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Why Is TED Scared of Color Blindness?
11–20 of 59 posts
Re: Why Is TED Scared of Color Blindness?
#12What seemed to be missing was a critical and self-aware statement of why his critics may be right or at least his strongest argument. Without such honesty, any apologia is hollow. In response to the hollowness, I did some googling on racial color blindness and I now am very convinced of its connection to white supremacy. This author had my attention for 10 minutes and was too abstract for me to really learn anything…
Even the author doesn't believe in racial color blindness¹. This TED Talk is content marketing for his personal brand, his business doing speaking engagements² ($10-20K each), and his forthcoming book, and he's just upset that his YouTube view count shows that few people care what he thinks about the topic.
¹ "Taking that viewpoint seriously — while ultimately refuting it — was the express purpose of my talk."
² https://www.aaespeakers.com/keynote-speakers/coleman-hughes
Re: Why Is TED Scared of Color Blindness?
#13What seemed to be missing was a critical and self-aware statement of why his critics may be right or at least his strongest argument. Without such honesty, any apologia is hollow. In response to the hollowness, I did some googling on racial color blindness and I now am very convinced of its connection to white supremacy. This author had my attention for 10 minutes and was too abstract for me to really learn anything…
> What seemed to be missing was a critical and self-aware statement of why his critics may be right or at least his strongest argument.
I imagine for any talk (or any theory) about just about anything (worth giving a talk about) will have critics (and reasonable critical arguments.)
But, generally, I wouldn't think that that in itself is a good reason to (to some extent) censor his talk.
> In response to the hollowness, I did some googling on racial color blindness and I now am very convinced of its connection to white supremacy.
As someone who is maybe older than the typical HNer (maybe) this is cognitively dissonant to me. When I was younger, Progressives were striving for color-blindness (and MLK famously called for such a thing in his most famous speech.)
Re: Why Is TED Scared of Color Blindness?
#14I haven't followed all the details yet but I thought the reply by
Chris Anderson @TEDchris was very thoughtful and I now find myself in an indeterminate state for what the controversy was exactly https://twitter.com/TEDchris/status/1706792437098676224
Re: Why Is TED Scared of Color Blindness?
#15What seemed to be missing was a critical and self-aware statement of why his critics may be right or at least his strongest argument. Without such honesty, any apologia is hollow. In response to the hollowness, I did some googling on racial color blindness and I now am very convinced of its connection to white supremacy. This author had my attention for 10 minutes and was too abstract for me to really learn anything…
In other words you'd want him to repent and accept the orthodoxy, before you'll consider listening to his possibly-heretic theories.
Whether he is right or wrong is fundamentally irrelevant. TED accepted his talk, reviewed it, fact-checked it, like all other talks; and then bowed to political pressure and quietly moved away from it. That's not a good look, regardless of what the speech might be about. To be fair, it could be worse - they could have kept it completely hidden - but it's still not great.
Re: Why Is TED Scared of Color Blindness?
#16What seemed to be missing was a critical and self-aware statement of why his critics may be right or at least his strongest argument. Without such honesty, any apologia is hollow. In response to the hollowness, I did some googling on racial color blindness and I now am very convinced of its connection to white supremacy. This author had my attention for 10 minutes and was too abstract for me to really learn anything…
Even the author doesn't believe in racial color blindness¹. This TED Talk is content marketing for his personal brand, his business doing speaking engagements² ($10-20K each), and his forthcoming book, and he's just upset that his YouTube view count shows that few people care what he thinks about the topic. ¹ "Taking that viewpoint seriously — while ultimately refuting it — was the express purpose of my talk." ² http…
Coleman Hughes does indeed believe in racial color blindness.
The viewpoint he's taking seriously while ultimately refuting is that "color blindness is, in fact, a Trojan horse for white supremacy."
Re: Why Is TED Scared of Color Blindness?
#17TED talks have platformed literal fraudsters many times. It's just rich, well connected people roleplaying some idea of a "thought leader" organization.
TED is a well-oiled feel good scam that pretends that you can learn something that will change your life/your mind by watching a 15 minutes video.
It has managed to instill in the popular culture that those videos are educational. No, they are not. It’s simply a brand earning a lot of money on the free speakers hoping to get some Karma and organizers paying lot of money to just have the brand.
(I gave two TEDx talk myself. Not TED, of course but still)
Re: Why Is TED Scared of Color Blindness?
#18So TED only platforms people whose ideas they explicitly agree with 100%. It’s sad and disheartening to see institutions that are supposed to promote different ideas become another casualty in the culture war.
Re: Why Is TED Scared of Color Blindness?
#19It sounds like this is arguing against reparations without actually coming out and saying it.
I think the prospect of colour blindness allowing us to ‘wipe the slate clean’ and basically put the past behind us and just be non-racist starting now is what’s alluring.
It sounds great to just say “we should help people based on class, rather than race,” but I think that’s because it sidesteps the issue of reparation. People have been wronged in more ways than just economic status. We do absolutely need to make aggressive progress toward reducing the class divide and wealth disparity, of course we do. But does that actually heal the harm that’s been done in the past? Does it prevent the harm that will be done in the future?
Reparations for racism and reducing poverty are both noble goals, but they’re not interchangeable, you can’t fix one by fixing the other. They both need to be worked on.
Re: Why Is TED Scared of Color Blindness?
#20Oh, lord. This for two paragraphs was an interesting article --- is there something political or controversial about deuteranopia? But, no: it's just a culture war appeal.
Yeah I was genuinely curious what TED might have against the medical condition. Sad. The title is basically clickbait.