Although a small sample size, despite their ambitions the BIPOC people I know haven’t been able to reap any professional benefits from it. Whether from access to executive roles, getting taken seriously by venture capital firms, or in their attempts to join venture capital firms. There is a level of discretion in these team forming situations that is not extended to them whether it has anything to do with their race or not, its pretty clear the upwards mobility is not coming from this credential.
The “average salary” of MBA alumnis is not what is interesting about getting one, for me or them.
Probably because there's almost always an Asian who's more qualified or a white with better connections. The problem is the key insight you get from a BIPOC is BIPOC tend to not have much money (set aside equity and vicious cycles for another day), so unless they're your market, you're not interested in marketing to people who can't afford your products.
thats a really odd take, how did you start with connections and end up with consumer marketing?
is this a personal experience or is this non-sequitur is a common sentiment because we need to address that as ignorance
1) the admissions into the Ivy would be biased, the education should be the same as before, as admissions into Ivy were always biased in some way. So whatever their alumni (and dropouts) were known for in that brand would still be the same.
2) aggregate better decisions due to different lived experiences doesn't mean just selling consumer products to underprivileged people. you're really going to have to work on what people mean by that, "sales to poor people" isn't the whole universe of different lived experiences, there can be other market inefficiencies with a good TAM. very similar to non-revenue based reach.
these have an overrepresentation of Ivy League MBAs in them with a pedigree that has nothing to do with promotions. People see the Ivy League MBA as key to this and aren’t interested in the other things an MBA can do. The jobs these disillusioned alumni have were attainable without the MBA.
> despite their ambitions the BIPOC people I know haven’t been able to reap any professional benefits from it
its all part of one contiguous complete thought
> the connections resulted in no improved professional access or ability to exchange time for food and shelter.
When you make such broad statements, then walk them back in comments downstream, it makes conversation unfruitful.
“improved” is the operative word that you seem to ignore or view as contradictory
the MBA did not improve their work prospects, they already had work prospects. you asked for a clarification, you call the clarification backtracking
do you have an actual opinion on the topic now that its more clear for you
"despite the small sample size"
"despite their ambitions"
for people with the typical archetype "it amplifies their ambition if they want"
"whether it has anything to do with their race or not"
"the “average salary” of MBA alumnis is not what is interesting about getting one"
the point is for more examples that show its not a waste of time for ambitious BIPOC, and what archetype would help integrate them into the archetype that often happens to also have an MBA.
Anyway, I'd be interested to hear more about the psychology of this.
I remember when I was growing up in the 90s and 00s in California, people talked about race way less than they do today. When ethnic representation became a common topic of conversation, I had a hard time believing it at first, because it seemed so self-evidently obvious to me that race wasn't a particularly important characteristic of a person. I actually had the experience of thinking back to my time in jr high/high school and thinking "wow, that friend of mine had dark skin, and they weren't from India... I guess they were Black, huh".
I'm not trying to claim that I didn't have subconscious biases related to race as a kid. I'm sure I did. But I do suspect they have become a lot more severe as a result of people talking about race so much -- it has become a much more salient characteristic. (I'm also more aware of trying to mitigate my biases and avoid microaggressions and so on, of course.)
So yeah, I'm curious to compare notes with other 90s kids in this regard. I'm white, but if I was Black, I imagine that I'd be way more self-conscious about it now than I was when I was growing up. (Like, if I'm the only white person in a group, I feel self-conscious about it now in a way that I didn't feel when I was a kid.)
Is as helpful as you may have intended. The comment was about not wanting to be the first, even if the group is welcoming, the commentator will still be the first/only person of color in the group and there is a discomfort inherent to that even if everyone is trying to be welcoming.
Also re “colorblind” policies of the 90a versus the explicitness of today, I think it’s similar to the current reckoning in journalism. We all have biases and pretending we don’t/acting like we are capable of pure objectivity simply hides them and makes them more difficult to combat. On the other hand explicitly acknowledging them allows you to consider how they might be influencing your decisions.
I actually wrote the initial draft of my comment with welcomingness as sort of a background assumption in my mind, and then I thought "wait a minute, even if I'm assuming that people would be welcoming, the person reading my comment might not. and given how hostile online discussions can get, it seems safer to err on the side of emphasizing welcomingness." That still seems roughly correct to me -- I think some topics have so much hostility associated with them that whatever you're going to say about the topic, it probably makes sense to also add in a bunch of welcomingness too, just so the discussion goes well.
My feeling is that the best way to reduce subconscious bias is to have good race relations. And the best way to have good race relations is to have more positive interactions than negative interactions.
A thought experiment: Imagine a non-Mexican person says "I love celebrating Cinco de Mayo. It's an excellent excuse to drink tequila!"
As a culture, we can decide whether that's a positive interaction or a negative interaction.
We can make it a positive interaction by laughing and clinking glasses.
We can make it a negative interaction by calling the person out for cultural appropriation or trivializing an important Mexican holiday.
My intuition is that making it a negative interaction is a big mistake, because it worsens subconscious racial biases and generally makes the world a less pleasant place. I recommend playing this game https://ncase.itch.io/wbwwb to better understand my intuition here. (Based on what I've read about Israel/Palestine, the game is an excellent description of why things have been getting so bad there lately.)
I say this from Mexico, sitting next to my Mexican wife and her mother.
To be clear, many Hispanics agree. Many of their ancestors played a role alongside the rest of their fellow whites. Whites are still admired by Asians as well.
This anti-white thing is largely an American phenomenon and other far left folks around the world that are resentful and cannot accept responsibility for their own condition. The rest of them deal with the hand they’re dealt, and go to work. As no one has more influence over their lives than them. We just accept it rather than adopt victimhood as a way of life. That’s how you create losers.
I presume whatever fantasy it is might be a fairly common “master race” one
I wasn’t endorsing the Proud Boys, but they aren’t completely without a point either. I’m more concerned victimhood culture is destroying more lives than racism is at this point.
My wife is not a white woman. No one’s going to tell our kids that they’re doomed. I want them to flourish. regardless of circumstances, through grit, persistence, determination, and resilience.
At a certain point, we all need to deal with the hand we’re dealt in life. I certainly was not on the fortunate side of the fence myself.
There’s a reason why a lot of families no longer exist. Tough times came and they put a bullet in their head. We’re heading for tough times again and outcomes will be delineated by who has taught their children strong values.
I do like the minority inclusion because you don't have to be white to be Christian, support a modern law-abiding civilization, or generally do "what works". I'm white but my wife is Mexican. We're both very conservative in most ways. Her family is proud of the Christian conquest of Latin America and don't think they went far enough in the conquest. Far beyond the typical liberal American view of boo hoo for the "natives". Americans are not aware that many hispanics are more conservative than they think. The racial purity thing is not going to be very productive going forward. The Proud Boys were a model for the future in that regard.
What the boat is sailing on now though are Greco-Roman values, which is the basis of western civilization. Which is kind of important since the east tends to rely on oppression. Look at Russia and China today.
Your wording is a wee bit vague. There's nothing wrong about pushing back on the notion that if one is white than one is guilty of crimes committed in the name of white superiority (because that's actually racist too).
But it also doesn't discount the fact that racism is still very much a problem.
One's opinion should stand on the words/ideas behind them, not what one looks like. Getting called out for that is bullshit and should be disregarded.
Part of my confusion is also that I don't feel the threat that you mention. I'm also okay with being challenged and with being wrong. I think the key is to try to engage with respect and be prepared to listen to what the other party is trying to say -- and assume best intentions.
*Not singling out Cholitas, but it's a group that may feel "other" to you.
With regard to the Cholitas thought experiment, I think my major source of discomfort is that at least one of them would look at me and think to herself "he's a patriarchical colonizer" and feel hostility from that. I'd feel more comfortable if I had a friend in the group who could vouch for me. Otherwise I'd worry the Cholitas didn't want me to be there.
I suppose that works in reverse as well -- an ethnic person might look at a group of white people and worry that one of them was present at Jan 6 or what have you.
What I miss from my childhood was the feeling that we're all in this together as human beings and race just isn't important. In the time & place I grew up, if someone was to start denigrating others on the basis of race, everyone would consider them to be an unimportant wacko. In that cultural context I wouldn't feel as much apprehension joining a group of Cholitas.
I feel bad for the woman who kept pointing out she was from Oakland and I kept just treating her like the Santa Cruz surf betties I had dated before not realizing what she was hinting at or that I might be taking her out of her comfort zone. I like to think the date we boogie boarded all day then ate pizza in the back of my truck while the porpoises swam by (learn their schedule Las Selva/Aptos peeps, 'running into' porpoises at the beach adds a little extra magic to a date for valleys not used to it) was good and not too uncomfortable.
It’s very refreshing. It’s like the USA in my youth. Back in Chicago the racial tensions with blacks is far more. But still not as bad as one would assume. There’s a few that think their purpose in life is to scold you. A lot of that is just culture though, victimhood culture is permeating most racial groups in the US.
I've heard similar things, but as a non-minority, you don't see what happens when you aren't looking or when people think they can get away with something without consequences, including social or professional consequences. Someone who is a minority has to live it 24/7, so they get a bigger picture that you don't.
You might be well-intentioned and surrounded by people who you believe are well-intentioned, but not everyone is, and plenty of the people who talk and act as if they're well-intentioned will turn around and betray those purported intentions when you aren't paying attention.
With regard to race-blindness in the 90s and 00s, consider that today's focus on race is a reaction to the willful ignorance of the decades prior. Race mattered just as much back then as it does now, it's just that the majority in the past had patted themselves on the back and convinced themselves that it was a solved problem if they just stop talking about it.
Yeah I totally buy that.
>With regard to race-blindness in the 90s and 00s, consider that today's focus on race is a reaction to the willful ignorance of the decades prior. Race mattered just as much back then as it does now, it's just that the majority in the past had patted themselves on the back and convinced themselves that it was a solved problem if they just stop talking about it.
If we believe racial discrimination is the root cause of racial inequality, then "talk about race less" (as a way to treat people more equally, and reduce discrimination) seems like a reasonable hypothesis to test. So the thing about people patting themselves on the back seems perhaps overly cynical?
I'm also not convinced that what we're doing now is working better than what was done in the 90s and 00s. For example, this Gallup poll indicates that Black adults believe race relations with white people have gotten much worse since 2013: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1687/race-relations.aspx
And I've seen research indicating that corporate bias reduction trainings typically backfire. Apparently if you want your company to have more diverse leadership, one of the most effective ways to do that is to create an official mentorship program which randomly pairs off junior people and senior people without regard to race. It seems that a junior employee of color gets better mentorship if they are regarded as a "junior employee at our company" as opposed to "junior employee of color". The mentorship program just works to overcome activation energy and create relationships between junior and senior people which might otherwise not exist due to awkwardness. (This is all from Chapter 8 of the book Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It)
The output of the 90s and 00s era was Obama getting elected president in 2008 and serving two terms. By contrast, I do think you can make the argument that Trump is in some sense a product of the woke era.
Trump's popularity exploded around July 2015: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2...
But e.g. the number of NY Times articles on "whiteness" were on an exploding trend by 2014: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/th...
(The number of articles with those terms grows even faster after Trump becomes popular. I would postulate that the mechanism is something like this game I linked elsewhere in the thread https://ncase.itch.io/wbwwb )
Anyway, my impression from reading right-wing Twitter feeds is that supposed woke overreach is a major motivation for Trump supporters, playing into the backfire point I mentioned previously.
I'm sure there is room to improve on the 90s and 00s. But I remain skeptical of the politician's syllogism: "We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
This was the status quo for a very long time. Mentioning people's race was like mentioning people's weight. It didn't work.
> I'm also not convinced that what we're doing now is working better than what was done in the 90s and 00s.
The 2005 study "Are Greg and Emily More Employable Than Jamal and Lakisha" applied to jobs 5000 times with a stack of carefully crafted fake resumes that were randomly assigned names that were either stereotypically white (e.g. Greg, Emily) or black (e.g. Jamal, Lakisha.) The same resumes with white sounding names received 50% more callbacks. Over 5000 job applications. What we were doing in the 90s/2000s was not working and the fact that many white people find the polite approach more comfortable is not a good reason to stick to it. This isn't a social problem-- we're talking about people's basic chance of success in life. This idea that we can have equal opportunity by deliberately avoiding intervention is a proven fallacy. Pushing through the discomfort to find what actually works is a worthwhile undertaking. If another race with a far larger population was 50% more likely to get job callbacks than you were, I guarantee you'd agree.
The increase in political tension our culture has seen in the past decade plus is vastly more complex than the most visible catalyst of any given moment. Blaming social progress for the increasing resistance to social progress doesn't make sense. You could just as easily blame fascism or any other activist end of a political blob. As flawed and overly bandwagoned as it may be, "wokeness" is addressing real problems that oppress people in measurable ways every day. "Anti-Wokeness" is just another value signalling position to have that highlights political fault lines far older than any living American.
Imagine we found an identical study from 1995 that showed that white people received 100% more callbacks at that time, and a study from 1985 that found that white people received 200% more callbacks at that time. And then imagine that when subgroup analysis was done on the 2005 study, it was determined that most of the effect was from older hiring managers who were about to age out of the population. In this hypothetical, the study would strongly validate the strategy being used in the 90s and the 00s.
>This idea that we can have equal opportunity by deliberately avoiding intervention is a proven fallacy.
I didn't claim that. I just want interventions that don't backfire.
For example, how about removing the name from the resume?
With modern technology, it would be easy to conduct interviews remotely over screenshare with a voice changer.
80/20 rule, 20% of the discrimination probably causes 80% of the harm. As you imply, hiring discrimination is one of the most harmful types of discrimination. So anonymized interviews could put a serious dent in racial inequality. As the technology matured, we could hit firms which didn't anonymize interviewees with a punitive tax.
Would certainly be an interesting study, at least. Run it every few years to measure the trend in discrimination, as discussed previously.
>The increase in political tension our culture has seen in the past decade plus is vastly more complex than the most visible catalyst of any given moment.
If political tension is a complex phenomenon, isn't it possible that racial discrimination is also a complex phenomenon, which won't be solved effectively using the social equivalent of a sledgehammer?
>Blaming social progress for the increasing resistance to social progress doesn't make sense.
Imagine a cop responded to criticism by saying: "Blaming crime fighting for the increasing resistance to crime fighting doesn't make sense." Would you find that persuasive?
It's possible to "solve" a problem in a way that superficially looks like progress, but actually makes the underlying issue worse. And if you can find a way to get paid money to do that, you'll never be out of a job. (Trump may not be good for America, but he's good for CBS. NY Times subscriptions exploded in the wake of Trump's election, IIRC.)
>You could just as easily blame fascism or any other activist end of a political blob.
I do in fact blame fascism. Historically speaking, it seems fairly normal for right-wing extremism and left-wing extremism to arise at the same time in the same society. The left-wing extremism is strengthened by the right-wing extremism, and vice versa.
I explained why regardless of study quality, the study can't support the point you want it to. You're not addressing my point, just making a vague appeal to authority.
>Calling any of these interventions a social sledgehammer is laughably hyperbolic.
What interventions are you referring to? You yourself referred to wokeness as "flawed and overly bandwagoned".
>How does any of what I said really on racism being simple?
You argued, without any supporting evidence, that it couldn't be the case that efforts to reduce racism could make it worse. If racism is complex then we shouldn't be surprised by counterintuitive results like that.
>The name on the resume is obviously a symptom of a larger problem and only one of many ways someone's race shows up in any number of consequential situations far more difficult to spot, like in neural network derived decisions.
I didn't claim that removing names from resumes was a complete solution, but it's suspicious that there seems to be so little interest in it, given that it could be very impactful.
Additionally, reducing hiring discrimination should have positive downstream effects: As Black people get better jobs, they move up in social class and that reduces stereotyping.
I think the fact that you aren't interested in an incremental solution should make you wonder if you're part of the flawed woke bandwagon you referred to. Remember, lots of incremental solutions can add up to a complete solution.
>No I don't blame crime fighting for the increased resistance to crime fighting because the actions taken by cops that people are actually mad about are crimes and opposing them is crime fighting.
By the same token, many people who claim to advance social progress may actually be advancing social regress.
>That you consider interrogating our culture to highlight racism to be political extremism says a lot.
I consider abolishing the police to be political extremism. See this article: "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
>I'm all done here.
I don't mind, it's tiresome to debate people who argue in bad faith.
Mewanwhile, you've just cited a totally unrelated (and widely dunked-upon) NYT op-ed as evidence for your position, and then accused the person you're arguing with of bad faith. Physician, heal thyself.
You're correct, I haven't rebutted the study. I explained that it doesn't make the point he wants it to make. See first 2 paragraphs here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34214917
>using voice changers on interview calls (come on)
What I describe has already been done for gender: https://interviewing.io/blog/voice-modulation-gender-technic...
And if researchers can change the name on an applicant's resume to do a study, why can't HR departments do the same thing?
"Come on" is not a good faith counterargument.
>But both of those interventions just mitigate the racism, they don't directly reduce it.
I'm not sure that is true. Imagine someone had the experience of interviewing a Black developer using a voice changer, giving them a thumbs up, meeting them in person for the first time, and learning that they were Black -- counter to the stereotype they held. You don't think that experience could be a powerful demonstration of a person's racial bias which could cause them to rethink some stuff?
Past that, I don't see why the distinction between mitigating and reducing is so important. Racism is bad because it causes bad effects. (CF argument earlier in the thread: "If another race with a far larger population was 50% more likely to get job callbacks than you were, I guarantee you'd agree.") If the easiest way to reduce the bad effects doesn't involve reducing racism, we should do it anyway. The point is to help people, not ideologically purify people.
>Mewanwhile, you've just cited a totally unrelated (and widely dunked-upon) NYT op-ed as evidence for your position
I cited it as evidence for the position that some extremists want to abolish the police. It's right there in the title of the op-ed. I don't see what dunking has to do with it.
Here's a woman with almost half a million Twitter followers saying the same thing in 2022: https://twitter.com/BreeNewsome/status/1547223384643231744 She tweets something like this every few months. Here's one of her tweets where she explains what she means in more detail: https://twitter.com/BreeNewsome/status/1267138648174137345
There's a bunch of other problems with what you're saying here (for instance, the idea that you can correct for ethnicity with a voice changer), but they're not interesting compared to this question.
No, I cannot. It seems that despite the big conversation about diversity in tech, people aren't very interested in practical solutions to reducing discrimination.
It comes down to the point I made about helping people vs ideological purification. Many people prefer the latter. This is the sort of left-wing extremism I referred to earlier.
To be honest, I think the main reason companies don't use voice changers is if they do, the ideological purifier types will go after them. Just in this thread you can see how upset you and DrewADesign got, after I suggested the idea.
>the idea that you can correct for ethnicity with a voice changer
If it can work for gender, why can't it work for race?
Because pitch/tone is different than ethnolect, and voice changers can obscure differences of the first but not the second.
Not as significantly.
> I doubt this is a big issue in practice
It absolutely is.
> you could mask the ethnolect using AI.
That’s not just a “voice changer”, and if you are going beyond pronunciation to alter grammar and vocabulary that is ethnically identifying, with even modern AI, you have a non-negligible chance of occasionally whiffing and radically altering semantics.
The idea was suggested in response to someone who implied I favored "deliberately avoiding intervention". I mentioned the idea to clarify my position, and give an example of the sort of intervention I'd be in favor of.
If someone turns it into a product, they deserve mega kudos as far as I'm concerned.
Racism stems from racist beliefs, and your approach to putting out spot fires ignores the raging wildfire that's spitting them out. Confronting the source of racist behavior, racist beliefs, is confronting the root cause of discrimination.
In the 90s and 00s, much of the anti-racism education consisted of the same things you'd cry "woke" about, but were instead called "politically correct". The education confronted racist beliefs, and engaged the how and why those beliefs were wrong, and gave students and intuition about why those beliefs were wrong when they encounter them in their lives.
CRT, for example, is nothing new. Anti-racism education in the 90s and 00s was direct implementations of the CRT school of thought that existed in the decades prior. At the time, the right-wing was losing their minds over how "PC" it was to say "African American", or to teach that the Civil War was fought over slavery, and not the fig leaf of "states' rights", or that they shouldn't say the n-word but black people can.
"Woke" is the new "PC", and the CRT that gets derided as "woke" is the same CRT that was derided as "PC" in the past, and it is the same CRT that influenced anti-racism education during your halcyon days of the 90s and 00s. That same anti-racism education addressed those very same racist beliefs you're desperate to assuage and protect.
Dancing around the problem and pretending racism and racist beliefs don't exist, because pointing that out makes some people uncomfortable, is something we've tried for decades, and it doesn't work, as MLK has pointed out:
> First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
Right-wing resistance to the results of liberal democracy is as old as time, and not anything new that suddenly appeared in 2015 like you seem to beleive. All of the rhetoric you hear now is the same rhetoric espoused by the right in the decades prior. The right has spent decades getting triggered over direct action and society acknowledging racism, and "woke" is just what they're calling it instead of "PC".
These beliefs existed before 2015, but they were mostly only expressed in "good company" between like-minded individuals, because blatant racism became a social faux pas. They were allowed to fester and go unaddressed because addressing them made people uncomfortable. But then Trump comes in and welcomes the far right renaissance that was happening around the world, a world-wide renaissance that had nothing to do with the NY Times posting articles that upset you, to the US. Trump showed them that no, they don't have to speak about those beliefs in hushed tones, you can wear bigotry on your sleeve and millions of people will celebrate it. Since you seem to take their rhetoric seriously, you can find plenty of far right leaders and ideologues saying just that, that Trump is "their guy" and that he opened the door to mainstream their far right ideas and rhetoric.
I don't claim we should never confront racism. I claim we should do it in an evidence-based way.
I went through the public education system in the 90s and 00s, in California's Bay Area of all places, and the discussion around race was very different than the discussion today. The idea that we should treat people the same regardless of race has switched from being a liberal position to being a conservative position. It seems to me that whatever was being done in the 90s and 00s "worked" in a way that what we're doing today does not. Probably because what we're doing today is very different, and is the product of an ideological conversation on social media rather than a conversation informed by data or reasoned discussion.
>But then Trump comes in and welcomes the far right renaissance that was happening around the world, a world-wide renaissance that had nothing to do with the NY Times posting articles that upset you, to the US.
Generally speaking the rest of the world takes their cultural cues from the US much more than the US takes their cultural cues from the rest of the world. Hollywood movies are viewed globally. The entire world follows news from the United States closely. Much of the rest of the world uses American social media websites. Etc.
It's a common observation that the current rise of wokism started in the US and then spread elsewhere in the world, which fits the general pattern. So the overall hypothesis that NY Times left-wing extremism is the root cause of the current worldwide far-right renaissance is pretty plausible to me. As you said -- treat the root cause.
>Since you seem to take their rhetoric seriously, you can find plenty of far right leaders and ideologues saying just that, that Trump is "their guy" and that he opened the door to mainstream their far right ideas and rhetoric.
I don't claim otherwise.
I'm a black person who grew up in Sweden in the 00s and early 10s, and I'm very glad race was never relevant or talked about outside of social science class. Almost everyone at my school was white, and I never felt like I was different because of my skin color. The first person who ever told me that my race or skin color was relevant to anything was an American. The worst thing about American culture (and what keeps me from moving to the US even though I could make much more money there) is that so many Americans are insisting on considering race (and other arbitrary categorizations like ethnicity, sex and gender) to be such a large part of what makes a person, overshadowing that person's unique attributes and identity.
Financially, income inequality in Sweden is vastly lower than in the United States as it is, and in the United States much of the inequality falls on racial boundaries. A recent Federal Reserve Bank of Boston study found that local white household’s median net worth was $247,000 while for African American households it was $8. Yes, eight single dollars. The Black population in Boston has been well established for well over a century, and much of its white population came in waves of western European immigration in the early to mid 20th century.
Not talking about this problem hasn't solved it so far because systemic self-perpetuating inequality doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
I don't see how it's useful to note that something didn't work when there is no evidence to suggest that the alternative works any better. I don't understand how talking more about race as a characteristic could possibly help to reduce racism or racial inequality. It seems to me much more likely to do the opposite.
This isn't an attack and your sentiment seems genuine but obviously this person knows his fears are not logical. I doubt most people can will themselves into feeling accepted even if others, like yourself, do your best to them feel accepted.
That's why representation matters
Although I appreciate the intentions of such people, as a non-white guy this always made me feel uncomfortable. That I'm not being welcomed for being a new member but rather a new member who's somewhat different (in color in this case). Whether this is at work, sports groups etc. I guess you call that a token?
Maybe the right compromise is to just be especially careful not to be rude to people who are underrepresented in the group, and not worry about it beyond that?
I'm in my mid 30s, so I'm in the age group you wanted to inquire.
Personally, I fucking hate this modern era of determining what someone is over who someone is.
I'm Japanese-American, born in USA to Japanese parents, and I fucking /hate/ being labeled a "person of color" or worse "POC". I'm a man, nothing more and nothing less. Anyone who calls me a "person of color" is a fucking racist who can't or won't see a man for who they are rather than what they are.
As written in our Declaration of Independence: All men are created equal.
I strive to treat all men equally. Part of that involves being deliberately blind to a man's race. I don't care if you're White or Black or Brown or Yellow or fucking Purple-Green; you're a man, just like me and everyone else.
MLK once famously said we should be judging men by the quality of their character, not the color of their skin.
Identity politics and political correctness can die in a fucking fire.
As an aside, this is also why I've sworn to never vote for anything related to or in support of the Left. The Left call me a "POC", the Center and Right call me a man. The choice is simple.
> I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
>There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.
>We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only.
>We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.
Since then, most of these problems have been greatly reduced.
Consider police brutality, for instance. On the scale of the entire population, it is small. The Washington Post says they know of 7 unarmed Black people killed by police in 2022. Of those, the majority were fleeing the scene of the crime. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...
There are about 45 million Black people in the US, so those 7 victims represent around 0.00001% of the Black population.
And we can hardly say that "basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one" after a 2-term Black president, who many Black people (including in New York) voted for.
Since injustice has shrunk since King's day, it follows that our concern for that injustice should be smaller as well. Same way it wouldn't be reasonable to murder a clerk who didn't give you the proper amount of change after a purchase.
There's plenty of evangelicals of every race, but overall the communities are very segregated. It was clear no matter their professed faith, in practice the community I grew up in was hostile to PoC.
So you hold the homogeneity of your original post-European community as evidence of moral impropriety--do you believe this principle should be universally applied to all peoples of the world, or are whites the only ones where homogeneity is "a problem"?
I have no desire to retread the 101 of how "white" cannot be treated as logically equivalent to other racial labels. Go do some reading on the subject. A good place to start is trying to enumerate exactly what heritages count as white, and how that has changed over time.
I didn't ask you whether or not your community was "racist". I'm sure they were, as are the majority of people on earth outside of progressive urban areas in western first-world countries. I asked you if ethnic homogeneity is morally improper in any communities besides post-European white people.
You're past my line with ascribing what I think and who from in a way that's literally just you ranting your imagination at me. You have no idea my mind on any of these things based on our conversation thus far.
Talk about the self report...
(Editing: as far as "ascribing what you think", the only things I've ascribed to what you think that you think that ethnic homogeneity in post-European white population is morally improper, which is exceedingly clear from the phrasing of the first comment you posted when you called it a "problem", and that you believe your community was racist, which is clear from the second comment you posted.)
Sure buddy.
The Kenyan soccer team doesn't have any white players. Are they racist?
This is clearly from someone who hasn't experience other cultures. White, black, asian, latino labels were all made up around 1700-1800s and all have been argued who's included all over the world even now, is a human created concept that has changed over time. Like most Americans your clearly making up for any biases of an all white upbringing and systemic racist past by being anti-white now.
This makes me curious. Would you mind answering, from your point of view, why do you think that is? Is it a specific scenario or type of scenario you wish to avoid or is there a generalized concern that comes with it? Is that due to uncertainty or past experience?
Another aspect is that I don't have that shared connection or ease of relating to people in the group. The activity has obviously selected for a specific group and there are probably other aspects of their lives that are also different from my own.
Past experience mostly. Trying to make friends where the majority is white was difficult though I was in university and far more awkward then. One on one or in smaller settings, its easier and at work it's relatively straightforward to become friendly with anyone.