I wish we would transcend to a point where we look up to people based on their achievements and separate their race from it.
I’m Asian btw. I can relate to Lebron just as much as I can relate to Neil Armstrong or Satya or Matz or Woz or Marie Curie because they are all excellent at what they did/do.
I want to be excellent like them. Because we all are humans.
It's interesting to me seeing all asians and pacific islanders lumped together and excluded from most DEI efforts because HR departments think there's too many of you already and that you're too white-adjacent. Seems like blatant racism to me.
This is exactly the way normal anti-racism was up until recently. It's how MLK wanted it to be and it's pretty much how the US was treating it up until the last decade. Somehow we've switched in the last few years to the point where skin color and/or specific race is the MOST important attribute someone has.
Diversity based on skin color is absolutely asinine. You can have a multitude of poc in one room but if their backgrounds and the groups they associate with are all the same, then their thinking is all going to be alike.
From a very sincere position, can you link to your sources for 'how MLK wanted it to be' and 'how the US was treating' DEI?
Unless we were all in the same positions within our careers since the time of MLK to now (and I'll also ignore some other confounders, like the fact that many black Americans could not easily attend college in the time of MLK), I wonder whether a recency bias may explain the differences you are reporting.
A link to sources? Really? Come on man, you've got to do a little work yourself here.
All you need to do is read what DEI is striving to do and listen to MLK's "I have a dream" speech when he specifically states he doesn't want a society where we judge the character of people on skin color but instead merit. This is something you should have learned in elementary school if you're an American. Are you trying to claim this isn't the case?
Explain to me how making everything equitable and inclusive for specific class oppressed poc isn't basing things on skin color vs. merit? This is a logical test, not one that needs sources.
Here's another test for you - explain how you make everyone equitable without lowering the higher achievers in society down to the average? Do you think it's possible to make under-achievers the same intelligence, physical capability as higher-achieving people?
I was being very charitable - it seems you are asserting knowledge of Dr. King's canon of work based on your memory of a very meme-ified quote.
I also requested information about how the US used to treat racial equity better in the past; do you have any such evidence?
> Explain to me how making everything equitable and inclusive for specific class oppressed poc isn't basing things on skin color vs. merit? This is a logical test, not one that needs sources.
The quote you reference mentions character. The issues at hand are whether hiring ignores qualified candidates based on their skin color. I understand that you wish for a colorblind world but this is not the world we live in. I suspect that it is easy for you to forego a 'patch' in our current situation because the problems at play do not affect you. To rephrase, because you're not running an affected version of a problematic script, nobody should be allowed to install a hotpatch. Better to wait for the perfect v1.0 to be released.
> Here's another test for you - explain how you make everyone equitable without lowering the higher achievers in society down to the average? Do you think it's possible to make under-achievers the same intelligence, physical capability as higher-achieving people?
This is the perennial boogeyman and strawman. I think the reason it comes up is to make those who have enjoyed unappreciated benefits feel that their experience relates solely to their ability.
One of the best pitchers in baseball history never had a chance to play in his prime. Why? Because of an accident of his genetics.
With the arguments you set up, I surmise that you would argue that expending any effort to finding such good, but unappreciated, players necessarily debases all players; let's leave the greats in the dust to ensure that the sons of the wealthy get to play the game.
I would say that it is a disservice to humanity not to explore every option to uncover wasted talent.
We will disagree on this, but I encounter brilliant people whose life stories hinge on just one lucky break regularly. When I am confronted by the mammoth systemic inequalities the United States has imposed against some of its daughters and sons for hundreds of years, I am motivated to spend an extra moment to find qualified candidates in unappreciated venues.
Finally - your argument presupposes that every job search finds the best candidate. This may be a surprise to you, but as someone who hires, the candidate I end up with is as much defined by the vagaries of chance as by the candidate's ability. This is not controversial to any one who hires and is indeed a confound that we all must consider.
One key factor in someone getting their foot in the door is knowing someone who can contact me. Is this fair? Do I lower the average quality of all candidates if I use this very common source of referrals?
"Dr. King's canon of work based on your memory of a very meme-ified quote"
It's part of his most famous speech which follows the same line of thinking throughout... nice try with the gaslighting though.
"One of the best pitchers in baseball history never had a chance to play in his prime. Why? Because of an accident of his genetics."
Absolutely not, he missed out on playing because people back then decided to base hiring off of skin color (white skin) instead of basing it off of merit (pitching skill). The irony here is that you're trying to bring us back to that same exact pre civil rights era mindset. Somehow your cognitive dissonance has twisted your racism into being a good thing and justified it.
> It's part of his most famous speech which follows the same line of thinking throughout... nice try with the gaslighting though.
You're still side-stepping my line of questioning. This is like reading a module name and assuming you understand the code.
> Absolutely not, he missed out on playing because people back then decided to base hiring off of skin color (white skin) instead of basing it off of merit (pitching skill).
This is just you trying to contort my argument to fit your perspective. I wish you luck learning anything that doesn't match your opinions.
You cannot claim past bias on skin color and argue for future bias on skin color. That is what you're doing and it's cognitive dissonance. You need to break down your arguments to their base, instead you're just putting a cognitive block in place to stop yourself from doing that.
Are you trying to deny his skin color kept him from pitching? By your own admission this pitcher was good and was only stopped due to his skin color. Therefore, the fix is to look at the skills he had as pitcher and drop the irrelevant skin color requirement, correct? And yet you're here trying to promote switched bias where we look at skin color FIRST instead of merit. That is the base of your argument whether you want to admit it or not.
You can falsely claim MLK didn't want a society based on merit and wanted skin color to count for everything, I don't really care, it's not all that relevant to my point. Arguing that some people might have an underlying bias for skin color also isn't really relevant. We do not, as a society, just stop trying to move forward because a few outliers might impede 100% progress.
I DO want a society based on merit because the alternative is a complete collapse of what we have. A society based of diversity of skin color (which is a really superficial useless diversity) above merit based skills is a dead society.
"I wish you luck learning anything that doesn't match your opinions."
Are you looking for someone to just be submissive to what you're claiming and not challenge you? Are you sure I'm the one that needs "luck" here?
Just for your reference, here is another Martin Luther King quote. I encourage you to read more of an author's work before quoting in the future:
From Why We Can't Wait : "Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic."
---
Some more to help bolster your MLK canon:
*In 1965 the writer Alex Haley interviewed King for an interview that ran in Playboy Magazine. Haley asks him about an employment program to help "20,000,000 Negroes." After expressing his approval for it, King estimates that such a program would cost $50 billion.
Haley then asks: "Do you feel it's fair to request a multibillion-dollar program of preferential treatment for the Negro, or for any other minority group?"
King: "I do indeed. Can any fair-minded citizen deny that the Negro has been deprived? Few people reflect that for two centuries the Negro was enslaved, and robbed of any wages--potential accrued wealth which would have been the legacy of his descendants. All of America's wealth today could not adequately compensate its Negroes for his centuries of exploitation and humiliation. It is an economic fact that a program such as I propose would certainly cost far less than any computation of two centuries of unpaid wages plus accumulated interest. In any case, I do not intend that this program of economic aid should apply only to the Negro; it should benefit the disadvantaged of all races."*
People are impatient. Changes that take a few generations to notice are too slow. Instant gains now now now. We learned identity politics worked for LGBTQIA so we deployed them for BIPOC as well. The ends justified the means. The ends are undefined.
I always get confused when people say they need to have people who look like them in prominent roles in order to feel welcome in a hobby/career/whatever. I'm a fan of boxing, and my favorite boxer is a black Muslim. I do some hobby-level game dev on the side, and most of my favorite devs that I look up to are Japanese. Young black men seem to disproportionately love Dragon Ball Z, with an Asian-appearing main character based on the Chinese epic Journey to the West whose hair turns blond when he gets angry and powers up.
Dragon Ball Z was introduced into lower income neighborhoods via Cartoon Network among many other anime, so it was hard to miss. It was pretty hard to miss Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z and etc. in elementary school especially with the merch kids brought to school. Marketing, re-runs and perceived coolness/epicness, I'd say drove the continued popularity of it. Once you hit high school and college though, Dragon Ball Z/Pokemon are niche and less visible (it stopped being cool and a relic of age) at least that was my experience in low income neighborhood. DBZ is still awesome because of its familarity, but not something I will watch intentionally.
Goku being Japanese and loved by people of lower income is like how Final Fantasy 7 is beloved in predominately white (western) countries. There's still discussions of people thinking Cloud Strife is white even though he is Japanese.
Race, in general, isn't a big deal when you are younger since it is not taught in schools (shockingly to some people :O). It becomes an issue when people actively start generalizing and using tropes for the purposes to make you feel like shit (in)directly.
Cloud isn't Japanese. He is a fictional character from a fictional planet.
And Goku isn't Japanese either; he is Saiyan, an Alien race.
> Race, in general, isn't a big deal when you are younger
It isn't a big deal, if you're not impacted by it (colloquially known today as 'privilege').
However, what you might not believe is a big deal, is arguably a big deal to other people.
A few examples:
You may not be aware that black women in the US are 3-times more likely to pregnancy related issues than white women. There is a downstream impact on the children of those women. [1]
Separately, there still exists a serious gap in achievement for Alaska Native / American Indian children.
Let's be honest here, a creator can make Apples be purple and slightly deformed and call it Banora Apples, but it's still an apple. Plenty of people who like DBZ or FF to debate with on how to classify said characters based on traits such as skeletal structure, influences from the creator, etc. These classifications, I don't think about much when playing games in general, not that much of a fanboy in trying to identify with any character. Gonna have to find someone else here to debate with on any particular character's race or racial influences.
You clearly misread. Elementary and even some high school school kids don't think about "race" until it is pointed out in some way whether by a national event or cited as bullying reason etc. How you could extrapolate that to "race doesn't matter", I have no clue other than a misread whether intentional or not.
Japanese isn't a race it's a nationality and/or ethnicity, and neither Goku nor Cloud are from Japan nor do they share any real cultural traits with Japanese people.
You've changed crux of your argument (or perhaps clarified what you inteded to argue) to now be what school age children do or do not think; though that isn't very compelling as neither you nor I are capable of reading minds. However the comment I did respond to was clearly written--"Race, in general, isn't a big deal when you are younger..." and it clearly can be a big deal to young people; just perhaps not a big deal to you.
Don't know how you can say that with a straight face. You got me laughing right now. [1] shows clear influence by Japanese culture. With Japanese language symbols in each creation, again, I can't see how your claim stands that there is no influence. I could never say that creations are not influenced in any way by the world we live in. Race/Nationality/Ethnicity tend to be used in an intertwined manner these days so I have to believe you are not being of good faith here. It's 2023, so you can read it as Pokemon and DBZ are of Japanese origin and leave out the fluff. If we really used the race term literally, it wouldn't be used at all to describe differences between people in the human race.
I've changed nothing. You misread it and I clarified it for you to come to an understanding. Race/Skin Color/Nationality, whatever it is you want to read it as with the negative connotations assigned, isn't something any young-in thinks about on a daily basis without it being pointed out in some way.
Anyway, I'm not interested in going on circles on this. I would know about said experience given my own culture and interactions. No one needs to reads minds to give anecdotes about their life experience and talk to other people in the same situation about their life experience and thoughts about things that happen(ed) to this day.
There's no country called 'Japan' in Final Fantasy VII, so I don't know why you're so confidently stating that. The closest analogue is Wutai, and Cloud's not from there.
Assuming you’re white and male: there are loads of white boxers and game devs! And you probably know some of them!
Think about how men feel about traditionally femme activities which may be stigmatized for hetero men. If you see even one other straight man get their nails done at a salon it sort of implicitly opens that door to you.
Not sure about getting a manicure, but speaking as a hetero man, getting a pedicure is amazing and I recommend every person with the means to, try it once.
If you are someone who has experienced personally harmful racism (e.g. a black boy getting in trouble at school for things that white boys routinely get away with), then it is helpful to see a counterexample of what is possible in society for someone who has the same potential to be targeted by discrimination.
Are you truly confused or is it that you choosen not to listen to the reasons “people” have for finding value in representation?
Does your comment mean that because your human experience is different than other people that you find it difficult to understand how others may think and feel differently than you?
It's also funny to use the term "Asian". I'm also "Asian" (from Israel). There are hundreds of completely non-related ethnical groups in this vast continent.
Yeah, and what do you call a white Siberian? A large part of Russia is in Asia as well. Asia must have the most ethnic groups, along with the largest population, but somehow they're all one race to the West.
I found that out, when I arrived in this country, and was informed that Indians are their own groups, and Asians referred to Chinese and Koreans (and others).
The 'Asian' tag is a clear racist way, determined by the way one looks.
Lebron's struggles as a black man in America are a huge part of his success story. Not just that he's excellent at what he does. Pretending that race doesn't exist does not actually work in practice. LeBron himself will tell you that.
Lebron plays in a league that's majority black in the footsteps of Michael Jordan, who was the most famous athlete on the planet and on the way to being a billionaire and owner. Lebron was anointed Jordan's heir while still in high school, and he got drafted straight into the NBA with the #1 overall pick. He's had numerous huge endorsements over his career.
Exactly how did he struggle as a basketball player? White Men Can't Jump was a 90s movie, and back in the 80s, Bird was a the great white hope as redneck from Indiana, because the top players were mostly black, and Bird was even called out as unathletic by Dennis Rodman and Isaiah Thomas after he won a playoff game over them in Detroit.
I said his struggles as a black man. As in being raised in poverty in the midwest (not a lot of opportunity for people of his background) and having no real shot at success in America other than selling his body.
>having no real shot at success in America other than selling his body.
Selling his body? Are you serious?
He wouldn't have been able to become a cop, a nurse, a clerk, a financial professional or any of the other thousands of professions that black people in the midwest find themselves in?
LeBron's struggles seem less part of his success story and more part of a self-penned "rags to riches" legend.
Selling his body? Is that what millionaire athletes are doing? Or just the black ones? You mean Lebron didn’t want to play basketball but had no other choice? Unlike us office workers who grew up dreaming of being professional athlete, but weren’t good enough at sports?
> "I would even say that being black was an advantage, and gave him great genetics that he took to the next level with discipline."
Being Jewish was a great advantage to Einstein, and gave him great genetics that he took to the next level with discipline.
Being French was a great advantage to Joan of Arc, and gave her great genetics that she took to the next level with dedication.
LeBron may have great genetics. But if he does, it's because of his parents and luck, not his race per se. Otherwise everyone who is black would have a genetic advantage that they could take to the next level with discipline.
It is racist as hell to attribute to race what are personal qualities. Other than, perhaps, traits that only certain races possess, such as the ability to breath at high elevations without taking weeks to adapt to the conditions.
I’m Asian btw. I can relate to Lebron just as much as I can relate to Neil Armstrong or Satya or Matz or Woz or Marie Curie because they are all excellent at what they did/do.
I want to be excellent like them. Because we all are humans.