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Comment by tunesmith | Hacker News Reader

Those words are "systemic" or "implicit" or "institutional", etc. All you really need is a proof or example that racist/sexist outcomes are possible even when there is no overt intent. And there are plenty of examples like that out there. Failure to accept that those examples exist, however, is something beyond just looking at intent instead of outcome.

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I don't see how those adjectives add any clarity to the situation, since you can swap them out interchangeably and you're still describing the same vague, handwavy sense of racism somewhere being a cause for an unequal outcome.

Larry Elder had an interesting take on "systemic racism" IMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phPXTWJhnYM

This isn't about unequal outcomes, it's about racist/sexist outcomes. It's very possible to have unequal outcomes without them being racist/sexist. And despite what seems to be commonly believed, liberals/left/progressives/democrats/etc don't tend to have a problem with that.

It's also not vague and handwavy. If you'd like to explore an example of institutional racism, check out the Parable of the Polygons. It's a clear, simple model with repeatable results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Polygons https://ncase.me/polygons/

I'd also like to bring up the International Obfuscated C Code Contest.

Just because a policy seems reasonable and has straightforward justifications for all of its pieces doesn't mean it wasn't maliciously designed to another purpose. The stated intent is not always the only intent and if the results...

Perhaps even more apropos to your point is the Underhanded C Contest:

http://www.underhanded-c.org/

That's true too, yes. I just think it's interesting that malicious intent isn't required. I think it helps to talk about it too - if you can approach the participants and assume good faith, allow them to believe that you believe the output is completely unintentional, then maybe it will be easier for them to agree to change their system.

There's plenty of "systemic" racism/sexism/etc. coming from the left, though. Social engineering in general is a recipe for every kind of unintended consequences at the "systemic/institutional" level, and the left is huge on social engineering.

"Systemic" doesn't even have to be left/right though, that's the point. It can simply be well-meaning people that keep ignorantly doing things they way they did before, unaware that their system has racist/sexist impact.

I don't know what you mean by social engineering, by the way. I've only heard it in the context of hacking, like calling customer support and pretending to be someone else to try to get their mother's maiden name or whatever.

Not the person you're responding to but I took their meaning to be social engineering in the sense of someone's purposeful planning and intercession in areas where there is a social output, fiddling with whatever knobs are available to shape the desired output.

For example, Harvard admitting less Asians because they are over-represented compared to other races. If you take your view that racism is an emergent phenomenon that you can spot based purely on the outcome, then Harvard was exactly correct to deny more Asians admission than other races, yes? If Harvard didn't do that, then the outcome of their admission process would've been "racist."

Many would disagree with that interpretation of racism.

That's not my view, so that seems a straw man.

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