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3 Black Teenage Scientists Had a Breakthrough, Then Came the Trolls

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Re: 3 Black Teenage Scientists Had a Breakthrough, Then Came the Trolls

#41

Post by insickness »

IanDrake wrote: post #18
RasputinsBro wrote: post #2

Slight off-topic. I'm sure this has been said before, but I'm saddened to catch myself doing it. All my life I've been indifferent to matters of race, and so if I'd read 10 years ago about 3 black girls doing whatever I wouldn't have thought twice about it. But after what's been happening in recent years, I just caught myself thinking: "3 black girls? I wonder if they didn't win as part of the diversity quota" :-/ I…

I’ve never met anyone who claims racism doesn’t exist. Perhaps I haven’t met the right troll? The odd thing about racism is that we typically see it in the US as a asian/black/white/hispanic issue where historically race was finer grained, especially when talking about a much more homogeneous population. Historically Brits would consider the French, Irish, or Italians as a different race, and, yes, have racist views…

> I’ve never met anyone who claims racism doesn’t exist.

The anti-affirmative action argument doesn't say that racism doesn't exist. The argument against affirmative action is that society should aim for equal opportunity rather than equal outcome.

Re: 3 Black Teenage Scientists Had a Breakthrough, Then Came the Trolls

#42

Post by Latty »

RasputinsBro wrote: post #2

Slight off-topic. I'm sure this has been said before, but I'm saddened to catch myself doing it. All my life I've been indifferent to matters of race, and so if I'd read 10 years ago about 3 black girls doing whatever I wouldn't have thought twice about it. But after what's been happening in recent years, I just caught myself thinking: "3 black girls? I wonder if they didn't win as part of the diversity quota" :-/ I…

You are buying what the racists are selling - the idea that progress for minorities comes at the expense of white people.

Almost all affirmative action is designed to help pushing inclusion and participation, not just pushing the end goal. You set a target for numbers of candidates you interview to be minorities, which helps you get more opportunity to find capable people who happen to be minorities. They still have to be the best candidate at the end of the day.

People acting without any discrimination doesn't magically fix the world - look at Chess. Sure, women could play in tournaments, but they largely didn't. It took the creation of women's only tournaments to grow a community and give role models, and now we have women who are grandmasters and play in normal tournaments very successfully.

Even something as simple as your subconscious bias while hiring, if you see more minority candidates, your mental model of what someone who can do that job looks like will change, and maybe when it's borderline you don't instinctively just go with the white guy because that's what's familiar.

Trying to make a world where all people have equal opportunity is important. Right now, too much of the time the opportunities just aren't there because of history. It's not as easy as saying "you can't discriminate" to someone overtly racist, it's having a classroom and getting one of the girls to try programming - something she might never try (because it's not a "girl thing"), even if it's something she might love doing, if she did.

The defaults and patterns of our society are built on our history, and our history was racist and sexist. Changing that requires active thought and effort, and painting that as just trying to bring the straight white man down is the aim of these kinds of people.

Re: 3 Black Teenage Scientists Had a Breakthrough, Then Came the Trolls

#43

Post by CM30 »

verroq wrote: post #19
rudedogg wrote: post #17

I read about this a couple days ago. Apparently this started the nonsense: https://twitter.com/Pash_away/status/988951710524583937 Lots of varying levels of "wrong" to go around IMO.

Funny how none of the news mention that pro-black groups started the vote manipulation, which resulted in trolls escalating the manipulation.

Probably because stories that support an outlet's worldview/narrative are investigated far less than ones that challenge it. You can see the same issue with the story of that YouTube prankster supposedly 'thrown off a plane for speaking Arabic'; he wasn't (he was trolling people beforehand), but because it fit the '2016 election led to increased Islamaphobia/hatred of outsiders' worldview, it went unchallenged until others stepped forward afterwards.

It's not a pattern exclusive to one political side and their media outlets either; if a story sounds like it can be used to rally the troops and support a message, it won't be investigated too thoroughly regardless of whether it supports the left or right or centre or whoever else.

Re: 3 Black Teenage Scientists Had a Breakthrough, Then Came the Trolls

#44

Post by CM30 »

Pica_soO wrote: post #33

My solution- depersonalize all work. As in no faces, no interviews, no names- just a number and the work. Take the old web to reality- kick the whole social approach out of it. If writing styles or location give the work away, jumble and anonymize even that. There will be no way human reeducation will ever work. There will no new - more human humanity appear by enough reeducation. So just make it one huge peer review…

Reminds me of a similar idea I've often thought about regarding the court system; anonymise defendants when possible to remove the biases people have towards races, genders or human attractiveness.

Yes, it would likely be really difficult to do, and not work too well with eyewitness evidence or what not, but it may make prison sentences and punishments consistent between different social groups and demographics again.

Re: 3 Black Teenage Scientists Had a Breakthrough, Then Came the Trolls

#45

Post by tripletao »

IanDrake wrote: post #18
RasputinsBro wrote: post #2

Slight off-topic. I'm sure this has been said before, but I'm saddened to catch myself doing it. All my life I've been indifferent to matters of race, and so if I'd read 10 years ago about 3 black girls doing whatever I wouldn't have thought twice about it. But after what's been happening in recent years, I just caught myself thinking: "3 black girls? I wonder if they didn't win as part of the diversity quota" :-/ I…

I’ve never met anyone who claims racism doesn’t exist. Perhaps I haven’t met the right troll? The odd thing about racism is that we typically see it in the US as a asian/black/white/hispanic issue where historically race was finer grained, especially when talking about a much more homogeneous population. Historically Brits would consider the French, Irish, or Italians as a different race, and, yes, have racist views…

Intra-white racism was totally a thing in the USA. Jacob Riis ("How the Other Half Lives") is sometimes considered to have had progressive views on race, because he didn't consider black people to be strictly worse than white; but that probably just reflects his low opinion of Southern Europeans.

Such racism is mostly dead now, because generations of generic-white intermarriage would make it hopelessly confusing. My suspicion is that as long as distinct races are perceived, racism will continue, and the absence of that intermarriage is simultaneously evidence of that racism and a cause of it.

Re: 3 Black Teenage Scientists Had a Breakthrough, Then Came the Trolls

#46

Post by cimmanom »

insickness wrote: post #41
IanDrake wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never met anyone who claims racism doesn’t exist. Perhaps I haven’t met the right troll? The odd thing about racism is that we typically see it in the US as a asian/black/white/hispanic issue where historically race was finer grained, especially when talking about a much more homogeneous population. Historically Brits would consider the French, Irish, or Italians as a different race, and, yes, have racist views…

> I’ve never met anyone who claims racism doesn’t exist. The anti-affirmative action argument doesn't say that racism doesn't exist. The argument against affirmative action is that society should aim for equal opportunity rather than equal outcome.

And those in favor of affirmative action would say that it's a way to support equal opportunity later in the pipeline when earlier stages of the pipeline have failed to do so.

Re: 3 Black Teenage Scientists Had a Breakthrough, Then Came the Trolls

#47

Post by cimmanom »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #21

It always bothers me when there are complaints of treating someone differently while also describing those persons as "hyphenated Americans". I don't think those, in this article, described themselves as such but you can't be the same and different at the same time.

Then how would you describe the reason that they were targeted?

Re: 3 Black Teenage Scientists Had a Breakthrough, Then Came the Trolls

#48

Post by RasputinsBro »

Latty wrote: post #42
RasputinsBro wrote: post #2

Slight off-topic. I'm sure this has been said before, but I'm saddened to catch myself doing it. All my life I've been indifferent to matters of race, and so if I'd read 10 years ago about 3 black girls doing whatever I wouldn't have thought twice about it. But after what's been happening in recent years, I just caught myself thinking: "3 black girls? I wonder if they didn't win as part of the diversity quota" :-/ I…

You are buying what the racists are selling - the idea that progress for minorities comes at the expense of white people. Almost all affirmative action is designed to help pushing inclusion and participation, not just pushing the end goal. You set a target for numbers of candidates you interview to be minorities, which helps you get more opportunity to find capable people who happen to be minorities. They still have…

> You are buying what the racists are selling - the idea that progress for minorities comes at the expense of white people.

I didn't say that affirmative action comes at the expense of white people, I said (implicitly, by presenting an example) that it comes at the expense of the people it tries to help.

Re: 3 Black Teenage Scientists Had a Breakthrough, Then Came the Trolls

#49

Post by IanDrake »

insickness wrote: post #41
IanDrake wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never met anyone who claims racism doesn’t exist. Perhaps I haven’t met the right troll? The odd thing about racism is that we typically see it in the US as a asian/black/white/hispanic issue where historically race was finer grained, especially when talking about a much more homogeneous population. Historically Brits would consider the French, Irish, or Italians as a different race, and, yes, have racist views…

> I’ve never met anyone who claims racism doesn’t exist. The anti-affirmative action argument doesn't say that racism doesn't exist. The argument against affirmative action is that society should aim for equal opportunity rather than equal outcome.

Affirmative action IS institutional racism in that it codifies advantage to one race over another.

One could argue about the intention of affirmative action, but I don’t think one could argue that it’s not racist, using the dictionary’s definition of racism.

Re: 3 Black Teenage Scientists Had a Breakthrough, Then Came the Trolls

#50

Post by dogma1138 »

rudedogg wrote: post #17

I read about this a couple days ago. Apparently this started the nonsense: https://twitter.com/Pash_away/status/988951710524583937 Lots of varying levels of "wrong" to go around IMO.

Is that the troll account or did people reacted negatively to the precieved tribalism and voted against them?
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