[coderc]

Because you said that this author has the "wrong take on wokeness", what do you believe to be "the right take on wokeness"?

And by the way, I do think you are being more than a little bit performative here, because it seems you're just displaying how morally superior you believe yourself to be over Paul Graham, your heroes, and the readership of HN. But I would still like to hear your answer to my question.

[zackmorris]

Apologies for my late reply. I wrote an answer the day you asked, but was hesitant to post it due to length. I just got my first "That comment was too long" error from HN.

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In the meantime, I've been wrestling with difficult feelings around Donald Trump's inauguration and the TikTok ban. This is the darkest time in America that I've experienced since 9/11. As a whole, we made the wrong choice then, a series of wrong choices, that sent us down the wrong path onto this timeline. Now we have a chance to avoid similar mistakes, but with the powers that be asserting their dominance over us at the worst possible time by plunging us into darkness through censorship, I worry that we'll sleepwalk into a new era of regression.

I've lost respect for the elected officials who voted for the TikTok ban, that I thought were on my side. Just like I lost respect for the ones who voted to invade Iraq after 9/11.

Before I answer, let me give you an example of what it is to be truly woke:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrVF_ijzbIs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3DEmzXNn0w (alternate link in case of censorship)

https://voyagecomics.com/2020/11/03/this-captain-america-quo...

Now let me give you an example of what it is to be asleep but not realize that you are dreaming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5S8rhNCBnc (specific derogatory language at 5:15)

If Bill Maher's message resonates with you, take a moment to note the sensation of the feelings you're experiencing. That little tingle of endorphins is your ego. The ego evolved as a survival tool to keep us alive during adversity. The ego grows more powerful with every win. A win often means a loss for someone or something else. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the place we live, exists because life, energy and time were taken from people, living things and the environment. The rush you feel is you taking some measure of power from the protected groups that Bill Maher admonished by claiming that they got preferential treatment instead of focusing on the true causes of the disaster.

To blame the failed LA fire response on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is particularly offensive. It doesn't matter if there is an element of truth to anything he's saying. Because there are higher principles to aspire to.

The fires were caused by global climate change, decades of poor urban planning, greed in construction where improper materials were used to save costs, building in areas that should have been left wild because there isn't enough water, past leadership incompetence, and most importantly a lack of empathy that led to unprecidented wealth inequality which drove the tendancy to live in ivory towers as well as the lack of sympathy from spectators.

In fairness, Bill Maher mentioned these causes. But to give air time to criticizing DEI, without criticizing the criticizing of it, is ignorant. Enough so that it drove me to write this essay when some might say there are better uses for my time. Which is exactly my point. The strongest argument against wokeism is that there are more important things to do, making it appear performative. Which is no argument at all.

Ah, CNN just said that the TikTok ban has been lifted as I write this, and I see that it works again. It may seem silly to post this now, since there was optimism that the ban would be suspended. But that's not the point. Which is, that it never should have been banned in the first place.

-

Continues ->

[zackmorris]

> what do you believe to be "the right take on wokeness"?

That's a fair question, and I'll answer it. Admittedly, I thought-policed Paul Graham when I said that he had the wrong take on wokeness, taking exactly the stance that he called out. I must choose my words carefully here, because whatever I say is likely to offend someone. I'll get to that in a moment.

But first, let's look at the literal definition of woke, to try to avoid misinterpretation:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woke

  1 chiefly US slang
    a: aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)
    b: reflecting the attitudes of woke people
  2 disapproving: politically liberal or progressive (as in matters of racial and social justice) especially in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme

I'm familiar with both of these, but feel that pg was voicing his disapproval of wokeness, as in definition 2. Which is an attack on my values, because like I said, I identify as woke and progressive, and feel that criticisms of those are rooted in prejudice and intolerance. Since wokeness focuses on justice, pg's focus seems to be on libertarian values. My focus might be deemed justitarian - if that word existed.

Before I knew what woke meant, I thought it was a reference to the Matrix movies. That awakening was about seeing the simulation, how all of this is a construct of the human mind with its habits and traditions, completely arbitrary but with subjugation as a primary goal. And that people who haven't awakened yet are effectively non-player characters (NPCs), instruments of the status quo who unwittingly perpetuate it and its inequities.

That probably came from my roots growing up in a small town of 10,000 people in the northwestern US in the 1980s. I was a computer geek who got bullied by athletes and children of ranchers who didn't know what to make of me. I felt profoundly alone and alienated. But I wasn't wrong, I just felt like a loser. And they weren't right, they just felt like winners.

When we look around at our leaders today, who do we see? Are they people who came from adversity and now pay it forward for others? Or did they win the internet lottery and pull up the ladder behind them? The important question here is: are they right, or do they just assume they are because they won? The answer to this defines the status quo.

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So I feel that the right take on wokeness is to quite literally be woke and not act like an NPC on the side of the oppressor. A person can write in the most eloquent fashion with an air of impeccability but still be tactless. Which is just exactly what pg did.

I've never met him, but I'm certain that for the most part he's a decent person. I'd even wager that there's no discrimination in his hiring practices, for example. But he's the beneficiary of privilege as a middle-aged white man. There is power imbalance at play in his status. To pretend otherwise is an insult to people who have experienced discrimination or been otherwise suppressed in achieving their own success.

Specifically, the right way to practice wokeness is to conduct oneself in a manner which recognizes injustice without perpetuating it. What does that look like? It means never mentioning aspects of someone's personal identity or things about them that can't be changed, while being an ally to reform the systems of control that undermine them for those traits anyway.

For example, in a group with multiple races, creeds, genders, sexual orientations, differing physical abilities, ages, etc, in polite conversation one should never mention anything having to do with those things. No assumptions should be made about someone's familiarity with or stance on an issue simply because of their demographics. Everyone in the group should be given equal respect for their dignity. The group achieves power that overcomes injustice against any one member.

The key is not to concern ourselves with maintaining our image if we fail to conform to contemporary etiquette around wokeism, but to treat others as they wish to be treated and practice the golden rule so that we don't have to.

How is that different than what pg said? After all, treating everyone the same way is admirable. Why might he feel like he's walking on egg shells while I don't share his cognitive dissonance? Because I don't feel threatened by wokeism or its implications for how I got to where I am and why that might drive a need in me to project my criticism of it.

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It's important here to distinguish between equality and equity. For example, if a company board has 9 men and 1 woman, but there are an equal number of men and women working for the company, then giving the woman 10% of the speaking time may be equal but probably isn't equitable. If I'm a board member, I'm going to put effort towards giving the woman more speaking time. I'll likely sacrifice some of my own time to achieve that. And most importantly, I'll call out other members of the board who talk over her or otherwise treat her disrespectfully, so that anyone on the fence about an issue can consider my offering in their own vote and hopefully join us in overcoming inequity.

Let's talk about why I didn't say 9 women and 1 man in my example. It's because the realities of the world in these times may make that come across as condescending. Injustice is asymmetric. This is why "both sides" and "not all men" statements may have some basis in fact but carry prejudice. Maybe men are underrepresented in other places, but in most cases the board room isn't one of them.

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Here's where we get to the part where I've offended someone. There are countless hardworking white men who feel like they got a raw deal in life, and I'm one of them. Life can be brutally hard and unfair. My demographic shoulders insults and injustices that too often lead to a lifetime of self-doubt and self-harm. We can't always articulate the mental, emotional and physical pain we endure. That can cause us to become self-absorbed and ego-driven. Diving deep inside our misfortune and letting ourselves be vulnerable feels undignified, so we put it behind us and do our best to provide for our families, to work hard and be happy.

But it's precisely for those reasons that I speak out against injustice. Because as hard as I had it, it could have been worse. Why should it be worse? Why in the world would I want to inflict injustice on others? Revenge? A sense of control? That feeling of control would be me feeding off the same emotional energy that others used to hurt me.

That's what I meant about losing my heroes. People who I thought would work to change the status quo just sold out. Being woke means promoting self-awareness and changing one's mind when presented with new information. If the people we hold in high regard were to read all of this and still subscribe to the idea that wokeism is bad like pg was suggesting, then do they really deserve our esteem anymore?

[coderc]

Thank you! I'll respond to both of your comments here:

>If Bill Maher's message resonates with you...The rush you feel is you taking some measure of power from the protected groups that Bill Maher admonished by claiming that they got preferential treatment instead of focusing on the true causes of the disaster.

I chuckled once or twice, but I think it's odd to view that as a way of "taking power away from protected groups", and by these I assume you mean the "diverse" people in charge, such as the lesbian fire chief, and the other woman shown in a clip. I certainly don't feel any more powerful, or even vindicated.

For example, was "power taken away" from white police officers after George Floyd's death? Maybe perhaps in a real way, yes, since, not only is the white officer in prison, departments presumably reorganized and placed an increase emphasis on public relations (as in not appearing racist), accountability, and not killing suspects.

Perhaps, in a similarly real way, these fire departments will be restructured, and they will place a greater emphasis on preventing and stopping fires, and less emphasis on DEI in response to public outcry that may or may not be happening. In this way, you could say that "power" is being taken from "protected groups".

>To blame the failed LA fire response on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is particularly offensive. It doesn't matter if there is an element of truth to anything he's saying. Because there are higher principles to aspire to.

I would agree to that. If we're ranking principles, I would think that the preservation of human life would rank above DEI. Is that offensive to say? I can certainly see how offensive it is to blame DEI where there are plenty of other more immediate reasons why the fires were as bad as they were, but I think we should also be concerned with that "element of truth". We don't do ourselves any favors to ignore elements of truth.

For example, what if the firefighter mentioned in the clip that says "you want someone who looks like you" can't actually save a person from a burning building, because "looking like you" was prioritized over "being able to lift your weight"? Is that an element of truth we should consider before someone actually loses their life?

---

>... he's the beneficiary of privilege as a middle-aged white man... There is power imbalance at play in his status. To pretend otherwise is an insult to people who have experienced discrimination or been otherwise suppressed in achieving their own success.

>Specifically, the right way to practice wokeness is to conduct oneself in a manner which recognizes injustice without perpetuating it. What does that look like? It means never mentioning aspects of someone's personal identity or things about them that can't be changed, while being an ally to reform the systems of control that undermine them for those traits anyway.

Didn't you just mention that PG is a "middle-aged white man". Isn't that an aspect of his personal identity that can't be changed?

>For example, in a group with multiple races, creeds, genders, sexual orientations, differing physical abilities, ages, etc, in polite conversation one should never mention anything having to do with those things. No assumptions should be made about someone's familiarity with or stance on an issue simply because of their demographics. Everyone in the group should be given equal respect for their dignity. The group achieves power that overcomes injustice against any one member.

This is the first time I've ever heard of this, so thank you for that. I've actually heard, from other people who call themselves 'woke', that the opposite should actually be done. What you describe here seems more like the "color blindness" of the 1990s, which means that a person should be treated as a person, not as a 'white person' or a 'black person'. You should behave as if you don't 'see' their ethnicity.

So what I've heard from others is that you SHOULD see someone's race, and to not do that is damaging to them. You SHOULD recognize a black woman as a black woman, and not just see her the same as you would see a white man, because to treat them the same would actually be harmful or dismissive of the black woman, for example. That's what I've been told about why 'color blindness' is wrong. You touched upon that point otherwise when you said that we shouldn't pretend that PG isn't a beneficiary of privilege as a white middle-aged man.

Of course, I don't know which is 'correct', your view, or the view I've been told, or if they can be harmonized somehow.

>if a company board has 9 men and 1 woman, but there are an equal number of men and women working for the company, then giving the woman 10% of the speaking time may be equal but probably isn't equitable. If I'm a board member, I'm going to put effort towards giving the woman more speaking time.

Why? Isn't that treating her differently because she is a woman? What about the "everyone in the group should be given equal respect" part you mentioned earlier? Would this be called "equitable respect" instead? Why are the men lumped together as if they are a monolith, as if their concerns can be presumed to be shared, so that they do not individually deserve an equal 10% of the time?

I think this is what PG touches upon when he mentions the dizzying array of rules that one has to memorize to avoid committing an offense. At face value, it seems very difficult to navigate. If I were to throw my own definition of "woke" into the ring for consideration, it would be something like "someone who knows all these rules and how to navigate them".

[zackmorris]

Hey thanks for responding too. I never know if anyone actually reads these things.

When I said "you", I should have clarified that I meant the reader. Words are imperfect and I'm only human. Conversations about sensitive topics like this can feel personal. But you have a right to your opinion, regardless of my opinion of it.

I should have mentioned that the firefighter who said "you want someone who looks like you" was also in the wrong. Leaving them out could be seen as ignorant on my part. To this I would say, we can still strive for a more equitable world tomorrow even if it's imperfect now.

Also remember that people in historically oppressed groups need to be mindful of their behavior, just like people who don't want to be lumped in with the oppressor. Because they will be singled out and made examples of, which sets back the cause of liberation.

This is also why it's so important to practice nonviolence and peaceful protest. Because the battle for equality happens in everyone's heart, but the oppressor has the media. The public is insulated from news of corruption and centuries of abuse, but any impropriety by those being oppressed is broadcast for all to see, just like Bill Maher did. Which triggers a disproportionate level of violence in response, even the enabling of violence by tacit indifference, which perpetuates the status quo.

I think your arguments hinge on what happens if political correctness, wokeism and DEI go too far, and preferential treatment is given to marginalized groups to the point that it infringes on the freedoms of people not siding with oppression. That's a valid concern.

I would say, the reason that it's not a valid call to action is proportionality. Reparations for centuries of slavery would amount to trillions of dollars which have never been paid back, and maybe never will be, because the victims are long deceased and efforts to trace lineages get derailed easily. That money would come from the businesses and families that received the profits of unpaid labor. Basically the wealthiest corporations and families today, who are beneficiaries of that earlier stolen investment. And go to the descendants of families that struggled for all of those years for having the fruits of their labor stolen.

Since reparations will likely never happen or even start to happen, then concessions to that fact (like affirmative action) amount to a drop in the bucket. That's why it's disingenuous to point out the fire chief's sexual orientation and people hired as part of affirmative action in LA's hiring practices, because the injustices against them and their ancestors is far greater but left out of the conversation.

So then we can talk about, ok, what if DEI is partially responsible for the poor LA fire response? Let's think this through. If the real cause of the failure was decades of poor urban planning and little or no fire suppression infrastructure, then would the fire chief have performed better had they been a straight white man? Of course not. That's why sexual orientation is a non sequitur, and why we don't bring it up in polite conversation.

And that's why even though the goal of preserving human life ranks higher than promoting DEI, deciding between them is a false dichotomy.

So what if it's not just about the fire chief, but a pattern of hiring practices, why wouldn't we bring up DEI then? Because if we followed the money trail, we would find the specific people who voted against fire response infrastructure to save money and line their own pockets. We'd discover why insurance companies cancelled policies in the months before the fires, and who profitted by not paying claims. Using DEI as a scapegoat distracts us from the truth, the same way that making examples of recipients of affirmative action allows wealthy corporations and families to avoid paying reparations in the form of higher taxes on the rich.

And more importantly, it allows tragedies like the fire to be used as an excuse to undermine DEI efforts. This is how political capital works. When there isn't enough political will for a vote to end DEI to pass, political capital can be borrowed from public sentiment in times of crisis to get the vote passed anyway. In this way, long-term public sentiment can be overridden at points in time to sway policy away from majority rule towards minority rule. In other words, from democracy towards republicanism, authoritarianism and eventually aristocracy if left unchallenged by a governing system of checks and balances.

> So what I've heard from others is that you SHOULD see someone's race, and to not do that is damaging to them. You SHOULD recognize a black woman as a black woman, and not just see her the same as you would see a white man, because to treat them the same would actually be harmful or dismissive of the black woman, for example. That's what I've been told about why 'color blindness' is wrong. You touched upon that point otherwise when you said that we shouldn't pretend that PG isn't a beneficiary of privilege as a white middle-aged man.

You bring up a good point. How do we go about recognizing someone's identity without letting it affect our behavior in ways that might negatively impact them or someone else? I think the best way to look at this is that it is a practice. A black woman may want to achieve success on her own merits, not because of her identity. When reviewing her resume against a number of white men for example, one way to make it equitable would be to remove race and gender from the application. Of course, there are other hints that might reveal her demographics with a high likelihood, like which schools she attended or where she lived or worked. So we try to be impartial the best we can, while also weighing the needs of the community, such as having more black women represented in our company to make up for the years when they weren't.

Note that the reason the reverse consideration isn't as applicable to Paul Graham is that he is in the same demographic as the majority of business owners and wealthy people in the US. He already fits the generalization in the public's mind, which gives him inherent advantage. Devoting the same effort to his representation as a black woman's would be inherently inequitable at this time in history.

> Why? Isn't that treating her differently because she is a woman?

It sounds like you might have misunderstood me. Because the company has an equal number of men and women working for it, then having 1 woman on the board instead of 5 is inequitable. I'm not treating her differently because she's a woman. I'm giving her some of my time and the benefit of the doubt so that our voices speak for the women who aren't being represented.

I see how this can be confusing. How is it that giving her this preferential treatment, without specifically mentioning that she's a woman or why I incorporate that into my behavior, is somehow woke? Because through my actions, she can see that I identified the injustice at play and am working towards healing it. Whereas telling her that I'm doing it solely because she is a woman denegrates what she has achieved through her own efforts.

I should clarify that if she has her own motives for being on the board outside of equity, for example nepotism etc, then I will just as easily be an ally for men who vote to have more women on the board or otherwise align their vote with the needs of women working there. I'm incorporating context into my actions, but not letting demographics override my decisions.

> I think this is what PG touches upon when he mentions the dizzying array of rules that one has to memorize to avoid committing an offense.

It sounds like you might be misunderstanding how woke etiquette works. It's not about avoiding offense, but changing behavior. For example, say I don't know if someone I'm speaking with prefers the term black, african american or person of color, but the topic of conversation involves race and I must choose. Say the person is my age and I was raised with the term black in the 1980s, so maybe I say black because I'm nervous about sounding patronizing. That's ok. I watch for their reaction. They may say black in their next sentence. They may say that they prefer the term person of color. In the 1990s they might have said that they preferred the term african american. It doesn't matter which. I show respect for their dignity by using the term that they prefer from then on. No offense needs to be given or taken.

What I forgot to say most in these answers is why we're doing all of this. It's because as we all work to change our behavior on the road towards equality, the status quo changes. There are countless efforts to make the world more equitable, everything from resisting to protests to strikes. But because not enough people practice wokeism, those efforts are often suppressed. Which creates an ongoing illusion that everything is ok, when countless people are suffering under oppression. That's why wokeism looks performative to people who benefit from the status quo and don't see a problem.

So we should consider the reverse. How the actions of the rich, powerful and indifferent look to the woke. If someone is exposed to all of these concepts, yet still clings to the notion that wokeism is bad, then (to use a similar word) that behavior looks pejorative to people who don't benefit from the status quo.

[coderc]

Thanks again for continuing this conversation! I'm enjoying it. Also, can you recommend me a book or two to read on this subject? Thanks in advance.

>Since reparations will likely never happen or even start to happen, then concessions to that fact (like affirmative action) amount to a drop in the bucket. That's why it's disingenuous to point out the fire chief's sexual orientation and people hired as part of affirmative action in LA's hiring practices, because the injustices against them and their ancestors is far greater but left out of the conversation.

This is sort of like the concept of "original sin", isn't it? The notion that certain people have a debt that is so big that it is impossible to ever be paid back, and so they must forever remain burdened with the guilt of the sin that their ancestors committed. The scale can never be zeroed. The guilt can never go away. The transgression can never be forgiven, because the effects linger down to our day.

And this is a good example of that. You say it's disingenuous to point out the role that DEI played in LA's fire planning, prevention, and response, because of an unpaid debt that happened centuries ago. Is the concept of this "unpaid debt" a golden, reusable "get-out-of-jail-free" card that means that DEI can never be criticized?

Given a different disaster, unrelated to the LA fires, we could imagine this conversation: "Sure, we hired the wrong person for the job, but as X people, we owe an everlasting debt to the Y community for hundreds of years of suffering, so don't mourn for what you lost, it's just a drop in the bucket compared to what our ancestors did".

I'm being overly dramatic, but only half so, because this, to me, actually sounds like something someone might say.

In the case of the LA fires, and for the additional reasons you've given, I agree, DEI was not to blame and is being used as a scapegoat. I wonder, if the fire chief were instead a straight white male, and if there was no firefighter that "looked like you" but instead, was capable of saving your life, would people still have blamed DEI, or would they instead shift their focus towards the "real problems" that you mentioned? Perhaps if these people weren't in these highly visible positions to begin with, DEI would not have been undermined as it was.

>A black woman may want to achieve success on her own merits, not because of her identity. When reviewing her resume against a number of white men for example, one way to make it equitable would be to remove race and gender from the application....So we try to be impartial the best we can, while also weighing the needs of the community, such as having more black women represented in our company to make up for the years when they weren't.

That last sentence seems to be completely at odds with the first. If you give preferential treatment to black women to make up for "years" of this type of original sin, you are no longer allowing this person to succeed on her own merits. Imagine that you let this black woman see all the metrics you used to make the decision to hire her, and you showed her the section marked "We need more black women in our company in order to atone for the sins of the past". Do you think she would still feel confident that she was the best person for the job? I think she might sooner feel insulted by 'the soft bigotry of low expectations'.

Merit based is merit based. It should be simple, self-explanatory. A test score, credentials, years of experience, that sort of thing.

>I see how this can be confusing. How is it that giving her this preferential treatment, without specifically mentioning that she's a woman or why I incorporate that into my behavior, is somehow woke? Because through my actions, she can see that I identified the injustice at play and am working towards healing it. Whereas telling her that I'm doing it solely because she is a woman denegrates what she has achieved through her own efforts.

preface: I would like to think that everyone on the board has in mind the good of the entire company, and that the men don't just have in mind the considerations of men, and that the woman is not the only advocate for all the women of the company.

Given the above, what injustice is there? Assuming that everyone earned their seat on the board fairly, without nepotism, sabotage, or shady backroom deals, why do you consider there to be an injustice happening here?

The only way I can see there being an inherent injustice in a board room like this is if my initial assumptions aren't true, and that the men aren't advocating for the concerns of the women. But that would be to assume the worst of people. That sort of thinking is racist and sexist. That leads to tribal thinking, where people think that people from other demographics are similarly only looking out for "their own group".

Sure, as humans, we all have some biases and preferences towards our own "groups" and to recognize that is healthy, but to look at a group of male board members and automatically assume that there is some injustice happening towards the women of the company seems to be too extreme.

>It sounds like you might be misunderstanding how woke etiquette works. It's not about avoiding offense, but changing behavior. For example, say I don't know if someone I'm speaking with prefers the term black, african american or person of color, but the topic of conversation involves race and I must choose. Say the person is my age and I was raised with the term black in the 1980s, so maybe I say black because I'm nervous about sounding patronizing.

That anyone is nervous in this situation is already kind of ridiculous to me. I am black (but grew up with African-American), and if it makes people nervous to just pick one of the words... that's just sad. If this is what goes through the heads of certain people, the need to be lovingly reassured that they should not be made to feel this way, and that anybody who did is in the wrong.

If this is how you feel, I am sorry. This isn't how it should be. Neither should you be made to pay for the sins of your father.

>What I forgot to say most in these answers is why we're doing all of this. It's because as we all work to change our behavior on the road towards equality, the status quo changes. There are countless efforts to make the world more equitable, everything from resisting to protests to strikes. But because not enough people practice wokeism, those efforts are often suppressed. Which creates an ongoing illusion that everything is ok, when countless people are suffering under oppression. That's why wokeism looks performative to people who benefit from the status quo and don't see a problem.

Honestly? It seems that I benefit from the status quo just fine. I don't feel oppressed. I don't feel like a debt needs to be repaid to me. I'm typing on my computer from the comfort of a electrically-heated room. I don't blame anyone for what I don't have, and I would feel hurt if what I do have was given to me by someone who felt that I needed a handout.

I am part of a religion that teaches that all mankind faces, and will continue to face, suffering and injustice, and that all men are limited and inherently flawed. Though some have less than others but we are all equal. What we have does not matter since we can not take it with us. If one among us is suffering or lacks sufficient food, clothing, or shelter, of course we should help them out.

Where we differ is that it seems like you are working towards a certain 'utopia', where the various 'debts' of sin you've incurred have been paid off. In contrast, we have already been forgiven, and have already arrived at our utopia.

[zackmorris]

> Thanks again for continuing this conversation! I'm enjoying it. Also, can you recommend me a book or two to read on this subject? Thanks in advance.

Hey sorry for my late reply, I really didn't mean to waste your time, I just got super busy and spun a bit responding. Honestly I haven't read as much as I'd like to after discovering the internet around 1995, so this is mostly what I've picked up online.

To me, wokeism is fundamentally about stuff we can't unsee. It's like being friends with someone in an abusive relationship, where the other partner takes us aside and tells us that if we knew what they knew about our friend's behavior, we might not want to be friends with them anymore. The more we learn, the more that America's origin story becomes a twisted fable of revisionist history, written by the winners to cover centuries of oppression and violence. These stand out to me:

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_(1781_ship)#/media/File...

I went to South Carolina a few years ago and stood on a small plantation cotton field they keep preserved for tours. It was suffocatingly hot, felt like 100% humidity under intense sun, and not even the hottest time of the year. I just imagined people forced to pick cotton all day, every day, their entire lives. It was soul-crushing.

Then the tour guide called the Civil War the Northern War of Aggression and my eyebrows raised. Reality shifted and I suddenly saw the feelings from that time still running strong today.

Maybe I can relate my experience better through pop culture references..

I grew up on movies like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, Do the Right Thing, Glory, Schindler's List and Amistad, to name a few. I never read Black Like Me and never saw Soul Man. I think I may start with these, regardless of if they aged well, to get an impression of where my head is at now vs then.

This search brought back a memory, that in Short Circuit (one of my all-time favorite movies), I didn't know that Fisher Stevens wore brownface to play Indian engineer Ben Jabituya until maybe the 2000s:

https://ew.com/movies/short-circuit-fisher-stevens-regrets-p...

This just goes to show how ignorant people were (including myself) as recently as a couple of decades ago. I think that the makeup in Soul Man is forgiveable because it's explicit and the subject of the film, much like Dustin Hoffman dressing as a woman in Tootsie. Whereas Short Circuit did it for convenience, without considering that it might be offensive.

I also grew up playing with the toy car with the rebel flag on it from the Dukes of Hazzard, completely oblivious to any racist connotations.

And sexual harrassment was so prevelant that we had never even heard of it until Anita Hill vs Clarance Thomas in 1991 before he was appointed to the Supreme Court. I remember that we were really appalled by that, because it was so obvious that he was guilty of the harrassment, even if that didn't bar him from being appointed. This was just after the Rodney King beating and LA riots, but a few years before the OJ Simpson case if I remember right. Racial tensions were running high, but also there was a feeling that minorities were being kept from positions of power, so there was a lot of cognitive dissonance. There was no Me Too movement and we didn't have a words like cancel culture yet. I didn't feel at the time that he should have been appointed, because he gave me creepster vibes. I think his decisions in the time since have shown that he is very, let's just say tempted by financial favors.

> This is sort of like the concept of "original sin", isn't it? The notion that certain people have a debt that is so big that it is impossible to ever be paid back, and so they must forever remain burdened with the guilt of the sin that their ancestors committed. The scale can never be zeroed. The guilt can never go away. The transgression can never be forgiven, because the effects linger down to our day.

Ya that's a good point, I hadn't considered that. It reminds me of how young people in post-WWI Germany felt that it was impossible to pay back the war debt that their elders faced when they lost the war. So they felt oppressed by who they viewed as Jewish elites in banking, eventually using them as scapegoats and starting WWII against the countries whose loans they were defaulting on.

Which has eerie similarities with the dissilusioned feelings of young men in America today, who due to wealth inequality can't earn the level of income needed to provide for a spouse or family, as they watch women and minorities rise without them. Blaming liberal and Hollywood elites, as well as immigrants, for bruising their egos instead of the real culprit, late-stage capitalist patriarchy.

I think what we're talking about is: how can the rights of individuals be upheld when our debts to previous generations are so high that we'd lose ourselves in an attempt to pay them back?

I guess my only counter to that is, if winners and losers resulted from the inequities of previous generations, leading to the vast wealth inequality we see today, then what would healing look like? Letting it go without making ammends, or going too far with violence as a result, both seem extreme.

I feel that affirmative action and taxing the wealthy are two solid approaches. But I don't feel that either have been tried to a degree nearly approaching reparations. Because if they had, then Congress might be 50% women, we wouldn't have such a large national debt or high poverty rate, etc.

> In the case of the LA fires, and for the additional reasons you've given, I agree, DEI was not to blame and is being used as a scapegoat. I wonder, if the fire chief were instead a straight white male, and if there was no firefighter that "looked like you" but instead, was capable of saving your life, would people still have blamed DEI, or would they instead shift their focus towards the "real problems" that you mentioned? Perhaps if these people weren't in these highly visible positions to begin with, DEI would not have been undermined as it was.

Ya, DEI probably wouldn't have been blamed had the people involved in the response fit prejudiced notions of what they should look like.

It seems that we both agree that DEI wasn't the cause of the fires. But maybe we should ask if putting such priority on DEI is undermining the cause of reaching equality. With so much political manipulation happening these days, it makes for an attractive scapegoat for those wishing to distract us from the real issues.

I don't know the answer, or if DEI should be put on hold temporarily. What I do know is that with controversial issues like gun control, we can find ourselves on hold indefinitely. So I am suspicious of calls to halt DEI when the problem of discrimination in hiring still exists. It feels too opportunistic IMHO.

> preface: I would like to think that everyone on the board has in mind the good of the entire company, and that the men don't just have in mind the considerations of men, and that the woman is not the only advocate for all the women of the company.

> Given the above, what injustice is there? Assuming that everyone earned their seat on the board fairly, without nepotism, sabotage, or shady backroom deals, why do you consider there to be an injustice happening here?

> The only way I can see there being an inherent injustice in a board room like this is if my initial assumptions aren't true, and that the men aren't advocating for the concerns of the women. But that would be to assume the worst of people. That sort of thinking is racist and sexist. That leads to tribal thinking, where people think that people from other demographics are similarly only looking out for "their own group".

Ya good point about the dangers of tribalism, since that is the single greatest threat facing the US today. We've grown so divided and provincial that we can't seem to work together, and that's undermining our credibility in the eyes of the world.

And I agree that people don't just work towards their own best interest, and that assuming they do is putting them in a box.

What concerns me though is that some people only respond to authority, not what society deems common decency. So without a law in place, they will return to discriminatory practices.

Trump just issued an executive order revoking Lyndon B. Johnson’s Executive Order 11246, promoting affirmative action in federal contracting:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/23/trump-rev...

Even though this move claims to encourage merit-based hiring, it will undoubtedly have the opposite effect. Because authoritarian-minded people will no longer be forced to practice nondescrimination. So they will hire candidates who appear to fit their own projections and stereotypes, causing them to overlook similarly-qualified candidates from other demographics.

When the laws aren't there, companies have a track record of accepting a certain level of human cost if it raises profits. Seatbelt laws, pollution laws, etc reflect the need for those regulations.

Now, we can argue whether the free market would take care of discrimination on its own. But in these times of little or no antitrust enforcement, often workers have few alternative employment options, so are at the mercy of employers. I'm not seeing politicans in favor of deregulation also calling for antitrust enforcement, so they are having their cake and eating it too, making this argument suspect.

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