7 ms·

How incredibly weird is it to witness American schizophrenia* when it comes to races (and gender) from a non-american perspective. "Black+", "Latinx+", "LGBTTQ

How incredibly weird is it to witness American schizophrenia* when it comes to races (and gender) from a non-american perspective. "Black+", "Latinx+", "LGBTTQQIAAP". Putting people in smaller and smaller box in the name of equality and diversity. I am the only one to feel this is coming to an absurd point ? I'm not an alt-right fan, nor would I vote Republican if I could, I'm a leftist in what's considered a traditional sense in my country, but this is beyond my understanding. * Oh boy was that ableist ?

lm28469 5y ago
In the quest for universalism they're splitting the population in an ever increasing number of sub groups, the irony is lost on them I guess. In my country it happens on both side of the spectrum, they're just instrumentalised differently, I don't think it's a left vs right thing
tester34 5y ago
Seems like Dividing by Equality and Diversity
brap 5y ago
As someone who works for Big Tech outside of the US, it's kind of comical to us foreign workers. From out point of view it seems like Americans are truly obsessed with diversity, or rather being perceived as diverse (PR), to the point where we can't help but laugh at the weekly corporate emails we get from the US leadership and the regular diversity training we have to do.
- cudgy 5y ago
  It’s equally comical to many non-foreign tech workers. Problem is that if you criticize it openly, there will be repercussions to your career. Corporations will take action against you due to the fear of activist employees and the news media which has been largely infiltrated/influenced by woke/post-modern critical theory activists.
  - walkedaway 5y ago
    Exactly this.
haunter 5y ago
It's the biggest victory of the rich in the last decade. They turned a socio-economical class problem (poor workers vs rich) that infects the current state of capitalism into a race warfare. Turn people against each other so we can live free. divide et impera, working perfectly
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  While I partially agree - too often a class problem is recast as a race problem to narrow the range of possible solutions - there is also a race problem that should not be ignored.
slumdev 5y ago
> * Oh boy was that ableist ? It was hate speech against your neurodiverse colleagues. Doubleplus ungood.
lunfard00 5y ago
It is super irritating to apply to american companies, most of them ask for your race (optional input) and list latin and white as different options. I am white as milk from a Latin America country I dont know what I am suppose to complete. I consider myself latin but companies may think I am not brown enough to fit the category.
- Invictus0 5y ago
  That form is mandated by the government, not the company. Anyone with a Spanish speaking heritage is considered to be hispanic.
  - lunfard00 5y ago
    oh that is nice to know, thanks
    - iammisc 5y ago
      So Brazilians aren't Hispanic?
      - xdennis 5y ago
        Yes. Hispanic refers to Spanish language and culture.
        AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        Brazilians mostly speak Portuguese... (I don't know if that leaves them considered "Hispanic" or not. I think it does leave them considered Latin, though.)
  - xdennis 5y ago
    The problem is that the terms are often not understood correctly or confused. Hispanic, indeed, refers to Spanish speakers... of any race. It includes, for example, Spaniards and some Filipinos. But GP didn't say Hispanic. He was referring to Latin America, whose people are called Latino. Neither of the terms carry racial connotations. If you're Argentinian of pure Italian descent, you're still Latino. If you're one of the 2 million Spanish speakers of the Philippines, you're Hispanic. If you're one of the Guarani indigenous languages speakers of Paraguay who doesn't speak Spanish at all you're still Latino but not Hispanic.
mb7733 5y ago
It wasn't abelist but I don't understand the analogy with schizophrenia.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  Schizophrenia is characterised by a difficulty properly categorising and integrating experiences, so it actually seems like a fairly good analogy.
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
You're definitely not the only one, but I think it's staying around because of a real societal need. The civil rights era was a recognition that background wasn't a valid basis on which to stereotype strangers. In the intervening decades, we mostly stereotyped strangers based on how they presented themselves, with a few recognisable 'types' of people that had little variation within their clades. Then the internet happened and society fractured along personal interest, whatever one is into now there are dozens of people with the same interest online. It became impossible to distinguish people on the basis of fashion either. But to interact with strangers, we need some way to stereotype them, and so intersectionalism has tried to fill that gap. It won't work in its current form because nobody who presumes to declare on behalf of an identity group as to what is a proper way to treat members of that identity group is actually representative of any group. But the need to stereotype strangers somehow remains, so social offerings like this will continue to be brought forward.
fennecfoxen 5y ago
A fun exercise for you! Next time you hear about "diversity and inclusion," sit back to consider what the company in question actually does to promote an atmosphere of inclusion. Is it a slack message about celebrating XYZ Group Week, in the midst of an atmosphere where dissent is persecuted?
- notatoad 5y ago
  i also like to try to unpack "diversity" when i hear it - do they mean diversity of skin colour, or a broader definition that includes people of various economic and social classes in addition to ethnicity. "we only hire stanford grads, but some of them are black!" isn't really diversity.
- hndirect 5y ago
  "Diversity" = Identity based approach to society "Inclusion" = Restricted speech and justification for purges "Equity" = Equality of outcomes
tasubotadas 5y ago
>LGBTTQQIAAP I had to look up if this acronym was some kind of joke.
- justin_oaks 5y ago
  To save other people from looking it up: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/LGBTTQQIAAP https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/LGBTTQQIAAP
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  The dumb thing is we actually have a word for this. The word is queer. I'm still unsure as to why this word isn't used for most contexts where the LGBT[...] are currently used. We use the word "gay" and that used to be an insult like "queer" was too.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    I think 'Queer' is one of the Q's. The definition I heard for it now was that 'gay' is someone who wants to have a mainstream life with their same-sex partner while 'queer' is someone who considers their sexual identity a form of rebellion.
    - 3pt14159 5y ago
      From the first sentence on the Wikipedia article: > Queer is an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer Now, some people personally identify as queer instead of lesbian, bi, or gay for all sorts of reasons; but it is the umbrella term.
ramblerman 5y ago
"The ideology of individualism is dependent on a denial of the past as relevant to the present… Individualism denies the significance of race." -- Robin DeAngelo Robin DeAngelo, is a frontrunner of 'white guilt', CRT, and other strange sides of the woke movement. This quote pretty much sums it up, they want to put group identity first, above individualism.
- Traster 5y ago
  I see this criticism of CRT/wokeism etc very often and I really want to address a point about people talking past each other. Proponents of CRT don't say they want to divide people based on group characteristics, they say people are divided based on group characteristics and they recognise that whilst individualists deny what is evidently true. Essentially it's the position that people are negatively impacted due to the group they're in so they should advocate for themselves as part of that group.
  - ramblerman 5y ago
    The remedy to injustice is to treat people on their merit. Not come up with different ways to divide them in the name of social justice. > I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
    - Traster 5y ago
      If there is injustice, then the correct response is to recognise it and combat it, not to do nothing whilst it continues. The problem with your appeal to treating people on merit is often merit is the result of unequal conditions. So all you’re doing is baking in the existing inequality and then quite insultingly tell people “oh it’s a meritocracy” . It’s not a coincidence that the most privileged people end up having incredibly meritorious children.
  - peytn 5y ago
    It’s about using racial rhetoric in a self-serving way. Isn’t that what people are talking about here?
mymanz 5y ago
Voting democrat is to provide approval of this ideology and to give it a greater platform. Many americans are equally perplexed at this, and a lot of republican voters exist precisely as a reaction to it.
- archagon 5y ago
  Voting Republican is to enact fascism and tear down the tenants of democracy in the US, while siphoning as much money and power to big business and the upper classes as possible. The ideology you cite is remarkably tame by comparison.
  - mymanz 5y ago
    Hmm that's interesting. Who told you that? The US just had a republican president. Many states have had republican government for decades. Do we see this happening? No. Instead here we are talking about a real and tangible event, largely championed by mainstream democrats. If you think the average republican voter would support enacting "fascism [to] tear down the tenants of democracy in the US, while siphoning as much money and power to big business and the upper classes as possible", then I suggest you talk to some more. You may be quite surprised. Regardless, I think this is a major pitfall of the two party system. What you say certainly has truth. What I say has truth as well. However discourse usually devolves to attacking the extremists in each group and no real discussion can be had. I am optimistic about the future. Have a nice day.
xdennis 5y ago
It feels like an "emperor has no clothes" situation. I'm sure that even the people at Reuters find the terminology stupid, but they're afraid of what others might think of them if they say so or if they don't use it.
tchinit 5y ago
This is a malliciously uninformed take; which you seem to imply you already realize with your provocative self attack mocking 'ableism'. If you have an issue with "Putting people in smaller and smaller box"es then you should start your rants by addressing religion or American voter policy. Your take reads like in America's history black people were always able to vote and Civil Rights was really a rebranding of their rights because Black Americans collectively just wanted to now call it the 'Black Vote'. Religions are predicated on in-group out-group dynamics, and the shared schizophrenic delusion of a, specifically old white male in the case of the dominant American religion Christianity, in the clouds telling them to hate homosexuals. Your take ignores the fact that the oppressor is often the one compartmentalizing. For example, the church refusing to marry same sex couples. So homosexual specific civil rights movements organize to force the hand of the chuch to begrudgingly allow them to marry. But some people still want to tell trans people they are forbidden from using a bathroom. So now a T specific civil rights movement is needed from the previous compartment they were just lumped into of 'homosexual' because the L and Gs can use bathrooms without issue. I agree the end goal should be one category: Entropic Debris. It encompasses all that is and will ever be. I think compartmentalizing humanity as separate from the rocks we see in the night sky is unscientific, but I can recognise that such a take fails to address any of the frought and nuanced elements of contemporary human social interactions that need to be addressed with specificity.
- noutella 5y ago
  This was not a rant. I hear you and I mostly share your view tbh. As we speak, Republican lawmakers are pushing for legislations that aim to exclude voters from democratic expression ; Flint residents still don't have drinkable water. All of this exist, racism exist, poor people are suffering and even dying from it, minorities in larger proportions. Still, is the X of Latinx the solution ? Or is it smoke and mirrors in the Big Tech goal of being perceived as noble ? Respectfully.
  - tchinit 5y ago
    > Still, is the X of Latinx the solution ? Hardly, though this seems a strawman since anyone who advocates for the X in Latinx would be unlikely to claim it solves the Flint water crisis. > Or is it smoke and mirrors in the Big Tech goal of being perceived as noble ? This feels like conflating. The X in Latinx is independant of the Tech industry, and was most definitely used long before any Tech HR department caught on. Latinx came out of the intersectionality of minority rights and issues of gender. Latin languages are gendered but we want to address Latin-American issues without profiling a single gender, a la Latino or Latina. As another tool in the toolbox to fix oppressive systems the X in Latinx is a fine thing and people have been empowered by it, but it in isolation is certainly going to fall short of addressing the myriad of issues within this domain and I doubt any advocates for change would claim otherwise. I think business leaders will do anything to avoid dilluting their ownership, which will be an important effort toward real positive change, and if their tactic is to distract organizers with superficial changes then organizers will need to remain diligent. Take what is offered and keep working until what is offered is what you need. > This was not a rant. Maybe, but your replies seem to point to a specific interpretation of your comment of villifying, or at least mocking, of people who see themselves represented in LGBTTQQIAAP and its advocacy ilk, and a plea that the only reasonable response is to reject the activism wholesale.
iammisc 5y ago
When it comes to social issues, the republican party is typically more in line with international norms, whereas the democratic party is far far to the left. People will mock this sentiment perhaps, but it's true. Take the polarizing issue of abortion for example. If the USA had the same abortion restrictions as Germany, you'd likely see the GOp drop most of its prolife stuff. Right now, the democrats are very extreme on abortion and other social issues compared to international norms. It's why places like France are now also explicitly condemning american leftism despite nominally and fiscally being far to the left of the democratic party too.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Well, France is condemning American "woke" leftism. France thinks it's something different from "normal" leftism. And they're probably right...

lm28469 5y ago

In the quest for universalism they're splitting the population in an ever increasing number of sub groups, the irony is lost on them I guess. In my country it happens on both side of the spectrum, they're just instrumentalised differently, I don't think it's a left vs right thing

tester34 5y ago

Seems like Dividing by Equality and Diversity

brap 5y ago

As someone who works for Big Tech outside of the US, it's kind of comical to us foreign workers. From out point of view it seems like Americans are truly obsessed with diversity, or rather being perceived as diverse (PR), to the point where we can't help but laugh at the weekly corporate emails we get from the US leadership and the regular diversity training we have to do.

cudgy 5y ago
It’s equally comical to many non-foreign tech workers. Problem is that if you criticize it openly, there will be repercussions to your career. Corporations will take action against you due to the fear of activist employees and the news media which has been largely infiltrated/influenced by woke/post-modern critical theory activists.
- walkedaway 5y ago
  Exactly this.

haunter 5y ago

It's the biggest victory of the rich in the last decade. They turned a socio-economical class problem (poor workers vs rich) that infects the current state of capitalism into a race warfare. Turn people against each other so we can live free. divide et impera, working perfectly

AlexandrB 5y ago
While I partially agree - too often a class problem is recast as a race problem to narrow the range of possible solutions - there is also a race problem that should not be ignored.

slumdev 5y ago

> * Oh boy was that ableist ? It was hate speech against your neurodiverse colleagues. Doubleplus ungood.

lunfard00 5y ago

It is super irritating to apply to american companies, most of them ask for your race (optional input) and list latin and white as different options. I am white as milk from a Latin America country I dont know what I am suppose to complete. I consider myself latin but companies may think I am not brown enough to fit the category.

Invictus0 5y ago
That form is mandated by the government, not the company. Anyone with a Spanish speaking heritage is considered to be hispanic.
- lunfard00 5y ago
  oh that is nice to know, thanks
  - iammisc 5y ago
    So Brazilians aren't Hispanic?
    - xdennis 5y ago
      Yes. Hispanic refers to Spanish language and culture.
      - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        Brazilians mostly speak Portuguese... (I don't know if that leaves them considered "Hispanic" or not. I think it does leave them considered Latin, though.)
- xdennis 5y ago
  The problem is that the terms are often not understood correctly or confused. Hispanic, indeed, refers to Spanish speakers... of any race. It includes, for example, Spaniards and some Filipinos. But GP didn't say Hispanic. He was referring to Latin America, whose people are called Latino. Neither of the terms carry racial connotations. If you're Argentinian of pure Italian descent, you're still Latino. If you're one of the 2 million Spanish speakers of the Philippines, you're Hispanic. If you're one of the Guarani indigenous languages speakers of Paraguay who doesn't speak Spanish at all you're still Latino but not Hispanic.

mb7733 5y ago

It wasn't abelist but I don't understand the analogy with schizophrenia.

SuoDuanDao 5y ago
Schizophrenia is characterised by a difficulty properly categorising and integrating experiences, so it actually seems like a fairly good analogy.

SuoDuanDao 5y ago

You're definitely not the only one, but I think it's staying around because of a real societal need. The civil rights era was a recognition that background wasn't a valid basis on which to stereotype strangers. In the intervening decades, we mostly stereotyped strangers based on how they presented themselves, with a few recognisable 'types' of people that had little variation within their clades. Then the internet happened and society fractured along personal interest, whatever one is into now there are dozens of people with the same interest online. It became impossible to distinguish people on the basis of fashion either. But to interact with strangers, we need some way to stereotype them, and so intersectionalism has tried to fill that gap. It won't work in its current form because nobody who presumes to declare on behalf of an identity group as to what is a proper way to treat members of that identity group is actually representative of any group. But the need to stereotype strangers somehow remains, so social offerings like this will continue to be brought forward.

fennecfoxen 5y ago

A fun exercise for you! Next time you hear about "diversity and inclusion," sit back to consider what the company in question actually does to promote an atmosphere of inclusion. Is it a slack message about celebrating XYZ Group Week, in the midst of an atmosphere where dissent is persecuted?

notatoad 5y ago
i also like to try to unpack "diversity" when i hear it - do they mean diversity of skin colour, or a broader definition that includes people of various economic and social classes in addition to ethnicity. "we only hire stanford grads, but some of them are black!" isn't really diversity.
hndirect 5y ago
"Diversity" = Identity based approach to society "Inclusion" = Restricted speech and justification for purges "Equity" = Equality of outcomes

tasubotadas 5y ago

>LGBTTQQIAAP I had to look up if this acronym was some kind of joke.

justin_oaks 5y ago
To save other people from looking it up: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/LGBTTQQIAAP https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/LGBTTQQIAAP
3pt14159 5y ago
The dumb thing is we actually have a word for this. The word is queer. I'm still unsure as to why this word isn't used for most contexts where the LGBT[...] are currently used. We use the word "gay" and that used to be an insult like "queer" was too.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  I think 'Queer' is one of the Q's. The definition I heard for it now was that 'gay' is someone who wants to have a mainstream life with their same-sex partner while 'queer' is someone who considers their sexual identity a form of rebellion.
  - 3pt14159 5y ago
    From the first sentence on the Wikipedia article: > Queer is an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer Now, some people personally identify as queer instead of lesbian, bi, or gay for all sorts of reasons; but it is the umbrella term.

ramblerman 5y ago

"The ideology of individualism is dependent on a denial of the past as relevant to the present… Individualism denies the significance of race." -- Robin DeAngelo Robin DeAngelo, is a frontrunner of 'white guilt', CRT, and other strange sides of the woke movement. This quote pretty much sums it up, they want to put group identity first, above individualism.

Traster 5y ago
I see this criticism of CRT/wokeism etc very often and I really want to address a point about people talking past each other. Proponents of CRT don't say they want to divide people based on group characteristics, they say people are divided based on group characteristics and they recognise that whilst individualists deny what is evidently true. Essentially it's the position that people are negatively impacted due to the group they're in so they should advocate for themselves as part of that group.
- ramblerman 5y ago
  The remedy to injustice is to treat people on their merit. Not come up with different ways to divide them in the name of social justice. > I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
  - Traster 5y ago
    If there is injustice, then the correct response is to recognise it and combat it, not to do nothing whilst it continues. The problem with your appeal to treating people on merit is often merit is the result of unequal conditions. So all you’re doing is baking in the existing inequality and then quite insultingly tell people “oh it’s a meritocracy” . It’s not a coincidence that the most privileged people end up having incredibly meritorious children.
- peytn 5y ago
  It’s about using racial rhetoric in a self-serving way. Isn’t that what people are talking about here?

mymanz 5y ago

Voting democrat is to provide approval of this ideology and to give it a greater platform. Many americans are equally perplexed at this, and a lot of republican voters exist precisely as a reaction to it.

archagon 5y ago
Voting Republican is to enact fascism and tear down the tenants of democracy in the US, while siphoning as much money and power to big business and the upper classes as possible. The ideology you cite is remarkably tame by comparison.
- mymanz 5y ago
  Hmm that's interesting. Who told you that? The US just had a republican president. Many states have had republican government for decades. Do we see this happening? No. Instead here we are talking about a real and tangible event, largely championed by mainstream democrats. If you think the average republican voter would support enacting "fascism [to] tear down the tenants of democracy in the US, while siphoning as much money and power to big business and the upper classes as possible", then I suggest you talk to some more. You may be quite surprised. Regardless, I think this is a major pitfall of the two party system. What you say certainly has truth. What I say has truth as well. However discourse usually devolves to attacking the extremists in each group and no real discussion can be had. I am optimistic about the future. Have a nice day.

xdennis 5y ago

It feels like an "emperor has no clothes" situation. I'm sure that even the people at Reuters find the terminology stupid, but they're afraid of what others might think of them if they say so or if they don't use it.

tchinit 5y ago

This is a malliciously uninformed take; which you seem to imply you already realize with your provocative self attack mocking 'ableism'. If you have an issue with "Putting people in smaller and smaller box"es then you should start your rants by addressing religion or American voter policy. Your take reads like in America's history black people were always able to vote and Civil Rights was really a rebranding of their rights because Black Americans collectively just wanted to now call it the 'Black Vote'. Religions are predicated on in-group out-group dynamics, and the shared schizophrenic delusion of a, specifically old white male in the case of the dominant American religion Christianity, in the clouds telling them to hate homosexuals. Your take ignores the fact that the oppressor is often the one compartmentalizing. For example, the church refusing to marry same sex couples. So homosexual specific civil rights movements organize to force the hand of the chuch to begrudgingly allow them to marry. But some people still want to tell trans people they are forbidden from using a bathroom. So now a T specific civil rights movement is needed from the previous compartment they were just lumped into of 'homosexual' because the L and Gs can use bathrooms without issue. I agree the end goal should be one category: Entropic Debris. It encompasses all that is and will ever be. I think compartmentalizing humanity as separate from the rocks we see in the night sky is unscientific, but I can recognise that such a take fails to address any of the frought and nuanced elements of contemporary human social interactions that need to be addressed with specificity.

noutella 5y ago
This was not a rant. I hear you and I mostly share your view tbh. As we speak, Republican lawmakers are pushing for legislations that aim to exclude voters from democratic expression ; Flint residents still don't have drinkable water. All of this exist, racism exist, poor people are suffering and even dying from it, minorities in larger proportions. Still, is the X of Latinx the solution ? Or is it smoke and mirrors in the Big Tech goal of being perceived as noble ? Respectfully.
- tchinit 5y ago
  > Still, is the X of Latinx the solution ? Hardly, though this seems a strawman since anyone who advocates for the X in Latinx would be unlikely to claim it solves the Flint water crisis. > Or is it smoke and mirrors in the Big Tech goal of being perceived as noble ? This feels like conflating. The X in Latinx is independant of the Tech industry, and was most definitely used long before any Tech HR department caught on. Latinx came out of the intersectionality of minority rights and issues of gender. Latin languages are gendered but we want to address Latin-American issues without profiling a single gender, a la Latino or Latina. As another tool in the toolbox to fix oppressive systems the X in Latinx is a fine thing and people have been empowered by it, but it in isolation is certainly going to fall short of addressing the myriad of issues within this domain and I doubt any advocates for change would claim otherwise. I think business leaders will do anything to avoid dilluting their ownership, which will be an important effort toward real positive change, and if their tactic is to distract organizers with superficial changes then organizers will need to remain diligent. Take what is offered and keep working until what is offered is what you need. > This was not a rant. Maybe, but your replies seem to point to a specific interpretation of your comment of villifying, or at least mocking, of people who see themselves represented in LGBTTQQIAAP and its advocacy ilk, and a plea that the only reasonable response is to reject the activism wholesale.

iammisc 5y ago

When it comes to social issues, the republican party is typically more in line with international norms, whereas the democratic party is far far to the left. People will mock this sentiment perhaps, but it's true. Take the polarizing issue of abortion for example. If the USA had the same abortion restrictions as Germany, you'd likely see the GOp drop most of its prolife stuff. Right now, the democrats are very extreme on abortion and other social issues compared to international norms. It's why places like France are now also explicitly condemning american leftism despite nominally and fiscally being far to the left of the democratic party too.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Well, France is condemning American "woke" leftism. France thinks it's something different from "normal" leftism. And they're probably right...