zlacker

>>saeedj+(OP)
I thought this was a great article. One of the most interesting things to me was how the embarrassment/defensiveness of the white people involved was one of the biggest blocks to the black CEOs in their advancement, e.g. the VCs who "just wanted to get the hell out of there" after mistaking a white subordinate for the CEO.

I've recently been reading/watching some videos and writings by Robin Diangelo on systemic racism - here's a great starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7mzj0cVL0Q. She also wrote the book "White Fragility".

Thinking about that, I'm just wondering how different it would be if one of those people who mistook the employee for the CEO instead turned to the CEO and said "I'm sorry, please excuse me for the instance of racism I just perpetrated against you, I promise it won't happen again." I realize how outlandish that may sound writing that out, but I'd propose that the fact that it does sound outlandish is the main problem. Everyone in the US was raised in an environment that inculcated certain racial ideas, subconsciously or not. We can't address them if we're so embarrassed by their existence as to pretend they don't exist.

>>hn_thr+L01
Robin Diangelo’s work doesn’t seem to me very good or well informed on what anti-racism actually constitutes. It seems mostly like a schtick to sell to HR managers. The way that she essentializes race seems like a bizarre, inverted reification of whiteness (and by extension white supremacy), than any deconstruction or attack on it.

Anti-racism is about taking on the powers and material structures that reproduce racism in our society to put an end to that reproduction. It’s what the multiracial coalition is doing right now, in the streets, forcing changes to laws and policing.

All of this has little to do with your boss paying someone to lecture you about why you’re bad/biased/ignorant. In fact, it’s contrary to anti-racism, because it positions your boss, who controls your life and buys her classes, as the arbiter of what is and isn’t racism.

People would be better off studying the life and work of Fred Hampton.

>>claude+q41
What exactly are the powers and material structures that contribute to the perceived racism in our society?

From my limited understanding of this position, it sounds like the goal is a dismantling of police and courts which form the backbone of a civil rule of law society.

>>nspori+Di1
Systematic exclusion of black people from social programs, like the GI Bill and Social Security, and redlining, which prevented black Americans from building up wealth through homeownership the way white Americans were. "The Color of Law" is a good book on redlining.

To expand on the bit about Social Security, farmworkers were excluded, since farmworkers tend to be not white. It was a nice sneaky way to be racist without coming out and doing so explicitly.

>>zasz+Lj1
Adolph Reed has written on the Social Security exclusions that you're referencing, and the issue is not so clear cut: [1].

The initial iteration of Social Security excluded many types of temporary and informal labor. Although black workers were disproportionately impacted by these exclusions, the large majority (about 75%) of people who were excluded were white. One possible reason why these exclusions were in place is that getting accurate payroll figures for informal jobs is difficult. In any case, these exclusions were lifted between 1950 and 1955.

Keep in mind that Social Security was not the only New Deal program, and things like the Public Works Administration disproportionately benefited African Americans. The New Deal was extremely popular among African Americans, and is one of the major reasons why most African Americans switched over to voting for the Democratic Party. That's what makes the recent narrative that the New Deal was racist (and to blame for today's disparities) so strange.

1. https://newrepublic.com/article/155704/new-deal-wasnt-intrin...