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It's better to read this as just a form of "genuine politics" in the sense that it's one group saying they want more resources than they have. Here, the messag

It's better to read this as just a form of "genuine politics" in the sense that it's one group saying they want more resources than they have. Here, the message is basically: our people want more of what your people have. ("Proper ratios" arent the point). This is what most of these movements are about, a certain type of economic-political warefare most accute when high-status positions are rare and there's a lot of competition for them. I think this perspective also, in some sense, "humanises, justifies and rationalises" this type of agit-prop. Ie., I actually have a lot of sympathy for "genuine politics" -- ie., competition over finite resources and their allocation. It's just some people saying, "we think we're owed more than we have" -- and that's a real political claim everyone, at somepoint, makes justifiably. Here, I say: let them make their demands. It's part of politics. It is likely this author (or their group) wants a resource: a job in journalism. There arent many. If they have some grounds to demand it, let them demand it. (It is however dressed up and disguised in this weird theology of race, gender, etc.).

whimsicalism 5y ago
HN is such an idiosyncratic place. You could frame any number of struggles this way and feel smug about being "above it all." "our people want more of what your people have." -> What "your people have" could be freedom from slavery in 1864, ability to attend the same schools, etc. etc. Framing it in this way does not make the argument less compelling and I have no idea why you think that race-based discrimination is a "theology" in a country that had explicit legal discrimination against black people up until the 70s and plenty of informal discrimination afterwards.
- mjburgess 5y ago
  I think it's an anti-smug move: the point is we are all "within it all". Yes, we could talk about systemic racism etc. That is why one might engage in a lot of political projects. However a highly specific demand about ratios in upper-middle-class high-status industries... these specific demands are a little harder to parse. The #metoo movement was not about the masses in the industry, it was about the elites. The academic "fire them" movements (eg., against pinker) are likewise not about the army of PhDs and their sexism. Rather these are intra-elite warfare using somewhat valid grounds to wage an attack on resource-horders. I agreed that these groups have justifiable reasons to make demands; that's partly my point. The issue, where it exists, it their methods. It is very easy to become cynical and take these demands "too literally" as demands for quotas, and for reinstitutionalising racism "as a corrective". Rather, it is better to see them as the same ordinary politics everyone both engages in, and is entitled to engage in. As for the "theology" that refers to the particular dogmatic moralising and evangelising approach taken, and the frequently dubious premises.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    I think you are mistaking the media's tendency to focus on controversy in high-status arenas with a broader cultural/political movement that is not at all exclusively focused on elite status. Calls to integrate schools, calls to reduce our massive incarceration - all of those are designed to be broad based. That those people also want the people who tell media stories and who make political decisions and who run major enterprises to be representative of our population as a whole does not, in my view, indict those people as "elitists." What's wrong with moralizing? I think some things in how our society is structured ought to change. Is that "theology"?
    - mjburgess 5y ago
      > Calls to integrate schools, calls to reduce our massive incarceration... Are, indeed, not what i'm talking about. Most people demanding jobs in journalism arent engaged in projects to reintegrate schools. I'm talking about those demanding the jobs, not MLK.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        Who are you even talking about - do you have an example? Most people who want greater diversity in journalism aren't demanding jobs for themselves (indeed most of them aren't journalists and are not in that profession). It seems you've constructed this whole narrative on a pretty thin basis.
commandlinefan 5y ago
> our people want...we think we're owed As somebody who is prohibited from having "people", the whole "our people" thing rubs me the wrong way from the beginning.

whimsicalism 5y ago

HN is such an idiosyncratic place. You could frame any number of struggles this way and feel smug about being "above it all." "our people want more of what your people have." -> What "your people have" could be freedom from slavery in 1864, ability to attend the same schools, etc. etc. Framing it in this way does not make the argument less compelling and I have no idea why you think that race-based discrimination is a "theology" in a country that had explicit legal discrimination against black people up until the 70s and plenty of informal discrimination afterwards.

mjburgess 5y ago
I think it's an anti-smug move: the point is we are all "within it all". Yes, we could talk about systemic racism etc. That is why one might engage in a lot of political projects. However a highly specific demand about ratios in upper-middle-class high-status industries... these specific demands are a little harder to parse. The #metoo movement was not about the masses in the industry, it was about the elites. The academic "fire them" movements (eg., against pinker) are likewise not about the army of PhDs and their sexism. Rather these are intra-elite warfare using somewhat valid grounds to wage an attack on resource-horders. I agreed that these groups have justifiable reasons to make demands; that's partly my point. The issue, where it exists, it their methods. It is very easy to become cynical and take these demands "too literally" as demands for quotas, and for reinstitutionalising racism "as a corrective". Rather, it is better to see them as the same ordinary politics everyone both engages in, and is entitled to engage in. As for the "theology" that refers to the particular dogmatic moralising and evangelising approach taken, and the frequently dubious premises.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  I think you are mistaking the media's tendency to focus on controversy in high-status arenas with a broader cultural/political movement that is not at all exclusively focused on elite status. Calls to integrate schools, calls to reduce our massive incarceration - all of those are designed to be broad based. That those people also want the people who tell media stories and who make political decisions and who run major enterprises to be representative of our population as a whole does not, in my view, indict those people as "elitists." What's wrong with moralizing? I think some things in how our society is structured ought to change. Is that "theology"?
  - mjburgess 5y ago
    > Calls to integrate schools, calls to reduce our massive incarceration... Are, indeed, not what i'm talking about. Most people demanding jobs in journalism arent engaged in projects to reintegrate schools. I'm talking about those demanding the jobs, not MLK.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      Who are you even talking about - do you have an example? Most people who want greater diversity in journalism aren't demanding jobs for themselves (indeed most of them aren't journalists and are not in that profession). It seems you've constructed this whole narrative on a pretty thin basis.

commandlinefan 5y ago

> our people want...we think we're owed As somebody who is prohibited from having "people", the whole "our people" thing rubs me the wrong way from the beginning.