Comment by zzleeper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zzleeper | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

In what field are you? From my experience in a business school, there is a lot of pressure now to have more woman and minorities as faculty. For instance, this is a task I recently got asked to do:

--------------------------------

Hi ,

* said that you can help me collect some data for the finance hiring committee. Here is what I need.

Attached is an excel spreadsheet with a list of business schools. Please go to each business school's website, and look up the finance department/area/group, and count the # of assistant professors in that group. In addition, please note the name of any assistant professor who is female or African-American, and the year of PhD if available. I hope you can complete this task by . Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards,

*

--------------------------------

Interestingly (in a sad way), I couldn't find any African American assistant professor professor in the list of ~100 schools I got for that field (although I did find "African Africans" and "African Europeans" or whatever you call being black and not American).

Africans who are not from America generally realize that their society has a lot of problems, which really isn't there in America or the 'developed' countries. So they try to learn what they can to improve.

African Americans have internalized their class status so much, copying 'white people' has become equivalent to not being black.

> Interestingly (in a sad way), I couldn't find any African American assistant professor professor in the list of ~100 schools I got for that field (although I did find "African Africans" and "African Europeans" or whatever you call being black and not American).

That leads to a question not often discussed. I have seen in other places too that black people that are from outside US fare better in US than African-Americans. Is there a point in which the years lived under systemic racism have side effects of learned helplessness that amplify and perpetuate the initial problem?

This can be partly explained by the fact that much racism in America actually uses cultural markers in addition to just skin color. For example, many people will judge a person as stupid if they seem "thuggish" regardless of skin color. Some don't consider that racist, because it's not about skin color. But it is a cultural marker that correlates with race, so in that sense it is at least partly racism.

Someone from Africa would only have some of the cultural markers we look for when making racial distinctions in America, so in this way they would be partially spared. Sometimes all it takes is some indication that this black person is "not like all the other black people" for someone to be open to the idea they are a capable and safe human being.

Our prejudices are not simple. We are not stupid, we are very good at seeing patterns. And evidence for intra-racial distinctions is not evidence against interracial distinctions.

Which is another can of worms. Because the case against discrimination based on one's culture is much harder than race. And I am not even sure if culture should have blanket protection - there is stuff out there that we don't want taking hold in the west.

I think it is more likely to be the result of approaching things with an outsiders perspective. This gives you the ability to avoid problems insiders assume are unavoidable.

> problems insiders assume are unavoidable

Isn't that one aspect of learned helplessness?

Not quite. There is a difference between assuming you can't do anything about the situation and giving up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com