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Comment by eplanit | Hacker News Reader

The Diversity agenda of the past 20+ years has created more racism and division than I witnessed in my entire life before then. I have come to conclude that it's one of the most misguided movements in modern history. We were making progress (seemingly too slow, I know) by applying Dr. King's prescription for Color Blindness. But, that concept has been rejected (though his name is still used in honor); and sure enough, we've slid horribly backwards.

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It has just become a very combative and partisan issue. Take the statement "women make 70% of what men do". This statement has been thoroughly debunked, but if someone made that statement and you challenged it, even with something reasonable like: "There is a gap but it is not that large", you would be risking ostracization by longtime friends, loss of career, etc. Are we supposed to feel like we are making forward progress when objecting to bad statistics, or any reasonable discussion around certain issues will result in an insanely hostile response?

Now, your race and sex matter more than ever.

But consider all of the little slights of hand performed. I recall the unhappy Tweets from feminists when women were considered for the draft, mostly around the theme of "this isn't the equality I wanted." Equality is the whole package, it isn't a pick and choose. It isn't "only the good stuff."

And then the shift has been to equity now. You have probably noticed this.

Yes. And, for women the insanity is mind-blowing. Now, being a "woman" is a state of mind and simply a matter of choice -- i.e. it's a meaningless "construct". We spent decades _rightfully_ learning to recognize and respect our differences, in terms of recognizing equal rights. But now, boom that's just bullshit, I guess.

But, that's me who's amazed by this. I'd be more interested in the the opinion of women (biological females) on this recent phenomenon.

MLK was against what people today call colorblindness. Just because he said he wanted people to not judge his children by the color of their skin does not mean he didn't recognize that modern society does and will continue to do so, so we need to put in place compensating measures. Using a dead person's words in the exact opposite way they were intended is bad.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/colinseale/2020/01/20/mlks-i-ha...

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,"

People can be forgiven for thinking this quote by MLK Jr. advocates colorblindness because that's exactly what it seems to say. It is only when you apply a scholarly interpretation do you arrive at his words being used "in the exact opposite way they were intended".

This strikes me of "Yes, well it says 'Defund the Police' but what it actually means is.."

Appending on to what BitwiseFool said. There is "Martin Luther King Jr." the person and "Martin Luther King Jr." the public figure (or the icon, or the philosophy, or the doctrine, or the movement).

MLK could have thought any number of great or terrible things. In some contexts it can be highly appropriate to mention them.

In my opinion, when someone mentions MLK in the context of the "I have a dream" speech, its clear to me that the personhood of MLK or his beliefs are really not up for discussion. MLK is a piece of iconography, a historical reference point, for the color-blind, racially-neutral position. Any discussion of MLK's beliefs distract from the point being made and ultimately does not change minds.

And positions that are contrary to what MLK believed shouldn't be advocated by calling on his status as a public figure. Just because people are ignorant doesn't mean they get to say whatever they want. I don't see how this is even being discussed.

> I don't see how this is even being discussed.

It's because people disagree with your assumption that you are completely correct, but I know you're already not here to discuss but to "fact-check".

There are reasons why specific pieces of history stick out and resonate. His "I have a dream" speech is what I remembered most because that is what ultimately, I believe, actually played a role in truly removing a lot of pervasive racism and discrimination that used to exist.

It certainly helped me from a young age really have a worldview that people are who they advertise themselves as, not by the visual identity I associate them with. It's never been an issue until people like you popped up out of nowhere saying I'm the most racist person alive because I don't treat people differently because of their race.

I don't know what you are saying. Are you saying we shouldn't consider context when looking at quotes? That's a bad idea. For example, BitwiseFool said "Defund the Police." We shouldn't be saying MLK advocated a position he clearly didn't, and I should be allowed to correct someone when they do.

> I should be allowed to correct someone when they do.

You're not a fact checker, this is a discussion board...?

You're just arguing that only a subset of people can correctly interpret what people truly mean. I'm not sure that is consistent or valid? Taking things at face value is a valid interpretation because that is what is literally said. Excluding tone, but a quick search returns the literal interpretation backed by congresswoman AOC.

> 'I believe the path toward justice is a long arc. Safety is not just an officer with a badge and a gun,' AOC said. 'Our [police budget] is too high,' she added, citing a $6 billion figure for New York's department. [src](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/aoc-defends-defund-t...)

This is also backed by multiple cities literally cutting police funding. [LA](https://abc7.com/defund-the-police-lapd-los-angeles-mayor-er...) [NYC](https://www.policemag.com/562124/new-york-city-cuts-police-b...)

Did the budget drop? Then it was defunded, which is accurate. It can be defunded and reallocated and still be accurately stated by "defund the police".

You're arguing that what people say isn't what they really mean to say. Almost insinuating that it always requires an "expert" or "scholarly" opinion in order to truly interpret the true meaning of what someone says.

"The sky is blue"

"Well he meant to say the sky is clear, but it's the reflection of light from the water in the air that makes it appear blue, but it's not actually blue"

Meanwhile if you look outside observe you notice the sky is blue, validating the original statement. There wasn't any depth to the statement other than "The sky is blue"

I would like you to personally explain why you believe that article to be convincing that colorblindness isn't a positive way to treat people. What do you actually propose with how to treat people that is an overall improvement over colorblindness?

Let's say you start to treat people based on the supposed presumption that all blacks are oppressed and poor. All. Not some, all. I'm not talking about a rough life in a rough neighborhood, I'm talking systemtic oppression at all levels everywhere that everyone does to blacks. As that's the premise of that article, you must repair the relations of the past in order to move forward? Instead why not take the individual and judge them by who they are, not the color you see through your eyes and assume them to be. You end up properly enacting how people should be treated in general, regardless of race. Unless of course you propose and truly believe a race is somehow indicative of a persons' entire identity and personal history. It's delusional and dishonest if you think seeing color is the ultimate message.

You can wish to not be judged for color and wish for reparations to repair relations _at the time_. Certainly the way you're championing this article as somehow irrefutable account of MLKs true intent behind his speech is also disingenuous to nuance.

The article isn't even conclusive as it would require you to follow the sources of:

- Standford (Univeristy) - Brookings (Public Policy Nonprofit) - WashingtonPost (Media) - the74million (Media) - The Atlantic (Media) - Ibram X. Kendi ("How to be anti-racist" book author) - SPLC (Law firm) - ASCD (Educators community?) - TNTP (Educators community?)

Not to mention all the standford links are behind a login panel which cannot be verified. This is horribly sourced to be considered _concrete_ in itself.

I feel the article takes MLK's speech as if he said it yesterday instead of taking into account improvements that occurred between then and now. Trying to say that the blacks have had a total degradation of rights and life since then is an insult to the blacks who actually suffered during that time.

I'll continue to treat everyone the same regardless of race because I feel that trying to apologize or cater to someone for the color of their skin without having spoken a word to them would be pretty presumptuous to assume they come from that background or even from a country where they were oppressed in the first place. I'm not sure what your goal is?

Holy strawmans Batman. Stop putting words into people's mouths. I don't think we should treat all black people like they are oppressed and poor. I think we should recognize our society has historically oppressed and impoverished the majority of black people. Colorblindness does not allow that. Beyond that, I owe you no explanation.

> I think we should recognize our society has historically oppressed and impoverished the majority of black people.

Okay, now that we've acknowledged it happened historically how do we make sure it doesn't continue? Treat those same people differently based on the color of their skin?

> Colorblindness does not allow that.

What are you talking about? It absolutely does, you can understand that treating people based on race is incorrect. You are blind to the color of their skin for today.

If you treat them any differently because of their skin color you're inherently believing they are different because of their skin color.

> Beyond that, I owe you no explanation.

Then don't post on a _discussion_ board? You're kidding, right? I guess I won't expect anything else, but I'm not sure why you're here in the first place then?

I am frankly tired of this as a person of color. I work in Silicon Valley and constantly being hassled by HR/PR/Marketing teams to pose as their diversity pawn. Yes, I have a picture of me taken (company owns the rights) to put me at the fore front of their marketing materials.

You can always say no to this. I've seen recruiters do this other places and people got their pictures taken down after the fact.

At the time, it was not so easy to say no (when we had racial tensions in June last year). I'll try reaching out.

I don't envy you ... Funny thing is, when I was in academia, I was always annoyed by being passed over in the "token Muslim" photo shoots because I did not fit white liberals' stereotypes of Muslims :-)

Regardless of what anything thinks about it, it's here to stay as the diversity industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. The people leading this movement have amassed lots of power over corporations and government.

EDIT: Downvoted for speaking facts. Amazing this site.

I would add that it feeds nicely into the "outrage industry" that is an offshoot of the attention economy. There is a lot of money (power as well) in dividing and enraging people. As long as current ad revenue models (and yes, the associated algorithmic escalation of outrage) persist, I don't see this improving.

No idea as well why you’re getting downvoted. I work in a big tech company where some employees’ sole role of existence is pushing diversity & inclusion and preach wokeness, with the blessings of HR of course.

It's precisely why big corporations jumped on the woke bandwagon so eagerly over the past few years. They walk around constantly virtue-signal-flogging themselves these days, it's despicable.

Coca Cola is an evil company that - in my opinion - has knowingly killed hundreds of thousands of people with its product, by way of health consequences. They're every bit as vile as the tobacco companies, and they've operated in a very similar manner over time. Yet somehow they've become a poster child for woke'ism in corporate America. How is that possible? They certainly do not care about the well-being of people. They see a power angle in taking advantage of it, there is something for them to gain by acting as a parasite riding on cultural trends. Giant corporations like that don't do anything for any other reasons, power and profit.

I read an article that I cant find now about the irony of "evil" organizations - the example they gave was intelligence agencies - going out of their way to be "gay friendly" or some similar pandering to make people feel good. As if it's ok that you're illegally wiretapping and torturing or whatever, because of your commitment to diversity.

I'd also add that it seems that many of the most zealous virtue signaling orgs are monopolies / oligopolies that don't have a lot of real business needs to focus on. Check out the Canadian banks for an example. I feel like there's some animal kingdom example I'm not remembering about large antlers or something that signal fitness because only a strong, well fed reindeer could expend the energy growing them. You get the idea. And it ends up having the evolutionary advantages that it crowds out those who are struggling to make ends meet and can't grow the big antlers, and eventually we're left with some ridiculous relics that can barely lift their heads.

Glen greenwald wrote the article you talk about.

Thank you, found it again!

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/big-corporations-now-deploy...

(I'm shadow banned from voting or I would upvote :) )

> The Diversity agenda of the past 20+ years has created more racism and division than I witnessed in my entire life before then

I am forced to wonder if this isn't precisely because the "diversity agenda" has simply called attention to something already lurking in the background. In other words, it's not that there is more racism and division than there used to be, only that you're more aware of it now.

This. There is way less racism now than their used to be. At the same time we have more awareness of the issues. The only people I know who are really bothered by this are those who liked the old world where people knew their place.

I don't think the "diversity agenda" has contributed to awareness. Awareness of the problem probably comes from the internet and the democratization of media. People couldn't watch Rodney King on YouTube. Now they can and thousands of other similar incidents.

No amount of racial sensitivity trainings could ever amount to watching a single YouTube video of an unarmed black man being shot by the police.

Somehow there is little reaction when white people are being shot, though (or killed in general, like the white guy who died in the same way as Georg Floyd sometime before). I think there is more to it than just accessibility.

The racism and division was being intentionally enflamed the past few years. Muslims being banned from the US (until the courts shot it down). Anti-immigrant rhetoric. "Build the wall." "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." It's easy to have a short memory nowadays, but you're taking something that's local temporally and acting like it was always this way.

Why not mention the Biden administration attempting to distribute COVID relief money based on race?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/joe-bidens-covid-debt-reli...

This wouldnt be even legally possible in vast majority of western countries. Americans are weird.

"The Diversity agenda of the past 20+ years has created more racism and division than I witnessed in my entire life before then."

Are your children being taken from you, forced to speak a different language in a state-mandated school where they're underfed and not given medical treatment, leading to high death rates from preventable diseases?

Or do you just love pretending being persecuted?

Are you taking about Canada?

They might be talking about the Muslim cultural eradication program going on in Denmark, the description fits.

I'm struggling to understand your point - is it that so long as that's not happening, people aren't allowed to complain?

“The Diversity agenda of the past 20+ years has created more racism and division than I witnessed in my entire life before then.”

This could only be said from someone in a group that benefitted from the racism of the past.

Edit: Love the downvotes, but not unexpected given the demographic.

It’s nearly impossible to have a discussion about race here, and the most popular articles always seem to have the same point of view.

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