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Comment by mft_ | Hacker News Reader

Interesting dilemma. Let's take race and politics out for a moment.

Suppose I arrange a meeting for a group with a specific interest. And then suppose people then attend my meeting who disrupt it; I'd be within my rights to ask people to leave, right, because it's 'my' meeting?

Now... does that basic principle change if a) we make that specialist interest related to race or minority issues, or b) I'm a politician?, or c) it's arranged by (e.g) a students' union?

Genuinely interested in people's views on this...

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I think you can exclude people from a group. But when you're explicitly excluding people from a group on racial lines in the name of inclusion and fighting racism, you should expect some raised eyebrows. If you have an ideal of equality, you cannot use methods that are unequal; if you have an ideal that people should not be excluded based on race, you cannot make it a criterion of exclusion - at least, you can't and still expect anyone to buy that you believe in what you're selling.

Well if it's arranged by a group, you need to formulate a rule for who gets to attend. If that rule is "no whites" that's certainly controversial.

> people then attend my meeting who disrupt it

So ask those people to leave if they disrupt the meeting. But asking someone to leave a meeting because of their race is racism.

More like having a meeting with people where the specific interest has a lot to do with the excluded group.

A simple thing is just reverse the position.

Imagine a public meeting by WASPs discussing the (black/Latino/Asian/Jewish) “problem”.

Imagine this being a public meeting by men discussing the “female problem”. There would be massive backlash.

Look at college campuses. Left wing groups do not allow right wing speakers to even “speak to their own”. The disrupt and try to shut them down.

You can’t both fight to prohibit speech you don’t like and then have speech they aren’t likely to like and expect them to be quiet about it.

You can be adjacent to the special interest and have a genuine, good faith interest in the discussion, and in the interest of inclusivity, should not be turned away.

Maybe you’re role is to listen more than share your own experiences, but you shouldn’t be turned away.

I totally get why it 'feels' wrong - but what I'm trying to establish is what precisely makes it wrong.

I mean, people hold private meetings with a specific list of invitees all the time around the world, and we don't police peoples' private reasons for who they choose to invite.

To take another example: support groups for women coming out of abusive relationships. Very good reasons to not allow men to attend, no?

>> To take another example: support groups for women coming out of abusive relationships. Very good reasons to not allow men to attend, no?

So women cannot be in abusive relationships with other women?

Are all men abusers?

Edit: Downvotes? So allies are not possible? Is everyone in a given group summarily guilty because of their identity?

Good Q. In point of fact, people might be interested in looking up the percent of lesbian relationships that are abusive and compare to other relationship types.

> people hold private meetings with a specific list of invitees all the time

They're not private meetings, they're public policy meetings. And yes, in Europe, you couldn't even do this on a commercial level (which is more "private" than a political meeting). You can't go "sorry, only people with this skin color are allowed to enter".

Ok, let's imagine you host a mtg for Linux users who are persecuted by Windows users.

A win user comes in and say that all win users are not like this. Is he disrupting?

He says that Linux users are sometimes harsh too and he suffered from that. Disrupting?

He says that this is all bullshit and win users are great. Disrupting?

For me the last one is - others are not. Except if the mtg is to one way complain (which is also a legitimate reason for a mtg, but it should honestly be announced as such)

It's not a dilemma in my mind. They're free to exclude anyone they want from their private meetings. What is disturbing is that there is a sizeable chunk of the population that thinks this sort of exclusion and bigotry is acceptable and would even vote for parties that seek to have such policies codified into law.

Then again, most of the rest of the world is already okay with plenty of "racism" and discrimination when it comes under the guise of justice, so I'm not hopeful that we'll be seeing the light anytime soon.

I think profiling white/people as universally ignorant to minorities’ issues is just a typical stereotype. Yes, there will be ignorant and disruptive individuals, but ban them selectively. One by one. Lumping everyone into “they don’t get it” is like admitting white people are a lost cause, and reinforces “us vs them” combative narrative, playing right into the hand of alt right.

In a similar fashion, the feminist movement can be like that. Or it can be like they did it in Iceland, for example, where (speaking from memory) women pushed a legislation to mandate for women to hold no less than a 40% board seats in public companies. BUT they also made it so that it also applied to men.

So, at the end of the day, it’s just political extremism. They come and go, as the social pendulum swings from left to right and back.

The only way it swings back is when there’s room to openly criticize. The opportunities and venues for that are shrinking and the costs growing.

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