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You wouldn't get the discount because you're white, you'd get it because you're a member of a minority subculture in the context you're in. Say, you're back packing through [somewhere far away], and you walk into a restaurant somewhere that's run by a guy who went to your university (or is from your state or whatever). He gives you a free beer. Still feels uncomfortable?

Bingo. This is the classic case of a tech geek looking at things through a lens of "abstract principle" when it's really not appropriate. Yes, sure, I think we can all agree that in a perfect world no one should get preferential treatment because of an objective fact of existence like ethnicity.

But in the real world, we have social groups with complicated dynamics. Expressing solidarity with your group is a normal and important part of this. Tech geeks do it too! And yes, sometimes that takes the form or a free beer or a "Greek discount" or whatever.

a bartender I once knew in a "late stage gentrification" neighborhood would feed me free drinks for listening to punk and not being a yuppie. Same subculture = discount

It is absolutely prejudicial. Citing a case where I benefit from it doesn't make it right. Why not randomly give a beer to every 1000th patron, or every 10th shirt with lettering, as a conversation-starter?

Again, you're citing "right". I'm saying this is a case of complicated social interactions being benign in one case where the same kind of behavior would be discriminatory in others. You can make it right/wrong if you want to, but you're not going to solve anything by doing so.

And, it must be noted: if you really think hard about things (something that tech geeks, in my experience, are really bad at doing in a social context), you'll realize that your "wrong" filter always seems to be applied against some group other than the ones you're part of. Whether you realize it or not you participate in this kind of social game too, even to the exclusion of other groups. And it's not "wrong" when you do it either.

In what case is it benign?

Because writ small this sort of thing is isomorphic to "Let me buy you a beer." (see armenarmen's post above for a great example). That's a friendly gesture of kindness and common cause, and it makes friends. Those are good things, right? It's happens also true that these gestures are almost always offered within some social group or another. They're both "nice" and "exclusionary" at the same time. Isn't our world a funny place?

Basically you don't like "Greek discount" because you're not Greek. But if you met DHH at a bar and he offered that beer, you'd take it, right?

But isn't that always going to be racist? Even in the case of DHH, honestly. A programmer meeting another programmer and doing favors for them that have nothing to do with programming?

I don't really think that I would feel the urge to offer someone a beer because I was aware of them as a programmer - but if they went to my high school? I don't think so, and I can't recall doing that, but I just might be misremembering. Would I take it? Of course, I like free stuff. I don't know if I'd offer it. That feels like a weird backslapping "this guy is alright, he listens to Black Flag" or "he's from Arkansas, woo pig!"

Of course, if I used rails, I would offer him a beer, but that's because I'd be showing up at the bar after a day of making a living off of his work:)

Actually, think very hard about what you're proposing. OK, let's propose a humanity where there is absolutely no group cohesion whatsoever. What's the result?

It certainly doesn't look much like the world you're familiar with.

If you look around, there are plenty of species that work that way. You really shouldn't have to imagine that hard.

I often amuse myself when the recurring gender debate (or other similar debates) come up on HN by trying to convince participants to first concretely describe the world they are actually trying to produce before they go too far off into la-la land making wild prescriptions about what needs to happen. This is another example of that sort of thing. Are you sure you want to produce a world in which nobody, ever, for any reason, has any sort of preference for one person over another and gives any sort of preferential treatment as a result? If you really think about it, probably not. Trying to take the ultimate hard line on "no discrimination" isn't a sound solution. It is neither logically nor socially viable. The method has become mistaken for the cause itself, the direction for the destination.

Because there is a higher chance that I will enjoy a conversation with someone I share some background with. Call it an easy icebreaker.

Edit: Added 'easy'

Different treatment alone isn't enough to make something problematic, it's when the discrimination serves to perpetuate some sort of broader injustice that it becomes a problem. Discrimination without systemic injustice is just harmless capriciousness.

In that context, no. If it was an everyday thing like in the original context, it's a different issue. A better example would be to look at how expat anglos operate in different countries - "if you were living long-term in Hong Kong, would you feel uncomfortable with a fellow [nationality] giving you a discount because you were of the same group?"

> Even typing this out and thinking about someone telling me they would give me preferential treatment because I'm white makes me uncomfortable.

You need to shake that PC bullshit off. There is nothing wrong with freedom of association, nor with feeling good about being "white". Neither of those things is discrimination (or evil).

Not only are you just 8% of the world's population (and on a decline), but you're also part of a race (if you accept white as meaning of somewhat Eastern European decent) that has built some of the most impressive civilizations, empires, and cultures on this planet,... filled libraries with countless works on all subjects and matters,... ended slavery (a long world-wide practice that was mosty done by non-whites; and still is),... built and financed just about every part and institution in America (USA was 90% white even up to 1960; now about 62-72%),... invented, refined, and progressed just about every modern technology and field,... actively discriminated against your own race to help & better minorities,... and did a countless other exceptional things in abundance.

It's amazing how people will associate the bad things that some people did (the things that are all easy to do like kill and destroy - that all other races have done in abundance) to the white race, yet at the same time ignore all the positive things they did to advance the whole of humanity (things that are difficult to do - things that require quite a bit of work, self-sacrifice, intellect, and character/morality).

How is it possible to ignore the positive things white people have done for society? This argument is flawed because, as a majority (in America that is), there are countless positive examples of the behavior of whites, current and historic, that are praised by the entire nation daily. This is a good thing, and whites benefit inadvertently from this positive imagery. As a black guy, its an enviable problem to have.

That being said, your frustration is misplaced. Instead of incorrectly spinning a legacy of slavery into a positive attribute, understand that there were some events that set minorities down negative paths that have repercussions to this day.

Rest assured that everyone in America knows the myriad of positive things that white people do. But, as they are minorities, other races don't have the outlet for such positive slants.

I sometimes reflect on pride in being a member of the White race.

I know such thoughts aren't considered PC the way saying "Black Pride" or "Latino Pride" is, but I think it's kind of cool that I share a similar heritage with the inventors of calculus or linear algebra or the transistor.

I think it depends how you use it. Ultimately, all pride other than human pride and pride in yourself is bullshit. But if taking pride in people who share a superficial similarity with you helps with motivation, and you do so with full awareness that it's just a cognitive trick, and ultimately bullshit, there's nothing wrong with it.

Human pride is pretty bullshit too.

I tend to drill down to more specific category more often - being proud of being Irish seems to be more respectable than saying, "hey, I'm happy to be White".

> but you're also part of a race

Not really, since the concept is meaningless (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1998-10/WUiS-GSRD-071...)

You may or may not be part of cultural group with another white person, but the idea that there is any shared heritage among races is simply untrue. You aren't any more related to most of them than anyone else.

You sound awfully silly saying that race is a "meaningless concept" and then knowingly talking about a "white person" the very next sentence.

Your own mind subconsciously knows the nice ideas you want to believe are nonsense. Interestingly, that is analogous to the otherwise open-minded subjects of the study at hand who subconsciously favour their own.

Just because the concept is meaningless in the real world doesn't mean it's not a concept who's definition is widely understood.

Should I have put "white person" in quotes? Should I had phrased it like "what would commonly be called a "white person"".

I felt that would be overly pedantic of me and besides you are missing the point: "white people" do exist, it's just wrong to assign any shared attributes to them other than "looks like a white person". And by the way, I don't mean "wrong" in any kind of moral sense, I mean wrong in terms of "factually incorrect".

If he had talked about ghosts instead of "white people" would I have sounded awfully silly if I had said "ghosts don't exist. Ghosts are frequently just photography artifacts or sleep paralysis hallucinations." because I used the word "ghosts" in the next sentence?

So you think that the pre-scientific idea of categorizing people by skin colour and nose and eye features is valid and that the scientific understanding from genetics is "nonsense" that I "want to believe"?

That's both ridiculously presumptuous and ... well, stupid.

>You need to shake that PC bullshit off. There is nothing wrong with freedom of association, nor with feeling good about being "white". Neither of those things is discrimination (or evil).

Meh, you look in the mirror, really examine yourself, and the thing you come back with to make yourself feel better is your skin color? That... is kinda sad.

I mean, I'm not going to feel bad when other people give me an unfair advantage. I don't have the time or emotional reserves. I tell myself that it's on them, not me. But it's certainly not a source of pride.

> Meh, you look in the mirror, really examine yourself, and the thing you come back with to make yourself feel better is your skin color? That... is kinda sad.

And you're right. In a vacuum that would be quite sad and stupid.

But when someone is telling you that white people are the reason for all the wrongs in this world (and they need to make things right), or that you should be ashamed of your white-privilege, I provide another perspective.

Personally, myself, I don't have a source of pride in being white, I identify myself mostly as an individual caught up in this crazy thing we call existence.

But most importantly, I neither have a source of guilt in being white. And that was kind of what I was trying to convey.... That neither should he.

>But most importantly, I neither have a source of guilt in being white. And that was kind of what I was trying to convey.... That neither should he.

oh, well, sure. Guilt is... usually not very productive even when it was your fault, and collective guilt is out of fashion for good reason.

But there's a big difference between saying "I'm not responsible for the racism of others" (which, I think, is fine, even healthy for you.) and saying "I take pride in my race"

>But when someone is telling you that white people are the reason for all the wrongs in this world (and they need to make things right), or that you should be ashamed of your white-privilege, I provide another perspective.

Eh, I am not really getting this feeling that you seem to have that people blame me for the world's problems 'cause I'm white, or even that they begrudge me the advantages that could have had something to do with my race. (It's never 100% clear-cut) I mean, I didn't go to school, and I haven't worked for the government since I was sixteen or seventeen, so maybe that's where you see it, but I'm just not seeing a lot of this white-hate, you know?

To me? the important part of being aware of racism is making more rational choices; we've all got nasty little brain bugs that, if left unexamined, will cause our "gut" to make sub-optimal decisions. And it's not only about race; that's what the article was about, for most of us now, there are in-groups that resonate far more strongly than ethnicity.

> Eh, I am not really getting this feeling that you seem to have that people blame me for the world's problems 'cause I'm white

You've probably never watched a video of a race debate/relations type of meeting that's not designed to be PC or have white apologetic speakers...

You'd be surprised how many white people (that show up in the audience) are completely oblivious to everything positive the white race has done, while being hyper-sensitive to every negative thing they have done - and how many of the people in other race categories think that white people should be exterminated.

But I'm not talking about the general public of course. I'm mostly talking about people that expect you to feel guilty for being white... Which has been the context of everything I've said so far.

>You've probably never watched a video of a race debate/relations type of meeting that's not designed to be PC or have white apologetic speakers...

So there's a video that says bad things about people who look like you, and this upsets you? Is this video on the internet, where everyone can see it?

But in all seriousness, my primary point here is that identifying with your race? it's a class marker. A low class marker. Socioeconomic class matters more (in terms of how others treat you) than race. A lot more. (some would say that the two are related, and there certainly is a correlation, but in the end, green is the color that matters.)

My secondary point is that I've never seen serious real-world discrimination against white folk, so quit your whining. (I mean, yes, we're all a little bit racist. I'm just saying, I've not seen /serious/ discrimination against white people. Nobody acts weird when someone shows up for an interview, and turns out he's white.)

How about just feeling good for being a human? Tribalism is not a virtue.

Ideally? Sure, but...

The human condition is complicated, and the human brain is a pattern matching and association machine.

Humans have been identifying and separating themselves by color/race since the beginning of time, even before we could talk. It is the first category... before rich/poor, beautiful/ugly, young/old, etc. It's almost primial.

The context to what I wrote was in relation to the current "white privilege" PC bullshit that has been indoctrinated into our collective. Nothing more.

>Humans have been identifying and separating themselves by color/race since the beginning of time, even before we could talk. It is the first category... before rich/poor, beautiful/ugly, young/old, etc. It's almost primial.

How exactly does proving that something has always existed also show that it is right?

Does it really have to fit in the right/wrong classification?

Can't it just be an evolutionary survival mechanism?... One of the things that primarily is designed to help people come together and stay away from danger.

I'd imagine at the core of it there is a neural network (that you're born with) that categorizes things into - "like me" - "not like me".

In of itself, it's not something that's right/wrong in a moral sense, but how it's further consciously used can be.

Correct. Race and ethnicity represent real human attributes that are immediately discernable, understood instinctively by everybody, and have a degree of predictive value, and always have. It's completely asinine to pretend that race doesn't exist, or to make pedantic arguments along the line of "genetic similarity" of human beings. Human behaviour is not some geneticist researcher's data set.

How exactly is that not also a form of tribalism? You're just breaking it down into human versus non-human groupings ("tribes", if you will).

I couldn't imagine going to a restaurant and getting a discount because the owner and I are both white.

Think about all the times you went shopping at a department store and weren't hassled by store security. That's your preferential treatment.

That's not really "preferential treatment" in any sense. That's exactly how the store would ideally want to treat all of its customers.

Retailers don't want to expend money and other resources on security personnel and equipment. Unfortunately, they have to do so because certain individuals do partake in behavior that harms the store in one way or another.

If a given store repeatedly has trouble (or a lack of trouble) with individuals who have certain traits in common, perhaps even including skin color, then it's understandable that people exhibiting such traits may be treated with a certain degree of suspicion.

The store is merely trying to manage risk in an efficient manner, rather than intentionally giving people with one trait an advantage over others without that trait.

"Retailers don't want to expend money and other resources on security personnel and equipment. Unfortunately, they have to do so because certain individuals do partake in behavior that harms the store in one way or another."

Ideally you're right (If the metrics backed this up). The problem is when stereotypes become the metric, which is common, especially with minorities.

> The problem is when stereotypes become the metric, which is common, especially with minorities.

If 90% of your store's theft was caused by 5% of your customers - that can be identified of having the same race/color, are you really going to blame the owner or employee that gives more attention to those 5% than the other 95%? If so, what is your solution to this issue? Should it be ignored?

Yes, let's make up numbers to reinforce our prejudices.

No, not at all. If you can identify the group doing the stealing it is fine to take appropriate countermeasures. If not, to chastise people based on an uninformed bias or negative feeling toward a certain group is wrong.

Stereotypes, both positive and negative, don't just arise out of nowhere. They may not be numeric, but they are a measure built up over aggregated experiences and encounters in the past.

While they may not apply to each and every individual, many times they do hold true to some extent, even if it may not be particularly pleasant to acknowledge.

Stereotypes don't come out of nowhere - you are correct. But they can oftentimes be the fruit of outdated, biased, or incorrect opinions with no connection to the truth. To clarify what I said above, if young Asian girls are stealing from your store more than any other group, the metrics back this up, and actions to prevent this are justified. If you don't have such data then that is where it becomes an issue.

I think this is the crux of the article:

"Greenwald and Banaji are not suggesting that people stop helping their friends, relatives and neighbors. Rather, they suggest that we direct some effort to people we may not naturally think to help."

When I was living in Tokyo, I used to go eat at a mexican restaurant in Yotsuya where a fellow Houston-ite was the chef. She'd always give me a couple of free cervezas and maybe a discount. I'm white and she is mexican, but since she knew we were both from Houston she gave me a discount. I accepted it and never thought anything of it, and before I read your post, I would have been surprised if anyone would have.

All that said, how is in-group preferential treatment any different than familial preferential treatment. The article mentioned giving away free tickets as an example.

Maybe they're not all that different, just different forms of tribalism. I can certainly see it applying early last century in the U. S., when you're fresh off a visit to Ellis Island and the natives aren't particularly fond of you. If you don't watch out for each other, who else will? Further back in history such prejudices may have been more valuable when unfriendly tribes are just a short walk away.

Same thing for family: the rest of the world isn't going to give us a leg up, so we best watch out for each other.

Or maybe for both it's just familiarity. When you're a long way from home, I can see value in having someone around who understands your cultural background and speaks the language you grew up with. As for family, I'm probably not the one to ask. Mine is spread all over the U. S., and even if my sister lived next door I'd be just as likely to give courtside seats to a coworker as I would to her.

In a similar line I recommend the paper "Cultural Biases in Economic Exchange?" http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/sapienza/htm/cul...

> I couldn't imagine going to a restaurant and getting a discount because the owner and I are both white.

What about a job? Or a political position? Or a promotion?

You won't get a job simply because you are white, at least in a place where whites the majority, though it would be interesting to see how this works in places where whites are a minority.

It's more likely that you simply won't be discriminated against. It also means that you are statistically more likely to belong to a minority group that does have privilege, for example the minority group of people with high wealth.

Of course you might well not belong to such a minority group. So for a poor white , the fact that bill gates is rich does not really help you.

I think this is where a lot of where the confusion regards these issues comes from.