Now why am I interested in sightings - IDK...
I also wanted to answer any questions others might have about why I might be a black conservative programmer.
There are a number of reasons. I like small gov't. I'm actually not entirely against gov't programs - but having grown up 20 miles outside the hood, wellfare just seems to breed more wellfare.
Also, my parents worked their butts off to get where they are. One of my parents is an immigrant, the other grew up lower middle class. One went to MIT and did quite well.
Growing up and hearing these stories and growing up in strict discipline really instilled the value of hard work and making lemons from lemonade.
Liberal values just seem to want to coddle everybody's issues.
All this talk about hate speech and don't offend somebody else sickens me. If somebody says something racist to me in public, I don't get mad. I'll actually sit down and have a conversation with them to understand why they feel that way.
Republicans don’t want to spend the money and democrats only want to help people who “need” it. So you can’t get food stamps if you have more than $2,500 in the bank, which sends the clear message: don’t even bother trying to get ahead.
I get that sometimes, people just need some cash to get through the day. But how can you make sure your program doesn't train people to be dependent on it?
I wonder if there is a clever optimization hiding to this problem somewhere.
Racism will always exists - it even exists in various African countries(more as tribalism) - I have relatives in various countries.
After doing research into BLM and watching various debates, BLM's arguments register to me as sensational and consistently seem to fall apart in the face of basic statistics.
With regards to LGBTQ, I had a trans friend who killed himself. He was really miserable and I'm not sure "transitions" are really a good first option - they should be a last resort. Also, he didn't kill himself because he was ostracized. People actually liked him...
I used to be a little softer on abortion, but after watching a video I can't unsee, I just can't swallow that anymore.
Do you have any examples of this?
The guy on the show is a respectable character, but he somehow manages to turn every issue into a race issue.
When I say basic statistics, I'm referencing the fact that BLM supporters will talk about issues that affect everybody and magically turn it into a race issue.
I'm not disputing for example that black people are affected more by COVID in the U.S.(https://sph.umich.edu/news/2020posts/covid-19-and-the-dispro...) but systemic racism?? Please...
OK - so the article says that black people tend to work lower income jobs than white Americans(this is true where I live) - so they had more interactions and chances to spread the virus... Fine. How on earth is that caused by racism?
Some will try to say that black people are zoned in poorer school districts and don't get as many oppurtunities. Somewhat true - I'll admit personal experience reflects this.
But, where I went to HS(where sent one black student to harvard a couple years before I graduated), most black students were simple uninterested in academics.
We had 20% asian, 25% black, 35%white, 20% other roughly. I've actually observed this consistently - black people just don't give a crap about trying in school or on the job - and it pains me to say this as a black person. I've observed a few exceptions to the rule. When I was in HS, black people always cared about new shoes, basketball, and hair.
And if you want to pretend that BLM leaders actually care or represent black lives... - https://www.npr.org/2022/04/07/1091487910/blm-leaders-face-q... - https://nypost.com/2021/04/10/inside-blm-co-founder-patrisse... - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/27/us/black-lives-matter-fra... - https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-based-activist-faces-federa...
And right outside where I grew up, black officials in Atlanta regularly embezzle funds... Our roads are continually rundown and the water runs inconsistently... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasim_Reed#Bribery_charges_and...
Kaseem Reed had a huge cartel - many of which were corrupt black people.
There are obviously many great black people in the city too such as the late John Lewis.
But pretending that black people suffer in modern society because of "systemic racism" is mostly a lie. Yes, black people consistently come last in many metrics behind other people groups, but now it has more to do with black culture and less with racism.
I think the primary issue is a lack of fatherhood in many black communities. It may sound old fashioned, but 60 years ago, there was a 20% fatherlessness rate in the black community - now its more like 60%
Props to all the single moms out there, but two people seem to be better than raising children than just one.
It would seem that it’s less about evidence and more about interpretation.
What do you think structural racism is?
I wouldn’t say I was necessarily any more “woke” than any of my peers, a lot of the realizations I’ve had about that time came later as an adult.
Frowning up in a liberal environment with liberal values definitely made me predisposed to accepting the left position on these issues, but there was also some tangible things that really connected to me, like the fact that ruby bridges is still only 67 years old. The past really isn’t all that far away.
But I'm not so convinced that BLM is helping anybody AFAICT.
I'm just now learning about structural racism. Thanks for this.
But twitter-mobbing and taking to the streets everytime somebody gets shot will never in a million years make real progress. Neither will zoning laws, or wellfare... Etc. These are only patches to the problem.
And as a black person, I'm embarrassed frankly - to have the media always portray black people as victims.
The solutions must come from within each black individual - the resolve to take lemons and make lemonade - which(even with all its faults) is a basic tennet of conservatives. I believe in sending the message to every person that you can make it in life - no matter how tough things get - and like I said before, this is basically the diametric opposite of the liberalism which seems to focus on equalizing outcomes in society rather than empowering people to escape victim mentality.
There are countless stories of people born and raised in abject poverty who are now millionaires... Why do you think I'm running a software Rust/ML consultancy? :P
I think the biggest problem in our political discourse is the degree to which people from different viewpoints/parties/etc make statements that aren’t the best faith representation of the other side’s perspective.
In this instance, I’ve never actually heard anyone besides liberals make the “equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome” comparison. I think a more reasonable dichotomy is that conservatives make the assumption that everyone has roughly equal opportunities while liberals don’t. In the end, both actually do believe in equality of opportunity.
As someone who does ML, you should connect with the probabilistic argument well: if we assume that am everyone has the same opportunities, who would we consistently see such disparities in outcome? The only answer is that there is something intrinsic to these groups that leads them to be the cause of their own shortfalls, which is the conservative argument you put forward here (that black culture is the problem).
The liberal counter argument is that there is a strong weight of hundreds of years of history in America to suggest that opportunity is very much not equal. Further, it’s an American value that we assume all people are equal regardless of race, therefore it’s most reasonable to assume that such disparities are the result of bias. This of course does not mean that individuals aren’t able to be statistical outliers due to their own efforts.