14 ms·

San Francisco school board halts appointment based on race

176 points by undefined1 6y ago

throwaway894345 6y ago
> Here's the current ethnic makeup of the PAC: > Three Latinas > Three white women > Two African Americans > One Asian American > One Pacific Islander > All current members of the PAC are women. Brenzel would have been the only man, and he happens to be white. How do you even parody this? > About 33% of SFUSD students are Asian, 28% are Latino, 15% are white and 6% are African American. The school board argued that adding a white male would tip the balance in the PAC. Whites would then become the "dominating race." What if we didn't encourage a world in which people identified with and advocated for their own race? I.e., you have some extra white people (or whatever race) on the board but it's not really a problem because they aren't lobbying for "white interests" (whatever that means). In what world is segregating everyone to their own racial lane going to deliver more equitable outcomes for individuals? Surely this is only going to enforce antiquated, racist ideas that race is a useful predictor for anything at an individual level (i.e., "I know everything I need to know about a person from their race"). Surely this is the very essence of racism? Do these people really not understand that they're being far more racist than their broader society? Or are they aware of their racism but using terms like "anti-racism" and "equity" deceitfully? EDIT: Looks like TFA was flagged off of the front page, which is really too bad because this seems like a very important topic and very relevant to much of this forum (considering how frequently we deal with racial employment policies in tech or the broader BLM threads over the summer or general SF/SV happenings).
- brink 6y ago
  > What if we didn't encourage a world in which people identified with and advocated for their own race? Agreed. How on earth did the "Each race only looks out for their own kind" mentality get labeled as progressive?
  - rsj_hn 6y ago
    Because "Progressive" is about dismantling the incumbent policies and replacing them with your own policies. The advantages of this is that if you are a political leader, it's something you can hang your hat on to grab a leadership position rather than waiting for the incumbent to retire. But the price of this constant rejection of what your grandparents did is that if you yourself achieve the goal, then your own policies get dismantled by your crusading grandchildren. Take for example anti-trust, which sought to destroy the power of big trusts in the Teddy Roosevelt era -- and was itself destroyed by the progressive Watergate Democrats in the 70s, about 60 years later. All these anti-trust rules were considered old fashioned, obsolete, and policies of a discredited generation. They were called bigoted and not with the times. Or the social hygiene movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_hygiene_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_hygiene_movement), another great crusading Progressive cause, that sought to make illegal prostitution, alcohol, public nudity, and other attacks on morals. Few remember that the Women's Temperance movement and the Women's Suffrage movement were part of the same movement, and the progressives of those days really wanted to build a virtuous society, in much the same way that the current crop of progressives is obsessed with virtue, or the 60s crop was also inordinately focused on being virtuous, except for them being virtuous required dismantling the laws of the previous virtue movement. All the moral purity laws from the social hygiene movement were dismantled by other progressives in the 60s-70s. Or the union rights movement which was triumphant during the FDRs period, but was systematically destroyed primarily by Democrats in the 1970s-1990s (Clinton putting the last nail in the coffin). Unions were viewed as bigoted, old fashioned, and not with the times. Similarly the civil rights movement of the 60s is being systematically dismantled by the culture warriors of the present era, who view color-blind policies as the legacies of a discredited generation, of bigotry, and not being with the times. The good news is that if our current pro-racism movement triumphs and the nation re-segregates, there is a good chance that grandchildren of the current generation will themselves dismantle that system as being old-fashioned and not-with-the-times. In either case, Progressivism needs to be viewed as an act of rebellion first, and the policies are whatever they need to be in order to rally the most people to the moral revolution.
    - Mountain_Skies 6y ago
- foofoo4u 6y ago
  > What if we didn't encourage a world in which people identified with and advocated for their own race? It saddens me to see the woke ideology taking hold across the United States. It is indeed fundamentally racist and brings us back to our most tribalistic behaviors. It's the kind of thinking we learned a long time ago to put in the past. But now it's making a resurgence. And it's spreading. But articles like [this](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threa...) and the most upvoted comments within it give me hope that the west hasn't become entirely mad. It seems the French have observed the discourse of modern American events and see how decisive and destructive the ideology is. I'll quote the top comment within this particular article. > Yes, importing the American political correctness/woke/cancel culture will destroy France. How do I know this? Because it is already destroying the US. It fuels social division, and it distracts from the real problems, which tend to be economic and environmental. Much of the recent scholarship coming from the US, obsessed about race and gender, is completely useless and extremely ideological. It is no wonder that many of the most important books of global interest from recent years, such as Picketty's Capital in the 21st Century, do not come from the US. US universities are not free environments of vigorous intellectual debate anymore, and the faculty lives under constant fear of uttering the wrong word or phrase, and of being canceled because of their ideas. If a child of mine decided to study social sciences or a humanities field, the US would the last place I would send them to. I'm glad France is standing up against this nonsense. It gives me hope.
  - ng12 6y ago
    > Because it is already destroying the US. It fuels social division, and it distracts from the real problems, which tend to be economic and environmental I think about this a lot. I don't think it's a coincidence that most of the countries lauded for their economic equity or environmental leadership are also largely homogenous societies. I don't know what the answer is for a fundamentally multicultural country like the US but obsessing about race and "representation" surely isn't it.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
- majormajor 6y ago
  > What if we didn't encourage a world in which people identified with and advocated for their own race? I think you're flipping cause and effect here. We can see plenty of examples in the history of the US of people, when left otherwise unencumbered, either ignored the needs of others at best or put their own race first at worst. The idea of segregation isn't being introduced here, existing segregation and related behaviors are being responded to. They aren't saying "this man is unable to perform this role due to his race" in a racist-against-this-person way, they're putting additional structural checks in place as a preventative measure. So here people are trying to make that structurally more difficult. Which is arguably a more realistic and rational choice than simply saying "things will be fine if we get better people."
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    I understand what you're saying, and to be clear I'm not suggesting that woke progressives invented segregation. But the racial lanes that divided us historically have been progressively weakened--indeed, "racial progress" is largely synonymous with desegregation. So the idea that we can make racism/segregation "structurally more difficult" by reinforcing racial lanes is completely paradoxical. Can we not agree that categorizing people by their race is going to reinforce their racial identity at the expense of a broader collective human/national identity? And can we not agree that reinforcing racial identities and weakening the collective identity is going to create competition among and animosity between the different racial groups? And can we not agree that it is this racial animosity that births all of the evils of racism? If we can agree here, then surely this does the opposite of making segregation/racism "structurally more difficult"? > Which is arguably a more realistic and rational choice than simply saying "things will be fine if we get better people." Desegregation isn't "things will be fine if we get better people"; it's the active dissolving of racial lanes ("dismantling racist structures" might be a good phrase if it weren't coopted to mean the exact opposite). And it has been the only thing that has worked so far, so why should we think that it's a worse choice than segregation?
  - griffinheart 6y ago
    I don't disagree with a lot of your above reply, but this part in particular picked my interest, mostly because I don't understand how its not racist. > They aren't saying "this man is unable to perform this role due to his race" in a racist-against-this-person way, they're putting additional structural checks in place as a preventative measure. Its not about the intention of the emitter, its about the receiving end of it. It seems that if we flip this so that the receiving end is part of a minority we would all think this is utterly racist independent of the intention, how is it not? edit: typo
- suzzer99 6y ago
  It's San Francisco, and big city school boards have always been utterly terrible. Hyper-liberal cities and universities have been doing ridiculous loopy stuff since basically forever. My uncle used to always complain about some ridiculous thing universities or San Francisco was doing, in the pre-internet 80s, when you had to read about it in American Spectator or someone's newsletter. I don't get how people think stuff like this is some existential threat - when we have much bigger very real problems in this country, like 30% of the population thinks the election was rigged, and armed militias are flexing their muscle taking over statehouses. It's a very weird form of focusing on the molehill and ignoring the mountain imo. Like walk me through how this kind of nonsense is this ever going to spread to Johnson County, KS - as opposed to being contained in hyper-liberal enclaves. I can walk you through a lot of scenarios as to how the stuff I mentioned above is a real existential threat to our democracy.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ghiculescu 6y ago
    The problem is that the people in SF are doing things that many people find divisive and dumb. But the same people are seen as in control of media, universities, tech etc - things that impact everyone. If you’re in Johnson City, KS, this happening in your country feels like it impacts you even if it’s in a hyper liberal enclave.
    - suzzer99 6y ago
      How does the SF school board have anything to do with the media? This seems like really digging hard for something to be mad about.
      - ghiculescu 6y ago
        It doesn’t, directly. But if you’re far away from SF and all you see is this headline, it reads as “the ruling class did some dumb woke stuff again”. How can you respect them? How can you be confident the wokeness won’t spread?
- silicon2401 6y ago
  I agree entirely. Lots of people calling out racism are themselves acting fundamentally racist in the sense of racially prejudiced and discriminatory. I won't be surprised if I wake up one day and we have race-specific water fountains again.
  - undefined1 6y ago
    segregation is already being practiced in schools. here's an example: https://www.bwscampus.com/our-community/commitment-to-diversity/inclusive-excellence/dialogue-community-building-sessions https://www.bwscampus.com/our-community/commitment-to-divers...
  - foofoo4u 6y ago
    > I won't be surprised if I wake up one day and we have race-specific water fountains again. We already have: Race-specific clubs on Universities.[1]; Race-specific departments on Universities.[2]; Race-specific video playlists on YouTube. [3]; Race-specific filters for map apps. [4]; Race-specific brands [5]; Race-specific merchandise [6]; Race-specific professional feeds [7]; Race-specific video channels [8.1][8.2]; Race-specific graduations [9]; I could go on endlessly with this list. You see the trend. America is socially segregating itself. So the concern you raise with race-specific water fountains is valid. Though that form of segregation, specifically, may not return, but other forms will. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/company/bbsasfsu/about/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/bbsasfsu/about/ [2] https://equity.sfsu.edu/blackunitycenter https://equity.sfsu.edu/blackunitycenter [3] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbpi6ZahtOH5pZK-VXFwjwCzuwaMgIR0g https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbpi6ZahtOH5pZK-VXFwj... [4] https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/black-history-month-2021/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/blac... [5] https://www.target.com/c/black-owned-or-founded-brands-at-target/-/N-q8v16 https://www.target.com/c/black-owned-or-founded-brands-at-ta... [6] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/01/apple-celebrates-black-history-month/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/01/apple-celebrates-blac... [7] https://www.linkedin.com/news/daily-rundown/special-edition/ https://www.linkedin.com/news/daily-rundown/special-edition/ [8.1] https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/81299227?so=su https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/81299227?so=su [8.2] https://www.hulu.com/black-stories https://www.hulu.com/black-stories [9] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/red-alert-politics/more-than-75-colleges-host-blacks-only-graduation-ceremonies https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/red-alert-politics/more-t...
- golemiprague 6y ago
  Just looking at the list and the grouping, it is such a warped worldview, Latin define people who speak a group of languages but only if they are south to the US in the American continent. White is a skin colour but includes all the range up to brown, as long as they don't live south to the US (or is it? If you are Italian from Italy you are white but if you are Italian from Argentina you are Latino? Or do you have to be slightly mixed with native to become Latino?). African American includes only black people, but not other Africans from north Africa who are not black. Asian includes all east Asians but not sub continental or middle Eastern. It is just a crazy mix of codes to group people by a combination of characteristics which they themselves not only see but the Americans are very sure about them. It is just nuts.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  sometimes the process of making a decision is just as important as whatever decision ultimately gets made. sometimes a tough decision has to get made and the tradeoff is that your ingroup takes a hit. the impact is the same either way, but it doesn't feel as bad if someone from your group was at least involved in the process. people already segment themselves into many different in/out-groups. institutions sometimes take this to a ridiculous level, but we have to account for this somehow.
fasteddie31003 6y ago
Another embarrassment for SF. I've been thinking more and more how government jobs do not attract the best and brightest because there is so much more money to be made in the private sector. However, their responsibilities are pretty high. I don't have a solution for this.
- undefined1 6y ago
  fewer government jobs, but highly paid. Singapore does this in order to compete with the private sector and reduce corruption.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Jobs = power for politicans. A team of ten people that does the work of five people is five jobs that state legislators and high level bureaucrats can phone in "recommendations" for resulting in five big favors owed. A team of five that is paid like ten and does the work of five is a direct threat to their power and they will fight it tooth and nail. I like the idea of fewer better paid jobs but I have no idea how we transition the current status quo from here to there.
- sbuttgereit 6y ago
  Ahh... but the decision makers in this case are elected officials... democracy in action.
solosoyokaze 6y ago
"He's gay, that's an important voice that we don't have right now, and he's a man. There are no males on the committee" Having no males on the committee seems like the biggest issue of them all, especially considering that male performance in education has been suffering for so long. I would argue that having no male voices hurts PoC especially as so many Black and Hispanic men are already being crushed by the system and imprisoned en masse. How does this decision help them and their families?
- dominotw 6y ago
  > I would argue that having no male voices hurts PoC funny that this the only possible angle we can argue for more male representation. What case do we have for male representation if lack of didn't hurt POC?
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    It's not an "angle", it's a critical situation. I think these stats show why we need more male representation in general and why the situation with PoC should be first in mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#Gender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
    - dominotw 6y ago
      I wasn't disagreeing with your original comment or the intention behind it. 'angle' prbly wasn't the best choice of word on my part.
    - rajin444 6y ago
      How do you know what the correct rates of incarceration in the US should be? I've struggled with this question and I'm curious as to how others have arrived on a number. Saying "less" or "more" seems like a way to justify policies with no accountability (i.e, asking to be abused), so I do not use those answers.
      - 6y ago
vmception 6y ago
They should have said “culture fit” instead of race and fit right in here. They are looking for people with specific backgrounds as they will represent so that they'll be in those communities and see things from that perspective. That means they are selecting for factors outside of that individual’s control, which is dystopian but what has happened a different way all along.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  > They are looking for people with specific backgrounds Why would anyone think that race is a good proxy for one's background? This seems pretty racist, in the most literal, original sense of the term.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    >Why would anyone think that race is a good proxy for one's background? On a long enough timeline it's unfortunately a self fulfilling prophecy. (This goes for whatever demographic groups you use to divide people into, not just race.)
  - vmception 6y ago
    it is race-based discrimination is just as unproductive for society as racism and being racist.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  I really wonder just how differently people from different "communities" (race/ethnicity/etc) see things. Part of me thinks you can just boil those differences down to personality and politics rather than some shared cultural filter on reality.
  - vmception 6y ago
    > Part of me thinks you can just boil those differences down to personality and politics and the politics will be with people in the same community as them, that's the point. public figures make themselves hard to contact outside of the organic backchannel of just being there when they were growing up. this has benefitted one group while the concerns of other groups are not able to be addressed in this way. we don't have a system devoid of those things and now it will happen with different people represented by their own neighbor I'm not advocating anything in this comment
TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
I fear mentioning this because it could turn into a flame war, but this is somewhat related. French leaders and politicians are now concerned that USA "wokeness" threatens the stability of their country[1]. It's a really difficult topic to address because it involves contentious racial issues, but we really need to find a way to talk about it while avoiding the bickering. I fear that if we don't find a way to put a stop to this, anti-white and anti-male discrimination will be fully accepted in the near future, which would be absolutely terrible for our society. [1] https://thepostmillennial.com/french-leaders-concerned-american-wokeness-will-divide-their-country https://thepostmillennial.com/french-leaders-concerned-ameri...
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  What's interesting is that what's happening on American campuses is exported to France, yet, what's happening on French campuses stays on French Campuses. I wonder if it reflects current brain flow (are American students coming to French university in greater numbers than French students going to the US?). Maybe the solution is to build an ecosystem where the culture and practices is exported instead of imported.
  - cameldrv 6y ago
    Foucault definitely did not stay on French campuses, and he's a huge part of this new ideology.
  - lm28469 6y ago
    > What's interesting is that what's happening on American campuses is exported to France, yet, what's happening on French campuses stays on French Campuses. I never thought of it that way. That being said after 50+ years of Americanisation of Western culture (through movies, music, &c.) it's not really surprising that it flows that way. I think a lot of the American "woke" culture also emerges from things that are very easy to empathise for and trigger an outrage response. For example the George Floyd case which somehow triggered dozens of protests in Europe: no one with a fully formed brain can watch the video and not be outraged. I also feel like a lot of the American ideas about progressivism are fairly "feel good" measures that are very easily adopted (everyone wants to be upset about something, everyone wants to be themselves/special, &c.) and are all somewhat based on "identity", it feeds the "us vs them" part of the brain very nicely.
devmunchies 6y ago
I would love for the term "neoracists" to catch on. Much bigger problem than the other "neo___" that we hear so much about.
- haunter 6y ago
  Regressive left
  - SavageBeast 6y ago
    Just added a new term to my toolkit - thanks!
- orange_tee 6y ago
  Why not simply "racists"? They are racists. They are literally trying to reorganize society based on a race theory. They only difference is that it is a different race theory, but they still have the race war mentality of past eras.
  - devmunchies 6y ago
    > it is a different race theory exactly. and we can call this different branch of racism "neoracism". IMO "racist" has been thrown around so much that I think a new term that specifically describes this new woke branch of racism will have more muster.
908B64B197 6y ago
When I see nominations based solely on race, this makes me doubts the qualifications of everyone on a board. Same thing with schools/companies with diversity quotas. If the person is "diverse" you can never really know if he/she is there on merit or if someone had to lower the bar to fill the quota. But if they aren't "diverse" you know they are there on merit. Am-I the only one?
- pjkundert 6y ago
  It's terribly insulting. Especially to the target "protected" groups. I would have thought that we would have realized that racist (and any other "group"-ist) selection policies are ridiculous and would have rejected them by now. At least by people who have a basic understanding of how group statistics apply to individuals... But no. The "woke" madness is doubling down, and dialling the madness up to 11.
  - yegle 6y ago
    For non-English speaker it looks like the last sentence refers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven?wprov=sfla1
    - bendbro 6y ago
      That's exactly right. The commenter is saying that by doubling down (gambling reference: betting more on your possibly untrue theory) on woke ideas, they are increasing the madness in society to a maximum level (the commenter is also potentially implying it can't be increased further, because society may break).
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Nah, I don’t feel that way because I think the pool of candidates is often so big that everyone will be competent. Anyway, in this case, though, your idea is reinforced because the SF USD board is actually people more politically savvy than smart. For evidence, I present the Clarendon school renaming.
- 6y ago
happyjack 6y ago
Keep up the experiment, California. Middle America is excited to see the results in 20 years.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  The results are gonna move in next year when the little old lady down the street croaks and her house goes up for sale.
  - happyjack 6y ago
    I'm not sure I follow :D besides the sarcasm ... all I know is that this insanity is not sustainable.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      The demographics that drilled all the holes in the ship are also the first people off the sinking ship. Look at the further out suburbs of Austin, Denver, Boulder and Boise if you want to see this effect in various stages of its progression. You're not gonna have to wait 20yr to see CA crash and burn from afar. The root cause is going to set up shop and start doing its thing closer to (your) home and it will do so on a much shorter timeline.
      - happyjack 6y ago
        Oh I know ... it's scary. I live in the west and have seen first hand what it's done to Denver / Boulder / Boise. I really liked your analogy, too. "Let's screw things up and see what happens. No worries I have unicorn stock and can move to somewhere better and bring my wreck with me." I read a comment one time that said "Denver used to be the Kansas City of the West, now it's the SF." It saddens me how true that is now.
        jaywalk 6y ago
        It's more like "Wow, this place with all of the policies that I supported and voted for has turned into a dump! I need to get out of here, but I need to make sure that I can get all of my policies implemented in the new place as well!"
cdiddy2 6y ago
This is how populist leaders get elected, keep this up and we end up with another.
- devmunchies 6y ago
  isn't populism just what the democratic party used to be 40 years ago? appealing to ordinary working class? Occupy wall street was a populist movement. so was the recent gamestop pump.
  - cat199 6y ago
    As I like to say, populism is not a 4-letter word...
marcell 6y ago
Worth noting this policy is contrary to the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause, and also a California law prohibiting discrimination based on race that was recently upheld by a large majority vote.
- fallingknife 6y ago
  Amazing that in 2021 we only enforce the racial discrimination laws in one direction. That's also what they did in 1921.
  - vmception 6y ago
    There is no data to support that, a racial discrimination law should be levied here, because now the action just occurred. edit: so 20 year old data is being masqueraded as modern civil rights realities. never seen that before in any other topic.
    - fallingknife 6y ago
      No data? There are supreme court decisions on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger
      - vmception 6y ago
        In 2003 a racial discrimination law favored one group, your premise was about 2021. In the last 18 years (oh wow people born then can vote now!) race-based discrimination statutes are routinely enforced for all groups, including in favor of the majority group when they have been discriminated against by race by a potential or current employer. Take a quick browse at the EOCC enforcement actions, or California's DFEH, and other agencies and other court cases.
      - vmception 6y ago
        a racial discrimination law should be levied here, because now the action just occurred. the laws are not pre-emptive.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dna_polymerase 6y ago
What fucked up ideology do you have to follow to think this is not racist and in any way okay? And why does it matter that he is gay? What the fuck is happening, have people gone insane?
- bcheung 6y ago
  Yes. This is why so many are fleeing California and the bay area. This and taxes were probably the 2 biggest motivations for me to move out of the SF bay area.
- alacombe 6y ago
  "Racism", as per the progressive left definition, only applies to white men, when the same concept is applied to anybody else, it's called "progress". Should be obvious by now.
jariel 6y ago
This is a Monty Python Skit come to life.
jfk13 6y ago
Is this the same school board as recently indulged in an absurd school-renaming binge? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/san-francisco-renaming-spree/617894/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/san-franci... [edit: Yes, apparently. Nice to see the insanity is at least consistent.]
throwawaysea 6y ago
Isn't it explicitly illegal to hire in this manner? Also in terms of diversity, I feel like SF is really only chasing visible, skin deep diversity. What they actually need is ideological diversity. Over- and under-representation should be looked on more dimensions (https://heterodoxacademy.org/ideological-underrepresentation-compared-to-race-gender-sexuality/ https://heterodoxacademy.org/ideological-underrepresentation...) than just the ones that are politically convenient or have the most coverage in news/social media. And leaving that aside, chasing equality of opportunity is fair and just, but chasing equality of outcomes (AKA equity) is unjust and discriminatory. Progressives need to abandon that train of thought because it corrupts institutions in the very manner we are seeing in this story. Unfortunately I am also seeing a trend of big companies, particularly tech companies, adopting "equity" into their language. The move from Diversity programs making work accessible and comfortable for everyone to trying to create equal outcomes based on arbitrary group distinctions is moving them away from meritocracy and towards a victimocracy (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Victimocracy https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Victimocracy).
tannhauser23 6y ago
This is why parents who care about education put kids in private school or move out of SF.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  I'm sure there will be a push to outlaw private schools.
  - throwawaysea 6y ago
    It’s already here. That’s what the fight against charter schools and school choice in general is. The money grab by ineffective unionized teachers is one aspect, but the centralization of education is the other aspect they seek to protect since it enables one sided indoctrination instead of diverse education. And now there are even activists and (sham/quack) academics trying to ban homeschooling - see https://fee.org/articles/harvard-magazine-calls-for-a-presumptive-ban-on-homeschooling-here-are-5-things-it-got-wrong/ https://fee.org/articles/harvard-magazine-calls-for-a-presum... or https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemcshane/2020/04/21/harvards-lazy-attack-on-homeschooling/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemcshane/2020/04/21/harvards... Somehow proponents of one size fits all centralized public education don’t seem to recognize that they’re no different than the CCP forcing Tibetan children into government schools to get reprogrammed into their ideology and revisionism.
newbie578 6y ago
Looking at this from Europe, this just feels ludicrous, like we are all taking crazy pills, and slowly this kind of mentality is infecting everywhere. Anything which focuses on race first is inherently racist. I do not care for your ethnicity, race, gender, or religion. If you are qualified for the job, you get the job. I just remembered reading on TechCrunch a VC fund which only accepts bids for women only led startups. How the hell is something like that allowed? I was honestly temped to apply just to see what they would say. Sorry you are a man, please go away. And I know there are going to be people to downvote me for stating this, but just imagine if the opposite happened, if someone made a young male VC fund... Heads would roll...
- dna_polymerase 6y ago
  The VC fund is something entirely different. You can choose who you are doing business with, if you make decisions based on anything else than ability and product you probably will miss out on profit, but in the end, no harm was done. Also, this stuff comes to Europe. It's already in Germany where some public jobs have to meet certain male/female quotas, but also the universities, which are filled with this PC crap.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  It is seeping in here as well, especially the Green movement seems to be infiltrated. Austrian Greens split over wokeness into two parties. German Greens are basically taken over, with a few personal exceptions (Boris Palmer). And given how much climate change interests voters, we may get a hefty dose of racial wokeness as an unexpected side effect.
- koonsolo 6y ago
  I agree. We should really try to keep this crazy US bullshit outside of Europe, but unfortunately I see it creeping in already :(. US had a big cultural impact on the rest of the world.
ssijak 6y ago
I literally do not understand this obsession. I thought that antirasism basically mean opposite of obsessing about race in any way. I mean, yeah I notice if someone is white, black, or whatever but what does that have to do with anything else than the wavelength of the light hitting my eyes after reflecting from their skin. If everybody just totally ignored color of the skin in any way, like totally, rasism would be non existent. Is that so hard?
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  "I thought that antirasism basically mean opposite of obsessing about race in any way." Bless your heart.
- whatisantir 6y ago
  The term anti racism has been defined by woke leaders to mean something different. It’s actually illiberal and racist. They are proudly illiberal. You should look it up because it’s so shocking.
balozi 6y ago
Predictably the problem here is a centralized education system. Break up or decentralize the school system. Make the decision making hyperlocal. Anytime you centralize power, crazy power-hungry people will try to capture it.
- warkdarrior 6y ago
  Hyperlocal education will lead to fragmented education, and result in arguments like these: * Why should one force black kids to learn white people math? * Why should Latino kids be forced to learn native american history?
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  Hyperlocal decision making is needed across the boards and it is why our country was designed as a federation of states. It wasn’t meant to place so much power in a federal government and it didn’t anticipate centralization of public education through institutions like teachers unions. Unfortunately what we are seeing now are brazen power games to oppress one’s ideological or political opponents, and it includes things like the education system, where there is massive, tribal opposition to choice in education.
SavageBeast 6y ago
There is a valuable lesson in this book, so valuable in fact we teach it to our children. https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Cried-Wolf-Timeless-Fables/dp/0986431370/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2K6TVWMTNZJN5&dchild=1&keywords=the+boy+who+cried+wolf&qid=1613155970&s=books&sprefix=the+boy+who+cr%2Caps%2C184&sr=1-4 https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Cried-Wolf-Timeless-Fables/dp/098... Heres another one that teaches a similarly valuable lesson. https://www.amazon.com/Chicken-Little-Classics-Phidal-Publishing/dp/2764324235/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2E7GF99DSL752&dchild=1&keywords=chicken+little+book&qid=1613156034&s=books&sprefix=chicken+little%2Cstripbooks%2C180&sr=1-4 https://www.amazon.com/Chicken-Little-Classics-Phidal-Publis... We're going to reach a point in this society when you call someone a racist (deserved or not) and they just say "pffft... whatever..." and go happily about their business totally unaffected. Social Justice is having its moment now and this is what they're doing with their time in the spotlight. Somehow the same people who put lunatics in charge of their own movement now want to install similar lunatics in every place they can. This will stop someday and it will stop hard.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  Yes, that would not be the first time either. The times when "you are a godless atheist" was a serious call out threatening your social standing are still within living memory.
- throwaway829 6y ago
  White person: We need more of my kind on the board. <-- racist Black person: We need more of my kind on the board. <-- woke Brown person: We need more of my kind on the board. <-- woke That view is endorsed at the highest levels of corporate America, politics and MSM. And somehow we're supposed to believe that "white supremacists" control the system. The current state of America is quite laughable.
twoslide 6y ago
This kind of story is really difficult: it provides fodder for right claims that social justice warriors have taken over the country. As a professor of education, I have some reservations about the decision based on the information I have However, it is important to keep in mind, that in outcomes that matter most to many (incarceration, life exepectancy, home ownership, high-paying jobs), institutional sexism and racism are real and heavily favor white men. Both these things are true, but there is some attention bias in omitting the second.
- jwond 6y ago
  > This kind of story is really difficult: it provides fodder for right claims that social justice warriors have taken over the country. It always makes me a little sad when people see something wrong happening and their first concern is not about the issue itself, but rather about how bringing attention to the issue might lend credence to the views of their political opponents.
  - twoslide 6y ago
    Apologies for making you sad and sorry bringing party politics into this conversation. Perhaps a more constructive way to say this would bave been: "I worry that this story may lead individuals to conclude there is a broad pattern of reverse discrimination across the country." My argument is that there is not such discrimination against White males in the population more generally. Thanks and apologies again.
- infamia 6y ago
  In your example (incarceration) of "institutional sexism and racism", it's all about how the data is typically segmented and presented. For instance, white males receive harsher sentences than any other combination of race or gender (except black males). Additionally, white males have higher incarceration rates when compared to females of any race. Given these facts, how can "institutional sexism and racism" be objectively proffered when considering white males? If anything, they are far worse off than average. Some may find these statistics surprising, but it's mainly because of the way the headlines are consistently presented and segmented (i.e. almost always white males vs. black males). These numbers are even worse when you dig further into the data and look at the specifics of the circumstances (i.e. gender sentencing disparity/incarceration is a thing). https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-publications/2017/20171114_Demographics.pdf https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...
wwww4all 6y ago
San Francisco school board members are openly anti-male and anti-white. This is the inevitable end result of leftists identity politics and leftist views running rampant in San Francisco. The leftists are pushing their views on everyone because they are fascists set out to conform everyone to their views.
- koonsolo 6y ago
  I'm from Europe so genuine question: Is it correct that this is a very loud but tiny group (like 1%)? Or is this group becoming big (like 20%)?
  - throwawaysea 6y ago
    It’s becoming big, especially because the previously tiny group managed to inject their views into everything from corporate hiring practices to school curriculums. So young people get indoctrinated with this way of thinking early, and by the time they’re college age, it is all they are surrounded by. And activists / proponents of these views are so hostile to any other way of thinking that any attempt to oppose it will be shut down, using aggressive dirty tactics if needed (like disrupting a speaker on a college campus or deplatforming on social media). Because enough people have become victims of this (a phenomenon known as “cancel culture”) many who disagree with these ideas don’t speak up for fear of being fired or shamed or ostracized. Another avenue by which the group size is being increased is through organized groups like unions or nonprofits. For example the National Educators Union (NEA) is the largest labor union in the US, and organizes teachers. They’ve adopted, due to the focused activism of that tiny loud group, all these same principles as their guidance and standards for their member teachers to follow. You can see quickly how this adds up to one set of ideas being amplified and everything else shutdown, society-wide. The result is that younger generations in the US are much more left leaning, particularly in terms of being “woke”, and they have a lot less diversity of ideas and opinions that they’re exposed to. This is reflected in political polls by age groups. And it isn’t restricted to any one location either, because groups like the NEA implement those changes nationwide. So the lunacy we see in SF does change the rest of the country, and it will change the world. If I were a European I would definitely view American universities, news media, entertainment, and companies (particularly tech) with a lot of suspicion because of how much power they wield and how easily they can shape the culture and opinions of other countries. You see it already, with how progressive American activism is projected around the world through the Internet.
vmception 6y ago
race-based discrimination is just as unproductive for society as racism and being racist so many people are willing to deflect to an argument over an academic definition of racism that nobody uses colloquially, except when convenient for some people to levy their own race-based discrimination at others and exempt themselves from criticism the federal government has prosecuted race-based discrimination for 50 years, thats what their own agency calls it, "race-based discrimination". we have the anti-troll spray already created by Congress, and it seems like nobody noticed
danans 6y ago
The claims of racism here are as always completely and predictably ignoring the context. As things stand, there are two major dimensions of misrepresentation on the committee: it is completely over-represented by women, and it over-represented (33% of the board vs 15% of the student body, and would be 40% if the candidate was brought on) by white people, and significantly underrepresented by Asian Americans (1 board member vs 33% of the student body). Unless one makes the ridiculous argument that we "just shouldn't see race" despite it being a highly operative factor in our public lives, there is nothing wrong with the school board considering the problems of racial under-representation. They are seeking a qualified candidate who helps them address many dimensions of their demographic representation issues. There are likely many candidates who would be just as qualified but would better represent the community, like an Asian American man. In fact, they didn't summarily say no to the candidate, just that they want to see a more diverse slate of candidates, and encouraged the individual in question to reapply. Of course, that part isn't mentioned by people who want to cast this as anti-white discrimination.
- nn3 6y ago
  >the ridiculously argument that we "just shouldn't see race" I don't think it's ridiculous at all. Why can't we just be fair to everyone regardless of color?
  - danans 6y ago
    > Why can't we just be fair to everyone regardless of color? Because our society is structurally and historically configured to not be fair to people based on color, such that even individuals acting in their own non-racist self-interest (i.e. choosing a home in a "good school district") end up amplifying the effects of the racist social and power structures [1]. The only way we can move toward a world in which we are "fair to everyone regardless of color" is to dismantle the endemic systemic racism that currently exists. Denying the existence of structural racism is what is ridiculous. 1. https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/A_Shared_Future_Chapter_24_Interdependence_of_Housing_and_School_Segregation.pdf https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/A_Shared_Fu...
cromwellian 6y ago
This along with accusing Lowell (86% nonwhite) of using. “White supremacist” merit based admissions is the kind of stuff that drives people into the arms of politicians like Trump. Converting Lowell to open lottery for example will ironically increase the white student population at the expense of Asians. Does this make Asian voters more or less likely to vote for Republicans next time around when they demagogue this? Even if a lottery system is the right move, the way school board members communicate is toxic. Do school boards even do anything useful? They seem primarily to be a vehicle for people who want a future in politics, and often involve politics manipulation of schools that don’t necessary benefit students like injecting creationism into textbooks. Maybe the state legislature should be left to manage school districts state wide instead of allowing these local fiefdoms of tribal warlords.
koonsolo 6y ago
Where I went to school, there were only white kids. However, we did have kids with black, brown, blonde and ginger hair. We never really cared much about the color of anyone's hair. I hope in the future, all races will be so intermingled that some generation of kids don't really care about anyones skin, or religion, or culture, just as we did with the hair. But I'm afraid we are far away from that one.
- em-bee 6y ago
  in support of your example of not caring for hair color it is interesting to note that in japan, discrimination based on hair color does exist.

176 points by undefined1 6y ago

> Here's the current ethnic makeup of the PAC: > Three Latinas > Three white women > Two African Americans > One Asian American > One Pacific Islander > All current members of the PAC are women. Brenzel would have been the only man, and he happens to be white. How do you even parody this? > About 33% of SFUSD students are Asian, 28% are Latino, 15% are white and 6% are African American. The school board argued that adding a white male would tip the balance in the PAC. Whites would then become the "dominating race." What if we didn't encourage a world in which people identified with and advocated for their own race? I.e., you have some extra white people (or whatever race) on the board but it's not really a problem because they aren't lobbying for "white interests" (whatever that means). In what world is segregating everyone to their own racial lane going to deliver more equitable outcomes for individuals? Surely this is only going to enforce antiquated, racist ideas that race is a useful predictor for anything at an individual level (i.e., "I know everything I need to know about a person from their race"). Surely this is the very essence of racism? Do these people really not understand that they're being far more racist than their broader society? Or are they aware of their racism but using terms like "anti-racism" and "equity" deceitfully? EDIT: Looks like TFA was flagged off of the front page, which is really too bad because this seems like a very important topic and very relevant to much of this forum (considering how frequently we deal with racial employment policies in tech or the broader BLM threads over the summer or general SF/SV happenings).

brink 6y ago
> What if we didn't encourage a world in which people identified with and advocated for their own race? Agreed. How on earth did the "Each race only looks out for their own kind" mentality get labeled as progressive?
- rsj_hn 6y ago
  Because "Progressive" is about dismantling the incumbent policies and replacing them with your own policies. The advantages of this is that if you are a political leader, it's something you can hang your hat on to grab a leadership position rather than waiting for the incumbent to retire. But the price of this constant rejection of what your grandparents did is that if you yourself achieve the goal, then your own policies get dismantled by your crusading grandchildren. Take for example anti-trust, which sought to destroy the power of big trusts in the Teddy Roosevelt era -- and was itself destroyed by the progressive Watergate Democrats in the 70s, about 60 years later. All these anti-trust rules were considered old fashioned, obsolete, and policies of a discredited generation. They were called bigoted and not with the times. Or the social hygiene movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_hygiene_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_hygiene_movement), another great crusading Progressive cause, that sought to make illegal prostitution, alcohol, public nudity, and other attacks on morals. Few remember that the Women's Temperance movement and the Women's Suffrage movement were part of the same movement, and the progressives of those days really wanted to build a virtuous society, in much the same way that the current crop of progressives is obsessed with virtue, or the 60s crop was also inordinately focused on being virtuous, except for them being virtuous required dismantling the laws of the previous virtue movement. All the moral purity laws from the social hygiene movement were dismantled by other progressives in the 60s-70s. Or the union rights movement which was triumphant during the FDRs period, but was systematically destroyed primarily by Democrats in the 1970s-1990s (Clinton putting the last nail in the coffin). Unions were viewed as bigoted, old fashioned, and not with the times. Similarly the civil rights movement of the 60s is being systematically dismantled by the culture warriors of the present era, who view color-blind policies as the legacies of a discredited generation, of bigotry, and not being with the times. The good news is that if our current pro-racism movement triumphs and the nation re-segregates, there is a good chance that grandchildren of the current generation will themselves dismantle that system as being old-fashioned and not-with-the-times. In either case, Progressivism needs to be viewed as an act of rebellion first, and the policies are whatever they need to be in order to rally the most people to the moral revolution.
  - Mountain_Skies 6y ago
foofoo4u 6y ago
> What if we didn't encourage a world in which people identified with and advocated for their own race? It saddens me to see the woke ideology taking hold across the United States. It is indeed fundamentally racist and brings us back to our most tribalistic behaviors. It's the kind of thinking we learned a long time ago to put in the past. But now it's making a resurgence. And it's spreading. But articles like [this](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threa...) and the most upvoted comments within it give me hope that the west hasn't become entirely mad. It seems the French have observed the discourse of modern American events and see how decisive and destructive the ideology is. I'll quote the top comment within this particular article. > Yes, importing the American political correctness/woke/cancel culture will destroy France. How do I know this? Because it is already destroying the US. It fuels social division, and it distracts from the real problems, which tend to be economic and environmental. Much of the recent scholarship coming from the US, obsessed about race and gender, is completely useless and extremely ideological. It is no wonder that many of the most important books of global interest from recent years, such as Picketty's Capital in the 21st Century, do not come from the US. US universities are not free environments of vigorous intellectual debate anymore, and the faculty lives under constant fear of uttering the wrong word or phrase, and of being canceled because of their ideas. If a child of mine decided to study social sciences or a humanities field, the US would the last place I would send them to. I'm glad France is standing up against this nonsense. It gives me hope.
- ng12 6y ago
  > Because it is already destroying the US. It fuels social division, and it distracts from the real problems, which tend to be economic and environmental I think about this a lot. I don't think it's a coincidence that most of the countries lauded for their economic equity or environmental leadership are also largely homogenous societies. I don't know what the answer is for a fundamentally multicultural country like the US but obsessing about race and "representation" surely isn't it.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
majormajor 6y ago
> What if we didn't encourage a world in which people identified with and advocated for their own race? I think you're flipping cause and effect here. We can see plenty of examples in the history of the US of people, when left otherwise unencumbered, either ignored the needs of others at best or put their own race first at worst. The idea of segregation isn't being introduced here, existing segregation and related behaviors are being responded to. They aren't saying "this man is unable to perform this role due to his race" in a racist-against-this-person way, they're putting additional structural checks in place as a preventative measure. So here people are trying to make that structurally more difficult. Which is arguably a more realistic and rational choice than simply saying "things will be fine if we get better people."
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I understand what you're saying, and to be clear I'm not suggesting that woke progressives invented segregation. But the racial lanes that divided us historically have been progressively weakened--indeed, "racial progress" is largely synonymous with desegregation. So the idea that we can make racism/segregation "structurally more difficult" by reinforcing racial lanes is completely paradoxical. Can we not agree that categorizing people by their race is going to reinforce their racial identity at the expense of a broader collective human/national identity? And can we not agree that reinforcing racial identities and weakening the collective identity is going to create competition among and animosity between the different racial groups? And can we not agree that it is this racial animosity that births all of the evils of racism? If we can agree here, then surely this does the opposite of making segregation/racism "structurally more difficult"? > Which is arguably a more realistic and rational choice than simply saying "things will be fine if we get better people." Desegregation isn't "things will be fine if we get better people"; it's the active dissolving of racial lanes ("dismantling racist structures" might be a good phrase if it weren't coopted to mean the exact opposite). And it has been the only thing that has worked so far, so why should we think that it's a worse choice than segregation?
- griffinheart 6y ago
  I don't disagree with a lot of your above reply, but this part in particular picked my interest, mostly because I don't understand how its not racist. > They aren't saying "this man is unable to perform this role due to his race" in a racist-against-this-person way, they're putting additional structural checks in place as a preventative measure. Its not about the intention of the emitter, its about the receiving end of it. It seems that if we flip this so that the receiving end is part of a minority we would all think this is utterly racist independent of the intention, how is it not? edit: typo
suzzer99 6y ago
It's San Francisco, and big city school boards have always been utterly terrible. Hyper-liberal cities and universities have been doing ridiculous loopy stuff since basically forever. My uncle used to always complain about some ridiculous thing universities or San Francisco was doing, in the pre-internet 80s, when you had to read about it in American Spectator or someone's newsletter. I don't get how people think stuff like this is some existential threat - when we have much bigger very real problems in this country, like 30% of the population thinks the election was rigged, and armed militias are flexing their muscle taking over statehouses. It's a very weird form of focusing on the molehill and ignoring the mountain imo. Like walk me through how this kind of nonsense is this ever going to spread to Johnson County, KS - as opposed to being contained in hyper-liberal enclaves. I can walk you through a lot of scenarios as to how the stuff I mentioned above is a real existential threat to our democracy.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ghiculescu 6y ago
  The problem is that the people in SF are doing things that many people find divisive and dumb. But the same people are seen as in control of media, universities, tech etc - things that impact everyone. If you’re in Johnson City, KS, this happening in your country feels like it impacts you even if it’s in a hyper liberal enclave.
  - suzzer99 6y ago
    How does the SF school board have anything to do with the media? This seems like really digging hard for something to be mad about.
    - ghiculescu 6y ago
      It doesn’t, directly. But if you’re far away from SF and all you see is this headline, it reads as “the ruling class did some dumb woke stuff again”. How can you respect them? How can you be confident the wokeness won’t spread?
silicon2401 6y ago
I agree entirely. Lots of people calling out racism are themselves acting fundamentally racist in the sense of racially prejudiced and discriminatory. I won't be surprised if I wake up one day and we have race-specific water fountains again.
- undefined1 6y ago
  segregation is already being practiced in schools. here's an example: https://www.bwscampus.com/our-community/commitment-to-diversity/inclusive-excellence/dialogue-community-building-sessions https://www.bwscampus.com/our-community/commitment-to-divers...
- foofoo4u 6y ago
  > I won't be surprised if I wake up one day and we have race-specific water fountains again. We already have: Race-specific clubs on Universities.[1]; Race-specific departments on Universities.[2]; Race-specific video playlists on YouTube. [3]; Race-specific filters for map apps. [4]; Race-specific brands [5]; Race-specific merchandise [6]; Race-specific professional feeds [7]; Race-specific video channels [8.1][8.2]; Race-specific graduations [9]; I could go on endlessly with this list. You see the trend. America is socially segregating itself. So the concern you raise with race-specific water fountains is valid. Though that form of segregation, specifically, may not return, but other forms will. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/company/bbsasfsu/about/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/bbsasfsu/about/ [2] https://equity.sfsu.edu/blackunitycenter https://equity.sfsu.edu/blackunitycenter [3] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbpi6ZahtOH5pZK-VXFwjwCzuwaMgIR0g https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbpi6ZahtOH5pZK-VXFwj... [4] https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/black-history-month-2021/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/blac... [5] https://www.target.com/c/black-owned-or-founded-brands-at-target/-/N-q8v16 https://www.target.com/c/black-owned-or-founded-brands-at-ta... [6] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/01/apple-celebrates-black-history-month/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/01/apple-celebrates-blac... [7] https://www.linkedin.com/news/daily-rundown/special-edition/ https://www.linkedin.com/news/daily-rundown/special-edition/ [8.1] https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/81299227?so=su https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/81299227?so=su [8.2] https://www.hulu.com/black-stories https://www.hulu.com/black-stories [9] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/red-alert-politics/more-than-75-colleges-host-blacks-only-graduation-ceremonies https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/red-alert-politics/more-t...
golemiprague 6y ago
Just looking at the list and the grouping, it is such a warped worldview, Latin define people who speak a group of languages but only if they are south to the US in the American continent. White is a skin colour but includes all the range up to brown, as long as they don't live south to the US (or is it? If you are Italian from Italy you are white but if you are Italian from Argentina you are Latino? Or do you have to be slightly mixed with native to become Latino?). African American includes only black people, but not other Africans from north Africa who are not black. Asian includes all east Asians but not sub continental or middle Eastern. It is just a crazy mix of codes to group people by a combination of characteristics which they themselves not only see but the Americans are very sure about them. It is just nuts.
leetcrew 6y ago
sometimes the process of making a decision is just as important as whatever decision ultimately gets made. sometimes a tough decision has to get made and the tradeoff is that your ingroup takes a hit. the impact is the same either way, but it doesn't feel as bad if someone from your group was at least involved in the process. people already segment themselves into many different in/out-groups. institutions sometimes take this to a ridiculous level, but we have to account for this somehow.

fasteddie31003 6y ago

Another embarrassment for SF. I've been thinking more and more how government jobs do not attract the best and brightest because there is so much more money to be made in the private sector. However, their responsibilities are pretty high. I don't have a solution for this.

undefined1 6y ago
fewer government jobs, but highly paid. Singapore does this in order to compete with the private sector and reduce corruption.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Jobs = power for politicans. A team of ten people that does the work of five people is five jobs that state legislators and high level bureaucrats can phone in "recommendations" for resulting in five big favors owed. A team of five that is paid like ten and does the work of five is a direct threat to their power and they will fight it tooth and nail. I like the idea of fewer better paid jobs but I have no idea how we transition the current status quo from here to there.
sbuttgereit 6y ago
Ahh... but the decision makers in this case are elected officials... democracy in action.

solosoyokaze 6y ago

"He's gay, that's an important voice that we don't have right now, and he's a man. There are no males on the committee" Having no males on the committee seems like the biggest issue of them all, especially considering that male performance in education has been suffering for so long. I would argue that having no male voices hurts PoC especially as so many Black and Hispanic men are already being crushed by the system and imprisoned en masse. How does this decision help them and their families?

dominotw 6y ago
> I would argue that having no male voices hurts PoC funny that this the only possible angle we can argue for more male representation. What case do we have for male representation if lack of didn't hurt POC?
- solosoyokaze 6y ago
  It's not an "angle", it's a critical situation. I think these stats show why we need more male representation in general and why the situation with PoC should be first in mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#Gender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
  - dominotw 6y ago
    I wasn't disagreeing with your original comment or the intention behind it. 'angle' prbly wasn't the best choice of word on my part.
  - rajin444 6y ago
    How do you know what the correct rates of incarceration in the US should be? I've struggled with this question and I'm curious as to how others have arrived on a number. Saying "less" or "more" seems like a way to justify policies with no accountability (i.e, asking to be abused), so I do not use those answers.
    - 6y ago

vmception 6y ago

They should have said “culture fit” instead of race and fit right in here. They are looking for people with specific backgrounds as they will represent so that they'll be in those communities and see things from that perspective. That means they are selecting for factors outside of that individual’s control, which is dystopian but what has happened a different way all along.

throwaway894345 6y ago
> They are looking for people with specific backgrounds Why would anyone think that race is a good proxy for one's background? This seems pretty racist, in the most literal, original sense of the term.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >Why would anyone think that race is a good proxy for one's background? On a long enough timeline it's unfortunately a self fulfilling prophecy. (This goes for whatever demographic groups you use to divide people into, not just race.)
- vmception 6y ago
  it is race-based discrimination is just as unproductive for society as racism and being racist.
BitwiseFool 6y ago
I really wonder just how differently people from different "communities" (race/ethnicity/etc) see things. Part of me thinks you can just boil those differences down to personality and politics rather than some shared cultural filter on reality.
- vmception 6y ago
  > Part of me thinks you can just boil those differences down to personality and politics and the politics will be with people in the same community as them, that's the point. public figures make themselves hard to contact outside of the organic backchannel of just being there when they were growing up. this has benefitted one group while the concerns of other groups are not able to be addressed in this way. we don't have a system devoid of those things and now it will happen with different people represented by their own neighbor I'm not advocating anything in this comment

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago

I fear mentioning this because it could turn into a flame war, but this is somewhat related. French leaders and politicians are now concerned that USA "wokeness" threatens the stability of their country[1]. It's a really difficult topic to address because it involves contentious racial issues, but we really need to find a way to talk about it while avoiding the bickering. I fear that if we don't find a way to put a stop to this, anti-white and anti-male discrimination will be fully accepted in the near future, which would be absolutely terrible for our society. [1] https://thepostmillennial.com/french-leaders-concerned-american-wokeness-will-divide-their-country https://thepostmillennial.com/french-leaders-concerned-ameri...

908B64B197 6y ago
What's interesting is that what's happening on American campuses is exported to France, yet, what's happening on French campuses stays on French Campuses. I wonder if it reflects current brain flow (are American students coming to French university in greater numbers than French students going to the US?). Maybe the solution is to build an ecosystem where the culture and practices is exported instead of imported.
- cameldrv 6y ago
  Foucault definitely did not stay on French campuses, and he's a huge part of this new ideology.
- lm28469 6y ago
  > What's interesting is that what's happening on American campuses is exported to France, yet, what's happening on French campuses stays on French Campuses. I never thought of it that way. That being said after 50+ years of Americanisation of Western culture (through movies, music, &c.) it's not really surprising that it flows that way. I think a lot of the American "woke" culture also emerges from things that are very easy to empathise for and trigger an outrage response. For example the George Floyd case which somehow triggered dozens of protests in Europe: no one with a fully formed brain can watch the video and not be outraged. I also feel like a lot of the American ideas about progressivism are fairly "feel good" measures that are very easily adopted (everyone wants to be upset about something, everyone wants to be themselves/special, &c.) and are all somewhat based on "identity", it feeds the "us vs them" part of the brain very nicely.

devmunchies 6y ago

I would love for the term "neoracists" to catch on. Much bigger problem than the other "neo___" that we hear so much about.

haunter 6y ago
Regressive left
- SavageBeast 6y ago
  Just added a new term to my toolkit - thanks!
orange_tee 6y ago
Why not simply "racists"? They are racists. They are literally trying to reorganize society based on a race theory. They only difference is that it is a different race theory, but they still have the race war mentality of past eras.
- devmunchies 6y ago
  > it is a different race theory exactly. and we can call this different branch of racism "neoracism". IMO "racist" has been thrown around so much that I think a new term that specifically describes this new woke branch of racism will have more muster.

908B64B197 6y ago

When I see nominations based solely on race, this makes me doubts the qualifications of everyone on a board. Same thing with schools/companies with diversity quotas. If the person is "diverse" you can never really know if he/she is there on merit or if someone had to lower the bar to fill the quota. But if they aren't "diverse" you know they are there on merit. Am-I the only one?

pjkundert 6y ago
It's terribly insulting. Especially to the target "protected" groups. I would have thought that we would have realized that racist (and any other "group"-ist) selection policies are ridiculous and would have rejected them by now. At least by people who have a basic understanding of how group statistics apply to individuals... But no. The "woke" madness is doubling down, and dialling the madness up to 11.
- yegle 6y ago
  For non-English speaker it looks like the last sentence refers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven?wprov=sfla1
  - bendbro 6y ago
    That's exactly right. The commenter is saying that by doubling down (gambling reference: betting more on your possibly untrue theory) on woke ideas, they are increasing the madness in society to a maximum level (the commenter is also potentially implying it can't be increased further, because society may break).
renewiltord 6y ago
Nah, I don’t feel that way because I think the pool of candidates is often so big that everyone will be competent. Anyway, in this case, though, your idea is reinforced because the SF USD board is actually people more politically savvy than smart. For evidence, I present the Clarendon school renaming.
6y ago

happyjack 6y ago

Keep up the experiment, California. Middle America is excited to see the results in 20 years.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
The results are gonna move in next year when the little old lady down the street croaks and her house goes up for sale.
- happyjack 6y ago
  I'm not sure I follow :D besides the sarcasm ... all I know is that this insanity is not sustainable.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    The demographics that drilled all the holes in the ship are also the first people off the sinking ship. Look at the further out suburbs of Austin, Denver, Boulder and Boise if you want to see this effect in various stages of its progression. You're not gonna have to wait 20yr to see CA crash and burn from afar. The root cause is going to set up shop and start doing its thing closer to (your) home and it will do so on a much shorter timeline.
    - happyjack 6y ago
      Oh I know ... it's scary. I live in the west and have seen first hand what it's done to Denver / Boulder / Boise. I really liked your analogy, too. "Let's screw things up and see what happens. No worries I have unicorn stock and can move to somewhere better and bring my wreck with me." I read a comment one time that said "Denver used to be the Kansas City of the West, now it's the SF." It saddens me how true that is now.
      - jaywalk 6y ago
        It's more like "Wow, this place with all of the policies that I supported and voted for has turned into a dump! I need to get out of here, but I need to make sure that I can get all of my policies implemented in the new place as well!"

cdiddy2 6y ago

This is how populist leaders get elected, keep this up and we end up with another.

devmunchies 6y ago
isn't populism just what the democratic party used to be 40 years ago? appealing to ordinary working class? Occupy wall street was a populist movement. so was the recent gamestop pump.
- cat199 6y ago
  As I like to say, populism is not a 4-letter word...

marcell 6y ago

Worth noting this policy is contrary to the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause, and also a California law prohibiting discrimination based on race that was recently upheld by a large majority vote.

fallingknife 6y ago
Amazing that in 2021 we only enforce the racial discrimination laws in one direction. That's also what they did in 1921.
- vmception 6y ago
  There is no data to support that, a racial discrimination law should be levied here, because now the action just occurred. edit: so 20 year old data is being masqueraded as modern civil rights realities. never seen that before in any other topic.
  - fallingknife 6y ago
    No data? There are supreme court decisions on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger
    - vmception 6y ago
      In 2003 a racial discrimination law favored one group, your premise was about 2021. In the last 18 years (oh wow people born then can vote now!) race-based discrimination statutes are routinely enforced for all groups, including in favor of the majority group when they have been discriminated against by race by a potential or current employer. Take a quick browse at the EOCC enforcement actions, or California's DFEH, and other agencies and other court cases.
    - vmception 6y ago
      a racial discrimination law should be levied here, because now the action just occurred. the laws are not pre-emptive.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dna_polymerase 6y ago

What fucked up ideology do you have to follow to think this is not racist and in any way okay? And why does it matter that he is gay? What the fuck is happening, have people gone insane?

bcheung 6y ago
Yes. This is why so many are fleeing California and the bay area. This and taxes were probably the 2 biggest motivations for me to move out of the SF bay area.
alacombe 6y ago
"Racism", as per the progressive left definition, only applies to white men, when the same concept is applied to anybody else, it's called "progress". Should be obvious by now.

jariel 6y ago

This is a Monty Python Skit come to life.

jfk13 6y ago

Is this the same school board as recently indulged in an absurd school-renaming binge? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/san-francisco-renaming-spree/617894/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/san-franci... [edit: Yes, apparently. Nice to see the insanity is at least consistent.]

throwawaysea 6y ago

Isn't it explicitly illegal to hire in this manner? Also in terms of diversity, I feel like SF is really only chasing visible, skin deep diversity. What they actually need is ideological diversity. Over- and under-representation should be looked on more dimensions (https://heterodoxacademy.org/ideological-underrepresentation-compared-to-race-gender-sexuality/ https://heterodoxacademy.org/ideological-underrepresentation...) than just the ones that are politically convenient or have the most coverage in news/social media. And leaving that aside, chasing equality of opportunity is fair and just, but chasing equality of outcomes (AKA equity) is unjust and discriminatory. Progressives need to abandon that train of thought because it corrupts institutions in the very manner we are seeing in this story. Unfortunately I am also seeing a trend of big companies, particularly tech companies, adopting "equity" into their language. The move from Diversity programs making work accessible and comfortable for everyone to trying to create equal outcomes based on arbitrary group distinctions is moving them away from meritocracy and towards a victimocracy (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Victimocracy https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Victimocracy).

tannhauser23 6y ago

This is why parents who care about education put kids in private school or move out of SF.

BitwiseFool 6y ago
I'm sure there will be a push to outlaw private schools.
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  It’s already here. That’s what the fight against charter schools and school choice in general is. The money grab by ineffective unionized teachers is one aspect, but the centralization of education is the other aspect they seek to protect since it enables one sided indoctrination instead of diverse education. And now there are even activists and (sham/quack) academics trying to ban homeschooling - see https://fee.org/articles/harvard-magazine-calls-for-a-presumptive-ban-on-homeschooling-here-are-5-things-it-got-wrong/ https://fee.org/articles/harvard-magazine-calls-for-a-presum... or https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemcshane/2020/04/21/harvards-lazy-attack-on-homeschooling/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemcshane/2020/04/21/harvards... Somehow proponents of one size fits all centralized public education don’t seem to recognize that they’re no different than the CCP forcing Tibetan children into government schools to get reprogrammed into their ideology and revisionism.

newbie578 6y ago

Looking at this from Europe, this just feels ludicrous, like we are all taking crazy pills, and slowly this kind of mentality is infecting everywhere. Anything which focuses on race first is inherently racist. I do not care for your ethnicity, race, gender, or religion. If you are qualified for the job, you get the job. I just remembered reading on TechCrunch a VC fund which only accepts bids for women only led startups. How the hell is something like that allowed? I was honestly temped to apply just to see what they would say. Sorry you are a man, please go away. And I know there are going to be people to downvote me for stating this, but just imagine if the opposite happened, if someone made a young male VC fund... Heads would roll...

dna_polymerase 6y ago
The VC fund is something entirely different. You can choose who you are doing business with, if you make decisions based on anything else than ability and product you probably will miss out on profit, but in the end, no harm was done. Also, this stuff comes to Europe. It's already in Germany where some public jobs have to meet certain male/female quotas, but also the universities, which are filled with this PC crap.
inglor_cz 6y ago
It is seeping in here as well, especially the Green movement seems to be infiltrated. Austrian Greens split over wokeness into two parties. German Greens are basically taken over, with a few personal exceptions (Boris Palmer). And given how much climate change interests voters, we may get a hefty dose of racial wokeness as an unexpected side effect.
koonsolo 6y ago
I agree. We should really try to keep this crazy US bullshit outside of Europe, but unfortunately I see it creeping in already :(. US had a big cultural impact on the rest of the world.

ssijak 6y ago

I literally do not understand this obsession. I thought that antirasism basically mean opposite of obsessing about race in any way. I mean, yeah I notice if someone is white, black, or whatever but what does that have to do with anything else than the wavelength of the light hitting my eyes after reflecting from their skin. If everybody just totally ignored color of the skin in any way, like totally, rasism would be non existent. Is that so hard?

inglor_cz 6y ago
"I thought that antirasism basically mean opposite of obsessing about race in any way." Bless your heart.
whatisantir 6y ago
The term anti racism has been defined by woke leaders to mean something different. It’s actually illiberal and racist. They are proudly illiberal. You should look it up because it’s so shocking.

balozi 6y ago

Predictably the problem here is a centralized education system. Break up or decentralize the school system. Make the decision making hyperlocal. Anytime you centralize power, crazy power-hungry people will try to capture it.

warkdarrior 6y ago
Hyperlocal education will lead to fragmented education, and result in arguments like these: * Why should one force black kids to learn white people math? * Why should Latino kids be forced to learn native american history?
throwawaysea 6y ago
Hyperlocal decision making is needed across the boards and it is why our country was designed as a federation of states. It wasn’t meant to place so much power in a federal government and it didn’t anticipate centralization of public education through institutions like teachers unions. Unfortunately what we are seeing now are brazen power games to oppress one’s ideological or political opponents, and it includes things like the education system, where there is massive, tribal opposition to choice in education.

SavageBeast 6y ago

There is a valuable lesson in this book, so valuable in fact we teach it to our children. https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Cried-Wolf-Timeless-Fables/dp/0986431370/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2K6TVWMTNZJN5&dchild=1&keywords=the+boy+who+cried+wolf&qid=1613155970&s=books&sprefix=the+boy+who+cr%2Caps%2C184&sr=1-4 https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Cried-Wolf-Timeless-Fables/dp/098... Heres another one that teaches a similarly valuable lesson. https://www.amazon.com/Chicken-Little-Classics-Phidal-Publishing/dp/2764324235/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2E7GF99DSL752&dchild=1&keywords=chicken+little+book&qid=1613156034&s=books&sprefix=chicken+little%2Cstripbooks%2C180&sr=1-4 https://www.amazon.com/Chicken-Little-Classics-Phidal-Publis... We're going to reach a point in this society when you call someone a racist (deserved or not) and they just say "pffft... whatever..." and go happily about their business totally unaffected. Social Justice is having its moment now and this is what they're doing with their time in the spotlight. Somehow the same people who put lunatics in charge of their own movement now want to install similar lunatics in every place they can. This will stop someday and it will stop hard.

inglor_cz 6y ago
Yes, that would not be the first time either. The times when "you are a godless atheist" was a serious call out threatening your social standing are still within living memory.
throwaway829 6y ago
White person: We need more of my kind on the board. <-- racist Black person: We need more of my kind on the board. <-- woke Brown person: We need more of my kind on the board. <-- woke That view is endorsed at the highest levels of corporate America, politics and MSM. And somehow we're supposed to believe that "white supremacists" control the system. The current state of America is quite laughable.

twoslide 6y ago

This kind of story is really difficult: it provides fodder for right claims that social justice warriors have taken over the country. As a professor of education, I have some reservations about the decision based on the information I have However, it is important to keep in mind, that in outcomes that matter most to many (incarceration, life exepectancy, home ownership, high-paying jobs), institutional sexism and racism are real and heavily favor white men. Both these things are true, but there is some attention bias in omitting the second.

jwond 6y ago
> This kind of story is really difficult: it provides fodder for right claims that social justice warriors have taken over the country. It always makes me a little sad when people see something wrong happening and their first concern is not about the issue itself, but rather about how bringing attention to the issue might lend credence to the views of their political opponents.
- twoslide 6y ago
  Apologies for making you sad and sorry bringing party politics into this conversation. Perhaps a more constructive way to say this would bave been: "I worry that this story may lead individuals to conclude there is a broad pattern of reverse discrimination across the country." My argument is that there is not such discrimination against White males in the population more generally. Thanks and apologies again.
infamia 6y ago
In your example (incarceration) of "institutional sexism and racism", it's all about how the data is typically segmented and presented. For instance, white males receive harsher sentences than any other combination of race or gender (except black males). Additionally, white males have higher incarceration rates when compared to females of any race. Given these facts, how can "institutional sexism and racism" be objectively proffered when considering white males? If anything, they are far worse off than average. Some may find these statistics surprising, but it's mainly because of the way the headlines are consistently presented and segmented (i.e. almost always white males vs. black males). These numbers are even worse when you dig further into the data and look at the specifics of the circumstances (i.e. gender sentencing disparity/incarceration is a thing). https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-publications/2017/20171114_Demographics.pdf https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...

wwww4all 6y ago

San Francisco school board members are openly anti-male and anti-white. This is the inevitable end result of leftists identity politics and leftist views running rampant in San Francisco. The leftists are pushing their views on everyone because they are fascists set out to conform everyone to their views.

koonsolo 6y ago
I'm from Europe so genuine question: Is it correct that this is a very loud but tiny group (like 1%)? Or is this group becoming big (like 20%)?
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  It’s becoming big, especially because the previously tiny group managed to inject their views into everything from corporate hiring practices to school curriculums. So young people get indoctrinated with this way of thinking early, and by the time they’re college age, it is all they are surrounded by. And activists / proponents of these views are so hostile to any other way of thinking that any attempt to oppose it will be shut down, using aggressive dirty tactics if needed (like disrupting a speaker on a college campus or deplatforming on social media). Because enough people have become victims of this (a phenomenon known as “cancel culture”) many who disagree with these ideas don’t speak up for fear of being fired or shamed or ostracized. Another avenue by which the group size is being increased is through organized groups like unions or nonprofits. For example the National Educators Union (NEA) is the largest labor union in the US, and organizes teachers. They’ve adopted, due to the focused activism of that tiny loud group, all these same principles as their guidance and standards for their member teachers to follow. You can see quickly how this adds up to one set of ideas being amplified and everything else shutdown, society-wide. The result is that younger generations in the US are much more left leaning, particularly in terms of being “woke”, and they have a lot less diversity of ideas and opinions that they’re exposed to. This is reflected in political polls by age groups. And it isn’t restricted to any one location either, because groups like the NEA implement those changes nationwide. So the lunacy we see in SF does change the rest of the country, and it will change the world. If I were a European I would definitely view American universities, news media, entertainment, and companies (particularly tech) with a lot of suspicion because of how much power they wield and how easily they can shape the culture and opinions of other countries. You see it already, with how progressive American activism is projected around the world through the Internet.

vmception 6y ago

race-based discrimination is just as unproductive for society as racism and being racist so many people are willing to deflect to an argument over an academic definition of racism that nobody uses colloquially, except when convenient for some people to levy their own race-based discrimination at others and exempt themselves from criticism the federal government has prosecuted race-based discrimination for 50 years, thats what their own agency calls it, "race-based discrimination". we have the anti-troll spray already created by Congress, and it seems like nobody noticed

danans 6y ago

The claims of racism here are as always completely and predictably ignoring the context. As things stand, there are two major dimensions of misrepresentation on the committee: it is completely over-represented by women, and it over-represented (33% of the board vs 15% of the student body, and would be 40% if the candidate was brought on) by white people, and significantly underrepresented by Asian Americans (1 board member vs 33% of the student body). Unless one makes the ridiculous argument that we "just shouldn't see race" despite it being a highly operative factor in our public lives, there is nothing wrong with the school board considering the problems of racial under-representation. They are seeking a qualified candidate who helps them address many dimensions of their demographic representation issues. There are likely many candidates who would be just as qualified but would better represent the community, like an Asian American man. In fact, they didn't summarily say no to the candidate, just that they want to see a more diverse slate of candidates, and encouraged the individual in question to reapply. Of course, that part isn't mentioned by people who want to cast this as anti-white discrimination.

nn3 6y ago
>the ridiculously argument that we "just shouldn't see race" I don't think it's ridiculous at all. Why can't we just be fair to everyone regardless of color?
- danans 6y ago
  > Why can't we just be fair to everyone regardless of color? Because our society is structurally and historically configured to not be fair to people based on color, such that even individuals acting in their own non-racist self-interest (i.e. choosing a home in a "good school district") end up amplifying the effects of the racist social and power structures [1]. The only way we can move toward a world in which we are "fair to everyone regardless of color" is to dismantle the endemic systemic racism that currently exists. Denying the existence of structural racism is what is ridiculous. 1. https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/A_Shared_Future_Chapter_24_Interdependence_of_Housing_and_School_Segregation.pdf https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/A_Shared_Fu...

cromwellian 6y ago

This along with accusing Lowell (86% nonwhite) of using. “White supremacist” merit based admissions is the kind of stuff that drives people into the arms of politicians like Trump. Converting Lowell to open lottery for example will ironically increase the white student population at the expense of Asians. Does this make Asian voters more or less likely to vote for Republicans next time around when they demagogue this? Even if a lottery system is the right move, the way school board members communicate is toxic. Do school boards even do anything useful? They seem primarily to be a vehicle for people who want a future in politics, and often involve politics manipulation of schools that don’t necessary benefit students like injecting creationism into textbooks. Maybe the state legislature should be left to manage school districts state wide instead of allowing these local fiefdoms of tribal warlords.

koonsolo 6y ago

Where I went to school, there were only white kids. However, we did have kids with black, brown, blonde and ginger hair. We never really cared much about the color of anyone's hair. I hope in the future, all races will be so intermingled that some generation of kids don't really care about anyones skin, or religion, or culture, just as we did with the hair. But I'm afraid we are far away from that one.

em-bee 6y ago
in support of your example of not caring for hair color it is interesting to note that in japan, discrimination based on hair color does exist.