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Fighting the “loneliness epidemic” at work

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Re: Fighting the “loneliness epidemic” at work

#101

Post by brokenmachine »

Raphmedia wrote: post #97
Raphmedia wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it's "we share a skin color, let's hang out" for anyone. It's more of a "we share the same challenges and hardships, let's compare notes" mentality.

Interesting how this comment went from very upvoted to downvoted. Must be a controversial topic. Anyone care to explain why the downvotes? I try to avoid repeating mistakes and I don't have a lot of comments in the negative. Pointers would be awesome. As per the site's rules: Instead of "you're doing it wrong", suggest alternatives. When someone is learning, help them learn more.

Your post suggests that people with the same skin color share the same challenges and hardships, which just doesn't seem correct to me.

I have no idea if that's why your post was downvoted but anecdotally, asking why you were downvoted only ever elicits more downvotes. Quoting site rules is definitely not going to help your case. They're just imaginary points. Best to just forget about it and move on.

Re: Fighting the “loneliness epidemic” at work

#102

Post by pasabagi »

thex10 wrote: post #46
jlawson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish people of my color, gender, or belief were allowed to make a club, or join yours. It sounds great. Maybe something like this is why whites commit suicide so much more than blacks in America (per CDC [1]). Blacks suffer in many ways but at least they're allowed to make a community just about themselves, and that's valuable. [1] https://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2013/04/05/us_... !

My (black) spouse has talked with me about their thorough support of this idea. They think there ought to be white student unions, white history month, white studies courses, etc. I wouldn't mind seeing this happen, if white folks could do it without hate or exclusion of others (which probably requires acknowledging and destroying white supremacy).

I think the problem is, the conventional depiction of many events is already 'white'. I had no idea that there were large numbers of African and Indian soldiers on the western front, for instance, until quite recently.

Re: Fighting the “loneliness epidemic” at work

#103

Post by TheCoelacanth »

maxxxxx wrote: post #75
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you've grown up facing a particular set of hardships that most of the people around you aren't familiar with, it's important for your mental health to be able to spend time with folks who get it. It doesn't mean you spend all your time together chatting about oppression, but it's easier to relax and let your guard down with someone when you know they won't lecture you for being nervous around police, or try to s…

"As a white male you haven't experienced any of that," Not all white males are the same and face the same challenges. Life is very different if you are good looking, tall, athletic, outgoing vs. being short, non-athletic, nerdy and socially awkward. I was in the second group and faced a lot of discrimination, bullying and ridicule when I grew up. I probably had a lot of advantages too but it's not that simple. There…

Then shouldn't you start a short nerd ERG instead of a white male ERG?

Re: Fighting the “loneliness epidemic” at work

#104

Post by maxxxxx »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #103
maxxxxx wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As a white male you haven't experienced any of that," Not all white males are the same and face the same challenges. Life is very different if you are good looking, tall, athletic, outgoing vs. being short, non-athletic, nerdy and socially awkward. I was in the second group and faced a lot of discrimination, bullying and ridicule when I grew up. I probably had a lot of advantages too but it's not that simple. There…

Then shouldn't you start a short nerd ERG instead of a white male ERG?

I am starting neither. But if I followed the normal pattern i would start a male or a white group. All other groups we have are either gender or ethnicity based.

Re: Fighting the “loneliness epidemic” at work

#105

Post by Raphmedia »

brokenmachine wrote: post #101
Raphmedia wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting how this comment went from very upvoted to downvoted. Must be a controversial topic. Anyone care to explain why the downvotes? I try to avoid repeating mistakes and I don't have a lot of comments in the negative. Pointers would be awesome. As per the site's rules: Instead of "you're doing it wrong", suggest alternatives. When someone is learning, help them learn more.

Your post suggests that people with the same skin color share the same challenges and hardships, which just doesn't seem correct to me. I have no idea if that's why your post was downvoted but anecdotally, asking why you were downvoted only ever elicits more downvotes. Quoting site rules is definitely not going to help your case. They're just imaginary points. Best to just forget about it and move on.

Based on personal experience, I strongly believe that people with the same nationality, religion or gender do share the same a lot of the same challenges and hardships. That's the entire point of those groups.

That was my direct answer to atom-morgan's post who said: “I find the "hang out with people who look like me" mentality to be really weird”.

As for the points themselves I don't care, it's how the post slowly rose to positive and then hit negative in an instant that made me confused. But then again, perhaps I should put away my tinfoil hat.

Re: Fighting the “loneliness epidemic” at work

#107

Post by jlawson »

pasabagi wrote: post #102
thex10 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My (black) spouse has talked with me about their thorough support of this idea. They think there ought to be white student unions, white history month, white studies courses, etc. I wouldn't mind seeing this happen, if white folks could do it without hate or exclusion of others (which probably requires acknowledging and destroying white supremacy).

I think the problem is, the conventional depiction of many events is already 'white'. I had no idea that there were large numbers of African and Indian soldiers on the western front, for instance, until quite recently.

If you mean WW1, there weren't.

There were three Africans (musicians in the German army). Yes, exactly three. Not four or five.

Indians were involved as part of British forces, but numbered well under 1% of men deployed. I wouldn't take anything away from them (good men), but it's inaccurate to say they were significantly represented by numbers.

You need to be careful about people (in this case video game developers) lying to you about history to uphold a moralistic narrative. The facts of history are not politically correct, they are actually correct (by definition), and this is a big difference.

See also: Absurd BBC depictions of Roman-era Britain where there are random black characters all throughout the society at every level of power and influence. A pure lie.

Basically what you get from media these days (95% progressive by survey) is comparable to what you'd get if the media was 95% evangelical Christians, but in another direction. Just keep the source in context.

Re: Fighting the “loneliness epidemic” at work

#108

Post by jlawson »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #51
jlawson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish people of my color, gender, or belief were allowed to make a club, or join yours. It sounds great. Maybe something like this is why whites commit suicide so much more than blacks in America (per CDC [1]). Blacks suffer in many ways but at least they're allowed to make a community just about themselves, and that's valuable. [1] https://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2013/04/05/us_... !

Perhaps, but I belong to groups based on my interests which are completely orthogonal to race: my Church, various interest groups on Facebook, etc. I work at a small company (c. 600 people), so it isn't big enough to have these kinds of groups, but I'd be more interested in joining a group based on interests, like software development (I do work for a software company), or maybe tabletop gaming. I don't care what rac…

Well I noted belief; as an atheist I don't get to go to church groups.

Which leaves interest groups on Facebook... that's okay but talking about board games or model trains isn't really the same as talking about who you are and how you exist in the world as a person.

Re: Fighting the “loneliness epidemic” at work

#109

Post by jlawson »

scarejunba wrote: post #57
jlawson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish people of my color, gender, or belief were allowed to make a club, or join yours. It sounds great. Maybe something like this is why whites commit suicide so much more than blacks in America (per CDC [1]). Blacks suffer in many ways but at least they're allowed to make a community just about themselves, and that's valuable. [1] https://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2013/04/05/us_... !

Much of the value is shared challenges. For many other ethnic groups this is because it coincides with the fact that they're actually foreigners. If you're having trouble having a place where you can talk about the challenges you have and you feel, for whatever reason, uncomfortable to call it a "white people's group", perhaps try forming it functionally? So, for instance, If you have trouble finding mentorship, a Pe…

A lot of these ERGs link together peoples with little cultural connection.

Black -> AA as well as African immigrants

Asian -> Japanese, old migrant Chinese, new communist-raised Chinese, Indonesian

The religious ones make more sense; at least religions are belief systems.

Re: Fighting the “loneliness epidemic” at work

#110

Post by pasabagi »

jlawson wrote: post #107
pasabagi wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is, the conventional depiction of many events is already 'white'. I had no idea that there were large numbers of African and Indian soldiers on the western front, for instance, until quite recently.

If you mean WW1, there weren't. There were three Africans (musicians in the German army). Yes, exactly three. Not four or five. Indians were involved as part of British forces, but numbered well under 1% of men deployed. I wouldn't take anything away from them (good men), but it's inaccurate to say they were significantly represented by numbers. You need to be careful about people (in this case video game developers)…

Is the wikipedia article wrong? The numbers are a little unclear, but it suggest that 1.3 million Indian men volunteered for the British army in WW1, with 75,000 or so dying in the process. That's about a tenth of the casualties, so I'd assume the Indians were a similar proportion of active-duty soldiers. There was also a pretty nasty war in East Africa, although the details are hazy in my mind.

I'm also finding about 72,000 colonial casualties on the French side - which is a smaller proportion, given the colossal numbers the French fielded, but still substantial.

The German army is a very misleading case regardless, since they were pretty much the only power without significant non-white minorities or colonies, aside from perhaps Austro-Hungary.

I'm also unsure about to what extent Romans were black. Obviously, about half their traditional dominion was in Africa, so you'd expect some part of them to be black - and there are certainly many archaeological remains suggesting so, even as far north as England. I also don't know if having black characters is any less true to history than having white characters, since Roman Romans were distinctly brownish, and very short to boot.

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