Is this really the way to go to promote diversity?
Offline Here's the thread on Skepchick:
http://skepchick.org/2011/06/ai-blinded-by-the-white/#comments
The atheist equality vultures are really swooping in for the kill. And coming from an Indian darky like me, I really feel sorry for white guys. I'm on board with groups being more inclusive but this is just beyond insanity IMO. A white guy should refuse to be on a panel of white guys. The author even goes as far as saying that a white guy needs to be told not to participate on such a panel. The article comes across as a liberal meal with a bad fascist aftertaste. This is not the way to move forward.
The argument is that scientific panels consist of mainly white males because of their "privileged" status in society. And perish the thought that you may disagree with this statement lest you wish to be branded as racist and sexist. And even if there is this "white male privilege" is coercion the way forward to "equality"?
This weekend I watched Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odessey, a few episodes of Sagan's Cosmos, read Hawking's the Grand Design, listened to a few tracks by Rush (Freewill in particular), watched a round table discussion on consciousness among a group of scientists and I ended the day spending time at a coffee shop with a few friends. The artists, actors, scientists, musicians and friends who were part of my nerdfest all happen to be white. Should I therefore be thought policing my daily activities to make sure that there is diversity? Should I flagellate myself for not recognizing the "white privilege" and not making the conscious decision to find something black or female or Indian for that matter? Should I have included a Bollywood flick on my weekend schedule and then say to the world "Aha!!! I'm so wonderful because I support diversity!!!".
Folks, I'm not saying there is no bias that needs fixing. I have admitted my own unconscious bias. Remember the tale of the man and his son who got in a car wreck and the father dies. The son is rushed to the hospital and the chief surgeon says I can't operate on this boy for he is my son. I immediately answered this riddle by claiming that the boy was adopted and the surgeon was his real father. Not once did it cross my mind that the chief of surgery was the boy's mother. I admitted my gender bias here and without any coercion whatsoever, I learned from this riddle to improve myself. And no one forced me to think this way.
I'm sad to say this but sites like Skepchick are no longer my cup of tea. IMO atheist women and minorities will not be empowered by articles that mandate sticking it to white guys who have really done nothing wrong.
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So what is the goal of diversity in the first place?
Really, if the issue is something that I don't follow, there should be some measure for determining when the criteria are met. Absent that, all I see is a bunch of people waving the flag of diversity without any agenda except going after whitey.
As an example, let's say that we are setting up a panel on well, anything at all. Now the selection committee will identify a dozen or so potential members and send them all invitations at the same time. They know that some will refuse the invitation for various reasons (lack of interest, prior commitment, etc.). Perhaps six or eight of the invited guests will accept and we have our panel.
I have been on selection committees for panels in the social sciences before and that is pretty much how we do it. None of the invitees are given the list of other invitees. There would be no real point. People are invited because they have the standing to talk about a specific subject, skills at being a good public presenter and so on. We simply don't have any goal to empower a panel based on some blogger's social agenda. Even so, the panel will be composed of those who accept the invitations.
The only way that I can even see white guilt coming up would be if the letters were sent out one at a time with the list of people who have already accepted attached. I have never heard of any selection committee doing that. If they did, they would have bigger problems to deal with.
Not the least of which would be how any potential invitee would think about why they received an invitation in the first place. Really, if you send the invitations out all at once and take whomever responds, then you have a panel of people who are desirable for academic standing and effective public speaking. If you send invitations out in sequence, then it must happen on some level that you are trying to stack the panel for a political agenda and not for the nature of the topic.
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Maybe you'd be right. Why else would my tenths of gigabytes in musical collection have so much Indian, tribal and otherwise ethnical influence? Not that I could withstand the heat, smell, beggars and intestinal parasites of Bombay's streets, but I'd welcome a manageable bit of cultural diversity to spice up the life. Hell, even gender diversity would suffice for a beginning. It seems men own most of the culture, education and property and women are left with mundane existence and simple joys.
There are of course many exceptions, (like intelligent, educated girls with cultural talents, refined tastes and white skin or not) but they are so dispersed in general population, that they can't meet together physically and make a difference.
As you can guess, I blame the competitive economy for limiting people's life standard and consequentially their access to education and cultural activities.
But boycotting white male people on the panels won't magically get you there ethnically diverse female intellectuals. I don't know, they should persuade Mark Zuckerberg to include racial profiling to Facebook and then search the geographical surroundings for people who meet their parameters.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I'm racially infringed upon and in most cases I shouldn't have a say.
quack quack
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
Is this the right forum for this question? I mean, we're predominately educated white males on this forum. Lol, I, of course agree with you one hundred percent. I make an effort not to discriminate, and for the most part am successful. I live in Canada near Toronto, and I'm glad to say that racist incidents are very few and far between. That being said, as I was learning English, and had a noticeable accent. Every time I crossed the US border I used to get pulled over. It was so freaking annoying. Now that my accent is almost gone, and since my skin is very fair, even though I'm of Latin decent, I never get questioned.
Let me give you another perspective on this whole thing. I used to enjoy when people underestimated me out of hand, back when my accent was thick and it was obvious that I was an immigrant. It gave me a huge advantage when the person I was professionally/intellectually competing with thought me inferior. This is why I now pity bigots more than get annoyed with them. I also never thought I needed any special treatment because I was 'being discriminated upon'.
If I had ever gotten a position to fill an 'immigrant' quota anywhere, it would eat at my ego to no end. I would assume that in an academic environment, with the egos those people throw around, the sentiment would be amplified. Anyways, I agree this whole get whitey thing is idiotic. The only thing the 'quota' mentality promotes is contempt, mediocrity and if anything, highlights the very faults it is meant to compensate for. If you should hire an inferiorly performing female, over a more qualified male, it would just look as though the female couldn't do the job as well. When in fact it has nothing to do with gender, but the level of qualification.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
I think that to reduce racism and sexism everyone needs to spend less time thinking about race and sex. Sometimes when people have unconscious biases it is necessary for them to think about their biases in order to correct them, but I also think that spending to much time thinking about race and sex might make thing worse instead of better. People should think about those around them as people first and not as men woman, Black, White, Hispanic etc.
It is for some people to get something for nothing. As a white male you're expected to mind yourself and pretend that it's not.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
and I work on the other side so it's like living in another country mostly. Funnily, the US, Australia, the UK, Canada are far less homogeneous than places like India, Japan, China, Africa - even Hong Kong seems monochrome compared to Sydney. If I have any gripe with this it's that there's clear division between the different communities. We might cross paths at work, but otherwise not. Maybe the kids coming through will do things better. Probably.
White guilt. I'm sure only white libs could ever come up with it. Be sorry for the mistakes of the past, by all means, and learn from them, but the way things are trending, all European achievement will be considered shameful and only the secret ways of the 'noble savage' will have any serious meaning.
Personally, I've always liked whole rainbow coloured star trek community thing but the fact is humans don't always work that way and it's not because of 'whites'. It's because of humans.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
where does it leave me with indian,spanish and african heritage ?