racists. Racial separation to the extent there is any now is coming from anti anti-anti-racists.
4) is actually funny because that is what you would expect if their search wasn't based on race. ie: if they were correctly using risk factors when deciding whether to search or not then the chance of finding contraband conditional on being searched should be the same. it even says this in the study:
Though we found that African Americans were significantly more likely to be searched than Whites, this overall higher rate of searching did not result in a lower recovery rate as one would expect if officers were using lower standards to search African Americans, as other researchers have found in other cities
All these links and studies are very nice and support your position very well, however let me ask you a brutally honest question: how do you really think a sincere attempt at investigating the effects of anti racism would go? Let us be honest, such an effort would never see the light of day. So all your links that suggest existence of one problem unfortunate as it is, simply does not imply the other problem does not.
> Police in oakland find contraband at the same rate regardless of race, but search black drivers 4x more often.
This is remarkable and indicates white drivers are 4x more likely to be carrying contraband than black ones.
> The more white a suspect appears to be the less likely police are to use force. The more black a suspect appears the more likely it is that police will use force.
I can say that as a Brazilian. Even when I was clearly wrong, police was never anything other than extremely polite with me and often dismissed my misbehaviour with a friendly warning, which is the complete opposite of the experience a close friend of mine, who’s somewhat black, had during our teens. In fact, when he and another friend were found to be carrying a small, but illegal, amount of marijuana in their car, the black friend was indicted while the white one faced no charges.
> This is remarkable and indicates white drivers are 4x more likely to be carrying contraband than black ones.
Not really. If white drivers are only searched if there are real indicators that something is off and black drivers are sought if there are real indicators but also when there are none then the bulk of drivers being caught will likely be in those being searched with real indicators showing something off. In which case the likelihood of a driver carrying contraband is not really correlated to their race.
It's not a “hot take” at all, it is like the official of the GOP, and have been so for quite some time.
Actually it is a pretty common trope from concervatives talking about anti-racism. For instance in France this argument dates at least since the 80s (your sentence is almost an exact translation of a bullet point in the agenda of the Front National in 1986 (far right and Holocaust deniers, cofounded by a former waffer SS French volunteer, by the way), which changed name to Rassemblement National and grew to become the second most powerful political party in France).
Indeed I didn't, for good reasons[1] my comment was
aiming at the claim that this commonplace was a “hot take”.
[1] it's not even an argument to beging with, it's a cheap attempt at decredibilizing the opponent with an inflamatory comparison. You wouldn't lose time to discuss the claim that “conservatives are nazis” or anything like that would you? If you're genuinely interested in an intelligent discussion about that slogan, just search on your favorite search engine: many people have actually discussed it in depth and showed how stupid it is (which is something I deeply admire, since Brandolini's law is very real).
So you've used two tactics now: 1) try and smear people who make this statement by saying "bad people" use it too and now 2) saying that the statement is so "clear false" that it's not even worth trying to refute.
Color me skeptical.
And i would certainly refute that "conservatives are Nazis" is someone made that statement. It's pretty easily falsifiable.
> And i would certainly refute that "conservatives are Nazis" is someone made that statement. It's pretty easily falsifiable.
Yet you didn't bother to do it.
> Can you falsify the OP's statement?
Well, pretty easily given that a big fraction anti-racist intellectual and activists are actually white people. Black and white dudes working together on something sounds pretty far from “regular racism”. You can criticize anti-racists actions or arguments all you want (for instance I'm really not fond of affirmative action) but calling them racist is just dumb. And I don't really think that anybody in good faith on this kind of forum (with mostly folks with higher education) can sincerely believe it.
As someone else already pointed out, this is the exact argument made by the far right. It is entirely dishonest and only serves to suppress efforts to improve the situation of oppressed groups.
You can do better than this kind of intellectual laziness. Go learn what actual anti-racism is. Don't just blindly accept contrarianism by those who wish to harm.
