Racism and Meritocracy • Hacker News Board

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#121

Post by neilk » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 2:55 AM UTC

jnordell wrote: post #27

Fascinating discussion. In fact, the reasons people do or don't rock certain fields are (like people themselves) incredibly complex. The blind orchestra auditions to which Eric refers are just one drop in a sea of quantitative data about the effects of unconscious bias. There's Robert Rosenthal's study that showed that others' belief that you are "gifted" actually results in an IQ increase. There's the famous "McKay"…

Self-Made Man is a tale similar to Black Like Me, where it was a writer's experiment, rather than a transgender exercise.

http://www.amazon.com/Self-Made-Man-Womans-Journey-Manhood/d...

There are also a lot of interesting works by transgender people, but the perspective there is different, since they usually report that they never felt comfortable in their birth gender.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#122

Post by thaumaturgy » Tue, Nov 22, 2011, 9:23 AM UTC

merkat wrote: post #119

danking00 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss the very last line of his comment? "Knowing that they exist can help us make better decisions." He's making this admission with the expressed desire of changing, not trying to justify or excuse it.

Don't you think it is contradictory to support both views that racism and sexism "help us make better decisions" AND that there is an "expressed desire of changing" that? Why would you want to change something if you think it helps you make better decisions? So my conclusion is that the parent comment is only looking for excuses for being racist, namely that it allegedly helps and that people are generally racist. It…

Sorry, I just found this a day after you left your comment. I'm a little stumped at how you read my comment that way, because that wasn't at all what I was thinking when I wrote it (and I tried to be clear in what I wrote).

I do not think that racism and sexism help us make better decisions; I think that acknowledging our own racist and sexist biases can help us make better decisions. i.e., if we become aware of the problem, then we can address it.

I do not condone or excuse racist or sexist behavior, either.

A lot of the original article was founded on the idea that we can have cognitive biases -- prejudices -- that we don't mean to, or even that we are aware of, and that those biases and prejudices can affect other people. I thought it was worth standing up and admitting that these biases are a part of my psychology, and by doing so, take the first steps towards creating a better environment for other people.

I was especially prompted to speak up because of the tendency for people in discussions like this to downplay their own vulnerability to such biases. The default response seems to be, "these are just the people that are interested in this industry, so I don't see a problem." I think it's better to say, "there might be a problem that we aren't fully aware of yet, so we should examine it more closely."

Hope this helps clear things up.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#123

Post by jnordell » Mon, Nov 28, 2011, 3:38 AM UTC

neilk wrote: post #121

jnordell wrote: post #27

Fascinating discussion. In fact, the reasons people do or don't rock certain fields are (like people themselves) incredibly complex. The blind orchestra auditions to which Eric refers are just one drop in a sea of quantitative data about the effects of unconscious bias. There's Robert Rosenthal's study that showed that others' belief that you are "gifted" actually results in an IQ increase. There's the famous "McKay"…

Self-Made Man is a tale similar to Black Like Me, where it was a writer's experiment, rather than a transgender exercise. http://www.amazon.com/Self-Made-Man-Womans-Journey-Manhood/d... There are also a lot of interesting works by transgender people, but the perspective there is different, since they usually report that they never felt comfortable in their birth gender.

I liked Self-Made Man-- really interesting exploration of masculinity and the culture of "manhood" in general. It would have been especially interesting if somehow Vincent could have stayed in her old sort of rarefied world and experienced life there, rather than having to leave that world and join bowling leagues so she wouldn't be recognized.

Ben Barres (formerly Barbara Barres) wrote a great piece in Nature ("Does Gender Matter?") after the Larry Summers debacle. There's an interview with him here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/science/18conv.html?pagewa...

Pretty convincing stuff on the role gender plays in our interactions with each other. To me, what's so fascinating about the experience of transsexuals is that they literally have controlled experiments going on-- they're the only people who can experience life in two different bodies. What a useful perspective to have-- I'll never know what life is like as someone of another gender/race/ethnicity, but I imagine it would be incredibly mind-expanding if I could.