> According to a report by Berkeley, Latino candidates constituted 13 percent of applicants and 59 percent of finalists. Asian and Asian American applicants constituted 26 percent of applicants and 19 percent of finalists. Fifty-four percent of applicants were white and 14 percent made it to the final stage. Black candidates made up 3 percent of applicants and 9 percent of finalists.
The article includes a video showing they were able to use FaceApp on the non-smiling photo to reproduce the smiling photo exactly.
They also include analysis comparing the smiling photo to other existing photos of those people smiling and note that in the smiling photo some people are depicted with dimples that the person doesn't actually have.
These are not "personal circumstances." Laws have been written to intentionally disenfranchise Black Americans, to intentionally criminalize Black Americans, etc.
> Also, "it's okay to be white" is not a hidden rake of a dogwhistle to stumble on. If that were a serious position, it immediately leads to the question of "who is saying otherwise".
I found a few examples if you are interested:
> conservatives are objecting after the discovery of a speech by Berkeley Professor Zeus Leonardo in which he discussed the need “to abolish whiteness.” […] “to abolish whiteness is to abolish white people”
I'll start with addressing the second one, because it sets up the first. To start, the author of that article is himself white. He seems to be saying (and pointing to others who have said) that "whiteness" as a cultural identity leads to white supremacy. For example, "white pride" is white supremacist in a way that "Irish pride" isn't. The article isn't saying anything should happen to people considered white, just that lumping us all into a single "white" identity is a problem.
Meanwhile, the reaction to that first link seems to prove that professor's point. In context, it seems clear to me that he's saying is that people interpret arguments like those presented in the second link as attacks on those people rather than just calling out that singular identity as an issue. He's not saying "the solution to white supremacy is to get rid of white people", he's saying "whiteness as a singular identity is a problem, and pointing out that it's a problem is seen as an attack on white people themselves", which is clearly true based on the reaction to his speech.
Newsweek is trash, but I'll put that aside for the moment. The training seems to be presenting the same arguments as the first two, but badly. A workplace training is really the wrong context to try and make that kind of nuanced point, and that seems to have been an especially clumsy attempt at it.
> The article isn't saying anything should happen to people considered white, just that lumping us all into a single "white" identity is a problem.
And yet, it seems to be that many Americans – including Americans like this university professor – are actually huge on doing exactly that.
Growing up in 1980s/1990s Australia, there was very little talk about "white" or "who is white". At school, this kid was Irish, this one Italian, another Croatian, Lebanese, Chinese, Indian, Filipino, etc – who was "white" and who wasn't? Who knew and who cared–"white" (in a racial sense) was not a frequently used word in our vocabulary. Even the school curriculum avoided the term – 1788 was presented as the start of the "European settlement" or "British settlement" of Australia, I don't remember any teacher ever saying "white" in that context.
But, in the last 10–15 years or so, there's been this big influx of talk about "white" and "whiteness" – which mostly seems to be coming from the US, and (my impression is) predominantly from that part of America which this university professor represents.
Australia wasn't always like that – we did once have a "white Australia policy". But, as we dismantled it (a gradual process between 1940 and 1970), I think we collectively decided that the best way to be less racist was to stop lumping people into coarse racial categories such as "white". Hence, post-1970 Australian officialdom was very happy to put people in ethnicity/nationality categories – British, New Zealander, Aboriginal, Maori, German, Jewish, Irish, Italian, Lebanese, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Vietnamese, Egyptian, Somalian, Sudanese, South African, etc, etc, etc – but studiously avoided the use of terms such as "white". Most Americans seem to have never got that memo, and the creeping Americanisation of Australia seems to be injecting that kind of "white" talk back into the conversation.
I'm really not qualified to say much on the subject of race in any other countries, but I think coming at that professor from an external perspective misses context. Pushing the audience to recognize that the system is classifying them as "white" is true for a US audience. The fact that it seems like he's pushing whiteness isn't because he's wrong, it's because he's not talking to you.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's especially surprising that the US's cultural export also includes our deeply unhealthy relationship to race.
> Unfortunately, I don't think it's especially surprising that the US's cultural export also includes our deeply unhealthy relationship to race.
I still think that professor LeVine is busy pushing that "deeply unhealthy relationship to race".
An example of how he does it, is by promoting Noel Ignatiev's very dubious "How the Irish Became White" theory. Both Ignatiev, and LeVine, ignore that most anti-Irish sentiment was actually anti-Catholic – so long as the majority of Irish immigrants to the US were Protestants, anti-Irish sentiments were almost unheard of, and they only began when Catholics came to outnumber Protestants among immigrants from Ireland to the US. At which point Protestant Irish Americans rebranded themselves as "Scots-Irish" to make clear that they weren't Catholics, hence escaping that prejudice and discrimination. Ignatiev is taking something which was fundamentally about religion, and misrepresenting it as something about race – which is one of the ways in which people like Ignatiev and LeVine keep on pushing that "deeply unhealthy relationship to race". In fact, I'd even say that their refusal to acknowledge the reality of anti-Catholicism, and their denial of it in an attempt to transform it into a form of "racism", is a sign of their own anti-Catholic prejudice.
For a scholarly criticism of Ignatiev's whole "Irish Became White" theory, see Arnesen, E. (2001). Whiteness and the Historians' Imagination. International Labor and Working-Class History, 60, 3-32. doi:10.1017/S0147547901004380 https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/6817279/mod_resou...
White ethnic groups that are predominantly Catholic being distinguished from "real" whites and being targets of White supremacists is a real historical thing (and not just with the Irish, also true of Italians, and its no small factor historically in why predominantly-white-in-traditional-racial-terms Hispanics have been largely constructed as non-White for quite some time in the US, which has turned out to be more durable than the others.)
Race is a mutable social construct that largely exists to rationalize other prejudices, and ethnic and religious prejudices are high on that list; treating race as if it were a real and fundamental thing orthogonal to other concerns is buying into race essentialism. Which is not to say Ignatiev is right, but rather to pretend that the anti-Catholicism he ignores contradicts a connection to racism and the construction of race rather than explains it is...also wrong.
> White ethnic groups that are predominantly Catholic being distinguished from "real" whites and being targets of White supremacists is a real historical thing
Anti-Catholicism is a huge part of the history of the UK, Ireland and the British Empire. As such, it has no particular connection with white supremacy – were the Penal Laws "white supremacist"? Was the Ulster Protestant League "white supremacist"? Is the Orange Order "white supremacist"?
Outside of the US, anti-Catholicism had no significant association with ideas of "race" or skin colour. Indeed, the whole "Irish weren't white" claim sounds so bizarre from a British or Irish or Australian perspective. All three countries have unpleasant histories of discrimination against Catholics, but nobody ever tried to justify it because "they weren't white". They were discriminated against because of their "popery", because they were viewed as disloyal to the state, bearers of foreign allegiance, practitioners of outdated superstition, etc.
And, much of US anti-Catholicism was directly imported from the UK. Which is why trying to view it all through a racial lens – which is a peculiarly American approach – seems so confused. It seems to come from just looking at things from a narrow US-centric perspective which ignores everything that happens in the rest of the world, and even ignores the British historical origins of much that happened in the US as well.
> Anti-Catholicism is a huge part of the history of the UK, Ireland and the British Empire. As such, it has no particular connection with white supremacy
It does in fact have a particular connection with American white supremacy and, historically, with construction of race in America. You seem to be making the irrational jump from “X originated separately from Y” to “X has no particular connection with Y”, but that’s neither logically warranted nor as at all reliable as a practical guide when looking at elements of culture.
> It does in fact have a particular connection with American white supremacy and, historically, with construction of race in America. You seem to be making the irrational jump from “X originated separately from Y” to “X has no particular connection with Y”, but that’s neither logically warranted nor as at all reliable as a practical guide when looking at elements of culture.
I wouldn't say that race and anti-Catholicism have zero connection in US history – but I do think Ignatiev fundamentally misrepresents what that connection is. People can be prejudiced against both groups A and B simultaneously, without making them the same sort of group or the same kind of prejudice; people can simultaneously have religionist and racist prejudices, without making religionism a form of racism.
And there are some deep differences between the two. Catholics who converted to Protestantism (a significant minority did) found that the vast majority of Protestant prejudice and discrimination against them disappeared, almost overnight – now, they shouldn't have to do that, and of course for most it was not a live option socially or psychologically, but for all it was at least physically possible – the impossibility was in deciding to do it, not in being unable to do it if they'd decided to. By contrast, the vast majority of African-Americans couldn't "convert to being white" – a minority of individuals of mixed ancestry could manage to "pass", but for the vast majority "convert to white" was asking the physically impossible. Ignatiev et al cite occasional historical usage of "racialised" language against Catholics, but they overstate its frequency and significance, and ignore the fact that even most people who deployed this "racialised" language would forget it the moment a Catholic expressed interest in conversion – there was nothing most African-Americans could do to get them to forget it.
The fact is, prejudiced people tend to have lots of different prejudices–that doesn't make all their prejudices the same, or make all of their numerous prejudices instances of just one of them. I mean, if someone is homophobic, is that racism? Sure, most racists may well be homophobic, but gay people can be racist too, [0] and I don't think the Ugandan politicians who have been clamouring to reintroduce capital punishment for homosexuality are motivated by racism either. [1]
But Ignatiev decided to take this one issue, race – which no one denies plays a major role in US history, and arguably a much bigger role than in the history of the rest of the English-speaking world – and turn it into the be-all-and-end-all of American history, in terms of which everything else has to be interpreted, the square hole into which everything else must be squeezed, regardless of its shape. And, this is I think the biggest particular connection between anti-Catholicism and race in US history – through pseudo-history, Ignatiev has made history, and caused very many Americans today to believe such a connection exists, no matter how ahistorical that belief may be – and believing it is true makes it true, not in the past, but in the present. I really doubt the US is going to be able to move past its "deeply unhealthy relationship to race" until people abandon views such as those of Ignatiev and LeVine, who are part of the problem not part of the solution.
> I wouldn't say that race and anti-Catholicism have zero connection in US history – but I do think Ignatiev fundamentally misrepresents what that connection is.
Sure, I tried to make clear that while I think it goes to far to separate anti-Catholicism from racism (And the evolving construction of race) in America, I'm not defending Ignatiev's particular characterization in so doing.
> The fact is, prejudiced people tend to have lots of different prejudices–that doesn't make all their prejudices the same, or make all of their numerous prejudices instances of just one of them. I mean, if someone is homophobic, is that racism?
I dunno, I think generally multiple bigotries shared by the same person are society constructing different labels for the persons "not like me-ism", so in that sense, yes they are all the same thing having different labels assigned to different manifestations of a unified whole. But, on the other hand, when you are talking about social impacts, it makes sense to look at them differently because the different aspects can have different dynamics as societal forces, whether or not they individually are part of a unified system.
But the relation between anti-Catholicism and racism isn't that they are the same social force, but that they are social forces where each colors the manifestation of the other. This is, AFAIK, not as true of, say, homophobia and racism in the same way (they interact intersectionally, but that's a different thing).
> I dunno, I think generally multiple bigotries shared by the same person are society constructing different labels for the persons "not like me-ism", so in that sense, yes they are all the same thing having different labels assigned to different manifestations of a unified whole
I think that ignores that societies treat some "not like me" groups much better than others, and even have their reasons for doing so (whether right or wrong or a bit of both). British hostility to Catholicism wasn't just "not like me-ism" – they didn't show anywhere near as much "not like me-ism" towards Huguenot refugees, or the Dutch or the Germans – on the contrary, they imported monarchs from the Netherlands (William of Orange) and Germany (George I). Protestant England treated foreign Protestants better than English Catholics, because the religious similarity was seen as more important that the linguistic/cultural/ethnic differences. It is hard for people today – in a society where most people (even religious people) don't take religion that seriously – to understand how seriously people took religious disputes back then. Also, domestic Catholics were seen as a political threat to the reigning regime (many of them were Jacobites, or at least had sympathies in that direction), most foreign Protestants were not.
> But the relation between anti-Catholicism and racism isn't that they are the same social force, but that they are social forces where each colors the manifestation of the other.
Contemporary American culture foregrounds issues of race and backgrounds issues of religion – hence, if one immigrant group (e.g. Germans or Norwegians) was accepted into American society more easily than another (e.g. Irish Catholics) – people are quick to accept the proposed explanation that was because one group was "more white", the alternative explanation of "more Protestant" won't even occur to many people. I think that says more about 21st century US culture than 19th century US history. But isn't that cultural tendency to focus on "racial" explanations for things to the exclusion of non-"racial" explanations, part of that "deeply unhealthy relationship to race" which another commenter mentioned upthread?
> Wasn't this the company that announced they were laying people off based on race in the last round of layoffs?
Oh yeah, they were. I forgot about that.
> As you all know, we are committed to becoming an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression company. Layoffs like this can have a more pronounced impact on marginalized communities, so we were particularly focused on ensuring our layoffs – while a business necessity today – were carried out through an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens.
They finally listened to their lawyers. Anyone not of a so called “marginalized community”fired in the last round very likely sued for civil rights violations.
One of the silver linings of this recession is DEI has been gutted and thrown on the trash heap where it belongs. Any competent CEO is using this moment to gut the commissars and rabble rousers from their payrolls. Time to check the Slack logs and cleanse the company of activists.
I‘ve seen plenty of overt racism coming from some people who advocate for DEI too (I can provide examples if you would like), so I don’t really see what your point is. Guilt by association is silly.
> black peoples' bodies are far more suited for strenuous physical activities than asians'
> […]
> The reality is asians aren't as physically capable as other races, generally speaking.
Do you apply similar logic to explain why black people are underrepresented in technical fields while Asian people are over-represented? Would you say that Asian peoples’ minds are “far more suited” for strenuous intellectual activities than black peoples’?
Given that he's "accusing" his own race of being less physically capable I can only assume that the same goes for other traits in other races. Have a look at who has been winning long distance running events for the last few decades and you'll quickly find out that people from a certain area - nay, a certain tribe [1] - in Kenya are grossly overrepresented. This is not because they're all using doping like e.g. athletes from the former DDR did, it is because they share a mixture of genes and culture which makes them exceed in this field. Going by the data it seems clear that people from certain areas in the world - mostly in Asia and Europe - share a mixture of genes and culture which makes them exceed in what you call "strenuous intellectual activities" [2].
You seem to be upset over his pointing out this fact. Why is it no problem to point out that these Kenyans are dominating long distance running - even NPR reports about this - but problematic [3] to point out that the Japanese, Swiss, Chinese, Americans and Dutch dominate when it comes to intellectual pursuits? I suspect this is because intellectual pursuits have a higher standing among the "educated" classes who tend to ruminate about these things than physical activities. In a way this itself is problematic just like the way many "educated" people look down upon physical labour is problematic - to use a term often bandied about by those same people. A healthy society needs both those who are more into physical activities as well as those who are more into intellectual pursuits to develop and thrive - this is true diversity.
I’m not particularly upset, and I don’t necessarily disagree with the rest of your comment.
My comment was more related to the fact that in my experience there are quite a number of people who have no qualms about suggesting that black people are over represented in sports like running and sprinting, professional basketball, and professional football because they are just naturally better athletes, but then will absolutely refuse to even entertain the possibility that some other races or ethnic groups might be naturally better in other fields like science and engineering. I find that sort of thinking rather inconsistent, so I was mostly just probing to see what the person I was replying to believed.
Of course this sort of discussion is going to be controversial since suggesting that a certain ethnic group is naturally better than other ethnic groups in some sense, even if only in certain areas, would seem to fit the traditional definition of racism.
I wouldn't say they are less intellectually capable. But the number of black people who grow up in an environment of computers, engineering, etc... is much much lower than the comparable number of white or asian young men who grow up in such environments.
This is also the reason why there are far few women software engineers than men. It is not about their capabilities, physical, intellectual or otherwise. It is about their environment where they grow up in - some people grow up with programming computers from very early age because their parents do something similar, most of these (by a wide margin) are white or asian boys.
But most early computer programmers were women. If it’s just the environment they grew up in, then why did programming computers shift over the 20th century from being a job dominated by women to a job dominated by men?
For the record, I also don’t think it’s about “differences in capabilities”. I think that amongst other things, as personal computing came of age different types of men became attracted to computing, and changed the culture around computing to one which excluded women (in most cases probably unintentionally). If that’s true, there might be parallels with the software industry today and race.
> But most early computer programmers were women. If it’s just the environment they grew up in, then why did programming computers shift over the 20th century from being a job dominated by women to a job dominated by men?
Early computer "programmers" were doing something more akin to data entry than churning out CRUD apps using the latest js framework. Comparing the programming jobs of the 70s or whatever to the jobs today therefore makes little sense.
Early "computers" were also women. Because the engineering work was done by men and the computational "menial work" was done by women. These same women were replaced by digital computers later on, and some of these women felt "at home" with the new medium since they had better familiarity with what is going on in there than men did.
But that was the 60s and 70s, and the women at the time were in their 20s and 30s.
Many of those women remained "computers" and did not go into "engineers", and there is a big difference between the two. A computer is great at solving equations and doing the menial work of data calculation, similar to what we use spreadsheets for today.
Engineers on the other hand is a more creative approach to problem solving, when presented with various problems (not just of math) that need some solutions, an engineer would try and find that solution by being creative.
About 20-30 years ago, there was a large population of engineers around the world who are the parents of today's engineers who are 20-30yo right now. Those engineers were white men, and women, and asian men and women. Not many of them were black families, so today's 20-30yo black men (and women) are not only a small portion of the world population, they are also heavily underrepresented in engineering. That is not to say they are incapable, as I mentioned above, it is more influenced by the "environment" where these people grew up in.
Also, early women programmers does not mean that today's women had the same upbringing and attraction to the same professions as the women in the 60s and 70s. Back then being a "computer" was similar to being a secretary, it involved a lot of menial work and precision. Today's secretaries might be required to be good with spreadsheets and document writing software, quite a leap away from programming.
The above are generalizations, since there are absolutely definitely amazing women software engineers today, as well as black men software engineers. It is just that they are barely a minority in the software engineering industry, there are just very few of them - which makes sense why the software engineering jobs don't have any significant representation of these people working there.
Assuming there are no underlying systemic discriminations or inhibitors at play, the results speak for themselves.
The brutal reality is that various peoples and individuals have varying aptitudes to various things depending upon their genetic makeup, upbringing, social factors, and more.
You literally can not round up a random group of people and expect them all to behave the same. That's not how this works.
> Assuming there are no underlying systemic discriminations or inhibitors at play, the results speak for themselves.
Systemic discrimination and inhibitors can't be set aside in a discussion about representation. The results you're referring to have those two baked in.
> According to a report by Berkeley, Latino candidates constituted 13 percent of applicants and 59 percent of finalists. Asian and Asian American applicants constituted 26 percent of applicants and 19 percent of finalists. Fifty-four percent of applicants were white and 14 percent made it to the final stage. Black candidates made up 3 percent of applicants and 9 percent of finalists.