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I agree. Except this: > these "allies" are worse than ... overtly prejudiced/racist people. I disagree. By my reckoning, there just isn't a comparison, by alm

I agree. Except this: > these "allies" are worse than ... overtly prejudiced/racist people. I disagree. By my reckoning, there just isn't a comparison, by almost any metric of societal damage. Of course, it doesn't have to be a contest. That's not the important thing.

makomk 5y ago
The thing is, when the social justice left do things that are actively prejudiced against and intentionally hurt the minority groups they claim to be helping, you just don't hear about it because one of their core beliefs is that they're always helping by definition and they have enough power over the mainstream discussion that it's impossible to challenge. For example, one of the last things the Labour party, who're the more left-wing of our two main parties, did when they had power here in the UK was write a special exemption in anti-discrimination law to deny trans women access to rape and domestic violence services at the request of a feminist lobbying group. (As in this was literally the stated purpose according to the official guidance accompanying the law when it was proposed.) Any discussion of how this happened or the lobbying group behind it was explicitly forbidden in the left-wing and feminist publications and communities with any reach. The press only turned on the Labour-linked lobbying group in late 2019, over a decade after the original law, when they started lobbying the Conservatives over the same anti-trans cause. The discussion of this has been so warped that the established social justice left view on the whole thing is that it shows transphobia is a right-wing thing and proves any attempt to equate the left with them (not just over transphobia, but any attempt to claim they're comparably bad in general) is a dangerous false equivalence.
darkerside 5y ago
HN should be a place of justice and sharpening of ideas. Thank you for participating in that. Allies and racists both exist on a continuum, do they not? A single individual will take actions that are both helpful and harmful in different measures to other people and groups in society. Some racists are going to be net benefits to society. Their racist views may be limited, unintentional, unexpressed, or any combination of the above. While their works may be helping minority groups directly. That's just one example of the presented framework breaking, but there are many more permutations. Hopefully this is enough for us to agree that a blanket statement like > these "allies" are worse than ... overtly prejudiced/racist people. is, if not inaccurate, so imprecise as to be meaningless.
vmception 5y ago
Its the unpredictability to having their world view challenged that I called out and already clarified. Those are completely related thoughts separated by punctuated. There's no point in trying to find other metrics I didn't specify at all.
wearywanderer 5y ago
Overt racists are dangerous like bears. The danger they present is obvious to anybody with sense and they're not pretending to be anything other than dangerous. The aforementioned "allies" are dangerous like bear-traps. Ostensibly they exist to deal with the bears. But they lay hidden in the brush ready to take off the foot of anybody who missteps, bear or otherwise. And you probably won't notice one is around until somebody steps on it.
- kelnos 5y ago
  Funny how you neglected to mention the harm non-overt racists cause, and how it's often difficult to detect the danger they present. I would wager there are more non-overt racists out there than counter-productive allies.
  - himinlomax 5y ago
    The danger they present is nil until proven otherwise.
  - wearywanderer 5y ago
    > Funny how you neglected to mention the harm non-overt racist [...] Funny how you're taking this gripe up with me, not the commenters above mine to whom I am responding. I did not set the scope of this branch of conversation, yet you insinuate I am responsible for it. Buzz off.
  - furgooswft13 5y ago
    I guess the prudent thing is to burn all the witches then.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    One of the principles of medicine is that the cure should not be worse than the disease. At some level of activism, the remaining non-overt racists will be less harmful than the obsession to root them out. Companies already pay a ton of money for sensitivity and diversity trainings that either do not work or even worsen the atmosphere of the workplace. This money could have been used for a better purpose than lining already fat pockets of Robin diAngelo and her peers.
listless 5y ago
Maybe, but you’d have to back that up with at least an anecdote. I agree with OP and the fact that most racists are extremely poor and rural with no power makes them a downward punch for most people.
- arthur_sav 5y ago
  That is incorrect. The source of it may vary but the results are the same. Educated and well off people might have a superiority complex and they can be both racists and classists. And poor people can be ignorant, even more so when isolated, which is a catalyst for racism.
  - listless 5y ago
    I agree with the “class” part. And that’s what it always is. Everybody looks down on somebody and that almost always gets conflated with racism.
- Arainach 5y ago
  >most racists are extremely poor and rural with no power [[Citation Needed]] The rural poor have plenty of power on both a federal level (each California House representative is responsible for 65 times as many people as each North Dakota representative; numbers are similar for Wyoming, Montana, and plenty of other rural areas) and state levels (thanks to the magic of gerrymandering. There are all sorts of racist rich people. I grew up in a well off suburb in Michigan that was significantly more than 90% white (though adjacent to a more diverse larger city) and full of overt racism, to say nothing of the more subtle forms.
  - listless 5y ago
    You gotta come visit rural Appalachia and see if you still think they have any power. We have turned our poorest, most vulnerable populations into the enemy. We did it in the 80s/90s with young black men, then in the 2000s with Muslims and we’re doing it again but this time it’s “racists”. Because we have to have an enemy. This is not a defense of racism, but it is a defense of the people being made into the target.
Izkata 5y ago
I agree with GP. The antagonistic "allies" push away neutral people, turning more people against the groups they're supposedly trying to help. Overtly prejudiced people do the opposite, with neutrals seeing them as obviously wrong.
- rainonmoon 5y ago
  These ostensibly "neutral" people are in fact biased by their lifetime of experience and the way they skew in light of this confrontation is very revealing about exactly how. No one is introduced to the idea of, say, microaggressions, institutionalised racism/misogyny etc. as a neutral bystander. They have a stake in it whether they've acknowledged it already or not. No one is "pushed" away; they choose, informed by their experiences. And if someone is "pushed" towards maintaining a status quo that some of the most marginalised people in the world think is unfair, maybe they should think about why.
  - Izkata 5y ago
    > No one is introduced to the idea of, say, microaggressions, institutionalised racism/misogyny etc. as a neutral bystander. They have a stake in it whether they've acknowledged it already or not. This is part of what I'm talking about, the inability to understand neutral people. It presupposes they already agree with the concept, same as original sin from religion: You need to have already bought in to these concepts before the preaching means anything other than "you're stupid/evil", and the preachers don't understand why the nonbelievers don't like being called stupid/evil.
actuator 5y ago
I concur with the parent comment. A lot of these groups show such a deep religious fervour to their "ideology", that any slight disagreement to them on any topic is not allowed. They will hound you out, suppress your opinion if you don't subscribe to the groupthink. Twitter is a pain to use because of this behaviour, I wouldn't want the culture in my workplace to be like it.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Not to make a statement on the rest of the thread, but you're using Twitter wrong. I've never had to deal with shitty people or shitty behaviour on Twitter. How do I do it? The unfollow button. I also don't look at replies to famous or controversial people's tweets.
  - actuator 5y ago
    The problem as I see with Twitter is, if I am following an expert in some field I am interested in, say cryptography. I love their tweets about the subject, papers they share etc. I love their expertise in cryptography but I am not the least bit interested in their political inclinations or social view. When I follow them, I am exposed to all of it though; the only way to escape is to unfollow them but at that point the platform loses value to me. Also, with the algorithmic field based on likes, even if I am not following someone, someone I follow might like tweets from a new crusade happening and they enter my feed. It seems like there are one or more groups out with their pitchforks on some issue. While I support activism for causes, when the activism is such that it hounds out any divergent viewpoint, it becomes toxic and I would rather not see it.

makomk 5y ago

The thing is, when the social justice left do things that are actively prejudiced against and intentionally hurt the minority groups they claim to be helping, you just don't hear about it because one of their core beliefs is that they're always helping by definition and they have enough power over the mainstream discussion that it's impossible to challenge. For example, one of the last things the Labour party, who're the more left-wing of our two main parties, did when they had power here in the UK was write a special exemption in anti-discrimination law to deny trans women access to rape and domestic violence services at the request of a feminist lobbying group. (As in this was literally the stated purpose according to the official guidance accompanying the law when it was proposed.) Any discussion of how this happened or the lobbying group behind it was explicitly forbidden in the left-wing and feminist publications and communities with any reach. The press only turned on the Labour-linked lobbying group in late 2019, over a decade after the original law, when they started lobbying the Conservatives over the same anti-trans cause. The discussion of this has been so warped that the established social justice left view on the whole thing is that it shows transphobia is a right-wing thing and proves any attempt to equate the left with them (not just over transphobia, but any attempt to claim they're comparably bad in general) is a dangerous false equivalence.

darkerside 5y ago

HN should be a place of justice and sharpening of ideas. Thank you for participating in that. Allies and racists both exist on a continuum, do they not? A single individual will take actions that are both helpful and harmful in different measures to other people and groups in society. Some racists are going to be net benefits to society. Their racist views may be limited, unintentional, unexpressed, or any combination of the above. While their works may be helping minority groups directly. That's just one example of the presented framework breaking, but there are many more permutations. Hopefully this is enough for us to agree that a blanket statement like > these "allies" are worse than ... overtly prejudiced/racist people. is, if not inaccurate, so imprecise as to be meaningless.

vmception 5y ago

Its the unpredictability to having their world view challenged that I called out and already clarified. Those are completely related thoughts separated by punctuated. There's no point in trying to find other metrics I didn't specify at all.

wearywanderer 5y ago

Overt racists are dangerous like bears. The danger they present is obvious to anybody with sense and they're not pretending to be anything other than dangerous. The aforementioned "allies" are dangerous like bear-traps. Ostensibly they exist to deal with the bears. But they lay hidden in the brush ready to take off the foot of anybody who missteps, bear or otherwise. And you probably won't notice one is around until somebody steps on it.

kelnos 5y ago
Funny how you neglected to mention the harm non-overt racists cause, and how it's often difficult to detect the danger they present. I would wager there are more non-overt racists out there than counter-productive allies.
- himinlomax 5y ago
  The danger they present is nil until proven otherwise.
- wearywanderer 5y ago
  > Funny how you neglected to mention the harm non-overt racist [...] Funny how you're taking this gripe up with me, not the commenters above mine to whom I am responding. I did not set the scope of this branch of conversation, yet you insinuate I am responsible for it. Buzz off.
- furgooswft13 5y ago
  I guess the prudent thing is to burn all the witches then.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  One of the principles of medicine is that the cure should not be worse than the disease. At some level of activism, the remaining non-overt racists will be less harmful than the obsession to root them out. Companies already pay a ton of money for sensitivity and diversity trainings that either do not work or even worsen the atmosphere of the workplace. This money could have been used for a better purpose than lining already fat pockets of Robin diAngelo and her peers.

listless 5y ago

Maybe, but you’d have to back that up with at least an anecdote. I agree with OP and the fact that most racists are extremely poor and rural with no power makes them a downward punch for most people.

arthur_sav 5y ago
That is incorrect. The source of it may vary but the results are the same. Educated and well off people might have a superiority complex and they can be both racists and classists. And poor people can be ignorant, even more so when isolated, which is a catalyst for racism.
- listless 5y ago
  I agree with the “class” part. And that’s what it always is. Everybody looks down on somebody and that almost always gets conflated with racism.
Arainach 5y ago
>most racists are extremely poor and rural with no power [[Citation Needed]] The rural poor have plenty of power on both a federal level (each California House representative is responsible for 65 times as many people as each North Dakota representative; numbers are similar for Wyoming, Montana, and plenty of other rural areas) and state levels (thanks to the magic of gerrymandering. There are all sorts of racist rich people. I grew up in a well off suburb in Michigan that was significantly more than 90% white (though adjacent to a more diverse larger city) and full of overt racism, to say nothing of the more subtle forms.
- listless 5y ago
  You gotta come visit rural Appalachia and see if you still think they have any power. We have turned our poorest, most vulnerable populations into the enemy. We did it in the 80s/90s with young black men, then in the 2000s with Muslims and we’re doing it again but this time it’s “racists”. Because we have to have an enemy. This is not a defense of racism, but it is a defense of the people being made into the target.

Izkata 5y ago

I agree with GP. The antagonistic "allies" push away neutral people, turning more people against the groups they're supposedly trying to help. Overtly prejudiced people do the opposite, with neutrals seeing them as obviously wrong.

rainonmoon 5y ago
These ostensibly "neutral" people are in fact biased by their lifetime of experience and the way they skew in light of this confrontation is very revealing about exactly how. No one is introduced to the idea of, say, microaggressions, institutionalised racism/misogyny etc. as a neutral bystander. They have a stake in it whether they've acknowledged it already or not. No one is "pushed" away; they choose, informed by their experiences. And if someone is "pushed" towards maintaining a status quo that some of the most marginalised people in the world think is unfair, maybe they should think about why.
- Izkata 5y ago
  > No one is introduced to the idea of, say, microaggressions, institutionalised racism/misogyny etc. as a neutral bystander. They have a stake in it whether they've acknowledged it already or not. This is part of what I'm talking about, the inability to understand neutral people. It presupposes they already agree with the concept, same as original sin from religion: You need to have already bought in to these concepts before the preaching means anything other than "you're stupid/evil", and the preachers don't understand why the nonbelievers don't like being called stupid/evil.

actuator 5y ago

I concur with the parent comment. A lot of these groups show such a deep religious fervour to their "ideology", that any slight disagreement to them on any topic is not allowed. They will hound you out, suppress your opinion if you don't subscribe to the groupthink. Twitter is a pain to use because of this behaviour, I wouldn't want the culture in my workplace to be like it.

scrollaway 5y ago
Not to make a statement on the rest of the thread, but you're using Twitter wrong. I've never had to deal with shitty people or shitty behaviour on Twitter. How do I do it? The unfollow button. I also don't look at replies to famous or controversial people's tweets.
- actuator 5y ago
  The problem as I see with Twitter is, if I am following an expert in some field I am interested in, say cryptography. I love their tweets about the subject, papers they share etc. I love their expertise in cryptography but I am not the least bit interested in their political inclinations or social view. When I follow them, I am exposed to all of it though; the only way to escape is to unfollow them but at that point the platform loses value to me. Also, with the algorithmic field based on likes, even if I am not following someone, someone I follow might like tweets from a new crusade happening and they enter my feed. It seems like there are one or more groups out with their pitchforks on some issue. While I support activism for causes, when the activism is such that it hounds out any divergent viewpoint, it becomes toxic and I would rather not see it.