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Comment by bruce343434 | Hacker News Reader

As a non-american I must say I don't understand where the latter half of the article comes from. Why care about race? Why must a racist reason be sought behind everything?

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This stood out to me as well. Granted, the person people felt "uncomfortable" about only later tweeted out that the 0% black representation was an outlier, but I haven't heard much reason why this is relevant yet.

On the other hand, there's more going on than what's being told publicly. Perhaps racism does play a role in this. The use of the word "uncomfortable" without clear explanation suggests this is more than just "we don't want another reflection flame war".

It's possible that this person was just hoping to use the keynote speaker as a token of inclusiveness, but I have to wonder if there isn't more going on if racism is brought up after incredible vague notions of people feeling "uncomfortable" being given as a reason why they keynote speaker got demoted to a normal speaker either.

I'm hoping the remaining leadership owns up to their mistake, put out a detailed reason why the purely technical topic of reflection is making them so uncomfortable, and lay out proper measures to prevent this from happening again, with the necessary correctional measures applied to the leadership member who went behind the others' backs on changing the invitation. They'd also need to come up with a clear and honest apology, of course.

If they can't give a decent objective reason why they're so "uncomfortable", or don't get real professional real fast, there's much more drama to be had the coming weeks.

I think it's just SJW mudslinging. Imply someone's a racist and they spend so much time defending themselves against the accusation that people just start to assume they're racist. Activist cultures have the nastiest in-fighting.

Life is unfair and some people will use anything they can, whether it be race or whatever, to get ahead. I did the same thing when I was younger: I wrote a book at age 15 and marketed it as being written by a teenager to get sales. In this case, I played into my age rather than race, but the idea is the same.

I mean, sometimes it’s not one’s race—sometimes it’s sexuality, gender, religion, disability, or some other variable that I missed. And people in America think along those variables because they have a history of disenfranchising and discriminating people along those axes.

Unironically, Americans think like this because they're more progressive than Europeans (some, anyway; some are way less). Europe has a history of disenfranchisement too, and to the extent they don't see it much it's because they have more homogeneous societies (until recently, with refugees). The melting pot of the new world was always life on higher difficulty: you don't get to be racist while pretending you're not because you're never tested on it as a society. You don't get to outlaw slavery, posturing like you're doing it because you're just that virtuous when in reality it's because it's easy to do when your economy doesn't rely on slavery so it's an easy way to look good. In this crucible, minds are traumatized into reverse-racism and performative bullshit.

In a culture that values free speech and critical thought, why would you expect anybody to stay silent about the elephant in the room?

And where do you live that inequities have never existed?

what the previous comment probably meant is that in many countries there is no elephant in the room

not because there is no racism in the country and neither because everyone is racistic but because the situation in general is very very different

Have you ever been the victim of losing a position because you weren't white? Have you even been turned down for a loan because you weren't white or straight or were “different”. That's why it's a big deal. It isn't everything, but it is a factor all over in America. I seriously don't believe anyone who says it isn't also an issue in other places as well. I lived in Europe for a year in various parts and heard racist talk just as surely as I have as an American, so don't tell me that it's not an issue in other countries, I know it is. Racism is just a subset of ethnic discrimination. It was a little more subtle in most cases, but it was there.

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