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

bloomberg.com

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

#611

Post by IkmoIkmo »

tomp wrote: post #35
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #21

I thought this was a great article. One of the most interesting things to me was how the embarrassment/defensiveness of the white people involved was one of the biggest blocks to the black CEOs in their advancement, e.g. the VCs who "just wanted to get the hell out of there" after mistaking a white subordinate for the CEO. I've recently been reading/watching some videos and writings by Robin Diangelo on systemic raci…

That's stereotyping, not racism. People make inferences. Like, if there's two folks, one dressed in a suit, the other in baggy clothes with thick glasses, most people (including VCs) would default to the former as the MBA CEO, and the latter as geek CTO Even though it might be the exact opposite! If you make a wrong inference, just accept the correction and move on, no hurt feelings. Similar for old vs. young.

Acting on racial stereotypes (e.g. by treating someone as the superior or subordinate because of racially based assumptions) is indeed racist.

It means your behaviour is informed by racial profiling of an individual.

It means that you're not treating someone as an individual, but rather based on membership of a racial group he happens to be born in, which has statistical characteristics (e.g. lower chance of being a CEO) that do not necessarily have any bearing on the individual at all.

We define treating people distinctly like that because of their racial membership, as racist. That's really just the definition. You can have a discussion about whether you think racism is justified or not, and make your own value judgement. You could say that even if membership of a group does not necessarily say something, odds are that it can be a good way to infer things. And that's true, group-membership (e.g. your ethnicity) has many useful correlations from which to infer things. But to say it's not racist simply isn't factual, it is racist according to how we define it. What's left open for discussion is whether racism is okay or not.

Of course as a society we have indeed had that discussion and fortunately decided that racism isn't justified, not okay, and should be prevented as much as possible. I'm happy about that. Because even if group membership (e.g. race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, religion etc) has correlations with all kinds of outcomes we may wish to approximate, as a society we agree that it is only fair to judge people on their individual merits, and not on the group that they belong to.

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

#612

Post by humanrebar »

hanspeter wrote: post #488
js2 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am Jewish. This gives me no insight into what it is to be black in America. But it does give me some insight into what it is to be a minority in America. I have an inkling of your loneliness and you have my profound sympathy. I wish everyone could experience what it is to be a minority in some, any, aspect of their identity to the extent that it might provide them some empathy for others. (I also never realized wha…

> I also never realized what it must feel like to be a Christian in America until I visited Israel for the first time I'm pretty sure white atheists in America feel equally among "my people" as Christians do (unless they're in a church or other highly religious surroundings). It's also an odd comparison as religion is a choice, where race or ethnicity is not.

I'll agree that Christians do not feel among "my people" unless they are in their particular church culture. Even going to a drastically different type of church can feel out of place. Put a Pentecostal in a traditional Greek Orthodox service and ask if it felt like home.

I'll also ask that atheists stop referring to religion as a choice. Atheists have as much of a say in whether God exists as anybody else. It would be patronizing to tell firm atheists that they chose atheism when clearly in the atheists mind, they are just reacting to reality. Likewise a theist doesn't have a say in whether an almighty creator exists and has opinions or not.

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

#613

Post by sky_rw »

It's always fascinating to me how the most liberal and progressive areas of our society are the ones who exhibit the most functional racism.

This is the manifestation of the bigotry of low expectations that is so engrained in Silicon Valley. When you live your life grouping people of a certain skin color into a protected class that you the hero white person need to save, you automatically assume that every person you see of that class is of diminished status.

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

#614

Post by hef19898 »

scooble wrote: post #563
hef19898 wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racism against white people? Definetly notin the wstern world. And if you really want to put a strawman for anti-white-racism up there, use some of the actually happened atrocities against white land owners in some Africna countries after de-colonisation. Obviously without the historic context, because it wouldn't work otherwise. Don't pick Iran, besides being the current boogey man for conservative circles, it reall…

"Racism against white people? Definetly notin the wstern world." Iirc, in the UK, around half of victims of race hate crimes are white.

Official government numbers (the full report can be found here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-..., race starts at page 15 of the PDF):

- Percentage of adults affected by hate crime by ethnicity 2015/16 to 2017/18: White 0.1, Mixed 0.5, Asian 1.1, Black/African/Caribean/Black British 0.6 and other 1.0

- Same, by religion: Chistian 0.1, Buddhist 0.1, Hindu 0.7, Muslim 1.5, other 0.5, none 0.1

All adults: 0.2

Conclusion: White christian are by any number underaffected by hate crime in the UK

Additonal numbers form London's MOPAC for victims of racist hate cimes in the 12 months up to June 2017: 56% male, 30% black, Asian 25%, White-North European 25%. Obviously, percentages cannot be summed up here. Again, whites are underaffected. perosnal view: Numbers in London might be higher than elsewhere for whites, I don't have a source for that, so.

Anyway, both numbers are an order of magnitude away from the 50% you mentioned.

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

#616

Post by textgel »

taurath wrote: post #416
Reedx wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

Newdiscourses seems to be a website dedicated /entirely/ to taking down the author and the book. A sampling of their articles over the past 2 weeks: "In Defense of the Status Quo" "White Silence is NOT Violence" "A Principled Statement of Opposition to Critical Race Theory" "Eight Big Reasons Critical Race Theory is Terrible for Dealing with Racism" Further investigation shows the site owner, James Lindsay makes his…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

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

#617

Post by pbhjpbhj »

darkerside wrote: post #390
commoner wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term was coined in 1970: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression

I think poster was referring to the fact that workplaces are naturally fun of microaggressions regardless of race or sex, so it's easy to point the finger. It's analogous to how everybody's speeding, so everybody's guilty, and anyone can be pulled over (but usually the black person will happen to be the one pulled over).

>usually the black person will happen to be the one pulled over //

Which country are you in? Have you checked that statistic or did you assume it?

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

#618

Post by textgel »

DagAgren wrote: post #606
avs733 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it interesting you choose the word 'explanation' as opposed to 'counter argument'

He also chose the word "kafkatrap", a word coined by a notorious racist.

Using a kafkatrap against an opponent you can't beat in debate when they have just pointed out the tactic is probably ill advised; perhaps try something else; Ad hominem or motte and bailey for example.

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

#620

Post by tomp »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #611
tomp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's stereotyping, not racism. People make inferences. Like, if there's two folks, one dressed in a suit, the other in baggy clothes with thick glasses, most people (including VCs) would default to the former as the MBA CEO, and the latter as geek CTO Even though it might be the exact opposite! If you make a wrong inference, just accept the correction and move on, no hurt feelings. Similar for old vs. young.

Acting on racial stereotypes (e.g. by treating someone as the superior or subordinate because of racially based assumptions) is indeed racist. It means your behaviour is informed by racial profiling of an individual. It means that you're not treating someone as an individual, but rather based on membership of a racial group he happens to be born in, which has statistical characteristics (e.g. lower chance of being a…

Your reply is conflating a few things.

1. We make judgements on “group membership” all the time, and to the extent they’re correlated to the outcome (i.e. true) that’s not wrong or -ist. Example would be, do you avoid stepping in front of a car because you infer that the car might run you over, or do you just take your chances and hope that this individual car will stop. Ok, contrived example. How about this: people generally accept that men are more dangerous than women (e.g. when it comes to rape, stranger danger, domestic violence, courts, jails, ...) even though the vast majority of men aren’t violent at all! Is this sexist? Yes, to some extent, in particular when the state does that (e.g. always arresting men in case of domestic violence call). But at the same time, that kind of “prejudice” might just save your life; how wrong can that be?

2. Even if there’s no correlation to the outcome, not every inference is -ist. Example I mentioned downthread is, assuming that “Alex” is a man. Is that really wrong?

3. Which brings me to, you write that “treating people distinctly” is -ist. But what is treating? Again, people make inferences (that’s literally what intelligence is, short-term prediction engine). Sometimes that’s even embedded in the language (e.g. in Slovenian, you have to assume gender, unlike in English). But as long as we remain open to change, that’s fine! If the woman tells me that actually she’s “Alex”, the only actually sexists way would be if I refused to call her by her (masculine-ish) name.

TL;DR: if everything is racist, then racism cannot be immoral.

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