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Comment by xwolfi | Hacker News Reader

But you make a strange comment here: "black and brown" employees are both completely different people.

What you should want in priority is to get the descendents of former slaves to have a prominent place in society, include them as equals and make them powerful. I can understand that, they built the US same as the other invaders, and maybe even the natives should be more present in american society.

But brown ? Im French, and sadly not brown, I wish I was ofc, but why would an Indian from Calcutta be more "diverse" than me from Normandy ? Skin color is as interesting as hair color, it means nothing. Say "descendent of slaves", Indians and Europeans if you want to rank people by order of priority, maybe ?

For me that's why these DEI things are wrong, they're racist in a way. They divide people across skin color boundaries that make no sense.

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This actually makes a lot of sense to me. It would be like trying to get more white-looking people in positions, when what you really want is to integrate the Irish or the Italians into more prominent positions in your culture. We don't even think about that anymore because our definition of white has expanded to include those people. But for a while they were on the outside trying to get in while the newly freed slaves weren't even at the door yet.

But being white is really random: how is it my problem that the weather is shit in Normandy and all my ancestors are pale ? I arrive in the US, people would tell me I'm privileged somehow, when all I do is work hard and do my best to contribute to companies. And the same goes to more sunny weather-born people.

If we talked less about skin color, and a bit more about the actual nature of people (I can accept positive discrimination towards former slave families, they deserve compensation), maybe we'd accept those DEI policies more ?

It's a complex debate everywhere anyway, we have the same in France with our own colonial crosses to bear, and like what to do with a Tunisian freshly arrived vs a descendent of a Tunisian family who's been French for 3 generations.

Disenfranchising Indians must be the new racist trend here. Please try to have some empathy.

Brown person can be a descendant of the “Coolies” taken as Indentured servants to Fiji, Trinidad, Suriname, Malaysia, SA etc.

They could be people from French colonies like Algeria as well.

Brown doesn’t only mean an Indian from Calcutta, although they were heavily persecuted until recently (Check Bengal Famine)

Coolies have nothing to do with America though.

If we have solved all of the locally rooted problems already, then sure let’s go ahead and help others too. That isn’t the case though.

I think it’s insulting to descendants of American slaves to go from treating them as sub human not long ago straight to putting others’ past hardships at the same level as theirs in America.

How is that a US issue? It's more of an issue for the French or the British.

I was simply pointing out an Indian deserve no more advantages than a Turkish or a Portuguese, while a descendent of slave might, since his family was wronged by the initial american invaders and they contributed, sometimes via back-breaking work, to the current state of the country.

Indians can go through totally normal immigration and hiring procedures, just like me: they're brown just because of the sun, just like Im white because the weather is shit in Normandy.

You're thinking in terms of group guilt and inter generational guilt, which frankly doesn't make sense. There is no rational basis to trace ancestry of people to find who descended from slaves or slave owners. It's non sensical. In a fair hiring environment, no one deserves any special preference. If you want to help economically poor groups, the time to intervene is much earlier in their childhood by providing them better education, communities, infrastructure etc. So tipping the scales by investing more in certain communities is alright, tipping them at the job interview isn't.

When we think about society we love equality, but when we have to choose our heart surgeon we only want merit. Helping some group get by easier through school and hiring only puts a question mark to their real merits. It's also demeaning for them to be admitted with lower standards.

I am not sure where you are getting the idea that people of Indian origin are asking for or getting any special consideration compared to Turkish or a Portuguese or any other ethnic groups.

They are not, ofc. But the DEI policies group them in the "black and brown" group, to try to up their presence in the mix. But it's silly, me and an Indian raised in the same circumstances will have the same world views and him or me offer no more diversity.

A french guy raised in struggle will have as interesting a perspective as a brown guy raised the same way. They are both interesting and diverse hires regardless of their color.

See my point ? Diversity should be circumstance based and Im afraid sometimes, it's just sun-strength-on-the-skin-based. Maybe Im wrong there too ?

Interesting.

I personally think that it is not helpful to subscribe to 'sins of the father belong to the son' view of the world. Apart from everything else, it rewards near-constant cries of perceived injustices that drown any point you may have had about descendants of slaves.

I said "might" for this reason. I can tolerate the argument while I agree with you ofc. Still, they've been wronged, and the debt is hard to repay.

I feel we misbehaved in Africa, us French, for instance, and owe something, smaller and smaller every decade that passes sure, to these people we exploited.

There are more brown people than Indians… Usually these initiatives push for underrepresented brown people, ie Hispanic/Latino Americans.

Most diversity programs actively harm Indians as over represented, as they fall under the broad “Asian” category (see Harvard).

But I guess Indians are easy pickings these days.

This is an interesting response that points out ambiguity in it all. Depending on what you're reading / what statistic is being derived, often times you see Hispanic / Latino included as white and not brown.

In the US I always see Hispanic/Latino as its own category.

On forms, I would tend to agree.I'm more speaking of in statistics. It appears depending on the narrative they're intertwined. There's also the variances in self reporting.

"A 2014 Pew Research Center survey found that one-third of US Latinos identify as "mestizo", "mulatto", or another multiracial identity.[21] Such identities often conflict with standard racial classifications in the United States: among Latino American adults surveyed by Pew Research who identified as multiracial, about 40% reported their race as "white" on standard race question as used on the US Census; 13% reported belonging to more than one race or "mixed race"; while about 20% chose "Latino" as their race." - Wikipedia

Historically in the US, Indian and Arab people were classified as “Caucasian”. In fact, it was marked on my relatives first speeding ticket in 1972.

It should not make sense, but as long as discrimination is based on skin color, you will see efforts to address it also be based on skin color.

The only thing I advocate for is on economic basis. Nothing else should matter.

If one is "poor" (for a socially acceptable definition of poor), we as a society must help them.

Skin color, historical persecution, country of origin,gender, sexual orientation or any of the thousand things that can be "different" , shouldn't matter.

I agree, but I think the constant division of people across vague color lines make people counter react in unproductive ways. Like (random example) talking about Obama as a black person hides so much nuances about who he truly is (and who his ancestors are) that it gives his opponents the impression that s all he is and his defenders not much else to defend him with.

I just find the american casual racism, both sides of the political spectrum, very ... american :D

In France we sort of pretend to ignore there s skin color. I d never describe someone as black, or no more than I d describe someone as blonde and I would almost never use a French word to describe it. It makes me nervous to reduce someone to this random attribute, when maybe his family came from Mali, or Martinique or the US and that's so much more interesting than the effect of the sun on his skin.

I'm in Germany and I'm also puzzled by how Americans view race. To me, black, white, etc. are just phenotypes, no more important than e.g. being blonde (of course, I realise that some people discriminate based on skin colour). The idea that these skin-colour labels constitute separate "identities" is a bit weird to me.

And yes, of course many African-Americans have certain cultural traits, some heritage etc. that sets them apart, but I would describe that as "African-American" and not "black" because I don't think that a Nigerian or a Sri Lankan would share those traits.

When Donald Trump insisted that Kamala Harris wasn't really black that just made no sense to me.

Brevity informs diction.

Your comment is too brief for me to figure out what you mean by it.

Yes, it is not optimal. Like I said, I don't subscribe how its handled either.

I am not an American, and I'm brown. I don't take issue if someone says I'm brown because I am brown! Maybe I cannot empathize with other races who've been extremely discriminated because of their skin color, but as you said, it is an attribute describing me, among hundred others. I also agree, color of skin by itself is not interesting at all, just like being blonde is not interesting at all - but may play into personal preferences, again, just like any of the hundreds of physical, personality attributes.

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