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MLK explicitly advocated for policies that gave preferential treatment to Black people, so it's a bit surprising to see such a fan of his taking this stance by

by tdeck 6y ago

MLK explicitly advocated for policies that gave preferential treatment to Black people, so it's a bit surprising to see such a fan of his taking this stance by invoking King. For example, here's a quote from his book "Why We Can't Wait": > Whenever the issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race three hundred hears after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up. The Internet Archive has this book available for free to check out, you can read more on his argument around page 134 right here: https://archive.org/details/whywecantwait00king/page/134/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/whywecantwait00king/page/134/mod... Essentially King is arguing that the government should promote the same kind of preferential hiring and other benefits that veterans get, but for members of other disadvantaged groups.

seibelj 6y ago
My father in law is a Vietnamese immigrant, came here after communists destroyed his country on a fishing boat. He’s now a retired millionaire! My neighbor is black, and she drives a $100k+ Mercedes! Country club golfing and sailing type. My point is, arbitrary assumptions based on race are totally meaningless in 2020. There are people in all social strata of every race. Giving a leg up to someone for being XYZ is dumb - it reduces complex people to simple labels that define how victimized the woke left says they should be. If we want to talk about giving government assistance to people in poverty regardless of race, I’d be much more amenable. There will be correlations to poverty and race but I think we all agree Oprah and Michael Jordan should not be getting handouts. As it stands the identity politics movement is ideologically inconsistent and is focused on driving people apart and re-segregating us. This is a movement doomed for failure. We should instead be eliminating our superficial differences and moving beyond bankrupt social justice theories that reduce individuals to mere labels rather than intelligent, thinking independent people with their own agency.
- skitout 6y ago
  "My point is, arbitrary assumptions based on race are totally meaningless in 2020." Well, unfortunately race and gender are still important in 2020, and in the VC world there are still important negative discrimination against woman, against black people... and positive discrimination for White and Asian men... [1] [2] and that is a serious problem. (This comes on the top of existing other problems linked eg. to poverty, that is touching disproportionately the people negatively discriminated by VC and investors) [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2018/02/15/founders-and-venture-capital-racism-is-costing-us-billions/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2018/02/... [2] https://hbr.org/2017/05/we-recorded-vcs-conversations-and-analyzed-how-differently-they-talk-about-female-entrepreneurs https://hbr.org/2017/05/we-recorded-vcs-conversations-and-an...
  - seibelj 6y ago
    I still hire the best person for the job, which over the years has included men, women, and people of many races. Like I said in the original post, I am an old fashioned type that believes we are not restricted by superficial and unimportant details like our race - all people can succeed and thrive based on their character. It’s crazy that this is now old school, but this is 2020 and I don’t read any critical race theory pseudoscience. My view is a much more optimistic, forward-looking attitude than one that constantly analyzes how hard society has screwed each person based on their labels. Rather than see ourselves as victims who can’t succeed because of XYZ, we should encourage people to thrive despite XYZ. If you wait your entire life for society / the government / other people to save you, you’ll never be happy and you will never be saved.
    - skitout 6y ago
      You think you hire the best person for the job... Just like the Swedish in the HBR article I quoted were sure they invest in the best project/person while they were discriminating negatively women (the discriminating positively men).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

by tdeck 6y ago

seibelj 6y ago

My father in law is a Vietnamese immigrant, came here after communists destroyed his country on a fishing boat. He’s now a retired millionaire! My neighbor is black, and she drives a $100k+ Mercedes! Country club golfing and sailing type. My point is, arbitrary assumptions based on race are totally meaningless in 2020. There are people in all social strata of every race. Giving a leg up to someone for being XYZ is dumb - it reduces complex people to simple labels that define how victimized the woke left says they should be. If we want to talk about giving government assistance to people in poverty regardless of race, I’d be much more amenable. There will be correlations to poverty and race but I think we all agree Oprah and Michael Jordan should not be getting handouts. As it stands the identity politics movement is ideologically inconsistent and is focused on driving people apart and re-segregating us. This is a movement doomed for failure. We should instead be eliminating our superficial differences and moving beyond bankrupt social justice theories that reduce individuals to mere labels rather than intelligent, thinking independent people with their own agency.

skitout 6y ago
"My point is, arbitrary assumptions based on race are totally meaningless in 2020." Well, unfortunately race and gender are still important in 2020, and in the VC world there are still important negative discrimination against woman, against black people... and positive discrimination for White and Asian men... [1] [2] and that is a serious problem. (This comes on the top of existing other problems linked eg. to poverty, that is touching disproportionately the people negatively discriminated by VC and investors) [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2018/02/15/founders-and-venture-capital-racism-is-costing-us-billions/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2018/02/... [2] https://hbr.org/2017/05/we-recorded-vcs-conversations-and-analyzed-how-differently-they-talk-about-female-entrepreneurs https://hbr.org/2017/05/we-recorded-vcs-conversations-and-an...
- seibelj 6y ago
  I still hire the best person for the job, which over the years has included men, women, and people of many races. Like I said in the original post, I am an old fashioned type that believes we are not restricted by superficial and unimportant details like our race - all people can succeed and thrive based on their character. It’s crazy that this is now old school, but this is 2020 and I don’t read any critical race theory pseudoscience. My view is a much more optimistic, forward-looking attitude than one that constantly analyzes how hard society has screwed each person based on their labels. Rather than see ourselves as victims who can’t succeed because of XYZ, we should encourage people to thrive despite XYZ. If you wait your entire life for society / the government / other people to save you, you’ll never be happy and you will never be saved.
  - skitout 6y ago
    You think you hire the best person for the job... Just like the Swedish in the HBR article I quoted were sure they invest in the best project/person while they were discriminating negatively women (the discriminating positively men).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]