Comment by octernion | Hacker News Reader

Comment by octernion | Hacker News Reader

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i really can't tell if you are responding in some weird attempt at playing devils advocate (in some sad alt-right personality), but in case you are actually responding in good faith...

sadly it's impossible to be both "not racist, nor sexist" _and_ against "positive discrimination". not sure how much more simple i can make it for ya. sorry.

no one is angry because one person of color or woman is rejected from a position; it's not a simple first-order investment but rather a structural, generational change and people are mad because folks in power are not (occasionally, and thankfully increasingly less) acknowledging that. again i know it's almost certainly too complicated for someone who is pro-structural racism and misogyny to understand.

and, it's not possible to be "racist" in the way that racism is used in this structural way against white people. white men are sadly still in a position of structural power and as such you can't be racist against white people (especially white men). sorry for your lack of understanding here as well.

> impossible to be both "not racist, nor sexist" _and_ against "positive discrimination".

So people are racists and sexists if they disagree to the political view of affirmative action? This is what create polarization in society.

I have often said that I would enjoy to watch what happen if we had a simple law that required all official gender segregated places of employments to impose affirmative action. Here in Sweden there are equally amount of women and men employed, so for every place there is a male dominance there is an other that is female dominated. It actually happen that the extremest gender segregated profession is female dominated, as is the only university level program that is 100% mono-gender. It happens that 87.5% of the population, both women and men, work in a gender segregated profession and thus around 90% of work places would be required to implement affirmative action if we had a common law that equally apply to all citizen, women and men.

Are you against making affirmative action a common law? If so, is it you or I that are sexist?

"Positive discrimination" is racism. Or sexism. Or whatever group-ism it is being used to disadvantage at the favour of some other group.

The idea that whites are privileged is the opposite of reality in many cases now. Non-whites have "entitlements" which whites do not, which favour them in things like hiring.

The concept itself, that someone of a certain skin color should be given preference over somebody of another skin color, is racist whatever way you wish to spin it. If you're favoring one group because you dislike the other group, you're the kind of shitty person you mentioned.

If you're favoring them because you pity them, and that pity is derived from your subconscious association with a group that you think aught to be pitied because of a certain stereotype (eg, skin color), then you might think that you're a good person for having such feelings - but you're really just a closet racist.

I get that it has not always been the case that everyone had equality of opportunity, and that certain groups were disadvantaged in the past. We can't change the past, but we can create the future. Instead of repeating the past, by reversing the group roles, I'm in favour of eliminating all forms of discrimination.

I'm astounded by your lack of self-awareness of your racism and sexism. Apparently all white men are privileged, or at least, some of them are, so we can use this to make judgements about all white men. Great. You're not a hypocrite in the slightest.

"positive discrimination" is not racism, sorry.

unfortunately, the only way to change the future is to enable the groups that were historically disenfranchised, which we can enable through diversity quotas/affirmative action/etc. it doesn't just magically happen through everyone agreeing that "racism is over."

i know that you feel uncomfortable because you do not feel that you were responsible with the current situation, but you continue the status quo (racist society) by not structurally enabling disenfranchised groups.

we are no danger of positive discrimination causing structural problems for white people (especially men), besides them feeling (apparently) very uncomfortable with confronting systematic racism and white privilege.

thankfully companies are increasingly seeing this and i'm hesitantly positive towards the future (assuming we continue to hold companies accountable).

What do you define as "enabling"? As far as I'm concerned, they have been enabled for years, through legislature which prevents discrimination in hiring. I'm in favor of due process, and if somebody had a real grievance with my hiring decision, then I will see them in court, where I can present my case.

Social justice is actively harmful to due process, because it makes social media the jury and throws away any chance of the failed candidate getting a fair trial. The collateral damage is the reputation of the company, who may or may not have done anything wrong - we may never know because the process was not followed. It's a lose-lose process, no winners, just some extra brownie points for the SJWs. This is why it's more of a religious crusade than anything else.

I also think social justice is actively harmful for the groups it is intending to "enable", because it makes interactions with members of said group become riskier than ever before. People will just avoid the interactions as much as they possibly can to avoid the risk. See #MeToo and recent statements from WallSt as an example.

i'm not going to keep responding because it's clear you haven't understood any of the above comments around the structural and generational concerns.

there is plentiful literature to better educate yourself and be less ignorant about this.

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