| 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. |
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>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.