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

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677 points saeedjabbar | 1 comments | 16 Jun 20 15:19 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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wottamap[dead post] ◴[16 Jun 20 21:51 UTC] No.23544704[source]▶
The messages that need to be said right now are very difficult to say because people have steeled themselves. But they need to be said. This is not meant to be flamebait, I truly deeply believe these messages need to be heard and understood, so please understand that I'm speaking in good faith here. If you feel strongly that I am wrong, please reply with well thought out reasons why. I will listen.

Articles like this do the black community a disservice.

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.

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

I'm not saying there isn't any racism. But I am saying that the level of racism is low, and the remaining racism is probably impossible to eliminate. The way to improve the lives of blacks is to stop focusing on and zooming in on racism, which makes it look a lot bigger of a problem than it really is.

Lived experience is not the way to determine why people do what they do. The hearer is not the expert on what the speaker means when he/she speaks. Like hanlon's razor, don't attribute to racism that which can be attributed to a simple embarrasing mistake. If you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

The recent protests due to police behavior is justified to call attention to a real problem, and police need to be less militarized and better trained. However, the belief that they are systematically hunting down black people for extermination is untrue and only harms the black community, because if you believe that, you are more likely to consider lawful persuits hopeless, more likely to engage in crime instead, and more likely to resist arrest which means you'll be much more likely to be killed by the police. It's self-fulfilling.

adjkant ◴[16 Jun 20 22:08 UTC] No.23544884[source]▶
> Blacks that believe cops are out to kill them will be more likely to resist arrest and get killed.

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.

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scollet ◴[16 Jun 20 22:49 UTC] No.23545272[source]▶
I would also like to highlight

> 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

<

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.

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wottamap ◴[16 Jun 20 22:59 UTC] No.23545360[source]▶
I'm not blaming the victim, I'm blaming all the white people who are scared to death of being seen as racist and who eagerly point out minor behaviours and scream "racism." I'm not blaming blacks for these beliefs, I'm blaming the society that drills them into their heads.
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adjkant ◴[16 Jun 20 23:09 UTC] No.23545464[source]▶
With respect and goodwill (appreciate that you actually seem to be coming to the comments to learn), it's very hard to read your comment in that way when you say things like:

> 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.

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wottamap ◴[16 Jun 20 23:30 UTC] No.23545638[source]▶
I will indeed find and watch those movies. I'm aware of the drug laws and the powder/crack issue, and I agree that is structural racism and is very wrong. My entire life I've been on the side of legalization of drugs. I'm watching a lot of social media, and I read as much as I can on this issue. There are methodological issues with many of the other topics/claims you mention, but I won't drag us into the weeds.

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.

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1. adjkant ◴[17 Jun 20 00:03 UTC] No.23545925[source]▶
When one side has suffered injustice for 400 years, people who are working to make sure the other side doesn't experience any injustice by something swinging too far and needing correction (at the cost of prolonged injustice for the already suffering side) are making a claim about who is more important. When there is injustice to be fixed, contrarians against it are effectively saying "the oppressed group's rights are less important than the oppressor's rights". You are literally slowing progress and extending injustice. When you argue the minutiae and get into the weeds, while some may be valid, the practical effect is it works to invalidate the full idea thanks to how humans work and generally are not good with nuance.

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.

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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.