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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

This seems like such a hard problem to really solve, since so much of what we consider racism, or at least borderline racism, has a significant basis in fundamental human thinking. I really feel for the guy, but it's hard to know where to start.

I try really hard to ignore color, but I'm not immune to at least noticing. Then I try hard not to double-take. It's completely expected to meet Indians at the workplace, but black people are so rare that it always feels like a surprise. Maybe there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem in play.

I recall that when I was in the military, I got so used to the racial make-up, which has a lot more representation from black people than my hometown, that it wouldn't register at all. Just another guy. When it really hit home was after I'd been back in Oregon for a few months after I left the service, when I was walking across the college campus and noticed a small group of black students walking towards me. I noticed them, and then I realized that I had just noticed them, as if they were noteworthy. That was the moment I realized how white Oregon [mostly] is. I didn't feel negativity towards them, but I felt uncomfortable that it was something that even came to mind.

In any case, we have two black guys on our team. Both really nice, but very different people. One of them acts like he was raised locally in a wealthy family, he's very laid back and doesn't seem to feel out of place. The other guy is a little older, and if you didn't know better you'd think he was a little hostile. No, he's wary. He acts like he's faced judgement his entire life and he's always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Easy to be comfortable around the first guy, much harder around the second guy. I want to act like it's not even anything to be aware of, but that in itself seems pretty dishonest. People are different, and that's totally okay. Good in fact, since they bring their own unique perspective to the daily problems we are asked to solve.

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Thank you . That was a very honest reply . As someone who is brown and worked for over a decade in Oregon - I used to be similar to the first guy in my 20s . I was laidback , felt in touch with the local culture and was easy to work with. All of that was great until I gained experience and did not get promotions and saw my white co-workers keep getting promoted to lead and managerial positions . This was despite me being more qualified and having excellent performance reviews. When I brought it up with my manager and I was shortly laid off.

Now I am more like your second guy - I am older and a little wary. I know I am being judged especially if management and coworkers are overwhelmingly white - which is very common in Oregon . I am more careful , wary and precise about how I am at work - which makes others and someone like you less comfortable. It’s anecdotal but this is where the rest of us come from .

This is useful to see, thanks for sharing. It mirrors my own experience. I came into this profession with a lot of energy, enthusiasm, and an open heart. Then I had a couple of experiences that triggered "The Great Noticing" in me. I haven't really been the same since, though I've tried to keep an open heart/mind and lean against the wariness that's come with experience. But mostly I try to stay away from SF, the PNW, and their geographically dispersed cultural outposts.

What is "The Great Noticing"?

For the longest time I felt like I didn't notice race: yeah, if I looked it was there, and the town I grew up in and live in is pretty multicultural, so it wasn't a novel thing to see people of different colours. Sadly, as I've become more aware of the bitter division of race present in some people, I feel that I've not only become acutely aware of the races around me as if its something strange and unexpected, but I actually feel like I've become somewhat more prejudiced because of it.

As a real life example from the pandemic, everyone is "social distancing" or whatever your local term is. So, went out shopping, needed to get something off a shelf that someone was stood by, asked them to move and they barely scoot back at all. If this was a white guy I'd say "its two metres, not two inches, please move back more" but because this guy was a different shade of brown to me my mind goes "I can't challenge that person because if I do they'll erupt in a cloud of 'that's racist' and I don't want to make a scene" so I just have to bend around them to get the thing off of the shelf and put us both at risk of catching an indiscriminate virus off of each other all because I'm going against everything I thought was right and treating another person differently because of the colour of their skin.

It feels bad because as someone that wants to treat everyone nicely, I feel like I'm walking on eggshells so as to not accidentally oppress someone. Why can't I just ask someone to observe social distancing and it not be a racist thing? Am I going crazy or does anyone else feel this way? Am I alone in this feeling? Am I becoming racist purely because I try so damn hard to not be racist?

You're just dealing with a social problem that you haven't as much experience with. As you grow to better understand the interpersonal dynamics between you and other people w.r.t. race it'll be the same as learning how best to communicate with old, or disabled, or femme, or masculine people without offending them.

It's not hard, just new. You're not crazy, just inexperienced. All we should do is keep trying to get better at it.

The social discomfort is par for the course for American POC. Did that white lady cross the street cause she's afraid of me, or my dog? All day, every day. Now you and I get to experience some of this discomfort and through our experience we can work to make the world a bit better and more equitable.

Specifically for your social distancing example, I've found it's far too confrontational to ask people to step away from me. In lines, if someone is up my asshole, I simply offer them to go in front of me, then give 6ft of space. Or in a grocery store, I walk away and come back to get what I need later.

It's also unclear that private companies are capable of solving this. I'm not sure when we collectively decided that FAANG companies and private universities should take on a problem that was created by government policy. Government broke it, and government should fix it. Equitable funding for primary school STEM programs and subsidized childcare could be a good start. I get the sense that so many Americans have given up on government to the point that we would rather ask Twitter and Harvard to fix social issues.

It's a systemic problem, meaning that there isn't one specific cause. Government policy created the conditions, individuals perpetuate them, and the companies in question have the candidate pool that they have because of where they hire from and the expressed preferences of their individual workers. Because it is a systemic problem, there isn't a side of right and a side of wrong except for the few true malicious actors. And because it is a systemic problem we are all of us responsible for addressing it. We can't fob it off on the government or on private enterprise or on specific individuals. We must each individually make different choices if we want to change things.

Agreed. There seems to be this sort of broad recognition of past racial injustice among many very smart people. Yet they seem to have decided that at some point, the populace that created that racial injustice just stopped being racist.

I am of the opinion that past racial injustice is the larger factor in today's racial inequality. But that doesn't mean that current racial bias isn't responsible for a significant portion. We have to fight this battle on all fronts, public and private.

I heard an anecdote once about young parents who were mortified that their young child referred to the two Little Orphan Annie movies they had as "red Annie" and "black Annie."

Judging by "image search", it is possible the child had been innocently referring to hair colour, and the mortification was due to what "even came to mind" for the parents.

> I try really hard to ignore color

One thing I was taught in anti-bias trainings at big tech companies was that trying to "ignore" color helps perpetuate biases. It is important that if an under represented co-worker speaks up, you pay extra attention, explicitly ensure their idea is credited to them, be vocal when you agree even if you otherwise would not, help others to understand their contributions, etc. Biases will never go away, we all have negative thoughts pop into our head, you cannot "ignore race", but we can all take steps to improve things.

Isn't that horribly patronizing?

I'd feel offended if someone treated me with kid gloves based on my skin color.

Try asking some POC friends or colleagues! Get their perspective.

Another user mentioned that it feels like kneeling on the ground and using "baby talk." That's not what's being said here. It's simply taking a moment to observe yourself and other colleagues potentially engaging in unconscious (or even conscious - you may have an avowed racist hiding it very well on the team!) bias.

This is being an ally. It's not patronizing. The reality is that systemic racism against POC in America is real. Ignoring that only aids the status quo.

> POC

It’s not like “white” people aren’t colored

POC means people of color means non white.

You taking the anthropologic perspective isn't scientifically incorrect - race doesn't actually exist, after all, in any meaningful way. However it is sociologically incorrect to call white people "colored."

BLM has been creeping towards Asia where I am, and some of those activists are absurdly trying to redefine some Asian views of aesthetics as White admirations that the noble White must responsibly educate to eliminate.

To me these ungrounded imaginations are clearly stemming from the idea that some people are objectively not colored and others are colored. I’ve never come across this “POC” term but if it’s not racist I don’t know what racism means by dictionary.

It's relatively new. If it's any consolation, it probably won't last.

Lol. The classic "no YOU'RE racist for pointing out race exists!"

Deny that black Americans are terrorized by cops. Pretend that people of color is a non concept all you want. It won't change reality.

You are aiding a racist status quo when you fight against ally causes like BLM.

The situation we are living in at the moment is not a dichotomy.

it seems to me a rather dangerous precedent to argue that one must ally with blm. after all if you are not a social conservative you are perpetuating an immoral status quo.

of course one might work to end qualified immunity for example or to equalize the education and economic gaps without being a Marxist.

let's not confuse ends and means.

Denying the existence of POC and their oppressed status in America is more than just "not supporting BLM," it's a denial of the foundation of their reason for existing.

> Denying the existence of POC and their oppressed status in America is more than just "not supporting BLM," it's a denial of the foundation of their reason for existing.

Acknowledging the personhood of people of color is not synonymous with supporting BLM. One might broadly support the ends of BLM while being uncomfortable with the means.

> One might broadly support the ends of BLM while being uncomfortable with the means.

I sense a conflation of the statement "Black Lives Matter" with the movement "Black Lives Matter" with a third, completely unrelated concept, that being lootings and property destruction. Are you insinuating that the people who want the world to know that black lives matter are the same that are looting target? Despite extensive arrests showing these people to be agent provocateurs and white supremacists?

Furthermore, it's not really accurate to even say "the Black Lives Matters," as if it's an organization. If anything, it's unfortunately extremely disorganized, with extremely disparate groups and goals (i.e. defund vs abolish vs reform police arguments), almost complete lack of a central, trustworthy 501(c) to donate to, and lack of leadership. The politics of the movement are also extremely disparate - communists, anarchists, libertarians, pro-gun anti-gun, Muslim, Christian, non-religious. It's all over the place.

The only unifying thing behind people who say "Black Lives Matter" is the belief that Black Lives Matter. That's why to say "uncomfortable with the means" doesn't mean you're uncomfortable with, say, someone burning down a police station, it's more precarious, or you end up like the White Moderate that MLK warned against as the greatest threat to civil rights.

> The only unifying thing behind people who say "Black Lives Matter" is the belief that Black Lives Matter.

Okay, I'll stipulate for sake of argument.

As the apostle famously said, faith without works is dead. If one believes that black lives matter, then one works to that end. Yet what should one do? Is there (to abuse the analogy) a set of ten commandments to follow? If there is no organization, then isn't one free to pursue justice for people of color as she sees fit?

It is easily seen that two people may assert "Black Lives Matter" and work towards conflicting ends.

One might, for example, work to prohibit abortion, seeing it as means by which the state sanctions genocide by murdering people of color (who have higher per-capita abortion rates than whites).

Someone else could advocate for unrestricted free-as-in-beer abortion, believing that economic inequality among women of color is driven in no small part by the disproportionate burdens placed on them by childbearing and the destruction of the nuclear family, to say nothing of reproductive rights of women.

I suppose having no organization allows for a big tent--a sort of catholicity, if you will--to unite such disparate groups of people, but it seems ineffective to me. After all, a house divided against itself cannot stand, as someone else famously said.

One way to help solve that problem is to have clearly stated policy goals (e.g., end qualified immunity) with targets to meet (e.g., here is a political contest we have a chance of swaying to get another vote against qualified immunity). A suitable organization can put people in touch (e.g. lawyers, grassroots campaigners, et c.) to get things moving. Maybe it's already been done, but in general this seems to be missing from blacklivesmatter.com.

I don't disagree with what you're saying regarding cross purposes, however there's a viewpoint missing: that of the person who doesn't believe black lives matter, either on purpose or on accident.

Liberals eating eachother alive and liberal movements being terribly disorganized is certainly an issue, but what I'm arguing against on here is people denying that BLM has ground to stand on. blacklivesmatter.com not having been updated in like, 3 years, is separate from that issue.

That is a big lie that BLM is not organized and just some loose coalition of all kind of political groups. There is an interview with one of the founders of BLM on youtube. That person says that she is a trained marxist and a trained organizer. BLM is also very well funded thanks to many corporate sponsors. There is nothing spontaneous about it.

You're right to point out the absurdity of dividing the universe of people into two groups: white and non-white or white and "POC." But humans have evolved to be suspicious of those who aren't in their tribe, who are different. We are naturally xenophobic. We reflexively divide the world into "Them" and "Us." There are cultural cleavages like sexual orientation and religion that divide us, but in the US, skin color continues to be one of the stickiest and most powerful dividing lines. "White" and "POC" are words we use to discuss this powerful force in our culture. White people would still, often subconsciously, divide the world into "Them" and "Us," "whites" and "POC" if we did not acknowledge that it's happening. To understand and respond to the phenomenon, we need words like "POC" to describe it.

Of course, "POC" was first used in a Western cultural context, and it may not translate in a straightforward way to an Asian context. I am sure racism also exists in Asia--xenophobia is a universal human weakness--but it may require different language to accurately conceptualize and the dynamics might be very different. It also might not be nearly as pressing of an issue as it is in the US. I don't know.

But if you've never heard the term "POC" before, you're clearly not familiar with the racial dynamics in the US. I would encourage you to learn more before dismissing a term as racist or judging the BLM movement in the US. I can't speak to the activists in Asia you mention, but I assure you BLM is a very much needed movement in the US.

I admire your way of engaging on this topic - it's much more civil and (imo) convincing than my way!

Thanks! I love how enthusiastically you engaged the wrong-headed comments on this article. I'm often tempted to roll my eyes and get on with my day, but I really do think it's important that these statements aren't allowed to go unchallenged as if they express conventional wisdom.

Your statement is like claiming there is no scientific basis for family. Two people of the same race are more genetically related than half-siblings born to the same father and mothers of different races. The categories we call "race" are genetic clusters of populations who developed in different regions/environments. It's the level of taxonomy below species and above one's family. Overlap between these clusters does not invalidate them any more than the existence of purple invalidates our ability to describe something as "red" or "blue".

The exact point is that what is called “race” is a sociological sense isn’t based on meaningful generic clusters — saying someone’s (genetic cluster) race has a 1:1 mapping to skin colour is like saying their (genetic cluster) race has a 1:1 mapping to their hair colour.

Race isn't skin color, though [1].

Self-identified race maps to distinct genetic clusters with >99.8% accuracy [2].

1: https://i.imgur.com/0uyOA.jpg

2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15625622

From my eyes you guys differentiate on skin colors on offensive and use diversity card on defensive to further and further ingrain the notion that “others” has weirdly colored skins.

If all of western world would cut the BS and use something like “white asian non-christian” which is what “yellow” stands for in actuality, I can tolerate those racial elitism a bit better.

One might be tempted to say it’s not about skin tones, but people taught in white/black/yellow system tries to fit surface albedo of actual human beings to those visual wavelength responses out of cognitive dissonance, through pigmenting, cinematographic techniques or other technological means, or by verbally abusing creators, artists, races, cultures so I strongly believe accurate visual representations in the context of pure racism matters if it’s not going to completely entirely permanently disappear by tomorrow morning.

You guys hate it when we don’t look #FFFF00, like for real. That happens and that’s insulting.

It sounds like you’re angrily agreeing with me, but I’m not sure.

Side point: I’m not American, and what you wrote reads like “you guys” means “white Americans” (I’m not sure which political block, if any, is implied); this impression is in part because in my experience only Americans say “in actuality”.

This came up to my feed elsewhere so I’ll leave it here. I don’t care if particular skin colors are similar or dis-similar from one another, but I naturally don’t value actively agreeing with supremacists.

> East Asians were almost always called white, particularly during the period of first modern contact in the 16th century. And on a number of occasions, even more revealingly, the people were termed “as white as we are”.

(...)

> But by the 17th century, the Chinese and Japanese were “darkening” in published texts, gradually losing their erstwhile whiteness when it became clear they would remain unwilling to participate in European systems of trade, religion, and international relations.

> Calling them white, in other words, was not based on simple perception either and had less to do with pigmentation than their presumed levels of civilisation, culture, literacy, and obedience (particularly if they should become Christianised).

[0]: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2184754/chine...

Every POC I know thinks that these kinds of efforts are often, although not always, patronizing. (In some cases even beyond patronizing; I've heard a few people say it's actively hurting their career, because they spend so much time being voluntold into diversity discussions that it cuts into their bandwidth for their real job.)

Then look at it as opportunity.

If it's patronizing, it's a shitty diversity and inclusion program.

Your conversations are the opposite of the ones I've had.

I agree, and I’m absolutely in favor of good diversity programs. It just seems to me that the attitude of “don’t strive to be race blind, always keep yourself aware” consistently leads to bad programs. By far the most bigoted thing I’ve heard at work was in a diversity seminar, where the instructor (a white man) told me (a Hispanic man) that we must make sure to call on Latinas in meetings because they’re not comfortable speaking up for themselves.

That does sound frustrating. That does sound like a shitty D&I program. That is something worth speaking against, I believe.

Isn't there some way to act as an ally to a minority population that doesn't involve patronizing?

Absolutely. I don't tremendously like the framing of "allyship", but there are lots of good diversity-promoting measures that companies should take - one example, we're working on pushing my current company to do an AfroTech sponsorship.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gFP4dJHJXoI

Couldn’t find the whole thing, but I agree it seems constantly talking about race leads to more racism and not less. Seems so opposed to the civil right movement stance against segregation.

"constantly talking about race leads to more racism not less" Isn't an effective argument against diversity and inclusion efforts.

Racism is real and POC Americans (to scope the discussion) are experiencing it. Maybe Morgan Freeman has the perspective that pretending it's not real will make it go away, but that doesn't change the fact that black programmers are underrepresented, or that police forces are staffed with avowed racists, or that... Etc.

Answering for myself / at the level of the individual: yes.

I don't want to work with white colleagues who are biased against non-white people. I have been in this situation at a very small startup. I wasn't the only person to notice or complain about it, so I know it wasn't "in my head". So I left.

But I also don't want to work someplace where white colleagues are overcorrecting for deep-seated cultural biases. Ideally they don't have to correct at all. I've been in that situation as well, at a large company with a extremely woke / "D&I" culture. So I left.

Exit isn't a systemic solution — only an individual one, and only for market participants with options.

It's also not cheap, but the psychological and emotional cost of being judged by group membership -- for me, at least, is greater.

I think it's worth keeping in mind that the kind of pan-social "affirmative action" advocated by diversity consultants is a double-edged sword, and not without its own risks and costs. At best it's a stopgap measure of sorts. (The diversity consultant operates under perverse incentives, and doesn't have anything like a Hippocratic Oath constraining his/her advocacy.)

I've been lucky and have found a few places where that pervasive sense of cultural bias wasn't present. It would be easier to find such places if startups, and engineering teams in particular, would try to hew to traditional standards of professionalism on the job.

> I don't want to work with white colleagues who are biased against non-white people.

I don't want to work with people who are biased against white people. I support equality and I genuinely want to see people treated fairly but I can't help but take offense to the notion that because I'm white I am less or should feel guilty.

Allyship for POC doesn't imply bias against white people. Acknowledging and fighting against systemic racism doesn't imply that all white people should feel universal guilt for their very real privilege.

Raising others up doesn't require pushing anyone down. Well, anyone that isn't in a white hood, anyway.

> Allyship for POC doesn't imply bias against white people.

Sure, in theory. In practice, bias against whites exists, some of it catalyzed by woke ideology. (By woke logic) White-presenting people are really the only ones with standing to speak to such bias in their own lives.

> Well, anyone that isn't in a white hood, anyway.

Ah yes, the IRL downvote: call someone a racist / Nazi / fascist / Klansman.

Where did I call anyone a klansman? I'm saying you can bring up the oppressed minority populations without putting anyone else down, with the explicit exception of people who are punished by society for their hateful ideology.

> bias against whites exists

Not in any meaningful way, especially when compared to the experience of POC in America.

> some of it catalyzed by woke ideology.

Sometimes racists lose their jobs. That's not racism against white people.

> White-presenting people are really the only ones with standing to speak to such bias in their own lives.

I'm white. We don't experience meaningful bias. Trying to claim so is just attempting to appropriate victimhood from actual victims, and detracts from anti-racist movements.

Another paragraph before someone angrily hits reply and says "BUT WHITE PEOPLE IN TRAILER PARKS! BUT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION!" I said meaningful bias. I've experienced racial discomfort. Doesn't change the fact that no matter what angle you take, my life would've been harder if I'd been born black.

You really should try to travel and visit places out of your comfort zone to see how other people live, before dismissing their hardships.

You really should engage in good faith instead of combing through nearly all of my comments in this thread and shitting out drive by rhetorically fallacious comments.

I'm not the one shitting on people whose life is a struggle but are the wrong skin color to get empathy from you.

I'm the real racist because I say Black Lives Matter rather than All Lives Matter, right?

No, only patronizing to black people and dismissive of white people less fortunate than you.

> "Ah yes, the IRL downvote: call someone a racist / Nazi / fascist / Klansman."

But it does need to be called out when it happens. Otherwise we allow it to continue. Protecting the status quo is not neutral or unbiased when the status quo is marginalising certain groups. And no, white people are really not remotely marginalised in any meaningful way in western countries.

Making sure everybody gets a fair chance and get heard, isn't really about color or gender. It's necessary in every human organization, no matter how fancy policies and human rights they claim to subscribe to.

It's only patronizing if it results in preferential treatment. But I think the experts who work on these programs have found that it is necessary to "over-correct" in order to override unconscious bias.

Obviously, if it is coming across as patronizing, then you are doing it wrong. The point is to try to get to a happy medium. Like shooting for the stars in hopes of getting to the moon.

Exactly. Inevitably some of my co-workers brought up the "points" in this thread too, that it feels patronizing & unfair.

I'm not suggesting anyone be patronizing. I'm simply saying you should be aware of the fact a co-worker might be feeling a certain way, and then notice & speak up if you see, for example, their idea(s) being misattributed to others.

The idea that being an ally would be patronizing is comparable to people responding to "black lives matter" with "all lives matter". Yes, all lives should matter, but all lives don't matter until black lives matter. If you work somewhere where white people are being systemically held back, you should speak up there as well, but I doubt that is the case.

> Isn't that horribly patronizing?

Not a racist but am torn between ignoring race - wr’re all people stance - and the behaviour described as patronizing. My conclusion is that nobody has a clue how to deal with this mess. We need to have some sort of clear guidelines on what is best tto do in these cases without offending nor patronizing. Im an Eastern European immigrant to the US and in my US education it has been drilled into me that there is no such thing as race, we’re all related and so on while emphasizing on different cultures. I took African American studies and did learn a great deal of injustice at the expense of blacks in America. But it seems I didn’t learn how to behave properly. What am I doing wrong? Should we set clear guidelines or leave them ambiguous?

I think the idea is that you should ignore the race, but doing that requires effort and awareness.

Seems like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. If the options are getting ignored, including for promotions; or getting extra attention because you're from an underrepresented group, I think option B is better in the long run, because at least it helps to address the underrepresentation.

Once representation is more equal, I think the "ignore colour" option becomes more feasible. But we're not there yet.

I agree that this is implausible within our lifetimes, but I hope one day it will be possible. There are all sorts of other physical characteristics we mostly ignore by default, and with enough time I'm hopeful we can one day live in a world where the mental biases associated with race will disappear too.

So, it’s important to treat them...the way you should treat everyone. True statement. I think you’ll need to elaborate further on what the philosophical and semantic difference is between ignoring and noticing, because the outcome is the same in your example.

Intending to overcompensate is an effective method to actually treat them the way you should treat everyone.

Eh, that only works if you have trouble treating people equally otherwise which is quite the character trait. That advice goes back to this idea that white people are born with the original sin of racism.

I find it incredibly patronizing to actively pursue "okay, black guy is talking, let me me play everything up a little bit!" Yikes. Reminds me of kneeling to talk to a child in a baby voice when they're crying that borders on a weird manipulation.

If you have such a hard time giving people of other races equal footing and need a roleplay minigame like this to do it, please speak for yourself and not everyone else.

A good leadership + empathy trait is to recognize people who aren't able to get their word in, in general, and use some of your leverage to help them. This may be the one male substitute teacher on a team of professional women teachers, or the whitest kid in a Mexican school (my experience), or a woman in a male-dominated workplace, or a black guy on a team of east asians.

I'd rather be teaching that. That's the actual moral bedrock that you're trying to get at here but in the wrong way.

And once you realize this, you'll realize there are plenty of other people in meetings that don't have equal footing for all sorts of reasons, like the soft-spoken guy with low self-confidence, probably the most common in our field.

> white people are born with the original sin of racism.

No, it doesn't, but this is generally speaking a perfect encapsulation of the "all lives matter" perspective, which is morally incorrect, usually not because of raw KKK level hatred or racism but instead simple ignorance of what unconscious bias and racism is really like for POC in America.

> I find it incredibly patronizing to actively pursue "okay, black guy is talking, let me me play everything up a little bit!"

This is also a common trope I've encountered time and time again. Some call it "racism of low expectations." The important distinction to make is that being an ally isn't patronizing, it's an active recognition of the reality of racism and unconscious bias that POC face in the workplace. The fact that you jump all the way to comparing it to speaking to a child in a baby voice says more about your own lack of empathy than an effective rhetorical attack on the position that "seeing color" as an ally is good and helpful.

I don't know you but your position is identical to a lot of people who think they aren't racist but I have observed act in a biased way, unconsciously.

The playing field isn't level. Doing nothing aids the status quo, and the status quo is systemic racism against POC.

This is great and all, but as someone who's been patronised in this way for being the autistic kid, I'd rather you just treat me like a human being. I've learned my coping strategies, I don't need you to cope for me.

I'm sorry you were patronized. Nobody likes being patronized.

You may have learned to cope but not all coping is equal and not everyone can. Again, the argument isn't for baby talk. It's for adult strategies for adult issues. Be it ensuring that a woman can have her voice heard in a meeting or an autistic employee can have a desk in a non-busy part of the office. Non-patronizing, reasonable, and aware methods to improve inclusivity and be an ally.

An ally doesn't take over the fighting entirely, they simply aid.

This is kind of what I'm getting at, though. You've just made the assumption I'm hypersensive to noise, and while that does sometimes bother me, the thing that causes me sensory overload is heat. I can solve this fairly easily because I have a reasonably quiet desk fan that doesn't take a lot of space and can be powered off of USB if needed. Please don't fight for me over things I can solve myself.

What I do struggle with is being able to get a word in edgeways during group conversation, and that can be solved quite easily with a good team leader inviting quiet voices to speak. This is where I need the most help because real life isn't a neatly nested series of conversation threads where replies accurately link back to the quoted text, life is life and life is a mess.

That's good then. If I pretended you were homogeneous with me (ignored color, the root of this thread), I'd not have had this conversation and learned that sensory overload can be caused by heat. This is exactly the sort of thing I want to happen throughout offices across America.

Life is a mess hence why I don't think we should pretend otherwise. You don't want help, cool! Some do. I've been told this explicitly. If I act on a general rule of thumb of keeping the dialogue open, that would mean people like you can say "no thanks, I don't need help," and that's that.

I feel like, to unmask me as unempathic, you ignored the rest of my post that starts with "a leadership + empathy trait..." where I attempt to generalize the goal here instead of this myopic "POC" narrow-vision. My empathy doesn't need Sparknotes for who to help, just the built-in human radar we have where we can parcel out the social hierarchy of a group.

When you have the empathy I described, you don't need a custom rule engine for black people or women or indians. You realize that people don't have equal footing even among people you would think are equal peers. Nor a group of ten white twenty-year-old guys from the same suburb. Some of the individuals in that group may be enduring the full brunt of the suffering you're talking about. And there are groups where black men have the social power and have the power to cut others off, they don't need your white-guilt superhero help.

Most of us reading this aren't even the well-spoken social apex of the groups we're in and could be assisted by others with the empathy that I describe.

In another comment, you admit that you found yourself unintentionally talking over women at the workplace. Which can't be an easy thing to introspectively discover nor admit on a public forum.

Yet your reply re-focuses on POC, racism, KKK when my viewpoint generalizes over women, people of all races, people in your peer group, and groups of any composition.

I don't intend to "unmask" you as unempathetic. I apologise for writing that way. My intent is to challenge whether you truly understand what a minority population of your team goes through.

Everything I'm saying here I've learned through conversations with POC and women coworkers. I want to comment in a way that convinces others to have those conversations. If we "ignore color," we never have those conversations.

Your writing reads as if you think of yourself as a person free of all unconscious bias and so self-aware of your actions that you would instantly spot any internal bias and immediately correct. It seems unlikely that is the case.

I can’t stop thinking that ideas like GP is explaining is just a modernized racial segregation

This alt-right trope that diversity and inclusion is modern racial segregation should have been DOA but I keep seeing it crop up even here. Frustrating.

The ask is to become aware of and fight against your own unconscious biases, nothing more.

I think part of the philosophical disagreement here is whether fighting against one’s bias is a necessary precursor to treating people equally. As a practical matter I think that’s probably true for most people, but I’m not sure it’s universally true either in theory or in practice. I respect this line of thinking but it also assumes or implies that anyone who just treats people equally because it’s the right thing to do has either necessarily failed to confront their biases or done so without knowing it. I don’t know if that’s true or not but I doubt we’ll ever find out because it doesn’t appear to be a falsifiable assertion.

Oh the ctrl-left trope we are only fighting unconscious biases. Is fighting the unconscious biases like Don Quixote fighting the wind mills or more like repentance for the original sin your born with?

Do you disagree that society should be equitable regardless of race?

Yes I do. People should be treated equal regardless of race. All people should be individually judged and not infantilized or demonized because of their skin color. Everything else is deeply anti-humanist and leads to more suffering in pain down the road.

> All people should be individually judged

This isn't in opposition to what I'm saying.

> not infantilized or demonized because of their skin color.

Good, we don't disagree.

So, unless you're operating off some kind of strawman of what a good diversity and inclusion initiative does, I think we're on the same page.

You assume that the unconscious biases are less powerful than the conscious ones, which may not be true (I don't believe it is).

A personal example - I "treated everyone equally" for a long time, and then I was brought to be aware of the "don't ignore color" perspective. I started paying active attention and realized I was talking over women in meetings regularly. Crazy regularly. I had no idea. And then I noticed that almost all the men on my team were doing it.

By acting as an ally to people in that situation you can turn the tide. If even one person in the meeting is aware of this tendency, they can lend strength to someone who's "given up" trying to get their voice heard, with a simple "hold on, I think {{name}} had something to add."

"Ignoring color" means you assume everyone has the motivation and power to play on a level field with a bully, conscious or otherwise. It means you assume there's no such thing as unconscious bias, which is wrong.

I think your intent is great. But I do think it would be better to keep the outward response as neutral as possible, so you don't unintentially single someone out in your attempt to be inclusive.

For example, make a conscious decision to say "hold on, I think {so-and-so} had something to add" when you see that situation with anyone, even if they happen to be a white man (because just being a white male doesn't mean they aren't an introvert who can never get a word in a discussion with more assertive pears).

Sure. But what we're talking about here is how "not seeing color" hurts more than it "helps."

I’m not assuming anything. I’m merely pointing out that both scenarios described had the same desired outcome.

In reality I disagree. If I "never saw color," I'd never have the uncomfortable conversations that led to me recognizing and changing unconscious behavior.

The point is, one scenario doesn't actually reflect reality, it reflects an ideal that doesn't exist because humans are sloppy.

The behavior you prescribe is itself a bias.

Can we please treat individuals as individuals instead of narrowly viewing others through whatever lenses we carry?

This sounds kind of like "all workers matter", which ignores the current and historical challenges gender/race minorities have experienced in certain fields of work. If you are the majority it can be very easy to be blind to the plight of the minority. "I see a black man or a woman got hired, so things must be fine."

I don't think there is harm in making extra effort to ensure inclusion of minorities within the group, at least for the time being while we try to find better balance, and we see fewer reports of minorities being overlooked, outcasts or underpayed.

It's very important to ensure inclusion, and there's no harm in it when it's done well. But if you find yourself keeping mental notes of everyone's skin color to figure out how you should interact with them, that's not really inclusion.

It's more thinking, "did I forget to add {{somebody}} to the engineering help desk email group because they're black" than it is "lemme use my baby voice when talking to the black engineer."

It's about working to catch your own unconscious bias in the act, and then fighting to correct any mistakes you made as a result. And then, you start making yourself aware of how your colleagues and company culture is treating POC, and working to correct mistakes there.

If it sounds like exhaustive policing, I'd simply ask if code review is exhaustive policing. Is it rude to insist on code reviews? Of course not, because we're humans and make mistakes. The whole point of a team and company is to combine strenghts and look out for eachother.

Just know that whether you are consciously making mental notes on skin color or not, your unconscious mind definitely is taking notes and affecting your behaviour accordingly.

And this goes both ways. Racial bias exists in all human beings. It's just that when you are a member of the group that is overwhelmingly represented in all corners of power, that racial bias tends to help you while harming others.

Re "borderline racism", I think xenophobia is the term you're looking for.

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