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Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

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Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#181
I would highly recommend the "Cynical Theories" book for some background on the academic disciplines and "scholars" this stuff is coming from. I feel like the book is in fact too kind, but it is a good background (and it makes a case for liberal/universalist social justice, which is what I thought social justice was about).

Being an unapologetic modernist and an enlightenment, for the lack of better word, fundamentalist, what struck me the most is how, whereas I used to think that "math and science are white imperialism" people are freak edge cases, they in fact represent the core beliefs of the movement and its philosophical roots. The conclusion that I drew (not in the book as such) is that the whole "studies" edifice has no more claim to truth and morality than Old Testament theology, or taking some other random philosophical notion like Letzter Mensch and running with it to characterize society.

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woke culture is an abhorrent movement that combines the coercive dynamics of Marxism with the racism of national socialism. It's not about removing racism, it's about consolidating power by forcing everyone into compliance. Actual racial segregation is already happening in the US because of it and worse things are bound to happen. Everyone will be worse off if this is given free reign.

What are the commonalties that link this sort of neo-racism with Marxism? I’m somewhat familiar with Marx (mostly second-hand) but most of his writing seemed to focus on analysis of economics, historical forces and people’s relationship with the means of production.

The focus on power and oppression, and viewing everything (in this case, including actual knowledge, hence "ways of knowing", standpoint theory, etc.) thru that lens. That is why, for example, Asian-Americans are sometimes (often?) grouped with whites when considering diversity - they are not "oppressed".

Semi-related, the best way to troll a Silicon Valley SJW - tell them the truth; that my team at a TechCo is >67% "people of color", and that if I was hiring for my dream funded startup the first 3 people I would contact would all be "brown people". Alas, it turns out they are the "wrong" kind of "brown people"!

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#183
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insulting and demeaning racial groups is the opposite of inclusion. It breeds resentment and hatred. For a time there was a focus on treating people as human and not as [racial/sex/religion] Trend these days is to encourage openly being a bigot, just as long as it’s against certain people. Replace the word white with any other social group and perhaps you’ll see the problem.

"White" isn't a racial group. "White" as an idea to describe a group of (roughly) light skinned European people, came about in order to justify enslaving and subjugating other groups. Various groups worked their way into being considered white over time, in part by contributing to the subjugation of others. And various groups once considered white, later were not considered so. "White" as what you call a "social grou…

Then why not come up with a better word? They say to never attribute malice to something that can be explained by incompetence, but I cannot help but wonder if tying essentially class-based activism against "systemic racism" where class correlates with race based on past non-systemic racism (I base this on reading So You Want To Talk About Race and New Jim Crow and taking copious notes - the former actually says that even if every single person became genuinely non-racist the systemic racism would still not budge, among other things) is a ploy that the movement has evolved semi-intentionally. If you argue for class-focused equality, there are various arguments that could be made against you from morality, history, etc. If you tie it to race, suddenly the counter-arguments seem racist.

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

States actually measure this: pick any metric you want (you may choose any of dropout rate, pass rate, sport budget, student:teacher ratio, college admission rate for a start) and compare how each school is doing compared to the average.

I can't find any student:teacher ratio statistics anywhere. Are you sure it's different by race?

I never suggested the statistics are by race: I clearly said the comparison is between schools in the comment you replied to.

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#185

As an international entrepreneur, I am delighted that large US companies spend their time and attention on inconsequential and toxic identity politics. More opportunities for us to exploit their weakness, create real value and shape the future And it goes without saying that the future we create and control will have no place for this drivel

It doesn't work like that. You will be forced into compliance. Try creating a competing social network for example.

Hah. We’ll see. To reliably force someone into compliance you have to have power. Power acquisition requires skill. And these people are fucking clowns

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#186

As an international entrepreneur, I am delighted that large US companies spend their time and attention on inconsequential and toxic identity politics. More opportunities for us to exploit their weakness, create real value and shape the future And it goes without saying that the future we create and control will have no place for this drivel

In the culture war the U.S will come out on top like they always have. They are the kings of soft power and they fund academics to spread their ideology all over Europe. You can see it taking root in our universities. Unless our politicians wake up in a massive way we'll follow wherever America goes and it's not a trip I'm looking forward to.

Past tense right here. Right now the US is a bankrupt, imploding, dying empire full of angry people and crumbling infrastructure.

And the advance of remote work, internet media and crypto will mean that the US will have a hard time keeping itself together for a single more decade.

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To her, "white privilege" is an academic abstraction. She grew up in real poverty and never went to college. By contrast, "be less white" is quite easy to understand as a statement of overt racism. And, perplexingly to her, its overt racism that's evidently being given sanction at the highest levels of our society. This is absolutely true and needs to more vocally and explicitly acknowledged. As explanatory variabl…

> However, it is also beyond question that there is at least some marginal disenfranchisement experienced by certain people purely on the basis of their appearance Most of the focus today is on what’s called “systemic racism” which is a real thing and is based more on structural disparities associated with skin color rather than skin color in and of itself. For example, wealth in Black families undercut by redlining,…

Which leads to the more fundamental question of how society should stop bad ideas leaking out of the professoriate and into the real world. That in turn raises difficult questions about the structure of academia and universities, its general lack of accountability, the near-total lack of progress on basics like the replication crisis, the prevalence of bizarre and extreme ideologies at supposedly 'elite' teaching institutions and so on.

I mean, brainwashed HR drones trying to teach DiAngelo's nonsense is one level of problem. But dig deeper, turn over a few more rocks and the structural nature of the problem becomes apparent. It's not just white privilege that's a wrong and harmful idea coming out of universities, there are lots of such ideas, and there is absolutely nothing that can stop it. No mechanisms, no social conventions, nothing. Professors can just make up junk their entire lives and be continuously rewarded for it.

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#188

As a brown person and hopefully a champion of reason, I would like to encourage you white folks to be a bit less obedient and compliant with this madness. It is long past time that this ideology was firmly and squarely rejected, contested, questioned. Leftist ideology is extremely troubling and has devolved into a cult. It should never have been possible for an ideology of this quality to co-opt all these orthogonal…

Identifying leftism as a harmful ideology is certainly a critical step, however it's very difficult to gain traction with that because the term "leftism" is very, very close to "left wing politics", which is strongly normalised as being entirely acceptable in civilised society and always has been since the start of modern democracy itself.

Indeed if you try and figure out where the line is between leftism and left wing politics, it rapidly becomes very difficult. Left wing political parties at least in the Anglosphere are all fully on board with this new leftism of racism, hatred of Anglo culture and history, and all that comes with it. To take a stand in e.g. the workplace against leftism by arguing it is an intolerant and hateful ideology is equivalent to arguing that all left wing voters are supporters of intolerant and hateful ideology. But many of them are not fully on board with all that stuff, even though their chosen representatives are, so to make progress here requires a way to distinguish between people who vote left because they want a higher minimum wage or something like that (reasonable, not the enemy), and people who vote left because they want statues to all be abolished, conservatives to be driven underground and white people turned into second class citizens in their own countries.

That in turn would require consensus around a term that describes the former, socially acceptable state of left wing politics: back when it was a sort of pro-big-government, pro-regulation, primarily economic belief system. Debates about economics and the role of government are far less fraught and far more intellectual than debates about the intrinsic worth of people based on gender or race, so splitting the left cleanly into the parts that want such debate and the parts that want ideological attacks and no-platforming seems like a necessary first step.

Unfortunately whilst there is an abundance of words to describe the new left wing politics (woke, wokeism, leftism, identity politics, critical theory, neo-Marxism, "anti-racism", third wave feminism etc) there aren't many terms which clearly describe the old left wing politics. Thus the traditional wings get pulled along by the new strains, as they lack the intellectual and linguistic framework to push back or separate themselves from the parasitical takeover of their institutions.

Interestingly, Europe seems to have less of a problem with that. In Europe it's still common to describe the more classical centrist positions as "social democracy". This phrase is is widely understood to mean classical left wing politics focused on economics, welfare, higher taxes etc, but without the overt focus on race and gender.

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#189

As a brown person and hopefully a champion of reason, I would like to encourage you white folks to be a bit less obedient and compliant with this madness. It is long past time that this ideology was firmly and squarely rejected, contested, questioned. Leftist ideology is extremely troubling and has devolved into a cult. It should never have been possible for an ideology of this quality to co-opt all these orthogonal…

Identifying leftism as a harmful ideology is certainly a critical step, however it's very difficult to gain traction with that because the term "leftism" is very, very close to "left wing politics", which is strongly normalised as being entirely acceptable in civilised society and always has been since the start of modern democracy itself. Indeed if you try and figure out where the line is between leftism and left wi…

> Identifying leftism as a harmful ideology is certainly a critical step, however it's very difficult to gain traction with that because the term "leftism" is very, very close to "left wing politics"

They aren't “very close”, they are exact synonyms.

> Unfortunately whilst there is an abundance of words to describe the new left wing politics (woke, wokeism, leftism, identity politics, critical theory, neo-Marxism, "anti-racism", third wave feminism etc) there aren't many terms which clearly describe the old left wing politics

Yes, there are. You even used one of them with a “neo-” in front of it to describe new left-wing politics.

Also, many of your “new left wing" labels are inaccurate; “identity politics”, particularly, isn't specifically left-wing; there are progressive identity politics, center-right neoliberal identity politics (the dominant ones in the Democratic Party, which serve as a capitalist distraction from left-wing economic justice issues), and right-wing identity politics (in the US, various strands of White and/or Christian supremacism/nationalism are prominent here.)

Re: Coca-Cola says 'Be Less White' learning plan was about workplace inclusion

#190
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! That’s incredible. How does something like this pass muster? Hey let’s find every negative stereotype about a class of people and let’s tell them to be less of that stereotype! Nice.

This is basically Silicon Valley mentality broadening its influence. I would guess - just a guess - that a corporation like Coca-cola sees this kind of stuff heralded in Silicon Valley and things "hey we can be hip too!"

This isn't just SV. I'd argue that it arose from academia, and slowly crept into SV from that. I see it in the media and most large companies with a powerful HR department.
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