How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life? • Hacker News Board

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#731

Post by zepto » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 3:12 PM UTC

jensensbutton wrote: post #660

angelzen wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ibram X. Kendi: Any disparity in group outcomes is proof of a deeply flawed and malicious system. The darling of American academia and corporate. You can either have equality of opportunity and accept that the outcomes will be disparate, or have equality of (group) outcome. You can't have both. Your friends have not thought through the consequences of the current dominant ideology. > 'When I See Racial Disparities, I…

Ibram X. Kendi is one person. You can find individuals who espouse any view you want. The question is are there any large groups actually pushing for this. Though the parent didn't, I would s/large/mainstream/ because the internet makes it easy to find large groups of people talking about any old topic.

> Ibram X. Kendi is one person.

This is essentizlly false. Ibram X. Kendi is a Harvard professor, author, and widely published by the New York Times, the Atlantic, etc.

He is literally a leader of a large group of people pushing for exactly the views he espouses.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#732

Post by yawaworht1978 » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 3:12 PM UTC

ptr2voidStar wrote: post #706

yawaworht1978 wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree with that. You only slip and evade so many punches before you strike back. Many of these things took a lot of effort. Examples were suffrage in Switzerland, only approved in 1971(by male voters). Sounds crazy, the UK suffragettes got their way between WW1 and WW2, it's pretty shameful that Some anti homosexuality laws have been passed after that. The same conservative outlets who point fingers at the Ta…

> The Dutch simplified the most useful rule in the 17th century: "live and let live", it was codified into (maritime) law. Would that happen to be the same Dutch that were heavily involved in the slave trade (about the same time you mention)?

Yes I agree, odd interpretation, might be even perverse to a degree, as it only applied to maritime law and was probably abused to engage in slave trade, they could always claim they never killed a slave.

The statement is potentially nice, though.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#733

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

jackson1442 wrote: post #711

bequanna wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The woke are experts at placing people into endless categories and determining which is “good” or “bad”. Which are the “oppressors” and the “victims”. Listen to their rhetoric, it is pretty much the opposite of live and let live. One of the more ridiculous ideas to come out of this is that “everything is a human construct”. For example, it appears to be a woke idea that mathematics, science is some human (mor…

> For example, it appears to be a woke idea that mathematics, science is some human (more specifically, white) invention and we should explore “alternative mathematics” or “alternative science”. Do you have a source for this? I’ve never heard of either of these terms, the closest being the “alternative facts” of one of Trump’s press secretaries.

[deleted]

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#734

Post by stackedinserter » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

yawaworht1978 wrote: post #327

It's just a shift from older, less flexible values like family, church etc to the more open minded approach, "do as you like". Nothing wrong with people having tattoos everywhere, green or violet hair, non conformist clothing and views. Let them be, let them express and find themselves. I am the shave every day suit kinda guy and will remain so, but if someone chooses to be different or wants to complain about new wo…

> Nothing wrong with people with non conformist clothing and views. Let them be, let them express and find themselves.

...and be cancelled, fired and banned from being hired anywhere.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#735

Post by mkr-hn » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

babyshake wrote: post #28

It definitely seems as though specifying your preferred gender pronouns is no longer optional. This is required "in solidarity". Being an otherwise progressive person, I don't feel great about this and how quickly it happened.

This is not something I or anyone I know wants enforced by policy or "if you know what's good for you." It's nice and helps normalize the practice for people who need that acceptance, and it stands out in a good way, but the lack of stated preference isn't a negative indicator.

Now, when someone flips out on me because I default to they/them in text when someone has no stated preference and there's no way to tell, that's a negative indicator. It's clear they have a preference and refuse to state it just to be difficult. But it's a rare occurrence.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#736

Post by sarahjosh » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

platz wrote: post #697

DethNinja wrote: post #680

I think people are over-analysing this issue here at HN. It is far better for upper class to ensure that people discuss and focus on issues like gender and skin colour than the class differences. Hence, they ensured that this is the issue plebs would hear all over on the media and shift their attention from class divides to gender and skin colour.

proceeds to detail conspiracy

It’s not really a conspiracy as it doesn’t need to be centralized. Class resentment articles don’t get traction with upper class media gatekeepers but white guilt does. So the market produces what the gatekeepers want.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#737

Post by candyman » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

Is the ultimate woke state to not care at all about being woke?

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#738

Post by mathgladiator » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

jackson1442 wrote: post #711

bequanna wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The woke are experts at placing people into endless categories and determining which is “good” or “bad”. Which are the “oppressors” and the “victims”. Listen to their rhetoric, it is pretty much the opposite of live and let live. One of the more ridiculous ideas to come out of this is that “everything is a human construct”. For example, it appears to be a woke idea that mathematics, science is some human (mor…

> For example, it appears to be a woke idea that mathematics, science is some human (more specifically, white) invention and we should explore “alternative mathematics” or “alternative science”. Do you have a source for this? I’ve never heard of either of these terms, the closest being the “alternative facts” of one of Trump’s press secretaries.

https://equitablemath.org/

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#739

Post by rayusher » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

busymom0 wrote: post #668

lemmsjid wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the answer to your question is actually answered in your first paragraph. In the same way that you believe all Christians shouldn’t be judged by those who haven’t “practiced what they’ve preached”, consider that your understanding of “woke” people might be tainted by the fact that whatever media you are consuming might be focusing on the ones who also don’t practice what they preach. In other words, any movem…

It isn’t just the media. Here in Canada, the government literally passed the mathematics curriculum which claimed nonsense like “mathematics is subjective” and “mathematics is colonial”. I emailed them a long rant that I would rather ship my future kids to India for a better education instead of the nonsense they are teaching. So no, it isn’t just some media. Nor do I follow corporate news.

"There's plenty of room for subjective opinion in mathematics. It usually doesn't concern questions of the form Is this true? since we have a good consensus how to recognize an acceptable proof and which assumptions for such a proof you need to state explicitly.

As soon as we move onwards to Is this useful? and Is this interesting?, or even Is this likely to work?, subjectivity hits us in full force. Even in pure mathematics, it's easy to choose a set of axioms and derive consequences from them, but if you want anyone to spend time reading your work, you need to tackle the subjective questions and have an explanation why what you're doing is either useful or interesting, or preferably both.

In applied math, these questions are accompanied by Is this the best way to model such-and-such real-world problem? -- where "best" again comes down to usefulness (does the model answer questions we need to have answered?) and interest (does the model give us any insight about the situation we wouldn't have without it?).

The subjective questions are important in research, but can also arise at more elementary level. The high-school teacher who chooses to devote several lessons to presenting Cardano's method for solving the generic third-degree equation will certainly have to answer his students' questions why this is useful or interesting. Perhaps he has an answer. Perhaps he has an answer that the students don't agree with. In that case, he cannot look for a deductive argument concluding that Cardano's formula is interesting -- he'll have to appeal to emotions, curiosity, all of those fluffy touchy-feely considerations that we need to use to tackle subjective questions." https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1354044/can-math-be....

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#740

Post by BEEdwards » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

JanneVee wrote: post #654

BEEdwards wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I went to a very white, quite red Virginia public school 30 years ago and nobody ever told me about brown skin being bad. Then you got very very lucky. It has been an issue for a very long time. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/apr/09/coloris... it was a problem long before the modern era. https://www.naacpldf.org/ldf-celebrates-60th-anniversary-bro... Preparing kids for the real world seems like a good…

So your response to a person with brown skin say that their experience doesn't matter? Why doesn't it matter because you read that they where lucky or that you experienced something different?

I say it from my own personal experience as a light skinned black person, I've seen how the police laser focus on my dark skinned friends and, I've seen the subtle differences in behavior displayed by white people in their presents.

So yes they are lucky to have not experienced it.