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Comment by slashdev | Hacker News Reader

Rant warning: I'm really sick of looking at everything through the lens or race or gender. Can we just go back to not seeing those things?

I wasn't racist before, but I am a little now. I think all this focus on race and gender may have the opposite effect that people want.

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Interesting quote from X (Twitter) the other day:

"In Terminator 2, how many people remember that the inventor of Skynet, who was a brilliant engineer and also invented many other important technologies, was a black man? If T2 was made in 2024, this would be the centerpiece of the marketing; in 1991 this was just an innocuous fact."

Rodney King wasn't until 1992, after that, race and its depiction in media changed

If you've ever watched the extended edition of T2 (which I can mostly recommend), it actually gives quite a bit more development to Miles Dyson that shows him as a nerdy, focused futurist/engineer, and also a loving family man. It's quite well done though you can see why it would be cut from the theatrical release of a balls-to-the-wall action movie.

That said, if you think that the early 90's were some sort of pre race-consciousness society or Miles Dyson just happened to be black as some sort of accident of casting, then you probably just weren't aware of the issue - you weren't "woke" to it, so to speak.

Hollywood up until about 10 years ago used to promote social cohesion and actual tolerance, and fair treatment of all. It would fight stereotypes and raise awareness of important issues affecting minorities, without being overly preachy and antagonistic. What we have now is the opposite. We get preachy and exclusionary politics pushed from the top in almost every facet of media and corporate life. In Hollywood they are writing movies and shows with lame plots, often produced by inept diversity hires, and if you don't like their garbage products then you're called a racist or a homophobe. I for one am not deliberately paying money to be insulted by my entertainment at every turn. Big firms like Disney have killed all the golden geese they had by disrespecting fans and producing racist/sexist propaganda to appease misanthropic investors, and they may be forced to accept that people don't want their bullshit.

Again, for as long as Hollywood has existed, it has been excoriated by conservatives as a din of leftist libertines (and not without at least a bit of reason on occasion). Before that, theater performers were seen in much the same light. The moral panics stretch back time immemorial I’ve no doubt, but I can at least remember 10 years ago and there was no lack of controversy then.

That is true, but the modern leftist is against liberal values like free speech and egalitarianism. The leftists have taken up a divisive stance that puts people in a contest to be the most victimized, to get points. They literally argue that math and science are racist/sexist/whatever, want to bring back segregation, and be actively racist against people who look like a handful of bad actors in the past. They're ruining many different aspects of society, and if people don't put them in check we will be going off the rails soon.

You see, this even has echos of Red Scare era hysteria. It's hardly anything novel.

First of all, the Red Scare had some well-known innocent casualties. But it was a legitimate response to wannabe revolutionary/authoritarian forces operating in the US. Lenin's tactics, which many communists subscribe to, are violent and toxic, and communism is at odds with the basic principles that make our society successful. Compared to the tremendous political persecution typically ommitted by various communist regimes, the Red Scare was nothing.

Second of all, what we see now is more like Mao's China. People who disagree with the woke agenda are targetted for harassement and violence. Too many of the woke don't want their detractors simply chastised or fired, they want them dead or exiled.

The big difference between "moral panics" of the past and this stuff is that the so-called victims are the ones moralizing and attacking everyone who disagrees, calling normies "ultra far-right extremists" or whatever scary sounding names they can muster. Am I attacking them by calling them out or moralizing? That's for you to decide. But it doesn't matter. I won't be gaslit into thinking that their hostile actions are simply misunderstood. I see it as a power grab and I'm not having it.

The first line of the Nasa's Artrmis Program reads:

With Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon

--- https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/

I hate the way NASA phrases it, because it makes them sound like cargo.

Well, there wouldn't be anything special about it if were a woman and person of color landing on the moon themselves. We already know people can land themselves on the moon. Been there, done that. The white men on the ground at the NASA command centre remotely landing precious cargo on the moon is still somewhat novel, though.

Reminds me of the intro to the movie "Iron sky"

Evidently this is an opinion, and the argument - which you are, of course, free to disagree with - is that 'not seeing those things' implies a privilege from which you are benefiting, or an ability to ignore the fact there is injustice even if you aren't benefiting.

If you have a bit of damage on your front door, is it better for the person observing you as you walk through the door to point it out (hoping you fix it) or to not point it out (hoping you notice it yourself and fix it, or alternatively that whether you notice or not you choose not to fix it).

I do not think it is subject to debate that our front doors have damage, so the question is how to remove that damage in the short/long term.

There's no question there's injustice in the world, and discrimination is alive and well, but I don't think that framing all issues as being the result of discrimination is helpful. They empircaly are not, in the US, discrimination is a minor issue compared to the much larger issues that people face.

It's really missing the forest for the trees.

Or to use your door analogy, it's pointing out the damage to the door, while ignoring the missing window right next to it.

Now imagine how annoyed non-white people with them systematically having problems with joining certain professions.

>I think all this focus on race and gender may have the opposite effect that people want.

That's a common critique from reactionaries, never seen much proof from it.

> Now imagine how annoyed non-white people with them systematically having problems with joining certain professions.

But do they? Adjusting for education and experience? I've yet to see proof of that.

> That's a common critique from reactionaries, never seen much proof from it.

I can attest to it personally. Not proof, but it makes me wonder.

> Adjusting for education and experience?

That's largely the systemic problem with joining certain professions. Those are most often the qualities the market seeks, but education and experience are biased towards the wealthy. You need resources to attain them. For historical reasons, non-white people as a group don't have the same kind of wealth.

That's true.

Financial inequality is a much bigger problem in the US than discrimination.

I expect at the end of the day they are one and the same. As in, certain races are treated the way they are because they are poor (generally speaking). It is not like, for example, the white "slack jawed yokels" (rednecks, hicks, white trash, whatever insensitive term you want to call them) are held in high esteem. They too are poor (generally speaking), so they get treated poorly.

Let's face it, if the rich list was comprised of mostly black women, we would be bowing down to them and praising their every move. They are marginalized because they, by and large, don't have a good answer to "But what can you do for me?"

There's more truth to that than I'd like to believe.

> That's a common critique from reactionaries, never seen much proof from it.

You need no proof when you can just dismiss any sort of criticism to the current state of things with a blanket accusation of people being reactionaries.

Someone reacting to the existence of racial politics by becoming more racist out of spite is literally being a reactionary. That's the psychology of comic book villains.

It's not out of spite. That'd be childish.

I'm aware of things I was ignorant of before, like how much crime is commited by people of color.

Now I also have to consider if someone earned their position through merit or if it was the result of DEI. Before it was never a question in my mind.

I think it's childish to interpret crime statistics as a valid justification for racism, rather than consider correlating factors such as increased poverty among non-whites, and more aggressive policing and conviction of non-whites, and purposeful misinterpretation of statistics by white supremacists.

I think it's childish to assume candidates hired under DEI are less likely to deserve their position than white male candidates. There is no reason to believe that DEI policies require lowering standards other than a belief that white men are categorically more qualified by default. Otherwise, one wouldn't see race, gender and quality as mutually exclusive.

I'm not going to get into a long, drawn out argument over this because I suspect it would be a waste of time and it would ruin my day - you came into this thread virtue signaling your racism after all, so it seems you're not in a mood to have your point of view challenged. But I do think you and the normalized cultural bigotry you're expressing are clear examples of why we cannot afford to "just go back to not seeing those things." You can disagree with the incentives of the politics without embracing prejudice against the people those politics are meant to help.

I'll respect your wishes and not try to draw you into a debate here. I strongly disagree with all these points.

> Someone reacting to the existence of racial politics

More like reacting to people annoyingly inserting race and gender to every single discussion, even when otherwise meaningless.

Of course, if they get tired of the incessant political pandering, they can only be reactionaries. That's the only possible explanation.

Wow.

Yeah, I know

If this pushed you to be a little racist, that's a you problem.

Could be.

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