Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

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It often feels to me like the more recent brand of this behavior is something like perfectly valid study of social phenomenon (revolving around social justice at this point) on a macro level where it makes sense .... then taken by some to use on a micro level with individuals where it stops making sense.

Obama had a speech where he noted the futility of talking to someone about their privilege ... when that person as far as they're concerned has had a hard life and everything stacked against them. And maybe that person is right, they did have a hard life / quite the opposite of privilege.

The macro study and ideas aren't wrong, but they don't work at a micro level.

The same extends now to phrases / patterns or any indicators at a macro level we associate with injustice ... and folks take them out like a guy with only a hammer to use and apply them to groups and individuals at a micro level that stops making sense.

A family member of mine is a teacher. They recently had a big discussion about how minority students (a specific minority actually) were more likely to be assigned to special ed services. Some folks identified this as troubling behavior as it was seen as a path where students would be stereotyped or other undesirable things might happen because of it.

The teachers listened to the concerns and presentation by some groups... but they're left wondering what to do when the 4th of 10 students who is this minority comes in to be evaluated and clearly needs help ...

On a macro and even historical level the concerns are valid and sometimes special ed in the past was used poorly. On a micro level now what do these teachers do with kids who need help?

Applying these concepts on a micro level without understanding the individual / individual situation isn't justice...

> Obama had a speech where he noted the futility of talking to someone about their privilege ... when that person as far as they're concerned has had a hard life and everything stacked against them. And maybe that person is right, they did have a hard life / quite the opposite of privilege.

This resonates true in tech. I know (white) developers who grew up poor. Poor as in, hide anything you have else it'll get pawned. Poor as in it doesn't matter the fridge is broken: since the electric bill is late the whole house is freezing anyways.

Then they get invited into diversity trainings and told that they are privileged, oppressors and should acknowledge it. Ohh and there's now a diverse hiring program which, so far, has hired three Ivy League educated sons of wealthy Nigerians.

This is what intersectionality is supposed to be about: the notion that privilege and discrimination aren't one-dimensional, but are complex products of many intersecting and possibly conflicting experiences, attributes, and contexts. Unfortunately this is a very nuanced idea, and we hate nuanced ideas -- especially about people -- because they require time, energy, rapport-building, context sensitivity, holistic thinking, and the ability to grab hold simultaneously of opposing ideas. (And worst of all for some, they require cutting off a supply of intoxicating self-righteousness.) None of that is going to happen in a one-hour workplace training session. If it's going to happen at all, it's going to unfold gradually over a lifetime. Since timelines of that scale are intolerable, we end up with the sort of ham-fisted oversimplifications you've experienced.

> This is what intersectionality is supposed to be about

Intersect enough and you start dealing with individuals

And no one has time for that

The individual is the most oppressed minority.

The issue with intersectionality is the same as the issue with affirmative action: a person is treated as an RPG character where the desired outcome is to "save" the person with the "lowest" stats or compensate for some real or perceived loss in that person's life. In the case of intersectionality, the "winner" is the person who can stack the most "undesirable" traits on his/her bingo card of victimhood (i.e. the victim Olympics) without any consideration given towards his/her personal agency. Intersectionality, both in premise and application, is, in my view, a collection of x-isms of low expectations masquerading as some grand revelation about societal functions.

And I don't think your longterm timeline, even with the nuance and consideration you believe to missing from its application, would bring you to a world where people understand one another's circumstances and integrate these observations into their personal livelihood. Instead what you'll have is a world beset with the reinvention of tribalism and original sin. While intersectionality may have some merit as a sociological observation (even if I though I find its claims to be unfalsifiable), a sociological observation cannot be treated a deterministic inevitability supplanting human agency.

> In the case of intersectionality, the "winner" is the person who can stack the most "undesirable" traits on his/her bingo card of victimhood (i.e. the victim Olympics) without any consideration given towards his/her personal agency

This is a completely insane lie about intersectionality.

Where is the lie? Please be more specific.

I quoted it directly.

Let me rephrase. What makes my statement a lie?

Intersectionality is about marginalized groups working togther and supporting each other. Basically when Caeser says "Apes alone weak. Apes together strong" in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

The "Oppression Olympics" narrative is an offensive and bizarre strawman.

>Intersectionality is about marginalized groups working togther and supporting each other. Basically when Caeser says "Apes alone weak. Apes together strong" in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

That may be the theory, but "victim olympics" is the actual practice.

That's a category mistake on your part, if not an obvious lie with malicious intent.

Priveledge is such a stupid choice of words that using it for outreach instead of academia frankly seems like they are trying to start conflict for the sake of self-righteousness and one-upmanship purity spiral. The word "priveledge" implies that nobody deserves it by default when really it is the exact opposite. "Hidden Problems" is a clumsy top off the head synonym which would get the idea across better. It still fails to get across "what you take for granted they don't have" but it lacks the many sins of priveledge phrasing. Heck there are issues which aren't neccessarily anybody's fault like say being a minority in an area and finding it difficult to find people with the same related experiences.

...and they didn't get arrested for no reason, lived to adulthood, and when they tried to get a job they were taken seriously and evaluated mostly on their ability.

You are making a lot of assumptions.

Try showing up at a hiring event with a southern accent, no matter your race.

Try showing up to do anything at all without that southern accent and and without a professed love of jeebus where those accents come from.

This sad story of the unfairness of prejudice somehow inspires not a single tear.

That doesn’t match my experience in over four decades of living and working in the south.

But it is the same kind of story I hear time and time again from folks who don’t live in the south about the south. So it must be true I guess.

If you live and work in the south for over 40 years, then you are by definition no visitor.

Meanwhile, you don't even have to get out of your car to get told you're not welcome when people have big signs on the south bound side of the road proclaiming "You're in TRUMP COUNTRY now!"

Enjoy your denial.

Like I said, despite my long experience to the contrary it must be true because somebody on the internet said so.

And I’m sorry that stupid signs frighten you so…most people I know just ignore them.

Interpreting that observation as fear on my part rather than fear or ignorance on the part of the property owner is an excellent example of the very incivility you attempted to deny.

Why didn't I ever have the equivalent Obama sign on my yard, gloating in the face of anyone who came by that might not have liked it?

What is the person who does that doing exactly? Have you ever even taken 11 seconds to wonder where actions come from?

It's curious how when I give an example of someone getting off on insulting everyone who drives by their house, your reaction was to excuse that behavior and add your own insult to theirs, attempting to say something about the thickness of my skin, which in the end just says something about the thinness of your own.

Let’s recap. You mentioned that (paraphrasing here) that is difficult to near impossible to get hired in the south without a southern accent and a love for Jesus. I mentioned that wasn’t my experience. You take my response and turn into an anti-trump rant. Again, I mention have never found the south inhospitable, but acknowledged your opinion. I also mention that most people I know ignore stupid signs (because they do). Apparently you don’t or perhaps “can’t”—and that’s your reaction to own. Then you end this with some sort of assumption that the tiny percent of idiots that might place Trump signs in their yards are somehow representative of an entire region of the country. Including wrapping me into this group because I simply choose to ignore the idiots. You finish your obviously thin skinned rant by trying to project it on to me.

So again I say, I find your initial premise about employment difficulties in the south for folks without a southern accent or without a Christian faith to be be completely counter to my experience.

As for the rest of your diatribe and opinions, I think I am just going to ignore them. Frankly, it reminds me just a little too much of the kind of attitudes and binary thinking that cause certain people to post “Trump country” signs in their yards.

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