From the subtitle of the article:
> and quite possibly even racist
And I'm out.
Does racism exist? Of course.
Is everything everywhere always racism? Of course not.
> and quite possibly even racist
And I'm out.
Does racism exist? Of course.
Is everything everywhere always racism? Of course not.
It’s saying they’re pushing sun screen for people who don’t really need it.
This is 2 paragraphs after the one I quoted and it says it even more clearly: “And yet they are being told a very different story, misled into believing that sunscreen can prevent their melanomas, which Weller finds exasperating. “The cosmetic industry is now trying to push sunscreen at dark-skinned people,” he says. “At dermatology meetings, you get people standing up and saying, ‘We have to adapt products for this market.’ Well, no we don’t. This is a marketing ploy.””
> “I think that sun-protection advice,” [David Leffel, Yale] told me, “has always been directed at those most at risk”—people with fair skin or a family history of skin cancer. “While it is true that people with olive skin are at less risk, we do see an increasing number of people with that type of skin getting skin cancer. But skin cancer… is very rare in African Americans… and although they represent a spectrum of pigmentation, [they] are not at as much risk.”
Your original comment was effectively ‘why does everything have to be about race?’ and it matters in this context.
You say “systemic racism”, I say “the article cites one guy and gives his voice more weight than an entire industry body in order to contort this into a story about (maybe) racism”.
Science is messy. Doctors are very cautious by training and experience. So yes, they encourage everyone to use sunscreen until the preponderance of scientific evidence suggests otherwise. This is not racism in any form. To suggest otherwise is a slap in the face to people who have been subjected to real racism.
> No real science is performed to test their validity.
This is a ludicrous argument. Which scientific experiment do you want me to perform, exactly, to discover the definition of racism? It's a word, not a physical law.
> To suggest otherwise is a slap in the face to people who have been subjected to real racism.
And a true scottsman would never put sugar in his porridge, yes, yes.
It's generally a damned good principle to live by. We know for certain that higher UV exposure = higher risk of melanoma. It may be a lower risk for people with darker skin, but where do you draw the line for how dark is dark enough to not need to bother with sunscreen? The article states that it's rare in African Americans, but not nonexistent. In the absence of other evidence, why not avoid UV exposure?
This article presents emerging studies that suggest that UV exposure does have some direct benefits and that avoiding it may be especially harmful to people with darker skin. If there's enough evidence to support the findings, the AAD should absolutely change its advice. That's the scientific process. The article uses the example of margarine to illustrate the point; we've gotten it wrong before.
Given the above, are you certain that the term "racism" is accurate here? What can we attribute to bias that can't be explained by a lack of scientific evidence?
Maybe the world needs a variant of Hanlon’s razor: never attribute to racism that which is adequate explained by stupidity (or incompetence or the desire to promote one’s product or profession, etc.).
The US tried /extremely/ hard to take 'color-blindness' as the solution to centuries of explicit racism. And it failed rather completely. There's two effects at play: a) the 'true' racists learned how to keep being horrible without ever explicitly talking about race, and b) we wound up with lots of 'data gaps' around race by ignoring real differences. This data gap is arguably at the root of what's called structural racism.
(Incidentally, an incredibly similar dynamic has played out with the rights of women. I'm currently reading Caroline Criado-Perez's 'Invisible Women' which is about a huge range of areas where the 'default' is male, and the resulting gaps in data about women lead to poor outcomes.)
So I'd say the article points to a particular kind of structural racism: That the medical advice for white people is assumed to also be good for people of color.
Maybe? The article is trying pretty hard to say that the medical advice is wrong for white people too. Of course, it’s plausible that the article is wrong, white people should use sunscreen, and black people (at least in Northern climates?) should not.
Here’s a more clear-cut example of structural racism in medicine:
https://sph.umich.edu/pursuit/2021posts/black-people-are-thr...
As an example, if you give 100 children a math test -- no word problems, just algebra -- and find that there is any correlation between skin color and test performance, then the test itself must be racist, and perhaps even math itself. Similarly here, if there is a difference in how cancer affects people... what must be the cause? That's right! Racism™!
This is a patently absurd understanding of racism, but I've found it extremely helpful to start discussions like these by pointing out that if we don't have a common definition of what it means for something to be racist, then we can't have a discussion about it.
PS: The classical definition of racism is the idea that skin color is indicative of performance. To look at the students before or after the test takes place, and make the assumption that skin color will effect performance. The extremely fine point here is that *the skin color itself* is what will cause (or caused) the difference.
That is racism.
And doctors don't want to differentiate because it's safer to just say "sure, wear sunscreen all day and wear a helmet too, in case you get hit by a meteor". Nobody will blame a doctor for repeating the currently-accepted dogma. Maybe they'll blame sunscreen companies in ten years, but not the doctor.
Could possibly be racially motivated, but greed seems likelier.
The can want to sell more suncreen, and the way they are achieving that might be racist. These two are not mutually-exclusive.
Particularly here, where the alternative action (not recommending sunscreen for dark-skinned people) could also be seen as racist, it seems unfair to claim one way or the other.
There's nothing about race in there anyway. Don't get tricked into these identity discussions. Both ignoring anything that has race in it as well as getting angry when they bait you with it ultimately means they have control over you, because you're easily manipulated with a single word.
To disregard legitimate concerns about racism because you've grown frustrated with false positives is evidence of a weak morality. It's prioritizing our selfish frustrations over significant harms that other people (the victims of racism) are experiencing.
Intelligent, moral people aren't obligated or forced to jump into action when someone makes an accusation of racism. We can take a moment to consider the available facts, the context, and decide whether the charge of racism seems credible.
It does take effort, so there's a limit to how much attention we can give to these things... But we can also respond to the false accusations, and push back on them for being distractions and wasting the patience of people.
We get the society that is as good as we choose to put in effort to make it.
If anyone lacks the time or patience to parse my comments, I would welcome them to skip reading my comments... Why should any of us feel obliged to read everything on HN? I sure as hell don't.
Personally, I find your comments to be far too simplistic and reductive, to the point that you lack the ability to do more than snipe and quip at a single idea at a time... But some ideas are complex enough to benefit from longer, more thorough treatment, in order to avoid miscommunication.
Or maybe some people just have more patience, or better reading comprehension skills? Ya know, so we don't mind reading a longer comment that does a better job making the point than a half-baked, single-sentence hot take?
BTW, if you made it this far... Why ARE you compelled to keep reading my comments, anyway? Just ignore me, and be happy with the existence you choose
Has there been an overreaction? Are too many things being blamed on racism now? Possibly. But the motivation is good and clear about attempting to get to the root of how people treat one another in the world, and what structures we've created to reinforce tribal or instinctual prejudices and how they're not even obvious to most people going through their lives in the world today.
This all has meaning. I urge you to not give up on the concept, to not discount those talking about it as "woke", or "virtue signalers" or "social justice warriors".
Some of them are overly angry and vitriolic, yes. Some are tired of explaining concepts that are clear and for granted to them, thinking that at this point anyone that disagrees is simply an agitator. Not all show good faith. Some are in it for themselves, and the glory of being holier-than-thou. I'm not going to pretend that doesn't exist.
But most of the concepts being discussed are sound. And there is a lot of fire behind the smoke. There is a lot of past, present, and future "racism" that still needs to be understood, and addressed.
I came here to read an article about sunscreen, not be implicitly lectured with distilled identity politics.
But from where I sit I do not see any diversity quotas that choose race/gender over skill. There might be exceptions somewhere, I won't lie. I only know about my corner which is big tech hiring.
What I see is an acknowledgement that much selection in our society (to universities, for jobs, etc) are subjective decisions that incorporate objective and subjective factors. Every student trying to get into Yale has perfect GPA, SATs, and a list of extra-curricular activities as long as my arm. So if they are equal on these measures, why not bring in slightly more folks from races that have been historically disadvantaged to offset past injustices? Is that fair to white students? No. But there is no "fair" way to make a choice like this.
Big tech hiring focus on diversity is much the same - the bar is NOT lowered for women or anyone from a minority race. The last step of hiring before an offer is an objective test of programming ability. And nobody gets through those except on merit. But the FIRST step of hiring for multi-billion dollar companies is to sift through thousands of interview applicants, or contact thousands of applicants on LinkedIn with identical sounding resumes. These steps are HIGHLY subjective and unscientific - they're based on keywords, feel of recruiters, overindexing on past signals (other big tech companies, big universities, etc). The first "screen out" phase of hiring has NEVER been a meritocracy. It's always been a gut feel of who "feels" like they would be a successful candidate.
This is where the diversity initiatives are focused - to try to shift the variables in a subjective non-meritocratic process to - again - offset past racial discriminations to try to even the playing field slightly.
I ask you to have patience with "being lectured about identity politics". I ask you to wonder why you find virtue signals "accusatory" if they're not talking to you or about you. Don't discount those talking about this subject as "woke", or "virtue signalers" or "social justice warriors".
Some of them are overly angry and vitriolic, yes. Some are tired of explaining concepts that are clear and for granted to them, thinking that at this point anyone that disagrees is simply an agitator. Not all show good faith. Some are in it for themselves, and the glory of being holier-than-thou. I'm not going to pretend that doesn't exist.
But most of the concepts being discussed are sound. And there is a lot of fire behind the smoke. There is a lot of past, present, and future "racism" that still needs to be understood, and addressed.
>Big tech hiring focus on diversity is much the same - the bar is NOT lowered for women or anyone from a minority race.
When employers industry wide are tripping over themselves to hire minorities, then yes, the bar is absolutely lower and pay higher. Its a classic perverse incentive.
>The last step of hiring before an offer is an objective test of programming ability.
Having been on both ends, there is absolutely nothing objective about interviews, and its perfectly possible to even pass a hard leetcode interview while lacking hard/soft skills. This is the basis for the diversity overcorrection: the allegation was that the system was implicitly biased against minorities, and the solution was to apply bias in the other direction.
Except the fundamental premise, all of the "proof" upon which the justification for racist/sexist hiring is a giant conflation; inequality of outcome is not strong evidence of discrimination. Especially when you have a glaring and obvious pipeline problem.
You can't snap your fingers and decide that you're going to hire up a bunch of minorities to senior positions tomorrow when they don't even exist in college today without sacrificing merit. Statistics and the normal distribution guarantee that a smaller pool of candidates will have a disproportionately smaller pool of high achievers and once those are vacuumed by corps virtually signalling for ESG Goodboy points you are forced to either abandon quotas or draw from closer to the mean. It is a statistical inevitability that minority hiring quotas lead to reduced average competence.
Something about the road to hell and pavement.
You can, if OP's premise is sound - that you can get more diveristy hires simply by expanding the pool of candidates being considered.
I am deeply involved in hiring at Amazon, (and am a bar raiser) and we work super hard to make sure diversity candidates want to apply, are being considered fairly, don't fall through the cracks, but when it comes to the final on-site, it might as well be a blind audition. We teach interviewers to refer to candidates impartially and focus purely on the questions, and answers. The analysis and conclusions is reviewed in a group. There is no way to make a hire decision without supportive data from their performance on the coding test, or in their behavioural experience.
I can't speak for the entire tech industry, but I know at Amazon the bar has absolutely not lowered.
Introversion is still taken poorly, as if it is a sin. Despite introversion having almost no relation to job performance without further context.
People who work better on different schedules are still funneled primarily into a 9-6 rhythm, being told to suck it up.
"White students" from poor backgrounds now struggle to move up even more, as they are selected against for "not being diverse enough".
Really, most companies with diversity quotas might not hire Joe, but they'll hire Juan who's basically the same as Joe except he's Mexican and loves Taco Tuesday more than Pizza Friday. It's diversity in the most superficial sense, looking for the same car with a different paint job. They're not in this to combat "racial injustices", they're in this to appease some crowd with too much money in an attempt to get more money out of them.
Remote work should help with this. I have no idea how tall my coworkers are.
> Introversion
In my corner of the world - the tech industry - it's taken to be a baseline, so there is no discrimination.
There IS insufficient accordances made for neuroatypical (ADHD, Autistic) people with interviews, but there is active discussion happening about it.
> "White students" from poor backgrounds now struggle to move up even more
So long as any part of our society remains not a pure meritocracy, of course some people will struggle against others. Money is still the best way to get ahead. So poor people will struggle, and there is not enough opportunities for everyone. White people still get selected to "move up" by the forces that be, they just aren't the ONLY ones that do so. Instead of 99% of the scholarships going to white students, maybe 50%% are. But if that reflects the demographics of the part of society that is making that choice, where is the problem?
> diversity in the most superficial sense
It's a correction for discrimination in the most superficial sense. It's a start. It's a stepping stone towards not having any discrimination, and not needing corrective action like diversity initiatives.