zlacker

"Think about what a white man would do" seems completely ambiguous to me. It's not a clear way to communicate. It would be better to follow up "I see you're hesitating to take credit for your work" with specific examples of what she might be able to say. Or you could give examples of behavior that people she knows have exhibited.

Even if "what a white man would do" wasn't emotionally charged (and it is), it's not a good way to make the point.

>>steve_+(OP)
I think it's not a useful exercise to come up with a better phrasing of the advice, as that's not really the point here. When you're in the moment reacting to peoples' questions and giving advice on the spot, you don't have time to wordcraft your speech like this. You'd still mess up once in a while.

Look at how often people tweak, clarify, and edit their comments even here on hacker news. So you'll probably just end up with "stifled" advice (using the terminology from the article), as you can see with all these suggestions in this thread.

>>steve_+(OP)
No matter how dumb it is, in what way is it ambiguous? How could you possibly interpret it in any other way than 'be more confident/less hesitant in taking credit'?

>>steve_+(OP)
I can't imagine how someone would think that is a good suggestion.

Are they implying white men are smarter/better so they always take the right decisions? If that's what they're doing, they're also implying, in this case, she, as a black woman, is not as smart as a white man.

I'm a white man surrounded by mostly white people working on a field with mostly white men and I can't say what a white man would do in certain situations because we're all different and we all think differently.

>>Improb+o2
Clearly, the black female employee didn't interpret it that way, so your ability to empathize may be lacking.

>>Improb+o2
There are some pretty clear alternate interpretations:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613528

>>Improb+o2
It's ambiguous because white men don't all act the same way. There are plenty of non confident, hesitant white men.

>>Darmod+63
A generous interpretation would be that a white man typically mentions their accomplishments without reservation. I.e. they are comfortable speaking up in almost any circumstance. (They most often are in secure in their employment and role.)

>>sackof+f2
There's a difference between wordcrafting and giving obviously preposterous advice like "What would a white man do?"

If I was giving advice to someone who was too assertive and taking too much credit, I would never say "Think about what a black woman would do." Things like this are so transparently racist it shouldn't even need to be explained. You are simultaneously characterizing a race and gender of people and also telling someone else to act like a different race and gender.

The reason the advice was poorly received is because it is nonsense. The recipient of the advice asked the perfect question - "what does it mean to act like a white man?" The OP, when asked, also doesn't seem to know what it means. I'd say there is a lesson there - don't repeat something just because it was will received when you originally heard it. You may not understand it. It may be something of an emperor's new clothes situation where nobody can question the person who gave the original advice, but that doesn't make it good.

>>paulry+Z6
I don't think that's generous at all. It's characterizing all white men. If I told a bad math student to think what an Asian person would do would you take the "generous interpretation" of "study more"?

Why not just say what you mean without the racial stereotypes?

>>ALittl+39
Generous as in assuming the most graceful interpretation. Not intending to bucket people.

>>paulry+qa
Claiming that "What would a white man do?" Is not intending to bucket people has moved beyond "interpretation" and into gaslighting. The entirety of the advice is bucketing people.

"Graceful interpretation" does not mean that you ignore the advice and substitute for it what would have been good advice.

>>ALittl+39
> her advice to her mentee was "Think about what a white man would do" and everyone applaud such an insightful advice.

> Why not just say what you mean without the racial stereotypes?

Nothing is going to win cheap applause at a diversity panel than saying "white man bad".

>>Improb+o2
> No matter how dumb it is, in what way is it ambiguous?

That it is unclear is obvious in that the person using the stereotype couldn't identify the concrete, actionable behavior they intended to encourage when directly questioned.

>>Darmod+63
> Are they implying white men are smarter/better so they always take the right decisions? If that's what they're doing, they're also implying, in this case, she, as a black woman, is not as smart as a white man.

I suffer a bit from imposter syndrome, so I completely get what the GP is getting at, it was just phrased ambiguously.

Here is a disambiguated version: "Imagine what a privileged, entitled, overconfident, upper-midlle-class cishet white dude would do, and do that."

When you speak, people pay attention! Comic books pander to your adolescent fantasies! Your doohickey is the greatest thing since sliced bread! In fact, it's the greatest thing since unsliced bread! You're a frickin genius for dreaming it up! Your LoMoSo strategy is going to make billions for you, the few early employees that don't quit, and the VC that you choose to let invest! You're making the world a better place through scalable fault-tolerant distributed databases with asset transactions! The world is your oyster, and everyone who laughed at you in high school is going to be sorry! Bwahahaha!

Er, ahem. Pardon, got just a little carried away there.

Anyhoo... that advice has nothing to do with capability, talents, skills, or accomplishments, and everything to do with self-promotion and attitude. If you don't toot your own horn, who will?

>>ALittl+z7
I'm not a fan of racialising everything either, but I don't think the intended meaning of that advice is really so obscure. It is something like 'white guys have been socialised to put themselves forward and take credit for things, whereas our society has probably squashed those tendencies in you; but in this setting you would benefit from being more like those white guys, i.e. more assertive and less self-effacing'. It's fair enough to be annoyed by the generalisations, the insistence on bringing race into everything, etc., but I don't think it takes much charity to see that the underlying point is well-intentioned and not obviously stupid.

>>retsib+5z1
There is absolutely no reason to bring race into it. If you need to tell someone to be more assertive, then tell them to be more assertive and give examples of how and explain why. Don't bring up racist generalizations and hope they are interrupted the way you want them to be.

Saying that white men are confident and black women aren't is simultaneous bi-directional racism. You are generalizing white men and black women AND telling black women to act more white?

>>ALittl+1L3
I'm not advocating the race-based approach, just pushing back against the idea that the advice was complete nonsense or hopelessly ambiguous. I can see why someone would say it with good intentions and a basically sensible message in mind. I agree that it was framed in a silly way and that race-based rhetoric and generalisations, even from the 'progressive' side, are usually a bad idea.