But further, I’d never seen the statement from antiracist before…wow. The idea that the only cure for discrimination is discrimination is akin to saying the only cure for violence is violence. It’s abject insanity that such a notion is being advanced in society.

The cure for discrimination is forgiveness. The cure for violence is forgiveness. The cure for hatred is forgiveness.

The only way anything stops is for people to have the humility and wisdom to say “this will stop with me.”

Kendi is just advocating for a system of racial preferences administered by "good white people." That's been a hobby horse of a segment of the political left since the Nixon administration. Decades later, it still remains unpopular even among the minorities it is supposed to help: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/05/08/americans-see-adv.... But center left think tanks and advocacy organizations won't let it go. Even the most liberal state in the country defeating it resoundingly won't dissuade them: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/california-not-bell.... So keep expecting it to pop up in different guises until they manage to get their way.

As to why Kendi supports it, who knows. Lots of people attach a low price to their dignity.

Is that worse than not picking a single Hispanic, Muslim, or Asian because they are Hispanic, Muslim, and Asian?

The main flaw in your blend of anti-affirmative action argument is that at it's core it's a pro-racism argument, which supports the racist status quo as a default desirable scenario by first going out of your way to reject each and any alternative to the racist status quo.

Systems like this have historically been managed by the dominant "white people", which have unknowingly or not been advancing "white people" almost exclusively whether due to good or bad intentions, thus forming a vicious cycle. See for instance companies that employed machine learning models to drive admissions which ended up admitting candidates which already match the candidates which were already admitted in the past (white candidates from specific white-dominated academic institutions) and rejecting everyone else in the process regardless of ability.

This has been the way it's gone since Kendi wrote How to be an Anti-Racist. It is racism by any other name whether somehow "justified" or not. The books in the catalog of anti-racism include great hits like "White Fragility" further exemplifying the movements innate hatred of a certain skin color. The more you go down the rabbit hole the more you realize it's been a movement to transfer all problems other non-white races have onto white people and use that to promote what is objectively racist and bigoted language and methodology. These "authors" (I use that term loosely here, they are racist demagogues) are a key driver of so-called "diversity hiring" and an overall more difficult workplace because now anything can be conceived in their framework as some sort of anti-PoC swipe. This concept of "increasing representation" has in many places replaced the meritocracy. If anything, this type of movement has an overall negative effect (as exemplified by the pejorative "diversity hire" to refer to a person who is undeserving of their position).

It's not uncommon to get silenced for having the above view of anti-racism though a cursory view of the movement will lead you to the same thing. The reason you are just seeing this now is we've reached the point the average American realized "anti-racism" is cleverly designed newspeak and it's supporters are becoming more fringe by the day. In fact, commonly, criticism of the movement is associated with "marginalizing" the experiences of "people of color" which creates a situation where the movement can do what it wants because the opposite of anti-racism, is, of course racism (in English). If you're criticizing them as the wrong skin color you "benefit from power structures designed to empower white people". There's no winning with them, and that's why the movement has taken so much ground. No one wants to be accused of racism so you end having to do all sorts of backflips through flaming rings just to show how not-racist you are.

I don't have a solution to whatever perceived slights other people feel. I do know that targeting a group of people for punishment based on their skin color is wrong regardless of who it is or what they are.

When I started to read it, I thought it would be about making a statement about how we should be diverse. Not that he would have to present only science that is about diversity.

The second I read there would be a litmus test for studies I was right onboard with him quitting.

Stepping aside from the main debate, how can you possibly justify this? If I'm going to be forgiven every time I discriminate, assault, and slander people, why would I ever want to change my behavior? After all, I get rewarded for it: When I do those things I gain advantages over other people that benefit me, not to mention the psychological rush of dominating others. You forgive me for those things? Over and over, unconditionally? That sounds to me like I'm your god and I can do with you as a I please.

Discrimination, violence, and hatred are antisocial behaviors. They need to be reduced in a way that is just and fair and effective. Forgiveness is none of those.

The key thing for me is we give people the opportunity to change. This doesn't necessarily mean that there shouldn't be consequences. Only that the consequences are proportionate and finite.

In my opinion, hostility towards people who have made mistakes is a major problem that holds the left back. Identity politics has been very successful in driving a wedge between groups that would otherwise have very similar economic and class interests. I don't believe that was a mistake.

I'm in no way saying that going that far is desirable. However, I do think less ideological purity and more flexibility would be beneficial in bringing in people who agree on the core values.

Like women who have abortions? Gay people? Trans people? Liberals? Communists?

I'm not against flexibility, but IMO the left is far too forgiving, and needs to be much more aggressive. the Trump right is a fascist party, and the left needs to openly recognize that.

Yes. The right are quite ready to entirely ignore pretty much all of that if you're in agreement with them on whatever other issue is currently at hand. Plenty of women on the right have had abortions. Some fairly prominent gay figures would be Dave Rubin and Milo Yiannopoulos. I don't think Blair White needs much introduction either. Ben Shapiro is quite clearly Jewish and regularly reposted by the same kind of guys that were chanting "Jews will not replace us" in Charlottesville. The right are practical beyond the point of hypocrisy when it comes to the topic of the moment.

> I'm not against flexibility, but IMO the left is far too forgiving, and needs to be much more aggressive. the Trump right is a fascist party, and the left needs to openly recognize that.

The left needs to be aggressive in the right way. The right are extremely effective at being extremely hateful while also guiding relatively normal, if sometimes problematic, people down a path that takes them much farther right. From what I've seen, leftists doing the same work to reach out to the uninformed and apathetic are often attacked for a perceived lack ideological purity. I've not seen that kind of behaviour from the right and I think it plays a big part in pushing people away.

Besides, elements of the left are already aggressive, in the wrong way. Personally I think allowing race to supplant class as the primary talking point has been a huge mistake. You essentially alienate a great many people who would otherwise share a common interest by allowing the issue to be morphed into a blame game with fingers pointed across racial lines.

Why is it race instead of class and not race AND class?

Also, who has been canceled inappropriately? In fact, who has even suffered significant consequences for being cancelled? My impression is that it's a band of rapists who become right wing celebrities and get book deals.

I think the people being pushed right are:

1. Generally already on the right

2. If they are pushed, it's by the internal contradictions on the left. And those internal contradictions are caused by a wavering of conviction, not an excess

It's not race and class because race has eclipsed class in the public discourse. I don't know why that is but if I was being cynical I'd say it's to sow division and limit effectiveness.

On And vs Or, there's limited space in public discourse. Introducing additional issues necessitates that space being divided into smaller chunks. Grouping the issues also only serves to narrow your potential support. That's not to say certain issues can't/shouldn't be grouped.

Personally I believe that a focus on class would be more effective in dealing with the harms of systemic racism than the current approach focused on race. While also taking a lot of steam out of the right's rhetoric.

I honestly only see harm in the current approach where upper middle class white people tell some guy living in a trailer, paycheck to paycheck, that he has white privilege and that's why he should be paying reparations and passed over for a job.

> Also, who has been canceled inappropriately?

I'm not talking about people being cancelled, I'm talking about how we engage with people who are either politically apathetic or exploring a leftist perspective for the first time.

> 1. Generally already on the right

There seems to be this insular view that we should only engage with people that already fully agree with us and it often results in attacking people that might have problematic views that they would otherwise have become open to examining. I've seen a lot of younger people who don't necessarily have fully formed opinions pushed away in this way. The same applies for people who are generally apathetic and maybe examining their opinions for the first time.

> 2. If they are pushed, it's by the internal contradictions on the left. And those internal contradictions are caused by a wavering of conviction, not an excess

Hard disagree. The demand for ideological purity is the biggest factor that pushes people who haven't quite made up their mind or don't fully engage to the right. We literally saw this play out with the atheism movement in the early 2010s.

My observation has been that orthodoxy and too many causes has alienated a lot of people that were traditionally aligned with the left.

In the UK a recent example would be the collapse of the red wall. Constituencies that had been held by Labour for up to ~80 years flipped. A key factor was that the working class in the area felt that Labour was no longer interested in representing them, with the focus having shifted to social justice and right wing press latching onto this as an angle of attack.

I don't follow celebs enough to name names here but there are many democrat-leaning ones being cancelled. It's hard to cancel a dedicated conservative in a conservative environment, but a lib can be cancelled for anything, like saying the correct messages from six months ago.

And then there's everyone not in the news. All the women kicked out of breastfeeding or ovarian cancer groups for complaining that they allow men, etc.

> In fact, who has even suffered significant consequences for being cancelled?

Parents who question what their child's school is doing. The father who the school board worked with the FBI to label a terrorist because he shouted during a meeting where he was discussion the cover-up of the rape of his daughter at school.

> people being pushed right [by] the internal contradictions on the left. And those internal contradictions are caused by a wavering of conviction, not an excess

Contradictions are probably not caused by wavering beliefs but by inconsistent or hypocritical beliefs. Combine this with an excess of conviction and usual absolute unwillingness to discuss and you have alienating opinions.

But I don't think people are being pushed "right" as much as the liberal parties are being pushed to hard-left absolutist positions. "Capitalism bad. White people bad. Men are women." The people are staying roughly where they were and the parties are moving.

If that's too much, you could at least forgive the people who had nothing to do with the discrimination, assault and slander - which is something that Kendi doesn't seem to be able to do.

Too handwavy, the cure for discrimination is at the very minimum adequate public funding for primary and secondary education _everywhere_ (with adequate student to teacher ratios _everywhere_).

Although the discussion is at NYU this problem is not limited to the US. The issue with this and other societal problems is that state governance is operated in 4 year cycles (much like corporations now are restrained by the next quarter). Public education is something you invest in now to see a benefit of 25 years down the road. Until we collectively solve the incentives around long term policy all other aspects of addressing discrimination fall short.

So how does increasing the funding of poor white students advance Kendi's "anti-racist" program, precisely?

Clearly there's no logical link between the two concepts of discrimination and government school funding, at best a historical one and where I live, government schools get way more funding per pupil ($10k more) than private school tuition. But that doesn't make the government schools good, as a rule.

He gives the example of the vision laid out by MLK in the 1960s ("judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin"), and contrasts it with that of modern social justice types, and also compares Christianity when it was persecuted in the Roman Empire, to when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

As if we hadn't been doing that for past 60 years, with extremely underwhelming (in fact, arguably negative) outcomes.

1) (a) The history and experience of Black people in America is sui generis and (b) justifies responses that don’t need to be generalizable or measure up to ordinary standards of procedural fairness.

2) the “bootstraps”approach of Kendi’s parent’s generation has failed.

3) bureaucratic institutions operated by well meaning credentialed people can solve every problem.

Really, the only area where I substantively disagree with him is (3)—the white people in charge of bureaucratic institutions will inevitably use any special powers given to them to advance their own economic and cultural interests.

1. Virtually nobody with a BLM lawn sign believes this: https://twitter.com/DrIbram/status/1302724276412387334

2. I can't do any better than Kalefa Sanneh at pointing out the incoherence of Kendi's professed world view. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/19/the-fight-to-r...

Which should eventually lead to forgiveness, right?

The framework presented does not include forgiveness at all, the crimes are treated as unforgivable and atonement is eternal. Which clearly indicates that their goal is not to end discrimination.

Perhaps we should consider what crimes are treated by America as unforgivable as a way to establish common ground and then look at outliers from in groups and out groups for trends? There’s a lot of discussion here that is naive to how social work professionals routinely and successfully resolve these matters. I anticipate rich and colorful debate over the forgivability of rape, child abuse, and murder depending on the offenders demographics, assets, and associations.

Forgiveness is a process that victims undertake for themselves when they are out from the clutches of their abusers. Forgiveness is not a trophy for active offenders to carry as a spoil of their conquest, instead it a badge of shame they honor by being a better human than they were when they willingly harmed our caused others to be harmed tangibly or otherwise. Victims must be extraordinarily supported through their healing journey in any community truly invested in solving generational problems, which is not a process that can be scheduled or timed. Some people may never achieve this and accepting that is non negotiable if our goal is to heal. The offenders must work on themselves to, at minimum, become incapable of ever perpetrating these offenses again and be able to articulate the explicit details of their offenses while taking responsibility for their actions and making personal restitution to their direct and indirect victims. Only when both victim and perp have successfully achieved these ends can they be safely reunited. Those who are incapable or refuse to rehabilitate have no place in civil society, their status or demographics are irrelevant. This applies to gang banging murderers as it does to the architects and agents of slavery, the war on drugs/terrorism, or child abusers whether or not they hold status in their communities, etc.

Demanding forgiveness for ongoing abuses is laughable and shameful. No one is entitled to being forgiven for their wrongs, especially not if they keep doing the same horrible shit over and over and over again.

Have you considered that blaming white folks for your all problems might be one of the main reasons those problems persist?

Indians, Latinos, Asians move to the US with no money to their name, work their assess off and achieve success. Do you think they are not being discriminated against?

Your "generational problems" are a minor nuisance compared to the struggles of the rest of the world. Maybe it's time to stop with the despicable victimhood and whining?

Heed my words, the biggest change to well-being of the black community will not come from the policies. It will come from within.

I’m not blaming white people as a monolith, but that seems to be what you want to interpret from my post. Telling. I’m blaming the people who made the choice to hurt others, see the bit above about without respect to one’s status, wealth ,or demographics. I meant that. All bad actors should be rehabilitated or imprisoned. Black white pink, gay straight trans or female, or Democrat. These things do not matter for the purposes of identifying bad actors.

Have you no capacity to emphasize with others? It seems you don’t. Minimization, and suggesting victims of state sponsored abuses should shut up and take it because America seems better than your cherry picked examples? Have a long face to face conversation with someone that repulses you just listen while they tell about their life. Imagine yourself in their shoes.

What qualifies you to make sweeping off the cuff assertions about all black Americans? Have you any similar assertions for gay Americans? Lesbian Americans? Trans Americans? Japanese Americans? Korean Americans? Irish Americans? Catholic Americans? Indigenous Americans? American communists/socialists/anarchists? I’d love to hear more of your hot takes on what these large and homogenous populations need to heal.

If that leads to a better outcome for them, why not? I don't believe they should live in poverty for the sake of achieving some weird intergenerational justice.

> What qualifies you to make sweeping off the cuff assertions about all black Americans?

Oh, but I'm actually not talking about all black Americans. Are you aware that the racism you talking about somehow evades Nigerian Americans, with their income being higher than national average, and poverty rate being lower (in fact being less than half that of African Americans)? Somehow they don't feel the same about police brutality.

Can you entertain the thought that this enforced victimhood mentality doesn't help black folks, but hurts them instead?

I don’t think you understand what rehabilitation entails, America, as a general rule, does not facilitate rehabilitation so it is outside our cultural knowledge. Generally speaking this rehabilitation in practice looks like restorative Justice. Punitive systems lead to worse societal outcomes. Undertaking a restorative Justice project for victims of American subjugation would require actions like paying restitution, expunging criminal records, drawing the architects and agents of these systems of repression under charges for their crimes, returning land stolen from indigenous peoples, etc.

This is not the gotcha you think it is, and if you’re going to refer to a small minority of a demographic you should name them so it doesn’t seem like you’re moving the goalposts when I take you at your words. Police brutality is not a subject up for debate, this term refers to police using force in excess of what they were trained to do. A severe problem in police departments across the country fostered by a toxic culture and poor oversight. What Nigerian or any Americans think about it is a pointless exercise. Either we hold violent criminals to account or we don’t. In America some violent criminals are excessively punished, others are not punished at all and instead celebrated for mercilessly assaulting the right people. These are systemic failures.

enforced victim hood mentality is a racist dog whistle and I’m not going to engage with you further if you can’t help but use hateful language. This article could be helpful in your understanding, however you will need to do the work of relating their examples to America and considering the adjustments to your outlook needed to drop the dog whistles and underlying prejudices.

https://ilizwi.co.za/on-victimhood/

Essentially what you're saying is: if we try policy X and it doesn't work, we need to try even harder. Rinse and repeat.

This is a religious mindset.

You know perfectly well that most of your described actions will never happen. And that is exactly why you put them on your list: it protects you from the evidence that your policy doesn't work. When it fails, you can always claim that we didn't do enough.

> enforced victim hood mentality is a racist dog whistle

Back at you. Your messages reek of White Savior complex.

You’re ascribing motivations to me when you don’t understand the definitions of the words you use. I don’t want to make you feel bad, but you might be wise to look up some things before you speak about them.

White savior complex is used to describe people who try and solve problems for people they pity. I suspect you may treat empathy and sympathy as synonymsthey are not. I’m not trying to solve any problems for any groups I’m not part of. What I am is an ally who strives to understand the realities experienced by marginalized groups and I am willing to adjust my perspective toincorporate new (to me) information. I recognize that America only has democratic freedom for rich white men and that in order to make a freer society for all there need to be systemic changes and accountability for the consequences of this power structure must be had. By learning about the experiences of marginalized people I can incorporate their views into my mine and can in solidarity for the solutions these people demand.

> I’m not trying to solve any problems for any groups I’m not part of. What I am is an ally who strives to understand the realities experienced by marginalized groups and I am willing ...

A large part of the problem is calling it a racial problem. You're declaring yourself an ally to a racial group which means that the problem then has to be universal amongst your concept of that racial group. If a black person testifies that this isn't a universal race-based problem they aren't listened to (as tautological proof of their statement) but instead lambasted as having internalized white-supremacy or whatever.

Also, 'ally' is a pretentious term in this context. Ally generally means peers who support each other not a paternalistic protector but BLM showed that this isn't how it was being used in a social justice setting. There's a video from Portland during BLM of a black resident trying to talk to a black officer and a white Antifa runs between and starts shrieking at them because it would destroy the narrative if we could simply discuss our problems calmly.

It quickly starts to look like using marginalized people as props in a fight against your political enemies more than actually trying to help them.

Understanding this key point is fundamental to understanding intersectionality, which you would know if you had read the link I shared earlier. I have extended generous benefit of the doubt to you regarding your arguments and assuming, despite ample contrary indicators, that you’re arguing in good faith. I think this comment chain serves to prove that you’re actively arguing in bad faith in violation of the site guidelines. I suggest you read those as well as the article I linked above up thread and reflect upon your words and actions while digesting the content therein.

Once again you’re using words that you do not understand. I don’t know where you’re hearing these terms used in the way you’ve used them but you would be wise to excise that source of propaganda from your life.

https://libguides.library.cpp.edu/c.php?g=1047593&p=7681898

so one person got upset and acted poorly? I hope that they’ve learned from their mistakes because they do not represent anti fascism, blm, or me. Anti fascism means to be against fascism. Fascism is anti American so to be antifa is to be patriotic. My families elders did not kill fascists in wwii to see fascism brought to America by our own minority party. America can not be a democratic state and fascistic.

another non sequiter, and failure to understand me. I am trying to speak plainly for you but you need to do your part in trying to understand me. I actually want to help people, especially the marginalized and forgotten. I won’t bore you with the details or doxx myself but I think it suffices to say that I put considerable money and time where my mouth is.

I'm quoting you. You wrote those two sentences.

> Once again you’re using words that you do not understand. [Posts link to definition of 'Ally']

That definition is clearly aspirational.

> so one person got upset and acted poorly?

A lot more than one. And when they returned to their group nobody took issue with it. Look at riot footage, a majority of the people burning down black neighborhoods were whites carrying BLM-supporting signs.

> Anti fascism means to be against fascism.

Apparently anti-fascist just means fascist. I'm sure there's an aspirational definition somewhere that says otherwise but actions speak more loudly than words.

> Fascism is anti American so to be antifa is to be patriotic.

Antifa beats people in the street for their political views. That's very un-American! There was literally a USA communist party during the cold war, but there was no USA party in the USSR.

> My families elders did not kill fascists in wwii to see fascism brought to America by our own minority party.

Surprise, it's being brought by the majority party!

> There isan ever increasing body of unbiased research unequivocally proving ...

The article we're discussing is literally about how the institutions sanctioning the research are biased and only accepting research that purports, in its very setup, to support DEI. What we see is an echo chamber where people are expected to agree with those statements.

> I am trying to speak plainly for you but you need to do your part in trying to understand me. I actually want to help people, especially the marginalized and forgotten

This is what I used your quote to show, the type of allyship you are practicing defines problems as being based on intersections such as race, and how that turns into attacks on anyone who disagrees. (Even where that outcome is absurd, such as white people lecturing black people about blackness.)

I have seen Thomas Sowell and Candace Owens being racially attacked, by supposed anti-racist allies, simply because they did not subscribe to the narrative you use. I've seen Antifa members beat unarmed people and claim to be patriots. Behavior speaks louder than words.

Part of a functioning, healthy system is recompense/justice, and yes foregiveness.

If you tear a system down, even if you manage to shift some power balance, you stand to create a situation as bad or worse than the one you began with.

Unless a core value of the system you seek to create is forgiveness, you only stand to substitute one systemic opression for another.

Put in terms perhaps you might understand, african americans, hispanics are not forgiven their crimes, where often those with wealth and influence or socially favorable bias are (often) foregiven.

Adding more henious lanaguage, attitude to the mix does not help, when it can be redirected at those still in a position of relative powerlessness.

Some specific crimes should be punished harder (rapists especially in college and positions of power should immediately be punished and severely), at the same time where we are willing to dole out forgiveness, that should be equally given.

You cannot have one without the other.

http://www.mnchurches.org/blog/2021/02/18/holocaust-survivor...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reparations_Agreement_between_...

Absolutely not. The idea that any of this is fixable with 'forgiveness' is far more insane. You can't undo hundreds of years of systematic disenfranchisement and subjugation with forgiveness - you have to discriminate in the opposite direction.

To quote LBJ, "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." That's what Kendi is saying, and he's completely right.

It's not fair. Neither is discriminating in the other direction because these people are not at fault for what their ancestors did, not to mention that affirmative action policies divide people along racial lines rather than the factor more relevant to today, class lines.

Ask yourself whether a black student with wealthy parents should benefit from preferential admissions to colleges over a white student from a poor background.

If a white people said this everyone would say he is a nazi.

My problem with this quote is it intentionally ignores the plight of anyone who has nothing and isn't African American. Kendi's approach is an inherently selfish one and that's what makes it so polarising.

The answer to the societal issue of wealth disparity is not to give the poor of one racial group an advantage over the poor of another. It's to actually address the source of the problem in a manner agnostic to race. Doing anything else only serves to stoke division and racism.

Certainly I wouldn't argue for a second that we should implement policies that ignore or exclude poor white people.

Unless we see others as friends — that everyone is flawed human being, including yourself, that share this same world, and one day have to left this world altogether sooner or later, then I don't see how this problem will genuinely get fixed.

What they did instead is amped up individualistic ego and make the divide even more...divide.

You’re at least a year behind.

> The only way anything stops is for people to have the humility and wisdom to say “this will stop with me.”

This is how I used to think. It’s reminiscent of the thinking of the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, John Lennon, and countless others who have had noble idealism which sadly isn’t congruous with reality. Here is a quote which demonstrates the logical endpoint of this idea:

> Hitler killed five million [sic] Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.....It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany.... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.[1]

That is the logical conclusion of this idea, take your own life in hopes you’ll posthumously be considered worthy of having been spared, and worthy of having anyone intervene to spare you. Because unilaterally, arbitrarily deciding to forgive a transgressor who’s still motivated by their transgression grants permission and submission to their goal.

There is historical precedent for a similar notion being more realistic and effective: Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa. But what makes it more realistic and more effective is that there was significant, forceful pressure which motivated the transgressors to seek mutual reconciliation. To some extent, they were also willing participants.

Personal anecdote time: like probably many here, I was bullied as a kid. It was a shockingly regular occurrence for me to be violently attacked, sometimes even by people I don’t think I’d ever interacted with before they were beating me. I had a timid and peaceful demeanor even when some of my family strongly encouraged me to defend myself. Eventually this led to a group of ~20 kids kicking me on the ground while I covered my head and neck and hoped to make it out alive. I was 13-14 years old, I had endured beatings on a lesser scale too many times to count. Of course I knew I couldn’t defend myself from 20 kids, so I took another beating. But the next time I got jumped, by one kid, I punched him straight in the face. I didn’t even know I had it in me to do, but instinct took over. Then I got up, saw the kid who attacked me was embarrassed but physically okay, and I walked away. That was the last time anyone ever laid hands on me outside a sporting context with established consent. Now I can forgive those kids, because they’ve stopped beating me.

1: Quoting Gandhi, source: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/gandhi-on-the-holocaust

In the real world, your bullies are no longer the same people, and punching them 60 years later won't address your past or future problems.

> You can’t forgive someone for transgressions they’re determined to continue

My understanding is that hate and violence in the last few decades have been steadily declining. At the same time, self-reported perception of those has been increasing since ~2014.

Maybe there's eluding racism we can all feel but cannot measure.

Or maybe a side effect of changes to social network recommendation algorithms is that we're now building echo chambers and polarizing people.

Today there's less hate, but more talk about it. And drastic measures aimed to decrease it have a high likelihood of changing the trend.

When white people have kids, they have to give their children the birds and the bees talk when they reach an appropriate age.

When black people have kids, they have to give them the same talk, and also the one where you need to be really careful about acting a specific way around cops lest they unalive you because police officers view blacks as more aggressive than whites because of prejudice.

As long as my kids have to live in a world where they need to be given that second talk? I don't care about how put-upon you are by people actively reacting against racism.

> shouldn't act suspicious when you walk into a convenience store lest the employees stalk you

I understand it's tempting to blame it on racism, but please go talk to non-white store owners. They do the same thing, it's not about the race.

You have to pick which battle you're going to fight.

Either racism today is the major problem. Or there's racism in the past that lead to poverty in the present. Those are two different lenses dictating two different strategies.

You can choose to feel righteous and fight ever-elusive racism.

Or you can chose to be pragmatic and fight poverty.

Being righteous is definitely more pleasant and convincing to the masses, but it rarely produces better results than being pragmatic.

Have you considered that giving the talk and installing the idea that "cops are your enemy" might cause your kids to run away or resist the police, thus unnecessarily escalating what could be a perfectly civil interaction?

There's a speed trap in Louisiana that I passed through for over 30 years. I've never seen a white person behind the wheel of a car with a police car nearby unless it was a traffic accident, I've seen tons of white motorists pass through the area far above the speed limit, and the community is 60% white. Meanwhile, I saw black folks pulled over literally every day. Please whitesplain to me how being wary of the cops in that stretch is the fault of black folks.

Are you aware that for every example you brought up (Rayshard Brooks, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd) there's a recent example of the exact same thing happening to a white person and getting no national attention whatsoever?

Your cherry-picking and emotional response is what leads to polarization in society.

> how cops have treated minorities for generations

No, this is how cops treated everyone.

You mean like when people decide to highlight issues with diversity and representation in academia by requiring it to be addressed?

What I don’t understand is why that is assumed true. If we want to encourage many different cultures to live together wouldn’t it naturally make sense that different cultures would have different outcomes in job preferences? How do you separate potential racism from cultural differences?

My fear is if there are strong cultural differences that lead to disparate racial outcomes so organizations will always be able to point out that systemic issues exist even when they may be eradicated. I don’t know how we measure this.

By conducting studies where you study the effect of the race variable. This has been done many times over in multiple countries and the results have shown that colored people and racial minorities are discriminated against. But despite the vast amount of empirical data, people still refuse to believe that racial discrimination is a factor in the job market.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-29/job-appli... https://www.jstor.org/stable/40276548 https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/lehr-2015-000...

Well, your examples seem pretty cherry-picked and not necessarily generally empirical (ie. lots of embedded subjectivity).

Now your first link is more interesting and is usually the one that everyone pulls out as "absolute proof" that discrimination is live and well in modern hiring against Black people.

I wonder, though, how much of this is in the bias of the experimenters when they selected "Black sounding names" and how much is just unfamiliarity with an "unusual" (and by this I mean rare) name and how much is the knee-jerk reaction to a name (basically real prejudice).

For example the actual most common names for Black children in the US are – Jacob, Emma, Michael, Ava, William, Emily, etc. And I suspect they are not choosing those names on purpose.

On the other hand, my ex's sister named their son "Air Jordan" (for his first name) and their daughter Cinnamon for her first name. And I personally have great uncles with the real first names of "Snapbean" and "Squawk" (I am not joking).

None of these people are Black, but how do you imagine their resumes are accepted at large (or small) companies?

So I am wondering how much is prejudice against the person and how much is prejudice against the name?

Why is it your choice to make? When you hire someone, you're hiring everything they bring to the table. You might be wrong in your interpretation, but it's what you've got. So perhaps you find names beyond the pale, but why not dress codes too? Names and many other characteristics involve human choices well beyond genetics.

You do realize that the orchestras used to hire blind, that is, the audition was done with the musician hidden behind a curtain and all other factors withheld, so that the only factor that was perceivable was the sound of the music from the musician, in an effort to remove bias. And New York Times in the last year or two had an editorial decrying this as unfair, because it didn't give the correct outcome of reducing underrepresentation. The DIE crowd does not want fairness and equality of opportunity; they want equality of outcome. They want diversity hires, not hires of the maximally strong candidates.

I always find it weird that people see this is a bad thing. Equality of outcome is equity. Extra time for people with learning disabilities is equity, ada regulations is equity, hearing aids, glasses, booster seats, handicaps in golf and chess, giving bus seats to the elderly are all equity. Equity is the thing we naturally strive for in basically all aspects of life. Provide aid when we can, receive aid when needed.

> They want diversity hires, not hires of the maximally strong candidates.

That's not what affirmative action is, it's recognizing both the systematic and individual disadvantages that someone experienced and, potentially, depending on what they are, realizing that they have more potential than meets the eye. It's like basing hiring decisions entirely on leetcode challenges and putting on your blinders on not realizing that the people who have the time to waste on leetcode is a skewed sample of the population.

Who is the more impressive student? Alice who had a stable suburban comfortable upbringing and went to prestigious private high school and got a 34 on her ACT, or Bob who grew up with a single father, went to a public high school in an high needs district, had to work a part time job after school and babysit his little brother every day before his dad got home and got a 29?

The above is an example of an individual disadvantage, now apply that same logic to systematic disadvantages.

The kid with the higher score is a more impressive student. But there might certainly be a justification for giving the kid who had a tougher road to get there a leg up.

But that’s different from what we’re doing, where we apply racist assumptions and treat certain minorities as if they’re all from single parent homes, regardless of whether that’s true for the individual.

That’s not what you should have taken from that example at all, which is specifically why I used two white coded names. The point is that people grok individual disadvantages easily and giving them a leg up feels natural, and the same reasoning should be applied to systematic disadvantages.

> regardless of whether that’s true for the individual.

What you’re describing is looking at privilege through the lense of intersectionality, which nobody disagrees with.

Cough. Intersectionality assumes that people's problems are the problems of their identities, and that their identities are the ones visible to others. Black, short, etc.

Identity politics seems purpose-built by "allies" to explain why the allies don't actually listen to the people they're helping.

For instance, Thomas Sowell isn't treated as an individual who disagrees with BLM's policies instead he's declared to be a defective or traitorous black man who isn't part of the real black people group.

By contrast, progressive POC are always presented as representative of their race even when they’re not. Ilhan Omar is held up as the face of Islam in America. But there’s way more Trump voting Muslims than ones who are as far left as Omar.

What’s a “white coded name?” Most Black people have names similar to other Americans. E.g. here are the top names by ethnicity for babies in NYC in 2013: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/vs/baby-names-.... The top 3 Black baby names are Ethan, Jayden, and Aiden. Playgrounds in Park Slope are full of kids with those names.

If equity was our standard we wouldn't give eyeglasses to anyone because blind people can't see at all.

Instead we strive for equality, where everyone is able to use the best devices they or their insurance can provide regardless of others. I can get glasses to restore my vision to 25/20 even if yours never was 20/20.

> That's not what affirmative action is, it's recognizing both the systematic and individual disadvantages

Affirmative action doesn't treat people as individuals. It's specifically about using people's visible identities (whether or not they do!) to determine how they're treated. Under affirmative action a rich black man would get a job before a poor white man and it would be defended by its supporters as undoing systematic obstacles even if the recipient never encountered those obstacles themselves.

> people who have the time to waste on leetcode

Why do we hate people who teach themselves a skill? Why is it literally considered a negative these days?

> a skewed sample of the population

They're individuals, not population samples.

> Who is the more impressive student

If I was running a scholarship this would be the criteria because it would indicate who would get the most out of the resources. If I'm hiring them to fit a defined role I only care about their current skills, not where they started.

Yes, you are missing my point. I am not insinuating anything, I am stating directly that some people might be biased against unusual (to them) names. Names that are difficult to say, spell, etc. depending on the language, or just out-right stereotypical prejudice with a name (which is what these studies just assume). I am not saying that any of this is ok, people rarely get to pick their names. What I am saying is that it might not all be based on the color of people's skin.

Begin biased against Black skin is a problem (and is the important bit in some instances). Being biased against "Black" names is also a problem, even if you can devise situations where the name is attached to a person who doesn't have Black skin. And both are racism, because they are directed at people based on the assumption that they are in a particular ethnic group, even if that assumption is wrong.

You assume a racist motive in your scenario, but what if the bias is actually towards all unfamiliar names, only some of which are black names?

The specter of racism is so great that people are expected to be free from every potential bias because it could be race-equity related somewhere.

> You assume a racist motive in your scenario

No, I don't assume any motive whatsoever. I'm talking only about actions.

You are of course entirely right that it shouldn’t matter in the decision process, unless the job at hand is “person named John”. But a point to raise is that this holds for positive discrimination as well, if the goal is to increase the number of X minority employees, then you cant optimize for that by selecting for X-sounding names if that’s a bad proxy.

A black person, a white person, and an asian person with the exact same credentials mean extremely different things in terms of absolute rather than relative competence level, as a consequence of affirmative action policies. The filters they had to pass through are different, and therefore an Asian person who went to Harvard almost certainly is in the top 1% of the absolute test score distribution, whereas the same is not necessarily true for the others.

Since job performance is correlated with absolute capability, and not group-relative capability, discrimination on the basis of race is rational in a society that employs affirmative action policies at prior points in the credentialism pipeline. Correcting and controlling for this would only be possible by designing resumes that don't reference achievements that have group-relative thresholds.

> A black person, a white person, and an asian person with the exact same credentials mean extremely different things in terms of absolute rather than relative competence level

Say these sentences out loud.

That doesn't change the fact that the absolute level of current ability implied by the same credential differs between groups, when the credential is conferred via affirmative action.

Based on your other comment, you would claim "Affirmative Action" is why you think this. But it is important to realize that by making this assumption at all you are expressing biased judgements on these three humans entirely based upon their race.

One of the other two could have had the highest possible score of all time, but you have written them off by making an assumption about them, based on race. You have made a judgement based on statistical inference, when you should have treated them all equally.

You may not intend it in any ill-meaning way, but it is important to realize that minor assumptions like this are pervasive, and they have far-reaching effects.

I think it's important to distinguish between probabilities and possibilities. It is possible that any of them has the highest score. However, it is most likely that the Asian does.

Let me articulate this phenomenon in a more neutral example. Suppose you start an elite academy for the game Go. All of the best Go players in the world come from places like South Korea, China, etc, who have a long history of playing the game. However, you would like to increase the appeal of the game internationally, so you institute an affirmative action policy that says 50% of your students must come from non-asian countries.

Let's say you have 100 slots to fill each year, and you operationalize your affirmative action policy as follows: You take all the asian applicants, rank them by ability, and take the top 50. You take all the non-asian applicants, rank them by ability and take the top 50.

It should be obvious that, in this example, the average absolute ability level of the two groups will be quite different. The incoming Asian group would crush the non-Asian group in competition. This isn't due to any innate racial capacity gap, but due to the historical and cultural relationship to the game of Go.

Now, you educate each group together for say, 4 years. That education process may homogenize ability a little bit - helping the lower performers improve more than the higher performers (though the opposite may also be true), but it's probably not sufficient to close the rather large incoming skill gap.

Now, if you were watching a match, and the only things you knew about the two competitors were that they both attended your elite academy, and one was from South Korea, and the other was from California, who would you bet on to win?

It's entirely possible that the Californian is better! It's just less likely, given no additional information. Critically, this isn't an argument against the affirmative action policy. The AA policy is doing just what it should do - helping to close the skill gap. But it does means that statistical reasoning about racism has to be sensitive to this confounding variable if it wants to make truly accurate inferences.

However, the point that I am trying to make is that we, as a society, should be trying to ignore these obvious statistical likelihoods when we are choosing a candidate. Those statistical likelihoods have nothing to do with the candidate themselves. If we make these kinds of interpretations, we are no longer judging a candidate based on who they are, but rather who we think they might be. And who am I to make that judgement? I'm nobody special. That's all I'm trying to say, really.

EDIT Someone else in the thread brought up the idea of why there is AA for school, but not for the workplace as in my argument. It's kind of a different topic, but I think it's a good counterargument about the complexity of this. I don't really have a good answer, to be honest, but it will be on my mind for awhile now.

Ah, ok I see. I didn't understand your point then. I think we at least kind of agree on that point. What I was trying to say is that, I don't think that it's accurate to characterize the resume study as proving racism or racial discrimination, given the bias induced by AA. At least, providing they are not going further than correcting for that bias.

I do agree with you that in an ideal world, people would try to avoid factoring that in. But, it is important to keep in mind I think that hiring decisions are often extremely consequential for the people that make them (in a way that university admissions are not), and as a consequence, asking the decision makers there to intentionally ignore pertinent information is almost always going to be a losing proposition.

I think, even if people are correcting a bit for this bias in the hiring pipeline, AA is still providing considerable value to historically disadvantaged candidates, by helping them get access to alumni networks, and presumably a higher quality education and hopefully that will be sufficient to close the remaining skill gaps over time.

The truth is one. If you lie to other people and demand they lie to you it affects your entire model of the world. If there are facts about the world that you would prefer not to acknowledge they are linked to other facts. Lying consistently requires enormous effort.

* A name: must be in top 1% of test scores

* B name: must be in top 5% of test scores

* C name: must be in top 10% of test scores

The following 3 students are admitted:

* Allison (is in top 1%)

* Brian (is in top 4%)

* Caitlin (is in top 1%)

We can only safely assume that Allison is in the top 1% because her criteria certifies it. Even though Caitlin in actuality is in the top 1%, because her entrance criteria is more lax, we are not sure.

I think this is one downside of affirmative action, people are unsure if a person passes based on affirmative action or purely on merit. Now we consider the upsides and downsides of affirmative action, and decide whether it should be implemented.

Making assumptions about them based on probabilities is exactly the problem here, and it is one that we can easily avoid.

Using the credentials is making assumptions about them based on probabilities.

This is obviously the golden standard we are trying to achieve, but how do we get there? It's theoretically impossible to treat everyone equally and apply affirmative action at the same time. I understand there is a difference between equality and equity, but I'm replying to the words you wrote.

Affirmative action may be the best solution we currently have to deal with systemic racism, but ultimately it's trying to fix prejudice with prejudice - and that is not a perfect solution. It also creates a lot of confusion because sometimes we say to treat people equally (as you say when trying to decide between hiring candidates), and other times we say we should help out the disenfranchised (such as when admitting students to schools). So where do we draw the line for when we want equality versus equity?

My point is this is a complicated problem with no perfect solution, and people will correctly point out flaws with it both theoretically and (more relevant for this discussion) how we implement it.

Anyway, I think we mostly agree. Cheers.

Study results may only suggest something, which can often have the appearance of showing it.

How do you fight intentional racism, with a healthy dose of residual lasting generational effects from past racism, with passivity?

It's like creating a game with rules, but having no penalty for breaking them for the first half of the game, and then saying it's just the fault of the loser if someone cheats to beat them.

Or saying "I can't tell for sure if it's below freezing, my thermometer has an error bar of +/- ten degrees" and ignoring a bunch of freezing water around you.

If the movement to fight this spectre of "institutional" racism would focus less on applying their rules to everyone, and more on applying their rules to actual perpetrators, it would garner more support from the people it needs. To use your analogy if you're sitting in your neighbors pool and he says it's not freezing, but there's freezing water, perhaps don't blame all of his neighbors.

Others pointed out some studies which showed potential biases in hiring and that seems like a great potential proxy to understand the current level of racism in hiring.

A foundational belief here is that correlation is causation!

The assumption alone is wrong yet any other assumption inevitably leads to stigmatisation and segregation.

Whatever study anyone comes up with it will inevitably turn into a discussion if either racism or discrimination.

Obviously there are a lot of mechanisms that might change that equal expectation, but it still seems reasonable to me that for most jobs the default expectations should be around equal.

For example, in 1963 Yale disinvited George Wallace, who was popular in the deep south, as a speaker. As a result, observers were deprived of a chance to hear opposing speakers' arguments. To some, Yale appeared censorious. As Jonathan Rauch describes [2], that's not good for your case. Censorship is all these characters need to gain new followers. Wallace ran for president in 1968 and nearly forced a plurality which would have given him significantly more influence [3].

Early episodes of the podcast So to Speak [4] by FIRE can inform the direction that can get us talking again. Basically, open and civil discourse is the way. The podcast demonstrates, through interviews with free speech advocates, a bunch of examples showing why that is a good target to shoot for, and how to achieve it.

[1] https://archive.org/details/freespeechformeb0000hent

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0T9XSG73kY&t=4889s

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace_1968_presidenti...

[4] https://www.thefire.org/category/newsdesk/so-to-speak/page/1...

No, they also need a platform to make people aware of their existence, their views, and to recast their censorship to be in their favour. The whole point of no-platforming individuals is to make a statement that their views are seen as reprehensible and to stop them from being able to air those views to an audience.

Not all ideological disputes are about rational argumentation, many are based in a fundamental misalignment of values. Those value-based disputes cannot be resolved by open and civil discourse alone, and we know that racists have a tendency to abuse such spaces through techniques such as emotional rhetoric and Gish galloping.

The only way that this works is to exert total control of the content of all communications.

Otherwise, as in the real world until now, people find each other and network. You're talking about destroying freedom of association and expression in order to root out reprehensible people with the wrong values who could speak to people who want to listen to them.

I'm not advocating for some global censorship entity.

Ideology is not a protected class, however. In the case of Haidt, they are free to not present any research at conferences unless it advances their definition of equity, and he has no choice but to go along with it or walk away.

It's worth pointing out that they are not explicitly turning down non-equity-focused research, but that the existence of the question is his interpretation of an ideological pressure to conform.

If it even existed in the first place; there are plenty of laws that expressly allow discrimination in deference to 'religious beliefs.'

Courts, & the Supreme Court in particular, are giving far more weight to 'christian freedom' at the expense of the rest of us.

Cases include recent PrEP ruling, insane football prayer ruling that willfully ignored facts, bathroom & sports laws targeting kids. crazy ruling on prayers in court.

Adoption discrimination (de-facto govt by transitive property. we have to stop outsourcing government to contractors, especially when it makes religious orgs the only avenue).

Upcoming ruling from CO which will probably allow even more queer discrimination.

that 'pressure to conform' is and has historically been one way, giving one class the legal go ahead to discriminate in the name of some skewed idea of christian ideals

If it were not, mosques would be legally compelled to hire rabbis and churches would have to consider hiring druids for services.

Where the line ought to be drawn is nowhere near as obvious as you seem to think it should be.

But this disagreement highlights this major problem the US faces.

We live in two increasingly separate realities with different 'facts', where obvious is totally different based on your identity.

the one religious non-belief class example I gave is the football coach prayer case.

to me it's an obvious overreach and clearly breaks secular education norms (and past scotus rulings).

to such an obvious degree that the minority (on the court, majority in public opinion) broke precedence and put photos directly refuting the 'facts' the majority claim are truth.

that's also a bit spurious. i don't think anyone is arguing that churches must be forced to interview (or hire) other religions.

but the majority does believe that the state & courts shouldn't create laws that expressly allows someone to discriminate or refuse to provide service to someone else just because they are gay or trans or use different pronouns. or deny an adoption. or disallow kids from playing incredibly low states high school sports. or ban books. or not talk about gender & sexuality. i keep using queer-centric issues because that's my identity and I can speak to it better than race/trans issues. there are plenty of examples there too.

it's minority religion dictating laws that affect our lives and explicitly allowing those beliefs to take away rights from the rest of us.

Not true! Just being banned from significant swaths of social media has frequently forced many prominent Nazis/alt-righters out of business. Before Kiwifarms recently had all of their major issues, they were already finding it difficult to keep the site running as a result of continued pressure on every host they switched to.

It also introduces readers to the entirety of the uncensored internet all at once, the most 4-chan thing imaginable, which is somewhat counter to the "limit exposure to disinformation" goal being claimed by the original deplatformers.

And that substantially reduces their reach and ability to disseminate their garbage. It's good.

And yes, they're a bunch of Nazi stooges.