For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

This sort of thing has never, ever happened to me. Nobody has ever suggested that I hire a wingman of a different ethnicity or gender or anything similarly asinine either.

I understand the impulse to flag follow-up stories [1], especially on the hottest controversies of the moment, which always produce a flood of articles, most of which aren't very good. Curiosity and repetition don't go together [2]. But it's important to recognize the articles that are higher than median quality and not simply flag an entire category mechanically. Curiosity isn't mechanical either.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Consider that people are not flagging it because "it's a follow up article", but because a) it's Bloomberg, ergo hard to believe b) it's the seven billionth "minorities in tech" story in the past month c) it's not going to create an interesting comment section d) they don't find it as interesting as you do.

It's your site of course, but if "moderators build the front page" is the new modus operandi, I'll be disappointed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hm - I have had people look past me to talk to my Indian co-workers when asking technical questions: they just assume the Indian guy is the technical one and the white guy is the business manager.

(a) HN has had many good submissions from bloomberg.com (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). We go by article quality, not site quality (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). There's nothing hard to believe about this article. If there were, the solution would be to provide correct information or specific counterarguments. Obviously we're not going to ban bloomberg.com.

(b) I addressed this point thoroughly in the comment you're replying to.

(c) You probably shouldn't complain about the comment section's interestingness while contributing to lowering it. It remains to be seen how interesting this thread will end up being. One reason we try to focus on the most substantive articles is that they usually lead to better comments.

(d) Plenty of users, to judge by upvotes, find this article interesting. Those who flagged it presumably didn't. The tug of war between upvotes and flags is one of the axes around which HN turns. It works surprisingly well, but it's not perfect. It has failure modes, and human intervention is the only way to address them.

(e) HN is a moderated/curated/however you want to call it kind of site. It always has been. HN's system is built out of three subsystems: the community, the software, and moderation. They interact in complex feedback loops. All three are necessary and all three have their limits.

I thought the remedy for this was not upvoting rather than flagging.

I would urge people to stop and question that if they are tired of the "billion"s of stories about BIPOC, what must BIPOC be feeling about their systemic erasure from many facets of our society, including journalism and entrepreneurship. This article allows us to think about and discuss those issues.

The article is not hard to believe, is one of substance that I find interesting, and the content of the comment section is not the only arbiter of what should go on Hacker News.

I would suggest that Occam's Razor is a better tool here; a small number of people who want to silence the idea the article presents are trying to silence it.

Don't forget that Bloomberg regularly and knowingly spreads literal fake news, for example the whole "Huawei bugged Vodafone's equipment" debacle.

There are just as many reasons to dismiss every other large media outlet. You may have a bee in your bloomberg bonnet, but there are just as many bees in NYT bonnets and all the other bonnets. Obviously we're not going to ban all those sites; what we're going to do instead, hopefully, is pick the best articles and discuss them thoughtfully. Shallow/generic site dismissals aren't that, so please stop.

I don't buy into this theory that all Bloomberg content must be difficult to believe by default. There have been bad articles but I don't see a reason to automatically discount all articles.

I've recently been reading/watching some videos and writings by Robin Diangelo on systemic racism - here's a great starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7mzj0cVL0Q. She also wrote the book "White Fragility".

Thinking about that, I'm just wondering how different it would be if one of those people who mistook the employee for the CEO instead turned to the CEO and said "I'm sorry, please excuse me for the instance of racism I just perpetrated against you, I promise it won't happen again." I realize how outlandish that may sound writing that out, but I'd propose that the fact that it does sound outlandish is the main problem. Everyone in the US was raised in an environment that inculcated certain racial ideas, subconsciously or not. We can't address them if we're so embarrassed by their existence as to pretend they don't exist.

Thanks for unflagging it, otherwise I would have missed it I'm sure.

That doesn't sound outlandish to me at all. For what it's worth, it doesn't have to phrased in a stilted manner like that. A quiet "That was racist and I have no excuse. I am sorry, and will do better in the future." is fine.

I suspect that most people who want to "get the hell out" rather than apologize for racism have little to no experience with making sincere apologies and trying to genuinely mend fences in general. This probably has a significant overlap with people who claim that you should immediately leave your employer rather than speak out about any of their policies that you disagree with.

uh. nothing new about it. it makes this site great.

There are plenty of things that have never happened to me, despite it being possible/probable that they should. In 20 years I've never been called for Jury duty. It's never, ever happened to me. Does that mean I should disregard the experiences of people who have experienced jury duty?

Either way, it would be nice if we could look at my comment as doing what I can to not be offensive, instead of nitpicking an argument that is clearly trying. Instead of tearing it down, do you have another suggestion?

Racism doesn't imply intent either. It absolutely can be the case that someone unknowingly makes a racist inference even with the best of intentions.

The world has changed drastically in the last five years. It is white men who feel silenced in the tech industry, by HR, the press, CEOs and activists.

So the article can be true of course, but it aligns less and less with what we see in the field.

Anti-racism is about taking on the powers and material structures that reproduce racism in our society to put an end to that reproduction. It’s what the multiracial coalition is doing right now, in the streets, forcing changes to laws and policing.

All of this has little to do with your boss paying someone to lecture you about why you’re bad/biased/ignorant. In fact, it’s contrary to anti-racism, because it positions your boss, who controls your life and buys her classes, as the arbiter of what is and isn’t racism.

People would be better off studying the life and work of Fred Hampton.

BIPOC puts this group of people (Black and Indigenous) as a separate group before POC, since they face these challenges of simply surviving in society while doing what most of the "rest of us" consider normal activities. At first I was puzzled about why indigenous people were included, but then realized, for example, that Native Americans are killed in police encounters at a higher rate than any other ethnic group [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_John_Crawford_III

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sureshbhai_Patel (it's sobering to note that even in this case, Patel had the police called on him because someone thought he was Black)

[3] https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/10/us/native-lives-matter/index....

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php

And I also thought that this article, about the Brookings Institution's decision to capitalize Black in their reports, had some interesting historical context:

https://www.brookings.edu/research/brookingscapitalizesblack...

In some circumstances, it's not harmful to assume the person wearing a suit is the CEO, though you might not always be right. The person in the suit might also be head of sales, while baggy clothes is CEO. Generally, it's better not to assume at all unless you're forced to. Just ask.

But inferring that someone isn't the CEO because they're black? I'm sorry, but that's racism pure and simple. Stereotyping is one form of racism (not the only one). You have no reason to make the inference, and it's highly insulting if you make a mistake. And to assume that feelings wouldn't be hurt is... tremendously naive and blind to the reality of racism.

The AP, I believe, prefers lowercasing both. Some publications will capitalize just Black. Discussions of casing these words go back at least a decade, but I don't believe there's a strong consensus yet?

If it makes you feel any better, I'm always looking for ways to relax control and intervene less, partly because control and intervention are work, and partly because I like the Tao Te Ching.

I wrote about this point upthread too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23543970, particularly the last bit.

Or you can simply find a viable business model and remain bootstrapped without running to VCs for capital all the time, which is just like begging to have another boss, when in reality, they're creating a gigantic exit scam IPO or may pull out with their cash at anytime. [0][1]

Nothing stopping them and no excuses here.

[0] https://basecamp.com/bootstrapped

[1] https://twitter.com/chetanp/status/1205907182396395525

While I completely agree that the stories in this article are hugely problematic and represent issues that need to be solved, I think books like "White Fragility" are not helpful in solving them. This is due to a focus on group identity, and describing "White" as if it's a monolithic group of people, all with the same culture, emotions, and reactions.

Another interesting aspect I identified while reading the book was it's description of the emotions that one can expect to see when confronting white people about race issues: the description could have been used to describe any human being you will ever meet when you accuse/blame them for something that they did not personally do. It really does read like a horoscope in that sense.

I find it ironic that people on HN, who are typically super data driven, get on board with works like "White Fragility". Diangelo is one of many academics from the humanities departments who are incredibly pseudo-scientific. Data is incredibly scarce, measurements and studies even less so. Statistical knowledge isn't present in the vast majority of these folks. Typically, the "scientific method" is reading and writing essays/novels. When you don't attempt to quantify a problem, you can't propose solutions and then measure their results. You instead just keep yourself busy finding ever more ways to describe the water to the drowning person.

Even within her book she claims that no amount of training will solve the issue, it seems that "White Fragility" is just another way for White people to tamp down the anxiety of race relations in the United States, rather than take any meaningful action towards changing it.

If your goal is to truly understand the Black american experience, it's best to start with actual Black authors. The House That Race Built by Wahneema Lubiano is a great set of essays about race and class structures.

My Asian friends say that especially Asian women have problems being taken as authority figures as well. My friend was a senior manager at an accounting firm and went to visit a client with a fresh grad who was a tall white male. The client instantly greeted the fresh grad first and assumed he was the manager and she was the subordinate.

If a certain type of discrimination of perception arises due to stereotypes, but by and large affects certain racial groups, then is it racism ? It also affects women as it does those who do not abide by personality traits of the valley's cargo cult or the Ivy MBA.

> just accept the correction and move on

Yeah. I think in such cases a sincere apology is at the minimum warranted.

I would honestly suggest watching the video I linked by Robin Diangelo. I think that level of embarrassment/defensiveness would be common to the vast, vast majority of white people of a particular social class in the US, regardless of their broader experience making sincere apologies. Putting the frame of reference of "Look, only people so inexperienced with socialization that they can't make sincere apologies" in my opinion takes away from the more likely reality that the belief that "only bad people can be racist" is what is limiting forward progress in these areas.

https://www.theroot.com/capitalizing-the-b-in-black-is-nice-...

> At The Root, we’ve had a long-standing debate over capitalizing the “B” in black. Some of us are adamantly for it, while others (myself included) are grammar freaks who think that if we capitalize “black” we would also have to capitalize “white,” and I, personally, have no interest in that as it would continue to center whiteness.

One area to look is politicians apologizing for being wrong and the extent that is treated a weakness by their political opponents.

I think a society where the better choice of action is to own up to a mistake makes for a better society.

It can be both.

"Women drive badly" is a sexist stereotype, but not racism.

"Black people drive badly" would be both a stereotype and racism.

It's just assumed that I have no idea what "all the kids are into," these days. I guess they think that I'm being "Lenny Wosniak."

I grew up in Africa. I was quite used to black people running things, from a very early age.

As if two human beings who both happen to be white are the same, when one was born in a trailer park and the other a high-rise in Central Park West. I was pretty irritated to see her book getting promoted by my HR department, who is filled with people who proudly brag about "math not being my thing."

That creates a catch-22 for anyone who commits a faux-pas (like mistaking the black CEO for a subordinate). Either admit to racism and cast oneself in with the cross-burners, or bail out of the situation ASAP.

We have the same kind of problem with the label of "sex offender." It's a category that runs the gamut from "guy who got arrested for public urination while walking home drunk from the bar one night" all the way to Jeffrey Dahmer.

Scott over at Slate Star Codex has a fantastic piece that covers this phenomenon [1]. The core idea has to do with the tension between central and non-central examples of a category:

Remember, people think in terms of categories with central and noncentral members – a sparrow is a central bird, an ostrich a noncentral one. But if you live on the Ostrich World, which is inhabited only by ostriches, emus, and cassowaries, then probably an ostrich seems like a pretty central example of ‘bird’ and the first sparrow you see will be fantastically strange.

I'm glad we're having this conversation in society. I honestly don't know what to do about it though.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweap...

I admit I only just started reading her book, so can't comment on that, but I would say that's not the takeaway I got from any of the online videos or interviews I've seen of her, most definitely not from the youtube one I linked.

A better example would be, "women aren't passionate about driving". That's a stereotype, likely a correct one (i.e. substantiated by statistics... I mean, I'm not certain, but that would be my prior, but I'm very open to changing it), and most importantly: not harmful. It's just a stereotype.

I'm not denying that things could be harmful (racism, sexist, ...). But not all stereotypes are. Like guessing that "Alex" is probably a guy.

Interesting. My response to your recommendation of Dr. DiAngelo's work elsewhere in this thread was critical of her treating "white" as a monolith.

Which particular social class of whites do you think this applies to?

This also brings up another criticism I have about what I view is an absolute lack of scientific rigor: "White Fragility" is a phrase that can't be generalized to humans as a whole who are members of the dominant ethnic group of their respective societies. One would expect an urban, ethnic Han Chinese person to react in a similar pattern when confronted with their privilege in their own society. Think Japan as well.

Again, no measurements, or attempts to quantify. Which is convenient, when you realize that her workshops on anti-racism training feature an approach that has never been scientifically validated for efficacy in solving the problem.

I really hate to harp on this so much, but I am deeply interested in ACTUALLY SOLVING THE PROBLEM, and that makes me extra wary of people who sell snake oil cures to absolve HR departments of liability.

Not all groups face the same oppression and this term intentionally names the two groups which are systematically the most oppressed in a US context.

[0] https://www.thebipocproject.org/

'For the last year, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) has been integrating the capitalization of the word "Black" into its communications.

However, it is equally important that the word is capitalized in news coverage and reporting about Black people, Black communities, Black culture, Black institutions, etc.

NABJ's Board of Directors has adopted this approach, as well as many of our members, and recommends that it be used across the industry.

We are updating the organization's style guidance to reflect this determination. The organization believes it is important to capitalize "Black" when referring to (and out of respect for) the Black diaspora.

NABJ also recommends that whenever a color is used to appropriately describe race then it should be capitalized, including White and Brown.'

https://www.nabj.org/news/512370/NABJ-Statement-on-Capitaliz...

This appears to have been part of what prompted a large number of newspapers to change their style guides this past week, including USA Today, NBC News, MSNBC, the LA Times, the Seattle Times, the Boston Globe, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Washington Post.

To be honest - everyone, no matter who they are, makes judgements and has biases.

My earliest experience with this was seeing the difference in how people with college degrees from "good schools", "no-name schools", and "technical college" were treated during hiring at all of the companies where a third party put into place hiring policies.

Each of those people has their own "personal experience" about how easy or hard it is to find a job in the bay area. And those personal experiences are very different than mine.

How about just not making any assumptions at all and ask and support people, be it white, black, male, female, trans, etc?

Citation on those not being harmful? Stereotypes like that seem to be a driving factor in why STEM fields are very male dominated.

"Girls don't like cars; go find some dolls to play with."

That's a major criticism I have of the crusaders against "systemic racism." While I think the term is intended to capture the accumulated, "death by a thousand cuts" set of disadvantages that are faced by marginalized groups, it characterizes the problem in such a way that it makes it seem intractable. This is a perfect framing for politicians and activists, whose focus (IMHO) is on getting people mobilized by describing/raising awareness about problems, rather than actually solving them.

To me, when somebody describes specific examples of "systemic racism", I am immediately able to suddenly identify specific actions that can be taken to address each tractable problem. Replace "America is inherently racist" with "End Qualified Immunity" and "ensure public schools share funding across regions", etc. I think framing things like this makes the problems more solvable and far less politically useful for the demagogues.

https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.htm...

[0] https://www.thebipocproject.org/

Anyway, as to the subject of the article, I think it was covered in an episode of "The Jeffersons".

Why would the person on the victim end of this feel humiliated? I suspect,at least in part the body language offense and humiliation contributes to the awkwardness. Now, if they insist on treating the guy with less melanin as the boss even after being corrected...yeah, who wouldn't be pissed.

A little off-topic, but I notice a lot of the "All Lives Matter" people are mistaking the term "Black Lives Matter" as valuing black lives over others. I wonder if "Black Lives Matter Too" would convey its message better.

Apologies, in 2020 USA, just put a giant target on your head and don’t seem to be making much of a positive impact. Change that, you change the game.

People like their scalps too much right now.

No, it's my experience showing. I grew up being basically ostracized (and also bullied) for being a geek. Little did I know it would turn out to be an extremely lucrative career. Simply, while other boys were out playing sports, or indoors playing computer games, I was programming. Because I was interested.

Having said that, I think it's also the case that some people are discouraged from doing what they want, because parents/society. I don't think I'm doing that though. If anything, I'd be more curious about someone doing something unusual (not even in an anti-stereotypical way, but like, generally - such as archery, or spear fishing, or (until recently) bread-making).

> How about just not making any assumptions at all and ask and support people

I definitely support people doing pretty much whatever. But experience shows that it's often better to e.g. lead conversations into interesting topics, rather than play a questions & answers game to find a common interest. The more you're able to do that, based on quick inferences, the better conversationalist you are (on average).

You think that my response epitomized the thing I was complaining about. You are welcome to that opinion.

I think that your comment epitomizes the problem I was talking about, which is that this philosophy espouses that every thought in my head or word from my mouth is impossible to separate from my ethnicity. My ideas are beholden to and a product of my group identity in this worldview. I find that to be dangerous and regressive.

I should also add that "White Fragility" didn't "instantly" make me uncomfortable. I purchased and read the entire book. I was open minded about it, until the complete lack of scientific rigor and opinionated, essay-type qualities became clear.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/28/minecraft...

That may read as a suck-up but it's genuine gratitude -- this is my go-to site and the value comes from the dialog here, far more than the articles themselves.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQvL7YH0L_o

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

In this type of situation, the empathetic resolution would be to apologize for causing the victim's embarrassment, which most likely exceeds your own.

It's akin to just memorizing a list of microagressions like curse words and never saying them for fear of being fired. Anti-racism provides the tools to contextualize and understand why certain phrases are racist or biased.

Meanwhile, a central point of the book is one that should be self evident. Talking about racism makes white people[1] uncomfortable. I know this to be true from experience. And we can't make progress as a society until we own that discomfort and are willing to have frank conversations about racism.

I don't see how you need "statistical power" to recognize this or adopt this strategy.

Also, this:

> ccuse/blame them for something that they did not personally do

That's not what the discomfort is about. Of course none of us are _personally_ responsible for the systemic racism in the US. But if we can't even talk about it without getting uncomfortable, how are we going to fix it?

1: If this doesn't apply to you, great, I wasn't talking about you [2]

2: Except if this topic makes you annoyed enough to disagree then yes, I probably am talking about you.

I’m over forty and and upper middle class. It’s a true stereotype that we don’t tend to be passionate skateboarders, but someone that met me in a skatepark would not draw the conclusion that I’m not interested based on my age and socioeconomics.

Everyone has their own personal experience, that's just an unremarkable fact, not a _problem_.

> It is white men who feel silenced in the tech industry, by HR, the press, CEOs and activists.

How are you so sure your observation is specific to white men?

Someone always complains about reading Twitter threads, so here's a thread unroll https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1268665921364770816.html while I have also cut and pasted it here (again, this is Timothy Jones not me):

> I’m glad there’s now a vibrant discussion about black tech entrepreneurs and VC. Now might be a good time to discuss an elephant in the room: the systematic pushing aside of Black founders to make way for a White CEO who is “bankable”. Happens more often than not. I’ve seen this happen in two tech bull mkts; I hope those who have newfound interest in Black founders don’t repeat this same mistake

Here's the way it goes: Black Founder has an idea they're passionate about; could be demographically anchored, or just a great idea and they're Black. By some Miracle they raise a seed. They go off, build product, get some revenue even...

Now it's Series A time. Again, by some Miracle they raise a VC Series A. They're now part of the rate 1% of VC backed founders who are black. They add to their board 1-2 VC's from the usual suspects. They start to build a team...

Here's where the move is made. Somewhere between A and going for a B, the VC's on the board call the founder for a "chat". They "strongly suggest" that the founder get some "help" in order to get the company to the next stage. And they know just the guy...

'Cause it's always a guy. I call him "Business Biff". He looks like he's stepped out of central casting for "White Dude CEO". The Board VC's explain that Biff can "help" raise the next round, and "you two should really work together".

Black Founder says: "Ok, cool. Will reach out to Biff on a few things if I need him". VC's give the puzzled, RCA Dog-watching-TV-Look. "You know, we think Biff should really come on board the company to help you out ". "As What?" asks the Black Founder. "I already have a head of Sales/Finance/Marketing/etc"..."Well, we were thinking Biff should become CEO, and you become Chairman" "Sayyyyy whaaaa?" says Black Founder. "Am I being fired?". "Oh, No!" say the VC's. "We want you to stay and guide the strategy, Biff will be responsible for the day to day, and putting together the fundraise"

Not going to go into the details but here's essentially what happens:.

1. VC's realize that having a Black CEO creates financing RISK for the next round.

2. Best way to reduce the risk is to bring in a CEO who "pattern matches"

3. The problem is they still need the Founder. They still need the Founder for (a) mkt knowledge (b) passion so he/she doesn't get fired. But the bump to Chairman is designed to "keep them working, but not in control". It's straight out of the unopened letter in "Invisible Man".

There's a lot more here, but I'm raising the point now so that people realize that downstream of funding, there are still a ton of practices which need reforming. The kicker: The VC's decided to bring Biff in when they did the A. In fact, the seed investors may have suggested it, and backchanneled it to the A rounders. The bottom line is that even the investors realized blackness as a "risk" that needs to be managed down/out.

[0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kafkatrap

If you're a VC coming to a first meeting with a startup CEO and their team, none of whom you have met in person before, making an inference at all is simply unprofessional. You should be asking. The fact that the VC's inference was that the white person must be the CEO just adds the further insult of racist stereotyping to the insult of unprofessional behavior in this context.

My main takeaway from the article was not "lots of people in the startup world are racist" but "lots of people in the startup world are unprofessional assholes". I think the latter problem is what needs to be fixed.

As for where should a VC invest, I think it is his/her decision alone, and nobody else has any say that. Including the article's author.

This seems like a key moment to... cite data? Since you are broadly making pseudo-mathy sounding claims while complaining that others aren't as mathematically/statistically/factually rigorous as 'people on HN'.

Why wouldn't they? Being unfavorably stereotyped is almost universally frustrating and humiliating, regardless of any systemic concerns about racism and the like.

Wrt. the case mentioned by parent, it seems clear to me that the person involved should definitely apologize for their social faux pas and mistaken assumptions-- and that seeing them refuse to address the issue for fear of being regarded as racist or whatever would only result in even more frustration.

> Blacks that believe cops are out to kill them will be more likely to resist arrest and get killed.

Do you have any evidence for these assertions? I would be surprised if so, particularly with respect to the second, since police killings are notoriously difficult to gather data on, but I would certainly be interested to hear it.

A hypothetical: Reverse all the races in the VC/CEO situation. Who would the black VC assume was the CEO?

Repeat the experiment with whichever combination of race/sex you like.

I'm not doubting Timothy's experience, but if he's right, the point would have to be that VCs bring-in-Biff more often with black founders than they do white ones. Which seems entirely plausible, but that's not the argument I think I'm reading here.

But when it happens over and over and over, you can't help but feel frustrated. You realize that people natural instinct is to think you are the subordinate. One second your are on stage at Techcrunch (I was in 2017), where you have clearly introduced yourself. You get off-stage, they greet your colleague and ask him the questions as if he was on stage.

I was often in the interview room waiting for my interviewer, only to have him show up, and tell me I must be in the wrong room. A simple "Hey are you XYZ?" could have avoided this frustration.

I've written an article about my experience working as a black developer, I'll post it here in the near future. You wouldn't believe how lonely it is. In my team of 150 people, we were two black people.

It's humiliating for the "victim" because this probably happens on a daily basis. Tell me that wouldn't kneecap your confidence to constantly have to correct people and massage their egos and reassure them you're not offended just so they give you money. It's forcing the victim to perform the emotional labor of remediating the offense. It's wrong and we let people off the hook far too easily for it.

Those "associative generalizations" are racism, sexism and homophobia in a nutshell. You (not you in particular, but yeah, kind of) have certain associations bound to race. Acknowledge it, confront those feelings, and deal with them. It's your problem, not theirs; yet we constantly give people a pass on their own internalized racism because the people who are systemically oppressed by said racism aren't really in a position to call them out.

I'm not saying you should be fired from your job or anything; just that you should acknowledge that your generalizations do harm to people. Educate yourself on the things they go through to build empathy. Don't make them do the work you should be doing yourself. And don't assume that because they're exhausted from dealing with this daily and so don't act offended that they're not harmed by it.

The anti-racism movement is about white people not giving other white people a pass for casual racism. We have forced marginalized people of color to do the work on this front for too long, when it's a problem within the white community. Expect to be called out aggressively on this stuff from here on out until you educate yourself on why it's harmful.

I am all for having frank conversations, but I think the topic needs to be broader than "racism". It needs to be "systematic inequality of treatment". Or even better, "systematic violations of basic human rights". Then we can focus on why our society, which is supposed to be based on everybody having the same basic human rights, is not achieving that in practice, and how to fix it. Focusing on one particular group of people whose rights are being violated only distracts from that overall objective.

If you expect some kind of people to be in charge rather than others, it is a symptom of widespread racism/sexism in your environment. You doing the "mistake" does not mean you necessarily, actively, try to cause harm. But you still do, and this wouldn't happen if not for racism.

> Why would the person on the victim end of this feel humiliated?

For the person doing the mistake, it was one particular case of embarassment, for the victim it was Tuesday. The constant rate of mistakes make it humiliating.

Statements like this make it clear that this opinion is either highly uneducated or clearly not in good faith.

Time and time again, black people in America will tell you that they have to sit their kids down and explain in fine grain detail what do to if the cops pull them over so they are not killed, a conversation virtually no white people have. People don't have death wishes.

And even when people cooperate to the letter, people who do everything right still get brutalized or killed regularly.

Calendly, who's CEO is black, and is one of the top performing black led tech startups curiously doesn't have an about us page (and though I don't know the exact reason, I can only suspect why).

A very good friend of mine, a black woman in finance, had to have drinks with and entertain obnoxiously racist jokes from a potential white client to close the deal.

Black folks don't get the presumption of competence. You're assumed to be mediocre (or worse) until you can prove yourself exceptional.

It's not easy to say "sorry i was racist to you" and then briefly go on to talk about how you think their offer is bad and proposr something less (is it your racism again? ). It's a two way street is what I am saying, most people would see an apology as a weakness they can exploit.

It's difficult to design a study around. Calling it post-modern is just a slur. It's easier to say that you don't believe it.

Several years in people constantly arguing all lives matter and disingenuously arguing the point after correction are also a good filter for trolls.

Are the only important problems universal ones?

And citation for that citation, ad absurdum.

At some point, we have to agree on what is actually going on in this world. We can't solely rely on citations, because I can just say that those citations are a result of an oppressive patriarchy and as a result, I don't accept your citation as valid.

Where do we go form here?

The basis for any possible discussion is solidarity - society doesn't work if people are constantly being pitted against each other.

If it doesn't promote solidarity - it's anti society, pro anarchy. If you want guns in the streets and children screaming, we're well on our way. I just don't know if those creating anarchy (all of corporate media including social platforms) are even aware of what they've done - they're undermining the foundation of society that makes their existence possible and they don't seem to care.

I'll be contrarian and recommend Thomas Sowell's "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" instead.

And to make this personal, feeling like you have to be the best in every group in order to be respected enough that you can't be ignored leads to overwork and burnout.

> Why wouldn't they? Being unfavorably stereotyped is almost universally frustrating and humiliating,

I'd say because feeling humiliated is a completely wrong feeling but maybe something is lost in translation?

Here is my attempt, note that I'm not a native English speaker and I also haven't been in the US for long enough to understand all American customs but I read a lot of English and write a lot English:

- if someone does a mistake in front of others the perpetrator will normally feel embarrassed

- if this happens often enough the victim will feel annoyed and frustrated

- humiliated on the other hand is when someone tells others about something dumb you did.

is this correct?

I'm not claiming to be an expert in either area, and I don't mean to draw parallels between them. I think it just speaks to how complicated identity is for humans, not to even begin to mention empathy.

[0]: https://www.deafax.org/single-post/2016/06/08/What-are-big-D...

It's also problematic because the workplace inherently has an underlying adversarial quality that can provide a never-ending supply of "microaggressions" and various forms of otherings that effectively sow more division than actually get non-whites anywhere.

The author is particularly clever for writing a book for the target of anti-racism, because the market for "look who's racist" media is thoroughly saturated.

Since race is becoming a greater and greater issue, I imagine it will continue to become a get-rich-quick scheme for some adept to the English language, or the language of CorporateSpeak.

Who is "we", even?

The fact that she was standing on the customer side of the counter would probably be a bigger factor than her gender.

Can you expand on this a little bit? It sounds a lot like:

>It's akin to just memorizing a list of microagressions like curse words and never saying them for fear of being fired

With extra steps. What are these tools and how do they avoid accidentally putting the cart in front of the horse in terms of goals vs. reality?

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thomas+sowell

If you had done that while she was on the other side of the counter or if she was wearing some kind of obvious uniform you'd have a point. However, if she was on your side of the counter and had no obvious signs of working there, there would be no reason to think she was anything but a customer.

The alternative would be to address all the customers as if they worked there, and that's just not practical.

From my limited understanding of this position, it sounds like the goal is a dismantling of police and courts which form the backbone of a civil rule of law society.

The whole point of OP's article is to say nope, this is quite wrong. There's still a lot of unwarranted shame and, yes, humiliation attached to even something as ordinary as being CEO of a business-- if you happen to be Black. It's not an easy problem to solve, and most naïve, even well-intentioned suggestions don't necessarily help.

> Everyone knows that testosterone makes young men orders of magnitude more violent

You're using hyperbole but yes it's commonly understood that there's a link between testosterone and aggression, however you extend that claim to something completely different

> why is it inconceivable that they could also be 4 times more interested in more mechanic play? It’s been observed even in almost newborn chimpanzees for Gods sake.

I counter that this second claim is related to the first, is it that testosterone makes young males more likely to play with mechanical objects? There are a few articles that reference this study from 2008 [1]. It refers to rhesus monkeys not chimpanzees and their hypothesis at the end is much more nuanced

>We offer the hypothesis that toy preferences reflect hormonally influenced behavioral and cognitive biases which are sculpted by social processes into the sex differences seen in monkeys and humans.

Furthermore there is at least 1 meta-analysis from 2017 [2] that highlights

> Gender differences in toy choice exist and appear to be the product of both innate and social forces. > Despite methodological variation in the choice and number of toys offered, context of testing, and age of child, the consistency in finding sex differences in children's preferences for toys typed

Note they do not make the claim that testosterone is the cause of these differences. Scientists try to be careful about the language they use, we should be just as careful.

1: Sex differences in rhesus monkey toy preferences parallel those of children - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2008.03.008

2: Sex differences in children's toy preferences: A systematic review, meta‐regression, and meta‐analysis - https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2064

Regrettably, this is an area where both regions are equally terrible.

What is wrong with people? That's just basic courtesy.

If I was in India, and walked into a company meeting with a diverse set of people, I would assume the Indian looking person is the CEO. If I was in Japan, I would assume the Japanese looking person was the CEO.

This isn't racism. This is the human brain using pattern recognition to evaluate a situation and infer information as best it can under the circumstances.

People aren't actually colored black or white, and you can have the same coloring as a person who is black or white ane be neither black or white.

I'm not a big fan of the capitalization, but it's reasonable. Are "Aboriginal" or "Indigenous" place names or honorifics?

I thought “fundamentally understanding the lived experiences of the black community” was impossible for non-black people. What white person has achieved this goal? If none, is it impossible for a white person to be “anti-racist?”

I acknowledge racism is a real issue but think it’s reasonable to disagree what the best solution is. This stuff (white fragility etc) just smells way too much like “original sin” and “we are all sinners but must strive towards holiness, however unachievable” to me.

To expand on the bit about Social Security, farmworkers were excluded, since farmworkers tend to be not white. It was a nice sneaky way to be racist without coming out and doing so explicitly.

It is not racist to assume that the person in the room most like the other CEOs you have met, is also the CEO. If I was in a foreign country, I would assume the CEO is the person most like the other people in that country. I never made any assumption about competence. Half the time I think the least competent person in the room is the CEO. Sadly that's how business works. There would be nothing racist - intentional, or unintentional - about my assumption.

That isn't a different thing than "racism". When you don't know, don't assume.

I thought it wise to try this strategy when looking for employment, but I think it actually works against me in that case. If the employer knows I'm black then they can filter me out from the get-go and save both of us time rather than be dragged through a pointless interview process. It's hard to really quantify the exact degree to which my race is a detriment to how I'm perceived, but I sense it often enough to know that it's there in some capacity.

> Society pretending that there is massive racism when there isn't is itself structural racism.

If you believe you cannot succeed due to all this racism, that will be sulf-fulfilling.

Blacks that believe in widespread racism will be less likely to go to university and get a job

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The grandparent is victim-blaming PoC for not having the "Right mentality". The comment itself is what has been identified as polite racism, but I see this as rather rude.

(I also never realized what it must feel like to be a Christian in America until I visited Israel for the first time and had a sense of being among "my people", which didn't really make any sense because I'm not Israeli, but at the same time it felt comforting being among so many Jews in a greater way than when I'm at temple.)

Of course, unless I announce I am Jewish, I know I'm not being judged by it. I can only imagine how difficult it is that whenever you are slighted, you don't know for certain whether it is due to being black. It must be very hard not to start assuming that it's always the reason.

I'll watch for your future post. I look forward to reading it.

This conversation is difficult to have, but I would be doing everyone a disservice if I didn't state what I thought was true and if I was unwilling to be publicly wrong. Downvotes are more instructive than upvotes.

When the basic premise of the argument is that white Americans are born irredeemably flawed[1], you're unlikely to win many white supporters other than the most guilt-ridden.

I suppose the tactic is to impart as much guilt as possible. But that doesn't make the argument a good one.

[1] https://twitter.com/DisrnNews/status/1266857347567190016

I’m not sure I fully appreciate the point your making with breaking down the idea “America is inherently racist.” Outside of Twitter I’ve encountered exactly zero conversations that start and immediately end with such a statement. Of course things like qualified immunity and equitable education come into play - these topics have been heavily discussed in the public sphere for decades! To link them in this case to speak to a community’s broader experience seems both reasonable and necessary.

For a light hearted analogy — say I get a burrito from a taqueria on Monday and shit my pants and then go back Tuesday for tacos and shit myself again. When I’m retelling that story on Wednesday over sushi, you’d better believe I’m using the name of the restaurant.

Whether this psychological effect is more or less damaging than the racism is probably undeterminable. But because society widely believes the racism is the bigger problem, and my instincts run the other way, I'm taking the other side.

The group which can self-identify as biased is probably much larger (fortunately?). The challenge is that by naming/labeling the big discussion systemic racism, its possible for a much larger (and perhaps more influential) group of people to blissfully ignore the big discussion being had about both systemic racism and systemic implicit bias - the latter of which to a certain extent the original article seems to be about.

The idea of "dismantling of police" does not mean we do not offer protection. It just means that the current organization "police" is not providing the services it's customers want. Years of "tweaking" the police orgs have failed to provide results. It's time to create a new way to protect citizens.

So. One immediate problem, from statistics alone, is that the people you are meeting with are not drawn from a random sampling of the population. There is clearly a 50% chance that one of those two unknown people is the CEO. (If it were 3 people, a 33.33% chance, 4 people a 25% chance, and so on.) So I don't think your reasoning is sound.

Also, the end result of your argument is "the black person in this group isn't likely to be the CEO because they are black," and, well. I get that you're trying to arrive there through what you think is pure mathematics, but it is nonetheless the kind of conclusion that I believe the kids call "problematic."

Person A is an upper-middle class Indian. They study software engineering at university in India. They immigrate to the United States and get a job working as a software engineer in Silicon Valley.

Person B is a working class African-American. Nobody in their family has ever been to university. They work in a service job and live in the suburbs of Atlanta.

What do A and B actually have in common? It seems to me, probably not very much. Their life experiences are very different. A lives a much more privileged life than B. Probably, A actually has more in common with, and more commonality of interests, with their Caucasian American colleagues than with B. Given that, doesn't labelling them both as "POC" obscure more than it reveals?

It also completely ignores the problem that India has with anti-African racism and violence, see e.g – https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/24/the-harsh-reality-of-be... – something of which person A may of course be personally entirely innocent, but then again maybe not. If anything, I think the term "POC" is deeply Western-centric (and even US-centric), and presumes that racism and racial conflict is always whites-against-everyone else, when in the wider world it often isn't. (Africans in India, Uighurs and Tibetans in China–and, I think the case of China shows, trying to blame European colonialism for non-Western racism doesn't always work. Or, again, consider how Japan treated Koreans.)

I think the term BIPOC is potentially problematic in that it presents African-American and Native American interests as being more aligned than maybe they actually are. What is the foundational story of US history? The New York Times' 1619 Project presents it as being the Atlantic slave trade. Why that, and not the dispossession of Native Americans? Many African-Americans (and even many Caucasian Americans) seem to want to privilege the African-American narrative over the Native American narrative. Are Native Americans okay with that? I'm sure at least some are not. But lumping them together as "BIPOC" serves to obscure, even erase, these tensions.

(Throwaway because, I hope people can appreciate my comments are an attempt to approach these issues thoughtfully, but in today's climate one has to be very careful what one says.)

> Society pretending that there is massive racism when there isn't is itself structural racism

I'm not sure where is best to start here because there are so many things that have to go into actually believing that, and so many combinations, but there are tons of resources floating around so I truly do encourage you to seek those out.

A basic starting point list beyond police brutality: public school funding systems, household wealth inequality and lack of reparations + exponential investment growth, medical treatment differences (go look up the guides for black people in the US to get proper medical treatment from a doctor), the prison industrial complex, the criminalization of drugs in the US + its history, crack vs powder cocaine sentencing laws, parole laws

If you prefer movie format: 13th, I Am Not Your Negro, The House I Live In

> I am saying that the level of racism is low

This sums up why your comment go downvoted so far. The social media world is overflowing with resources showing the opposite right now with extensive evidence and research. It has always been there but it has never been more accessible.

Would they have done even better without the racism? Or what accounts for the difference?

One shouldn't think of oneself as the center of this situation. Your dubious appeals to evopysch relate to what's going on (or not) in one's brain, while one's behavior that is observable to others just says "black people are subordinate".

The are roughly 50 million black Americans out of a population of 330M. Americans own roughly $100T in wealth. So black Americans should own about 50 / 330 * 100T or $15T. But they currently only own about $5.5T.

We could start by allocating some our our Federal tax dollars to making black Americans whole.

Sources:

- https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts...

- https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining...

- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/raci...

- https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/04/06/the-black...

Edit: downvotes but no replies.

Why are they doing more harm than good? Because, after a claim like that, the conversation is over. There's absolutely no point in talking to someone who makes claims like that. And it makes you less likely to be willing to talk to the next person, either. So the net amount of whites willing to learn and talk about race and racism goes down when people say stuff like this.

(It's also factually untrue, blatantly unfair, and bigoted...)

* GI Bill: adopted in 1944, expired in 1956.

* Social Security: adopted in 1935, unclear what the impacts were at the time. Unclear what the impacts are today.

* Redlining: created in 1934, illegal since 1977.

As an immigrant that landed in US post 2000 with $1000 to my name and a tenuous F1 situation, all this sounds like ancient history. Much more stringent appear, in no particular order and not pretending to be exhaustive:

* the whole F1/H1B situation, which depresses the domestic labor market in technical jobs, especially software, but also research at large

* global competition, especially with China

* the over financialization of the economy

* the profits accumulating at the very top since the 2008 Great Recession

* the explosion of real estate market in big cities, way above what we pretend the inflation rate is

* manufacturing decline

* offshoring of entire industries to East Asia

* right now, the covid19 lockdowns which are destroying the service economy, which was supposed to be the future of jobs

* the decimation of small business America due to same covid19 lockdowns.

* specifically for the black community, the lack of academic achievement

* the rise of the gig economy and Amazon warehouse jobs

* the opioid, homelessness and suicide crisis

* the obesity crisis, and the related food deserts

Again, not a young black guy or gal. But if I'd were, there'd be 10 high priority items on my worry list before I'd get to the Civil Rights Era. As a nation we seem to have abandoned the middle and working class of all colors. The public discourse is obsessed with Instagram influencers and race histories half a century old if not older, sometimes much older.

Violence being the language folks use after all else fails.

Starting with violence means you don't really care about solving the problem and just want the incident to go away

Did you pick this idea up somewhere else or think of it yourself? I've not heard that concept, and it makes way too much sense.

People should use blank slates in more situations than they do.

It’s not all upside as some people take you to be slow for “not making connections,” but on the other hand you don’t make bad assumptions.

There is 0% chance that all police departments will all change in 2020. I'm happy to voice my support that some cities are willing to try new things. If it works great. If not, back to the drawing board.

It's not. The goal is to demand equal protections under the law for all, eliminate racial bias in policing, judging and sentencing, and make police themselves follow the law.

Don't be misled by the "defund police" mantra. It's just a way to divert resources to community engagement programs and/or get out of contracts with police unions. It doesn't literally mean "shut down the police department and courts".

> From my limited understanding of this position

At least you're honest about it. I'd encourage you to educate yourself instead of just relying on soundbites and scare-mongering media headlines (not saying that's what you've been doing so far).

> Rule #1 of negotiation is never negotiate from a position if weakness. As the original comment suggests, this is indeed fragility, you feep weak for being wrong and you would feel a lot weaker if you said it out loud.

In my comment, I said that an apology would have been the proper resolution:

> In this type of situation, the empathetic resolution would be to apologize for causing the victim's embarrassment, which most likely exceeds your own.

And frankly, since you have called me a "radical" and a "commie" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23544865) because I had made two comments stating that an apology would be the correct approach in the situation, your perception of the Overton window needs some serious adjustment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

any position that doesn't losslessly compress into a chant or a rally cry or 240 characters is effectively censored by its own unfitness for the infrastructure of mass propagation.

this ultimately favors certain corners of the anti-censorship crowd, for you can be vocally against censorship while knowing full well that it is the most overbroad, reductionist and populist strains of messaging that prevail under such conditions.

I am a contrarian by nature; I'm always motivated to find fault with the prevailing narrative, not to confirm it, irrespective of the topic. Contrarians provide a useful service to society, but due to highly inflammed emotions, this particular topic has been nearly unapprochable by contrarians. Most are keeping their mouths shut. The result is IMHO people going too far in one direction because they are not hearing counterveiling data/opinions/reasoning.

I know at least one person who has.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/27/black-like-me-...

I know it's not possible for everyone to do what John Howard Griffin did, but reading that book and living that experience vicariously can be a start.

I'm sorry, but your opinion here does not match with either practical, common, or academic definitions for racism.

People have internal biases all the time that cause them to be averse to particular racial groups -- particularly disadvantaged racial groups. They may not even realize they are doing it, but that doesn't mean that it's not racist. (For example, resumes with White names are more likely to receive callbacks than those with Black names. There may be no intent by the resume reviewer.)

Another example, asking to touch a Black stranger's hair is othering, which is a type of racist behavior. The person asking usually isn't intending to be racist, and is 'just' trying to satisfy their own curiosity. There's no ill intent, but that doesn't mean it's OK.

You're probably experiencing the problem I wrote about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098. The fact that HN is a non-siloed site causes people to run into things here that they don't run into elsewhere, and it creates a shock reaction.

I bet you're particularly running into the international aspect, which is so much more influential on these perceptions than anybody realizes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438403. The way people approach this topic in other countries is not at all the way Americans approach it. In particular, arguments that would make Americans wince (or "head desk", as you put it) are obliviously unobjectionable to users in other places, and those users have zero idea about the conventions they're breaking in an American context, or how inflammatory they are. It pains me to see these misunderstandings, but what can we do. "Excuse me, but the person you're disagreeing with is actually posting from $country, to judge by their IP"? Out of the question.

An example:

- I run into a white friend and call him Dave (another white guy I know), when his name is Mark. It happens, I apologize as I'm terrible with names.

- I run into a black friend and call him Dave (another black guy I know), when his name is Mark. It happens, I apologize as I'm terrible with names.

In the 2nd instance, you can guarantee someone will accuse me of bring racist.

Basically, people make mistakes and say rude things all the time. But throw race in there and suddenly everything is viewed in the worst possible light.

Anti-racism is being against making judgement based on race. Nothing more. No laundry list of buzz words or actions.

Understanding 'the Black community' doesn't even make sense at all. Like all Black people are part of this community where if you truly understand and experience the worst pain only then you can start to find racism in society and yourself.

Racism can come from anyone and be directed to anyone or group.

You haven't been exposed to a very broad range of parents. I've seen parents who very tightly control which toys, clothes, and grooming choices their kids make because they don't align with the parent's gender expectations. It's frustratingly common in the US.

Even if their selection process for Biff was completely gender / race blind, as long as the primary qualification for Biff is "has previously been CEO" then the next generation of companies will continue to inherit the previous generation of companies' demographics.

That isn't to say that other ethnic groups don't deal with racism too. But it's different. An African American executive in a suit may be mistaken for being a waiter, but he's unlikely to be asked where he's "really from" like an Asian American.

Now that's not to say race wasn't an issue in this particular case. I don't know.

In the end the only the rich would have protection. Probably not the best path. For an example see the private police in London. They answer to no one.

If you learn anti-racist behavior and perform it only to manipulate, eventually you're caught, with ramifications for your life or your legacy.

In any case, white America certainly needs to try to understand black America better, but also of great importance is that they begin to understand themselves better. Their history (e.g., "The Lost Cause" is a myth), their personal and communal psychology (e.g., white fragility and guilt), and their behavior (e.g., white flight and opportunity hoarding); and to square that with what they claim are their higher ideals.

  - Management: Europeans
  - Coding: Russians
  - QA: Indians

Same thing happened after me too where many men were afraid to risk power for a real life hookup with the risks involved and have opted out for paided (where legal) risk free transactions. Which in turn has reduced the amount of relationships in general and made everyone lonely.

I’ve always been a “treat others as you would like to be treated” person. But a lot of this anti-racist concept is appearing on all my pod casts. And now I have to see race?

I’m in Australia and I think these are largely US concepts. Frankly I wish we’d stop importing US culture. Australia isn’t perfect but we largely agree on things like universal health care and getting rid of guns. So I think we can combat racism without having to look at the US for guidance.

Who offers the protection? Ultimately the are going to be people tasked with stopping criminal behavior, with force if said criminals resist. This isn't a dismantling of the police it's a rebranding.

Is it plausible to assume that STEM fields and female participation is a case where stereotypes have very little effect? I think I'd need some pretty strong evidence for the idea stereotypes had little effect on any kind of career choice. Even less so for fields where any mention of stereotypes and gender imbalance garners a furious insistence that the stereotype is [i] irrelevant to anyone's advice or decision making [ii] also such an accurate representation of biologically-driven preferences it would be unfair for the gender ratio to change

In the situations described in the article (VC pitch, sales pitch), just make introductions like a normal human being. "Hi, I'm triceratops nice to meet you <hold out hand, other person states their name in turn>"

If there are multiple people in the room, follow a fixed, consistent order. Options include nearest-to-farthest or left-to-right or starting from the head of the table.

This doublespeak, which reminds me of the whole "Kill All Men" issue, which itself was quickly followed by a rush to say "Noo you stupid man, we don't mean kill all men, just some men", makes my skin crawl.

Let's take a quick look at the dictionary:

Defund:

verb

prevent from continuing to receive funds.

If you are failing to use the language correctly, correct yourself. Don't attempt to gaslight people and twist the meaning of established terms.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

Would-be spoilers get educated about their own unrealized bias, racism continues to be a huge problem in this country, activists are vindicated and the world moves on.

That’s a part of why there is such a big push for better minority representation on all fields. VC partnerships, boards, upper management, etc. More diversity means more models of what a successful VC, CEO, Entrepreneur, etc looks like.

All of this ignores two central flaws in the concept of a "contrarian":

1. The "going to far" that people seem to be so concerned with has few to no examples, while history is littered with injustices not corrected far enough every step of the way. Literally the story of black people in the United States, at every step, can be summarized by "not far enough".

2. There is an implicit claim here that in order to critique and improve the prevailing narrative, you need to be taking the other side. Constructive internal work while still moving forward is perfectly capable of addressing the same things. A contrarian is always inherently on the side of privilege and the oppressor, it is a luxury of circumstance. That same luxury could do so much more good being used to push forward as part of the change, reforming from within, instead of working against.

> due to highly inflamed emotions

I think you are highly undervaluing emotions, something people "of logic/science" do far too often. If there are this many strong emotions on something, something is causing them. Highlighting and fixing that source issue is likely far more important than any possible value from contrarian approaches.

--------------------------------------------------

I'm gonna be honest, I'm tired of dealing with contrarians and hopefully this short and incomplete response compared to the subject will be useful. I suspect this is a longer road I don't have time/energy for, but I truly plead that you examine this "nature" and stop being a contrarian. There are so many better ways to capture the priorities I would guess underly it without, being frank, coming off as an asshole [1] to everyone and devaluing basic humanist ideas of injustice and empathy.

I have no doubt you've experienced being treated based off of that diagnosis or criticized like this before on the internet, and likely in person. I truly am trying to lay this out in a non-confrontational way to say that it should be a sign to examine the underlying actions and approach, not to assume that the people criticizing are "arguing from emotions" or something similar. I'm at this point trying to anticipate responses, and I could be off, so take what you will from some of the extras.

Contrarianism is not a service to society: it is many things, but IMO at its core a misguided application of logic undervaluing empathy and oblivious to circumstantial privilege to be able to act as one. Again, there are many better ways to address small flaws without undermining the entire idea.

[1] I am not using this word to namecall you or contrarians generally but to underscore the reality of how people (understandably) interpret contrarianism.

Because of the reason given in the article. It starts the meeting off on a bad note by making the VC aware of their bias and embarrassing them. Often they just want to get the hell out ASAP to save face, which means the black CEO doesn't get a "fair go".

If you legally forced minorities out from owning the property that has appreciated the most, you've created a generation of inequality -- people in their 30s and 40s today are likely dealing with the setback policies like this caused. It's not some far off history for Americans, it's very much a contemporary problem.

Me (a white guy) would frequently do ridealongs with some of our black installers and I would see this kind of treatment from customers regularly. I wasn't dressed like I was doing install work (business casual) and was clearly younger and would tell the customer in advance that I worked in X department and was just learning from the installer.

People would talk to me like the installer wasn't there. It really didn't matter what demographic either, it was pretty universal. Except for one older lady. She didn't even want me in her house if I wasn't there to physically work on her service. I liked her.

I don't disagree that some my find stereotypes alienating. But you're making a very big leap to claim that it's a "driving factor" as far as gender representation in STEM.

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

> Everyone in the US was raised in an environment that inculcated certain racial ideas, subconsciously or not

I’ve always noticed the opposite. Americans are a lot more forgiving of race than any other country. Even places like Sweden has serious problems with racism whereas US has lead so many positive changes and civil wars about racism.

Growing up in US white suburbs, we were taught by parents to be cognizant of racism and even small things like “African Americans, not black people”. Always had many immigrants and people of color in school. Race is at the center of America as it is the biggest melting pot of cultures in the world for over 2 centuries.

It's great that in your mind you also realized you had an implicit bias ("you just don't see women in those roles a lot"), but it doesn't seem like your implicit bias colored your interaction.

Murders are down 50% from then, it's still not a nice town or anything but it's not the worst town in America anymore.

Regardless of the obstacles faced in the second half (which are still more numerous than the competition's), can't you understand why runners would still look back at that first half to explain their fatigue, anger, and feelings of injustice? Particularly when looking ahead and thinking, "Oh God, this crap /again/??"

The marathon in this example actually spans multiple generations, but even the horrible segregation of the 50's was experienced first hand by the parents of black people still in the workforce today.

Sounds like you came into the race halfway through. As an immigrant you're still facing those unfair obstacles in front of you, but just remember that you don't have the fatigue of carrying the baggage from the first half.

You're misunderstanding my point. I'm not saying we have to fix everything at once. I'm saying that the "one thing that's bad" is not racism; racism is just one particular way the root problem manifests itself. The root of the problem is corruption: people in positions of public trust misusing the power they are granted to indulge their personal prejudices, whatever they are, instead of serving the public. Even if you could wave a magic wand and remove all racism from the world forever, that wouldn't fix the corruption problem; corrupt people in power would just find different excuses for violating people's rights. You have to fix the corruption.

And you won't fix corruption by focusing on one particular prejudice that the corrupt people happen to have, even if historically it has been the most common one (which, btw, I'm not sure is actually true--I think religious prejudice is at least as common historically if not more so--but I'm willing to assume it is for the sake of this discussion). The problem is not the particular prejudice the corrupt people have; the problem is that corrupt people are in power in the first place.

Is that really true? What do you think will happen if we put it up for a vote? Something like: defund police - yes/no?

Restaffing he police is a vastly different measure than dismantling the police or abolishing the police, which is what many activists are pushing for.

Furthemore, the idea that this was an instance of dismantling the police to reduce police abuses doesn't seem to hold up to scrutiny [1]:

> With the city under duress, over the objection of Camden community members, local officials partnered with Christie to enact a plan to disband the city’s police force and replace it with a regional county force. The goal was to dissolve the local police union, which would allow for a cheaper force that would enable more policing, not less.

> The new force embraced broken windows policing. In the first year of the new force, summonses for disorderly conduct shot up 43 percent. Summonses for not maintaining lights or reflectors on vehicles spiked 421 percent. Summonses for tinted car windows similarly increased 381 percent. And farcically, summonses for riding a bicycle without a bell or a light rose from three to 339. It was straight out of the Giuliani handbook.

> Unsurprisingly, these moves provoked tensions between the community and the police producing a parallel rise in excessive-force complaints. These tensions were still bubbling in 2014 when a particularly harsh and disturbing arrest was caught on video with officers using violent techniques similar to the ones that killed George Floyd in Wisconsin. When pressed about the incident, Camden County Public Affairs Director Dan Keashen said that an investigation showed it to be “a good arrest.”

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/16/camden-nj-...

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/19/the-fight-to-r...

Based on that statement alone I think I can accurately conclude you are not an indigenous Australian (aboriginal).

Seems they share quiet a lot in common with native Americans from stealing of their lands/displacement, mass killings, enslavement By colonists, to ongoing racism that continues to carry on today.

I'd say a tooltip could be added for context, but that seems even farther from the HN profile philosophy that exists currently.

This is a huge part of the problem isn't it?

I believe these painful interactions would be much less common if tech culture were more diverse in the first place.

Women share a similar fate. Whenever I hear some of these stories I cringe. Some of them are surprising/shocking even.

But this seems important. Hearing those stories including the ones you mentioned. Not necessarily to point fingers (although sometimes we should) but rather to fight this common, widespread ignorance.

If you eliminate funding for an existing police department, firing all of the employees, and divide all of its functions, including dealing with violent criminals, and performing investigations, up among other departments (both existing and new), isn't "defund" accurate? That's the most extreme position on the spectrum along which police reform plans lie. "Defund police" is a pithy catchphrase, an opening position for negotiations. I don't think the language is what needs "correcting". It's important to educate oneself on the issues instead of assuming the worst about anyone you disagree with.

I believe strongly these are more valuable than non-black corporate anti-racist consultants...

When several city depts don't seem to feel like they have to take orders from elected government, drastic measures start looking more reasonable.

Specifically to quote your post: "toy preferences reflect hormonally influenced behavioral and..."

At what point will you be convinced that you need to start over? Because removing corruption is like removing an invasive species: you don't solve it by taking a half-assed attempt with trimming and call it a day.

A more apt analogy may be a marathon where there are bystanders who latch on to half of the runners and keep telling them, "you cannot make it, you need us to help you, the race is unfair".

I think signing the Emancipation Proclamation, prosecuting the Civil War, and ultimately paying for it all with his life, give him a pass for his personal views that would be considered "racist" by today's standards. In Lincoln's case, actions really spoke far louder than words.

But what if society subtly, almost subliminally suggested that some kids are gifted in, say, sports but not school, while others are gifted in school, but not sports? Or what if society suggested that some men are more prone to violence than others? What if those embedded in our media and even our language? Do you think that would have some kind of effect on teachers and students, police officers and citizens? There are studies that suggest that this actually happens. Psychologists have found that young children are aware of gender and race stereotypes despite receiving no explicitly instruction whatsoever.

I'd ask you to reconsider being contrarian for the sake being contrarian. Obviously, you should interrogate society's assumptions as well as your own. But you should do so from the standpoint of neutrality to the extent possible, rather than knee jerk contrarianism, which isn't always useful. Flat Earthers and anti-vaxxers are contrarians too.

You want to broaden the topic but by doing so, you're erasing all nuance and approaches for solving a problem.

Well, it's not. In living memory:

>The wealth of black Americans was halved by the 2008 financial crisis, in part because of predatory lending practices which specifically targeted them by race and misrepresented their creditworthiness

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/01/24/t...

>A million black farming families essentially had their wealth-producing land stolen from them: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/this-la...

https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/losing-ground/

>Multiple black activists pushing for more advantageous policy have been imprisoned and assassinated, with allegedly some incidents as recent as the last few years.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Martin_Luth....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/puzzling-number-men-tie...

>Black students have become subject to levels of segregation - and associated disparities in educational quality - at levels rivalling those of pre-Brown v Board America

https://www.propublica.org/article/segregation-now-full-text

https://projects.propublica.org/miseducation

>Because many black workers were exempt from the initial impementation of Social Security and the GI Bill, their children (Silent Gen and Baby Boomers, currently in the process of passing on their inheritances) and grandchildren (Gen X and Millennials) are suffering the consequences in lost wealth-building opportunities

>Countless black Americans have suffered from poor healthcare based on apathy and stereotypes

https://features.propublica.org/diabetes-amputations/black-a...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/20/black-american...

https://www.heart.org/en/news/2019/02/20/why-are-black-women...

>Black Americans have watched a completely different and profoundly more compassionate response to the white people affected by the opioid epidemic than they experienced in the crack/cocaine epidemic

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/crack-h...

https://thewitnessbcc.com/crack-epidemic-opioid-crisis-race-...

>Marijuana, long a a drug whose sale and use was the pretext for the overpolicing of black communities, and which provided off-the-record income for many marginalized from the mainstream economy, was legalized in several states, under schemes that made sure that the overwhelming majority of those who profited were white.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/02/22/marijuana-...

https://qz.com/1194143/even-after-legalization-black-america...

https://psmag.com/economics/the-green-rush-is-too-white-hood...

>Historical atrocities were buried until after those afflicted were unable to see justice in their lifetimes

https://tulsa.okstate.edu/news/shedding-light-local-history-...

And, of course, bare-naked discrimination exists across aspects of American life, including employment, compensation, educational opportunity, freedom of movement, criminal justice, real estate, and on and on and on. When these and many more injustices were not directly impactful, they served as poignant examples of the extreme apathy, if not antipathy, American society has had for black Americans. On top of it all, black Americans still live under the specter of police departments nationwide, which have been allegedly infiltrated by white supremacist organizations, and which assuredly indoctrinate officers with racist training and policy, and root out anti-racist individuals.

I'll leave you with

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/05/29/...

a response to Ta-Nehisi Coates' seminal work, The Case For Reparations (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-cas...), which reopened the intellectual debate on racial justice with a focus on the subject above: racial injustice affecting living black Americans, however rooted it may be in the events of 50-60-70-150 years ago.

Think highlight rather than promote. Think shared experience rather than shared interest. No, not identical experience, but think overlapping parts of a venn diagram. A relevant example in that overlap, assumed criminality, is mentioned in the very comment you are replying to.

And sure, it's probably very Western-centric and doesn't encapsulate the complicated relations amongst many different races, nationalities, and ethnicities. Not sure why one would expect a single phrase to accomplish such.

> I think the term BIPOC is potentially problematic in that it presents African-American and Native American interests as being more aligned than maybe they actually are.

Do you have a similar issue with the LGBT framing?

FWIW, I think reading it would help some people understand.

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union...

Lincoln freed the slaves because it was expedient to do so. But it was a great act and certainly the right thing to do.

You were taught to be cognizant of racism because our country was a racial caste system for hundreds of years. Moreover, Jim Crow was less than a lifetime ago, racial redlining was legal as recently as the 1970's, and the crack-cocaine sentencing disparity existed as recently as 2010. Race is at the center of America because America put it at its center, time and time again.

Everyone just hang out more with people "different" from you and recognize we're all part of the human race.

I've heard this before and don't understand it.

Why should talking about racial issues make people feel like they're being accused of something? I am a man. I have not be catcalled or threatened for rejecting someone's advances. I can't recall any prominent examples of witnessing a woman being threatened for rejecting a man's advances. But when a woman tells me that it happens to her, I don't feel guilty. So I don't understand how someone telling you about their experience leads to feeling like being accused or blamed for something you did not do.