For me, this article is about mentoring younger people and benefits it provides. I mentor a young brilliant programmer who I used to work with. I maintained a relationship with him after I retired. He called me up last night frantic about some issues. I know he drinks too much and that he has mental health issues, so I was able to talk him through it. We talked about solutions for his drinking problem. He thanked me later for helping him. He calls me about 3 times a year with these freak outs. Helping him makes me feel useful and doing some good. I have a similar relationship with my son, so this programmer is like an adopted son, which I encourage because my philosophy is we are not alone in the world, but have people around us that care about us and are willing to help if we can put down our pride and ask for help. I wouldn't be alive today if I hadn't asked for help and then let people help me.
Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men
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Re: Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men
#32Why do people need to meld their ego with some nebulous "classification"? Like yo I'm black. Yo I'm white. Yo I'm asian. In reality, all humans are a continuous spectrum based off of groups of people that evolved in certain conditions over thousands of years. What does a "white" person from Ireland have in common with a "white" person from the Caucuses? What does a "black" person from Sierra Leone have in common with…
“ What does a "black" person from Sierra Leone have in common with a "black" person from the deserts in the northeast of Africa?” They face the same discrimination in America and in that they find companionship
Contemporary African immigrants significantly outperform those descended from slaves. Moreover, they have higher educational attainment, household incomes, and professional success than American white populations. Nigerian immigrants even outperform Chinese and Indian immigrants.
Re: Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men
#33It isn't because they are barbers. That is secondary. These are men's groups. This is men helping other men. Thanks to continued differences re hairstyles barber shops are one of the very few all-male places left in modern society (other than locker rooms which have a distinct competitive air). So it is no surprise that many urban men feel at home and are more willing to talk at the barber than anywhere else.
Re: Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men
#34I wish I had this at my barber.
Re: Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men
#35Why do people need to meld their ego with some nebulous "classification"? Like yo I'm black. Yo I'm white. Yo I'm asian. In reality, all humans are a continuous spectrum based off of groups of people that evolved in certain conditions over thousands of years. What does a "white" person from Ireland have in common with a "white" person from the Caucuses? What does a "black" person from Sierra Leone have in common with…
I don't think the media is the only thing that determines whether we form racial or any other social identity categories.
I think racial categories are identities imposed by us and by others. By us because sometimes, especially when we're in groups of people who don't look like us, we may tend to stick closer to people who do. By others, when they see someone who looks different, they often label us with a term separating us from their group.
I agree we're all a meld and deeply human, with a lot in common, and I also think we tend to form social groups that focus on how we are different from others and how others are different from us.
Re: Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men
#36no matter how cute the barber story is, you can't ignore the fact this is political propaganda from a primary propaganda source.
it's what pg calls "submarine PR", in this case for Dems "systemic racism" agenda, the more people believe this bs the more votes they get.
Re: Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men
#37Why do people need to meld their ego with some nebulous "classification"? Like yo I'm black. Yo I'm white. Yo I'm asian. In reality, all humans are a continuous spectrum based off of groups of people that evolved in certain conditions over thousands of years. What does a "white" person from Ireland have in common with a "white" person from the Caucuses? What does a "black" person from Sierra Leone have in common with…
It is like the ship of Theseus. Aggregates exist because that's how we abstract, even though calling it identity would be wrong. I don't know what a good solution is.
Ideally we could unmoor it from the arbitrary 100 year old census categories. Yeah, you have to draw arbitrary lines somewhere but our current set is really dumb.
Re: Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men
#38Why do people need to meld their ego with some nebulous "classification"? Like yo I'm black. Yo I'm white. Yo I'm asian. In reality, all humans are a continuous spectrum based off of groups of people that evolved in certain conditions over thousands of years. What does a "white" person from Ireland have in common with a "white" person from the Caucuses? What does a "black" person from Sierra Leone have in common with…
“ What does a "black" person from Sierra Leone have in common with a "black" person from the deserts in the northeast of Africa?” They face the same discrimination in America and in that they find companionship
And in the case of barbers - they have the same type of hair.. Why is this confusing for HNers?
Re: Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men
#39Why do people need to meld their ego with some nebulous "classification"? Like yo I'm black. Yo I'm white. Yo I'm asian. In reality, all humans are a continuous spectrum based off of groups of people that evolved in certain conditions over thousands of years. What does a "white" person from Ireland have in common with a "white" person from the Caucuses? What does a "black" person from Sierra Leone have in common with…
A shared set of experiences. I'm Latino, and when I visit the United States I get along well with other Latino folk because we share a set of experiences we can relate to.
We probably grew up in different places but there's a background we have in common, like our language.
It's called culture.
Re: Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
While I find the article and some of the comments interesting, I don't think it's a good fit for HN. Articles should provoke curious conversation; this one, judging from the number of dead posts, is provoking too much tribalism.
It's good at exposing racists, that's for sure.