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Isn't that horribly patronizing? I'd feel offended if someone treated me with kid gloves based on my skin color.

komali2 6y ago
Try asking some POC friends or colleagues! Get their perspective. Another user mentioned that it feels like kneeling on the ground and using "baby talk." That's not what's being said here. It's simply taking a moment to observe yourself and other colleagues potentially engaging in unconscious (or even conscious - you may have an avowed racist hiding it very well on the team!) bias. This is being an ally. It's not patronizing. The reality is that systemic racism against POC in America is real. Ignoring that only aids the status quo.
- numpad0 6y ago
  > POC It’s not like “white” people aren’t colored
  - komali2 6y ago
    POC means people of color means non white. You taking the anthropologic perspective isn't scientifically incorrect - race doesn't actually exist, after all, in any meaningful way. However it is sociologically incorrect to call white people "colored."
    - numpad0 6y ago
      BLM has been creeping towards Asia where I am, and some of those activists are absurdly trying to redefine some Asian views of aesthetics as White admirations that the noble White must responsibly educate to eliminate. To me these ungrounded imaginations are clearly stemming from the idea that some people are objectively not colored and others are colored. I’ve never come across this “POC” term but if it’s not racist I don’t know what racism means by dictionary.
      - bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
        It's relatively new. If it's any consolation, it probably won't last.
      - komali2 6y ago
        Lol. The classic "no YOU'RE racist for pointing out race exists!" Deny that black Americans are terrorized by cops. Pretend that people of color is a non concept all you want. It won't change reality. You are aiding a racist status quo when you fight against ally causes like BLM.
        hardlianotion 6y ago
        The situation we are living in at the moment is not a dichotomy.
        memling 6y ago
        it seems to me a rather dangerous precedent to argue that one must ally with blm. after all if you are not a social conservative you are perpetuating an immoral status quo. of course one might work to end qualified immunity for example or to equalize the education and economic gaps without being a Marxist. let's not confuse ends and means.
        komali2 6y ago
        Denying the existence of POC and their oppressed status in America is more than just "not supporting BLM," it's a denial of the foundation of their reason for existing.
        memling 6y ago
        > Denying the existence of POC and their oppressed status in America is more than just "not supporting BLM," it's a denial of the foundation of their reason for existing. Acknowledging the personhood of people of color is not synonymous with supporting BLM. One might broadly support the ends of BLM while being uncomfortable with the means.
    - medee 6y ago
      Your statement is like claiming there is no scientific basis for family. Two people of the same race are more genetically related than half-siblings born to the same father and mothers of different races. The categories we call "race" are genetic clusters of populations who developed in different regions/environments. It's the level of taxonomy below species and above one's family. Overlap between these clusters does not invalidate them any more than the existence of purple invalidates our ability to describe something as "red" or "blue".
      - ben_w 6y ago
        The exact point is that what is called “race” is a sociological sense isn’t based on meaningful generic clusters — saying someone’s (genetic cluster) race has a 1:1 mapping to skin colour is like saying their (genetic cluster) race has a 1:1 mapping to their hair colour.
        medee 6y ago
        Race isn't skin color, though [1]. Self-identified race maps to distinct genetic clusters with >99.8% accuracy [2]. 1: https://i.imgur.com/0uyOA.jpg https://i.imgur.com/0uyOA.jpg 2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15625622 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15625622
        numpad0 6y ago
        From my eyes you guys differentiate on skin colors on offensive and use diversity card on defensive to further and further ingrain the notion that “others” has weirdly colored skins. If all of western world would cut the BS and use something like “white asian non-christian” which is what “yellow” stands for in actuality, I can tolerate those racial elitism a bit better. One might be tempted to say it’s not about skin tones, but people taught in white/black/yellow system tries to fit surface albedo of actual human beings to those visual wavelength responses out of cognitive dissonance, through pigmenting, cinematographic techniques or other technological means, or by verbally abusing creators, artists, races, cultures so I strongly believe accurate visual representations in the context of pure racism matters if it’s not going to completely entirely permanently disappear by tomorrow morning. You guys hate it when we don’t look #FFFF00, like for real. That happens and that’s insulting.
  - numpad0 6y ago
    This came up to my feed elsewhere so I’ll leave it here. I don’t care if particular skin colors are similar or dis-similar from one another, but I naturally don’t value actively agreeing with supremacists. > East Asians were almost always called white, particularly during the period of first modern contact in the 16th century. And on a number of occasions, even more revealingly, the people were termed “as white as we are”. (...) > But by the 17th century, the Chinese and Japanese were “darkening” in published texts, gradually losing their erstwhile whiteness when it became clear they would remain unwilling to participate in European systems of trade, religion, and international relations. > Calling them white, in other words, was not based on simple perception either and had less to do with pigmentation than their presumed levels of civilisation, culture, literacy, and obedience (particularly if they should become Christianised). [0]: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2184754/chinese-were-white-until-white-men-called-them-yellow https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2184754/chine...
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Every POC I know thinks that these kinds of efforts are often, although not always, patronizing. (In some cases even beyond patronizing; I've heard a few people say it's actively hurting their career, because they spend so much time being voluntold into diversity discussions that it cuts into their bandwidth for their real job.)
  - loopz 6y ago
    Then look at it as opportunity.
  - komali2 6y ago
    If it's patronizing, it's a shitty diversity and inclusion program. Your conversations are the opposite of the ones I've had.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      I agree, and I’m absolutely in favor of good diversity programs. It just seems to me that the attitude of “don’t strive to be race blind, always keep yourself aware” consistently leads to bad programs. By far the most bigoted thing I’ve heard at work was in a diversity seminar, where the instructor (a white man) told me (a Hispanic man) that we must make sure to call on Latinas in meetings because they’re not comfortable speaking up for themselves.
      - komali2 6y ago
        That does sound frustrating. That does sound like a shitty D&I program. That is something worth speaking against, I believe. Isn't there some way to act as an ally to a minority population that doesn't involve patronizing?
        SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        Absolutely. I don't tremendously like the framing of "allyship", but there are lots of good diversity-promoting measures that companies should take - one example, we're working on pushing my current company to do an AfroTech sponsorship.
toochini 6y ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gFP4dJHJXoI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gFP4dJHJXoI Couldn’t find the whole thing, but I agree it seems constantly talking about race leads to more racism and not less. Seems so opposed to the civil right movement stance against segregation.
- komali2 6y ago
  "constantly talking about race leads to more racism not less" Isn't an effective argument against diversity and inclusion efforts. Racism is real and POC Americans (to scope the discussion) are experiencing it. Maybe Morgan Freeman has the perspective that pretending it's not real will make it go away, but that doesn't change the fact that black programmers are underrepresented, or that police forces are staffed with avowed racists, or that... Etc.
- historyremade 6y ago
  Off-topic. The same for drugs..
bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
Answering for myself / at the level of the individual: yes. I don't want to work with white colleagues who are biased against non-white people. I have been in this situation at a very small startup. I wasn't the only person to notice or complain about it, so I know it wasn't "in my head". So I left. But I also don't want to work someplace where white colleagues are overcorrecting for deep-seated cultural biases. Ideally they don't have to correct at all. I've been in that situation as well, at a large company with a extremely woke / "D&I" culture. So I left. Exit isn't a systemic solution — only an individual one, and only for market participants with options. It's also not cheap, but the psychological and emotional cost of being judged by group membership -- for me, at least, is greater. I think it's worth keeping in mind that the kind of pan-social "affirmative action" advocated by diversity consultants is a double-edged sword, and not without its own risks and costs. At best it's a stopgap measure of sorts. (The diversity consultant operates under perverse incentives, and doesn't have anything like a Hippocratic Oath constraining his/her advocacy.) I've been lucky and have found a few places where that pervasive sense of cultural bias wasn't present. It would be easier to find such places if startups, and engineering teams in particular, would try to hew to traditional standards of professionalism on the job.
- xfitm3 6y ago
  > I don't want to work with white colleagues who are biased against non-white people. I don't want to work with people who are biased against white people. I support equality and I genuinely want to see people treated fairly but I can't help but take offense to the notion that because I'm white I am less or should feel guilty.
  - komali2 6y ago
    Allyship for POC doesn't imply bias against white people. Acknowledging and fighting against systemic racism doesn't imply that all white people should feel universal guilt for their very real privilege. Raising others up doesn't require pushing anyone down. Well, anyone that isn't in a white hood, anyway.
    - 6y ago
loopz 6y ago
Making sure everybody gets a fair chance and get heard, isn't really about color or gender. It's necessary in every human organization, no matter how fancy policies and human rights they claim to subscribe to.
jjeaff 6y ago
It's only patronizing if it results in preferential treatment. But I think the experts who work on these programs have found that it is necessary to "over-correct" in order to override unconscious bias. Obviously, if it is coming across as patronizing, then you are doing it wrong. The point is to try to get to a happy medium. Like shooting for the stars in hopes of getting to the moon.
- joshribakoff 6y ago
  Exactly. Inevitably some of my co-workers brought up the "points" in this thread too, that it feels patronizing & unfair. I'm not suggesting anyone be patronizing. I'm simply saying you should be aware of the fact a co-worker might be feeling a certain way, and then notice & speak up if you see, for example, their idea(s) being misattributed to others. The idea that being an ally would be patronizing is comparable to people responding to "black lives matter" with "all lives matter". Yes, all lives should matter, but all lives don't matter until black lives matter. If you work somewhere where white people are being systemically held back, you should speak up there as well, but I doubt that is the case.
  - datavirtue 6y ago
    So, the golden rule?
tartoran 6y ago
> Isn't that horribly patronizing? Not a racist but am torn between ignoring race - wr’re all people stance - and the behaviour described as patronizing. My conclusion is that nobody has a clue how to deal with this mess. We need to have some sort of clear guidelines on what is best tto do in these cases without offending nor patronizing. Im an Eastern European immigrant to the US and in my US education it has been drilled into me that there is no such thing as race, we’re all related and so on while emphasizing on different cultures. I took African American studies and did learn a great deal of injustice at the expense of blacks in America. But it seems I didn’t learn how to behave properly. What am I doing wrong? Should we set clear guidelines or leave them ambiguous?
- AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
  I think the idea is that you should ignore the race, but doing that requires effort and awareness.
mcv 6y ago
Seems like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. If the options are getting ignored, including for promotions; or getting extra attention because you're from an underrepresented group, I think option B is better in the long run, because at least it helps to address the underrepresentation. Once representation is more equal, I think the "ignore colour" option becomes more feasible. But we're not there yet.

Try asking some POC friends or colleagues! Get their perspective. Another user mentioned that it feels like kneeling on the ground and using "baby talk." That's not what's being said here. It's simply taking a moment to observe yourself and other colleagues potentially engaging in unconscious (or even conscious - you may have an avowed racist hiding it very well on the team!) bias. This is being an ally. It's not patronizing. The reality is that systemic racism against POC in America is real. Ignoring that only aids the status quo.

numpad0 6y ago
> POC It’s not like “white” people aren’t colored
- komali2 6y ago
  POC means people of color means non white. You taking the anthropologic perspective isn't scientifically incorrect - race doesn't actually exist, after all, in any meaningful way. However it is sociologically incorrect to call white people "colored."
  - numpad0 6y ago
    BLM has been creeping towards Asia where I am, and some of those activists are absurdly trying to redefine some Asian views of aesthetics as White admirations that the noble White must responsibly educate to eliminate. To me these ungrounded imaginations are clearly stemming from the idea that some people are objectively not colored and others are colored. I’ve never come across this “POC” term but if it’s not racist I don’t know what racism means by dictionary.
    - bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
      It's relatively new. If it's any consolation, it probably won't last.
    - komali2 6y ago
      Lol. The classic "no YOU'RE racist for pointing out race exists!" Deny that black Americans are terrorized by cops. Pretend that people of color is a non concept all you want. It won't change reality. You are aiding a racist status quo when you fight against ally causes like BLM.
      - hardlianotion 6y ago
        The situation we are living in at the moment is not a dichotomy.
      - memling 6y ago
        it seems to me a rather dangerous precedent to argue that one must ally with blm. after all if you are not a social conservative you are perpetuating an immoral status quo. of course one might work to end qualified immunity for example or to equalize the education and economic gaps without being a Marxist. let's not confuse ends and means.
        komali2 6y ago
        Denying the existence of POC and their oppressed status in America is more than just "not supporting BLM," it's a denial of the foundation of their reason for existing.
        memling 6y ago
        > Denying the existence of POC and their oppressed status in America is more than just "not supporting BLM," it's a denial of the foundation of their reason for existing. Acknowledging the personhood of people of color is not synonymous with supporting BLM. One might broadly support the ends of BLM while being uncomfortable with the means.
  - medee 6y ago
    Your statement is like claiming there is no scientific basis for family. Two people of the same race are more genetically related than half-siblings born to the same father and mothers of different races. The categories we call "race" are genetic clusters of populations who developed in different regions/environments. It's the level of taxonomy below species and above one's family. Overlap between these clusters does not invalidate them any more than the existence of purple invalidates our ability to describe something as "red" or "blue".
    - ben_w 6y ago
      The exact point is that what is called “race” is a sociological sense isn’t based on meaningful generic clusters — saying someone’s (genetic cluster) race has a 1:1 mapping to skin colour is like saying their (genetic cluster) race has a 1:1 mapping to their hair colour.
      - medee 6y ago
        Race isn't skin color, though [1]. Self-identified race maps to distinct genetic clusters with >99.8% accuracy [2]. 1: https://i.imgur.com/0uyOA.jpg https://i.imgur.com/0uyOA.jpg 2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15625622 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15625622
      - numpad0 6y ago
        From my eyes you guys differentiate on skin colors on offensive and use diversity card on defensive to further and further ingrain the notion that “others” has weirdly colored skins. If all of western world would cut the BS and use something like “white asian non-christian” which is what “yellow” stands for in actuality, I can tolerate those racial elitism a bit better. One might be tempted to say it’s not about skin tones, but people taught in white/black/yellow system tries to fit surface albedo of actual human beings to those visual wavelength responses out of cognitive dissonance, through pigmenting, cinematographic techniques or other technological means, or by verbally abusing creators, artists, races, cultures so I strongly believe accurate visual representations in the context of pure racism matters if it’s not going to completely entirely permanently disappear by tomorrow morning. You guys hate it when we don’t look #FFFF00, like for real. That happens and that’s insulting.
- numpad0 6y ago
  This came up to my feed elsewhere so I’ll leave it here. I don’t care if particular skin colors are similar or dis-similar from one another, but I naturally don’t value actively agreeing with supremacists. > East Asians were almost always called white, particularly during the period of first modern contact in the 16th century. And on a number of occasions, even more revealingly, the people were termed “as white as we are”. (...) > But by the 17th century, the Chinese and Japanese were “darkening” in published texts, gradually losing their erstwhile whiteness when it became clear they would remain unwilling to participate in European systems of trade, religion, and international relations. > Calling them white, in other words, was not based on simple perception either and had less to do with pigmentation than their presumed levels of civilisation, culture, literacy, and obedience (particularly if they should become Christianised). [0]: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2184754/chinese-were-white-until-white-men-called-them-yellow https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2184754/chine...
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
Every POC I know thinks that these kinds of efforts are often, although not always, patronizing. (In some cases even beyond patronizing; I've heard a few people say it's actively hurting their career, because they spend so much time being voluntold into diversity discussions that it cuts into their bandwidth for their real job.)
- loopz 6y ago
  Then look at it as opportunity.
- komali2 6y ago
  If it's patronizing, it's a shitty diversity and inclusion program. Your conversations are the opposite of the ones I've had.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    I agree, and I’m absolutely in favor of good diversity programs. It just seems to me that the attitude of “don’t strive to be race blind, always keep yourself aware” consistently leads to bad programs. By far the most bigoted thing I’ve heard at work was in a diversity seminar, where the instructor (a white man) told me (a Hispanic man) that we must make sure to call on Latinas in meetings because they’re not comfortable speaking up for themselves.
    - komali2 6y ago
      That does sound frustrating. That does sound like a shitty D&I program. That is something worth speaking against, I believe. Isn't there some way to act as an ally to a minority population that doesn't involve patronizing?
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        Absolutely. I don't tremendously like the framing of "allyship", but there are lots of good diversity-promoting measures that companies should take - one example, we're working on pushing my current company to do an AfroTech sponsorship.

toochini 6y ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gFP4dJHJXoI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gFP4dJHJXoI Couldn’t find the whole thing, but I agree it seems constantly talking about race leads to more racism and not less. Seems so opposed to the civil right movement stance against segregation.

komali2 6y ago
"constantly talking about race leads to more racism not less" Isn't an effective argument against diversity and inclusion efforts. Racism is real and POC Americans (to scope the discussion) are experiencing it. Maybe Morgan Freeman has the perspective that pretending it's not real will make it go away, but that doesn't change the fact that black programmers are underrepresented, or that police forces are staffed with avowed racists, or that... Etc.
historyremade 6y ago
Off-topic. The same for drugs..

bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago

Answering for myself / at the level of the individual: yes. I don't want to work with white colleagues who are biased against non-white people. I have been in this situation at a very small startup. I wasn't the only person to notice or complain about it, so I know it wasn't "in my head". So I left. But I also don't want to work someplace where white colleagues are overcorrecting for deep-seated cultural biases. Ideally they don't have to correct at all. I've been in that situation as well, at a large company with a extremely woke / "D&I" culture. So I left. Exit isn't a systemic solution — only an individual one, and only for market participants with options. It's also not cheap, but the psychological and emotional cost of being judged by group membership -- for me, at least, is greater. I think it's worth keeping in mind that the kind of pan-social "affirmative action" advocated by diversity consultants is a double-edged sword, and not without its own risks and costs. At best it's a stopgap measure of sorts. (The diversity consultant operates under perverse incentives, and doesn't have anything like a Hippocratic Oath constraining his/her advocacy.) I've been lucky and have found a few places where that pervasive sense of cultural bias wasn't present. It would be easier to find such places if startups, and engineering teams in particular, would try to hew to traditional standards of professionalism on the job.

xfitm3 6y ago
> I don't want to work with white colleagues who are biased against non-white people. I don't want to work with people who are biased against white people. I support equality and I genuinely want to see people treated fairly but I can't help but take offense to the notion that because I'm white I am less or should feel guilty.
- komali2 6y ago
  Allyship for POC doesn't imply bias against white people. Acknowledging and fighting against systemic racism doesn't imply that all white people should feel universal guilt for their very real privilege. Raising others up doesn't require pushing anyone down. Well, anyone that isn't in a white hood, anyway.
  - 6y ago

loopz 6y ago

Making sure everybody gets a fair chance and get heard, isn't really about color or gender. It's necessary in every human organization, no matter how fancy policies and human rights they claim to subscribe to.

jjeaff 6y ago

It's only patronizing if it results in preferential treatment. But I think the experts who work on these programs have found that it is necessary to "over-correct" in order to override unconscious bias. Obviously, if it is coming across as patronizing, then you are doing it wrong. The point is to try to get to a happy medium. Like shooting for the stars in hopes of getting to the moon.

joshribakoff 6y ago
Exactly. Inevitably some of my co-workers brought up the "points" in this thread too, that it feels patronizing & unfair. I'm not suggesting anyone be patronizing. I'm simply saying you should be aware of the fact a co-worker might be feeling a certain way, and then notice & speak up if you see, for example, their idea(s) being misattributed to others. The idea that being an ally would be patronizing is comparable to people responding to "black lives matter" with "all lives matter". Yes, all lives should matter, but all lives don't matter until black lives matter. If you work somewhere where white people are being systemically held back, you should speak up there as well, but I doubt that is the case.
- datavirtue 6y ago
  So, the golden rule?

tartoran 6y ago

> Isn't that horribly patronizing? Not a racist but am torn between ignoring race - wr’re all people stance - and the behaviour described as patronizing. My conclusion is that nobody has a clue how to deal with this mess. We need to have some sort of clear guidelines on what is best tto do in these cases without offending nor patronizing. Im an Eastern European immigrant to the US and in my US education it has been drilled into me that there is no such thing as race, we’re all related and so on while emphasizing on different cultures. I took African American studies and did learn a great deal of injustice at the expense of blacks in America. But it seems I didn’t learn how to behave properly. What am I doing wrong? Should we set clear guidelines or leave them ambiguous?

AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
I think the idea is that you should ignore the race, but doing that requires effort and awareness.

mcv 6y ago

Seems like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. If the options are getting ignored, including for promotions; or getting extra attention because you're from an underrepresented group, I think option B is better in the long run, because at least it helps to address the underrepresentation. Once representation is more equal, I think the "ignore colour" option becomes more feasible. But we're not there yet.