7 ms·

This is a bit of an aside, but... What I think is getting obscured in all of the overheated rhetoric about race is the fact that all humans want a tribe. We wa

• mhoad 6y ago
  I don't know if this is an ungenerous reading of what you are saying or not but that sounded vaguely like racism is a fact of life and we should just deal with it. Am I misreading you on that? If not, what kind of approaches do you think would be more appropriate?
  • ck425 6y ago
    I think he's saying that discrimination in many forms is often - but not always - a side effect of evolutionary tribal tendencies and that if we don't take that into account when trying to reduce discrimination our efforts won't be successful. To me that sounds like realistic, if also extremely depressing, point. I'm optimistic though. We've been successfully living in larger and larger cultures throughout history and have overcome this difficulty many times.
    • mhoad 6y ago
      I want to be clear, I wasn't debating there was some truth to the idea that racism is that thing that you can tie to an evolutionary biological level around a fear of outsiders. But I guess it is the second part that you touched on here as well. When you say take that into account.. how specifically? Like when someone performs a racist act, how should we respond in a modern society?
      • ck425 6y ago
        It's a tough question and I don't know the answer. I think the current trend of aggressively calling out micro-agressions is counter productive. In cases where there was no negative intent, it's easy to alienate the person who made the faux pas by implying or outright telling them they are racist. That makes them less likely to change behaviour in future. We need to take intent into account and response with education over policing when possible.
      • alexashka 6y ago
        > Like when someone performs a racist act, how should we respond in a modern society? You'd first have to define what a racist act is and who gets to decide that it is so. We have a working system for these matters - legislative and judicial branches of government.
        • mhoad 6y ago
          I feel like you're trying to look at this from a very abstract place where it is impossible to come to some all encompassing grand unifying theory and it feels like without that we shouldn't act until we have an answer to that question. I'm asking a question that says in spite of not having a perfect answer when you are in a situation and you watch a friend do a racist act, what response if any do you think is appropriate? What if it's not a single act that might be considered racist but a whole string of them? Do you think there is any kind of moral or social obligation to do anything or is ignoring it ok?
          • deleted 6y ago
            [deleted]
          • alexashka 6y ago
            I personally haven't witnessed a single racist act in the 20+ years that I've lived in Toronto, a very diverse, multi-cultural city. Which leads me to believe that my definition of a racist act, is different from yours. Please provide your definition.
      • PeterisP 6y ago
  • hogFeast 6y ago
    So you are saying something that has existed throughout all periods of time, in every society isn't a fact of life? Also, speaking about racism particularly is something that makes very little sense historically. Racism has largely not been a problem because most societies weren't (and still aren't) multi-racial. The biggest issue has been religion and, more recently, class. Both of these distinctions are arbitrary and should highlight that discrimination, not racism, is the problem and that is a fact of life. You will get discriminated against if you are disabled, if you have a Southern accent, if you are too short, if you are too tall, if you are too fat, if you aren't fat enough, etc. On and on forever. This is constant, it is human nature. Btw, it is also worth saying that we largely have approaches that are effective. The only thing that history is really clear about is that constantly going over the past, seeking revenge/retribution, etc. doesn't work (many countries have gone down this route with power-sharing agreements due to religious/tribal conflict, it doesn't work). Equality means equality for all. Everyone is different. We all have to live with that. When you start from the basis that some people have an advantage/disadvantage because of their identity, the only way that ends is segregation and power-sharing agreements (usually after some period of terrorism/internal civil conflict). Everyone benefits from fairness, it isn't a race/religious/class issue.
• amcoastal 6y ago
  I don't see these two ideas as mutually exclusive. While putting aside our tribal nature seems unlikely, it seems realistic to think we could do something that would let most people stop considering race when deciding which "tribe" someone may belong to. You see this difference as well, which is why you based your example of reasonable tribal behavior on someone's actions/experiences rather than their skin color. It make sense to have tribal affiliations with other people that speak the same language as you do, it doesn't make sense to exclude someone from your tribe just because their skin is a different color.
  • whiddershins 6y ago
    So, off the top of my head two other kinds of in-group identity that have worked in the past are nationalism and religion. It seems those ideas aren’t so in favor right now, so how do we construct a sense of belonging that is truly positive?
    • mhoad 6y ago
      Humanism sounds pretty good to me...
    • dx87 6y ago
      I think something that takes a global effort, like space exploration or switching over to renewable energy, would get everyone working towards a common goal.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• dx87 6y ago
  I feel the same way. I had a coworker who believed that racism was a personal choice, like stealing, and that you could eliminate it by creating harsher laws to punish people who did or said anything racist.
  • okaythen 6y ago
    Can you explain how racism isn't a personal choice?
    • dx87 6y ago
      People are tribal about anything they identify with, whether it's their race, local sports team, country of birth, etc. It's not okay to be racist, but it's also not something you can legislate away. You may as well try to outlaw getting angry at people, it'll be just as effective.
      • 082349872349872 6y ago
        There may not be laws[1] about getting angry, but there are laws about assault, let alone battery. [1] here referring to legal code, not social code.
      • catalogia 6y ago
        Anger is a choice, at least to a limited extent. Managing ones emotions is a skill that can be honed with practice, if you're willing to make the effort. I don't say this to nitpick your point. I just think it's worth saying since some people may not realize they have a choice.
        • cal5k 6y ago
          It's not a choice at all. You don't choose to feel angry, but you can choose how you respond to it (often with great difficulty). Similarly, I have never seen evidence to suggest that the strong desire to associate with people like you (on one of many dimensions) can be eliminated. You do, however, get to decide how to act on that desire - likely to perpetually imperfect results as is the case with anger. I've let anger get the best of me before, and I'm sure I've judged people based on stereotypes despite my best intentions not to.
• okaythen 6y ago
  Sorry that's ridiculous, if your in group affiliation excludes others its a huge problem with your group. Equating it to a language is also awful being exclusive on the grounds of sexuality, race and gender is a deliberate choice that people make. If your culture is lacking in diversity seek it out you'll never know what problems you can solve by adding to your view point.
• 082349872349872 6y ago
  In Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle a karass describes the sort of tribe people are looking for. Unfortunately melanin content is not a karass, but instead a granfalloon. "La francophonie" is another granfalloon. But you have hit upon an easy way to distinguish immigrants from expats: immigrants hang out with people who have similar interests, while expats hang out with each other.
  • jcims 6y ago
    >granfalloon Or in current parlance, 'community'. An assigned identity based on shared property across the set.
• gshdg 6y ago
  This is totally irrelevant to the article. The article is about assumptions people make about a black programmer because he's a programmer and because he's black, and about how disappointingly rare black programmers are. Why are we not having a discussion about THAT?
• andreygrehov 6y ago
  Here is an interesting observation. If we take a look at how different nations are distributed across big cities, we can see that many neighborhoods are race specific. A lot of cities have chinese, jewish, russian, mexican, etc. neighborhoods, meaning that people _naturally_ want to live with _similar_ people. What's more important, it happens organically. It's not like some organization or government forces people to move there. There are no incentives, no financial benefits. Nothing. People are free to live anywhere they want, but they still create those communities and prefer to live among their own kind. From this specific observation, it seems like racism is more like a biological thing, the product of evolution.
  • davidgay 6y ago
    > _naturally_ want to live with _similar_ people You are forgetting that those kinds of neighborhoods have developed in part because other people have taken mild-to-extreme steps to prevent "those" people from living with them. Known steps in the US include at the very least: - rules preventing "those" people from living in some places - mild-to-extreme actions against "those" people when they move in - people leaving when too many of "those" people move in I.e., "People are free to live anywhere they want" is completely wrong, even in living memory.
    • zosima 6y ago
      So all of these groups choose to live in separate neighborhoods, because they all are racist to each other? Not because they want to be around people that are similar to themselves? And the fact that the same pattern shows up basically everywhere. In Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and to some extent South America, does not change your perception?
      • watwut 6y ago
        Is there something about European or Asian or American history that would make it reasonable to assume that racism was not factor shaping societies? Europe had pogroms before it had WWII. United States were racially legally segregated long after WWII. The Asian history does not lack racism either.
• cowboysauce 6y ago
  In the United States, there were periods of time where Irish and Italian people were discriminated against. Yet today, the idea that an Irish people is part of the out-group and wouldn't fit in a workplace is completely out-dated. The Rwandan genocide was Hutus killing Tutsis, yet the distinction between the two was very arbitrary and in a lot of cases boiled down to "the Belgians liked your ancestors more so declared you to be Tutsis". Nazi Germany was allied with Japan despite all their racial purity rhetoric and some Jews were designated as "honorary Aryans". White supremacists today will gladly talk about the portion of white people who are "race traitors" and deserve to die. Humans might have a natural tendency to favor those in their "own group", but exactly what that means is completely arbitrary.
  • 082349872349872 6y ago
    Emacs or vi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilliput_and_Blefuscu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilliput_and_Blefuscu > The novel further describes an intra-Lilliputian quarrel over the practice of breaking eggs. Traditionally, Lilliputians broke boiled eggs on the larger end; a few generations ago, an Emperor of Lilliput, the Present Emperor's great-grandfather, had decreed that all eggs be broken on the smaller end after his son cut himself breaking the egg on the larger end. The differences between Big-Endians (those who broke their eggs at the larger end) and Little-Endians had given rise to "six rebellions ... wherein one Emperor lost his life, and another his crown".
    • catalogia 6y ago
      Ironic that the great unifying software is called 'evil.'
    • josephcsible 6y ago
      TIL that's where the word for byte ordering came from.
  • komali2 6y ago
    Correct. So let's work towards squashing racism every time it crops up. We had a Catholic president, remember when that was a huge deal? Now nobody would bat an eye. Let's continue this for women, POC, LGBT, and so on. It's an ongoing battle.
• SuoDuanDao 6y ago
  I feel like we were doing fairly well moving towards a single 'human tribe' for the first part of my life, and that 'Racist' was such a powerful label because it was tantamount to putting the human tribe secondary to some sub-group. I'm not sure how or why, but it feels as though a large swathe of the intellectual class betrayed the project by changing the definition of racism from something an individual did, and could thereby be considered a traitor to the 'human' tribe, to something one could be guilty of merely by benefiting from when someone else betrayed the human tribe. If one person is a racist, everyone he favours is also guilty of racism under the new definition. No tribe could hold together under such conditions.
  • cal5k 6y ago
    Well-said. That's why I believe it will lead to a backlash if left unchecked. History suggests that forcing people to suddenly view themselves in stark racial terms is a recipe for disaster.
  • komali2 6y ago
    > to something one could be guilty of merely by benefiting from when someone else betrayed the human tribe. You may not be aware but this is a common alt-right strawman argument opposed to Black Lives Matter. The idea that all white people are vulnerable of being accused of racism simply because of their privilege. It's incorrect, and a strawman of the actual position, which is that silence aids the status quo. "There comes a time when silence is betrayal." ""First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;"
    • cal5k 6y ago
      > You may not be aware but this is a common alt-right strawman argument opposed to Black Lives Matter. Just argue the point. This kind of insidious smear-by-association is what I despise so much about the current state of public discourse.
• geofft 6y ago
  I think you have a point, but I think your point is about out-group exclusion more than in-group affiliation. Otherwise we'd just affiliate with "humankind." Your feeling of obligation to learn French, I think, is about not wanting to be seen as an outsider, not wanting to be judged for your poor command of the language, etc., more than the positive aspect of fitting in. They're two sides of the same coin, yes, but it determines a bit where you end. You don't have to be immersed in French culture to avoid funny looks at stores, but you do have to be able to order food without people noticing anything strange. And you're not affiliating with the expats because you inherently want to define yourself as one, but because they won't judge you. And so I think responding to the truth of human desire for affiliation by saying "Everyone needs an out-group" is bound to end poorly. Historically, the expansion of certain in-groups (e.g., "white" in the US encompassing the Irish, Italians, and for the most part light-skinned Jews, Arabs, etc.) has been tied to more firmly defining an out-group or responding to the presence of a new out-group. I think we need to figure out how to make people comfortable with not having an out-group. (And, to the article itself, we very much need people to make a conscious effort to get over their desires for in-groups or distaste for out-groups when making hiring or investment decisions.)
• snthd 6y ago
  France might be a bad example. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/19/17590302/trevor-noah-france-french-ambassador-araud-world-cup https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/19/17590302/t...