5 ms·

There should be zero targeting of ethnicity. Excluding people based on ethnicity is wrong, no matter what the ethnic group is. And what makes you so sure that

by JPKab 14y ago

There should be zero targeting of ethnicity. Excluding people based on ethnicity is wrong, no matter what the ethnic group is. And what makes you so sure that black men would relate to black women better than they would men of other ethnic backgrounds? Which is the bigger divider, gender or ethnicity? The point I am making isn't that this isn't a good thing, because as I said in my original post, helping any disadvantaged group of people is a good thing. I'm simply pointing out the hypocrisy in doing it based on race. Why not make it CityGirlsCode? If the argument for BlackGirlsCode is so logical, why would it be wrong to have an organization called WhiteGirlsCode in the poor areas of Appalachia? It's wrong in both instances, its just that modern political correctness has taught you that it's ok to discriminate based on race as long as it isn't favoring whites.

mindstab 14y ago
You don't get it. By "not discriminating" you are essentially discriminating against everyone who isn't in the majority. People are not these ideal unxenophobic people. You say you grew up in a black neighborhood but I'm going to guess you are a white male yourself. People group by like and are often exclusionary. Look at Gnome and Google's summer of code. They have started doing specifically female targeted ones because they females are there but aren't applying to the normal ones for a myrid of reasons plenty of which are mighty valid. I'm sorry but targeted helping is needed and is a good thing. Stop over reacting because for the first time you almost nearly kind of feel the sting of discrimination. All is not even close to equal.
- colmvp 14y ago
  "You don't get it. By "not discriminating" you are essentially discriminating against everyone who isn't in the majority. People are not these ideal unxenophobic people. You say you grew up in a black neighborhood but I'm going to guess you are a white male yourself." This a million times over. White men have certain inherent advantages over other demographic makeups in the Western world that it's laughable a white guy would feel offended by this small little group that's marginalized. It's like a rich person being offended that a non-for-profit just exists for poor people.
peterwwillis 14y ago
I'm kind of struggling to figure out how to explain this. You know how there's very few women in IT/CS? You know how there's very few black people in IT/CS? You know how people have been trying to figure out, 'Hey, how do we get more women and black people into IT/CS?' This solves both problems. What you're basically telling me is that trying to take people who generally have to struggle the most in life, and have the hardest time trying to get into technology, that helping them is wrong (morally? ethically?) and should be stopped because we should ignore the fact that they have a harder time than most because you don't like the idea of talking about race, or sex, or anything in specifics. Wake up, pal. This is the real world. In the real world, people don't get treated fairly, and they don't get to live exactly the same lives. We should strive to help people that need it the most, yes, and sometimes this means working with one of those groups. One of the reasons we do this is because there are special considerations when dealing with a specific group. Women, for example. They don't want arrogant objectifying men to intimidate them as they try to learn a new, difficult, intimidating subject. So there are organizations that try to help just women, to get around these problems. Black people have their own problems to deal with. Sometimes, it affects those who live in economically-depressed clusters of an area. Most of the time, this is an overwhelmingly large number of the population of that area. As a result, it becomes significantly more challenging for a black person in that area to do something like learn to program than a white person in that area, and thus, they need a little more support. It's not wrong to acknowledge this. It's just a fact of life. And in helping specific people who are having a hard time of things, we help those who are (in some cases) in the most need. So please, get off your fucking high horse and give these people some credit for actually trying to help people.
_delirium 14y ago
> There should be zero targeting of ethnicity. So I shouldn't be allowed to volunteer with the American Hellenic Progressive Association, a group dedicated towards looking at problems and interests specific to Greek-Americans? Why not? Not every group can target every community's problems, so it sometimes makes sense to target subgroups imo.
- peterwwillis 14y ago
  Apparently that makes you racist.
tysonjennings 14y ago
Dude, I'm a fairly new user with low karma but I'm going to burn every bit of it up in this one post so I'm going to try to make it good. First, let me ask you a question. What's the poorest country in the western hemisphere? Haiti. What makes it "special"? Now, what's the poorest most impoverished continent in the world? Africa. What makes it "special"? I think you get the picture. I'm going to tell you a little secret. Black people statistically speaking are intellectually inferior. You don't have to like it, I don't have to like it, the Hacker News zeitgeist doesn't have to like it but it's true. The question is, what do you do about that. Do you pretend everybody is the same and give everybody equal opportunity sink or swim? That sounds good in the libertarian utopia but the fact is we live in the real world and if you do that you are going to have a class of people that will never reach parity no matter what happens. Left to their own devices, black people are incapable as a group to ever reach the cultural and social level of white and Asian people. That being the case, you can either live with that which is a non-starter unless you want downtown SF look like downtown Johannesburg. So the only realistic option is to "stack the deck". Everyone that has ever thought about it for more than 5 minutes realizes that this has to happen in order for our mixed society to remain sane. The ivory tower "liberals" understand this far more than you realize and despite the public rhetoric of equality, behind the scenes, the dials are turned to make sure that despite the fact that blacks could never compete on merit, there is just enough stacked in their favor and just subtly enough that they have at least some chance. Thus programs like BlackGirlsCode. And that's it. I don't like it. I wish blacks were on par intellectually but that just isn't the case and won't be anytime soon so I buy in to this "fix". Give it some thought and you might too. BTW, before you get too far off on your own superiority remember that Ashkenazi jews (Einstein, etc.) are statistically a fifth to a full standard deviation above the average in mathematical and verbal IQ tests. Ever wonder why something like 50 percent of the nobel prizes go to them? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence Bye bye Karma.
- rmc 14y ago
  The poorest countries in Europe are ethnically Catholic. By your logic, catholics are stupid. Stupid mentally inferior JFK.
felipemnoa 14y ago
Look, it's simple. There has been an imbalance for a long time. One group is lagging behind because of hundreds of years of slavery, discrimination and oppression. Being a black women means that she was being doubly oppressed, one for being black and the other for being a women. What is happening in this particular example is that somebody is trying to fix the injustice that happened against a specific demographic for hundreds of years. Even though slavery and "separate but equal" are gone, and finally women have the right to vote, the effects of all that oppression is still being felt because of inertia (i.e. they are trapped in a cycle of poverty). The healing from all that oppression is happening slowly and some people are just trying to speed it up. At least I think that is what is happening here.
rmc 14y ago
Excluding people based on ethnicity is wrong, no matter what the ethnic group is. I disagree. In an ideal world, yes you're right. But that's not reality. In this world, it's OK. It's good and moral to try to eliminate the inherent disadvantages that some groups have. It's better in the long term. This is the right thing to do. it's ok to discriminate based on race as long as it isn't favoring whites. Pretty much yes. Non-whites have much less power, ergo they need it.
colmvp 14y ago
"...its just that modern political correctness has taught you that it's ok to discriminate based on race as long as it isn't favoring whites." That's because white men have less barriers to... well everything.

by JPKab 14y ago

mindstab 14y ago

You don't get it. By "not discriminating" you are essentially discriminating against everyone who isn't in the majority. People are not these ideal unxenophobic people. You say you grew up in a black neighborhood but I'm going to guess you are a white male yourself. People group by like and are often exclusionary. Look at Gnome and Google's summer of code. They have started doing specifically female targeted ones because they females are there but aren't applying to the normal ones for a myrid of reasons plenty of which are mighty valid. I'm sorry but targeted helping is needed and is a good thing. Stop over reacting because for the first time you almost nearly kind of feel the sting of discrimination. All is not even close to equal.

colmvp 14y ago
"You don't get it. By "not discriminating" you are essentially discriminating against everyone who isn't in the majority. People are not these ideal unxenophobic people. You say you grew up in a black neighborhood but I'm going to guess you are a white male yourself." This a million times over. White men have certain inherent advantages over other demographic makeups in the Western world that it's laughable a white guy would feel offended by this small little group that's marginalized. It's like a rich person being offended that a non-for-profit just exists for poor people.

peterwwillis 14y ago

I'm kind of struggling to figure out how to explain this. You know how there's very few women in IT/CS? You know how there's very few black people in IT/CS? You know how people have been trying to figure out, 'Hey, how do we get more women and black people into IT/CS?' This solves both problems. What you're basically telling me is that trying to take people who generally have to struggle the most in life, and have the hardest time trying to get into technology, that helping them is wrong (morally? ethically?) and should be stopped because we should ignore the fact that they have a harder time than most because you don't like the idea of talking about race, or sex, or anything in specifics. Wake up, pal. This is the real world. In the real world, people don't get treated fairly, and they don't get to live exactly the same lives. We should strive to help people that need it the most, yes, and sometimes this means working with one of those groups. One of the reasons we do this is because there are special considerations when dealing with a specific group. Women, for example. They don't want arrogant objectifying men to intimidate them as they try to learn a new, difficult, intimidating subject. So there are organizations that try to help just women, to get around these problems. Black people have their own problems to deal with. Sometimes, it affects those who live in economically-depressed clusters of an area. Most of the time, this is an overwhelmingly large number of the population of that area. As a result, it becomes significantly more challenging for a black person in that area to do something like learn to program than a white person in that area, and thus, they need a little more support. It's not wrong to acknowledge this. It's just a fact of life. And in helping specific people who are having a hard time of things, we help those who are (in some cases) in the most need. So please, get off your fucking high horse and give these people some credit for actually trying to help people.

_delirium 14y ago

> There should be zero targeting of ethnicity. So I shouldn't be allowed to volunteer with the American Hellenic Progressive Association, a group dedicated towards looking at problems and interests specific to Greek-Americans? Why not? Not every group can target every community's problems, so it sometimes makes sense to target subgroups imo.

peterwwillis 14y ago
Apparently that makes you racist.

tysonjennings 14y ago

Dude, I'm a fairly new user with low karma but I'm going to burn every bit of it up in this one post so I'm going to try to make it good. First, let me ask you a question. What's the poorest country in the western hemisphere? Haiti. What makes it "special"? Now, what's the poorest most impoverished continent in the world? Africa. What makes it "special"? I think you get the picture. I'm going to tell you a little secret. Black people statistically speaking are intellectually inferior. You don't have to like it, I don't have to like it, the Hacker News zeitgeist doesn't have to like it but it's true. The question is, what do you do about that. Do you pretend everybody is the same and give everybody equal opportunity sink or swim? That sounds good in the libertarian utopia but the fact is we live in the real world and if you do that you are going to have a class of people that will never reach parity no matter what happens. Left to their own devices, black people are incapable as a group to ever reach the cultural and social level of white and Asian people. That being the case, you can either live with that which is a non-starter unless you want downtown SF look like downtown Johannesburg. So the only realistic option is to "stack the deck". Everyone that has ever thought about it for more than 5 minutes realizes that this has to happen in order for our mixed society to remain sane. The ivory tower "liberals" understand this far more than you realize and despite the public rhetoric of equality, behind the scenes, the dials are turned to make sure that despite the fact that blacks could never compete on merit, there is just enough stacked in their favor and just subtly enough that they have at least some chance. Thus programs like BlackGirlsCode. And that's it. I don't like it. I wish blacks were on par intellectually but that just isn't the case and won't be anytime soon so I buy in to this "fix". Give it some thought and you might too. BTW, before you get too far off on your own superiority remember that Ashkenazi jews (Einstein, etc.) are statistically a fifth to a full standard deviation above the average in mathematical and verbal IQ tests. Ever wonder why something like 50 percent of the nobel prizes go to them? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence Bye bye Karma.

rmc 14y ago
The poorest countries in Europe are ethnically Catholic. By your logic, catholics are stupid. Stupid mentally inferior JFK.

felipemnoa 14y ago

Look, it's simple. There has been an imbalance for a long time. One group is lagging behind because of hundreds of years of slavery, discrimination and oppression. Being a black women means that she was being doubly oppressed, one for being black and the other for being a women. What is happening in this particular example is that somebody is trying to fix the injustice that happened against a specific demographic for hundreds of years. Even though slavery and "separate but equal" are gone, and finally women have the right to vote, the effects of all that oppression is still being felt because of inertia (i.e. they are trapped in a cycle of poverty). The healing from all that oppression is happening slowly and some people are just trying to speed it up. At least I think that is what is happening here.

rmc 14y ago

Excluding people based on ethnicity is wrong, no matter what the ethnic group is. I disagree. In an ideal world, yes you're right. But that's not reality. In this world, it's OK. It's good and moral to try to eliminate the inherent disadvantages that some groups have. It's better in the long term. This is the right thing to do. it's ok to discriminate based on race as long as it isn't favoring whites. Pretty much yes. Non-whites have much less power, ergo they need it.

colmvp 14y ago

"...its just that modern political correctness has taught you that it's ok to discriminate based on race as long as it isn't favoring whites." That's because white men have less barriers to... well everything.