Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 674 posts

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#291

Post by remarkEon »

monoideism wrote: post #278
username90 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. But the goal isn't for it to work, the goal of the advocates is to bill a lot of money and the goal of the company is to virtue signal. https://hbr.org/2012/03/diversity-training-doesnt-work

> he goal of the advocates is to bill a lot of money and the goal of the company is to virtue signal. You miss the biggest goal: for departments of diversity, inclusion, etc to gain more power and hires.

I've long wondered if this is the reason large, established companies (tech or non-tech) pour money into these seminars. It acts as a barrier to entry for smaller competitors who don't have giant piles of cash to spend on things like this, but now they have to because, well, they don't want to be the "racist startup".

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#293

Post by seneca »

cabraca wrote: post #34
rayiner wrote: post #4

I like the More in Common Project. But it overlooks the disproportionate representation of the extremists in our institutions. This happened at my alma matter earlier this year: https://freebeacon.com/campus/northwestern-law-administrator... . They also voted to abandon entrance exams at my magnet high school: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4979 It’s not comforting to know that only a tiny minority of people a…

I know those diversity sessions... They claim everyone who is white or passing as white is racist. I had to "confess" that i'm racist and promise to do better or it would have consequences for my career. Sidenote: I volunteer at a refugee center and took in a syrian family. Literally hitler, i know. A colleague got fired because he wouldn't confess and left the session. So even if that Dean said he is a racist, he's…

They are called Struggle Sessions[0].

> Struggle sessions were a form of public humiliation and torture used by the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) at various times in the Mao era, particularly during the years immediately before and after the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and during the Cultural Revolution. The aim of struggle sessions was to shape public opinion, as well as to humiliate, persecute, or execute political rivals and those deemed class enemies.

> In general, the victim of a struggle session was forced to admit various crimes before a crowd of people who would verbally and physically abuse the victim until they confessed. Struggle sessions were often held at the workplace of the accused, but they were sometimes conducted in sports stadiums where large crowds would gather if the target was well-known.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session Sorry for the Wikipedia reference.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#294

Post by pjc50 »

nailer wrote: post #199
jlokier wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should have seen the despicable "Go Home" vans that were circulating for a while. And the "hostile environment" that is legally mandated homelessness (people aren't allowed to rent privately, landlords have to check with .gov for "eligibility" to rent). All those "we lost the paperwork" people are subject to that. They would have lost their jobs, gradually had their banks close the accounts (with no alternative),…

> > How did “we lost the paperwork” turn into “well you look foreign so leave your country”? > You should have seen the despicable "Go Home" vans that were circulating for a while. How is losing the paperwork for legal migrants comparable or even closely related to telling illegal migrants to leave?

The only distinction between people with legal status and those without is paperwork. Which may have errors in it.

A coworker of mine had to spend six months living in someone else's flat and legally barred from working while he sued the Home Office; he'd entered legally, they found a paperwork error (making him "illegal"), and he won (making him "legal") once more.

Brexit provides lots of examples of how people who entered and lived in the UK legally but never got (and indeed weren't eligible for!) ILR suddenly can become "illegal" if they don't get "settled status".

Be very clear about this: if you immigrate to the UK by what you think is a legal route, and the Home Office makes a mistake, you can become an illegal immigrant very quickly.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#295

Post by [deleted] »

another-dave wrote: post #56

I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. "Vox pops" have formed part of filling air-time or column inches for a long while, but this is largely replaced now by journalists looking at Twitter and either a) using that as a stand-in for 'this is what the public think' or b) making it the story itself. Social media is no longer just "second screen" below-the-line commenting on events, it's hel…

[deleted]

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#296

Post by readarticle »

rjkennedy98 wrote: post #127
readarticle wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America in 1998 had little shared ethnic background by the standards of America in 1898, which had a frankly hilarious lack of shared ethnic background by the standards of 1798. California and Texas are utterly dominated by Non-Hispanic and Hispanic white people, the two ethnic groups with by far the highest rates of intermarriage in the United States of America. England 1798 -> Europe 1898 -> Western 1998

First, I've honestly never hear of "Western" ethnicity, but I get what you are trying to say. Hispanics tend to self-identify as white, especially after a few generations. I think the rest of your analysis is just wrong. First there was no "English" America. America from the start had European immigrants. New York was a Dutch colony. The early censuses used "white" and it always meant the same it means today. This id…

I’m not arguing whiteness will progress, I’m arguing against the idea there will be little shared ethnic background in California or Texas, and their “minority majorities”.

That ~20% figure is repeated in California and Texas, while the Hispanic and Non-Hispanic white populations are almost perfectly equal in size. These populations intermix at very high rates powered on one side at least by very strong social forces—societal and familial—that have existed for centuries, see: the demographic history of any Latin American country with substantial European immigration + the wildly different European:non European ratios in the US vs them.

From your own article, keeping in mind Hispanic immigrant populations are of European and Native descent:

We know that light-skinned Cubans were considered white at least as of 1950 because (despite the trepidations of the studio) the public accepted Lucy and Ricky, in a way they would never have accepted a black-white or Chinese-white couple. American Indians were considered non-white, but if they assimilated and married whites their children were generally accepted as part of white society. Did you know that Will Rogers was 9/32 ~~Cherokee~~ Maya?

A huge percentage of white babies of 2098 won’t have to self identify as white, they’ll just be white.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#297

Post by pvaldes »

inanutshellus wrote: post #141
pvaldes wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had to "confess" that I'm racist and promise to do better or it would have consequences for my career. So, basically inquisitor wannabees and pseudoscience cultists. Your colleague dodged a bullet. The idea that claiming that you are racist makes you not racist is totally gaga, random, and based in magical thinking, not in science. It only helps to hide in plain sight the real racists making much easier to admit…

He signed the document to stay at the institution. I wouldn't call it "dodging a bullet" I'd call it "securing his own yoke".

And their friend was fired.

We talk about an institution that will only hire people as long as they came out as racists first. Wow!.

Looks like the type of workplace to avoid at any cost.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#298

Post by JamesBarney »

michaelt wrote: post #94
zozbot234 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any real proof that these diversity sessions actually help people work in diverse environments? The way you describe this, it reads like a really, really weird cargo cult where just confessing to one's supposed racism will somehow make you more open to people of differing backgrounds. How exactly does this help?

Demanding people declare they are racists sounds very strange to me - I'm not sure that would help things much. But I've also seen some people do some pretty oblivious things in my time - like ordering company tee-shirts for their mixed-gender team, but only getting male sizes. Or evaluating every interview candidate's communication skills and cultural fit based on a conversation about rock climbing and craft beer. A…

While I'm sure there are complicated issues around race and gender that training can give you the tools to solve these examples seems pretty easy to fix.

> Or evaluating every interview candidate's communication skills and cultural fit based on a conversation about rock climbing and craft beer.

I feel like any cultural fit test is going to be inherently sexist/racist/classist. Better to just throw them out. Also why waste time talking about anything not relevant to the job to judge communication skills when you could be having job related discussions.

> If you get performance complaints about an otherwise-good employee who is fasting during Ramadan, what's the right way to address that while respecting privacy and being fair to the complainant, complainee and the company?

Is the complaint this person isn't doing their job? Then it should be treated like every other complaint. Is the complaint is "They aren't eating lunch" then it should be treated very differently.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#299

Post by [deleted] »

specialist wrote: post #237
wombatmobile wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neil Postman wrote in 1985: “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism." "Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley fe…

Neil Postman's books influenced me tremendously. I've been rereading McLuhan, Postman, Huxley, etc. Manufacturing Consent is the most directly applicable to understanding social media. With at least two updates to the thesis. #1 The outrage machine is fueled by advertising, right? What's new is the motivating control (choice) moved from the advertiser's intent to the algorithmic recommenders. #2 Third parties learned…

[deleted]

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#300

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

michaelt wrote: post #94
zozbot234 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any real proof that these diversity sessions actually help people work in diverse environments? The way you describe this, it reads like a really, really weird cargo cult where just confessing to one's supposed racism will somehow make you more open to people of differing backgrounds. How exactly does this help?

Demanding people declare they are racists sounds very strange to me - I'm not sure that would help things much. But I've also seen some people do some pretty oblivious things in my time - like ordering company tee-shirts for their mixed-gender team, but only getting male sizes. Or evaluating every interview candidate's communication skills and cultural fit based on a conversation about rock climbing and craft beer. A…

These are all valuable things to address, but in my experience they're not what corporate diversity programs do. I'm scrolling through my company's diversity page right now, and the front page from top to bottom contains:

* An affirmation that we stand with the black community.

* A list of political organizations we should donate to in support of the black community.

* TED talks on how news, policing, etc. are sometimes implicitly racist. (We as a company aren't involved in news or policing.)

* A reimbursement offer for up to $1,000 per person on anti-racism materials.

* Recommended articles, books, etc.

There's a lot of other stuff in tabs and menus and such. But if I didn't know how to handle an employee with poor performance during the Ramadan fast, none of the information I see would help me figure it out, and it's my understanding that this is typical.

Post reply on HN