4 ms·

It's a real breakdown of empathy. People only see skin color for their interpretation of "like me". There is so much to being a person, but this is the first th

by mvzvm 5y ago

It's a real breakdown of empathy. People only see skin color for their interpretation of "like me". There is so much to being a person, but this is the first thing people see, so it becomes insanely overrepresented.

throwaway894345 5y ago
Agreed. This brings to mind a couple of other anecdotes: * The Dutch translator who was hired to translate Amanda Gorman's work (AG is the youngest poet laureate in US history and while I'm not particularly informed on poetry, I liked her performance at the Biden inauguration). The deal was reneged because of significant complaints that the translator wasn't black and thus couldn't possibly understand Gorman (a black person) and thus couldn't possibly convey her sentiments. The translator noted that he was deemed fit to translate Shakespeare despite not being neither an Englishman nor alive during the 16th century, so the implication seems to be that race constitutes a greater distinction between humans than nationality and centuries of history. * The San Francisco school board affair in which a gay white man was deemed unfit to serve as a volunteer because, despite being eminently qualified and having the support of the broader community, he was "redundant" in that there were already several white female volunteers. In this case, the explicit reasoning of the school board was that the candidate volunteer wouldn't be able to relate to students of color and thus wouldn't be fit to serve them. The implication seems to be that students would be better served by a volunteer their own race (irrespective of the experiences or qualifications of said volunteer) rather than someone who was qualified and perhaps had relatable experiences but of a different race. > There is so much to being a person, but this is the first thing people see, so it becomes insanely overrepresented. Perhaps, but skin tone differences have always existed, and this sort of emphasis on skin tone seems like a very recent phenomenon at least in the scope of my lifetime.
- sweetheart 5y ago
  > this sort of emphasis on skin tone seems like a very recent phenomenon at least in the scope of my lifetime. This sounds like something that could only be true of a white person. It reminds of me of how I was horrified to learn that one of my gay friends had to deal with someone calling them the F slur once, and my friend said I was only surprised because I don't personally deal with homophobic slurs on a regular basis. There has always been extraordinary emphasis on skin tone, it's just that more and more non-POC folks are starting to see it bit by bit.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    > There has always been extraordinary emphasis on skin tone No doubt this is true in some strict sense depending on how you define "extraordinary", but in whatever sense this is true I don't think it's very informative. Namely, while (esp in the US) there is a deep history of racism, to say that it has always been this way is pretty much untrue--American views on race (including the importance placed on race) have changed a lot throughout history, and while racism has never utterly disappeared, it's perfectly correct to note that the emphasis placed on race in the 90s and 2000s was much lower than the most recent decade. Indeed, Google NGram corroborates this. Note the date range is 1990-2019 because ngram doesn't offer 2020 or 2021 data--though I strongly suspect the upward trend continues in 2020. Note also that I used "americans" as a suffix in all cases to disambiguate "white" and "black" which come up in a lot of non-racial contexts. * "White Americans" https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=white+americans&year_start=1990&year_end=2019&corpus=28&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cwhite%20americans%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=white+american... * "Black Americans" https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=black+americans&year_start=1990&year_end=2019&corpus=28&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cblack%20americans%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=black+american... * "Asian Americans" https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=asian+americans&year_start=1990&year_end=2019&corpus=28&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Casian%20americans%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=asian+american... So I don't really buy into the "we've always been this obsessed about race; whites are just mysteriously unable to perceive it" argument. In general, people are often surprised that the variation within a race far exceeds the variation between races, and specifically that "people of color" do not have the views (on race or otherwise) ascribed to them by the popular media.
    - sweetheart 5y ago
      People writing about race more does not mean that race is necessarily playing a larger role in the various operations of society, it just means the myriad ways it affects society are being discussed more. Race has always played this large a role, people just say it in books more. Our subconscious biases can reign supreme and yet never be discussed anywhere. EDIT: There is also nothing mysterious about white people having a much harder time picking up on racism. You're making it seem like this mystical hippy-dippy nonsense. It's instead very simple: if you're white you won't often (ever) be the target of racism, so you'll have a skewed perception of how common and powerful it is. No mystery here, friend.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > The San Francisco school board affair in which a gay white man was deemed unfit to serve as a volunteer because [...] he was "redundant" in that there were already several white female volunteers. That's kinda homophobic. Gay man so he HAS to be effeminate. > The implication seems to be that students would be better served by a volunteer their own race I bet the (closeted) students (of all races) would have probably preferred to see an openly gay man in a position of authority where he's not mocked for who is is.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    > That's kinda homophobic. Gay man so he HAS to be effeminate. FWIW, I didn't interpret it that way. I think the school board's message was merely that race dominates all other qualifications and since they already had two other white people (who happened to be female) they already had enough people with "white qualifications". Of course, this is by no means a less toxic interpretation than your "homophobia" interpretation.

by mvzvm 5y ago

throwaway894345 5y ago

Agreed. This brings to mind a couple of other anecdotes: * The Dutch translator who was hired to translate Amanda Gorman's work (AG is the youngest poet laureate in US history and while I'm not particularly informed on poetry, I liked her performance at the Biden inauguration). The deal was reneged because of significant complaints that the translator wasn't black and thus couldn't possibly understand Gorman (a black person) and thus couldn't possibly convey her sentiments. The translator noted that he was deemed fit to translate Shakespeare despite not being neither an Englishman nor alive during the 16th century, so the implication seems to be that race constitutes a greater distinction between humans than nationality and centuries of history. * The San Francisco school board affair in which a gay white man was deemed unfit to serve as a volunteer because, despite being eminently qualified and having the support of the broader community, he was "redundant" in that there were already several white female volunteers. In this case, the explicit reasoning of the school board was that the candidate volunteer wouldn't be able to relate to students of color and thus wouldn't be fit to serve them. The implication seems to be that students would be better served by a volunteer their own race (irrespective of the experiences or qualifications of said volunteer) rather than someone who was qualified and perhaps had relatable experiences but of a different race. > There is so much to being a person, but this is the first thing people see, so it becomes insanely overrepresented. Perhaps, but skin tone differences have always existed, and this sort of emphasis on skin tone seems like a very recent phenomenon at least in the scope of my lifetime.

sweetheart 5y ago
> this sort of emphasis on skin tone seems like a very recent phenomenon at least in the scope of my lifetime. This sounds like something that could only be true of a white person. It reminds of me of how I was horrified to learn that one of my gay friends had to deal with someone calling them the F slur once, and my friend said I was only surprised because I don't personally deal with homophobic slurs on a regular basis. There has always been extraordinary emphasis on skin tone, it's just that more and more non-POC folks are starting to see it bit by bit.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  > There has always been extraordinary emphasis on skin tone No doubt this is true in some strict sense depending on how you define "extraordinary", but in whatever sense this is true I don't think it's very informative. Namely, while (esp in the US) there is a deep history of racism, to say that it has always been this way is pretty much untrue--American views on race (including the importance placed on race) have changed a lot throughout history, and while racism has never utterly disappeared, it's perfectly correct to note that the emphasis placed on race in the 90s and 2000s was much lower than the most recent decade. Indeed, Google NGram corroborates this. Note the date range is 1990-2019 because ngram doesn't offer 2020 or 2021 data--though I strongly suspect the upward trend continues in 2020. Note also that I used "americans" as a suffix in all cases to disambiguate "white" and "black" which come up in a lot of non-racial contexts. * "White Americans" https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=white+americans&year_start=1990&year_end=2019&corpus=28&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cwhite%20americans%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=white+american... * "Black Americans" https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=black+americans&year_start=1990&year_end=2019&corpus=28&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cblack%20americans%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=black+american... * "Asian Americans" https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=asian+americans&year_start=1990&year_end=2019&corpus=28&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Casian%20americans%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=asian+american... So I don't really buy into the "we've always been this obsessed about race; whites are just mysteriously unable to perceive it" argument. In general, people are often surprised that the variation within a race far exceeds the variation between races, and specifically that "people of color" do not have the views (on race or otherwise) ascribed to them by the popular media.
  - sweetheart 5y ago
    People writing about race more does not mean that race is necessarily playing a larger role in the various operations of society, it just means the myriad ways it affects society are being discussed more. Race has always played this large a role, people just say it in books more. Our subconscious biases can reign supreme and yet never be discussed anywhere. EDIT: There is also nothing mysterious about white people having a much harder time picking up on racism. You're making it seem like this mystical hippy-dippy nonsense. It's instead very simple: if you're white you won't often (ever) be the target of racism, so you'll have a skewed perception of how common and powerful it is. No mystery here, friend.
908B64B197 5y ago
> The San Francisco school board affair in which a gay white man was deemed unfit to serve as a volunteer because [...] he was "redundant" in that there were already several white female volunteers. That's kinda homophobic. Gay man so he HAS to be effeminate. > The implication seems to be that students would be better served by a volunteer their own race I bet the (closeted) students (of all races) would have probably preferred to see an openly gay man in a position of authority where he's not mocked for who is is.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  > That's kinda homophobic. Gay man so he HAS to be effeminate. FWIW, I didn't interpret it that way. I think the school board's message was merely that race dominates all other qualifications and since they already had two other white people (who happened to be female) they already had enough people with "white qualifications". Of course, this is by no means a less toxic interpretation than your "homophobia" interpretation.