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677 points saeedjabbar | 32 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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hn_throwaway_99 ◴[] No.23544053[source]
I thought this was a great article. One of the most interesting things to me was how the embarrassment/defensiveness of the white people involved was one of the biggest blocks to the black CEOs in their advancement, e.g. the VCs who "just wanted to get the hell out of there" after mistaking a white subordinate for the CEO.

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.

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GaryNumanVevo ◴[] No.23544345[source]
I'm skeptical about Robin Diangelo, I read her book a few months ago, and it only seems to be an advertisement for her services as an anti-racist instructor. Her entire argument frames race relations within the context of the workplace which is problematic because her approach is coercive, not educational. It's more a guide on "how not to get fired for being racist" than anything. There are much better books for foundational education about race.

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.

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1. Reedx ◴[] No.23546703[source]
Your skepticism is well warranted. Unfalsifiable theory, dogma you can't question, purity tests, good vs evil, original sin, heresy, excommunication, self-flagellation and so on... It's a religion and Kafkatrap, but not yet widely recognized as such.

Further explanation:

https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/intellectual-fraud-robin-d...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/why-third-...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jonathan-haidt-on-the-cultural-...

https://unherd.com/2020/01/modern-politics-is-christianity-w...

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

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2. avs733 ◴[] No.23546833[source]
I find it interesting you choose the word 'explanation' as opposed to 'counter argument'
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3. toasterlovin ◴[] No.23547317[source]
Don’t forgot literal washing of feet and prostration in public gatherings! Some of the scenes from these protests bear an uncanny resemblance to Easter services.
4. GaryNumanVevo ◴[] No.23547473[source]
To be clear, I don't think Anti-racism isn't a kafkatrap or "religion". I take issue with the polite white-centric material made to further coddle and remove liability from future racist incidents.
5. taurath ◴[] No.23547559[source]
Newdiscourses seems to be a website dedicated /entirely/ to taking down the author and the book. A sampling of their articles over the past 2 weeks:

"In Defense of the Status Quo"

"White Silence is NOT Violence"

"A Principled Statement of Opposition to Critical Race Theory"

"Eight Big Reasons Critical Race Theory is Terrible for Dealing with Racism"

Further investigation shows the site owner, James Lindsay makes his entire living being an activist against gender studies and critical race theory. There's an extraordinary amount of resources dedicated to pushing back against the Robin Diangelo. Having heard her speak and having read at least a bit of her book, most of it is showing white people that all the things that we've tried over the past 10, 20 years are clearly not working. There's little improvement in inclusiveness in traditional white/male dominated cultures, such as the engineering teams at FAANGs for instance. Its insisting that you do something actually about it rather than patting yourself on the back for doing what you think is the right things. It takes a great amount of twisting about to ignore the main points, and all of the writers you linked have done so.

What you call the "dogma" of dealing with a racist culture I call people lived experience. Its heartbreaking to me how very conservative-minded and flat out defensive on issues of inclusion and race the HN community has been when the subject of race is allowed to be a thread.

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6. blub ◴[] No.23548027[source]
In order to have a complete picture, one also has to ask which "foo/bar dominated" cultures are inclusive if white/male dominated ones aren't.

As far as I'm aware, the majority population in any country, irrespective of skin color is intolerant to various degrees toward minorities, ranging from genocide and internment camps to harassment and minor discrimination.

The US is certainly not leader of the pack, but not exactly terrible either, when one looks at the constant amount of outrage. It seems to me that a group of people in the US concerned about the topic of race in their country is projecting its distorted view of things on the planet and has furthermore chosen an approach which is doomed to fail. Good luck with that, but maybe this time the US could try to not also damage the rest of the world in the process of fighting a war on abstract nouns.

Edit:

Someone in a nuked comment said "Why on earth does one have to make a broad comparison of cultures to rank badness at racism before dealing with this instance? And are you saying 'inclusion' is quantitative or something? "

Because by doing this comparison one can check if the problem of bias is universal (yep) and ingrained (yep), therefore suggesting that focusing on black vs. white in the US is counterproductive. Instead we should do research into individual and systemic biases and see how those could be kept under control.

Punishing individuals is hilariously bad. In fact there's a direct parallel between this and safety engineering, where clueless organizations will punish an employee which made a mistake while they continue to lumber from incident to incident.

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7. cheald ◴[] No.23548150[source]
Lindsay isn't just some activist, he was one of the three authors of the "Sokal Squared" papers.
8. taurath ◴[] No.23549107{3}[source]
I'm not even sure what you're saying here. The US literally imported slaves against their will from Africa and had slavery endowed into the constitution via the 3/5ths compromise. Then for literally 4 centuries they were beaten and oppressed and denied rights - literally jim crow laws were taken down only decades ago.

Its literally just talking about the US here. There's no projection elsewhere - this isn't just "minority rights", this is attempting to break away from a culture of systematic oppression that half the country up until last month didn't believe was a thing!

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9. marliechiller ◴[] No.23549242[source]
im so glad i didnt have to scroll too far to see rebuttle to the cult handbook that is "white fragility". Thank you for your post and links
10. blub ◴[] No.23549781{4}[source]
You said "most of it is showing white people that all the things that we've tried over the past 10, 20 years are clearly not working. There's little improvement in inclusiveness in traditional white/male dominated cultures, such as the engineering teams at FAANGs for instance."

The US is an immigration society where many white people from countries which weren't involved in US slavery and now they're all painted with the same brush. It's not reasonable for someone from say Russia to be attacked for the deeds of American slave drivers hundreds of years ago. And as far as I know white immigrants were strongly discriminated against in the US in the past two centuries.

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11. DagAgren ◴[] No.23550179[source]
He also chose the word "kafkatrap", a word coined by a notorious racist.
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12. textgel ◴[] No.23550326{3}[source]
Using a kafkatrap against an opponent you can't beat in debate when they have just pointed out the tactic is probably ill advised; perhaps try something else; Ad hominem or motte and bailey for example.
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13. DagAgren ◴[] No.23550802{4}[source]
"Kafkatrap" is a meaningless term, beyond "stop calling me a racist just for saying racist things".

Acting like it's an accepted logical fallacy is ridiculous. It's a term ESR made up because people kept rightly calling him a sexist and racist and he didn't like it and threw a tantrum.

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14. textgel ◴[] No.23551328{5}[source]
Well lets see... oh that's odd, that meaningless term appears to have a real meaning https://debate.fandom.com/wiki/Kafka_Trap . Now why would you be willing to lie about that?

Seems it's a perfectly accepted logical fallacy; and the only people who deny it are the sjw crowd largely because it is such a favoured tactic within their ranks.

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15. DagAgren ◴[] No.23551357{6}[source]
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/kafkatrap?s=t

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kafkatrap

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/spellcheck/english/?q=kafka...

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16. textgel ◴[] No.23551704{7}[source]
Yes those are dictionary's for definitions of words not a repository of debate tactics; if you'd checked you'd also notice that there's no entry for "motte and bailey falacy", "Appeal to Ignorance" or "appeal to authority"; funnily enough it doesnt prevent those existing either.
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17. DagAgren ◴[] No.23551891{8}[source]
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/...

Still not seeing it.

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18. textgel ◴[] No.23552019{9}[source]
Well yes if you purely limit yourself to a single college of liberal arts list of definitions then you won't, however search engines are your friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

And desperately clinging to any page-not-found of whatever website you can find to display it isn't exactly the most secure display of debate.

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19. DagAgren ◴[] No.23552058{10}[source]
Ah yes, Wikipedia, with one source form a libertarian propaganda rag. Very reputable.

Nobody but libertarians looking for excuses for racism use that term, deal with it.

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20. textgel ◴[] No.23552262{11}[source]
And at last you've taken my advice

> Using a kafkatrap against an opponent you can't beat in debate when they have just pointed out the tactic is probably ill advised; perhaps try something else; Ad hominem or motte and bailey for example.

Allow my to quote from one your trusted sources: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/...

> Ad hominem: This is an attack on the character of a person rather than his or her opinions or arguments.

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21. DagAgren ◴[] No.23552281{12}[source]
Feel free to provide me wrong by showing a non-libertarian source that takes this term seriously.
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22. commandlinefan ◴[] No.23552424{3}[source]
Ironically, you're employing a fallacious debate tactic (ad-hominem attack) while incorrectly trying to label a different debate tactic fallacious.
23. undefined1 ◴[] No.23552440[source]
Casting those who question dogma as the other (conservative or "alt-right", commonly) is an effective silencing and compliance technique. "You're not one of us if you don't stay in lockstep" has a real chilling effect and is doing serious damage to the left. Obama warned about this too, but unfortunately wasn't well heeded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM

It's also intellectually dishonest. Most (all?) of the cited authors are liberals. James Lindsay, liberal professor. John McWhorter, liberal professor. I'm pretty sure Jon Haidt and Paul G are liberal-minded. For random commenters on HN, you don't know what their leaning is nor does it automatically mean disqualification.

And it's worth noting that John McWhorter specializes in linguistics and has written books on language and race relations. He noticed the religious aspect of this years ago. Here he is on CNN back in 2015 making the point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGJbrLs_8_0

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24. textgel ◴[] No.23552465{13}[source]
Appeal to authority (points for variety at least) is a logical fallacy that I literally pointed out earlier.
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25. DagAgren ◴[] No.23553076{14}[source]
You really don't understand how logical fallacies work at all, do you.
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26. Reedx ◴[] No.23553351{3}[source]
It describes a fallacy and have no idea who coined it. First learned of it on HN, actually.

You don't know who coined "coined", but they may well have been a racist. Are you going to stop using it if so? Does that mean it's no longer useful for communication? Are you going to investigate every word on the chance it might've been and strike those from the lexicon?

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27. textgel ◴[] No.23553599{15}[source]
Well I must admit I haven't had as much practice at them as you have.
28. DagAgren ◴[] No.23558245{4}[source]
It is, in fact, not useful for communication, because it does not honestly communicate anything. It exists only to undermine people who try to call you out on making bigoted remarks. It was coined by ESR, and is popular mainly with people with a strong affinity for bigotry, like him, and also libertarians.
29. taurath ◴[] No.23561222{3}[source]
I don’t necessarily think that everything needs to be put on a left to right scale. But you’re also ascribing things to me that I haven’t said.

Conservative just means you want things to stay the same or have things to back to how they were when you decided it was good enough to “conserve it”. In this case the fight is about frustration over lack of progress and lack of acknowledgement that police violence and systemic discrimination both very much exist and are actively harming black people. Most of the working world just sees it through a tiny keyhole in that there’s maybe 1 or 2 black software developers in a company of 1000. We need to get better as stewards of society and the companies we work in.

30. taurath ◴[] No.23561259{5}[source]
We as Americans live in a society were responsible for. We as managers, owners and employees are responsible for the culture of the companies we own.

A Russian who moved here in 1998 certainly didn’t have anything to do with racism. But he is participating in a society that claims to be a just one, in which he will get preferential treatment over a Black person just because the color of his skin. Is that his fault? No. Is it his moral responsibility as a participant in society to help create a more just society? Yes.

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31. the_omegist ◴[] No.23564127{6}[source]
That sounds like some cult thinking. Collective responsibility by just doing nothing? By virtue of your genetics at birth ?

Then you're responsible for the climate problem, the extermination of native Americans, the Vietnamese death, the Iraqi deaths, etc... ? From what you preached you can only answer "yes" to all these. Then : what do you do to make amends for all those horrible crimes?

32. blub ◴[] No.23624577{6}[source]
The US has a deeply unjust society and with with the exception of some periods after WWII always has had. The US does not have any moral authority to tell other countries or people how they should deal with racism and very limited moral authority in general in the past years of the Trump presidency.

Other countries and people need not and should not accept sharing the blame for US sins against black people.