[jrm4]

Yup. Though I would refine it a bit -- it's the "rush to excuse" that's the most dangerous. I don't much worry about the deliberate racist programmer as much as I worry about subconscious deliberate-or-not biases creeping in.

This perfectly analogizes to most everywhere else; angry open n-word saying racists are usually powerless losers.

More problems come from the larger combination of the rest of the "racism" spectrum, whether apathetic, or racist-but-quiet, or harbors latent biases that they may not know about etc.

(And here I do feel like I have to say, the answer isn't "SMOKE THEM OUT AND EXPOSE THEM" on the personal level, it's just taking the utmost care in the work you do)

[pure_simplicity]

In this case, it's not the rush to excuse that is dangerous, it's the rush to accuse that is dangerous. Innocent until proven guilty is a fundamental principle of justice. You have not demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that this is in fact the doing of a racist, so anyone coming up with plausible alternative explanations is only doing so to prevent the discussion from devolving into a witch hunt where the guilt of the accused is simply assumed and our biases and perceptions stand in for evidence. Repeat the witch hunt scenario often enough and eventually you end up with a boy who cried wolf scenario and now you've lost your credibility even in cases where you do have evidence to back up your claims.

When people are careless in making accusations that's incredibly damaging to society. You as a black person should know how divisive and damaging false allegations can be, since that was a tool racists used to instill racial hostility in society. Let's not repeat those mistakes. I'm not saying racism doesn't exist or that we shouldn't do anything about it, but knowing in your heart of hearts that this must have been an act of deliberate racism is simply not enough. We need a smoking gun, or else it's best to withhold judgment.

The fact that no one thinks the mislabeling by the AI is acceptable should be enough. That shows you that no one would defend a person who deliberately designed this. The 'rush to excuse' is not because society doesn't want to condemn racism, but because most of society still cares about fairness and not making false accusations.

[jrm4]

If you follow who is saying what, I don't think you and I fundamentally disagree - or at least are not THAT far apart on this - I (the black person here who is still saying yep, my black opinion is important) have also been strongly suggesting that we not automatically attribute these problems to intentional racism.

So to clarify -- the "rush to excuse" that I'm saying is dangerous is really "the rush to insist that there is definitely no bias in play," NOT the "the rush to accuse individuals of being racist" -- and I suppose the fundamental problem I see going on here is that people can't seem to distinguish these two things, even though they are very different.

I'm going to keep saying this: the biggest problem is not smoking out hardcore racists who openly hate, the biggest problem is getting much of the non-black tech populace to even begin this conversation without the hypersensitivity kicking in (fully acknowledging that, while I'm not a fan of the terms "SJW" and "woke" and such, there also absolutely exists a naive liberal left that presently makes this conversation harder because they lean too hard into their particular direction)

[jrm4]

And now I'm very curious as to the reasoning behind the downvotes. Again, I'm fine with you disagreeing with me, but I must insist that discussion is more valuable than blind downvotes when you do have the rare occasion of an actual real life black person here giving their opinion.