[justinrstout]

This article never takes up the cause of the minorities who are being harassed and killed on a daily basis, but spends a lot of time whining about having to show even a modicum of empathy by using more inclusive language. For this reason it reeks of self-centered willful ignorance.

[lesuorac]

That's the point.

Spending time teaching people to use people of color instead of black is just performant. Actually firing a recruiter that immediately throws any black resume into the trash is real change.

[Vegenoid]

This seems illustrative of the "boogeyman" points that many commenters are making. I think it is a very small number of people who don't want people to call black people "black", and that the majority of liberal people would find the notion "you can't call them black people" to be ridiculous.

Are there people who believe this? I'm sure there are, but I think they are a vocal minority.

[andrewstuart2]

How exactly would you go about implementing the "real change" here?

[bpt3]

That's part of the problem, there is no silver bullet. I implement it by not being racist (or sexist or any other -ist) personally and refusing to support anyone who is.

That's largely all anyone can do (and I have a lot more ability to do something about it as a business owner than the average progressive), which I'm sure feels inadequate and leads to roving bands of thought police members looking for perceived transgressions to attack.

[theossuary]

And how do you decide whether someone you're considering supporting is or isn't racist? Do you, by chance, use the way they talk about black people or other minorities (man that's a mouthful, maybe just shorten it to BIPOC) as a way to gauge it?

For example, if someone said the N word in front of you, or made an uncomfortable joke about a Mexican, would you decide not to support them? If so, then does that make you one of those roving thought police? You'd obviously be censoring free speech if you decided how you treat them based on what they say!

On the other hand, people are clever, they know not to be too obvious or it may cause them social issues. So, as long as they don't do something too untoward right in front of you, does that mean they gain your full support?

Of course, I won't be surprised if those proponents of free speech decide to censor me by downvoting instead of engaging speech with speech

[bpt3]

> And how do you decide whether someone you're considering supporting is or isn't racist? Do you, by chance, use the way they talk about black people or other minorities (man that's a mouthful, maybe just shorten it to BIPOC) as a way to gauge it?

The same way I determine anyone's beliefs on any other topic, which is watching their actions over time, including what they say.

> For example, if someone said the N word in front of you, or made an uncomfortable joke about a Mexican, would you decide not to support them?

Probably, but context matters.

> If so, then does that make you one of those roving thought police? You'd obviously be censoring free speech if you decided how you treat them based on what they say!

And here we go. I'm not censoring anyone by not continuing to associate with someone I don't agree with. I'm also not digitally screaming to ostracize someone I disagree with over terminology, as is the case with cancel culture advocates.

> On the other hand, people are clever, they know not to be too obvious or it may cause them social issues. So, as long as they don't do something too untoward right in front of you, does that mean they gain your full support?

See what I said above about how I assess people. But if someone is a closet racist and I know nothing about it, what am I supposed to do?

> Of course, I won't be surprised if those proponents of free speech decide to censor me by downvoting instead of engaging speech with speech

Knock it off.

[theossuary]

If my using the same rhetorical devices as you annoys you, maybe consider how you come across to others? Phrases like "roving bands of thought police" make you sound like a child, and makes it easy to dismiss your opinion out of hand.

[wormlord]

> That's largely all anyone can do

When you don't have an understanding of racism as a systemic issue, this ends up being the conclusion. Which is why "woke" people (the ones who aren't just adopting the aesthetics and being annoying) typically discuss social issues in systemic terms (prison, policing, discrimination, etc). Which requires not just individual actions but collective action.

The inability to understand this concept is really just a lack of imagination that comes from internalizing the status quo for too long. Not to the fault of anyone, it's only natural. But I think this is why "woke" looks like a bunch of nonsense from the outside.

For example: the US has 2M people in prison more than any other country. An insane number, but to live in the US is to accept that number as normal.

[lesuorac]

It really depends on the situation.

Sticking with the hiring situation, if you notice that a recruiter only ever recommends hiring people with say the last name Pandit then ask them about it. A lot of times people are not ashamed of their views and will just straight up tell you that they could tell the other candidates were inferior because of their name.

But as somebody else mentioned, there is no silver bullet here. Racism varies from instance to instance. A solution to fix racism in hiring isn't going to fix red-lining. You need to be keeping an eye of things and looking for patterns that don't make sense for the given sample size.

[chaps]

What term would you use to encompass non-white folk?

[iooi]

Person of color is not for "non-white", see: east asians.

[chaps]

The question stands, then! What's your answer?

[SV_BubbleTime]

Why are you trying to divide people based on immutable characteristics anyhow?

[BobaFloutist]

"People of color" is a broader term than "black people", and is meant to replace the (pretty widely accepted as) offensive "colored people", not "black people". I feel like it's useful to have a non-offensive phrase that means "nonwhites" without being defined in terms of white people, but maybe I'm just too woke to reason effectively ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[layer8]

> phrase that means "nonwhites" without being defined in terms of white people

That does sound quite oxymoronic. (I’m not American.)

[bpt3]

[flagged]

[dang]

Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style and please stop using HN primarily for ideological battle? You've been doing these things repeatedly, they're not what this site is for, and they destroy what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

[joejohnson]

From the article:

>>Racism, for example, is a genuine problem. Not a problem on the scale that the woke believe it to be, but a genuine one.

pg, and many anti-woke crusaders, employ examples of performative anti-racism to undermine the necessity of genuine anti-racism altogether.

[Hongwei]

Is it the critics of performative anti-racism or the actual performers of performative anti-racism who are undermining anti-racism?

[cocacola1]

How do the critics divine the intention here? At a certain point, we're going to get to anything short of a riot being labelled virtue signaling. I'd like to avoid riots altogether.

[mindslight]

Do people that love Chipotle actually hate burritos? It's Sturgeon's law all the way down.

[anal_reactor]

I think that inclusive language became a symbol of a step too far. If you expect me to adjust some governmental policies to make a better society that's fine, but if you expect me to change the way I express myself because you personally don't like it and you have a bunch of bullies behind you, that's just not okay and should be fought against.

[soheil]

Who's being killed on a daily basis? Could you provide sources?

[gedy]

People in Chicago?

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/01/03/chicago-homicides-...

[soheil]

> but spends a lot of time whining about having to show even a modicum of empathy by using more inclusive language

Inclusive language can prevent homicide? I'm so lost, what does that have to do with cold-blood murder?

[vile_wretch]

No one is saying that

[wrycoder]

Yeah, and who is doing the killing?

[dusted]

Currently, Ukrainans are.

But I suppose the color of their skin means they don't count towards the particular argument that dude is trying to make. Not calling him racist of course. I'm not even suggesting it.

[update] Hey! Look! I was down-voted for mentioning that white people are being killed on a daily basis, what an absolute surprise :D

[skrebbel]

You might've been downvoted for bad style, irrespective of your actual argument.

[kkukshtel]

Institutionalized racism, sexism, and the general idea that some lives matter less than others kills people every day through healthcare claim denials, red-lined neighborhood districts with lack of infra for safe access to food/water/health/civil services, etc. If you want explicit violence, police in the USA literally kill people at alarmingly high rates usually reserved mostly for countries with notoriously violent regimes or gangs, beating out Mexico, Sudan, Rwanda [1].

"Wokeness" is a fake bear the right has built up to distract from class issues and sow dissent amongst workers and stave off class solidarity. Progressive policy is largely embraced by the majority of Americans [2], but because the right (and its newfound grifter-billionare tech exec class like PG, Musk, Zuck, etc.) have convinced an overwhelmingly large amount of Americans that their woes are because we have gender neutral bathrooms (instead of wage theft by the C suite), it is peddled and use as a smokescreen to continually push through policy and regime changes that will only every serve the .1%.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_annual_...

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/27/majority-of-americans-suppor...

[hhh1111]

"Paul Graham is an idiot. Heres the real issue: [deliberately convoluted and unfalsifiable conspiracy theories]"

[diggan]

> But by the same token we should not automatically reject everything the woke believe. I'm not a Christian, but I can see that many Christian principles are good ones. It would be a mistake to discard them all just because one didn't share the religion that espoused them. It would be the sort of thing a religious zealot would do.

It seems like pg sees good parts with "wokeness", and also bad parts. He want to continue with the good parts, while getting rid of the bad parts. The essay mostly seems to speak about the historical context, and how to work with "wokeness" so the good parts can persist, rather than "whining about having to show empathy".

Lots of comments here would do good by trying to address specific parts of the essay they deem worse, as currently there seems to be a lot of handwavey-arguments based solely on the title alone.

[Arkhaine_kupo]

> do good by trying to address specific parts of the essay

I mean its a pretty big train wreck from the start to the end but I will try to point some of the dumbest lines, and pg is a smart guy so this is a particularly weird miss by him.

>> Wokeness is a second, more aggressive wave of political correctness

This is simply not true. Stay Woke is a phrase that has a long history and it mostly related to paying attention to political issues not correctness. The hashtag where it became mainstream was around the shooting of an african american man by the police. It wasn't cancelling someone for saying something dumb, it was because police brutality has a never ending history in the states.

One of the first issues it was used on was freeing P*ssy Riot an anti goverment band from Russia, again not a political correctness instance but one of censorship and violence.

>> Now the pejorative sense is the dominant one.

He admits he uses the word pejoritively but does not examine why a word that begins in a marginalised community is now mostly an insult. Like that is beyond irresponsible. if you and your gf have a petname and I start using it as an insult, and I control the media and the word becomes a common word to mean dumbass and I analyse it as that, then I am 1) siding with the bully 2) being a shit reporter.

>> Racism, for example, is a genuine problem. Not a problem on the scale that the woke believe it to be, but a genuine one.

This is just stupid because "the woke" is not a real group of people, he even admits he uses it as an insult, and secondly because he has no reason to know at what scale it is a problem. Handwaving a problem that doesn't affect you is bonkers, like I'd walk in an oncology ward and say "the scale that cancer is killing you is exagerated, but its a real problem". Paul Graham is a 60 year old white dude who went to Harvard, a uni that invented Essays to admit more white kids instead of jews, sport scholarships to put more white kids than asians thorugh and that was caught admitting white kids with worse grades than asians and was sued for it. He benefits from racism in the instituion he went to, spends his life in a subject that has 0 to do with policy, politics or race and then starts a paragraph with "racism isnt so bad yall".

>> The reason the student protests of the 1960s didn't lead to political correctness was precisely that

They led to the crumbling of the vietnam war, the desmitification of the american military and the end of racial segregation. I know he was a kid when it all happened but the 60s movements can hardly be called failed political projects.

I could go on because its all equally unbased and plainfully dumb. But I think just pointing out the kind of basic mistakes he has in terms of how he treats the subject means you can easily spot other equally dumb conclusions or assertions.

Another dumb conclusion, specially coming from someone with a background in computer science is

>> Being outraged is not a pleasant feeling. You wouldn't expect people to seek it out. But they do.

We KNOW that anger is the most potent emotion in the brain, therefore social media algorithms favour it. AI feeds based on "engagement" feed people anger, people dont seek it out. Shareholders and people like Paul Graham who think humanities are stupid do by creating machines that interact with humans in ways that are completely unethical.

[logicchains]

In the US statistically speaking a minority is much more likely to be killed by another minority than a "white" American.

[Arkhaine_kupo]

Most people are killed by someone they know. Due to redlining many minorities live in communities that are, to this day, essentially segregated. Add the disproportionate correlation of violence and poverty, adn you get a volatile cocktail.

You will find it that cities with less redlining have less srong correlation between races of victims and perpetrators than cities that are more strongly, or more recently, redlined.

[ceejayoz]

Sure, for the same reasons 84% of white people are killed by white perpetrators, and most child abusers are family members of the victim. Closeness brings both opportunity and conflict, and things like redlining and white flight have ensured the white and black population are quite well segregated.

[012673]

Great fact!

I wonder... why is that? Is it simply because they are non-white? What do you think is making your fact a fact?

[mindslight]

Except the state is doing its killing as normative behavior in all of our names, whereas disorganized gang violence is already generally seen as wrong.

And yes, police unaccountability most certainly affects more than just minorities. The lawlessness of law enforcement is actually the most pressing second amendment issue of our time, but you wouldn't know it by listening to the fully-pwnt political hacks at the NRA, pushing their chosen "side" of the group-herding thought-terminating "woke" strawman like pg here (sigh). How can you claim to have a second amendment right to self defense when the police can summarily execute you for exercising that natural right, in your own home, at night? (The answer is that you can't)

[fatbird]

Statistically true. What's your point?

[strathmeyer]

Their problem with "political correctness" is that someone corrected them who them deem lesser than them.

[UltraSane]

> This was not the original meaning of woke, but it's rarely used in the original sense now. Now the pejorative sense is the dominant one. What does it mean now? I've often been asked to define both wokeness and political correctness by people who think they're meaningless labels, so I will. They both have the same definition:

    An aggressively performative focus on social justice. 

In other words, it's people being prigs about social justice. And that's the real problem — the performativeness, not the social justice.

[jordigh]

It bothers me so much that Paul Graham people thinks it's performative. He can't imagine anyone actually, sincerely holding those beliefs, because he doesn't hold them himself. If someone is trying to modify their beliefs and then their behaviour, say, by mild self-censorship, he's got a list of insults ready for that person trying to better themselves: prig, politically correct, woke.

It's not performative. We really do believe that there are injustices and that if we can begin by changing the language, we can change the behaviour.

Just because Paul Graham can't imagine himself sincerely believing in self improvement followed by social improvement doesn't mean we don't believe it in ourselves.

[UltraSane]

You can hold the beliefs without being "performative"

A perfect example is when gay marriage was illegal and some straight people loudly announced that they wouldn't get married until gay people could.

OK. Your motives are good but how exactly is this going to help legalize gay marriage? And why did the world need to know about it?

[bpt3]

While your example is interesting, I would at least give those people some credit for taking the action they could (even if it is largely pointless as you said).

I think a better analogy is people who would criticize other heterosexual couples for getting married when homosexual couples could not, as it is both pointless and needlessly antagonistic.

[UltraSane]

Except the goal of this kind of behavior is not actual change but proving to the world you are "morally superior" by your chosen system of morality.

[moskie]

Would you say the same about people joining picket lines and marches? Any sort of peaceful protest?

Also, you're projecting. You don't (and can't) know what a person's true goals are. Framing these actions as them communicating they are morally superior to someone (you?) is a thought in that other person's head, not the protestors. Maybe these straight people truly believe this form of protest (not getting married) will bring attention to a cause and maybe change some people's minds. Did it? Who knows. But good on them for at least trying.

[layer8]

Charitably, PG refers to the policing part as performative. He’s probably fine with what you describe as sincere self-improvement, but not when people start wanting to police everyone else.

[bpt3]

You don't understand the difference between attempting to improve yourself and aggressively applying your definitions of words and morally acceptable behavior to others without any serious thought.

Beginning by changing the language is so fundamentally flawed that I have a hard time believing you seriously think it could ever be effective.

[cameronh90]

> minorities

Ahem! I think you mean People of the global majority? Please consider using more inclusive language in the future.

[xmprt]

Actually I think that's exactly the problem with "wokeness" today. People care so much about minorities that we've come to a point where people will be extremely quick to cancel someone online who says something wrong but the same people turn a blind eye to the actual injustices that happen in the world like homelessness and hunger. It's easier to ban someone who says something ignorant than it is to go out and advocate for building new homes or deciding to stop buying on Amazon and Temu to curb the capitalism that people seem to hate so much.

Change needs to happen and I think the "woke" are at least working in the right direction compared to a lot of the right (who seem to be moving back a lot of progress that's been made in the last 50 years) even if their actions are woefully inadequate.

[mullingitover]

I feel like it's important to enter this part of the cycle where the absolute worst people feel comfortable entering their most heinous takes into the permanent internet record under the delusion that the social pressure to be a good person has been defeated forever.

This is effectively putting the popcorn into the popper, but it won't be served until about ten years from now.

[apsec112]

Trump won the popular vote; it's very hard, over the long term, to have strong social pressure from a minority over the majority.

[mullingitover]

The quote doesn't go "The arc of history is short and goes straight toward justice. Absolute downhill battle, frankly embarrassingly easy."

[stronglikedan]

But it's not just minorities who are being harassed and killed on a daily basis, so why should they get special consideration? That's the problem I have with it. It puts people into buckets, and then claims one bucket is more important than the others, even when that bucket is statistically insignificant compared to the others. Wokism is simply racism rebranded.

[belter]

You did notice the trend of 2025 is Billionaires complaining?

[pxtail]

I think they don't care at all, this is just signalling, different camp has the power to rule the country now and suddenly all of them are changing their minds

[flavius29663]

If you look how many white people are killed by blacks versus blacks killed by white people, you will have a shock. Even when you account for whites being a few times more than blacks in the general population.

I really don't buy this "minorities" are being killed story.

[omikun]

This is how to lie with statistics. Two things can be true without contradiction. Does a black gang member randomly killing an innocent white person cancel a white cop randomly killing an innocent black man?

[flavius29663]

The original comment made it sound like minorities are just hunted down by random whites, lynching style.

But even if you look at police murders on civilians, they are killing more whites than blacks. You might argue that whites are 5x more than blacks, but police has more interaction with blacks than with whites. https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

[apsec112]

"Inclusive language" won't stop anyone from being killed or harassed, especially with Trump in power in the US again.

[SV_BubbleTime]

Can you point to an increase in minority vs majority deaths while Trump was in office last time?