Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by smsm42 1912 days ago
It shouldn't be, but it surely helps to not be eaten by piranhas immediately. Somebody without this kind of shield - especially somebody, say, having a misfortune of being a male and of European descent - might be. I personally have been told many times that I do not get to have opinion about cancel culture and ideology because of my identity. Having credentials that even PC zealots can't deny surely helps to make it harder to dismiss her.
2 comments

> I do not get to have opinion about cancel culture and ideology because of my identity

That works both ways, you can ignore them back because they are of a different identity (as they insist) and they are biased against your own identity.

I have already begun to doubt the papers of woke scientists in the last year. If they are not inclusive they are not worth my time. For example a researcher raising scandal on racial bias had a paper where she excluded the Asians, not even a mention. She was only watching for her own and the token whites for baseline. Why should I take her seriously? She's not fighting for my good. It would have been a different story if she was including everyone's good in her agenda.

Well, as a private matter I am certainly going to ignore their claims that my identity somehow automatically makes my opinions invalid. The sad truth, however, is that they have much more clout currently in many of our society's institutions - like the academia, the education, the press, the administrative state - that people, who, like myself and many other, smarter and more prominent people in the past, thought that identity is not what defines right or wrong. Now, in many cases, it does, at least when the political and institutional power is concerned.

> Why should I take her seriously?

You and I may not. But people who distribute grants, academic positions, book deals, who compose curricula and who make political decisions - would. That's the problem. And until the cultural norm is forged to make this not happen, the problem will continue.

I don't think academics like this one somehow convinced wealthy donors to support their work and starve all other work. I think the people who have come into wealth recently are pushing their agenda for political reasons independent of what academics discover.
> I personally have been told many times that I do not get to have opinion about cancel culture and ideology because of my identity.

Yeah, what's up with that? I guess people are supposed to shut up, stop thinking about this stuff and just accept whatever they say as gospel because they are right and just and can do no wrong.