Comment by agar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by agar | Hacker News Reader

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One of the comments effectively frames the motivations for the US's current institutional disparities:

* The preference of well-off whites to pull the ladder up behind them;

* The preference of police unions to protect their members at all costs;

* The preference of the average non-black voter to not have to think about this crap.

I like that this is a pragmatic perspective that doesn't assume malicious intent behind most institutional racism (and tech debt, to continue the article's metaphor). People naturally act in their self-interest; it's not "I hate you" it's just "I'm not going to think about consequences when I optimize this solution for myself." While there are certainly many bad actors both in the creation and maintenance of our broken systems, IMO the vast majority of people are risk averse, passive participants in the status quo - i.e., falling into the third bucket. Even the more active participants in the first two buckets can justify their actions from inside their bubble; the horrible negative consequences are most visible only when placed in contrast to situations they often don't see.

Fortunately, people are recognizing the consequences of their actions - though not universally, and of course far too late to stop the death and marginalization of large numbers.

I hope it's a sign we're on the path to reduce or eliminate society's tech debt before the system crashes. Like all complex projects though, it needs sustained strong leadership.

I think the problem is better described not as "institutional racism" but as "institutional corruption", which is (a) broader, and (b) suggestive of different potential fixes.

From what I can see, the proposed solution to "institutional racism" is to browbeat everybody into thinking nicer thoughts. But we've been trying that for decades now and it hasn't worked.

Whereas, the solution for institutional corruption is to change the structure of the institutions, so that the people in them have different, better incentives. In many cases, I think that means reducing the power of the institutions over people's lives, and putting more power and choice back into the hands of each individual.

>From what I can see, the proposed solution to "institutional racism" is to browbeat everybody into thinking nicer thoughts.

This is a straw man, everything about the current push ("from what I can see") is towards exactly the types of anti corruption efforts you described.

Exactly.

- Deescalation training

- Defunding (extreme)

- Demilitarizing the police

- Community outreach

- Reduce over-policing

etc.

These are the things that have been talked about and pushed for the past decade (well, in some circles decades, but nationally it's a conversation that comes and goes, but has stayed at the top the past decade or so).

> everything about the current push ("from what I can see") is towards exactly the types of anti corruption efforts you described

Not "everything" is. Yes, "anti-corruption efforts" are being pushed. But you have shifted your ground. Now you're talking about "anti corruption efforts". Before you were talking about "institutional racism". The latter is, as I said, narrower; it amounts to saying, first, that the institutional corruption has racism as its sole or primary root cause (which I think is false--I think racism is a symptom of corruption, but not the only one, and certainly not its cause), and second, that the only reason to fix institutional corruption is to fix racism (which is also false). And that is exactly the kind of rhetoric I see all over the place.

The reason to fix institutional corruption is that it's corruption. Citizens of every demographic are affected by institutional corruption and want to fix it. I think it's much better to unite around that common goal than to talk about "racism", which is only going to divide people who should be united against corruption.

Man, you're really picking at straws here. If you want to nit pick about "the most effective" actions, then what about the dampening effect on the overall momentum that people like you have, however minor, when you decide that certain specific wording absolutely needs to be tweaked before you will support the cause?

Words matter because they describe what, specifically, "the cause" is that I'm supposed to be supporting. What's the next demand going to be after corruption in the police is fixed?

You are essentially arguing for class-based solidarity against the capitalist imperative for oppression and "corruption" in the name of profits. I'm not sure if these are original thoughts or inspired by reading leftist works but I agree with you.

But as words are important it's important to not dismiss intentional, systemic racism that we know definitely exists.

> From what I can see, the proposed solution to "institutional racism" is to browbeat everybody into thinking nicer thoughts.

That has never been the fix for institutional racism; the whole point of efforts to get people to recognize racism as an institutional problem rather than a mere personal one is so that the institutional problems which maintain it can be attacked. If you make the above claim sincerely, then you seriously have been paying approximately zero attention to anyone addressing institutional racism ever.

> But we've been trying that for decades

Whether what you describe or the actual fixes pushed by people advocating to address institutional racism in law enforcement, no, we mostly haven’t. We've mostly been backing the institutions charged with institutional racism, and not trying anything, which is why a movement that has spent most of the time up until the eruption in support in the wake of George Floyd’s murder marginalized even on the Left has grown up trying to get people motivated to have ant concern at all for the issue.

I mean, there were the Obama-era federal investigations that were ostentatiously discontinued by the incoming Trump Administration (which definitely fall into the driving institutional reform, not thinking nicer thoughts, camp), but not a lot else.

> Whereas, the solution for institutional corruption is to change the structure of the institutions

That's what the people talking about institutional racism have been saying since they started talking about it; that is like the entire import of the modifier “institutional”: that the source and, therefore, the solution is in the structure of institutions.

> the whole point of efforts to get people to recognize racism as an institutional problem rather than a mere personal one is so that the institutional problems which maintain it can be attacked

No, the whole point of efforts to get people to recognize racism as an institutional problem rather than a mere personal one has been to co-opt the much greater power of institutions as compared to individuals in the effort to browbeat people into thinking nice thoughts. Yes, institutions will sometimes reluctantly settle for people just exhibiting nice behavior if that's the best that can be done at a particular time, but since even people who have never in their life shown a sign of racism in their behavior are still forced to undergo continual training in "diversity" and "awareness", clearly behavior alone is not what is being targeted.

> No, the whole point of efforts to get people to recognize racism as an institutional problem rather than a mere personal one has been to co-opt the much greater power of institutions as compared to individuals in the effort to browbeat people into thinking nice thoughts.

No, again, it's been to identify and address the institutional malfunctions. E.g., the people addressing institutional racism in policing right now aren't asking for police or anyone else to think nice thoughts, they are calling for systemic reforms (e.g., 8cantwait) to, defunding and redistributing some of the functions of, and/or dismantling and redistributing all of the functions of police departments.

> the people addressing institutional racism in policing right now aren't asking for police or anyone else to think nice thoughts

The ones I see are. They aren't talking about respecting the rule of law and protecting the civil rights of citizens. They're talking about how people need to be "educated" about the trials and tribulations of minorities (actually of one particular minority).

> defunding and redistributing some of the functions of, and/or dismantling and redistributing all of the functions of police departments.

This makes no sense to me. You don't support the rule of law and protect the civil rights of citizens by getting rid of police. You do that by having local governments that hold police accountable, and are themselves held accountable by citizens.

> there were the Obama-era federal investigations

The institutional problems in question are mostly local. For example, the fact that a Minneapolis city cop killed a citizen without just cause is a problem for the local government in Minneapolis. Citizens there should be demanding to know how their local government allowed the police force to reach the level of corruption that allowed such an act to take place in the presence of other cops without any of them intervening. In the absence of good answers (and I find it hard to imagine how there could be good answers), those citizens should be voting out the government that allowed this to happen. In any case, a federal investigation is the wrong tool for that job.

> > there were the Obama-era federal investigations

> The institutional problems in question are mostly local

The institutional problems are local, state, and federal, but pointing out that they are “mostly local”, which is true, isn't a counter to pointing to the Obama-era investigations that the incoming Trump Administration loudly abandoned (both the ongoing investigations specifically, and the idea of conducting them in general), since those were federal investigations of systemic problems in local law enforcement agencies producing federal civil rights violations.

> "I'm not going to think about consequences when I optimize this solution for myself."

This. There's the clearly overt racism people love to upload/watch on youtube, but I like this sentence how it captures the 'institutional' racism. (I have a hard time conveying this in conversation with friends.) And over time this has created a very deep divide, along race. I'm reminded of an Alan Greenspan quote (that a can't find current, so I'm going to butcher it in paraphrase): beware the possibility that segments of the population will become "reluctant to participate" if the hill is too steep or if they perceive the system is against them, because the system will then be worthless because people will exit. I think he said this around the 2008 collapse.

That's a good quote (or sentiment).

Relating back to technical systems, it reminds me of implementing a CRM (customer relationship management) or other collaborative data system. Higher difficulty of use translates to lower participation, which leads to lower value, which leads to lower use...and so on.

Looks to me like the more you use the word "racism", the farther from the solution you get. Not because it's not there, but because the word simply prompts mental models that are very entrenched and it's unlikely they'll lead to much change.

Trying to go for approaches that reframe the problems might be more productive. One point to take from this article is that there are interest groups that will lose power from any meaningful reform. Saying they're "white" is... just the same as usual. Saying that chief among them is quite likely the top management of law enforcement institutions is a lot more conductive to new solutions. And so on.

I like your framing, because it provides an opportunity to "judo" some of the institutional resistance to change.

Loss of power is a huge motivator for the status quo. Are there ways to facilitate institutional change that do not weaken the power structures with the most influence?

It's an interesting thought experiment.

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