Comment by muninn_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by muninn_ | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not saying that you can't have a preference. The problem is that, if you prefer a monoculture than you're labeled a racist. So if you say: "I prefer a mix of cultures at xyz conference" that is ok because the mix is seen as good. But if you say: "I prefer only Han Chinese at this conference" you're a racist (actually I don't think you'd be labeled a racist, I think you would only be labeled a racist if you said white people). Personally, I also don't care who anybody prefers to associate with. What bothers me is that it's immediately racism if you're white. It's got to the point where I've stopped really caring about diversity. Sensory overload with how I'm an evil white man taking away everybody's jobs and how I'm so privileged. Meanwhile somehow white women aren't privileged? Meanwhile some black woman that went to Harvard had such a struggle? All people do is look at skin color. You (not you specifically) don't know what I've been through. Sorry for the poorly-worded rant. I'm just growing frustrated with stories like these. If people stopped flipping out and calling everything fascist and racist maybe we wouldn't be so divided.

Agreed. People that talk with disgust about all men rooms should be ashamed.

Maybe if people stopped flipping out a out having to think about injustice and their relative complicity in institutional inequality...

Like, freaking out about having to think about it. About not being able to sail through life without ever having to.

> relative complicity

No, this stuff doesn't belong in HN, I don't accept it; this isn't tumblr.

Nobody is complicit of anything just for existing. At risk of invoking Godwin's law, that's exactly what the nazis said about every jew, including children.

> About not being able to sail through life without ever having to.

Yeah, let's not pretend you aren't a person who's had so much privilege that the biggest thing you think to fight about online is the diversity quota about some conference in an emerging (bad, but that's IMO) technology.

The instant someone steps in to make comments defending the status quo -- when the status quo is obviously deeply flawed -- they become complicit irrevocably and beyond any hope of later denial.

Like you just did with your comment.

> The instant someone steps in to make comments defending the status quo -- when the status quo is obviously deeply flawed -- they become complicit irrevocably and beyond any hope of later denial.

Counterpoint: no, it doesn't. Because, being against racism against white people or sexism against men is not the same as being in favor of racism against non-white people or sexism against women. You're doing a false dichotomy.

> Like you just did with your comment.

Good thing I'm not in the USA and I'm not white, then. Now you'll tell me I have "internalized racism."

I'm also gay, facing actual discrimination because I can't even get legally married in my country.

And none of that makes retaliating to racism and sexism with racism and sexism ok. Nor it does retaliating homophobia with heterophobia, of course.

Don't confuse defending the status quo with resisting the misguided attempts at breaking it by encouraging something even more deeply flawed.

Straight to Nazis, huh? I'm not talking blood and soil here. I'm talking about benefiting from structural inequalities that favor certain groups over others.

And to the degree one benefits, and takes that for granted, and perceives the calling out of those benefits as a form of persecution, then yes, there's a degree of complicity.

But no one's saying (well, not anyone on HN, anyway, and not most people on Tumblr) that white people or me should be persecuted. Just that they shouldn't be accorded undue advantages to the direct detriment of others.

How you get to Nazis from that, I don't know.

> I'm talking about benefiting from structural inequalities that favor certain groups over others.

Still arguing about complicity just out of existence. Last time I'm replying to you because you won't understand, but at least now my comment is just as visible as yours.

> And to the degree one benefits, and takes that for granted, and perceives the calling out of those benefits as a form of persecution, then yes, there's a degree of complicity.

Again, calling out unfair benefits is not bad. Attacking the people directly based on their race and sex is. But you do you and keep pretending I'm doing the first, it's the only way you can avoid the cognitive dissonance of your narrative after all.

> Just that they shouldn't be accorded undue advantages to the direct detriment of others.

Yeah, no, this isn't what's being argued here, again. Nobody should have inherent advantages over anyone else, that's a non-starter, it's obvious.

What I and the others you replied to here is calling out is a direct snub on a group of people because of their race and sex. If you don't see that as racism or sexism (or are selectively pretending that those aren't bad things) doesn't matter: It is racism/sexism and they're bad things.

But how is saying "we want a more diverse group" a snub?

Postponing it because they aren't "diverse" enough is a snub.

Again, how so?

Let's imagine someone organizes a conference and every single speaker ends up being a black woman. The organizers proceed to postpone it because it isn't "diverse" enough.

Now you'll tell me that you'd think they did the right thing and that you won't consider that a snub. And I sure will believe that.

Let me know if that ever actually happens. I'd be happy to discuss when it does.

> Let me know if that ever actually happens.

As I knew, this is what you hope starts happening. So don't pretend that what you want is diversity, it was patently obvious from your first statement that it isn't what you want, and your backpedaling in every single reply didn't work.

Glad you're back to your original intent, though, it's honest.

There have been many open submission conferences with speakers who are all male. And all white. And a few both.

Are there any open submission conferences which have had speakers who are all WoC?

It seems like a distraction to discuss hypothetical diversity problems that don't exist, instead of real ones that do.

Ridiculous. I think about it all the time. I mentor early-career black and female employees right now, and sponsor on-campus events for groups like NSBE. So don't sit here and assume that because I have a problem with our discussion about equality now means that I don't think about equality, don't support it, or somehow I "sail through life". Did you grow up in a poor family of high school dropouts? Did you go fight in a stupid war so you could do something with your life besides drugs? Did you nearly fail out of college multiple times because you didn't learn how to study when you were younger? Did you struggle from depression for your whole life?

This is the exact kind of bs response that I was expecting from somebody who doesn't really understand what's going on besides whatever the latest outrage article they just read said they should be outraged about.

To clarify, it's not about you. Poor word choice? My bad.

The sailing through life bit was specific to the context of being untroubled by the need to examine ones relative privelege or lack of, and the structures affecting same.

Not to imply that not having to think a out these things means life is automatically easy. You can still get cancer, get hit by a bus, etc.

----

You say that if people were not so quick to call out perceived racism or sexism things would be better.

I say if people were not so quick to be personally insulted when perceived racism and sexism are called out, things would be better.

Did I misunderstand your point?

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