https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9143438/

edit: I found a video of this event: https://old.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/1qjfxbj/ice_pepp...

It doesn't show what led up to this moment, but it appears the person was indeed resisting arrest. If you are not resisting arrest, you don't need three officers to pin you to the ground.

I don't use LinkedIn all that much, I'd just like us to be friends in some way.

>Since reparations will likely never happen or even start to happen, then concessions to that fact (like affirmative action) amount to a drop in the bucket. That's why it's disingenuous to point out the fire chief's sexual orientation and people hired as part of affirmative action in LA's hiring practices, because the injustices against them and their ancestors is far greater but left out of the conversation.

This is sort of like the concept of "original sin", isn't it? The notion that certain people have a debt that is so big that it is impossible to ever be paid back, and so they must forever remain burdened with the guilt of the sin that their ancestors committed. The scale can never be zeroed. The guilt can never go away. The transgression can never be forgiven, because the effects linger down to our day.

And this is a good example of that. You say it's disingenuous to point out the role that DEI played in LA's fire planning, prevention, and response, because of an unpaid debt that happened centuries ago. Is the concept of this "unpaid debt" a golden, reusable "get-out-of-jail-free" card that means that DEI can never be criticized?

Given a different disaster, unrelated to the LA fires, we could imagine this conversation: "Sure, we hired the wrong person for the job, but as X people, we owe an everlasting debt to the Y community for hundreds of years of suffering, so don't mourn for what you lost, it's just a drop in the bucket compared to what our ancestors did".

I'm being overly dramatic, but only half so, because this, to me, actually sounds like something someone might say.

In the case of the LA fires, and for the additional reasons you've given, I agree, DEI was not to blame and is being used as a scapegoat. I wonder, if the fire chief were instead a straight white male, and if there was no firefighter that "looked like you" but instead, was capable of saving your life, would people still have blamed DEI, or would they instead shift their focus towards the "real problems" that you mentioned? Perhaps if these people weren't in these highly visible positions to begin with, DEI would not have been undermined as it was.

>A black woman may want to achieve success on her own merits, not because of her identity. When reviewing her resume against a number of white men for example, one way to make it equitable would be to remove race and gender from the application....So we try to be impartial the best we can, while also weighing the needs of the community, such as having more black women represented in our company to make up for the years when they weren't.

That last sentence seems to be completely at odds with the first. If you give preferential treatment to black women to make up for "years" of this type of original sin, you are no longer allowing this person to succeed on her own merits. Imagine that you let this black woman see all the metrics you used to make the decision to hire her, and you showed her the section marked "We need more black women in our company in order to atone for the sins of the past". Do you think she would still feel confident that she was the best person for the job? I think she might sooner feel insulted by 'the soft bigotry of low expectations'.

Merit based is merit based. It should be simple, self-explanatory. A test score, credentials, years of experience, that sort of thing.

>I see how this can be confusing. How is it that giving her this preferential treatment, without specifically mentioning that she's a woman or why I incorporate that into my behavior, is somehow woke? Because through my actions, she can see that I identified the injustice at play and am working towards healing it. Whereas telling her that I'm doing it solely because she is a woman denegrates what she has achieved through her own efforts.

preface: I would like to think that everyone on the board has in mind the good of the entire company, and that the men don't just have in mind the considerations of men, and that the woman is not the only advocate for all the women of the company.

Given the above, what injustice is there? Assuming that everyone earned their seat on the board fairly, without nepotism, sabotage, or shady backroom deals, why do you consider there to be an injustice happening here?

The only way I can see there being an inherent injustice in a board room like this is if my initial assumptions aren't true, and that the men aren't advocating for the concerns of the women. But that would be to assume the worst of people. That sort of thinking is racist and sexist. That leads to tribal thinking, where people think that people from other demographics are similarly only looking out for "their own group".

Sure, as humans, we all have some biases and preferences towards our own "groups" and to recognize that is healthy, but to look at a group of male board members and automatically assume that there is some injustice happening towards the women of the company seems to be too extreme.

>It sounds like you might be misunderstanding how woke etiquette works. It's not about avoiding offense, but changing behavior. For example, say I don't know if someone I'm speaking with prefers the term black, african american or person of color, but the topic of conversation involves race and I must choose. Say the person is my age and I was raised with the term black in the 1980s, so maybe I say black because I'm nervous about sounding patronizing.

That anyone is nervous in this situation is already kind of ridiculous to me. I am black (but grew up with African-American), and if it makes people nervous to just pick one of the words... that's just sad. If this is what goes through the heads of certain people, the need to be lovingly reassured that they should not be made to feel this way, and that anybody who did is in the wrong.

If this is how you feel, I am sorry. This isn't how it should be. Neither should you be made to pay for the sins of your father.

>What I forgot to say most in these answers is why we're doing all of this. It's because as we all work to change our behavior on the road towards equality, the status quo changes. There are countless efforts to make the world more equitable, everything from resisting to protests to strikes. But because not enough people practice wokeism, those efforts are often suppressed. Which creates an ongoing illusion that everything is ok, when countless people are suffering under oppression. That's why wokeism looks performative to people who benefit from the status quo and don't see a problem.

Honestly? It seems that I benefit from the status quo just fine. I don't feel oppressed. I don't feel like a debt needs to be repaid to me. I'm typing on my computer from the comfort of a electrically-heated room. I don't blame anyone for what I don't have, and I would feel hurt if what I do have was given to me by someone who felt that I needed a handout.

I am part of a religion that teaches that all mankind faces, and will continue to face, suffering and injustice, and that all men are limited and inherently flawed. Though some have less than others but we are all equal. What we have does not matter since we can not take it with us. If one among us is suffering or lacks sufficient food, clothing, or shelter, of course we should help them out.

Where we differ is that it seems like you are working towards a certain 'utopia', where the various 'debts' of sin you've incurred have been paid off. In contrast, we have already been forgiven, and have already arrived at our utopia.

I have no reason not to believe that Title IX in the 1980s was misused in a priggish sense, other than what you've told me just now.

He doesn't give any examples of how it was misused in the 1980s, but says "...but since for a professor merely being the subject of a sexual harassment complaint would be a disaster whether the complainant was reasonable or not..."

Did this mechanism support women? Perhaps. Was it also misused? Perhaps. Does it support his argument? I don't think I agree that he has an "argument", so much as he is merely telling a story that he believes to be true, and this bit of history is part of that story.

Even if this was never misused in the 1980s, it laid the groundwork for the future.

>Would you trust women in the 1980s to decide for themselves whether or not they were being sexually harassed by a professor in this expanded definition?

Well, I wouldn't trust anyone, in any time period, to have all the power of a judge, jury, and executioner. What I quoted above from footnote 5 indicates that. If there is any kind of accusation, it should be taken seriously, but it should also go through the proper procedure for determining guilt while presuming innocence.

Handing the female students of the 1980s virtually unlimited power to ruin the lives of others with just a word could be said to be "supporting" them, sure, but that comes at the cost of everyone else.

> So who was misusing this? Basically no one.

He gives no examples of this being misused in the 1980s, but he does give an example from the 21st century with Larry Summers.

> I have not heard of any professors suffering from false accusations of sexual harassment.

What can I say to your anecdotes, except... "Great!" Or perhaps it's not great that dozens of your friends have had such bad experiences with their professors.

I wonder if there are any long term effects of forcing someone to say something that they consider to be untrue? Taken to its most hyperbolic extreme, it could be used as a form of psychological torture, like something out of 1984, where Winston is tortured for not accepting that four fingers being held up is five, or "Four Lights" from Star Trek.

To get one to renounce what they know to be true and accept whatever you say without question is probably the ultimate form of control and subjugation.

For emphasis: "taken to its most hyperbolic extreme".

edit: more realistically, you could say that transgender or gay people might feel like they are compelled to lie about who they are in order to fit in, or in certain circumstances. Surely, if we recognize this as psychologically damaging, then we should recognize all other types of forced lying to be similarly damaging.

Whose comfort gets priority in this situation?

Consider, for example, expanding the definition of sexual harassment to also include creating a "hostile environment".

I think that pg's point is that this expansion to include a "hostile environment" makes it fall under the "eye of the beholder", which makes it a lot more vague and arbitrary. Something being vague and arbitrary is the perfect playground for a prig, because they can essentially invent new rules and enforce them. For one example: Microagressions. What are they? They could be anything, really.

"Supporting women" and "enforcing arbitrary rules" are not necessarily the same thing. One can claim that they're doing the former when they're really just doing the latter.

If you were to make up a new rule and say that men need to bow to every woman within a 10ft radius in order to show respect, is that really "supporting women"? Is that what women want? This is an intentionally ridiculous hypothetical (in certain cultures), but I think it demonstrates the issue that an arbitrary rule is not necessarily "support".

Remember Donglegate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681

Did this joke create a hostile environment? Did the shaming of these people make anything better, or did it make things worse? Was this an example of "supporting women", or was this just an example of punishing people for not following arbitrary rules?

>He says it in black and white, his problem is with minorities standing up for themselves.

Someone who acts priggishly may not be a part of the minority that they are 'standing up' for.

But you don't seem to be open to discussion on this issue, and that's the double standard I'm pointing out. "They do not care about what research say or whether there is harm or not" is what you've said about others, and it seems like it applies equally to you as well.

And since you don't seem to be open to discussion on this issue, I'm going to leave it here. I think my point has been made.

> "they would rather hire literally anyone else if they can add some much desired "diversity""

He feels like his applications are automatically deprioritized in favor of minorities.

I don't know what you're referring to, but if you would like to get specific about it, many authoritative medical organizations, such as the one that presides over Sweden, have declared a halt on procedures such as prescribing puberty blockers to minors. This is an example of a "wait, we need to be more cautious about this", saying that the risks outweigh the benefits.

https://segm.org/Swedish-2022-trans-guidelines-youth-experim...

But here you are implying that the science is already "settled" and that there is no harm. So when you say that one side cares about the research and the other does not, are you completely sure about that?

>If Bill Maher's message resonates with you...The rush you feel is you taking some measure of power from the protected groups that Bill Maher admonished by claiming that they got preferential treatment instead of focusing on the true causes of the disaster.

I chuckled once or twice, but I think it's odd to view that as a way of "taking power away from protected groups", and by these I assume you mean the "diverse" people in charge, such as the lesbian fire chief, and the other woman shown in a clip. I certainly don't feel any more powerful, or even vindicated.

For example, was "power taken away" from white police officers after George Floyd's death? Maybe perhaps in a real way, yes, since, not only is the white officer in prison, departments presumably reorganized and placed an increase emphasis on public relations (as in not appearing racist), accountability, and not killing suspects.

Perhaps, in a similarly real way, these fire departments will be restructured, and they will place a greater emphasis on preventing and stopping fires, and less emphasis on DEI in response to public outcry that may or may not be happening. In this way, you could say that "power" is being taken from "protected groups".

>To blame the failed LA fire response on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is particularly offensive. It doesn't matter if there is an element of truth to anything he's saying. Because there are higher principles to aspire to.

I would agree to that. If we're ranking principles, I would think that the preservation of human life would rank above DEI. Is that offensive to say? I can certainly see how offensive it is to blame DEI where there are plenty of other more immediate reasons why the fires were as bad as they were, but I think we should also be concerned with that "element of truth". We don't do ourselves any favors to ignore elements of truth.

For example, what if the firefighter mentioned in the clip that says "you want someone who looks like you" can't actually save a person from a burning building, because "looking like you" was prioritized over "being able to lift your weight"? Is that an element of truth we should consider before someone actually loses their life?

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>... he's the beneficiary of privilege as a middle-aged white man... There is power imbalance at play in his status. To pretend otherwise is an insult to people who have experienced discrimination or been otherwise suppressed in achieving their own success.

>Specifically, the right way to practice wokeness is to conduct oneself in a manner which recognizes injustice without perpetuating it. What does that look like? It means never mentioning aspects of someone's personal identity or things about them that can't be changed, while being an ally to reform the systems of control that undermine them for those traits anyway.

Didn't you just mention that PG is a "middle-aged white man". Isn't that an aspect of his personal identity that can't be changed?

>For example, in a group with multiple races, creeds, genders, sexual orientations, differing physical abilities, ages, etc, in polite conversation one should never mention anything having to do with those things. No assumptions should be made about someone's familiarity with or stance on an issue simply because of their demographics. Everyone in the group should be given equal respect for their dignity. The group achieves power that overcomes injustice against any one member.

This is the first time I've ever heard of this, so thank you for that. I've actually heard, from other people who call themselves 'woke', that the opposite should actually be done. What you describe here seems more like the "color blindness" of the 1990s, which means that a person should be treated as a person, not as a 'white person' or a 'black person'. You should behave as if you don't 'see' their ethnicity.

So what I've heard from others is that you SHOULD see someone's race, and to not do that is damaging to them. You SHOULD recognize a black woman as a black woman, and not just see her the same as you would see a white man, because to treat them the same would actually be harmful or dismissive of the black woman, for example. That's what I've been told about why 'color blindness' is wrong. You touched upon that point otherwise when you said that we shouldn't pretend that PG isn't a beneficiary of privilege as a white middle-aged man.

Of course, I don't know which is 'correct', your view, or the view I've been told, or if they can be harmonized somehow.

>if a company board has 9 men and 1 woman, but there are an equal number of men and women working for the company, then giving the woman 10% of the speaking time may be equal but probably isn't equitable. If I'm a board member, I'm going to put effort towards giving the woman more speaking time.

Why? Isn't that treating her differently because she is a woman? What about the "everyone in the group should be given equal respect" part you mentioned earlier? Would this be called "equitable respect" instead? Why are the men lumped together as if they are a monolith, as if their concerns can be presumed to be shared, so that they do not individually deserve an equal 10% of the time?

I think this is what PG touches upon when he mentions the dizzying array of rules that one has to memorize to avoid committing an offense. At face value, it seems very difficult to navigate. If I were to throw my own definition of "woke" into the ring for consideration, it would be something like "someone who knows all these rules and how to navigate them".