6 ms·

>It should come as no surprise that the professor who made that demand is a white male alumnus of the Ivy League, and the student an immigrant from a working-cl

by daenz 8y ago

>It should come as no surprise that the professor who made that demand is a white male alumnus of the Ivy League, and the student an immigrant from a working-class background. I'm getting really tired of these kinds of racial and ethnic generalizations. If you substitute "asian" or "jew" in and you find it's racist, it's still racist if it says "white."

BadassFractal 8y ago
Looks like someone here has a case of white fragility. Please recall that reverse racism does not exist: the oppressed cannot be racist towards the oppressor. I jest. That's another one of those concepts that came out of the humanities academia recently, which is relevant to the article: https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10774 https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10774
woodruffw 8y ago
> I'm getting really tired of these kinds of racial and ethnic generalizations. If you substitute "asian" or "jew" in and you find it's racist, it's still racist if it says "white." No. If you attended a civil rights march in 1962 and remarked at how white the counter-protesters were (and how the hoses never seem to get aimed at them), you would be making an accurate observation about race and power dynamics, not smearing white people. Observing that some (many?) of those same dynamics persist in our present enlightened age is not racism.
- daenz 8y ago
  Even if I accepted the modern re-branding of the word "racist" to mean the new "power + privilege", which I don't accept, but I understand many people use that definition, the author's statement is still loaded with racial prejudice. He literally said that bad behavior X is "no surprise" because the person behaving badly is white and a man. You trying to justify this language as not only tolerable but acceptable is part of the problem society has wrt treating people as individuals. And the fact that you're using historical injustices against people to tell me why I need to accept negative language around two immutable physical characteristics that I possess is really over the line. We're supposed to be moving away from that kind of society.
  - woodruffw 8y ago
    > You trying to justify this language as not only tolerable but acceptable is part of the problem society has wrt treating people as individuals. And the fact that you're using historical injustices against people to tell me why I need to accept negative language around two immutable physical characteristics that I possess is really over the line. We're supposed to be moving away from that kind of society. I'm confused here. You want society to treat you as an individual (a reasonable ask), but you also feel like some other white person's bad behavior somehow reflects upon you? Let's be clear: the negative language in this article is about the negative actions, not racial characteristics, of the person in question. The racial characteristics are only a reminder that these things don't happen in a vacuum, a truism that most people don't have an issue with (including you, insofar as you recognize that historical injustices really do exist). Talking frankly about how bad behavior connects directly to privilege does not a racist attack make.
    - daenz 8y ago
      >I'm confused here. You want society to treat you as an individual (a reasonable ask), but you also feel like some other white person's bad behavior somehow reflects upon you? I don't feel like some other white person's bad behavior somehow reflects upon me. I feel like it has become acceptable to judge me based on my non-individual characteristics, based on the language in the article, and your defense of that language. There is no contradiction here. >Let's be clear: the negative language in this article is about the negative actions, not racial characteristics, of the person in question. Yes, let's be clear: the negative language is "no surprise," which is being directly applied to those immutable physical characteristics of being white and a man (and one mutable characteristic of being an Ivy League alumnus). Please don't tell me what the author really meant, when their language is quite clear.
- chmln 8y ago
  > you would be making an accurate observation about race and power dynamics Accurate observations don't get a pass, unless you're generally smearing the white race. Today, you cannot have a conversation about racial differences in crime rates, IQ, etc. You also cannot make any negative generalized statements towards non-white or non-cisgender groups. However, you can hysterically smear white men as much as you want, without significant repercussions, if any at all [1][2][3][4] [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/06/the-soullessness-of-straight-white-men https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/06/the-soullessne... [2] https://globalnews.ca/video/4622886/cnn-host-don-lemon-calls-white-men-the-biggest-terror-threat-in-america https://globalnews.ca/video/4622886/cnn-host-don-lemon-calls... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/10/08/can-american-democracy-can-self-correct-pervasive-distortionary-power-white-male-privilege/?utm_term=.7cbc3790977f https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/10/08/can-americ... [4] https://pjmedia.com/election/former-tv-ceo-says-u-s-should-ban-straight-white-males-from-voting/ https://pjmedia.com/election/former-tv-ceo-says-u-s-should-b...
  - daenz 8y ago
    I think the parent post acknowledges this. When I said "if X is racist with race Y, then it's also racist with race Z," they replied with "No." They sound like the explicitly support a double standard, depending on what identity is being smeared.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- briandear 8y ago
  It’s not 1962 anymore. A non-liberal, straight white male is persona non-grata in many universities.
camdenlock 8y ago
Indeed, the irony here is... kind of amazing. While the author is spot on about the cultish practices thriving in certain corridors of the ivory tower, he's apparently blind to his own susceptibility to some of the more poisonous strains of dogma issued from the very same sources.
dang 8y ago
This comment breaks the HN guidelines, which ask you not to take threads on extraneous flamewar tangents. Especially a doozy like this one, which has burned and been picked over incessantly. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- shawn 8y ago
  I see no flamewar here. In fact, the only one who seems to have a problem with this discussion is you. There are a few low-quality comments, true. But these are mostly high-quality comments, relative to internet discourse on other websites. You're making bad calls. And if the sole way for me to contribute to this site is to point this out to you, then at least it's an impactful contribution.
- shawn 8y ago
  I see no flamewar here. In fact, the only one who seems to have a problem with this discussion is you. There are a few low-quality comments, true. But these are mostly high-quality comments, relative to internet discourse on other websites.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
shredprez 8y ago
I don’t find it to be racist (unless your definition is ‘someone who talks about race’). But it is exceptionally lazy. Rather than making the case they wish to directly, they’re offloading that work onto their audience, many of whom will obviously defer to popular generalizations. The majority of the time I see “privileged white male” shorthand, what the author is talking about is character and behavior, both of which can be warped by one’s environment or social status. But hiding that entire analysis in three words does wrong by the reader and makes it easy to view poor behavior as some kind of essential trait rather than a failure of socialization. If we’re looking to shift patterns of misbehavior or help people understand them better, that’s a bad way to start.

by daenz 8y ago

BadassFractal 8y ago

Looks like someone here has a case of white fragility. Please recall that reverse racism does not exist: the oppressed cannot be racist towards the oppressor. I jest. That's another one of those concepts that came out of the humanities academia recently, which is relevant to the article: https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10774 https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10774

woodruffw 8y ago

> I'm getting really tired of these kinds of racial and ethnic generalizations. If you substitute "asian" or "jew" in and you find it's racist, it's still racist if it says "white." No. If you attended a civil rights march in 1962 and remarked at how white the counter-protesters were (and how the hoses never seem to get aimed at them), you would be making an accurate observation about race and power dynamics, not smearing white people. Observing that some (many?) of those same dynamics persist in our present enlightened age is not racism.

daenz 8y ago
Even if I accepted the modern re-branding of the word "racist" to mean the new "power + privilege", which I don't accept, but I understand many people use that definition, the author's statement is still loaded with racial prejudice. He literally said that bad behavior X is "no surprise" because the person behaving badly is white and a man. You trying to justify this language as not only tolerable but acceptable is part of the problem society has wrt treating people as individuals. And the fact that you're using historical injustices against people to tell me why I need to accept negative language around two immutable physical characteristics that I possess is really over the line. We're supposed to be moving away from that kind of society.
- woodruffw 8y ago
  > You trying to justify this language as not only tolerable but acceptable is part of the problem society has wrt treating people as individuals. And the fact that you're using historical injustices against people to tell me why I need to accept negative language around two immutable physical characteristics that I possess is really over the line. We're supposed to be moving away from that kind of society. I'm confused here. You want society to treat you as an individual (a reasonable ask), but you also feel like some other white person's bad behavior somehow reflects upon you? Let's be clear: the negative language in this article is about the negative actions, not racial characteristics, of the person in question. The racial characteristics are only a reminder that these things don't happen in a vacuum, a truism that most people don't have an issue with (including you, insofar as you recognize that historical injustices really do exist). Talking frankly about how bad behavior connects directly to privilege does not a racist attack make.
  - daenz 8y ago
    >I'm confused here. You want society to treat you as an individual (a reasonable ask), but you also feel like some other white person's bad behavior somehow reflects upon you? I don't feel like some other white person's bad behavior somehow reflects upon me. I feel like it has become acceptable to judge me based on my non-individual characteristics, based on the language in the article, and your defense of that language. There is no contradiction here. >Let's be clear: the negative language in this article is about the negative actions, not racial characteristics, of the person in question. Yes, let's be clear: the negative language is "no surprise," which is being directly applied to those immutable physical characteristics of being white and a man (and one mutable characteristic of being an Ivy League alumnus). Please don't tell me what the author really meant, when their language is quite clear.
chmln 8y ago
> you would be making an accurate observation about race and power dynamics Accurate observations don't get a pass, unless you're generally smearing the white race. Today, you cannot have a conversation about racial differences in crime rates, IQ, etc. You also cannot make any negative generalized statements towards non-white or non-cisgender groups. However, you can hysterically smear white men as much as you want, without significant repercussions, if any at all [1][2][3][4] [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/06/the-soullessness-of-straight-white-men https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/06/the-soullessne... [2] https://globalnews.ca/video/4622886/cnn-host-don-lemon-calls-white-men-the-biggest-terror-threat-in-america https://globalnews.ca/video/4622886/cnn-host-don-lemon-calls... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/10/08/can-american-democracy-can-self-correct-pervasive-distortionary-power-white-male-privilege/?utm_term=.7cbc3790977f https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/10/08/can-americ... [4] https://pjmedia.com/election/former-tv-ceo-says-u-s-should-ban-straight-white-males-from-voting/ https://pjmedia.com/election/former-tv-ceo-says-u-s-should-b...
- daenz 8y ago
  I think the parent post acknowledges this. When I said "if X is racist with race Y, then it's also racist with race Z," they replied with "No." They sound like the explicitly support a double standard, depending on what identity is being smeared.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
briandear 8y ago
It’s not 1962 anymore. A non-liberal, straight white male is persona non-grata in many universities.

camdenlock 8y ago

Indeed, the irony here is... kind of amazing. While the author is spot on about the cultish practices thriving in certain corridors of the ivory tower, he's apparently blind to his own susceptibility to some of the more poisonous strains of dogma issued from the very same sources.

dang 8y ago

This comment breaks the HN guidelines, which ask you not to take threads on extraneous flamewar tangents. Especially a doozy like this one, which has burned and been picked over incessantly. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

shawn 8y ago
I see no flamewar here. In fact, the only one who seems to have a problem with this discussion is you. There are a few low-quality comments, true. But these are mostly high-quality comments, relative to internet discourse on other websites. You're making bad calls. And if the sole way for me to contribute to this site is to point this out to you, then at least it's an impactful contribution.
shawn 8y ago
I see no flamewar here. In fact, the only one who seems to have a problem with this discussion is you. There are a few low-quality comments, true. But these are mostly high-quality comments, relative to internet discourse on other websites.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

shredprez 8y ago

I don’t find it to be racist (unless your definition is ‘someone who talks about race’). But it is exceptionally lazy. Rather than making the case they wish to directly, they’re offloading that work onto their audience, many of whom will obviously defer to popular generalizations. The majority of the time I see “privileged white male” shorthand, what the author is talking about is character and behavior, both of which can be warped by one’s environment or social status. But hiding that entire analysis in three words does wrong by the reader and makes it easy to view poor behavior as some kind of essential trait rather than a failure of socialization. If we’re looking to shift patterns of misbehavior or help people understand them better, that’s a bad way to start.