7 ms·

The only reasonable way to fix an institution is to get the majority of its members to want change.

by zwkrt 6y ago

ethanbond 6y ago
And the strategy is to do that by... outing and destroying people who are demonstrably not racist? Those of us who want real change here should have a strong interest in preventing the stories described in the article. You're right that we need people to want to change, and I'm afraid that these incidents give more ammunition to racists than they galvanize anti-racists. They certainly don't help to convince anyone in the middle to join our side.
- rectang 6y ago
  Majority backlash, grievance and resentment is inevitable. Encouraging that sense of grievance by weighting one majority life over countless minority lives is counterproductive. Instead, keep perspective by maintaining a sense of proportion of the aggregate injustice. One guy getting fired is a drop in the bucket.
  - ethanbond 6y ago
    As a sort of “net suffering absolutist,” I find that to be somewhat ethically compelling (though many won’t). As someone who wants to see these problems fixed - permanently - I’m just not sure that this approach gets us closer. If it’s a drop in the bucket that discourages a large number of people from throwing their weight behind the solutions offered, then it’s no longer a drop in the bucket.
  - isoskeles 6y ago
    > One guy getting fired is a drop in the bucket. Sure, until it's you.
  - btilly 6y ago
    The attitude that "the wrongs done to me justify wrongs done to someone else" is exactly how every war and racial conflict has gone in the past. Even though momentum is currently on the side that you think is right, the precedent that is being set WILL come back to haunt you. The way to resolve and defuse conflicts is to treat others better than they deserve to be treated. This is also more effective politically. See the second example in the article where research indicated that peaceful protests promoted by MLK were more effective than race riots later. This result should not be a surprise. MLK promoted peaceful protests exactly on the theory that they would be more effective, based among other things on the experience of Ghandhi in India. Those lessons were copied a generation later and played a critical part in bringing down the Iron Curtain. Violence begets violence. Forgiveness begets peace. Going out of your way to treat people with fairness is not just the right thing to do, it is also more effective.
  - kofejnik 6y ago
    > One guy getting fired is a drop in the bucket. If you're willing to ruin innocent lives to further your cause, then I cannot comprehend how it makes you morally superior to _them_ (whoever _they_ might be) Are you keeping the score somewhere? Something like: "Today, we got 11 majority people fired for petty reasons, but it's Ok as it will improve the lives of 18 minority people"
    - rectang 6y ago
      > If you're willing to ruin innocent lives to further your cause, No, I am not "willing to ruin innocent lives". I regard these cases as deplorable but inevitable statistical anomalies being highlighted inappropriately. > Are you keeping the score somewhere? I suppose that in a broad sense, I am. I don't believe that innocent people are being unjustly ruined as racists for no reason en masse. I think there's a handful of these cases. In contrast, consider the ridiculous incarceration rates for Black Americans: 1 in 3 Black men will spend time behind bars in their lifetimes, while the rate for all US men is 1 in 17. That's millions of lives ruined. So I will get worked up for each one of these cases in isolation. But I'm not going to allocate my outrage disproportionately to the tiny minority while ignoring the vast majority.
      - kofejnik 6y ago
        > I regard these cases as deplorable but inevitable in other words, acceptable casualties in the war you're waging. nice.
        rectang 6y ago
        A "war", hmm. No, I don't see it as a "war". It's not a zero-sum conflict. When the bonds of ethnic loyalty are weakened and the bonds of cosmopolitan amity are strengthened, we all win, and our lives are all enriched. As for "acceptable casualties": I certainly would not go along with such injustices as the three anecdotes described in the article if they were playing out before me. Outside of my own limited sphere of influence, I am not cursed with the responsibility of making judgment calls as to what is "acceptable" — yet I can still aspire to weigh the suffering of all parties.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- scarface74 6y ago
  They don’t need ammunition. They will never see Black people as the “Model Minority”.
- btilly 6y ago
  And the strategy is to do that by... outing and destroying people who are demonstrably not racist? Outing and destroying people who are not racist makes examples of them. Examples that are to be hoped to make people too afraid to speak out against the agenda. As http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html points out, this strategy is used by groups that believe that they have power..but only barely. The problem is that if they prove to have less power than they think, the resulting backlash hurts them. Mark my words. That kind of backlash is part of what allowed Trump to get elected the first time. And if conflict intensifies, it will help his prospects of getting re-elected. And this is not just any election year. 2020 is census year - the state legislatures elected this year will redraw Congressional districts. We have been suffering for the last 10 years because the 2010 elections were dominated by opponents of Barack Obama and their districts favor Republicans. Do we really want the 2020s to be similarly suffering the fallout against overreach by the BLM movement?
  - rectang 6y ago
    > Outing and destroying people who are not racist makes examples of them. Examples that are to be hoped to make people too afraid to speak out against the agenda. There will always be such examples. Eradicating them entirely is a statistical impossibility. No social movement is perfect. No matter how much effort you put into perfecting it, the opposition will find fault with it.
    - free_rms 6y ago
      But we're not talking about the opposition. We're talking about people who are ON YOUR SIDE but committed some trivial heresy, and getting burned at the stake for it. Does that sound like a winning movement formula to you?
      - rectang 6y ago
        I don't believe that a morality-based movement will win the day, no. After a brief blip, the police will retrench and go back to being untouchable just as they have for many decades. Fighting that I think is a Sisyphean (but worthwhile) effort because people are by-and-large not persuadable when their interests as members of the privileged majority are at stake. If there is change, it will arrive because of demographic trends (as in California). And if it does, all the panic in this thread about ruining people's lives will come to nothing because having somebody fired unjustly was never in anyone's interest. It was just an isolated edge case being blown out of proportion.
- cantsay20june27 6y ago
  In 2020, how could you show that someone was "demonstrably not racist"? Arguing that a particular person (especially oneself) is not racist is an activity that shows racism.
scarface74 6y ago
That was tried with peacefully taking a knee. He was ignored and called a “son of a bitch” by the President. Conservatives always bring up the “The Three Boxes of Liberty”. Minorities took their advice - it’s time for the third box.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Soap, ballot, jury, ammo. The third box is jury.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    I’ve seen three, four and five boxes.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  > "Minorities took their advice - it’s time for the third box." One minority has. Don't presume that the rest of the minorities are with them; progressives have made it clear that they are no friends of theirs. Some recent examples are https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23407254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23407254 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23652659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23652659 .
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Bullet box === tear shit up and get noticed. Yes I realize that Clinton and Biden were the architects of the “War on Crime” in the 90s - AKA “The War on Black Folks” along with profiling during stop and frisk.

The only reasonable way to fix an institution is to get the majority of its members to want change.

by zwkrt 6y ago

The only reasonable way to fix an institution is to get the majority of its members to want change.

And the strategy is to do that by... outing and destroying people who are demonstrably not racist? Those of us who want real change here should have a strong interest in preventing the stories described in the article. You're right that we need people to want to change, and I'm afraid that these incidents give more ammunition to racists than they galvanize anti-racists. They certainly don't help to convince anyone in the middle to join our side.

rectang 6y ago
Majority backlash, grievance and resentment is inevitable. Encouraging that sense of grievance by weighting one majority life over countless minority lives is counterproductive. Instead, keep perspective by maintaining a sense of proportion of the aggregate injustice. One guy getting fired is a drop in the bucket.
- ethanbond 6y ago
  As a sort of “net suffering absolutist,” I find that to be somewhat ethically compelling (though many won’t). As someone who wants to see these problems fixed - permanently - I’m just not sure that this approach gets us closer. If it’s a drop in the bucket that discourages a large number of people from throwing their weight behind the solutions offered, then it’s no longer a drop in the bucket.
- isoskeles 6y ago
  > One guy getting fired is a drop in the bucket. Sure, until it's you.
- btilly 6y ago
  The attitude that "the wrongs done to me justify wrongs done to someone else" is exactly how every war and racial conflict has gone in the past. Even though momentum is currently on the side that you think is right, the precedent that is being set WILL come back to haunt you. The way to resolve and defuse conflicts is to treat others better than they deserve to be treated. This is also more effective politically. See the second example in the article where research indicated that peaceful protests promoted by MLK were more effective than race riots later. This result should not be a surprise. MLK promoted peaceful protests exactly on the theory that they would be more effective, based among other things on the experience of Ghandhi in India. Those lessons were copied a generation later and played a critical part in bringing down the Iron Curtain. Violence begets violence. Forgiveness begets peace. Going out of your way to treat people with fairness is not just the right thing to do, it is also more effective.
- kofejnik 6y ago
  > One guy getting fired is a drop in the bucket. If you're willing to ruin innocent lives to further your cause, then I cannot comprehend how it makes you morally superior to _them_ (whoever _they_ might be) Are you keeping the score somewhere? Something like: "Today, we got 11 majority people fired for petty reasons, but it's Ok as it will improve the lives of 18 minority people"
  - rectang 6y ago
    > If you're willing to ruin innocent lives to further your cause, No, I am not "willing to ruin innocent lives". I regard these cases as deplorable but inevitable statistical anomalies being highlighted inappropriately. > Are you keeping the score somewhere? I suppose that in a broad sense, I am. I don't believe that innocent people are being unjustly ruined as racists for no reason en masse. I think there's a handful of these cases. In contrast, consider the ridiculous incarceration rates for Black Americans: 1 in 3 Black men will spend time behind bars in their lifetimes, while the rate for all US men is 1 in 17. That's millions of lives ruined. So I will get worked up for each one of these cases in isolation. But I'm not going to allocate my outrage disproportionately to the tiny minority while ignoring the vast majority.
    - kofejnik 6y ago
      > I regard these cases as deplorable but inevitable in other words, acceptable casualties in the war you're waging. nice.
      - rectang 6y ago
        A "war", hmm. No, I don't see it as a "war". It's not a zero-sum conflict. When the bonds of ethnic loyalty are weakened and the bonds of cosmopolitan amity are strengthened, we all win, and our lives are all enriched. As for "acceptable casualties": I certainly would not go along with such injustices as the three anecdotes described in the article if they were playing out before me. Outside of my own limited sphere of influence, I am not cursed with the responsibility of making judgment calls as to what is "acceptable" — yet I can still aspire to weigh the suffering of all parties.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
scarface74 6y ago
They don’t need ammunition. They will never see Black people as the “Model Minority”.
btilly 6y ago
And the strategy is to do that by... outing and destroying people who are demonstrably not racist? Outing and destroying people who are not racist makes examples of them. Examples that are to be hoped to make people too afraid to speak out against the agenda. As http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html points out, this strategy is used by groups that believe that they have power..but only barely. The problem is that if they prove to have less power than they think, the resulting backlash hurts them. Mark my words. That kind of backlash is part of what allowed Trump to get elected the first time. And if conflict intensifies, it will help his prospects of getting re-elected. And this is not just any election year. 2020 is census year - the state legislatures elected this year will redraw Congressional districts. We have been suffering for the last 10 years because the 2010 elections were dominated by opponents of Barack Obama and their districts favor Republicans. Do we really want the 2020s to be similarly suffering the fallout against overreach by the BLM movement?
- rectang 6y ago
  > Outing and destroying people who are not racist makes examples of them. Examples that are to be hoped to make people too afraid to speak out against the agenda. There will always be such examples. Eradicating them entirely is a statistical impossibility. No social movement is perfect. No matter how much effort you put into perfecting it, the opposition will find fault with it.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    But we're not talking about the opposition. We're talking about people who are ON YOUR SIDE but committed some trivial heresy, and getting burned at the stake for it. Does that sound like a winning movement formula to you?
    - rectang 6y ago
      I don't believe that a morality-based movement will win the day, no. After a brief blip, the police will retrench and go back to being untouchable just as they have for many decades. Fighting that I think is a Sisyphean (but worthwhile) effort because people are by-and-large not persuadable when their interests as members of the privileged majority are at stake. If there is change, it will arrive because of demographic trends (as in California). And if it does, all the panic in this thread about ruining people's lives will come to nothing because having somebody fired unjustly was never in anyone's interest. It was just an isolated edge case being blown out of proportion.
cantsay20june27 6y ago
In 2020, how could you show that someone was "demonstrably not racist"? Arguing that a particular person (especially oneself) is not racist is an activity that shows racism.

scarface74 6y ago

That was tried with peacefully taking a knee. He was ignored and called a “son of a bitch” by the President. Conservatives always bring up the “The Three Boxes of Liberty”. Minorities took their advice - it’s time for the third box.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Soap, ballot, jury, ammo. The third box is jury.
- scarface74 6y ago
  I’ve seen three, four and five boxes.
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "Minorities took their advice - it’s time for the third box." One minority has. Don't presume that the rest of the minorities are with them; progressives have made it clear that they are no friends of theirs. Some recent examples are https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23407254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23407254 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23652659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23652659 .
- scarface74 6y ago
  Bullet box === tear shit up and get noticed. Yes I realize that Clinton and Biden were the architects of the “War on Crime” in the 90s - AKA “The War on Black Folks” along with profiling during stop and frisk.