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Comment by awinder | Hacker News Reader

This “war” has been going on for centuries. The difference is that white men were totally dominating it until recent times, and a lot of them really don’t like that they may need to adapt behavior. African Americans had a right side of the street to walk on within the last 2 generations, for risk of being lynched. You better believe they’ve been parsing every word out of their mouths, not for fear of being labeled a mean word, but for fear of being killed, or having their families killed.

The “freedom of speech”, or freedom to loudly espouse any idea, has only ever truly existed for some small segment of the population. And it’s never been a problem for any of these squalking idiots. Until now, go figure.

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You're not wrong, and yet ... as someone who would visibly be considered an african american, I have to watch what I say around my leftie friends. God forbid I should fail their intellectual purity tests. Fuck it!

I was at a club, and the first thing a brown woman said to me was "I had to get out of that room -- it was too white in there!". These bullies are just replacing one in-group with another. The root problem is tribalism and groupism, and only individuality, not a re-slicing of identities solves that.

Is this about revenge, or is it about equity?

Most men I know are pretty heavily in favour of equality. That might change if we treat equality as a war against men, instead of something we all work towards.

Adapting behavior is reasonable, but there's men also need to be able to have a voice, or you're going to get some major pushback. Hopefully we can keep this kind of war at a low simmer when trump is up for re-election.

More specifically, that means making sure that men do have a voice. I've seen a lot of silencing tactics deployed that are based on gender, or social class. It's all well and good to say "well that's how minorities always felt", but it doesn't actually make any part of this situation better.

The problem with silencing tactics currently in use that doesn't seem to be understood by those using them is that there is no such tactic that works in the voting booth. As long as we have secret ballots, the Shy Tory Effect is going continue to catch the censorship crowd off guard. I doubt this is going to be kept on simmer because we're already past that point. To continue the analogy, the pot will eventually boil over but eventually run out of water.

I personally don't see how we get out of this toxic situation with our Republic intact.

We work for it.

I know that sounds simple, but it really it. We get to work and we fix it.

Are you in Denver? Let's meet up if so and talk about trying to fix this mess.

If any other HNer is in Denver, the invitation stands. Let's meet up and talk and try to fix it.

"Equality" is the sticking point.

Equality of opportunity (meritocracy) or equality of outcome (sounds like a nasty place where people are selected on things like race, or gender)?

Strict equality of outcome means quotas, and that if the distribution of races, sexes, genders, sexual orientations, etc doesn't exactly match the entire population (or exceed it for certain disenfranchised groups) then something is horribly wrong and needs to be fixed. Very few people are in favor of that.

That being said, you can't have a strict equality of opportunity without acknowledging which people didn't have that opportunity. I think it's much easier to fix this problem if you focus on the person (e.g. Sandra couldn't afford college) rather than the group (Sandra's black and statistically less likely to have been able to afford college).

The problem is people use these bullshit heuristics that happen to suit their mental model of how they want their neighborhood/workplace/world to look ("We don't have a black woman in accounting, what's wrong with that hiring manager?" or "Everyone on the database team is Indian why can't they hire a white guy?") rather than just trying to be fair while still acknowledging systemic issues people have had because of the groups they may belong to.

Strict equality of opportunity is a pure lottery, which is just as absurd (if not more) as strict equality of outcome. Otherwise, it is claiming that certain factors (maybe, genetics or upbringing or geographic location or whatever else) should contribute to inequality of outcome, while others should not. The whole phrase, therefore, is a thought terminating phrase, allowing a speaker to ignore the nuance of which specific inequalities they belive are just vs not just, and why.

You can't control every factor. Arguing for "equality of opportunity" really just means taking a laissez-faire attitude as to who succeeds. It means not making explicit exclusionary rules as to who can participate, but also not undertaking a vain attempt to equalize every conceivable variable.

It's just the other side of the same absurdity coin (ooo next ICO?).

And one thing to remember is that (a) actual random distributions are lumpy, not evenly distributed and (b) there is pretty much no equality of outcome in whatever outcomes or input categories you choose. Anywhere. And very often the distributions in different places also look different (though there do seem to be some patterns).

Equality of opportunity a way of saying "fair treatment by some measures, unfair by others". You are picking which traits inequlaity should happen by and, huh, imagine that, they probably happen to be traits that overall benefit you.

"Equality of opportunity" is a phrase I no longer trust, because it obfuscates the true differences in moral ideology. Just be explicit about which factors you think should create unequal outcomes, and which ones shouldnt, and a real conversation can happen from there.

Is moral ideology beholden to demographics?

Equality of opportunity is meant as: Inequality should rise from personal choice and decisions, otherwise, why should anyone strive to be better than anyone else?

I suggest looking at the history of states that favor equality of opportunity (equality) against equality of outcome (equity).

I'll leave you with this Soviet joke: 'They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.'

Please see this idea illustrated in two ways: -http://deplorablyconservative.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02... -https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S01680102140029...

I'd like to add:

You see the term 'equal opportunity employer' -- it is meaningful and fair.

How does the term 'equal outcome employer' sound?

I agree, but "equality of opportunity" tends to follow "equality", so I think the "equality of opportunity" folks are trying to advance the conversation, but other folks are trying to stop it at "equality" (presumably because elaborating on their idea of the word would expose it to lots of obvious scrutiny).

To be fair when people talk about equality I think very few people think it through this far.

I agree with you, but from the opposite direction. On its surface the idea of equality of outcome seems terrible. It will never be achieved without oppressive totalitarian intervention. So any measure of equality or progress which is predicated on the goal of equality of outcome is a non-starter for me.

The only discussion I'm willing to have is one in which we discuss a particular area of treatment or opportunity.

Whenever I've asked about that, I've received this image (or similar) as the eventual goal:

http://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/I...

It is very clear this is not equal opportunity but equal outcomes. Trying to make equal outcomes requires some serious mental gymnastics because numerous decisions collectively contribute to our direction, standing, and potential in life.

How can you be 100% sure there's been equality of opportunity unless an equality if outcome metric has been satisfied?

Well, nothing is 1005 in this world. But say go for 85%. Still, you can measure along the way and talk to people in the 'pipeline'.

> This “war” has been going on for centuries. The difference is that white men were totally dominating it until recent times, and a lot of them really don’t like that they may need to adapt behavior. African Americans had a right side of the street to walk on within the last 2 generations, for risk of being lynched. You better believe they’ve been parsing every word out of their mouths, not for fear of being labeled a mean word, but for fear of being killed, or having their families killed.

That's US-centric. Until a century ago the majority of humans did not have a lot of freedom. Living under some autocratic ruler. The skin color or gender was irrelevant: only who you were the child of. A Chinese noblewoman had a lot more freedom than a English farmer.

> A Chinese noblewoman had a lot more freedom than a English farmer.

You'll have to specify that better; for instance, is the farmer a landowner, or a serf? Both work in agriculture and can so rightly be termed a farmer.

what is your point? that in the rest of the world racism wasn't a thing or that racism is actually classicism? both of these things aren't true

> what is your point?

Well, "That's US-centric".

Racism doesn't even translate well to other countries today: not every country has the situation that a significant part of the population has ancestors that were relocated by force and had to work as slaves in recent history, and are easily distinguishable by skin color ("race").

Different countries, different problems. Hence, different delineations in the various culture wars all over the world.

To some extent. By 1500 the Spanish were in the Americas, the European powers were forming colonies on the African coast, the Russians were dominating Siberia.

By 1900 European powers dominated almost everything, including China who were bulled into war by the British. If you were a subject of any of those colonial powers, you certainly were at a disadvantage to your foreign masters. This isn't even considering gender. Out of all of those empires, how many were led by women? There were exceptions here and there, but men dominated.

It's not US centric nor incorrect by any means to suggest that Caucasian males have had significant advantages in social relations for an extended period of time.

rate limited, but to reply:

Read Caucasian as white or European and don't get stuck on semantics. Germany only very recently favored this race (or another vague term, "Aryan") more than anyone else in history, so most people know what it means, the semantics are a digression and not an answer to what has happened historically.

Also, this isn't guilt tripping nor "hating" on my ancestors, it is pointing out obvious facts. Many of us are products of this domination and have connections to both sides.

"Caucasian" is a category that's or or less unknown in Germany, so "caucasian males" having advantages (or disadvantages) doesn't mean anything to us. That range of your categorization is much more nuanced around here. OTOH the US seems to have tons of categories that are simply called "Asian" here.

That's a big part in making that conversation US centric.

What's the point here? We should be content with anti-white discrimination now because anti-black racism used to be really, really bad? Is it justice to punish innocent people with pale skin because other, mostly dead pale skinned people unjustly punished dark skinned people? Or perhaps that there is some threshold of suffering that one's most recent ancestors endured before they're permitted to complain about discrimination? I'm not following.

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