Mental Health Professionals Have Begun Suing Stanford | Hacker News Reader

Mental Health Professionals Have Begun Suing Stanford

psychologytoday.com

58 pointsjaytaylor25 comments

If back in 2008 you thought you'd be doing pretty well as a gay Asian nerd, you won't be happy to find out that gay men are the new white people, Asians are the new white people, and nerds are the new white people. There is a silver lining to this, which is that since there are plenty of successful black people they will eventually discover that black people are the new white people. About the time black people become the new white people is when this whiteness thing will call it quits. Maybe by 2030.

> Maybe by 2030.

I think you're being optimistic.

I am really surprised all these bay insitutitions are still signining their employees up for classes like this, and that the classes are explicitly disfavoring jewish identify relative to other identities in the US. However, it seems like as more people become aware of this, the more pushback there is against these classes, so I'm hopeful the organizers will see the light and stop setting up conflict.

This is getting into silly territory. The original Black Lives Matter movement was about stopping cops from killing people. That's a workable policy goal, but not one that's being worked on hard enough to solve it. The other side of that is, how do you police a society where a sizable fraction of the population is armed, without militarizing the police?

The other big goal is how to get a living wage and some job security for people at the bottom.

Both of those are hard, but achievable. Fussing around with coercive "wokeness" diverts effort from the real problems.

>An ideology, on the other hand, might redefine baldness as “ideas about baldness that produce and normalize baldness.” Believers might claim that all heads are bald regardless of the presence of long and luxurious hair. In fact, hair might be evidence of a refusal to accept one's baldness.

I didn't realize just how badly Stanford (and DEI programs like the one they foisted on their employees) are screwed here.

The complaint describes (and presumable has access to through discovery) emails where the platififf were specifically told they were "part of systemic racism and oppression" by a person in an authority position within the Stanford organization.

If they have that email in hand, it's over for Stanford. This program will be cancelled, and many other institutions will follow. It's pretty simple: if a authority at your employer calls you racist in a discoverable medium, regardless of whether this is illegal, you can force the other side to settle.

In fact that's exactly what plaintiff says: """The complaints, which Lewin said she hopes will be resolved out of court, demand Stanford “come into compliance” with the law by taking “concrete steps” to eliminate the “hostile environment” for Jews at CAPS"""

> After a zoombombing that included both racist and antisemitic images, Albucher and Levin were informed that only the racism, not antisemitism, was worth addressing.

> Even when antisemitic graffiti appeared on campus, their requests to discuss antisemitism were denied.

I might agree with some of the stuff in this article, but I like to some earnest feedback about the use of the passive voice in this article. After reading and re-reading the previous sentences (including their context), I still did not know who denied their requests, who informed them that the antisemitism ought not to be discussed.

Interesting article nonetheless, thanks for sharing.

> but I like to some earnest feedback about the use of the passive voice in this article. After reading and re-reading the previous sentences (including their context), I still did not know who denied their requests, who informed them that the antisemitism ought not to be discussed.

There might be more explicit details in the lawsuit, but from context I think the who is some authority in:

> When CAPS [Stanford University’s Counseling and Psychological Services] initiated a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion program, White Fragility was the chosen book, and personnel were segregated into “affinity groups,” each of which met separately.

Though that authority could probably range from the leader of CAPS, to some diversity and inclusion bureaucrat, to some outside consultant they hired and empowered (e.g. https://www.ykhong.com/).

I love how they're talking about Israel's right to exist as if it is a universal truth and you're a bad person for not agreeing with it lol.

Israel's existence is extremely controversial, rightfully so as well. It wasn't a state that just __happened to exist without displacing others__.

There is no "right" answer to Israel, everything about is is emotional and historical.

> In the 21st century, when being white is now the morally contaminated category, non-Jews at Stanford forcibly classified Jews as white.

I don't know about the particular details of the Standford case, but this sentence is a real red flag for me. Is whiteness "morally contaminated" or are the differing/unjust experiences of non-white people just now being popularly recognized and elevated? To say that statement feels like a critical misunderstanding of the power dynamics of race.

IMO, saying "all whites are racist" _is_ morally contaminating whiteness because it implies that whites cannot be moral.

I may be poking the bear, but what if we stopped looking at racism as a moral thing and more of a (possibly) natural psychological occurrence?

Although I think the big issue is that there isn't a definition of "racist" that everyone agrees on. Is it only being antagonistic towards someone? Does it include unconscious bias? Does it include ignorance? There is a wide spectrum of racism.

All of what you said is a fair point, and for that, you get an upvote from me.

However, if we were to think of racism as a natural psychological occurrence, that doesn't eliminate the moral part. After all, the desire that men have to spread their seed is also a natural psychological occurrence, but we also consider it a moral imperative that they don't do that without consent from females.

But apart from that, even if it's a natural psychological occurrence, saying "all whites are racist" _also_ implies that whites cannot overcome that, which is the opposite of the fact that we all agree that men can overcome their desire to spread their seed.

And once again IMO, to imply that an entire race cannot overcome what we would consider a "moral deficiency" is racist. In fact, that's the same thing that a lot of whites believed about blacks back in the day, that black men could not overcome the desire to spread their seed and thus, needed to be controlled, an entirely wrong view, of course.

And for the same reasons, "all whites are racist" is racist and wrong.

I think we just fundamentally agree on whether or not it is a "moral deficiency" to be racist.

I believe it is a moral deficiency to treat someone differently because of their race. I don't believe it is a moral deficiency to have fleeting thoughts that might be racist and acknowledging that those thoughts exist but they don't make you an immoral person unless you let it dictate your behavior.

And I do believe that many white people struggle to not get defensive because they have (possibly minimal) racist thoughts even if they don't act on them. In my mind having those thoughts doesn't make them immoral. It makes them human.

I believe that I (and literally everyone) can be a racist by landing on SOME level of the continuum. But that my racism (which i believe i literally can't avoid through no fault of my own) can be overcome with being thoughtful, empathetic, and moral.

I also believe that literally everyone is racist, so that might be clouding the conversation further. (I don't subscribe to the "minorities can't be racist" theories.)

(Also, I'm just an IT guy. I'm by no means an expert on this and probably shouldn't even be commenting on this.)

Thank you for the nuanced reply.

I just want to address your opinion that everyone is racist on some level.

Do you likewise believe that all men are rapists on some level? If so, then I can commend your consistency and accept your view. If not, why not? What makes racism different?

Heading home for the day but that is an interesting point. I'll try to respond tomorrow!

Having racist thoughts is not committing an action, whereas raping is.

Yes, correct, but that implies that anyone who has racist thoughts but doesn't do anything with them is not a racist.

I agree with that, otherwise we're all racists and the word is practically useless.

>to imply that an entire race cannot overcome what we would consider a "moral deficiency"

It's a bit more subtle but in an important way: they say that no one can overcome it who posseses it. Which is why it's so important to define it in terms of "whiteness."

I see republican legislators fumble for the words to describe "critical race theory" but if you want something to rail against just read the introduction to this book:

https://www.worldcat.org/title/how-to-be-an-antiracist/oclc/...

which is wrong in so many ways it is not funny. For instance it says I am supposed to take some kind of leadership in solving the problems of black people.

I was involved in getting left-wing groups together on a college campus in 1994 and it was clear that black people were not going to be receptive to a white person telling them how to solve their problems.

That is, black people (like everybody) get to decide what their problems are and what solutions are acceptable. I am glad to help, but going on an endless introspection about the faults of me and my ancestors (who were serfs in Europe 150 years ago, could have faced annihilation had they been in Europe in the 1940s, etc.)

One problem that book has is that it sees the black-white conflict in the US as something on an entirely level from say, turks vs armenians, malays vs chinese, japanese vs ainu, etc.

Widening your compassion I think you see that hate and discrimination are similar, if not the same, evil -- that book is not asking you to expand your mind but contract it.

Disingenuous appeal to the rigor of science followed by several token anecdotes and thick sarcasm.

Reactionary reverse cancel culture hit piece, from the usual tabloid.

This piece is slanted but if you click through to the local news story [1], I dunno, it gets pretty weird…

> The white affinity group was eventually named the "Whiteness Accountability" group and was intended for "staff who hold privilege via white identity and who want to explore how the advantages of whiteness interact with their identities, with their work and in the world," the complaint quotes from the program's announcement.

> The announcement also identified the white affinity group as being for staff who are "white identified, may be newly grappling with or realizing their white identity, or identify as or are perceived as white."

[1]: https://paloaltoonline.com/news/2021/06/16/federal-complaint...

The whole “article” is like meta-reactionary though. From what I’ve read I agree that Stanford training sounds ridiculous. But this entire post is just the author doing the very thing she’s accusing others of doing:

> Building on the now-popular term “woke,” I have come to call this ideology, wokecraft. I use the metaphor of a spell because among believers are people in fields that rely on logic, reason, and science but who nonetheless appear unable to see that many of wokecraft's definitions — including new definitions of racism and antiracism — are tautological, and many of its foundational concepts (such as white fragility, white privilege, and microaggressions) are unfalsifiable.

Is “wokecraft” not tautological and unfalsifiable? And all of her examples seem intended to speak to ideology over science - “toxic” masculinity, Israel’s “right to exist”, etc. There are lots of deliberately chosen and emotionally-loaded phrases in this writing. That’s the hallmark of ideology over science.

> culture of free expression once enjoyed in the U.S.

I stopped reading here, there have always been inhibitors of free expression in the U.S. to suggest otherwise is to show one's ignorance of the history of the topic at hand.

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