5 ms·

Indians will read this and not once think of racism Reminds me of the "voter ID is racist" argument

by fareesh 4y ago

cuteboy19 4y ago
No i too was confused why indian needed mentioning
- fareesh 4y ago
  - Because Indian in this context is not a reference to the ethnicity but of location - i.e. it's not the DNA of the people that is Indian, it's the borders in which they are physically present while hacking. Many are unaware that India has a lot of phenotype diversity in its 1 billion people. There are dark skinned people in the south, light skinned people in the north, and almond shape eyed people in the east. Merely saying "Indian" does not really paint an image of anyone since we all look different, so it's a bit strange to allege racism. - Because just mentioning it adds the following dimensions to the headline: geopolitics, outsourcing, human resources in the developing world, cybercrime & jurisdiction challenges - Because it's allegedly true
  - watwut 4y ago
    Racism does not have to focus on skin color. As a super easy example, with Nazi did not defined races and their hierarchy by color. Also notably, people that have a thong against Indians and Asians I encountered in real life have literally zero idea about internal subdivision. They could not tell sub-groups apart, not by look and not by language. If you have a thing against people from India, it is India in general and you don't care about anything else.
    - fareesh 4y ago
      The publisher here (Reuters) is well aware of everything I've mentioned. They don't need to customize their headlines to modify the reaction of the people you are referencing. Those people should not be leading the decision making process for excluding facts from headlines.
      - alex_smart 4y ago
        >They don't need to customize their headlines to modify the reaction of the people you are referencing Why not? Doesn't media regularly customize their headlines to avoid stating factually true things that would propagate negative stereotypes against minorities and other protected groups? I think most responsible media organizations do avoid putting headlines like "Muslim man stabs three in church in Nice". Even if they do mention the religion, it is usually called "Islamic terrorism", and they have also invested quite some significant effort into emphasizing that most of regular Islamic people do not in fact have anything to do with Islamic terrorism. As far as I can tell, media companies certainly seem to be aware of the effect their headlines can have on propagating negative stereotypes and good editorial judgement usually involves an attempt to avoid doing that as much as possible.
        fareesh 4y ago
        They absolutely should not be customizing headlines for fear of how it affects a small fringe of people who are going to think that way regardless of a Reuters headline
  - alex_smart 4y ago
    This is a comment from this thread itself: "I think it's covered in the Dark Basin episode of Darknet Diaries, but India apparently has a reputation for especially aggressive private investigators, who were historically used to dig up dirt on families before committing to marriage pacts, but in the modern era are used regularly for PR and corporate blackmail. Apparently this practice is ingrained enough into the culture that digging up dirt on people by any means necessary is widely accepted, and not even illegal in most contexts." Please tell me more about how India can ever be used purely as a location.
    - fareesh 4y ago
      I'm not sure I follow the point that is being made here The comment is referring to the standard practices of private investigators in this country, and the nature of the corporate world based on what has been seen in some TV show What's the problem with this? Hypothetical example: I once watched a documentary about Africa and smuggling of ivory and it showed X, Y and Z. What does this mean? That because of this documentary I have a bias about Africa which now shapes all my decision making? Where does that line get drawn? I consumed the information, what does that have to do with how it affects my opinion of the people there?
      - alex_smart 4y ago
        If you can't see a problem in making a broad stroke judgment on the culture of a billion people on the basis of a single documentary, I am not sure that I can have a conversation with you. Have a good day.
swores 4y ago
You've misunderstood what racism is if you think it's defined by whether or not the victim is aware of racism. Of course that's often very relevant but absolutely not necessarily. If I walk into a friend's business, and say "woah, I did not know you hired a <derogative racist term>, they're all stupid you should fire him" and the friend immediately goes "ooh I forgot to be racist, yea I'll fire them immediately" then their firing would absolutely be racist despite the person being fired not witnessing the racist logic that causes it. Equally with voter ID laws, they're not racist because they put mean racist message onto the ID cards or something, and whether or not victims of that sort of racist politics notice doesn't mean racism isn't involved. If somebody says "I don't think we need voter IDs, but in my district only the <some race of people> don't have photo IDs and they would all want to vote for my opponent, so let's require ID to vote!" then those people have had a racist and very unfair thing happen against them, regardless of whether they are "thinking of racism". edit: and as a slightly easier example, if I edited a newspaper and decided that for every negative story about one skin colour would get front page billing, and every negative story about my own skin colour would get binned rather than published, then all my paper's readers might be able to look at every single article without seeing any racism in them - but their not knowing doesn't change that my theoretical editing was racist.
- fareesh 4y ago
  - Indian is not a race (see my other comment) - Even if you use the broader definition to include nationality, in this case, the "hackers" are physically located in the geopolitical boundaries of India - Nearly every major country with a large enough population has people in whitehat/blackhat infosec professions. It is an incredible reach to suggest that newspapers should not identify the national origin of these individuals because of what some racist readers might start to believe or become biased towards, by drawing non-existent lines to patterns that don't exist except in their own bubbles. Editorial standards and responsibility should not be driven by the weakest minds.
  - watwut 4y ago
    Definition of racism that includes nationality is not "broader". It is the definition of racism. It is also very common form of racism worldwide.
alex_smart 4y ago
Granted I haven't read the article yet, but I read some of the comments here and definitely did think of racism.

Indians will read this and not once think of racism Reminds me of the "voter ID is racist" argument

cuteboy19 4y ago

No i too was confused why indian needed mentioning

fareesh 4y ago
- Because Indian in this context is not a reference to the ethnicity but of location - i.e. it's not the DNA of the people that is Indian, it's the borders in which they are physically present while hacking. Many are unaware that India has a lot of phenotype diversity in its 1 billion people. There are dark skinned people in the south, light skinned people in the north, and almond shape eyed people in the east. Merely saying "Indian" does not really paint an image of anyone since we all look different, so it's a bit strange to allege racism. - Because just mentioning it adds the following dimensions to the headline: geopolitics, outsourcing, human resources in the developing world, cybercrime & jurisdiction challenges - Because it's allegedly true
- watwut 4y ago
  Racism does not have to focus on skin color. As a super easy example, with Nazi did not defined races and their hierarchy by color. Also notably, people that have a thong against Indians and Asians I encountered in real life have literally zero idea about internal subdivision. They could not tell sub-groups apart, not by look and not by language. If you have a thing against people from India, it is India in general and you don't care about anything else.
  - fareesh 4y ago
    The publisher here (Reuters) is well aware of everything I've mentioned. They don't need to customize their headlines to modify the reaction of the people you are referencing. Those people should not be leading the decision making process for excluding facts from headlines.
    - alex_smart 4y ago
      >They don't need to customize their headlines to modify the reaction of the people you are referencing Why not? Doesn't media regularly customize their headlines to avoid stating factually true things that would propagate negative stereotypes against minorities and other protected groups? I think most responsible media organizations do avoid putting headlines like "Muslim man stabs three in church in Nice". Even if they do mention the religion, it is usually called "Islamic terrorism", and they have also invested quite some significant effort into emphasizing that most of regular Islamic people do not in fact have anything to do with Islamic terrorism. As far as I can tell, media companies certainly seem to be aware of the effect their headlines can have on propagating negative stereotypes and good editorial judgement usually involves an attempt to avoid doing that as much as possible.
      - fareesh 4y ago
        They absolutely should not be customizing headlines for fear of how it affects a small fringe of people who are going to think that way regardless of a Reuters headline
- alex_smart 4y ago
  This is a comment from this thread itself: "I think it's covered in the Dark Basin episode of Darknet Diaries, but India apparently has a reputation for especially aggressive private investigators, who were historically used to dig up dirt on families before committing to marriage pacts, but in the modern era are used regularly for PR and corporate blackmail. Apparently this practice is ingrained enough into the culture that digging up dirt on people by any means necessary is widely accepted, and not even illegal in most contexts." Please tell me more about how India can ever be used purely as a location.
  - fareesh 4y ago
    I'm not sure I follow the point that is being made here The comment is referring to the standard practices of private investigators in this country, and the nature of the corporate world based on what has been seen in some TV show What's the problem with this? Hypothetical example: I once watched a documentary about Africa and smuggling of ivory and it showed X, Y and Z. What does this mean? That because of this documentary I have a bias about Africa which now shapes all my decision making? Where does that line get drawn? I consumed the information, what does that have to do with how it affects my opinion of the people there?
    - alex_smart 4y ago
      If you can't see a problem in making a broad stroke judgment on the culture of a billion people on the basis of a single documentary, I am not sure that I can have a conversation with you. Have a good day.

swores 4y ago

You've misunderstood what racism is if you think it's defined by whether or not the victim is aware of racism. Of course that's often very relevant but absolutely not necessarily. If I walk into a friend's business, and say "woah, I did not know you hired a <derogative racist term>, they're all stupid you should fire him" and the friend immediately goes "ooh I forgot to be racist, yea I'll fire them immediately" then their firing would absolutely be racist despite the person being fired not witnessing the racist logic that causes it. Equally with voter ID laws, they're not racist because they put mean racist message onto the ID cards or something, and whether or not victims of that sort of racist politics notice doesn't mean racism isn't involved. If somebody says "I don't think we need voter IDs, but in my district only the <some race of people> don't have photo IDs and they would all want to vote for my opponent, so let's require ID to vote!" then those people have had a racist and very unfair thing happen against them, regardless of whether they are "thinking of racism". edit: and as a slightly easier example, if I edited a newspaper and decided that for every negative story about one skin colour would get front page billing, and every negative story about my own skin colour would get binned rather than published, then all my paper's readers might be able to look at every single article without seeing any racism in them - but their not knowing doesn't change that my theoretical editing was racist.

fareesh 4y ago
- Indian is not a race (see my other comment) - Even if you use the broader definition to include nationality, in this case, the "hackers" are physically located in the geopolitical boundaries of India - Nearly every major country with a large enough population has people in whitehat/blackhat infosec professions. It is an incredible reach to suggest that newspapers should not identify the national origin of these individuals because of what some racist readers might start to believe or become biased towards, by drawing non-existent lines to patterns that don't exist except in their own bubbles. Editorial standards and responsibility should not be driven by the weakest minds.
- watwut 4y ago
  Definition of racism that includes nationality is not "broader". It is the definition of racism. It is also very common form of racism worldwide.

alex_smart 4y ago

Granted I haven't read the article yet, but I read some of the comments here and definitely did think of racism.