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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

In other words, you make snap judgements and assumptions about people based on their age, race, and sex.

That is in fact what the book How to be Anti-Racist prescibes that you do.

Part of the thesis of that book is that you are a racist if you treat people as individuals. To be Anti-Racist, you must treat people as part of their collective and then treat them well or badly based on membership of that collective in the name of equity. Thus whites and asians must be treated poorly because of their race and other minorities treated positively because of their race.

Basically you fight racism with racial discrimination.

Indeed, and the problem with all that is that it’s stupid and wrong.

As stupid and wrong it is, it is invading every aspect of our professional lives. It's extremely disturbing to find how many of my generation (let's say 30s & 40s) have accepted this belief system uncritically.

It seems at least that zoomers are somewhat more critical, or at least 50-50 on the topic. It's going to take many, many decades to unravel the harm this is causing.

Well that is just utterly vile.

They like that it's vile; that's the point for them. The power, the influence, and the authoritarian ability to control people's lives and, eventually, kill them (in my opinion), is what they crave.

Do not underestimate these people and how insane they are.

That’s not the thesis of the book.

Absolutely it is and presented clearly as so.

The book presents 5 questions to settle the question of "Am I racist?"

__always giving primacy to the individual over the collective, or group;

__always embracing the concept of individual rights to help me judge problematic social interactions;

__never assessing quantities of stuff in gauging whether a policy is racist;

__always attempting to embrace the “color-blind rule” when making choices;

__always maintaining awareness of the distinctions between equity and equality; never compromizing equality of rights in order to bring about equity of stuff.

These questions and what you said are two different things. You don’t need to treat any group poorly and none of those questions suggest you do. You made a leap that doesn’t logically follow.

You clearly have not read the book or even the quoted parts of it in the article. This quote is highlighted by Haidt who even supports and says there is a place for anti-racism.

> "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."

The book makes its point of view as plain as day. I haven't made any kinds of leap whatsoever.

Haidt only drew the line at his work being compelled to promote anti-racism because that's contradictory to the aim for truth and why we do research in the first place.

Your characterization of poor treatment seems like a leap. I guess the question for you is: if I discriminate against you in the post in such a way it creates inequity, but never attempt to correct it but merely say from this point forward no one can discriminate — is everyone being treated fairly?

You say it's a leap but then you present an argument where only way to achieve "fairness" is to engage in discrimination the other way. WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THE BOOK WE'RE TALKING ABOUT CALLS FOR!

Life isn't and will never be fair. The fairness you seem to be seeking is "eye for an eye". You know what does make life fair though? We're all headed for worms and dirt eventually. None of us escape that. That's how you square the inequalities of what happens in between.

I can't engage with you any more on this. The doublethink required to accept your argument is off the charts.

Your rationale for the lack of attempting to right past wrongs is we all die? Is that how you view the Justice system? I assume you see no need for detectives.

You seem to be suggesting that the only way to right past wrongs is to commit further wrongs. Is there really no positive way forward?

As a society we view “further wrongs” differently. Taking money from someone who stole from you (with the help of the legal system) isn’t considered a further wrong. Criminals rarely utilize the “let’s do no further wrong defense” at sentencing. But maybe they should, as there seems to be a huge appetite for this sort of thing.

> As a society we view “further wrongs” differently.

Yes, and that includes letting bygones be bygones when we all have terrible injustices in our collective past. This is what a generalized amnesty is all about. The only alternative is a destructive war of all against all, as indeed is often seen in "honor-bound" societies where "the duty of righting wrongs" is taken as an absolute.

There is a big difference between punishing a criminal for a thing they did, and punishing a disfavored-race-person for a thing their ancestor did. It’s both a moral difference (collective punishment is wrong) and a practical difference (unwinding history to determine the true victim and true perpetrator is almost always impossible - as illustrated by the case of “mixed-race” people with both slave and slave-owning ancestors).

I read it. It very much is. Have you?

The point of all this is to have people who are unqualified as individuals embedded deep in every organization who are loyal to and owe their jobs and livelihood not to their own merit, but to external political movements.

Unlike unions, these external political movements do not care about the organizations their members are embedded in, but have other goals which is why they are unconcerned with merit. Unions at least wanted the organizations their members belonged to to survive and employees to have some level of competence.

I make snap judgements on statements, supposing age, race and sex, yes. (not the other way around as you suggest.)

I then investigated to see if my suppositions were correct.

That they are helps me make judgements with insufficient data in the future. If they are not it helps me broaden my model.

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