Hacker News Reader

Comment by Archio | Hacker News Reader

> This is what happens when frat boys get jobs

Why do you think it is OK make a massive generalization about a group of people like that? While I wasn't personally involved in Greek life during college, I have very good friends that were upstanding and principled members of fraternities that would certainly abhor the horrific and abusive behavior described in this article.

If you met a nice person today and later found out they were in a fraternity during college, would you immediately make judgements about their morals and conduct just based on that association?

View on HN

Yeah. Yeah i would, honestly. There's always the exception to the rule, but we're talking about systemic issues, not playing the "but not all men..!" game. Refer to my other reply but when you put people who have grown up in a racist and sexist society into a racially and sexually homogeneous group where they spend most of their time, racist and sexist attitudes will be fostered in the absence of accountability. (Which u don't have, because racially and sexually homogeneous.)

You know, I've had people assume I was an inferior software developer solely because I was in a social fraternity and therefore must not have spent any time studying for my exams or working on my problem sets. That's not really a nice prior to have about an individual, sort of how it would be considered quite offensive to assume that a woman were an inferior software developer due to her gender.

Additionally, I'm not going to pretend that Greek life is 100% free of douchebaggery. Some people in fraternities do bad things to other people, or harbor bigoted worldviews. I feel that you grossly overestimate the proportion of people who do. To address the racial and sexual homogeneity point, I'm fairly confident that every single fraternity at my alma mater had individuals of color and homosexual individuals. My own certainly did.

I'd also like to point out the obvious blanket statements you've made about the demographics and attitudes of fraternity members. However, I really don't think anyone or anything can budge your opinion.

I understand that it is true that some fraternities have systemic issues with racism and misogyny, but isn't that a dangerous road to go down? Would it be OK for me to make judgements about the attitudes towards the treatment of women of my Muslim colleagues and acquaintances, without knowing anything else about them? Or would it be acceptable for me to make assumptions about the criminal history of acquaintances, just because they grew up in a "racially homogeneous" area that statistically has higher rates of crime?

While I accept that some social associations may have disturbing incidences of systemic problems that must be addressed, I strongly disagree that it is OK to make judgements and assumptions about individual people without knowing anything about who they are as a person.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com