6 ms·

I wish people of my color, gender, or belief were allowed to make a club, or join yours. It sounds great. Maybe something like this is why whites commit suicide

I wish people of my color, gender, or belief were allowed to make a club, or join yours. It sounds great. Maybe something like this is why whites commit suicide so much more than blacks in America (per CDC [1]). Blacks suffer in many ways but at least they're allowed to make a community just about themselves, and that's valuable. [1] https://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2013/04/05/us_homicide__suicide_rates_in_whites__blacks_106500.html# https://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2013/04/05/us_...!

thex10 8y ago
My (black) spouse has talked with me about their thorough support of this idea. They think there ought to be white student unions, white history month, white studies courses, etc. I wouldn't mind seeing this happen, if white folks could do it without hate or exclusion of others (which probably requires acknowledging and destroying white supremacy).
- pasabagi 8y ago
  I think the problem is, the conventional depiction of many events is already 'white'. I had no idea that there were large numbers of African and Indian soldiers on the western front, for instance, until quite recently.
  - jlawson 8y ago
    If you mean WW1, there weren't. There were three Africans (musicians in the German army). Yes, exactly three. Not four or five. Indians were involved as part of British forces, but numbered well under 1% of men deployed. I wouldn't take anything away from them (good men), but it's inaccurate to say they were significantly represented by numbers. You need to be careful about people (in this case video game developers) lying to you about history to uphold a moralistic narrative. The facts of history are not politically correct, they are actually correct (by definition), and this is a big difference. See also: Absurd BBC depictions of Roman-era Britain where there are random black characters all throughout the society at every level of power and influence. A pure lie. Basically what you get from media these days (95% progressive by survey) is comparable to what you'd get if the media was 95% evangelical Christians, but in another direction. Just keep the source in context.
    - pasabagi 8y ago
      Is the wikipedia article wrong? The numbers are a little unclear, but it suggest that 1.3 million Indian men volunteered for the British army in WW1, with 75,000 or so dying in the process. That's about a tenth of the casualties, so I'd assume the Indians were a similar proportion of active-duty soldiers. There was also a pretty nasty war in East Africa, although the details are hazy in my mind. I'm also finding about 72,000 colonial casualties on the French side - which is a smaller proportion, given the colossal numbers the French fielded, but still substantial. The German army is a very misleading case regardless, since they were pretty much the only power without significant non-white minorities or colonies, aside from perhaps Austro-Hungary. I'm also unsure about to what extent Romans were black. Obviously, about half their traditional dominion was in Africa, so you'd expect some part of them to be black - and there are certainly many archaeological remains suggesting so, even as far north as England. I also don't know if having black characters is any less true to history than having white characters, since Roman Romans were distinctly brownish, and very short to boot.
40acres 8y ago
I've found that even if an ERG was created around a particular identity that does not mean that you have to have that identity to be welcome, for instance -- everyone looks forward to when the Indian ERG throws a party because the food is amazing, everyone is invited and the event schedule is public. Also, ERGs are simply a more formal organization, in my company official ERGs some receive funding to support events. At a previous work campus we set up regular basketball and volleyball games after work using a simple mailing list and a share point like internal forum system. I've seen groups where the focus is those who identify as "makers" and also a group for drone hobbyists. You can think of these groups as "special interest groups" to use a political term, but most of these groups are not exclusive.. for instance, you can join the NAACP regardless of race.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Maybe something like this is why whites commit suicide so much more than blacks in America Whites officially commit suicide more than blacks because blacks who are even slightly inclined to self-destruction find it all to easy to get into situations that produce death by means that won't officially be viewed as suicide. > Blacks suffer in many ways but at least they're allowed to make a community just about themselves Whites can, and do, make communities just about themselves. Now, it's true that the ones that aren't purely and nakedly about virulent racism usually do it about some more specific subset of Whiteness (like a particular national/ethnic identity like Italian or Irish, etc.), probably because Whiteness as such (in America, at least) is not a particularly strong shared experience and identity (some other racial identities, particularly Black identity, are, but largely as a consequence of extended subjugation by the broader society which deliberately destroyed other identities in the group and produced a new common shared experience.)
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- hpbd 8y ago
  >Whites officially commit suicide more than blacks because blacks who are even slightly inclined to self-destruction find it all to easy to get into situations that produce death by means that won't officially be viewed as suicide. We all know what you're implying but you're making that statistic up.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > We all know what you're implying Implying? I was being explicit, if general because I was referring to a broad class of phenomenon. If you think I was using code for something narrowly specific, you are mistaken. > but you're making that statistic up. I'm not presenting a statistic, made up or not.
    - 8y ago
ConceptJunkie 8y ago
Perhaps, but I belong to groups based on my interests which are completely orthogonal to race: my Church, various interest groups on Facebook, etc. I work at a small company (c. 600 people), so it isn't big enough to have these kinds of groups, but I'd be more interested in joining a group based on interests, like software development (I do work for a software company), or maybe tabletop gaming. I don't care what race people are, but what their interests are like. Of course, I'm a white guy, so there wouldn't be a white guy group (nor would I want to see one). And for what it's worth, there are a lot of immigrants at this company, so whites are a minority among mostly Indians and Chinese, etc.
- jlawson 8y ago
  Well I noted belief; as an atheist I don't get to go to church groups. Which leaves interest groups on Facebook... that's okay but talking about board games or model trains isn't really the same as talking about who you are and how you exist in the world as a person.
scarejunba 8y ago
Much of the value is shared challenges. For many other ethnic groups this is because it coincides with the fact that they're actually foreigners. If you're having trouble having a place where you can talk about the challenges you have and you feel, for whatever reason, uncomfortable to call it a "white people's group", perhaps try forming it functionally? So, for instance, If you have trouble finding mentorship, a Peer Guidance Group may help? I don't actually know here. Just suggesting in case it helps.
- jlawson 8y ago
  A lot of these ERGs link together peoples with little cultural connection. Black -> AA as well as African immigrants Asian -> Japanese, old migrant Chinese, new communist-raised Chinese, Indonesian The religious ones make more sense; at least religions are belief systems.
wtf1234 8y ago
The average software company is already a white men club. Even more so finance companies.
- tdfx 8y ago
  I'm not sure where you've worked or where you went to school, but as a white person I've infrequently been in the racial majority of my computer science classes or corporate software engineering teams. East Asia and Indian subcontinent has been far better represented than white people, especially at the larger corporations.
Buldak 8y ago
Am I reading this right, you think a plausible reason for suicide among whites is that they're not allowed to form white affinity groups?
- tdfx 8y ago
  I think OP was saying that preventing white affinity groups decreases the availability of affinity groups to white people, which can cause an increase in feelings of loneliness and thereby contribute to things like suicide that result from feelings of loneliness.
amalcon 8y ago
At my employer, people who are not members of the class associated with an ERG are still allowed to join, provided that they are supportive. Is this not the case elsewhere?
vharuck 8y ago
"White" is so generic it's meaningless. It only helps when using skin tone to decide things, which is usually bad. There is no "white culture," but there is Irish, German, British, etc. I doubt anyone would bat an eye if you started a group focused on a European ethnicity.

thex10 8y ago

My (black) spouse has talked with me about their thorough support of this idea. They think there ought to be white student unions, white history month, white studies courses, etc. I wouldn't mind seeing this happen, if white folks could do it without hate or exclusion of others (which probably requires acknowledging and destroying white supremacy).

pasabagi 8y ago
I think the problem is, the conventional depiction of many events is already 'white'. I had no idea that there were large numbers of African and Indian soldiers on the western front, for instance, until quite recently.
- jlawson 8y ago
  If you mean WW1, there weren't. There were three Africans (musicians in the German army). Yes, exactly three. Not four or five. Indians were involved as part of British forces, but numbered well under 1% of men deployed. I wouldn't take anything away from them (good men), but it's inaccurate to say they were significantly represented by numbers. You need to be careful about people (in this case video game developers) lying to you about history to uphold a moralistic narrative. The facts of history are not politically correct, they are actually correct (by definition), and this is a big difference. See also: Absurd BBC depictions of Roman-era Britain where there are random black characters all throughout the society at every level of power and influence. A pure lie. Basically what you get from media these days (95% progressive by survey) is comparable to what you'd get if the media was 95% evangelical Christians, but in another direction. Just keep the source in context.
  - pasabagi 8y ago
    Is the wikipedia article wrong? The numbers are a little unclear, but it suggest that 1.3 million Indian men volunteered for the British army in WW1, with 75,000 or so dying in the process. That's about a tenth of the casualties, so I'd assume the Indians were a similar proportion of active-duty soldiers. There was also a pretty nasty war in East Africa, although the details are hazy in my mind. I'm also finding about 72,000 colonial casualties on the French side - which is a smaller proportion, given the colossal numbers the French fielded, but still substantial. The German army is a very misleading case regardless, since they were pretty much the only power without significant non-white minorities or colonies, aside from perhaps Austro-Hungary. I'm also unsure about to what extent Romans were black. Obviously, about half their traditional dominion was in Africa, so you'd expect some part of them to be black - and there are certainly many archaeological remains suggesting so, even as far north as England. I also don't know if having black characters is any less true to history than having white characters, since Roman Romans were distinctly brownish, and very short to boot.

40acres 8y ago

I've found that even if an ERG was created around a particular identity that does not mean that you have to have that identity to be welcome, for instance -- everyone looks forward to when the Indian ERG throws a party because the food is amazing, everyone is invited and the event schedule is public. Also, ERGs are simply a more formal organization, in my company official ERGs some receive funding to support events. At a previous work campus we set up regular basketball and volleyball games after work using a simple mailing list and a share point like internal forum system. I've seen groups where the focus is those who identify as "makers" and also a group for drone hobbyists. You can think of these groups as "special interest groups" to use a political term, but most of these groups are not exclusive.. for instance, you can join the NAACP regardless of race.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Maybe something like this is why whites commit suicide so much more than blacks in America Whites officially commit suicide more than blacks because blacks who are even slightly inclined to self-destruction find it all to easy to get into situations that produce death by means that won't officially be viewed as suicide. > Blacks suffer in many ways but at least they're allowed to make a community just about themselves Whites can, and do, make communities just about themselves. Now, it's true that the ones that aren't purely and nakedly about virulent racism usually do it about some more specific subset of Whiteness (like a particular national/ethnic identity like Italian or Irish, etc.), probably because Whiteness as such (in America, at least) is not a particularly strong shared experience and identity (some other racial identities, particularly Black identity, are, but largely as a consequence of extended subjugation by the broader society which deliberately destroyed other identities in the group and produced a new common shared experience.)

deleted 8y ago
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hpbd 8y ago
>Whites officially commit suicide more than blacks because blacks who are even slightly inclined to self-destruction find it all to easy to get into situations that produce death by means that won't officially be viewed as suicide. We all know what you're implying but you're making that statistic up.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > We all know what you're implying Implying? I was being explicit, if general because I was referring to a broad class of phenomenon. If you think I was using code for something narrowly specific, you are mistaken. > but you're making that statistic up. I'm not presenting a statistic, made up or not.
  - 8y ago

ConceptJunkie 8y ago

Perhaps, but I belong to groups based on my interests which are completely orthogonal to race: my Church, various interest groups on Facebook, etc. I work at a small company (c. 600 people), so it isn't big enough to have these kinds of groups, but I'd be more interested in joining a group based on interests, like software development (I do work for a software company), or maybe tabletop gaming. I don't care what race people are, but what their interests are like. Of course, I'm a white guy, so there wouldn't be a white guy group (nor would I want to see one). And for what it's worth, there are a lot of immigrants at this company, so whites are a minority among mostly Indians and Chinese, etc.

jlawson 8y ago
Well I noted belief; as an atheist I don't get to go to church groups. Which leaves interest groups on Facebook... that's okay but talking about board games or model trains isn't really the same as talking about who you are and how you exist in the world as a person.

scarejunba 8y ago

Much of the value is shared challenges. For many other ethnic groups this is because it coincides with the fact that they're actually foreigners. If you're having trouble having a place where you can talk about the challenges you have and you feel, for whatever reason, uncomfortable to call it a "white people's group", perhaps try forming it functionally? So, for instance, If you have trouble finding mentorship, a Peer Guidance Group may help? I don't actually know here. Just suggesting in case it helps.

jlawson 8y ago
A lot of these ERGs link together peoples with little cultural connection. Black -> AA as well as African immigrants Asian -> Japanese, old migrant Chinese, new communist-raised Chinese, Indonesian The religious ones make more sense; at least religions are belief systems.

wtf1234 8y ago

The average software company is already a white men club. Even more so finance companies.

tdfx 8y ago
I'm not sure where you've worked or where you went to school, but as a white person I've infrequently been in the racial majority of my computer science classes or corporate software engineering teams. East Asia and Indian subcontinent has been far better represented than white people, especially at the larger corporations.

Buldak 8y ago

Am I reading this right, you think a plausible reason for suicide among whites is that they're not allowed to form white affinity groups?

tdfx 8y ago
I think OP was saying that preventing white affinity groups decreases the availability of affinity groups to white people, which can cause an increase in feelings of loneliness and thereby contribute to things like suicide that result from feelings of loneliness.

amalcon 8y ago

At my employer, people who are not members of the class associated with an ERG are still allowed to join, provided that they are supportive. Is this not the case elsewhere?

vharuck 8y ago

"White" is so generic it's meaningless. It only helps when using skin tone to decide things, which is usually bad. There is no "white culture," but there is Irish, German, British, etc. I doubt anyone would bat an eye if you started a group focused on a European ethnicity.