by zahlman | 2025-09-13 16:25:24+00:00
> Luckily, this information is not hard to find for non-entitled people who don't live in a bubble:

This isn't what respectful discourse looks like and doesn't meet the standard I expect from HN.

> link

There are four quotes given, entirely out of context, "on race". Without looking them up, simply applying basic charity and awareness of basic American right-wing arguments, it's clear that none of them establish what you'd like them to establish.

The first and last do not propose that black people are inherently unqualified for particular jobs or roles. Instead, they propose that employers use discriminatory hiring practices to hire black people preferentially, for the specific purpose of measuring up to some external standard for racial diversity.

It should be clear why many would consider discriminatory hiring practices based on race to be racist, and therefore consider complaints such as this to be in fact anti-racist. There are also any number of factors that could cause a racially unbiased hiring practice to produce racially biased results, including but not limited to: past racism enacted by third parties (perhaps generations ago, resulting in racial correlation with socioeconomic status, which is reinforced by generational wealth); differences in inclination and interest (which may in spring from cultural differences); and workers generally preferring employers of their own race (whether due to actual racism of the workers, low social trust in general, higher ability to make connections in that environment, etc.).

The second conflates several identity markers with a mark of achievement (being in the WNBA) along with what Kirk presumably considered a moral vice (smoking marijuana). But setting up this example doesn't actually associate those identity markers with the moral vice, just as they don't associate them with the achievement (aside from the part where being a lesbian implies being a woman, and being a woman is a prerequisite to play in the WNBA, and if you are about to object with anything whatsoever related to transgender issues then you are missing the point, perhaps deliberately). Possibly Kirk considered being a WNBA athlete a lesser achievement than being a marine, but it doesn't make a big difference to the argument. The point, clearly, is to posit that people belonging to certain identity groups are being held to a lower standard for ideological reasons — which is to say, the same sort of thing going on with the employment examples. In particular, their (supposed) vices are overlooked.

(It's also noteworthy that this source capitalizes "black" while leaving "white" lowercase; this is an example of the exact sort of institutional bias that these arguments critique.)

The third describes a particular pattern of racially motivated criminal behaviour. It seems that Kirk might have considered the killing of Iryna Zarutska to fit this pattern. However, pointing out that these things happen is not attributing that behaviour to an entire race, or stereotyping the race. It cannot be, because it's commonly understood that very few people overall engage in violent crime (society could not have ever existed otherwise). The only "group" that can meaningfully be stereotyped this way is the one labelled "criminals".

Kirk points out race here because, presumably, he is aware of statistics that show racial disparities in who tends to do the attacking, and perhaps in who tends to get attacked. I am deliberately being vague about this because I am not interested in debating the numbers, nor spending time on researching citations, nor in being seen as the sort of person who routinely cites them. But from everything I've seen, it really isn't something that can be disputed in good faith. Again, there are many possible contributing factors to this, and simply observing the statistical fact does not allege any specific explanation.