Comment by zackmorris

Hey thanks for responding too. I never know if anyone actually reads these things.

When I said "you", I should have clarified that I meant the reader. Words are imperfect and I'm only human. Conversations about sensitive topics like this can feel personal. But you have a right to your opinion, regardless of my opinion of it.

I should have mentioned that the firefighter who said "you want someone who looks like you" was also in the wrong. Leaving them out could be seen as ignorant on my part. To this I would say, we can still strive for a more equitable world tomorrow even if it's imperfect now.

Also remember that people in historically oppressed groups need to be mindful of their behavior, just like people who don't want to be lumped in with the oppressor. Because they will be singled out and made examples of, which sets back the cause of liberation.

This is also why it's so important to practice nonviolence and peaceful protest. Because the battle for equality happens in everyone's heart, but the oppressor has the media. The public is insulated from news of corruption and centuries of abuse, but any impropriety by those being oppressed is broadcast for all to see, just like Bill Maher did. Which triggers a disproportionate level of violence in response, even the enabling of violence by tacit indifference, which perpetuates the status quo.

I think your arguments hinge on what happens if political correctness, wokeism and DEI go too far, and preferential treatment is given to marginalized groups to the point that it infringes on the freedoms of people not siding with oppression. That's a valid concern.

I would say, the reason that it's not a valid call to action is proportionality. Reparations for centuries of slavery would amount to trillions of dollars which have never been paid back, and maybe never will be, because the victims are long deceased and efforts to trace lineages get derailed easily. That money would come from the businesses and families that received the profits of unpaid labor. Basically the wealthiest corporations and families today, who are beneficiaries of that earlier stolen investment. And go to the descendants of families that struggled for all of those years for having the fruits of their labor stolen.

Since reparations will likely never happen or even start to happen, then concessions to that fact (like affirmative action) amount to a drop in the bucket. That's why it's disingenuous to point out the fire chief's sexual orientation and people hired as part of affirmative action in LA's hiring practices, because the injustices against them and their ancestors is far greater but left out of the conversation.

So then we can talk about, ok, what if DEI is partially responsible for the poor LA fire response? Let's think this through. If the real cause of the failure was decades of poor urban planning and little or no fire suppression infrastructure, then would the fire chief have performed better had they been a straight white man? Of course not. That's why sexual orientation is a non sequitur, and why we don't bring it up in polite conversation.

And that's why even though the goal of preserving human life ranks higher than promoting DEI, deciding between them is a false dichotomy.

So what if it's not just about the fire chief, but a pattern of hiring practices, why wouldn't we bring up DEI then? Because if we followed the money trail, we would find the specific people who voted against fire response infrastructure to save money and line their own pockets. We'd discover why insurance companies cancelled policies in the months before the fires, and who profitted by not paying claims. Using DEI as a scapegoat distracts us from the truth, the same way that making examples of recipients of affirmative action allows wealthy corporations and families to avoid paying reparations in the form of higher taxes on the rich.

And more importantly, it allows tragedies like the fire to be used as an excuse to undermine DEI efforts. This is how political capital works. When there isn't enough political will for a vote to end DEI to pass, political capital can be borrowed from public sentiment in times of crisis to get the vote passed anyway. In this way, long-term public sentiment can be overridden at points in time to sway policy away from majority rule towards minority rule. In other words, from democracy towards republicanism, authoritarianism and eventually aristocracy if left unchallenged by a governing system of checks and balances.

> So what I've heard from others is that you SHOULD see someone's race, and to not do that is damaging to them. You SHOULD recognize a black woman as a black woman, and not just see her the same as you would see a white man, because to treat them the same would actually be harmful or dismissive of the black woman, for example. That's what I've been told about why 'color blindness' is wrong. You touched upon that point otherwise when you said that we shouldn't pretend that PG isn't a beneficiary of privilege as a white middle-aged man.

You bring up a good point. How do we go about recognizing someone's identity without letting it affect our behavior in ways that might negatively impact them or someone else? I think the best way to look at this is that it is a practice. A black woman may want to achieve success on her own merits, not because of her identity. When reviewing her resume against a number of white men for example, one way to make it equitable would be to remove race and gender from the application. Of course, there are other hints that might reveal her demographics with a high likelihood, like which schools she attended or where she lived or worked. So we try to be impartial the best we can, while also weighing the needs of the community, such as having more black women represented in our company to make up for the years when they weren't.

Note that the reason the reverse consideration isn't as applicable to Paul Graham is that he is in the same demographic as the majority of business owners and wealthy people in the US. He already fits the generalization in the public's mind, which gives him inherent advantage. Devoting the same effort to his representation as a black woman's would be inherently inequitable at this time in history.

> Why? Isn't that treating her differently because she is a woman?

It sounds like you might have misunderstood me. Because the company has an equal number of men and women working for it, then having 1 woman on the board instead of 5 is inequitable. I'm not treating her differently because she's a woman. I'm giving her some of my time and the benefit of the doubt so that our voices speak for the women who aren't being represented.

I see how this can be confusing. How is it that giving her this preferential treatment, without specifically mentioning that she's a woman or why I incorporate that into my behavior, is somehow woke? Because through my actions, she can see that I identified the injustice at play and am working towards healing it. Whereas telling her that I'm doing it solely because she is a woman denegrates what she has achieved through her own efforts.

I should clarify that if she has her own motives for being on the board outside of equity, for example nepotism etc, then I will just as easily be an ally for men who vote to have more women on the board or otherwise align their vote with the needs of women working there. I'm incorporating context into my actions, but not letting demographics override my decisions.

> I think this is what PG touches upon when he mentions the dizzying array of rules that one has to memorize to avoid committing an offense.

It sounds like you might be misunderstanding how woke etiquette works. It's not about avoiding offense, but changing behavior. For example, say I don't know if someone I'm speaking with prefers the term black, african american or person of color, but the topic of conversation involves race and I must choose. Say the person is my age and I was raised with the term black in the 1980s, so maybe I say black because I'm nervous about sounding patronizing. That's ok. I watch for their reaction. They may say black in their next sentence. They may say that they prefer the term person of color. In the 1990s they might have said that they preferred the term african american. It doesn't matter which. I show respect for their dignity by using the term that they prefer from then on. No offense needs to be given or taken.

What I forgot to say most in these answers is why we're doing all of this. It's because as we all work to change our behavior on the road towards equality, the status quo changes. There are countless efforts to make the world more equitable, everything from resisting to protests to strikes. But because not enough people practice wokeism, those efforts are often suppressed. Which creates an ongoing illusion that everything is ok, when countless people are suffering under oppression. That's why wokeism looks performative to people who benefit from the status quo and don't see a problem.

So we should consider the reverse. How the actions of the rich, powerful and indifferent look to the woke. If someone is exposed to all of these concepts, yet still clings to the notion that wokeism is bad, then (to use a similar word) that behavior looks pejorative to people who don't benefit from the status quo.