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Comment by daxorid | Hacker News Reader

Given this (correct) understanding of what "diversity" really means in American culture, why do you think it is that Asian-Americans overwhelmingly vote for pro-diversity policies?

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There's a time dependency in some of this. What "diversity" is, even from a purely left-wing perspective, has changed a lot within my lifetime. I was born in 1978, and when I was growing up, the left-wing diversity perspective focused on "race blindness", MLK's dream about his children being measured by the quality of their character and not the color of their skin, and that sort of thing. Now... well... I know a lot of you on HN are very, very leftist; how does that sound to you now? I'm serious about that question. I'd guess a lot of you, if you were careful and thought about it, would have a hard time answering that question, because it isn't a "right wing" perspective, but it certainly isn't a left-wing perspective any more, which now focuses intensely on looking at people by their identity groups, to a degree that (very, very much no sarcasm here) greatly exceeds anything like the KKK, who merely looked at your race, rather than race, gender, disability status, and all the rest of the intersectional categories. The idea that anyone can be race-blind is seriously heterodox stuff now; grounds to get one instantly accused of not just racism, but subconscious racism.

There's a lot of people still operating under the assumption that the older meanings of the terms are in use, because most people have better things to do than to stay up-to-date on this sort of stuff when they've got lives to lead and their own problems, not to mention the fact that there's some deliberate obfuscation that tends to go on.

There's a very easy answer to your question. It's the understanding that bias/implicit bias exists and needs to be overcome.

The MLK quote is such a red herring. It's a nice statement, but what one guy said 50 years ago doesn't define a culture or society.

"The MLK quote is such a red herring. It's a nice statement, but what one guy said 50 years ago doesn't define a culture or society."

You misunderstand my point entirely. I am not "advocating" for that position today. Nor am I not advocating for it. I am staying neutral on the "ought" in this series of posts.

I am saying that when I was 10, that was the "left-wing" position. Many people still think it is, because they don't keep up with all this stuff. As you are rather handily demonstrating, it is not today. (I was a bit concerned when I mentioned it that people would just be contrary and deny the patently obvious fact that it is no longer an acceptable left-wing position, but now I don't have to worry about that.)

I will also say that the prickliness you've been programmed to fire back with, as evidenced by the rest of your thread, is a non-trivial part of the problem. You've been left unable to understand what anyone is actually saying, instead of what you think they are saying, as evidenced by your reaction to what I wrote. You may prove me wrong by replying to this without bulldoggedly arguing about whether implicit bias exists. Should you succeed I promise to acknowledge that.

Race-blindness was never the left-wing position, unless your definition of left wing is maybe the feel-good commentary of prominent elected moderate Democrats, who had to appeal to the majority rural white populists. I don't think many or any prominent minority civil rights leaders led on any sort of color blindness platform.

In fact, the 70's and 80's were all about embracing blackness.

If i were prickly, i'd be making insinuations about you personally.

Initially, I said you failed. But that's a bit harsh. You succeeded in the letter, but failed at the spirit.

This "You were born into implicit bias/racism" shtick sounds an awful lot like religion's "You were born into original sin" shtick. The fix is almost identical too: give us money, attention, and spread the word, or else you're extra double-plus ungood and we'll shame you harder.

So you deny that implicit bias exists? Implicit bias has shown to affect areas as dry as medicine to scientific research, yet racial bias is somehow made up?

My objection, at least, is that I think for both of jerf's eras, the intended end state is still a race-blind society. And it seems perverse to map out a course to that goal that explicitly requires us to be conscious of race.

So you think it is possible to condition people to look at another person and have them never consciously or unconsciously understand them to be white, black, asian, or any other race?

No, and I don't think that's what's sought.

I think what we're looking for is that it's just another attribute, no different from whether the person has blue or green or brown eyes, or what style shoes they're wearing.

In a conversation with my boss the other day, a newly-hired AWS engineer came up. I've met him just once, and helped him get situated because his desk is near my team. I realized that although I'd interacted with him to that degree, I had absolutely no recollection of what his race was (describing him was a logical part of that conversation). I think this is what's sought.

As he says, because they do get screwed in all the other sectors. They do happen to be in the "privileged majority" only in tech, so there they see redressing as a negative, but only there (or rather, here).

The ideal answer is not to completely drop any diversity effort, but on one side (the "revolutionaries") to recognise where they turn into zealotry, and on the other ("the entrenched", of any type) to accept they might have to lose something to gain something.

because the alternative is to vote for an overwhelmingly pro-white party.

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