7 ms·

I don't understand why one would point out a person's race (unless it's relevant to the situaiton), but since the title did... I cannot fanthom how anyone coul

by tomp 10y ago

I don't understand why one would point out a person's race (unless it's relevant to the situaiton), but since the title did... I cannot fanthom how anyone could call this person "black". If anything, his complexion is similar to what US people call "hispanic" (although to me that's just southern European, not a distinct race).

SolaceQuantum 10y ago
Black in this context is a race, which is an extremely broad spectrum of ethnicities and nationalities of various skin tones.
- weberc2 10y ago
  In any case, I don't know anyone who would consider this man to be black. Perhaps it's the lighting or angle of the photo?
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    Is who you know relevant?
    - weberc2 10y ago
      Yes, because it's a sample of human racial perceptions, but at any rate "who I know" isn't the sample I quoted, it was "who I know of", and the latter is a larger sample than the former. Further, "who I know of" is a pretty good informal indicator given that I know of mostly Americans (and a particularly diverse group of Americans at that). Perhaps you mean "is this sample statistically significant?", in which case the answer is "No, and I never pretended otherwise".
  - SolaceQuantum 10y ago
    Well, like I said. Black is a race, not necessarily a skin tone but mostly identified as a complex and arbitrary delineation of class, nationality, ethnicity, and general skin tone as the easiest identifier but not necessarily the qualifier. I have a white friend who's tan as hell, and studied under a woman from South Africa who was about as tan as my friend. The woman was considered a black woman, while my friend was considered a white man, even though their skin tones were similar. Life is full of such arbitrary nuance and complexity.
    - weberc2 10y ago
      I wasn't speaking about skin tone, but also physical features indicative of African descent. At any rate, in the United States (which is the context of the holiday), class, nationality, and ethnicity don't contribute to perceptions of race; it's effectively the presence or absence of indigenous African physical traits, skin-tone being but one example. Perhaps class, nationality, and ethnicity could be used in 'tie-breaker' cases where race isn't visibly apparent, but that's the extent.
dbaupp 10y ago
It is Black History Month in the US, as the very first paragraph of the article says.
gmarx 10y ago
The article is for Black History Month, a...holiday? here in the US which I think is now called "African American History Month". So does a guy from Barbados working in Canada not count now? I'm not good at that kind of math
- chickenfries 10y ago
  If you're genuinely confused and not trolling, it's okay to use black as an adjective. African American is okay too if they are that, but the 90s trend of referring to everyone black as AA is over.
  - gmarx 10y ago
    Not trolling. I think you either call it African American History month and write stuff about blacks who were descended from American slaves or you call it Black History Month in which case the inclusion of a Barbadan(?) working in Canada makes more sense
Cuuugi 10y ago
1:) It's black history month, and he's black and part of history. 2:) That lighting makes his complexion look much lighter. 3:) If they say he's black, i'll take their word for it, skin colour varies significantly.
monknomo 10y ago
The guy is from the Caribbean. Race is always complex, but it is especially complex in the Caribbean. How pale a person looks doesn't really have bearing on whether they consider themselves black. We don't know what his parents looked like, but they might have been fairly dark. We don't know what his sibling look like, but you'd be surprised at the variation there is. I have a black family friend and he has some blond grandchildren. Don't know if they consider themselves black, but they have a better claim to it as I have to consider myself Swedish. I also think you're off on what the US considers hispanic. While many hispanic people have some southern European origin, the term really mean people from Mexico on south from a Spanish culture of any race or ethnicity. It's a little weird, but you can have hispanic black Dominicans and hispanic Indian Brazilians. Actual Spanish people probably aren't hispanic in the US sense, although I get different answers on that. Filipinos are another people difficult to slot into the standard US hispanic definition.
garysieling 10y ago
It comes from a legal tradition- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
austin_coder 10y ago
The gender and racial identities of underrepresented populations is relevant to a whole host of readers, including researchers, educators, social scientists, etc. But beyond that, it's also relevant because the article references Black History Month and is even tagged with a "Black History Month" tag. As far as why he is considered black, it's probably because someone found it economically advantageous to consider one or more of his ancestors black at some point in their history, and the norm was that a son of a slave was also a slave (i.e. "black"), regardless of complexion. Relevant: https://psmag.com/why-your-race-isn-t-genetic-559908897f93#.i80jvzdcp https://psmag.com/why-your-race-isn-t-genetic-559908897f93#....
whatever_dude 10y ago
While I agree 100% the US and most of the Western world has a weird definition of "black", I think the photo in the article is just unlucky lighting. If you look at the guy's photos on Google Images [1] it's clear he has mixed features that are commonly associated with Caribbean blacks. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=Alan+Emtage&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X https://www.google.com/search?q=Alan+Emtage&source=lnms&tbm=...
maxerickson 10y ago
Neither "Black" nor "Hispanic" are used strictly as races in the US. They both largely refer to heritage.
bglazer 10y ago
I can tell you why it's important to note the race of an underrepresented minority who made a notable contribution. I teach programming to a group of black young adults. Self image is very important to most young folks. Just seeing other black people who are successful computer programmers helps them imagine themselves as computer programmers. Identity matters to young people who are trying to shape their own self image.
- gragas 10y ago
  Then why is it strictly forbidden to write an article with a title that caters specifically to young white children?
  - Cenk 10y ago
    One could say that almost every article caters specifically to white people.
    - gragas 10y ago
      Why do you think so? Could you not also say that almost every article caters specifically to Jewish people? Or would that be anti-Semitic in your mind?
    - lohengramm 10y ago
      Can you elaborate on that? Why is this so?
  - tyingq 10y ago
    Ignoring whether it's forbidden, I'm not sure it's useful. I don't remember having some identity tied to being "white" as a child. I think white children are more likely to identify as being "Catholic" or "of French ancestry" or "poor" or "from Philly" or some other dimension apart from race.
    - gragas 10y ago
      If there is no identity tied to being white, then how are there hundreds upon hundreds of articles in WaPo and the New York Times which almost literally say "White Men Ruin the World" and contain detailed accounts of how white supremacy won Trump the presidency? Either you're right, and white supremacy is not a problem at all, or you're wrong, and culture today has made it acceptable to say "fuck white men", which is disgustingly racist and yet no one is willing to publicly acknowledge it except "white supremacists" themselves.
gpawl 10y ago
Intersectionality is hard. https://www.google.com/search?q=ALAN+EMTAGE https://www.google.com/search?q=ALAN+EMTAGE https://www.google.com/search?q=black+hispanic https://www.google.com/search?q=black+hispanic https://www.google.com/search?q=white+hispanic https://www.google.com/search?q=white+hispanic
noobermin 10y ago
>I don't understand why one would point out a person's race (unless it's relevant to the situaiton). [sic] The first two sentences of the article says >At a time when “googling” has become the generic term for conducting an internet search, it can be hard to remember that search had a long history before Google came along. But it’s worth revisiting that past during Black History Month, because the pre-Google era saw one of the most momentous black contributions to the development of the internet: the invention of internet search itself, by Alan Emtage. Emphasis mine.
pizza 10y ago
> Researchers also offer alternatives to the color-blindness discourse. Reason and Evans call for people to become "racially cognizant", that is they need to acknowledge the role that race plays in their everyday lives. Being racially cognizant also demands a continuous examination and reinterpretation of race and how it affects our lives. It is also important to balance looking at a person as an individual and acknowledging the role their membership to a social group plays in their daily lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness_(race)_in_the_United_States#Alternatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness_(race)_in_the_... As to how someone could call them black... "it's not the color of your skin, it's the race of your kin"
- 08-15 10y ago
  > reinterpretation of race In other words "making up shit". It's time to stop listening to this bullshit.
  - sctb 10y ago
    Please stop posting uncivilly and unsubstantively. We're trying to have thoughtful, insightful discussion, and name calling doesn't help us get there. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
kristianc 10y ago
And I don't understand why, with such alarming, metronomic regularity, is there always someone who pops up and says that race is a non-issue and that we shouldn't mention it. Or even in this case, that we shouldn't recognize his blackness. I mean really - would you go and tell him he wasn't black to his face because his skin wasn't dark enough? The guy's race matters because it's important that people from minorities see that people that look like them and sound like them can succeed. The guy's race matters because in the past history has been rewritten to give prominence to white faces even when black faces have carried out exactly the same roles [1]. It matters because they've had to overcome, in many instances, a system that is structurally biased against their success. And it matters because middle aged, white, heterosexual men, who completely coincidentally stand to gain the most from things staying as they are, are the ones who argue the loudest that we shouldn't recognize these structural biases. It matters because in order to succeed they have had to overcome obstacles that you haven't. If you think that we are somehow overcompensating by even recognizing the color of someone's skin, perhaps you can also tell me why there were two BAME people in my year of four thousand people at Oxford. One of whom went to Eton. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole
- 08-15 10y ago
  > Or even in this case, that we shouldn't recognize his blackness. What?! He isn't black!! Dammit, look at him, he isn't even brown, never mind black! There is no blackness to acknowledge. > would you go and tell him he wasn't black to his face because his skin wasn't dark enough? Yes, for fuck's sake, because that is what black means: very dark skin. Not having black ancestors, not being a citizen of a black country, not having a black passport, but HAVING (almost) BLACK SKIN. He isn't black. Just to drive the point home in case you're a bit slow: black is a color. It is not a race. It is, has always been, and will always be a color. A color this guys skin doesn't have, not even approximately. > people that look like them Black people don't look like him. That's the whole point. He doesn't look black. > two BAME people I have no idea what that means, and I don't think it should mean anything. Seriously, get a life.
  - wolfspider 10y ago
zyx321 10y ago
Not to mention that (as of 2016) Black People don't even exist any more. Everyone who previously was "Black" is now "of Color". A Black Technologist is an expert in Black (=incomprehensible to laypeople) Technology. Since we're talking about search engines, I figure that's accurate enough.
- tomp 10y ago
  That's as silly redefinition of language. And racist as well - unless white people are also "people of color" (technically, we're not white, but yellow-pink or something).
  - zyx321 10y ago
    Sorry. I'm being overly cynical. But it seems that "people of color" is the hot new Politically Correct term for black people (or non-white people depending on who you ask). Do not ask me why.
dragonwriter 10y ago
"Black" as a racial label or identity is only tangentially connected with complexion (or even predominant ancestry, because cultural attitudes of race are shaped by history, including in the US specifically, the One Drop Rule [0].) Effectively, racial labels and identities are more about ethnicity (that is shared cultural identity [on the identity side] or shared ascribed kind of "otherness" [from the imposed labelling side]) than biology (either phenotype and genotype), though the latter influences the former. (And "hispanic" is explicitly an ethnic label/identity, which applies to people ranging from completely European descent to completely African descent to descent completely from the indigenous peoples of South and/or Central America, and every possible combination in between, as well as some others.) [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
Kinnard 10y ago
Are you american? The term isn't used to describe skin color per se, but to classify someone as a member of a certain group with attendant right/privileges and cultural traits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule Recently 'blacks' weren't allowed in certain venues/institutions and were required to take a generally subservient stance vis a vis 'whites'. White also receive(d) preference for admittance to the country and citizenship. The non-denotative nature of the language is well-discussed: http://forward.com/opinion/318667/im-a-mizrahi-jew-do-i-count-as-a-person-of-color/ http://forward.com/opinion/318667/im-a-mizrahi-jew-do-i-coun...
dragonwriter 10y ago
> I don't understand why one would point out a person's race (unless it's relevant to the situaiton) If you read the first paragraph of the article, you'd know that his race is the reason the article was published: At a time when “googling” has become the generic term for conducting an internet search, it can be hard to remember that search had a long history before Google came along. But it’s worth revisiting that past during Black History Month, because the pre-Google era saw one of the most momentous black contributions to the development of the internet: the invention of internet search itself, by Alan Emtage.

by tomp 10y ago

SolaceQuantum 10y ago

Black in this context is a race, which is an extremely broad spectrum of ethnicities and nationalities of various skin tones.

weberc2 10y ago
In any case, I don't know anyone who would consider this man to be black. Perhaps it's the lighting or angle of the photo?
- pessimizer 10y ago
  Is who you know relevant?
  - weberc2 10y ago
    Yes, because it's a sample of human racial perceptions, but at any rate "who I know" isn't the sample I quoted, it was "who I know of", and the latter is a larger sample than the former. Further, "who I know of" is a pretty good informal indicator given that I know of mostly Americans (and a particularly diverse group of Americans at that). Perhaps you mean "is this sample statistically significant?", in which case the answer is "No, and I never pretended otherwise".
- SolaceQuantum 10y ago
  Well, like I said. Black is a race, not necessarily a skin tone but mostly identified as a complex and arbitrary delineation of class, nationality, ethnicity, and general skin tone as the easiest identifier but not necessarily the qualifier. I have a white friend who's tan as hell, and studied under a woman from South Africa who was about as tan as my friend. The woman was considered a black woman, while my friend was considered a white man, even though their skin tones were similar. Life is full of such arbitrary nuance and complexity.
  - weberc2 10y ago
    I wasn't speaking about skin tone, but also physical features indicative of African descent. At any rate, in the United States (which is the context of the holiday), class, nationality, and ethnicity don't contribute to perceptions of race; it's effectively the presence or absence of indigenous African physical traits, skin-tone being but one example. Perhaps class, nationality, and ethnicity could be used in 'tie-breaker' cases where race isn't visibly apparent, but that's the extent.

dbaupp 10y ago

It is Black History Month in the US, as the very first paragraph of the article says.

gmarx 10y ago

The article is for Black History Month, a...holiday? here in the US which I think is now called "African American History Month". So does a guy from Barbados working in Canada not count now? I'm not good at that kind of math

chickenfries 10y ago
If you're genuinely confused and not trolling, it's okay to use black as an adjective. African American is okay too if they are that, but the 90s trend of referring to everyone black as AA is over.
- gmarx 10y ago
  Not trolling. I think you either call it African American History month and write stuff about blacks who were descended from American slaves or you call it Black History Month in which case the inclusion of a Barbadan(?) working in Canada makes more sense

Cuuugi 10y ago

1:) It's black history month, and he's black and part of history. 2:) That lighting makes his complexion look much lighter. 3:) If they say he's black, i'll take their word for it, skin colour varies significantly.

monknomo 10y ago

The guy is from the Caribbean. Race is always complex, but it is especially complex in the Caribbean. How pale a person looks doesn't really have bearing on whether they consider themselves black. We don't know what his parents looked like, but they might have been fairly dark. We don't know what his sibling look like, but you'd be surprised at the variation there is. I have a black family friend and he has some blond grandchildren. Don't know if they consider themselves black, but they have a better claim to it as I have to consider myself Swedish. I also think you're off on what the US considers hispanic. While many hispanic people have some southern European origin, the term really mean people from Mexico on south from a Spanish culture of any race or ethnicity. It's a little weird, but you can have hispanic black Dominicans and hispanic Indian Brazilians. Actual Spanish people probably aren't hispanic in the US sense, although I get different answers on that. Filipinos are another people difficult to slot into the standard US hispanic definition.

garysieling 10y ago

It comes from a legal tradition- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

austin_coder 10y ago

The gender and racial identities of underrepresented populations is relevant to a whole host of readers, including researchers, educators, social scientists, etc. But beyond that, it's also relevant because the article references Black History Month and is even tagged with a "Black History Month" tag. As far as why he is considered black, it's probably because someone found it economically advantageous to consider one or more of his ancestors black at some point in their history, and the norm was that a son of a slave was also a slave (i.e. "black"), regardless of complexion. Relevant: https://psmag.com/why-your-race-isn-t-genetic-559908897f93#.i80jvzdcp https://psmag.com/why-your-race-isn-t-genetic-559908897f93#....

whatever_dude 10y ago

While I agree 100% the US and most of the Western world has a weird definition of "black", I think the photo in the article is just unlucky lighting. If you look at the guy's photos on Google Images [1] it's clear he has mixed features that are commonly associated with Caribbean blacks. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=Alan+Emtage&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X https://www.google.com/search?q=Alan+Emtage&source=lnms&tbm=...

maxerickson 10y ago

Neither "Black" nor "Hispanic" are used strictly as races in the US. They both largely refer to heritage.

bglazer 10y ago

I can tell you why it's important to note the race of an underrepresented minority who made a notable contribution. I teach programming to a group of black young adults. Self image is very important to most young folks. Just seeing other black people who are successful computer programmers helps them imagine themselves as computer programmers. Identity matters to young people who are trying to shape their own self image.

gragas 10y ago
Then why is it strictly forbidden to write an article with a title that caters specifically to young white children?
- Cenk 10y ago
  One could say that almost every article caters specifically to white people.
  - gragas 10y ago
    Why do you think so? Could you not also say that almost every article caters specifically to Jewish people? Or would that be anti-Semitic in your mind?
  - lohengramm 10y ago
    Can you elaborate on that? Why is this so?
- tyingq 10y ago
  Ignoring whether it's forbidden, I'm not sure it's useful. I don't remember having some identity tied to being "white" as a child. I think white children are more likely to identify as being "Catholic" or "of French ancestry" or "poor" or "from Philly" or some other dimension apart from race.
  - gragas 10y ago
    If there is no identity tied to being white, then how are there hundreds upon hundreds of articles in WaPo and the New York Times which almost literally say "White Men Ruin the World" and contain detailed accounts of how white supremacy won Trump the presidency? Either you're right, and white supremacy is not a problem at all, or you're wrong, and culture today has made it acceptable to say "fuck white men", which is disgustingly racist and yet no one is willing to publicly acknowledge it except "white supremacists" themselves.

gpawl 10y ago

Intersectionality is hard. https://www.google.com/search?q=ALAN+EMTAGE https://www.google.com/search?q=ALAN+EMTAGE https://www.google.com/search?q=black+hispanic https://www.google.com/search?q=black+hispanic https://www.google.com/search?q=white+hispanic https://www.google.com/search?q=white+hispanic

noobermin 10y ago

>I don't understand why one would point out a person's race (unless it's relevant to the situaiton). [sic] The first two sentences of the article says >At a time when “googling” has become the generic term for conducting an internet search, it can be hard to remember that search had a long history before Google came along. But it’s worth revisiting that past during Black History Month, because the pre-Google era saw one of the most momentous black contributions to the development of the internet: the invention of internet search itself, by Alan Emtage. Emphasis mine.

pizza 10y ago

> Researchers also offer alternatives to the color-blindness discourse. Reason and Evans call for people to become "racially cognizant", that is they need to acknowledge the role that race plays in their everyday lives. Being racially cognizant also demands a continuous examination and reinterpretation of race and how it affects our lives. It is also important to balance looking at a person as an individual and acknowledging the role their membership to a social group plays in their daily lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness_(race)_in_the_United_States#Alternatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness_(race)_in_the_... As to how someone could call them black... "it's not the color of your skin, it's the race of your kin"

08-15 10y ago
> reinterpretation of race In other words "making up shit". It's time to stop listening to this bullshit.
- sctb 10y ago
  Please stop posting uncivilly and unsubstantively. We're trying to have thoughtful, insightful discussion, and name calling doesn't help us get there. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

kristianc 10y ago

And I don't understand why, with such alarming, metronomic regularity, is there always someone who pops up and says that race is a non-issue and that we shouldn't mention it. Or even in this case, that we shouldn't recognize his blackness. I mean really - would you go and tell him he wasn't black to his face because his skin wasn't dark enough? The guy's race matters because it's important that people from minorities see that people that look like them and sound like them can succeed. The guy's race matters because in the past history has been rewritten to give prominence to white faces even when black faces have carried out exactly the same roles [1]. It matters because they've had to overcome, in many instances, a system that is structurally biased against their success. And it matters because middle aged, white, heterosexual men, who completely coincidentally stand to gain the most from things staying as they are, are the ones who argue the loudest that we shouldn't recognize these structural biases. It matters because in order to succeed they have had to overcome obstacles that you haven't. If you think that we are somehow overcompensating by even recognizing the color of someone's skin, perhaps you can also tell me why there were two BAME people in my year of four thousand people at Oxford. One of whom went to Eton. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole

08-15 10y ago
> Or even in this case, that we shouldn't recognize his blackness. What?! He isn't black!! Dammit, look at him, he isn't even brown, never mind black! There is no blackness to acknowledge. > would you go and tell him he wasn't black to his face because his skin wasn't dark enough? Yes, for fuck's sake, because that is what black means: very dark skin. Not having black ancestors, not being a citizen of a black country, not having a black passport, but HAVING (almost) BLACK SKIN. He isn't black. Just to drive the point home in case you're a bit slow: black is a color. It is not a race. It is, has always been, and will always be a color. A color this guys skin doesn't have, not even approximately. > people that look like them Black people don't look like him. That's the whole point. He doesn't look black. > two BAME people I have no idea what that means, and I don't think it should mean anything. Seriously, get a life.
- wolfspider 10y ago

zyx321 10y ago

Not to mention that (as of 2016) Black People don't even exist any more. Everyone who previously was "Black" is now "of Color". A Black Technologist is an expert in Black (=incomprehensible to laypeople) Technology. Since we're talking about search engines, I figure that's accurate enough.

tomp 10y ago
That's as silly redefinition of language. And racist as well - unless white people are also "people of color" (technically, we're not white, but yellow-pink or something).
- zyx321 10y ago
  Sorry. I'm being overly cynical. But it seems that "people of color" is the hot new Politically Correct term for black people (or non-white people depending on who you ask). Do not ask me why.

dragonwriter 10y ago

"Black" as a racial label or identity is only tangentially connected with complexion (or even predominant ancestry, because cultural attitudes of race are shaped by history, including in the US specifically, the One Drop Rule [0].) Effectively, racial labels and identities are more about ethnicity (that is shared cultural identity [on the identity side] or shared ascribed kind of "otherness" [from the imposed labelling side]) than biology (either phenotype and genotype), though the latter influences the former. (And "hispanic" is explicitly an ethnic label/identity, which applies to people ranging from completely European descent to completely African descent to descent completely from the indigenous peoples of South and/or Central America, and every possible combination in between, as well as some others.) [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

Kinnard 10y ago

Are you american? The term isn't used to describe skin color per se, but to classify someone as a member of a certain group with attendant right/privileges and cultural traits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule Recently 'blacks' weren't allowed in certain venues/institutions and were required to take a generally subservient stance vis a vis 'whites'. White also receive(d) preference for admittance to the country and citizenship. The non-denotative nature of the language is well-discussed: http://forward.com/opinion/318667/im-a-mizrahi-jew-do-i-count-as-a-person-of-color/ http://forward.com/opinion/318667/im-a-mizrahi-jew-do-i-coun...

dragonwriter 10y ago

> I don't understand why one would point out a person's race (unless it's relevant to the situaiton) If you read the first paragraph of the article, you'd know that his race is the reason the article was published: At a time when “googling” has become the generic term for conducting an internet search, it can be hard to remember that search had a long history before Google came along. But it’s worth revisiting that past during Black History Month, because the pre-Google era saw one of the most momentous black contributions to the development of the internet: the invention of internet search itself, by Alan Emtage.