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> although I emphatically do As someone who's gained a lot of clarity from what you've written on HN in the past, I was saddened to read this. Could you explai

> although I emphatically do As someone who's gained a lot of clarity from what you've written on HN in the past, I was saddened to read this. Could you explain more about what your disagreement is?

throwaway894345 5y ago
> As someone who's gained a lot of clarity from what you've written on HN in the past Flattering that you can even identify my handle (I don't even have it committed to memory). > Could you explain more about what your disagreement is? Sure. 1. The BLM organization (that the banner was asking people to donate to) seems shady. Leaders lead lavish lives (alliteration not intended) while it's unclear how these funds are actually benefiting the people they purport to advocate for. 2. The BLM movement is predicated on a false narrative: racist police are disproportionately killing black people. This is only true if you fail to account for obvious factors like crime rates and rates of police interaction. This is all propped up by cherry-picked and often highly-editorialized examples. America does have a problem with police killings, but it doesn't appear to be racist contra the BLM narrative, and 90+% of Americans already support police reform. 3. The BLM movement appears to have done far more damage than it has saved (and I'm not even talking about property damage). The BLM movement succeeded in pressuring police departments to minimize killings of black people, but the anti-police pressure is also very likely a primary driver in the violent crime surge which has resulted in an enormous net loss of both black lives and American lives more generally. 4. The ideologies that shroud the movement (which are variously called "critical race theory" or "wokeness" or "antiracism" or etc) reject what we might call "colorblind egalitarianism" in favor of "race consciousness" which invariably results in the reification of race. E.g., a translator is fired because he's white and the author he was to translate is black, or a white man is prohibited from volunteering on a board because there's already a white woman. Or the various strictures about who is allowed to open an Asian restaurant, host a geisha party, wear a Chinese-inspired prom dress, etc. Or the various associations of math, objectivity, literature, etc with "whiteness" or "white supremacy". I can go on and on. Of course, I this sort of "BLM racism" has also "legitimized" and animated right-wing racism, so I think we see a rise in racism on both sides of the aisle. I'm passionate about a post-racist world, and I think we're a lot worse off as a result of BLM and adjacent ideologies than we were 10 years ago. Obviously I would support these points better if it were a longform post, but this is already very long for HN. Also, this is pretty terse (for sake of brevity), but I don't mean this to come across as combative. I'm happy to talk more about this, although given the controversial nature I'm not sure if this is the appropriate forum. :/
- zozbot234 5y ago
  It's worth noting that there are several reputable efforts pursuing criminal justice reform independently of the problematic BLM organization or movement. https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-ju... has a useful overview of groups you could look into.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Thanks for the link, I’ll look into them!
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  I just hated the banned because it was large and took away even more vertical space on my already limited screen. At some point about a full quarter of the screen was these fixed banners(!!) I userCSS'd it out, but they kept changing the HTML/CSS all the time so it kept breaking. I also don't especially like BLM as an organisation or movement because I think they're ineffective at best and contra-productive at worst, but that's okay: I don't mind seeing messages I disagree with, including on programming sites – everyone is free to use their site to promote whatever message they wish. But it's unfortunate that any conversation on this topic tend to very devolve to "against BLM = against Black people = literally Hitler!!11" or even "against banner that makes the actual page to use = against Black people = literally Hitler!!11" Well, no: I criticise BLM because I broadly agree with their goals, and am frustrated with them they are, in my opinion, not doing the right things to address them. It's that part that I find the most annoying: it's one thing if you put up a banner and we can have a conversation about whether this is the best way to address this, whether we should address it at all, and things like that. But if that's not possible things get pretty frustrating pretty fast.
- philosopher1234 5y ago
  Re (4), it seems to me like in order to change the existing influence of race on society you must first recognize it. I don’t see how everybody claiming to be colorblind when the systems and cultural institutions are structured to perpetuate racism could change anything. It seems like real color conscious changes must be made before color blindness is achievable.

> although I emphatically do As someone who's gained a lot of clarity from what you've written on HN in the past, I was saddened to read this. Could you explain more about what your disagreement is?

throwaway894345 5y ago

> As someone who's gained a lot of clarity from what you've written on HN in the past Flattering that you can even identify my handle (I don't even have it committed to memory). > Could you explain more about what your disagreement is? Sure. 1. The BLM organization (that the banner was asking people to donate to) seems shady. Leaders lead lavish lives (alliteration not intended) while it's unclear how these funds are actually benefiting the people they purport to advocate for. 2. The BLM movement is predicated on a false narrative: racist police are disproportionately killing black people. This is only true if you fail to account for obvious factors like crime rates and rates of police interaction. This is all propped up by cherry-picked and often highly-editorialized examples. America does have a problem with police killings, but it doesn't appear to be racist contra the BLM narrative, and 90+% of Americans already support police reform. 3. The BLM movement appears to have done far more damage than it has saved (and I'm not even talking about property damage). The BLM movement succeeded in pressuring police departments to minimize killings of black people, but the anti-police pressure is also very likely a primary driver in the violent crime surge which has resulted in an enormous net loss of both black lives and American lives more generally. 4. The ideologies that shroud the movement (which are variously called "critical race theory" or "wokeness" or "antiracism" or etc) reject what we might call "colorblind egalitarianism" in favor of "race consciousness" which invariably results in the reification of race. E.g., a translator is fired because he's white and the author he was to translate is black, or a white man is prohibited from volunteering on a board because there's already a white woman. Or the various strictures about who is allowed to open an Asian restaurant, host a geisha party, wear a Chinese-inspired prom dress, etc. Or the various associations of math, objectivity, literature, etc with "whiteness" or "white supremacy". I can go on and on. Of course, I this sort of "BLM racism" has also "legitimized" and animated right-wing racism, so I think we see a rise in racism on both sides of the aisle. I'm passionate about a post-racist world, and I think we're a lot worse off as a result of BLM and adjacent ideologies than we were 10 years ago. Obviously I would support these points better if it were a longform post, but this is already very long for HN. Also, this is pretty terse (for sake of brevity), but I don't mean this to come across as combative. I'm happy to talk more about this, although given the controversial nature I'm not sure if this is the appropriate forum. :/

zozbot234 5y ago
It's worth noting that there are several reputable efforts pursuing criminal justice reform independently of the problematic BLM organization or movement. https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-justice-reform https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/us-policy/criminal-ju... has a useful overview of groups you could look into.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Thanks for the link, I’ll look into them!
Beltalowda 5y ago
I just hated the banned because it was large and took away even more vertical space on my already limited screen. At some point about a full quarter of the screen was these fixed banners(!!) I userCSS'd it out, but they kept changing the HTML/CSS all the time so it kept breaking. I also don't especially like BLM as an organisation or movement because I think they're ineffective at best and contra-productive at worst, but that's okay: I don't mind seeing messages I disagree with, including on programming sites – everyone is free to use their site to promote whatever message they wish. But it's unfortunate that any conversation on this topic tend to very devolve to "against BLM = against Black people = literally Hitler!!11" or even "against banner that makes the actual page to use = against Black people = literally Hitler!!11" Well, no: I criticise BLM because I broadly agree with their goals, and am frustrated with them they are, in my opinion, not doing the right things to address them. It's that part that I find the most annoying: it's one thing if you put up a banner and we can have a conversation about whether this is the best way to address this, whether we should address it at all, and things like that. But if that's not possible things get pretty frustrating pretty fast.
philosopher1234 5y ago
Re (4), it seems to me like in order to change the existing influence of race on society you must first recognize it. I don’t see how everybody claiming to be colorblind when the systems and cultural institutions are structured to perpetuate racism could change anything. It seems like real color conscious changes must be made before color blindness is achievable.