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Comment by richmarr | Hacker News Reader

I haven't downvoted you but... "informed" is a tricky beast. Many people, but especially white men, especially engineers, think that they're qualified to comment on fields where they are a novice.

(see Dunning-Kruger and others)

In the field of discrimination, women and minorities are statistically more experienced; so on the whole you'd expect them to hold more informed opinions than white men.

At the best of times telling anyone to "piss off" would be poorly advised, but especially so when the people so dismissed are likely better informed.

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In the field of discrimination, women and minorities are statistically more experienced; so on the whole you'd expect them to hold more informed opinions than white men.

Maybe so, but I think it would be a mistake to understate the extent to which white men can experience discrimination. That is, there are far more parameters on which one can discriminate than just gender and ethnicity. For example, you could be a white man who is short. Or fat. Or short and fat. Or an atheist. Or who speaks with a Southern accent. Or a short, fat, atheist who speaks with a Southern accent.

The point is, everybody experiences at least some discrimination. As such, Caveman_Coder's position is understandable, even if his language could have been a little less inflammatory.

Yes, you could in theory be disciminated against for your shortness, or fatness, or mirth, or fashion sense, opinion, or eyebrow girth.

However...

Have you ever been held captive & forced into labour on the basis of your atheism?

Has your father ever been told you deserved no democratic vote because of your weight?

Have you ever told you weren't allowed to marry someone else because of your height?

Have you ever been held in an internment camp because of an intellectual opinion?

Have you ever been restricted to a particular school, or public toilet, because of your accent?

Maybe you see why comparing those characteristics with race/gender/orientation might not be appropriate.

I'm not "comparing" anything. Simply pointing out that non-white / non-male individuals don't have a monopoly on experiencing discrimination. Nothing you said above contradicts that in any way. I'm not saying that certain group don't experience more or even more severe discrimination. But this narrative that seems so prevalent today, the whole "you can't know anything about discrimination if you're a white male, and by the way, you white males are the root of all evil" is not supported.

And FWIW, I did not down-vote you. In fact, have a corrective up-vote on me.

You're defending white men against a point that I did not make. I was careful to make my original comment in a precise and defensible way.

You admit that women and minorities experience more frequent and severe discrimination. From that follows that a sample of those people are statistically more likely to have greater experience with discrimination than an otherwise-similar sample of white men. That's the point I made that prompted you to reply; I haven't yet seen a criticism of that point but we can discuss it if you like.

Instead you chose to argue the point "everybody experiences at least some discrimination". You're probably right, but in doing so you choose a definition of the word "discrimination" so broad that it becomes much less meaningful.

The net effect of this type of comment is to minimise the more severe discrimination experienced by women and minorities. To diminish the power of their experience.

So, to sum up; you replied to me to argue against a straw man, with the effect (conscious or not) of minimising the discrimination suffered by women and minorities.

My best guess is that you feel guilt by association, possibly insecurity. You're fed up of feeling that and are pushing back in order to feel better. It's understandable, it's natural.

I've got two points to make here that might help:

(1) There are other ways to make yourself feel better. Listening to people & helping is a good one. Reframe yourself as someone helping solve the problem, rather than someone trying to diminish the problem.

(2) Society is not a zero sum game. Raising up women and minorities does not mean knocking down men, even though sometimes it might feel that way.

Hope that helps. Thanks for the up-vote, right back at you.

>Instead you chose to argue the point "everybody experiences at least some discrimination". You're probably right, but in doing so you choose a definition of the word "discrimination" so broad that it becomes much less meaningful.

I grew up in a poor, primarily black/latino urban community. Not to anyone's surprise, the minority groups of the area (whites/asians) received far more discrimination than the majority groups. That's going to happen basically anywhere. Classic in/out group dynamics that humans display in every society across the world that I can think of.

This idea that white people only suffer "small amounts of discrimination, under a broad definition" is a joke. Ever been beaten up just because you were white and walking through a black neighborhood? Is that "small discrimination" or am I spreading the definition too broadly? Because to me it sounds like you grew up in a primarily white suburb and assumed because white people don't experience much/any discrimination in an area where they are the majority that they simply can't experience any meaningful amounts of discrimination anywhere.

>You admit that women and minorities experience more frequent and severe discrimination.

And the point that was trying to be made is that white people can be a minority. So nothing is contradicting this statement or the experience of white men who have faced discrimination. The problem is that in modern dialogue, white people are assumed to be the majority always and as such have no say in discrimination because they can't "possibly have faced any meaningful amount".

I'm sorry to hear that you had a hard time.

> This idea that white people only suffer "small amounts of discrimination, under a broad definition" is a joke

...and is not something that I said.

The rest of your comment follows from that fundamental misunderstanding so I'll stop here.

Which is why mindcrime feels you two are talking past one another; because you were. You're arguing statistics and the three of us (Caveman_Coder, mindcrime, and myself) are arguing that using that statistic to be dismissive is not acceptable. Which may not be what you're trying to argue, but is something it seems you are defending.

It is used to dismiss any experiences of discrimination faced by white men because "statistically they're more likely to be better off and experience less discrimination as a whole" which is not always true on an individual level or anywhere where being white puts them in the minority.

Let's go all the way back to a great, great grandparent that started this whole thread [0]. The argument is that white men can experience discrimination, and to tell people to piss off if they say otherwise. Then you specifically brought up that white men, statistically, experience less discrimination as a whole [1]. Which is not the argument put forward. The argument put forward was: "white men can experience discrimination, piss off if you say otherwise". Which is why mindcrime responds [2] that it is a mistake to understate the discrimination that white men can face.

You then follow up in [3] continuing to argue the statistic argument, when nobody is arguing the statistic. They're saying that being dismissive of white men's experiences of discrimination because of that statistic is bullshit which is the argument made in [0].

It may not have been what you meant - but it is how both myself and mindcrime interpreted your argument. If you still feel I've completely misread the discussion that is fine, I only wanted to explain how I came to my position.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703015

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703259

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703837

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14709785

Thanks for explaining; very helpful.

The point that failed to land was first thing I said, i.e. that we are poor judges of our own informed-ness.

Assuming discrimination were uniformly distributed it might be a reasonable position to suggest to people that they hold firmly to their own opinion (i.e. telling others to "piss off").

However discrimination is not evenly distributed, which means white men as a population will be disproportionately affected by overconfidence effects like Dunning-Kruger and fail to correctly assess their own informed-ness.

I can agree insofar as that. Although I don't think Dunning-Kruger applies, I do understand what you're trying to convey. But I don't feel it is a strong argument.

You would have to show that the individual is not "well informed" about discrimination in order to make that argument. Which is not an easy task and is also not what is commonly done. The common thing to do is to claim that they can't possibly be informed, because, for example "they are a cis, white male". It's just stereotyping using a statistic and is no less wrong than other forms of stereotyping based on statistics.

I'm not saying you do that, just that it's common and is where the "Oh, piss off" mentality comes into play.

> Although I don't think Dunning-Kruger applies...

Based on your extensive qualifications in behavioural science I assume? ;)

Sorry, that was a cheap laugh... but you don't get to brush it off without reasoning though, and Dunning-Kruger isn't the only confidence bias on the table. For example; system justification bias, state and national-scale in-group bias, and the ubiguitous availability of white male role models in almost any profession.

Confidence comes from many places. For example many police forces have trouble recruiting minority officers, even in areas where those minorities are majorities. This is usually not for want of trying, and neither is it because of qualifications. A complex web of motivating and demotivating factors affects conversion rates throughout the recruitment process that often results in unintentional systematic bias.

> You would have to show that the individual is not "well informed" about discrimination...

Not at all.

Caveman_Coder took it upon himself to issue advice to an entire demographic. I argued that demographic will be affected by disproportionate confidence bias. Caveman_Coder's advice specifically hinged on a self-assessment of informed-ness, which will be strongly influenced by confidence bias... making this advice likely to persist ignorance in a proportion of those people.

There's no reasonable obligation for me to look at individual cases of informed-ness.

Happy to discuss yours though.

I'm sympathetic to your story about your own experiences growing up, but I'm skeptical about your claims that you suffered equivalent discrimination to a minority in a white neighbourhood.

On a national level all of the following indicators show bias against minorities. To argue that discrimination against whites in your area is equivalent (in an informed way) you ought to be able to show that a good portion of these indicators are reversed in your neighbourhood... with data, or anecdotally if you that's all you have.

- What proportion of white men are shot by the police in your childhood neighbourhood, vs black or latino men? What are the stop-and-search statistics, and for death in police custody? What do the comparative conviction rates, sentencing, or parole rates look like?

- What's the data on employment by race? What do callback rates for black/white/latino résumés look like? Salaries, promotion, etc.

- What's the data on punishments issued to white/black/latino kids in school for comparable offences? Suspection & expulsion rates? Data on amount of help offered when kids struggle?

- To what comparative extent are white/latino/black votes devalued by gerrymandering in the area? What voter registration laws are in force, and what voter de-registration policies are in place?

What data/analysis do you have? Or if you tell me the name of the neighbourhood I'm happy to have a poke around.

Sorry for the late reply, but it seems you misunderstood what I meant about Dunning-Kruger in that it has to do with ability or perhaps knowledge in a defined field but not in something like a subjective experience.

It'd be confirmation bias or some other thing but not Dunning-Kruger.

So you're drawing a distinction between expertise and experience and saying Dunning-Kruger applies to one not the other. Huh. Perhaps we could dig into that at some point, but you can't ignore the parts of my comment that you don't like.

Can you demonstrate that a good portion of the indicators I listed in my previous comment are reversed to favour minorities over whites in white-minority areas?

If you can't, then your claim to have experienced equivalent discrimination is incorrect, and uninformed. Perhaps you have a deeper understanding of discrimination (personal or institutional) than being "beaten up" but so far you've not shown or hinted at it.

Without that evidence, your argument falls apart, and you come across as an uninformed white man arguing that uninformed white men should be encouraged to ignore others. It's an argument with no credibility.

Do you see the problem?

(I'm not being unreasonable, I know getting evidence is work and my offer to help with some legwork stands, although I suspect it'd be an eye-opening experience for you)

[Update - by all means reply and address these questions, but in the absence of that I'm going to interpret your silence as an admission that actually you're not as informed on the subject of discrimination as you initially argued. Which would kinda prove my point about overconfidence in your own opinion when you don't know very much. Wouldn't it.]

>but in the absence of that I'm going to interpret your silence as an admission that actually you're not as informed on the subject of discrimination as you initially argued.

HN just ate my post I spent the last hour on. So in lieu of that, here's the TL;DR

I only post on weekdays, and usually during work hours while I mull over some problem or another at work. If you look at my post history there is almost always a 2-day gap for the weekend. I rarely, if ever, post after PMT work hours, on Saturdays, or on Sundays. I simply don't go on HN at those times and as such wouldn't have seen your post to respond to. While HN doesn't timestamp posts with the hours - you can at least check and verify the days and then choose to trust me on the hours.

I try to limit the PII I put on the internet, but I grew up in a town that is part of Los Angeles County. Statistics for the town are not so readily available as they are for the county as a whole. The town I lived in is meth head central with lots of gangs. Mostly MS13 and Blood offshoots, so Hispanic and Black gangs - there's a few skinhead/lowrider groups.

I'll try to find actual statistics - but do know that statistics won't tell you of the white kid growing up in MS13/Bloods territory anymore than they'd tell you the story of a black kid growing up in Aryan Brotherhood territory. Do you agree that "growing up in the wrong neighborhood" where gangs are divided among racial lines means that you're far more likely to be discriminated against on the basis of your race?

I don't want to research these statistics at work - and am in the middle of moving countries (I depart on the 28th of this month) so don't exactly have the free time to provide you with any research. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or via email as I am interested in defending myself, but I'm not certain if I actually have the time to do so this month.

> ...but do know that statistics won't tell you...

I don't dispute that some or all of your childhood sucked. I understand and sympathise. You've landed that point.

> Do you agree that "growing up in the wrong neighborhood" where gangs are divided among racial lines means that you're far more likely to be discriminated against on the basis of your race?

The question is ambiguous. I'll break it out.

More likely to experience racially-aggrevated violence than a white kid in a white neighbourhood? Yes, I'd agree.

More likely to experience racially-aggrevated violence than a black kid in a black/latino neighbourhood? Not sure; you probably know better than I do. I'd need to see data. If I was forced to guess I'd expect it to depend on severity; higher chance of assault than a black kid, lower chance of fatality... but that's a total guess.

More likely to "be discriminated against" generally than a black kid in a black/latino neighbourhood? No, but it'd vary across the type of interaction so maybe some types of interaction might be equivalent... maybe.

More likely to "be discriminated against" generally than a black kid in a white neighbourhood? No way. Not even close.

Physical danger is one dimension, amongst MANY (and there's a significant difference between being afraid of criminals and being afraid of the state; you'd be comparatively less likely to be shot by the police, even assuming equivalent circumstances).

The USA is a country that only ended racial segregation within living memory. Evidence of significant bias against minorities at a federal and state level is still very strong. The specific demographic breakdown of an individual neighbourhood is a small part of a very big picture.

Even the existence of a black neighbourhood in Los Angeles is because of the black exodus from the South during the segregation era, when young boys such as Emmett Till were lynched for crimes like whistling at white women (turns out he was innocent even of that). Yes, that's somewhat historical, but it's still within living memory and you don't undo that kind of societal damage easily.

I think we're just talking around each other here. Anyway, I've said all I have to say about this for now. People can take from it what they will.

> I think we're just talking around each other here.

No, we aren't talking around each other at all, but I can understand why you might feel uncomfortable discussing your motivations so by all means let's stop.

I'm not uncomfortable about anything, but this clearly isn't productive.

Uh huh, sure.

So to try and make your next discussion productive, maybe try using evidence, try not creating straw-man arguments, try not deflecting or changing the subject in response to points made by other people.

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