For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business • Hacker News Board

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#401

Post by golf1052 » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 2:56 AM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #295

golf1052 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's frustrating that people make claims to ideas that they are vaguely aware about. The vagueness can lead to repeating incorrect claims which I think is harmful, especially when discussing sensitive topics. > Everyone knows that testosterone makes young men orders of magnitude more violent You're using hyperbole but yes it's commonly understood that there's a link between testosterone and aggression, howeve…

So you agree that gender has direct (hormonal) influence on toy selection? Specifically to quote your post: "toy preferences reflect hormonally influenced behavioral and..."

I prefer the later meta-analysis which looked at studies on humans which says

>Gender differences in toy choice exist and appear to be the product of both innate and social forces.

Gender seems to make some sort of difference but social factors also seem to make a difference. There is no claim to which is stronger, just that there is a difference. Taking this a step further I hypothesize that social forces could be enough to meaningfully change the gender difference.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#402

Post by jimbokun » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 2:57 AM UTC

lukev wrote: post #121

JPKab wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read "White Fragility". While I completely agree that the stories in this article are hugely problematic and represent issues that need to be solved, I think books like "White Fragility" are not helpful in solving them. This is due to a focus on group identity, and describing "White" as if it's a monolithic group of people, all with the same culture, emotions, and reactions. Another interesting aspect I identifi…

If you wait to do anything about systemic racism until it's fully quantified, it will be a long time until we can make any progress. Meanwhile, a central point of the book is one that should be self evident. Talking about racism makes white people[1] uncomfortable. I know this to be true from experience. And we can't make progress as a society until we own that discomfort and are willing to have frank conversations a…

Making white people uncomfortable, by itself, does nothing to improve anything for black people.

Hiring more black people, funding more black people, buying from black owned businesses, providing education opportunities to black people, making police accountable for how they treat black people, are all ways we can help black people.

The only thing that "making white people uncomfortable" accomplishes is making more money for white women like Robin DiAngelo selling their books and consulting services.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#403

Post by brentis » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:04 AM UTC

twybriny wrote: post #220

zasz wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Systematic exclusion of black people from social programs, like the GI Bill and Social Security, and redlining, which prevented black Americans from building up wealth through homeownership the way white Americans were. "The Color of Law" is a good book on redlining. To expand on the bit about Social Security, farmworkers were excluded, since farmworkers tend to be not white. It was a nice sneaky way to be racist wit…

One of the things that confuses me quite a bit is the focus on laws that expired or have been abrogated 50-60-70-150 years ago and make it as if everything wrong with contemporary American society is caused directly by such laws and nothing else. * GI Bill: adopted in 1944, expired in 1956. * Social Security: adopted in 1935, unclear what the impacts were at the time. Unclear what the impacts are today. * Redlining:…

Well said. For those who didn't net out what he enumerated, there is a long list of things that will bring personal, family, and community suffering long before inequality on a race basis.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#404

Post by commoner » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:07 AM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #282

nouveaux wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a publicly traded company is not doing well, the CEO gets canned and no one bats an eye. If one department is not doing well, it's very common to just fire a bunch of people or get rid of the department completely. The idea of "dismantling of police" does not mean we do not offer protection. It just means that the current organization "police" is not providing the services it's customers want. Years of "tweaking"…

> the current organization "police" is not providing the services it's customers want Is that really true? What do you think will happen if we put it up for a vote? Something like: defund police - yes/no?

> In a poll conducted by ABC News/Ipsos on June 10-11, 34% of US adults supported "the movement to 'defund the police'" and 64% opposed it. Support was higher among black Americans (57%) than among whites (26%) and Hispanics (42%).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defund_the_police#Public_opini...

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/64-americans-oppose-defund-p...

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#405

Post by toasterlovin » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:11 AM UTC

Reedx wrote: post #338

GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical about Robin Diangelo, I read her book a few months ago, and it only seems to be an advertisement for her services as an anti-racist instructor. Her entire argument frames race relations within the context of the workplace which is problematic because her approach is coercive, not educational. It's more a guide on "how not to get fired for being racist" than anything. There are much better books for foun…

Your skepticism is well warranted. Unfalsifiable theory, dogma you can't question, purity tests, good vs evil, original sin, heresy, excommunication, self-flagellation and so on... It's a religion and Kafkatrap, but not yet widely recognized as such. Further explanation: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/intellectual-fraud-robin-d... https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/why-third-... https://www.wsj.com/…

Don’t forgot literal washing of feet and prostration in public gatherings! Some of the scenes from these protests bear an uncanny resemblance to Easter services.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#406

Post by throwaway711477 » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

quadrifoliate wrote: post #394

throwaway711477 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think highlight rather than promote. Think shared experience rather than shared interest. No, not identical experience, but think overlapping parts of a venn diagram. A relevant example in that overlap, assumed criminality, is mentioned in the very comment you are replying to. How much shared experience does a professional class recent immigrant from Asia actually have with a working class African-American? For ver…

> How much shared experience does a professional class recent immigrant from Asia actually have with a working class African-American? Not much, but the shared experience they have is as a basis of the color of their skin is what is visualized when calling them a person of color. And historically, that has been a big deal (e.g. anti-miscegnation laws in the US and huge amounts of racial discrimination in India's colo…

> Not much, but the shared experience they have is as a basis of the color of their skin is what is visualized when calling them a person of color. And historically, that has been a big deal (e.g. anti-miscegnation laws in the US and huge amounts of racial discrimination in India's colonized past) – big enough that a lot of people think it's important enough to have a shared label.

Suppose a new, professional class / university-educated immigrant, arrives in the US from China tomorrow. Should they expect to be discriminated against in the US because of their color of skin specifically? I can imagine they might have good reason to fear being discriminated against becasue of concerns they might have links with the Chinese government – but, suppose they were instead a Taiwanese immigrant, or Singaporean or Malaysian Chinese? In any event, being discriminated against because of concerns about foreign government links is not discrimination on the basis of skin color specifically, any more than the Russian-American refused a security clearance because her brother has a job in the Kremlin is such a case. And, I'm sure they might be exposed to various stereotypes and misunderstandings that immigrants have to endure, dumb jokes, people mocking their accent or infelicities with the English language – but an immigrant from a European country might endure just as many stereotypes and misunderstandings – which suggests that none of those issues are due to their skin color specifically either. And how much relevance will anti-miscegenation laws, that were overturned over 50 years ago, have to the lived experience of a new immigrant arriving tomorrow?

Does a new Chinese immigrant have the same skin color as an African-American? Do Xi Jinping and Barack Obama have the same skin color? Do all "white" people have the same skin color? A Southern Italian and a Norwegian can look as far apart in skin tone as Xi and Obama do.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#407

Post by zerocrates » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:22 AM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #391

GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical of any American "Libertarian" especially when it comes to race. Sowell is a class-reductionist, which would make him a terrible pick for this topic.

What is a class reductionist?

Class reductionism is basically saying that disparities that appear to be due to race, gender, orientation, etc. are really just economic differences, so if you can "fix" the economic bit the rest just solves itself.

The term is, somewhat ironically, often applied in a reductionist manner.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#408

Post by rongenre » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:23 AM UTC

DevX101 wrote: post #148

Some of the most successful blacks in tech had to 'hide' their blackness to achieve success. Robert Smith, the wealthiest black man in America, specifically didn't put up a photo on his investment firm's site to avoid any possibility of bias (now that he's a multi-billionaire who's "made it", this is no longer a concern). Calendly, who's CEO is black, and is one of the top performing black led tech startups curiously…

From Peggy McIntosh's list: "If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones."

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#409

Post by pdonis » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:25 AM UTC

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #396

pessimizer wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we have to talk about everything bad before we talk about one thing that's bad, especially when it comes to black people? Why, when the aftereffects of American slavery are being discussed, is there always somebody who says that we have to talk about Middle Eastern and African slavery first? Are the only important problems universal ones?

>...Why do we have to talk about everything bad before we talk about one thing that's bad, especially when it comes to black people? Sanitizing discussions of race is something people have always done when it comes to Afrian-Americans. Notice the progression goes from African-Americans -> Systematic Inequality of Treatment -> Systematic Violations of Basic Human Rights -> Everybody. The intersection between race and…

> the go-to move is to "All-Lives-Matter" it

No the "go-to move" is to refuse to realize that we as a society have been trying to "fix" racism for decades now (arguably centuries), and it's not helping. The very people all the landmark civil rights laws and court decisions were supposed to help are worse off now than they were in the 1960s when those laws were passed.

So instead of continuing to do this not-working thing, maybe we should ask whether the root problem is something else, and work on fixing that instead.

Re: For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business

#410

Post by ScottFree » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 3:28 AM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #292

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It doesn't literally mean "shut down the police department and courts". This doublespeak, which reminds me of the whole "Kill All Men" issue, which itself was quickly followed by a rush to say "Noo you stupid man, we don't mean kill all men, just some men", makes my skin crawl. Let's take a quick look at the dictionary : Defund: verb prevent from continuing to receive funds. If you are failing to use the language co…

If it helps, I think "kill all men" is reprehensible and illegal. "Defund police" even taken literally, is neither of those things, so you're drawing a false equivalence. If you eliminate funding for an existing police department, firing all of the employees, and divide all of its functions, including dealing with violent criminals, and performing investigations, up among other departments (both existing and new), is…

> If it helps, I think "kill all men" is reprehensible and illegal.

Why would that help? Did you start the meme?

> isn't "defund" accurate?

Yes. That's the whole point. "defund the police" is wildly unpopular, so people have started to change the very meaning of those words so the other people won't hate them quite so much. It's not working.

> an opening position for negotiations

I can't tell if you actually believe that or if you're arguing in bad faith now. Nobody believes the people saying "defund the police" aren't extreme and serious. Killing people and burning down their homes and businesses is not the beginning point of a negotiation. It's a hostage taker's demand.