Comment by hardwaregeek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hardwaregeek | Hacker News Reader

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Okay I do like HN—I'm here for a reason after all—but it is flawed like any other curation. For one, I find that it veers extremely literal and nerdy. For some topics such as programming and math, this is wonderful, as programming and math are both topics where literalism and nerdiness are required.

But in some cases this blend is not great. I wouldn't put HN as a great place to get your knowledge of more social, cultural content. There are good articles on occasion and of course great users/comments, but there are times when I am confronted with the fact that there is a remarkable homogeneity which is reflected in the discourse on race, gender, politics, etc. This is a site populated by primarily tech workers and we have to face facts that tech workers are predominantly white and Asian and male, indeed predominantly cis-hetereosexual male. I don't mean any of this in an accusatory fashion; this is simply the reality of tech. But it does mean that the discourse is not capturing the entire spectrum of experiences and the few voices who do not fit these paradigms can, on occasion, be overwhelmed by the majority.

Not to mention, as a tech worker forum, I'd hazard that the average commenter is far more well versed in tech than in say, US politics or third wave feminism. Much as we'd find the discourse on technology in a politics forum rather naive and uninformed, I'd have to imagine that a politics expert would find the political discussions on HN similarly so.

TL;DR: Use HN as part of a balanced information diet. Read books and try to get out of the tech worker bubble.

> predominantly white and Asian and male, indeed predominantly cis-hetereosexual male

What I appreciate about HN is that we don‘t make everything about race, gender, and politics, for no reason.

You're both right. (I'm half in the in-group and half-out.)

It's nice that there's no political litmus test to post here. My gay butt would rather have to read some eyeroll inducing things but receive a greater variety of opinions because I favor variety in topics and opinions. This is because I think opinion and topic variety is important to synthesizing new ideas, to discovery, and to serendipity, which is what I like about tech.

On the other hand, it means if you point out that these demographics impact the tech world or its discussion centers, you get poo-poo'ed.

As somebody who would love to discuss things like the benefits, unexpected consequences, and drawbacks of more women in STEM or how, if all developers on a project share traits, they're more likely to miss needed features or key bugs depending on their audience (something I've also seen on all 'marginalized' teams), there's not anywhere to have those discussions that don't turn into shit-flinging contests that would make chimpanzees proud.

I'm not a huge fan of the "make it about race/gender/politics" rhetoric, and frankly this demonstrates the issues I mentioned in the post. The entire framing of "making XYZ about race/gender/politics" implies that XYZ was not about race/gender/politics and that the addition was simply unnecessary. However these issue of race/gender/politics permeate our society and do have an effect on a lot of issues. If I'm being honest, it's usually the demographics who have the least discrimination and the most power who think that these issues do not permeate. It's quite easy to think racism has no relevance to your daily existence when you don't get stopped by the police; when people don't commit hate crimes on people who look like you; when your existence is validated by media, government and society as a whole. Racism doesn't operate on a neat time clock. It shows up everywhere.

Of course there are exceptions. Some people of color truly do believe this "not bringing race" rhetoric. The very existence of Black and Asian republicans demonstrates this. But they're pretty rare. And there are people of color who use race as a cudgel to attack others. But they're also pretty rare. I'd advocate that if you see someone bring up race/gender/politics, try to not see it as someone "bringing in race", but someone sharing their experiences, experiences that may not be yours, but are still valid experiences.

I'm not sure where parent argued that we should not be concerned about police brutality, hate crimes, or the ongoing fraying of the social fabric which gets commonly internalized as a sense that "society is not validating my existence". Framing those issues are purely matters of race/gender/factional politics is just as harmful.

I'm also not sure where I argued that we should frame it as purely matters of race/gender/politics. Certainly there are other aspects and other lenses. But these are intersectional issues and race/gender/politics happen to be crucial lenses.

I don't mean btw to straw man the comment by mentioning hate crimes/police brutality/etc. First of all, race shows up in much more mundane stuff like awkward conversations about where you're really from, or people making implicit assumptions about my parental background based on my being in tech. It's my bad for not mentioning those as well.

However it's also that these dramatic things, as thankfully rare as they are, have a pervasive effect on one's life. I've never gotten hate crimed, nor do I know anyone who has (knock on wood). But I have thought about whether to buy my parents pepper spray. I have wondered each time a mentally ill person steps on the subway and looks in my direction if I'm about to get hate crimed. My Asian friends and I joke about it because it's something we think about in our day to day life. I can't speak for white people but I don't think most white people have that concern. And if this isn't part of your daily fabric, your daily existence, you might not understand that nobody is "bringing race" into stuff as much as they are sharing their racialized daily existence.

> I'm also not sure where I argued that we should frame it as purely matters of race/gender/politics.

That's what people are doing when they "bring it up", effectively, whether they realize this or not. It's a populist, lazy, anti-intellectual framing which rejects deep engagement with object-level concerns as somehow being less meaningful than "acknowledging/validating my identity/daily experience". It's a rejection of real, actual politics as the domain of creative adaptation and compromise-- as if "sharing [one's] racialized daily existence" obviates the need for this kind of consistent, active, pro-social engagement. And it's bad regardless of who's doing it. It doesn't matter if the people involved wear MAGA hats or not, the underlying dynamics are pretty much equivalent.

Very much agree. Computer related stuff in general, like anecdotes about buying brands to high level programming, and a wide spectrum of STEM discourse is great on HN, but I often find myself scratching my head like “lol really?” at comments which fall outside that. A lot of people here have a bit of a chip on their shoulder in topics outside their expertise just because, I guess, they have a false sense of confidence in all topics, art to philosophy to psychology to parenting etc etc, due to having high level ability in one hard one.

But to be fair, reddit and every other social platform is mostly terrible with both STEM and humanities.

Books will always be supreme.

> tech workers and we have to face facts that tech workers are predominantly white and Asian and male

In the US at least many tech companies have way more Indians that white. It's funny to me how Indians in the US are usually not in the white/asian conversation, and even often put in the "people of color" group. Just shows most people think race is about skin color.

I view it as Indian ⊆ Asian ⊆ people of color. I agree that Indians are often neglected in the Asian discourse, although I think there's been more work to include non-East Asians in the conversation lately.

The term people of color is bad and shouldn't be used. We shouldn't classify people into group of colors. When people see an African American person they are likely to have different bias about the person than when they see an Indian person. The bias is not about the skin color, it's about the group the person belongs to. Another example, Indians and African American have completely different issues in the US. Indians have great representation in academia, all top professions (tech, medical, law, etc), live in rich suburbs, etc. Racism against Indian people is usually from anti-immigrants people. African Americans have bad representation in everything I just listed and racism against them have nothing to do with immigration. In the US at least, the Indians and white groups are much closer to each other than Indians and African Americans (obv I'm generalizing here, even white is way too broad as a group).

Sorry for digressing on the topic here...

"People of color" was invented as a way to help black people in the US by forming a coalition of them and every other minority/immigrant group. It's unclear if this worked, but it's probably effective at stopping the old system where immigrants (Italians, Irish) would "become white" by being even more anti-black than the WASP class they were trying to enter.

Reminds me of one bit of a conversation I heard post-graduation ceremony from an Indian fellow grad insistent upon Indians not being asian on the grounds of it being its own distinct subcontinent with its own ocean. I'm not entirely quite sure what to make of that personal perspective and what it qualifies as.

Do you have any examples of places someone could go to find more "social, cultural content"?

I don't think my info diet is very balanced. I'd love to be introduced to other places where people talk about different things

I struggle with this too. Books and newspapers are a good resource of course. It's also quite good to read some academic humanities and social science writing. HN and other fora make a big point of free speech, open minded discussion, but I find that there aren't always articles from intellectuals in the academic sphere on HN. Of course these sources have biases of their own, but isn't the point of open minded free speech to read those with whom you disagree?

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