These moments help me empathise with people who live their entire lives with that fear. On the whole I have it good. I can walk down the street without people assuming I'm looking for cars to break into. Or fly on a plane without people wondering if I am going to blow it up.
But at the same time I get the feeling that some people see those behaviours as punishment for my percieved privilege, and might even enjoy seeing me squirm. Which doesn't sit right with me. I think the answer to bigotry is to be aware of it, counter it, and fix it so we can lift everyone up. Rather than wield it as a weapon to cut down those you perceive as being unfairly advantaged by history.
You absolutely cannot make the determination of someone's privilege just by skin color or hair or whatever else. It's impossible. You can make a generalized, probabilistic guess, but you don't know if a white person grew up in a leaky trailer with abusive parents, or if a black person grew up in an upper middle class family. You don't know if someone sleeps in their car, or if the bank won't give them a loan, or if they're chronically depressed or in pain. There are so many vectors to privilege beyond race. There's so much more to a person's position in society, whether cultural or economic, than can be determined just by looking at them.
And it seems to me that so much of "punishment" you speak about is directed towards people specifically based on outward attributes.
The old phrase "never judge a book by its cover" really does apply here.
Wow, I was barely able to get through the first part and honestly the whole time I was thinking "I can't believe this guy has been a professional writer for decades. He desperately needs help from an editor."
I find the content interesting, but the writing seems to wander unnecessarily and I wish he'd focus more on getting to the point than needlessly interject his, at least to me, obnoxious attempts to defend his character rather than let the audience decide for themselves. Yes, I realize the entire point of this article is to defend himself, but I'd rather read the meat of the story than variations of "I don't think I'm a bad guy."
To each his own.
I'll regularly go hours into holes reading fascinating articles about obscure topics. I even wanted to learn more about this, but I just could not stomach his awful writing. He thinks he's more important than he is and he clearly does not know his audience, which is what got him into trouble in the first place.
He is legitimately a bad writer. He's not even mediocre. And the majority of comments here on HN seem to agree, and this is hardly the "knee-jerk" reaction forum of the internet.
So yes, he does need help in the writing department but, as someone mentioned before, he just lost that.
Well, he did just get fired and lose al the editors he worked with for decades.
Goes to show how important editors are and writers really benefit from editors.
Especially when he illustrates that with examples of him being the bad guy.
I see instances where he makes perceptive mistakes and possibly cavalier. Bad? No.
If he’s _bad_ then if we look at the world at large, then over 50% of people are _bad_.
He’s more of a victim of a purity crusade by people who also are the same “bad” but either don’t see it, don’t admit to it, or are following a popular trend.
It reminds me of the cultural revolution where in order to save themselves neighbors, friends and family would denounce each other for doing “bad” (baselessly accused of being counterrevolutionaries) just to get ahead of being accused of doing “bad” things. In the end there was great injustice, but Mao got what he wanted out of it.
In his own words, he is an asshole some of the time
>> Am I really an asshole? I don’t think so. Not most of the time.
Many of us have worked with men like this and they're awful.
I mean, this example was pretty poor because it combines him being an asshole and his interpretation of the word "drug", Dictionaries disagree with him.
>> Now, there is an exception: if you’re an editor and you write an error into my copy, I can definitely be an asshole.
[...]
>> To give an example: an editor once went through a story of mine and changed all the references to vaccines to “drugs.”
>> I went over and said, “Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea what you’re doing? Vaccines and drugs are different. A vaccine is something you take to prevent illness. A drug is something you take when you’re already ill.”
Chambers:
> 1. Any substance used in the composition of medicine to cure, diagnose or prevent disease
Mirriam Webster:
> b: a substance used as a medication or in the preparation of medication c according to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (1) : a substance recognized in an official pharmacopoeia or formulary (2) : a substance intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease (3) : a substance other than food intended to affect the structure or function of the body (4) : a substance intended for use as a component of a medicine but not a device or a component, part, or accessory of a device
The idea that "is sometimes an asshole" means "is a bad person" is flat-out wrong, and is a big part of what is wrong with the internet: you get a short, context-free soundbite of something that may or may not have actually happened, and that's it for someone's career and life's work.
I read all four parts of his story, and found it riveting. Life is in the details. But those details are too boring and don't generate clicks and ad impressions, so the vast majority of the people who hear about this will only know "a NY Times reporter was fired for saying the n-word to kids in Peru, supporting colonialism, claiming white privilege doesn't exist, and getting his photo taken with naked underage girls", and will immediately assume the guy is a racist, perverted piece of garbage, and never know that they're being lied to.
I think your and my definition of bad differ. Bad to me means being directly significantly detrimental to others who were not doing bad to you.
Being a writer, he probably comes from a culture where people write lots of words and has many friends who respect people who write verbosely.
Someone's level of articulateness provides no information whatsoever of how truthful their writing is. There are countless extremely articulate lies told by people with mastery over their medium.
A student asked me: “Do you think one of my classmates should have been suspended for using the N-word in a video from two years ago?”
I said: “Well, wait — what exactly happened on this video? Did she actually call someone “nigger”? Or was she just using it in passing, like quoting the title of a book?”
Because when he asked for context around how the person said “nigger”, he didn’t self-censor when making reference to the word.
That’s it.
That’s how bad this juvenile cancel culture mob has become. They let some 15 year old activist wannabe complain to the paper and get him fired.
The gist is that he doesn't vibe with... someone?... and finds that his colleagues have wildly different expectations about... something?
This may get worse before it gets better, but it will get better eventually.
Fwiw, I've always found such statements insanely baffling - in an amused befuddled sort of way. Why would anybody want to spend their life with somebody to whom they couldn't explain themselves and or find common ground?
If you hurt someone, whether intentional or not, apologizing is the least you can do.
If you don't believe an apology is warranted, apologize, and sort though where the disconnect is later.
First, you can injure someone, physically or emotionally, without making a mistake or being wrong.
So, it’s possible to feel guilt over an injury even if ultimately, you did the “right thing.”
The point of an apology isn’t solely to say “I was wrong”. They can be an acknowledgment of the injury you caused.
If your actions cause an injury, and you feel no need to apologize, because you “didn’t do anything wrong”, you’re just an asshole.
Unless by apologising you start a new process of (often absurd) penalties that you cannot control.
Exactly why lawyers instruct people to never apologise or admit fault in even the smallest fender benders.
Never mind offending the woke.
A sincere apology implies that one truly feels bad about their behavior in some way. If someone truly feels bad about something that has public visibility, they should apologize for that for their own benefit, regardless if the other party accepts it.
Whats the benefit though?
I'm talking in the abstract, not about this man.
https://twitter.com/marcatracy/status/1357806202277797889/ph...
If your jokes are frequently poorly received by her then I would consider telling them to other people. Some jokes can be told to anyone but many have a limited audience.
You can apologize AND simultaneously it can be true that such other person is also a jerk who purposefully gets offended by stupid things and takes everyone out of context for their own benefit who leads a march to cancel you.
I obviously don't know you or the specifics of your disagreements, but I think you should be forgiving of yourself.
I'm genuinely curious if this is a good strategy, relationship-wise. I would expect that insincere / dishonest communication would put a limit on intimacy, but maybe that's preferable to frequent arguments?
Not in the naive "always apologize" sense. That has the risk of creating a dynamic where the apology can't be trusted to be sincere and problems don't actually get addressed.
Sure, if you actually did something wrong, by all means apologize. But if it's somewhat of a gray matter, a healthier dynamic would be to establish a baseline, something that is only built over the long term, that whatever happened it wasn't either person's intention to create conflict or upset the other person. That might mean apologizing for triggering something.
With a bit of space, ideally both people could talk about what they were thinking or perceiving, understand why the other person behaved the way they did, and come up with ideas for how to prevent the same problem from happening next time.
Obviously that only works if both people are well-intended, able to deescalate conflicts, and willing to put in the work. No amount of this would fix fundamental differences or relationship red flags.
Probably depends on the relationship.
I've found that during a conflict, I'm never 100% articulate or appropriate, so I will apologize for the mistakes I made during the discussion. If after the discussion, both of us agree that I was originally in the wrong, then of course, I'll apologize. But why apologize if you've done nothing wrong? That sets a really bizarre precedent: I'd rather placate someone who disagrees with me than to be able to express myself to a life partner. Why? If this is the person you're in a loving relationship with, why do they need so much protection from your viewpoints?
That said, I'm not immune to the equation:
(die_on_this_hill_factor / (perceived_anger_of_partner * estimated_kwh_of_ongoing_conflict)) *
(personal_energy * previous_perceived_slights_against_me * stress * recent_affirmations_about_topic)
I'd like to think the only winning move is to not play, but I dont think modern social media allows that
Yes. When it's about minor things, you don't care to be right when the relationship with your partner is at stake.
But the angry mobs fuelled by hypocrisy and bad journalism are not your partner. They are the problem. They need to be told loud and clear that they're not just dead wrong, they're also dangerous and bigoted.
I don't read the NYT.
I have a hard time reading long texts. I get distracted or bored real quick and switch to a different tab.
But these 4 articles were so interesting and horrifying to read I read them all in one setting. I'm sorry that this happened. This is a nightmare of mine. Someone gets a hold of some stupid thing that I said or did (as a joke back in college) or in this case as an honest attempt to explain stuff to teenagers, and now you have to go over every single word and explain yourself. and as soon as you start explaining yourself, you have lost the argument (I learned this when I tried to explain myself to my partner. I've learnt that no matter if I'm right or wrong, I should just apologize. It's faster and less painful.)