6 ms·

Have you spent time in other countries? Racism is everywhere, and often far more dramatic and in your face than what you are describing. What you are describin

by lazide 2y ago

Have you spent time in other countries? Racism is everywhere, and often far more dramatic and in your face than what you are describing. What you are describing is still wrong! And was made illegal for a reason. But anyone coming from Asia, Africa, South America, and most of Europe is going to just shrug their shoulders at what you just described. I have yet to see even the most progressive Western European country that didn’t have a huge hate against Roma/Travelers, or Indian community that didn’t have some serious Muslim/Hindu friction, or Chinese vs Non-Chinese, etc. And let’s not talk about Eastern Europe, or African tribal/clan warfare! The issue here is that the more you talk about all the wrongs and specifics, the more you highlight finer granularities of identity, the more you base things on some small group, the more it splits everyone, the more different groups/factions end up getting created, the more finger pointing happens, etc. The more people start thinking of us vs them, their identity and how they are different/split from everyone else, etc. and past grievances, the more they start thinking about retribution, control/exclusion, etc. For an incredibly evolved version of this, check out a (brief summary of [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India]. It ends up in a nearly infinitely Balkanized hellscape where the more someone knows about someone else, the more likely they will end up enemies than friends. And eventually, nearly everyone is an enemy with their neighbors, and sometimes even themselves. If we try to focus on what should happen, and the best common identity we can, and punish divergences from that instead, at least we can be mostly going in that, someone similar direction. And have at least some idea what common elements we can be friends on, and what we shouldn’t talk about lest we become (likely) enemies. It is far from perfect, but at least it has some cohesive identity and direction, rather than infinite levels of infighting. Nothing is perfect. Together, we can be strong. Alone, we are weak and easy to pick off. The issue the US always has had, is that really the only common theme between all its different groups, is the desire to make money, and be left alone to do what they want. But then when times get tough, inevitably some groups want to make everyone else do what they want and/or take everyone else’s money.

xrd 2y ago
Yes, I've lived in Brazil for almost a year, and lived in Japan for two years, and was more or less fluent in both the languages of those countries. I've traveled to almost every country in Europe and South America. But, I fail to see how your lengthy diatribe about modern day racism, most of what I agree with, disputes my comment about reparations. Those are totally different things and that's what I'm pointing out.
- lazide 2y ago
  Because how do you propose doing reparations without causing the exact problem I’m describing? After all, there are practical problems of who is eligible, how long, and who gets to decide that. Not only that, but at that point there is now strong financial incentives to be in specific groups. At least while the money flows. Not everyone can be eligible, or it loses all meaning. Someone has to pay, or it can’t be funded. Someone has to be officially the victim, and officially the offender, or such a program can’t actually exist. Etc. These aren’t modern problems either, and this isn’t ‘modern’ racism, whatever that is. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Alcatraz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Alcatraz]
  - xrd 2y ago
    Ah, I see your point now. I agree there isn't a way to do this easily. And I see what you are saying about the impact of separating into groups to achieve the goal of reparations. Tying it back together, though, this is why I'm disappointed that there is so much backlash about DEI programs. I know first hand from my time at a Fortune 50 company that the lack of black people employed there was partially due to the fact that they had never recruited at any historical black college ever. When they hired a Chief Diversity Officer, we did (I went there). And there were good candidates. I successfully recommended for hire the first black employee at the satellite office for that company. That (candidates being pushed that don't look like the current workforce) just simply doesn't happen when it is all white guys. We generally find other people that look like we do to recommend and hire, especially when we aren't aware of it. I'm sure Asian men suffer from the same myopia as I do. It doesn't stop unless I really think about my default behaviors. That feels like the right way to do reparations. That's the best way, IMHO, to build generational wealth. But, it's falling apart because angry white men like me are complaining that they are cut out of opportunities. I can understand, as a 51 year old white male I've seen how hard it is to find work the last few years. It's brutal. But I've always gotten most of my jobs through my personal network of other mostly white men that worked in tech. If you don't have that network because you aren't in a group heavily represented in tech, then your chances are slim even if it truly is a meritocracy.
stratocumulus0 2y ago
> I have yet to see even the most progressive Western European country that didn’t have a huge hate against Roma/Travelers You don't even have to go this deep. Each and every friend of mine who's German of mixed heritage (Black, Asian) has struggled with people who can't imagine a German not being white. As in you, a German born in Germany, get addressed in English every now and then by strangers, because if you're not white, you have to be a tourist.
- lazide 2y ago
  People pattern match. Gender, skin color, height, hair color are intuitively and naturally the easiest things people can pattern match on. Not a whole lot of Asians or black folks in pictures like these [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/West_and_East_Germans_at_the_Brandenburg_Gate_in_1989.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/West_and...], just like you won’t see a whole lot of local folks who are white in China or India.
- ekianjo 2y ago
  > As in you, a German born in Germany, get addressed in English every now and then by strangers, because if you're not white, Not sure why you find that surprising. Being German is not written on your face. Since most Germans are white, most people will make the correct assumption that if someone is not white, there is a stronger likelihood that they are not German. The same happens in Japan with mixed race kids who get treated like foreigners even though they were born and spent their whole life in Japan. That's just how brains work. If you had no prior assumption you could assume that nobody is who they seem to be and that would make things very complicated for everyday life.
  - portaouflop 2y ago
    The easy fix is to stop assuming and start talking to people in German - it’s really easy to do. If they don’t understand the language you will notice immediately. A bit of an aside but I find it very condescending by fellow Germans to address people immediately in English if they don’t speak perfect fluent German - give the people some chance to learn and practice the language for god sakes
portaouflop 2y ago
Humans are tribal. As much as I wish it weren’t the case often, I don’t think just pretending we’re all one big family will work. I hope we can build some common identity as “world citizens” or whatever- but the trend seems to go towards _more_ balkanisation and more division along class/wealth/privilege.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  The answer is to stop paying lip service to the idea that an ethnicity is like a big family - an idea almost nobody in the US believes, so this will not be that hard - and start saying what we all know to be true: that we're all individuals whose behavior and loyalties are determined by our character and values, not the circumstances of our birth, our skin tones, or which side of a pointless conflict our ancestors fled here to escape.
  - lazide 2y ago
    In most cases, it’s not so much that they’re a family, but rather a group of folks with somewhat aligned interests that can fight together for those interests. The ‘black community’, ‘Irish community’, ‘catholic community’. And those do often work - frankly, it’s often the only thing that works when that community does have some specific interest. It’s for lobbying and other pressure tactics, yes?
    - whatshisface 2y ago
      Ethnic groups don't actually have collective interests. Individuals have specific examples of universal interests. Sometimes individuals are lead to believe that they have collective interests, but that's usually because they're being made to do something against all of their individual interests. Let me offer a few examples. Civil rights is a specific example of a universal interest: equality before the law. The rise of the Nazi party is an example of people forsaking their own interests for a facade of collective interest that covered over the personal interest of a few leaders - Nazi Germany was extraordinarily corrupt, and of course ruined the lives of and killed most of the people who it claimed to exist for the interest of. It is interesting that you bring up "Catholic interests," because the Church is naturally opposed to concepts like "Irish interests." The Church doesn't want its members to divide themselves along ethnic or other lines because that would detract from their Catholicism. It is no accident that the Nazis - the most famous example of an "ethnic interest group" - had to destroy or subsume every other kind of organization to exist.
steveBK123 2y ago
Indeed humans are unfortunately tribal creatures. If you want to see some European racists, go to a soccer/football match between national teams. Or ask a Northern European what they REALLY think about the south. Or even a Northern Italian about Southern Italians. Or ask almost any of them about Eastern Europe or especially Roma. In many cases immigrants bring their own racism to the US that white Americans are completely unaware of. One of the only direct "racism in the workplace" complaints I've been party to in the workplace was Indian on Indian. Former team lead was fired and replacement was an Indian guy, from one particular caste/region I don't recall. Anyway he immediately tried to due-diligence the caste/region of the only Indian on the team. The rest of us had no idea what was going on until our Indian colleague rapidly found another job and accused him on the way out the door. I've even seen some crazy resentment in the workplace between patriotic CCP PRC enjoyers vs Taiwanese coworkers "you aren't Taiwanese, it's not a real country". It's not to excuse any past or present faults in the US, but only to raise the relative performance to other countries&group / how achievable the utopian Star Trek vision is. Our technology and living conditions have evolved rapidly, but HumanOS remains the same. We move ever forward, but its slow.
visarga 2y ago
> The issue here is that the more you talk about all the wrongs and specifics, the more you highlight finer granularities of identity, the more you base things on some small group, the more it splits everyone, the more different groups/factions end up getting created, the more finger pointing happens, etc. One issue that often escapes our attention when we focus on group identities and historical grievances is just how much we collaborate across groups. When a white woman (Katalin Karikó, Hungarian) worked on mRNA, the end results of that research were used by all groups and social identities. We collaborate across much more than we like to acknowledge.

by lazide 2y ago

xrd 2y ago

Yes, I've lived in Brazil for almost a year, and lived in Japan for two years, and was more or less fluent in both the languages of those countries. I've traveled to almost every country in Europe and South America. But, I fail to see how your lengthy diatribe about modern day racism, most of what I agree with, disputes my comment about reparations. Those are totally different things and that's what I'm pointing out.

lazide 2y ago
Because how do you propose doing reparations without causing the exact problem I’m describing? After all, there are practical problems of who is eligible, how long, and who gets to decide that. Not only that, but at that point there is now strong financial incentives to be in specific groups. At least while the money flows. Not everyone can be eligible, or it loses all meaning. Someone has to pay, or it can’t be funded. Someone has to be officially the victim, and officially the offender, or such a program can’t actually exist. Etc. These aren’t modern problems either, and this isn’t ‘modern’ racism, whatever that is. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Alcatraz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Alcatraz]
- xrd 2y ago
  Ah, I see your point now. I agree there isn't a way to do this easily. And I see what you are saying about the impact of separating into groups to achieve the goal of reparations. Tying it back together, though, this is why I'm disappointed that there is so much backlash about DEI programs. I know first hand from my time at a Fortune 50 company that the lack of black people employed there was partially due to the fact that they had never recruited at any historical black college ever. When they hired a Chief Diversity Officer, we did (I went there). And there were good candidates. I successfully recommended for hire the first black employee at the satellite office for that company. That (candidates being pushed that don't look like the current workforce) just simply doesn't happen when it is all white guys. We generally find other people that look like we do to recommend and hire, especially when we aren't aware of it. I'm sure Asian men suffer from the same myopia as I do. It doesn't stop unless I really think about my default behaviors. That feels like the right way to do reparations. That's the best way, IMHO, to build generational wealth. But, it's falling apart because angry white men like me are complaining that they are cut out of opportunities. I can understand, as a 51 year old white male I've seen how hard it is to find work the last few years. It's brutal. But I've always gotten most of my jobs through my personal network of other mostly white men that worked in tech. If you don't have that network because you aren't in a group heavily represented in tech, then your chances are slim even if it truly is a meritocracy.

stratocumulus0 2y ago

> I have yet to see even the most progressive Western European country that didn’t have a huge hate against Roma/Travelers You don't even have to go this deep. Each and every friend of mine who's German of mixed heritage (Black, Asian) has struggled with people who can't imagine a German not being white. As in you, a German born in Germany, get addressed in English every now and then by strangers, because if you're not white, you have to be a tourist.

lazide 2y ago
People pattern match. Gender, skin color, height, hair color are intuitively and naturally the easiest things people can pattern match on. Not a whole lot of Asians or black folks in pictures like these [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/West_and_East_Germans_at_the_Brandenburg_Gate_in_1989.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/West_and...], just like you won’t see a whole lot of local folks who are white in China or India.
ekianjo 2y ago
> As in you, a German born in Germany, get addressed in English every now and then by strangers, because if you're not white, Not sure why you find that surprising. Being German is not written on your face. Since most Germans are white, most people will make the correct assumption that if someone is not white, there is a stronger likelihood that they are not German. The same happens in Japan with mixed race kids who get treated like foreigners even though they were born and spent their whole life in Japan. That's just how brains work. If you had no prior assumption you could assume that nobody is who they seem to be and that would make things very complicated for everyday life.
- portaouflop 2y ago
  The easy fix is to stop assuming and start talking to people in German - it’s really easy to do. If they don’t understand the language you will notice immediately. A bit of an aside but I find it very condescending by fellow Germans to address people immediately in English if they don’t speak perfect fluent German - give the people some chance to learn and practice the language for god sakes

portaouflop 2y ago

Humans are tribal. As much as I wish it weren’t the case often, I don’t think just pretending we’re all one big family will work. I hope we can build some common identity as “world citizens” or whatever- but the trend seems to go towards _more_ balkanisation and more division along class/wealth/privilege.

whatshisface 2y ago
The answer is to stop paying lip service to the idea that an ethnicity is like a big family - an idea almost nobody in the US believes, so this will not be that hard - and start saying what we all know to be true: that we're all individuals whose behavior and loyalties are determined by our character and values, not the circumstances of our birth, our skin tones, or which side of a pointless conflict our ancestors fled here to escape.
- lazide 2y ago
  In most cases, it’s not so much that they’re a family, but rather a group of folks with somewhat aligned interests that can fight together for those interests. The ‘black community’, ‘Irish community’, ‘catholic community’. And those do often work - frankly, it’s often the only thing that works when that community does have some specific interest. It’s for lobbying and other pressure tactics, yes?
  - whatshisface 2y ago
    Ethnic groups don't actually have collective interests. Individuals have specific examples of universal interests. Sometimes individuals are lead to believe that they have collective interests, but that's usually because they're being made to do something against all of their individual interests. Let me offer a few examples. Civil rights is a specific example of a universal interest: equality before the law. The rise of the Nazi party is an example of people forsaking their own interests for a facade of collective interest that covered over the personal interest of a few leaders - Nazi Germany was extraordinarily corrupt, and of course ruined the lives of and killed most of the people who it claimed to exist for the interest of. It is interesting that you bring up "Catholic interests," because the Church is naturally opposed to concepts like "Irish interests." The Church doesn't want its members to divide themselves along ethnic or other lines because that would detract from their Catholicism. It is no accident that the Nazis - the most famous example of an "ethnic interest group" - had to destroy or subsume every other kind of organization to exist.

steveBK123 2y ago

Indeed humans are unfortunately tribal creatures. If you want to see some European racists, go to a soccer/football match between national teams. Or ask a Northern European what they REALLY think about the south. Or even a Northern Italian about Southern Italians. Or ask almost any of them about Eastern Europe or especially Roma. In many cases immigrants bring their own racism to the US that white Americans are completely unaware of. One of the only direct "racism in the workplace" complaints I've been party to in the workplace was Indian on Indian. Former team lead was fired and replacement was an Indian guy, from one particular caste/region I don't recall. Anyway he immediately tried to due-diligence the caste/region of the only Indian on the team. The rest of us had no idea what was going on until our Indian colleague rapidly found another job and accused him on the way out the door. I've even seen some crazy resentment in the workplace between patriotic CCP PRC enjoyers vs Taiwanese coworkers "you aren't Taiwanese, it's not a real country". It's not to excuse any past or present faults in the US, but only to raise the relative performance to other countries&group / how achievable the utopian Star Trek vision is. Our technology and living conditions have evolved rapidly, but HumanOS remains the same. We move ever forward, but its slow.

visarga 2y ago

> The issue here is that the more you talk about all the wrongs and specifics, the more you highlight finer granularities of identity, the more you base things on some small group, the more it splits everyone, the more different groups/factions end up getting created, the more finger pointing happens, etc. One issue that often escapes our attention when we focus on group identities and historical grievances is just how much we collaborate across groups. When a white woman (Katalin Karikó, Hungarian) worked on mRNA, the end results of that research were used by all groups and social identities. We collaborate across much more than we like to acknowledge.