Twitter drama: fake persona, covid, and #metoo

[dismalist]

I think it's because you are not Black that you don't know the many ways in which your professional life would be harder. To cite a minor one, you'd encounter people like yourself, people are oblivious to the bigotry and bias that Black people encounter at every level of professional life, and think that Blackness is an advantage.

Tell that to Rachel Dolezal. If there really is an immutable, one-way direction of discrimination, then no-one with "privilege" should ever WANT to "incorrectly" self-identify as belonging to some "oppressed" group. So there would be no reason to disallow it.

That's one rare example. If you put that much weight on a single case in other parts of your life, then I've got all sorts of snake oil I'd love to sell you!

That's a counterexample to the hypothesis of one-way discrimination. A single counterexample is sufficient to disprove a hypothesis. [One bridge falling down is sufficient to question the design; a second or third of the same design is not necessary.]

No it doesn't. To use the classic example, if I make a claim all swans are white and you find a black swan, my initial claim has been disproven, slightly. But the fact remains that 99.9999999% of swans are still white. The evidence then is most swans are white, not that all white swans are false, as you are claiming.

...

One black swan shows that the hypothesis "All swans are white" is incorrect. Need a better hypothesis: No swans are white, some swans are white, many swans are white, most swans are white could each be true. To figure out which, we gotta start counting. All that work required because of one black swan!

[Stockmann]

My understanding of the kind of self-identification the UCU is talking about is not a philosophy that anybody can say they belong to any race. It's that if you have, say, a white mother and a Hispanic father, and when forms ask for race and you write "Hispanic," they're not going to do a DNA check or demand a genealogy with an affadavit...

Err... define "Hispanic." There are Spanish-speaking Latin Americans, who are culturally Latino and whose families have been in Latin America for generations, who are blue-eyed blonds, others who are Amerindian, others who are black, and plenty that are of mixed ancestry. Add in Latin Americans of Lebanese, Chinese, Japanese, etc ancestry, and that many of the European immigrants to the region had Arab or Jewish ancestry, and "Hispanic" makes absolutely no sense as a "racial" category. It does make sense as a cultural category but in that case it has no link to DNA or genealogy. Or do only "mestizo/ladino" Latinos count as "Hispanic"?

I think you're making Hegemony's point for her, and also highlighting the fact that none of our racial categories actually make much sense (this was the whole point of the 'social kind' talk pages and pages and pages ago).

My point is that her example makes no sense - the white mother could also be Hispanic, and in any case if it's a cultural classification a person could be Hispanic without Hispanic ancestry. Whereas if it was a white mother and a black father, then according to the one drop rule the person would be black regardless of cultural background. Black is an ancestry-based category in a way that Hispanic (if it even makes sense as a category) is not, even if of course the one drop rule is biologically ridiculous.
If a category is ancestry-based, and belonging to it, or not belonging to it, confers advantages (whether official or not), including related to employment, then of course people will try to game the system, from using the most tenuous connections to outright making stuff up. The census, which doesn't confer any advantages, has surely far more honest answers than college applications (and by "honest" I mean "not deliberate fabrications or exaggerations").

[bacardiandlime]

But as far as Zoë Saldaña is concerned, the problem wasn't that she's British, because she's not. She's American. Her mother was Puerto Rican, and her father was a Haitian Dominican. Nor, as I understand the controversy, is the problem that she's not Black--she is, unquestionably. Rather, the problem is that the filmmakers darkened her skin and gave her facial prosthetics so that she could better approximate Nina Simone's look. And that cleaves a little too close to blackface, especially when the people in charge of making these decisions are white men.

Huh? Nobody mentioned Zoe Saldana. The original comment was about the Harriet Tubman film, which starred Cynthia Erivo (who is British). Your mixing up Black women isn't helping here.

[Parasaurolophus]

Huh? Nobody mentioned Zoe Saldana. The original comment was about the Harriet Tubman film, which starred Cynthia Erivo (who is British). Your mixing up Black women isn't helping here.

My apologies, you're right. I had the Nina Simone film on my mind because I read about the controversy, and Saldaña's apologetic response, yesterday.

[marshwiggle]

I think it's because you are not Black that you don't know the many ways in which your professional life would be harder. To cite a minor one, you'd encounter people like yourself, people are oblivious to the bigotry and bias that Black people encounter at every level of professional life, and think that Blackness is an advantage.

Tell that to Rachel Dolezal. If there really is an immutable, one-way direction of discrimination, then no-one with "privilege" should ever WANT to "incorrectly" self-identify as belonging to some "oppressed" group. So there would be no reason to disallow it.

That's one rare example. If you put that much weight on a single case in other parts of your life, then I've got all sorts of snake oil I'd love to sell you!

How about Elizabeth Warren?

[writingprof]

Sorry, I missed the part where you proved or even provided suggestive evidence that your friend's race was the cause of this treatment.  As you may recall from the old fora, many white Ph.D. candidates can tell similar stories of arbitrary rule in doctoral programs.  Not every bad thing that happens to a "B"lack person is due to anti-"B"lackness.  Assuming a causal relationship where non exists is sloppy thinking.  Try to knock it off. 

Give me a break, buddy. You shouldn't go around discussions applying stronger standards of evidence to your interlocutors than you're willing to apply to yourself.

It's entirely possible my friend is an illiterate moron whose work just isn't up to snuff. I know that's not the case, however, so I can easily dismiss that explanation. Since I'm acquainted with people in that department, and know some of the (explicitly racist) things that were said to and about her, I can start to form my own conclusions.

Ah. Congratulations. Your argument that "B"lack people are persecuted in graduate school has now risen to the level of anecdote. That's certainly a step in the right direction.

I don't think it's unreasonable to ask as a white person that if you are going to say identity is the most important aspect of all of us, the reason a VP pick should be chosen, the reason someone should get a job or get admitted to a school, the reason you're allowed to be outside during covid 19 or not, the reason why certain people should be asked to be silent on certain issues and the reason why others should be heard no matter what they say, you should at least have an easily understandable standard of what that thing is.

So, so true.

[Hibush]

[
If a category is ancestry-based, and belonging to it, or not belonging to it, confers advantages (whether official or not), including related to employment, then of course people will try to game the system, from using the most tenuous connections to outright making stuff up. The census, which doesn't confer any advantages, has surely far more honest answers than college applications (and by "honest" I mean "not deliberate fabrications or exaggerations").

This is a good description of the tension between inclusiveness and gaming that any organization needs to address.

To my mind, Twitter avatars may identify as any category they care to be. They are their own imagined thing, so they may or may not be similar to the person writing the posts. The organization, whether Twitter Inc. or the twitterverse can't exactly police that. As a result readers need to take potential inauthenticity into account.

College applicants need to be candid, since the organization asking has specific intentions in regard to the category and need relevant information.

On another thread, we discussed some open-membership group allowing people to identify as they chose. They have the authority to make that decision, and get to accept the consequences of accepting the various judgements members make. I don't think there is a huge risk to the organization from this choice.

(BTW, on this forum, I identify as a blueberry bush. Nobody has challenged the authenticity of my ancestry.)

[Parasaurolophus]

Ah. Congratulations. Your argument that "B"lack people are persecuted in graduate school has now risen to the level of anecdote. That's certainly a step in the right direction.

Thank you. I'm still waiting for the evidence that

If I were "B"lack, my professional life would be better in every conceivable way.

[writingprof]

Ah. Congratulations. Your argument that "B"lack people are persecuted in graduate school has now risen to the level of anecdote. That's certainly a step in the right direction.

Thank you. I'm still waiting for the evidence that

If I were "B"lack, my professional life would be better in every conceivable way.

Gladly. Every job ad in my field implores people "of color" to apply. (Perhaps by next year, search committees will have learned the new shibboleths "B"lack and BIPOC.) My current university offers special perks/funding/opportunities to "B"lack and "B"rown faculty. (Or is it "B"lack and brown? One forgets.) Broadly speaking, there's a movement afoot in my field to end the blind review of manuscripts, as blind review makes it more difficult to discriminate against white people.

Perhaps these steps are necessary. I am agnostic on the matter. But let's not pretend that they don't affect me negatively, or that my professional life wouldn't be better if I could take advantage of them.

[Parasaurolophus]

Encouragement to apply is not evidence of superior job outcomes. (Nor are designated funding opportunities, for that matter). It would be "sloppy thinking" to conflate the two.

[writingprof]

Encouragement to apply is not evidence of superior job outcomes. (Nor are designated funding opportunities, for that matter). It would be "sloppy thinking" to conflate the two.

Please help me understand your parenthetical sentence, which seems to state that "designated funding opportunities" are not evidence of "superior job outcomes."  What are "superior job outcomes"?  The phrase's connection to the application process in your first sentence indicates that it refers to one's chances of getting a job.  That makes sense.  But to say that "designated funding opportunities" don't contribute to one's chances of getting a job is nonsensical.  By definition, the people who get that designated funding already have the job.

[Parasaurolophus]

Please help me understand your parenthetical sentence, which seems to state that "designated funding opportunities" are not evidence of "superior job outcomes."  What are "superior job outcomes"?  The phrase's connection to the application process in your first sentence indicates that it refers to one's chances of getting a job.  That makes sense.  But to say that "designated funding opportunities" don't contribute to one's chances of getting a job is nonsensical.  By definition, the people who get that designated funding already have the job.

Your original claim was that your professional life would have been much easier if you'd been Black. It's not clear to me that the mere existence of specially-designated funding opportunities would make this true, especially if it's not the case that all or the majority or a significant chunk of funding opportunities are reserved for people who aren't like you.

[marshwiggle]

Please help me understand your parenthetical sentence, which seems to state that "designated funding opportunities" are not evidence of "superior job outcomes."  What are "superior job outcomes"?  The phrase's connection to the application process in your first sentence indicates that it refers to one's chances of getting a job.  That makes sense.  But to say that "designated funding opportunities" don't contribute to one's chances of getting a job is nonsensical.  By definition, the people who get that designated funding already have the job.

Your original claim was that your professional life would have been much easier if you'd been Black. It's not clear to me that the mere existence of specially-designated funding opportunities would make this true, especially if it's not the case that all or the majority or a significant chunk of funding opportunities are reserved for people who aren't like you.

If there are lots of qualified candidates from a group for whom there are "specially-designated funding opportunities", then they're not neccesary. If there aren't lots of qualified candidates from a group for whom there are "specially-designated funding opportunities", then it's basically a shoe-in.

[writingprof]

Please help me understand your parenthetical sentence, which seems to state that "designated funding opportunities" are not evidence of "superior job outcomes."  What are "superior job outcomes"?  The phrase's connection to the application process in your first sentence indicates that it refers to one's chances of getting a job.  That makes sense.  But to say that "designated funding opportunities" don't contribute to one's chances of getting a job is nonsensical.  By definition, the people who get that designated funding already have the job.

Your original claim was that your professional life would have been much easier if you'd been Black. It's not clear to me that the mere existence of specially-designated funding opportunities would make this true, especially if it's not the case that all or the majority or a significant chunk of funding opportunities are reserved for people who aren't like you.

As a white person, I have access to the main pot of money.  As a black person, I would have access to the main pot of money (and, let's face it, the informal boosterism of the people who give it out) and a separate pot of money.  I will let others decide which is the preferable situation.

[financeguy]

I remember in the years after 9/11 there was one state university system that told me they did not have "regular" Ph.D. fellowships due to budget cutting, only the "named" variety, which were invariably for a specific group or to "enhance diversity" in general. There was no "general" or "main" pool of money.