The main subject of the article, “Frank”, is already married. This is the part of the article that explains his motivation:
> There were the kids at school who taunted him for his height; a longtime online fan of his artwork who remarked, on meeting him, that Frank was “shorter than I expected”; or the guys who randomly shoved him in the street a few years ago, tearing out his headphones. They wouldn’t have done that to a taller man, he reasons.
In my experience the truth is somewhere in the middle. It's helpful to neither completely ignore nor ruminate over one's traits, but just _be aware_ of them.
It's been very helpful for me to pay attention to and think about how my own personality compares to others'. For example, I tend to be a people-pleaser, but I used to think that everyone was just as people-pleasing as me, which only reinforced the people-pleasing because I didn't feel right putting my own needs first when everyone else was already sacrificing their own needs (or so I assumed).
At the same time, medicalizing these things paints them as "abnormal" disorders that need to be "cured", overlooking any of the positives these traits bring. When it comes to my people-pleasing, I like it about myself that I care about others. As long as I recognize that it sometimes comes at my own expense, I can begin to make more conscious decisions about when to allow the people-pleasing to flow versus when to try to subdue it.
I agree with the author that this is a reasonable way to indicate their intent. But I've seen so many accidentally ineffectual code snippets that if I saw this code I'd be inclined to delete it unless there was also a comment expressing its purpose.
Yeah, ideally you’d have some kind of static typing to restrict the code to only use Number, and then a comment that says what the function does in case of NaN.
There was a thread the other day about a linter that flagged useless code and all the odd bugs it caught, and I think it would have flagged this snippet, eh?
"Interesting bugs caught by no-constant-binary-expression"
Fighting against human nature is the hardest. You know what is next hardest? Fighting culture. Even if culture can be changed, it takes a least one generation or ~30 years and often longer. I'm really not that interested in what the problem is theoretically. I'm interested in effectiveness. Ramping up of mining to build batteries to put a huge dent in CO2 emissions at the expense of localized environmental damage? That's effective. Not perfect or ideal, but it is effective because it is the path of least resistance.
There's no "cannot", it's a conscious choice - if you have more space than necessary that absolutely does not require that you expand to fill all of it. And in particular this has caused issues because American cities tend towards sprawl, filling up area with low-density housing that requires significantly more infrastructure per capita, and implementing zoning laws to prevent higher-density development even as the population grows, resulting in housing shortages.
They sprawl because people want space. If you're from Paris or Tokyo or London you really just don't know what it's like to have a quiet, detached house with a nice garden, maybe a pool where your kids can play randomly without needing to plan a trip to the community center, space for a garden, knowing everyone within 200m of your house by name...
It's a completely different way of life that is not possible without lots of space. Some people want that and so they will pay to buy it. It's not like city planners are laughing in smoke-filled rooms like, "haha! this will be our most sprawling city yet!"
People see what people want to see. An average family with two toddlers using bicycles to get around in the dead of Chicago winter. Sure, sure.
I would wager that the vast majority of the folk here that are pushing this romanticized idea of car-free european city have actually grown up in upper middle class US suburbs and bulk of these attitudes are really just subconscious rejection of their parents' lifestyles.
Having grown up in one of those car-free european cities myself, I can vouch that the US set up is, on average, far more convenient, which is also why you see car/pool/detached house/garage ownership rates increase with income and GDP. People that have the means clearly choose to avoid communal setups.
As some other commenters have noted, in cities like Amsterdam and Tokyo there are enough nice safe public spaces that even young children are free to play outside on their own and there's much less planning required to go places since you don't need a car.
That being said, I'm sure there are plenty of North Americans who love having a ton of space for gardening etc. But I would guess they're actually in the minority and that most people choose to live in sprawling suburban developments because they're the only affordable option to guarantee access to good schools and a safe neighborhood.
If you slow down the pace to help the "zero percenters" and only cover 80% of the material in the allotted time, the students who could have handled 100% of the material will be limited to 80%. And that slowdown still won't be enough to help the slowest learners much, so they'll still only learn, say, 20% of the material.
There isn't an assumption that all white men are racist here. Instead, I think the reasoning is that the vast majority of white men have benefited (probably unknowingly) from structural racism to the detriment of other groups. The training is intended to make these men aware of that in an effort to chip away at structural racism and its harmful effects.
It has taken us millennia to understand that the burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused.
To claim that someone benefits from Structural Racism is an accusation. Yet Structural Racism is poorly defined and is - in practice - used as a grab-bag to contain any disparity, any grievance, and any complaint. Thus, it is impossible to defend against. Indeed to defend against it is to 'benefit from White Privilege.' Hence the Kafka-Trap book, 'White Fragility.'
There is nothing good about this sort of stuff and it needs to go away.
>The training is intended to make these men aware of that in an effort to chip away at structural racism and its harmful effects.
I can't speak for anyone else, but as a middle-aged white man, I am well aware (and have been for decades) that I've been the beneficiary of white male privilege.
But aside from treating all humans equally, I'm not sure what else I can really do.
Should I interrogate potential employers as to their hiring practices and turn down job offers if the employer hasn't sufficiently included non-white, non-male candidates?
What does "sufficiently" mean in the context of the above sentence? And how should I interrogate potential employers about this?
What if I really need the job to pay my bills? Should I refuse to work at all and end up on the street so I can ensure that I don't receive any special privilege/treatment?
Should I give $20 to every non-white, non-male person I see to "pay them back" for the preferential treatment I (never wanted or asked for) received?
I'm not claiming that institutional and individual racism and sexism don't exist. Quite the opposite, in fact.
And I believe that folks should be (if they aren't already) made aware that these issues are real and negatively affect many people.
That said, unless I'm an employer/hiring manager, all I can do is treat all the humans around me with simple respect and judge people based on their actions, rather than their melanin content or type of genitalia -- traits which are irrelevant to the value of a person.
Edit -- I guess this isn't going to happen. More's the pity:
Perhaps I'm missing something in this discussion.
If so, I hope someone will enlighten me as to
what that might be.
Additional Edit: Apparently, I was wrong. Thank you to those who chose to respond positively rather than just rejecting my point of view out of hand. It's appreciated.
> I am well aware (and have been for decades) that I've been the beneficiary of white male privilege
Excellent. Either you got this training at some point or you figured it out yourself. The point of such training is to make sure that all of us white men understand that benefits we've gotten from systemic racism.
This is not really different from other aspects of education. I spent plenty of time in computer science classes where I already understood the material. I had some exposure to this kind of education about systemic racism early in college, which I completely bounced off of and missed the point of. Future exposure eventually got the message through. Sometimes repetition is needed.
> But aside from treating all humans equally, I'm not sure what else I can really do.
That's a big "aside from". There are many times in my career where I have decision making power or influence on a decision that involves other humans. Being aware of systemic racism and unconscious and conscious biases help me make more equitable decisions. If you are doing similar things, then congratulations, you are probably helping solve the problem. I don't think anyone is asking you to do more than that.
>Excellent. Either you got this training at some point or you figured it out yourself. The point of such training is to make sure that all of us white men understand that benefits we've gotten from systemic racism.
No. No training about this except more than fifty years of living in this world.
I'll summarize in a negative way as that's generally better understood:
There are assholes *everywhere*.
They are men and women.
They are of all ethnicities, creeds and levels of
melanin content.
They are also a pretty small group compared to the
larger population.
But they are well mixed within the population and
appear with some regularity.
Pretty much everybody else are decent, kind people. As such, I give folks the benefit of the doubt unless and until they show me they don't deserve it.
I think you're missing the audience of this training. This isn't about you (and I think that's another issue white men have to get over).
As a "nobody" :), you likely have no power to undo structural racism. Key executives of a company like Lockheed Martin, however, have some power in that regard.
>I think you're missing the audience of this training. This isn't about you. I think that's another issue white men have to get over.
Actually, I think it's about all of us. In the sense that as long as people ignore the issue (or insist upon being deliberately obtuse about it), we're not going to fix it.
I choose to do what I can.
As to whether or not that will make a difference that's larger than just my own personal interactions, I don't know. I'd like to hope so, but it seems pretty unlikely.
But that doesn't invalidate what I do or encourage.
I prefer to model the world as I'd like it to be and act accordingly.
>As a "nobody" :), you likely have no power to undo structural racism. Key executives of a company like Lockheed Martin, however, have some power in that regard.
As I said:
And I believe that folks should be (if they aren't
already) made aware that these issues are real and
negatively affect many people.
No, I can't change the ideas and attitudes of everyone around me. And no, I can't make institutional racism/sexism go away all by myself.
However, I can continue doing what I already do (treat others with respect regardless of their immutable traits) and encourage others to do the same.
That's not the reality.
Once they arrive, these kind of trainings become Compulsory for everybody. Those who refused are fired, with cause.
Well, everybody "white", of course, thus worth being "reminded" of their "privilege". And also their flaws. I mean, if they are white, they are necessarily racist. If they seem not to be, they are just hiding it. If they defend themselves, it's a proof of their privilege, and by extension their racism. If you are a man, you are also a rapist in hiding. Etc.
Just pass a few hours receiving such kind of "training", get it repeated every year just in case, and we'll see how you think about it afterwards.
When I start answering these hard questions about my ethnicity, one result is strong sense of white pride. It's hard to tell if that's the desired outcome or not; I'm skeptical of the sincerity of these people looking for "allies" through insults.
Perhaps 'pride' isn't a long-term useful label. I have chosen 'appreciation' for my ancestors that worked hard and contributed to our civilization.
Once viewed though that lens, you being to see kindred spirits in a lot of other races and cultures. For me, it came to a growing realization that as a white male, I often have much more in common with a new immigrant than I do with a trust-fund white kid that burning the downtown.
>>Instead, I think the reasoning is that the vast majority of white men have benefited (probably unknowingly) from structural racism to the detriment of other groups.
That's not reasoning. That's an unfounded claim or assertion.
Know of any apps like this that are available for iOS? I loved the old wunderground app's graphs and have been trying to find a replacement for ages...
> There were the kids at school who taunted him for his height; a longtime online fan of his artwork who remarked, on meeting him, that Frank was “shorter than I expected”; or the guys who randomly shoved him in the street a few years ago, tearing out his headphones. They wouldn’t have done that to a taller man, he reasons.