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"We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about race, and NOT MENTION IT." We live in a world where this is not remotely possible. Suggesting it is the

"We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about race, and NOT MENTION IT." We live in a world where this is not remotely possible. Suggesting it is the worst sort of idealism.

api_or_ipa 11y ago
When is the disease distinct from the cure? At a certain point, we need to move forward and strive towards a harmonious ideal. Otherwise we delay true equality.
- exolymph 11y ago
  I agree that we need to move forward, but I think it's better to focus on tactics that can succeed.
  - malandrew 11y ago
    What about tactics that are antagonistic and counter-productive? Isn't it about time someone asked "What could possibly go wrong?" when discussing each tactic?
alphapapa 11y ago
Why? Let me apply the principle you claim to be the case in a different, ahistorical way: "'We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about denigrating and enslaving blacks, and NOT MENTION IT.' We live in a world where this is not remotely possible. Suggesting it is the worst sort of idealism." --some Southern slave owner, 1859 The same could be applied to historical anti-semitic movements, anti-suffrage groups--anti-anything groups, really. It can be boiled down to: "We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about treating other people badly because of their appearance or where they are from, and NOT MENTION IT," and people like you saying, "That's impossible. We will always be just as hateful and prejudiced as the worst of us are now. You shouldn't even suggest that it's possible to make any progress in human society." It boggles my mind that you could even think this way. But, then, people thinking and acting in unreasonable ways is the root of these problems.
- tatterdemalion 11y ago
  The actual analogy would be: "We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about slavery, and NOT MENTION IT." Do you see why this would not be an effective way to eliminate slavery?
  - malandrew 11y ago
    This is a very strange mental exercise you're asking, but I'd like to explore it as a thought experiment for a moment if I may. Can you implement and maintain a market without mentioning/discussing that market? I don't see how any activity, economic or otherwise, can exist much less persist if you can't discuss it. How would one buy something if they don't understand what it is or its utility? Why would someone engage in selling something if they don't know a market exists for that product and don't talk about it (market it)? Could racist groups like the KKK persist without resorting to racial language to communicate their ideas? This thought experiment is rooted in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
    - tatterdemalion 11y ago
      ok
  - alphapapa 11y ago
    False. Yours is akin to saying, "Let's sweep slavery under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist." Mine is akin to saying, "We should no longer even consider enslaving people or treating people badly because their skin is a certain color." Yours would certainly be ineffective in eliminating slavery because it advocates pretending that it doesn't exist. Mine is standing up against slavery and saying that the underlying principle used to justify it is morally wrong. Applied to the issue of reverse racism, yours would be akin to saying, "Let's ignore or even advocate one kind of racism, while condemning another kind." Mine would be akin to saying, "All racism is wrong. We should all stop being racist in any way, period." I think the issue is that one side bases its position on moral principles, while the other side bases its position on utilitarianism. One side says, "Two wrongs don't make a right. -1 - 1 = -2". The other side says, "It's acceptable to do wrong to compensate for another wrong. -1 - 1 = 0." One side says, "We are not all-knowing or all-wise. We cannot fairly do a concrete injustice to an innocent person to compensate for a perceived injustice done to another innocent person." The other side says, "This innocent person should not complain about being treated unjustly, because this other innocent person has probably been treated unjustly." One side sees it as a zero-sum game. The other side recognizes that, as long as racism exists in any form, we all lose.
b6 11y ago
But do you agree that the goal should be, more or less, to create a world where ethnicity, sex, and other body attributes matter as little as, say, eye color does today? If so, what is the plan to achieve that goal? Don't we achieve it by actually acting that way as much as possible? That's what makes sense to me. Suppose we, in the name of equality or diversity or fairness, actually elevate the importance of bodily attributes like ethnicity and sex, deliberately considering them during hiring, and build that practice into our culture. Having practiced doing it wrong for however many years, will we someday decide it isn't needed anymore and get rid of it?
- mikeash 11y ago
  It's rarely possible to achieve a goal merely by pretending you've already achieved it. If current problems are driven by subconscious biases then you need to eliminate those. It seems to me that the best way to eliminate them is to forcibly overcome them until people get used to seeing more minorities in these positions and replace their subconscious biases with new ones.
  - b6 11y ago
    OK, I can readily believe lots of our problems stem from subconscious biases. But what do you think about the questions I posed? Are we trying to create a world where we don't care about body attributes? If so, do you advocate doing the exact opposite behavior (deliberately paying attention to body attributes and factoring them into decisions) for some temporary period and then stopping?
    - mikeash 11y ago
      Yes to both. We're already factoring these things into decisions whether we want to or not. I don't see anything weird about saying that we should change how we do so, as a step towards getting rid of it altogether. I think that as long as we have large discrepancies in how many people with or without a particular attribute are in a particular profession, we'll have subconscious biases in evaluating who's good at that profession. If you spend your whole life in an environment where almost all the best programmers are purple people, you'll have a hard time overcoming the notion that purple people are generally better programmers. Pretending not to notice color will simply persist the status quo. If we deliberately include more orange people for a time, then we may be able to overcome that.
jefurii 11y ago
So I shouldn't celebrate the interesting and cool things about other peoples' cultures (and my own)? That's sad.
justinclift 11y ago
Just to point out... the US is the western only country on the planet which cares, or even mentions, people's skin colour/race AT ALL. Literally every other western country calls people... people. A man is "a man" not "a green/blue/pink/red/etc man". A women is "a women" not "a green/blue/pink/red/etc woman". Continuously giving skin colour qualifiers in descriptions of people... is (to non-US people) bizarre, and seems to be a large part of the language used to keep racism alive in the US. That's as far as I've been able to tell so far anyway. :(
- jdbernard 11y ago
  You haven't been paying much attention then. Especially with all of the refugees coming into Europe, there is absolutely racism and discrimination based on race. There is also a long history of racism in Australia towards the indigenous population, and more recently towards immigrants. Pretty much everywhere you have two different cultures meeting you have racism. The modern western cultures are no exception.
  - justinclift 11y ago
    That's not at all what I said. I'm saying the US is the only country which prefaces descriptions of people with info about their skin colour. It seems (to someone not from the US) a truly strange cultural behaviour. [note - edited for clarity]
    - douche 11y ago
      I dunno if Europe is really recent, or just a bigger problem now. My experience of Berlin circa 2009 was that the natives were as racist towards Turkish immigrants as my hillbilly folk back in the states were towards Mexicans. There were also waves around that time about North African and Muslim immigrants in France.
Jedd 11y ago
> "We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about race, and > NOT MENTION IT." We live in a world where this is not remotely possible. > Suggesting it is the worst sort of idealism. This saddens me. I'm somewhat curious on knowing some other data points on your spectrum of (bad) idealism.. But the 'not remotely possible' claim sounds like you've decided for all of us that we're incapable of ever thinking of skin colour in the future the same way we think of, say, hair colour today. I suspect your position is based upon your current cultural surroundings, in which case I'd prescribe travel. Lots of it.
- Mangalor 11y ago
  The point is to not ignore racism by pretending it doesn't exist.
  - Jedd 11y ago
    I don't think anyone is advocating that we ignore racism, let alone that the ideal state is one where it exists and we ignore it. Rather, we aim to be in a place where racism simply doesn't exist. I am painfully aware that for many people this is an unsettling proposition as it sounds like rampant fantasy and/or they don't comprehend how (or believe that) any society could reach that position. But in turn I believe those people exhibit a poverty of imagination, and are exhibiting an ignorance of various historical examples of comparably profound cultural shifts.
    - Mangalor 11y ago
      Not talking about race has been the status quo in tech. Only in recent years have people even brought it up. To think that not talking about it further will cause racism to not exist is the fantasy.
  - malandrew 11y ago
    The parent's point was that not all places are racist in the same way and when you see the diversity in how racism plays out across countries and cultures, you realize that is exists because people believes it exists. Racism is not reality. "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick from "How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (1978) http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm
proc0 11y ago
I agree it may be idealistic, especially because part of the problem is people thinking themselves into a category, and adopting it as an identity. It is however the right direction, because all this "racial" problems are caused by categorization of people in the first place.
jp_sc 11y ago
> We live in a world where this is not remotely possible No, you live in a COUNTRY where that seems not remotely possible.

"We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about race, and NOT MENTION IT." We live in a world where this is not remotely possible. Suggesting it is the worst sort of idealism.

api_or_ipa 11y ago

When is the disease distinct from the cure? At a certain point, we need to move forward and strive towards a harmonious ideal. Otherwise we delay true equality.

exolymph 11y ago
I agree that we need to move forward, but I think it's better to focus on tactics that can succeed.
- malandrew 11y ago
  What about tactics that are antagonistic and counter-productive? Isn't it about time someone asked "What could possibly go wrong?" when discussing each tactic?

alphapapa 11y ago

Why? Let me apply the principle you claim to be the case in a different, ahistorical way: "'We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about denigrating and enslaving blacks, and NOT MENTION IT.' We live in a world where this is not remotely possible. Suggesting it is the worst sort of idealism." --some Southern slave owner, 1859 The same could be applied to historical anti-semitic movements, anti-suffrage groups--anti-anything groups, really. It can be boiled down to: "We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about treating other people badly because of their appearance or where they are from, and NOT MENTION IT," and people like you saying, "That's impossible. We will always be just as hateful and prejudiced as the worst of us are now. You shouldn't even suggest that it's possible to make any progress in human society." It boggles my mind that you could even think this way. But, then, people thinking and acting in unreasonable ways is the root of these problems.

tatterdemalion 11y ago
The actual analogy would be: "We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about slavery, and NOT MENTION IT." Do you see why this would not be an effective way to eliminate slavery?
- malandrew 11y ago
  This is a very strange mental exercise you're asking, but I'd like to explore it as a thought experiment for a moment if I may. Can you implement and maintain a market without mentioning/discussing that market? I don't see how any activity, economic or otherwise, can exist much less persist if you can't discuss it. How would one buy something if they don't understand what it is or its utility? Why would someone engage in selling something if they don't know a market exists for that product and don't talk about it (market it)? Could racist groups like the KKK persist without resorting to racial language to communicate their ideas? This thought experiment is rooted in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
  - tatterdemalion 11y ago
    ok
- alphapapa 11y ago
  False. Yours is akin to saying, "Let's sweep slavery under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist." Mine is akin to saying, "We should no longer even consider enslaving people or treating people badly because their skin is a certain color." Yours would certainly be ineffective in eliminating slavery because it advocates pretending that it doesn't exist. Mine is standing up against slavery and saying that the underlying principle used to justify it is morally wrong. Applied to the issue of reverse racism, yours would be akin to saying, "Let's ignore or even advocate one kind of racism, while condemning another kind." Mine would be akin to saying, "All racism is wrong. We should all stop being racist in any way, period." I think the issue is that one side bases its position on moral principles, while the other side bases its position on utilitarianism. One side says, "Two wrongs don't make a right. -1 - 1 = -2". The other side says, "It's acceptable to do wrong to compensate for another wrong. -1 - 1 = 0." One side says, "We are not all-knowing or all-wise. We cannot fairly do a concrete injustice to an innocent person to compensate for a perceived injustice done to another innocent person." The other side says, "This innocent person should not complain about being treated unjustly, because this other innocent person has probably been treated unjustly." One side sees it as a zero-sum game. The other side recognizes that, as long as racism exists in any form, we all lose.

b6 11y ago

But do you agree that the goal should be, more or less, to create a world where ethnicity, sex, and other body attributes matter as little as, say, eye color does today? If so, what is the plan to achieve that goal? Don't we achieve it by actually acting that way as much as possible? That's what makes sense to me. Suppose we, in the name of equality or diversity or fairness, actually elevate the importance of bodily attributes like ethnicity and sex, deliberately considering them during hiring, and build that practice into our culture. Having practiced doing it wrong for however many years, will we someday decide it isn't needed anymore and get rid of it?

mikeash 11y ago
It's rarely possible to achieve a goal merely by pretending you've already achieved it. If current problems are driven by subconscious biases then you need to eliminate those. It seems to me that the best way to eliminate them is to forcibly overcome them until people get used to seeing more minorities in these positions and replace their subconscious biases with new ones.
- b6 11y ago
  OK, I can readily believe lots of our problems stem from subconscious biases. But what do you think about the questions I posed? Are we trying to create a world where we don't care about body attributes? If so, do you advocate doing the exact opposite behavior (deliberately paying attention to body attributes and factoring them into decisions) for some temporary period and then stopping?
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Yes to both. We're already factoring these things into decisions whether we want to or not. I don't see anything weird about saying that we should change how we do so, as a step towards getting rid of it altogether. I think that as long as we have large discrepancies in how many people with or without a particular attribute are in a particular profession, we'll have subconscious biases in evaluating who's good at that profession. If you spend your whole life in an environment where almost all the best programmers are purple people, you'll have a hard time overcoming the notion that purple people are generally better programmers. Pretending not to notice color will simply persist the status quo. If we deliberately include more orange people for a time, then we may be able to overcome that.

jefurii 11y ago

So I shouldn't celebrate the interesting and cool things about other peoples' cultures (and my own)? That's sad.

justinclift 11y ago

Just to point out... the US is the western only country on the planet which cares, or even mentions, people's skin colour/race AT ALL. Literally every other western country calls people... people. A man is "a man" not "a green/blue/pink/red/etc man". A women is "a women" not "a green/blue/pink/red/etc woman". Continuously giving skin colour qualifiers in descriptions of people... is (to non-US people) bizarre, and seems to be a large part of the language used to keep racism alive in the US. That's as far as I've been able to tell so far anyway. :(

jdbernard 11y ago
You haven't been paying much attention then. Especially with all of the refugees coming into Europe, there is absolutely racism and discrimination based on race. There is also a long history of racism in Australia towards the indigenous population, and more recently towards immigrants. Pretty much everywhere you have two different cultures meeting you have racism. The modern western cultures are no exception.
- justinclift 11y ago
  That's not at all what I said. I'm saying the US is the only country which prefaces descriptions of people with info about their skin colour. It seems (to someone not from the US) a truly strange cultural behaviour. [note - edited for clarity]
  - douche 11y ago
    I dunno if Europe is really recent, or just a bigger problem now. My experience of Berlin circa 2009 was that the natives were as racist towards Turkish immigrants as my hillbilly folk back in the states were towards Mexicans. There were also waves around that time about North African and Muslim immigrants in France.

Jedd 11y ago

> "We need to start learning how to simply NOT THINK about race, and > NOT MENTION IT." We live in a world where this is not remotely possible. > Suggesting it is the worst sort of idealism. This saddens me. I'm somewhat curious on knowing some other data points on your spectrum of (bad) idealism.. But the 'not remotely possible' claim sounds like you've decided for all of us that we're incapable of ever thinking of skin colour in the future the same way we think of, say, hair colour today. I suspect your position is based upon your current cultural surroundings, in which case I'd prescribe travel. Lots of it.

Mangalor 11y ago
The point is to not ignore racism by pretending it doesn't exist.
- Jedd 11y ago
  I don't think anyone is advocating that we ignore racism, let alone that the ideal state is one where it exists and we ignore it. Rather, we aim to be in a place where racism simply doesn't exist. I am painfully aware that for many people this is an unsettling proposition as it sounds like rampant fantasy and/or they don't comprehend how (or believe that) any society could reach that position. But in turn I believe those people exhibit a poverty of imagination, and are exhibiting an ignorance of various historical examples of comparably profound cultural shifts.
  - Mangalor 11y ago
    Not talking about race has been the status quo in tech. Only in recent years have people even brought it up. To think that not talking about it further will cause racism to not exist is the fantasy.
- malandrew 11y ago
  The parent's point was that not all places are racist in the same way and when you see the diversity in how racism plays out across countries and cultures, you realize that is exists because people believes it exists. Racism is not reality. "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick from "How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (1978) http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm

proc0 11y ago

I agree it may be idealistic, especially because part of the problem is people thinking themselves into a category, and adopting it as an identity. It is however the right direction, because all this "racial" problems are caused by categorization of people in the first place.

jp_sc 11y ago

> We live in a world where this is not remotely possible No, you live in a COUNTRY where that seems not remotely possible.