Hacker News Reader

Comment by somethoughts | Hacker News Reader

Yes - perhaps if the current big conversation was rephrased as "everyone is biased and that society is rife with systemic bias" - people would be more willing to agree that its a problem and agree that they are part of the problem and would be more willing to be involved in solving it.

To be honest - everyone, no matter who they are, makes judgements and has biases.

View on HN

Well, there are people that are racist. They are easy to spot because they make no apology about that. There is also systemic, or institutionalized, racism and the current state of law enforcement in the US is a prime example of that. What is interesting is how the systemic racism bleeds into everyone else's minds to form or reinforce their biases. If we can eliminate systemic/institutionalized racism then I would expect that most people's personal biases will eventually disappear.

Yes definitely there is a group of people who are outright racist in the typically defined sense. And the group which can self-identify as racist is probably very small (unfortunately).

The group which can self-identify as biased is probably much larger (fortunately?). The challenge is that by naming/labeling the big discussion systemic racism, its possible for a much larger (and perhaps more influential) group of people to blissfully ignore the big discussion being had about both systemic racism and systemic implicit bias - the latter of which to a certain extent the original article seems to be about.

>a group of people who are outright racist //

That group is perhaps ironically the most racial diverse group one could conceive.

"Xenophobes of all countries, unite!"

I implore you to listen to this recent podcast on the matter of systemic police racism in the US. The statistics simply dont back up your claim https://samharris.org/podcasts/207-can-pull-back-brink/

For sure. Bias is a much better word to use here, unless your goal is to project ill will on the person you describe.

Racism is a form of bias, propably the nastiest one. And that is why you pick one particular for f bias when you start fighting it. Just lumping racism in with other forms of bias, while not factually wrong, is only helping the status quo.

And it seems that majority of people is supporting the current protests and BLM movement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com