[tczMUFlmoNk]

> I don’t see your joke as being in any way harmful towards Sanjay aside from potential knock on effects of Jeff Dean being more popular

I mean… yeah. When two people are peers and comparably well regarded, and one is elevated above the other and enjoys increased popularity, familiarity, and respect, and the elevation is because that person's name comes from a culture that is more aligned with the dominant culture and easier for them to engage with… that is a pretty textbook example of systemic racism.

I'm not at all saying this to demonize Kenton. We can make mistakes and reflect on them later, and that's laudable. But it is important to recognize these systems for what they are, so that we can notice them when they happen all around us every day.

[derangedHorse]

I find the assumption that Jeff Dean sounded better with these jokes because it sounds American to be a bigger issue than immediately acknowledging that it’s probably because it’s less syllables. These type of jokes are rapid fire and a lengthy name just fits better whether it’s ‘Jeff Dean’ or ‘Neel Patel’.

[refulgentis]

Seeing this reminds me Sanjay is two syllables

[jrowen]

I don't think it's really fair to call it racism. That is such a loaded accusation to levy today that it should only be used if someone really wronged another person.

We all have cultural biases and familiarities, is that wrong? By this definition, we're all racist. Maybe that's true but it kind of ceases to be a useful distinction at that point. I wholeheartedly agree with your last sentence, but I don't know if throwing around the r-word is helpful.

[istjohn]

> By this definition, we're all racist. Maybe that's true but it kind of ceases to be a useful distinction at that point.

Does it? I would argue that recognizing that we all swim in a soup of cultural biases and familiarities that advantage some people and disadvantage others is a noteworthy insight, an insight with practical implications. After all, we aren't volitionless molecules bouncing off walls. What if we made an effort to observe these biases more closely, to study there effects, and to better understand the way they effect our own behaviour? Then, what if we made an effort to counteract these biases, first in our own behaviour and then in our communities?

[jrowen]

> After all, we aren't volitionless molecules bouncing off walls.

Are we not?

The free will debate aside, I think what you said makes a lot of sense, and comes across as empathetic, and you didn't need to use that word. I just think it's too loaded, aggressive, and broad to be very useful as a shorthand for the more complex thought you expressed.

[istjohn]

I understand where you're coming from. It doesn't feel like such a heavy word to me because I know it's ubiquitous. It's like germs. I don't like germs, but I know they're everywhere, so I'm not scandalized at the implication that germs might be on my hands or food. At the same time, I am repulsed by reckless disregard for sanitation.

[bummy_commenter]

I see. I hadn't thought of it from a perspective of dominant culture. Looking at it that way, it can appear racist.

I looked at it from the perspective of syllable count. Jeff Dean is easier to say by that measure. If Jeff were instead named Alexander Chesterton, would he still be the obvious choice to head the facts? My takeaway from this is that a single-syllable name is perhaps a great boon.

[elijaht]

Sanjay is/was well known enough that you could have just used “Sanjay facts”

[kentonv]

Thanks, you explained this better than I could.

I'm not calling myself Hitler here, I think it was a mild offense. But in retrospect the site could have been about both of them, with competing facts, and that could have been really cool. Oh well.

[rayiner]

> that is a pretty textbook example of systemic racism.

It’s not “racism.” There’s plenty of Indians with names that are easy for English speakers. Conversely, the same situations would’ve presented itself if the other person was any sort of white Eastern European.

In fact, calling this “racist” is itself racist. I have close friends with family names from Poland or Croatia where we don’t even try to pronounce their names correctly. Nobody feels bad about that. But for some reason if it’s a “brown person” we’re suddenly super sensitive about it. That is differential treatment based on race.

People get awkward about how to pronounce my name because I’m brown. But it’s hard to pronounce because it’s misspelled Germanic! They wouldn’t act that way if I was a white guy with the same name.

[kentonv]

Are we... arguing about what happened in my head?

As the world's foremost expert about what happened in my head, do I get to, like, pick a winner here?

If so I pick tczMUFlmoNk, I think their description is accurate. (I think you might want to re-read it as it feels like you are responding to something else.)

If I don't get to pick, this is quite weird! "People on Hacker News tell me I'm wrong about my own thoughts." was not on my -- actually wait, that doesn't sound unexpected at all now that I write it out! OK, carry on.

[rayiner]

You wrote what your thoughts were. I’m just weighing in on whether your thoughts are “racist.” To the extent you feel sensitive about the issue because someone has darker skin, where you probably wouldn’t have written that part of the post if the other guy were Polish, that’s racist. It’s racist to treat people differently based on skin color, even if you’re well intentioned about it.

[refulgentis]

You're conflating two different things:

1. The original choice: Kenton picked "Jeff Dean" because the name was more familiar/rhythmic in English. This wasn't about skin color, it was about name patterns. You're right that a Polish surname could have the same issue, and in that, you're demonstrating complete understanding of the issue at hand.

2. The reflection afterward: Recognizing that name-familiarity advantages systematically correlate with certain cultural backgrounds more than others isn't "differential treatment based on skin color", it is observing a statistical pattern in outcomes.

And here's the key point: given Kenton's explanation, they are indicating they would reflect the same way if Sanjay had been Polish with an unfamiliar surname. You're arguing with Kenton about what Kenton thinks and could think... while Kenton is right here. At some point you have to engage with what he's actually saying rather than insisting you understand his mind better than he does.

[kentonv]

Yes, I actually do think if Sanjay Ghemawat were instead Wojciech Przemysław Kościuszko-Wiśniewski, white European but otherwise an equal engineer, and I chose to elevate Jeff Dean over him, I would later feel equally bad about it.

(Which again to be clear I'm am not riven with guilt here, I just think maybe given another chance I would have made it about both of them.)

[rayiner]

What you said was “in retrospect this feels a little racist.”

Obviously what’s in your head specifically is idiosyncratic to you. But the feeling you’re having certainly happens more generally, and is based on general social understandings. That’s what I’m commenting on.

If I say, “this feels a little rude,” isn’t it fair for people to chime in as to whether it’s actually rude by reference to general social standards?