The reason I love the sciences is that in general, people are more meritocratic in those circles compared to others. I've found especially in scientific academia that people are far more meritocratic compared to other disciplines. This also applies at science/engineering companies. No, not at all levels (the more business-y you get, the less of a meritocracy it becomes). But usually team-leads, senior engineers, etc. rise because of merit. Always exceptions, but in general. Much more than as an accounting firm where you rise because you know somebody who knows somebody.
Unfortunately, as time goes on, I've seen academic circles in sci&eng, and especially tech companies (and silicone valley in general) become much more interested in stay relevant, keeping up with social trends and movements, and appearing progressive. You see this with all the FAANG companies calmoring to be the first to speak out against some injustice or another, or be the first to take a stand on Their Platform(TM).
And with this, the meritocracy has slowly declined. You don't rise in a company because you're a skilled engineer - you can rise because you're a token minority. Or because you're the most outspoken on a social injustice and can see a way for your company to solve it (sorry, profit from it). You can be rewarded because you were the first (insert random minority here) to solve a problem or do something that plenty of other people had already done. Rather than celebrating scientific advancement, we're now celebrating the type of people making that advancement. What next, the first black woman to clone a GitHub repo? Let's name the GitHub HQ after that.
If you mean that gifted people should have their livelihood subsidised by the state, then sure, I'm open to exploring merit based scholarships, and society investing more in the sciences and so on. But nobody gets a prize in science without actually putting in the work and achieving something. Though, admittedly we are seeing that less and less. Society in general is becoming less meritorious (participation awards, etc).
Anyway, I won't waste my time further debating what's obvious gaslighting.
It is indeed gaslighting to talk about “safety nets” when there is a student loan crisis in the country.
Which means they are much more likely to be able to get support from home or even a home to move back to if things get tough.
It's a lot easier to take the economic risk of a post-grad or post-doc program when you know there is a family with means to fall back on.
Excessive student loans are not a serious issue relative to what many in poverty face. If you don't make enough money to pay your student loans, then you can defer them indefinitely. Or just not pay them. It might keep you from getting rich. But it's not going to keep you from eating.
Calling someone’s argument “obvious gaslighting” is just an appeal to incredulity.
You made a very big assumption about me, based purely on my preference for working environment and social environment. There is nothing jealous about wanting to see people rewarded based on merit.
I don't think they need to be meeting racial quotas for prizes, but my guess is that there is a lot of work to be done in the system that promotes and nominates candidates and those systems in place that decide who and what gets published.
It is a gross generalization and on an individual basis there is no way to check or know if that ______ person had equal opportunities or they didn’t. The problem with generalized appropriations but localized relief is that unfairness is vividly unbearable to those who are impacted. Imagine if race ______ gets 20 more points in an exam than the rest because they just happen to be a part of a minority. That would be infuriating to a lot of people who took that exam. It’s no fault of ours - this is a natural reaction of all humans. Now, if you’re not taking that exam, that might sound very benevolent. Life is like an exam in some ways. If everyone can take the exam, that would be great. Some can’t even take it, and that where the focus should be - eliminate poverty, inspire people to work hard, and enable people to go to college.
Imagine for a moment - you’re laid off, your family depends solely on you to survive. You’ve interviewed and you think you got the job only to realize that a minority person took it instead only because of the color of their skin. Would you be ok with that(assuming it’s true that there was no meritocracy involved)? This whole thing about improving the world goes into the toilet when your child is crying and you’re looking at your house being foreclosed.
If you’re well off, everything is rosy. You need to also consider other viewpoints.
Then you are told that you didn't get the job because now (as of the day the civil rights act passed or the day Obama was elected) we no longer have racial bias in our hiring practices and we are now officially a meritocracy.
So no, I don't see a problem with a system that might slightly favor a minority because I doubt that on the whole they are actually getting any sort of advantage anyway.
97% feels oppressive when you are used to 100%.
Why not focus on improving communities? I don't want to replace meritocracy with favored treatment one iota, doesn't matter if you were disadvantaged or not.
It is the height of hypocrisy as:
- What about native indians?
- What about asian minorities?
- What about people with disabilities?
- What about people with low IQ scores?
- What about people with low grades in schools?
- What about people that got killed by Genghis Khan?
- What about people that died in the crusades?
At this point, this whole thing lands on a shaky foundation of hypocrisy and favored treatment which is kind of ironic that that's exactly the problem you're trying to solve.
Born with a brown skin? You've got things lined up pretty good for you just because you were born brown. Born with a white skin? You've got things lined up pretty much against you just because you were born white (for the record, I am not white). This is reversing what used to happen. I don't think this is the solution, the solution is to go fix the problems in the first place - higher funding to impoverished schools, lifting up the people from poverty and letting these communities flourish. Colored or not. Instead, Democrats focus on reparations in place for meritocracy.
I want a society that stops talking about race on both sides - the oppressive and the oppressed. Color of the skin should be taught as a matter of historical context, not some kind of a revenge/reparations. Stop wasting energy on trying to undo history, instead focus on the future.
Who said anything about cash reparations or Democrats? Yes, programs should be better funded to make up for the past evils of our society. But what about the people here and now that are disadvantaged due to past evils and the lack of these programs in the past?
It's the pairing of past injustices with the inability to just "blend in" with the rest of the crowd that creates a special case.
If you are born poor as a black person, you are still twice as likely to remain poor.
As for your comment that being born white is some kind of disadvantage is just laughable. Look at the data, what does it tell you? The fact is, almost every statistic out there indicates the opposite.
Median net worth for black families is 1/10th that of median white family net worth in America.
You may think that your success in life is entirely dependent on your personal grit and whatever. But the reality is that wealth and success is heavily dependent upon generational wealth and social capital. Which means that those whose ancestors were enslaved and otherwise abused are by definition starting way, way back from the starting line.
You don't get to have a head-start and then halfway through the race declare that from this point forward, all rules will apply to everyone equally. You especially don't get to pretend that those that had to start way back from the start line don't have some little weights attached to their ankles (i.e. modern racial bias).
Nobody serious denies that individuals of the latter race were less likely compared to individuals of the former race to win a given prize amount in the lottery of birth, due to historical and ongoing slavery, Jim Crow and systemic racism, war on drugs/black families, etc. Most people believe that the historical and cultural context justifies giving members of the latter race help to "catch up".
The problem lies in the perceived taking away, factual or not: requiring higher test scores for individuals of your race for university admission, hiring less-qualified individuals of another race rather than well-qualified individuals of your race for the good corporate PR, etc. It's obvious that racial handicaps ensure a distributional qualification disparity among the races for accepted candidates. They also make it easy for candidates who don't make the cut, even if they would not have made the cut had they been members of the preferred race, to blame the preferred race for their failure. Whenever an individual of the preferred race makes a mistake or gets a bad grade or review, more people will assume that that person is simply unqualified, even if members of the non-preferred race actually make the same mistake/get the same grade/review at higher rates! As you note, this especially harms qualified members of the preferred race. The racial handicap is fertilizer for racists and sets up a pervasive subconscious racial bias that simply won't go away until the handicap is removed.
I think true progress will only be made once we avoid taking anything away or imposing any racial handicaps and gather the collective willpower to positively support disadvantaged people of all races. We need to ameliorate the stumbling blocks people face to fully developing the skills, personal character, and emotional and familial stability necessary to access opportunity. But this is an enormous task requiring huge amounts of coordination across government and civil society, and doesn't get clicks^H^H^H^H^H^H votes as well as "This One Quick Fix Will Solve Racism in 20 Years! Doctors Hate It!"
I have found that quite a few people seriously DO deny those facts. Look no further than several of the other responses to my comment.
As for taking things away, I agree that handicapping someone due to their race is not good. But unfortunately, society is a bit too complex to completely avoid it. The reality of many racial equality programs is not that less qualified candidates are awarded over more qualified candidates but that in cases where two candidates are effectively equal, preference is given to minority candidates. Because let's be honest, a few exam points here and there or extra-curriculars do not really make much difference.
If a white person grew up poor and in a single parent home, they can put on a nice suit and go to a job interview and blend in. And I'm not necessarily just talking about today. But definitely in the very recent past. Which affects the parents of children today and their ability to provide a good education among many other things to make their children competitive.
But talking more about today, it was in the early 2000s I believe where a study was done sending out thousands of identical resumes. Some with white sounding names and others with black sounding names. The white names got 50% more callbacks than the black names. That is an astounding difference and that alone shows that we have a serious problem. I suspect if we did that today, the results would be better, but still not "color blind".
As opposed to an ideal people strive for. Of course no one will ever be happy with every name. Every person has their own opinion. It doesn’t mean there is no place for public discourse around it.
> I mean, come on. People name junk after stupid things All. The. Time. And no one cares.
Evidently people care a lot about such stuff. Maybe you don’t like it, but many people like when the streets and buildings honor respectable people.
> Seriously, go to your local campus or government center or NASA facility or whatever and look up the names on the buildings and lecture halls and bathroom stalls. Tell me those people "really deserved" that recognition.
Do you have an example?
> Until you name something after a black woman. Then all of a sudden the white men get all meritocratic on your ass.
This looks like projection and envy.
They don't, though. When was the last HN thread about a building named after someone undeserving? Or really any discussion about a routine honorific misapplied? Anything remotely similar?
Only now, in a thread about a building named after a black woman, do "people" start to "care a lot about such stuff".
Uhm? Some states even renamed Columbus Day. It is not simply "remotely similar", a national holiday is much more prominent than a building.