6 ms·

Ha, so what, is it racist and bigoted to read books simply because they were written by a white man? Who even cares about what race and gender is the author of

Ha, so what, is it racist and bigoted to read books simply because they were written by a white man? Who even cares about what race and gender is the author of a book? What about their religion? Hair and eye color? Should we start vetting movie directors and screenwriters before renting a movie? Or maybe would you like for the governments to setup quotas, and federally funded programs to support minority authors?

sp332 12y ago
It's obviously racist to include only books from white authors. This isn't about each book, it's about the collection.
- bossmojoman 12y ago
  Or maybe, according to the laws of statistics, maybe, just maybe, (let me add in another maybe here,) The dude just happened to like 5 books that HAPPENED to be by white men? Possibly he most likely didn't even care who wrote them as quality knows not race, sex or orientation? I mean we should TOTALLY believe the dude trying to rid the third world of malaria is TOTALLY a racist, right? God, tumblr is leaking over into hacker news now.
  - sp332 12y ago
    Sure it's possible. It's just not mathematically likely. Sexist, too, since there's only 1/2^5 = 3% chance that all 5 books would be written by men if the choice were made fairly.
    - axlprose 12y ago
      you're forgetting to take into account the fact this is a list about his favourite books this year. Preferences, especially when talking about a 'top 5', are by definition highly selective, and not 'fair' according to any other measure besides how much the reader liked the book. This is also not about how many books were published this year (which may very well not be evenly distributed among the genders/races), it's about a subset of the books which Gates actually read this year, which may be an entirely different demographic of authors depending on his preferences. So you'd have to take into consideration the demographics of the authors for the particular sub-genres of books Gates likes to read as well. If you're going to use math to suggest something is discriminatory, you better do a thorough job of mathematically proving it correctly, because it is a large claim to make using only primitive estimations.
      - sp332 12y ago
        Only reading books written by men is not less sexist than reading both and only liking books written by men, so I'm not sure how that would help. If men are more likely to be published than women, that's an indication of a sexist industry (or sub-genre) and something that all readers should be actively working to compensate for.
        axlprose 12y ago
        If the industry does publish mostly men, then reading books mostly by men in that genre is inevitable. And if that is true for the industry, it could just be that not enough female authors are actually looking to get published. I have experience actually working at a publisher for a particular STEM field, and can tell you that we didn't receive an equal demographic of pitches from authors looking to get published; in fact, we automatically gave any female authors even more of a chance to refine their ideas with us regardless of their original pitches. Males that made dubious pitches on the other hand were just canned outright. Yet the percentages of books published by females was still low, and there's not much that can be done about that from the publishing end if there simply aren't enough females interested in authoring for that genre. Additionally, there is no reason why liking books by male authors over female authors (or vice-versa) in certain genres should be sexist. There have been studies showing that consumers can relate better to characters and such that share their same gender/culture than those that don't. Similarly, there are studies that students learn better from teachers that also share their same gender/culture. It's hard to say what exactly causes this right now, but it's not a stretch to suggest that perhaps males will simply enjoy reading/relating with authors more if they share a similar perspective. Also, actively going out of your way to only read books by male authors in all genres is definitely a sign of some kind of sexism, and I have no idea why you're positioning it as something could even be remotely interpreted as 'less sexist' than merely liking books by authors that share a common ground with you. Selectively reading means judging books before you read them, not even giving them a chance based purely on some superficial trait (like an author of a different sex), while liking books could mean judging them on any number of nearly infinite dimensions. The two are nothing alike.
        12y ago
    - strickjb9 12y ago
      You are poorly assuming that 50% of books are written by men.
    - davidiach 12y ago
      Because all books are created equal.
- forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
  >It's obviously racist to include only books from white authors. That is so incredibly ridiculous. It's just a list of his favorite books, the race of the authors is irrelevant. My favorite band is made up of all white musicians. Is that racist?
JoergR 12y ago
Everyone except white men cares about it. Without seeing different points of view, empathy, diversity and understanding of people is not possible. Which is, plainly, ridiculously simple to see unless you are trying really hard to stay ignorant in privilege.
- another_sigh 12y ago
  Completely off topic, but I always figured that you'd get better mileage out of "blessed" rather than "privilege".
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  I think you are letting your hatred of white men cloud your judgement.
mariusz79 12y ago
@sp322 it's racist to care about the race of the author imho. I've never, ever had the urge to check race, gender or sexual orientation of any author, director, screenwriter, photographer etc. Why would anyone waste their time doing something like that? It's just stupid.
- sp332 12y ago
  For example, you might expect someone writing about how Asia should reform its farming practices to be from Asia.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    I'd expect them to have studied farming practices and their effects broadly, and to have studied the status quo of farming in Asia. Whether they are from Asia or not seems to be mostly irrelevant.
    - sp332 12y ago
      It's relevant because it's not just about farming. There is a huge cultural shift involved in Joe Studwell's recommendations. A native would know which cultural patterns are more desirable to reform. It's also possible that Studwell does not entirely have the region's best interests at heart, and is writing to influence things in his favor. After all, that's why the USA doesn't allow people born in other countries to become President.
      - dragonwriter 12y ago
        > It's relevant because it's not just about farming. There is a huge cultural shift involved in Joe Studwell's recommendations. A native would know which cultural patterns are more desirable to reform. "Most desirable" is subjective, and a simply being native to (or residing in) a region, as opposed to conducting structure study of the relevant domains, is not particularly likely to provide any deep insights into what cultural patterns are more desirable to reform (or even on the objective questions that precede the subjective "most desirable" question of which cultural patterns are more amenable to reform and what the effects of attempts to reform those patterns would be likely to be. > It's also possible that Studwell does not entirely have the region's best interests at heart, and is writing to influence things in his favor. The same would be true of natives, who are quite likely to make recommendation in their own perceived personal interest whether or not they are in the general interest of the population of the region. On the objective questions of effects, that's what you use reason and analysis of presented evidence, rather than evaluation of origin of the author, to evaluate the arguments. What you propose is adopting the ad hominem fallacy as a preferred system of judging arguments. > After all, that's why the USA doesn't allow people born in other countries to become President. The USA allows people born in other countries to become President, it doesn't allow people not US citizens at or by birth to become President. And the history of the relevant clause does not provide much evidence of any particular basis for that restriction; any such explanation is purely speculative.

sp332 12y ago

It's obviously racist to include only books from white authors. This isn't about each book, it's about the collection.

bossmojoman 12y ago
Or maybe, according to the laws of statistics, maybe, just maybe, (let me add in another maybe here,) The dude just happened to like 5 books that HAPPENED to be by white men? Possibly he most likely didn't even care who wrote them as quality knows not race, sex or orientation? I mean we should TOTALLY believe the dude trying to rid the third world of malaria is TOTALLY a racist, right? God, tumblr is leaking over into hacker news now.
- sp332 12y ago
  Sure it's possible. It's just not mathematically likely. Sexist, too, since there's only 1/2^5 = 3% chance that all 5 books would be written by men if the choice were made fairly.
  - axlprose 12y ago
    you're forgetting to take into account the fact this is a list about his favourite books this year. Preferences, especially when talking about a 'top 5', are by definition highly selective, and not 'fair' according to any other measure besides how much the reader liked the book. This is also not about how many books were published this year (which may very well not be evenly distributed among the genders/races), it's about a subset of the books which Gates actually read this year, which may be an entirely different demographic of authors depending on his preferences. So you'd have to take into consideration the demographics of the authors for the particular sub-genres of books Gates likes to read as well. If you're going to use math to suggest something is discriminatory, you better do a thorough job of mathematically proving it correctly, because it is a large claim to make using only primitive estimations.
    - sp332 12y ago
      Only reading books written by men is not less sexist than reading both and only liking books written by men, so I'm not sure how that would help. If men are more likely to be published than women, that's an indication of a sexist industry (or sub-genre) and something that all readers should be actively working to compensate for.
      - axlprose 12y ago
        If the industry does publish mostly men, then reading books mostly by men in that genre is inevitable. And if that is true for the industry, it could just be that not enough female authors are actually looking to get published. I have experience actually working at a publisher for a particular STEM field, and can tell you that we didn't receive an equal demographic of pitches from authors looking to get published; in fact, we automatically gave any female authors even more of a chance to refine their ideas with us regardless of their original pitches. Males that made dubious pitches on the other hand were just canned outright. Yet the percentages of books published by females was still low, and there's not much that can be done about that from the publishing end if there simply aren't enough females interested in authoring for that genre. Additionally, there is no reason why liking books by male authors over female authors (or vice-versa) in certain genres should be sexist. There have been studies showing that consumers can relate better to characters and such that share their same gender/culture than those that don't. Similarly, there are studies that students learn better from teachers that also share their same gender/culture. It's hard to say what exactly causes this right now, but it's not a stretch to suggest that perhaps males will simply enjoy reading/relating with authors more if they share a similar perspective. Also, actively going out of your way to only read books by male authors in all genres is definitely a sign of some kind of sexism, and I have no idea why you're positioning it as something could even be remotely interpreted as 'less sexist' than merely liking books by authors that share a common ground with you. Selectively reading means judging books before you read them, not even giving them a chance based purely on some superficial trait (like an author of a different sex), while liking books could mean judging them on any number of nearly infinite dimensions. The two are nothing alike.
        12y ago
  - strickjb9 12y ago
    You are poorly assuming that 50% of books are written by men.
  - davidiach 12y ago
    Because all books are created equal.
forgotpasswd3x 12y ago
>It's obviously racist to include only books from white authors. That is so incredibly ridiculous. It's just a list of his favorite books, the race of the authors is irrelevant. My favorite band is made up of all white musicians. Is that racist?

JoergR 12y ago

Everyone except white men cares about it. Without seeing different points of view, empathy, diversity and understanding of people is not possible. Which is, plainly, ridiculously simple to see unless you are trying really hard to stay ignorant in privilege.

another_sigh 12y ago
Completely off topic, but I always figured that you'd get better mileage out of "blessed" rather than "privilege".
happyscrappy 12y ago
I think you are letting your hatred of white men cloud your judgement.

mariusz79 12y ago

@sp322 it's racist to care about the race of the author imho. I've never, ever had the urge to check race, gender or sexual orientation of any author, director, screenwriter, photographer etc. Why would anyone waste their time doing something like that? It's just stupid.

sp332 12y ago
For example, you might expect someone writing about how Asia should reform its farming practices to be from Asia.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  I'd expect them to have studied farming practices and their effects broadly, and to have studied the status quo of farming in Asia. Whether they are from Asia or not seems to be mostly irrelevant.
  - sp332 12y ago
    It's relevant because it's not just about farming. There is a huge cultural shift involved in Joe Studwell's recommendations. A native would know which cultural patterns are more desirable to reform. It's also possible that Studwell does not entirely have the region's best interests at heart, and is writing to influence things in his favor. After all, that's why the USA doesn't allow people born in other countries to become President.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > It's relevant because it's not just about farming. There is a huge cultural shift involved in Joe Studwell's recommendations. A native would know which cultural patterns are more desirable to reform. "Most desirable" is subjective, and a simply being native to (or residing in) a region, as opposed to conducting structure study of the relevant domains, is not particularly likely to provide any deep insights into what cultural patterns are more desirable to reform (or even on the objective questions that precede the subjective "most desirable" question of which cultural patterns are more amenable to reform and what the effects of attempts to reform those patterns would be likely to be. > It's also possible that Studwell does not entirely have the region's best interests at heart, and is writing to influence things in his favor. The same would be true of natives, who are quite likely to make recommendation in their own perceived personal interest whether or not they are in the general interest of the population of the region. On the objective questions of effects, that's what you use reason and analysis of presented evidence, rather than evaluation of origin of the author, to evaluate the arguments. What you propose is adopting the ad hominem fallacy as a preferred system of judging arguments. > After all, that's why the USA doesn't allow people born in other countries to become President. The USA allows people born in other countries to become President, it doesn't allow people not US citizens at or by birth to become President. And the history of the relevant clause does not provide much evidence of any particular basis for that restriction; any such explanation is purely speculative.