Is this what people mean when they say they don't see skin color?

[alexandraerin]

karnythia recently linked to a news article about people studying the effects of television on racial biases. There was an old bit on SNL's Weekend Update when I was growing up, where Norm Macdonald would read a headline about a recent medical study and then announce that it and other news could be read in the pages of the medical journal "DUH!As others

Comments

Re: potato v potaato

[alexandraerin]

For this to have been racist on HP's part there had to have been a decision at some point that people of color were not an important demographic to market to. I'm not saying that didn't happen...

I know you're not saying that. Have you noticed that I am saying that? I'll say it more explicitly: it didn't happen. Nobody at HP made a decision to exclude people based on color.

I'm open to the possibility of being wrong, because I've seen worse and more shocking displays of blatantly overt racism, but it's incredibly unlikely to me that the company said "This is a white people's camera and it doesn't need to work for anyone else.", to the point that I'm comfortable saying this:

It didn't happen.

Which is why it's a great example of systemic racism. Racism that's inherent in a system. Think about the implications of that. Our society is so fucked when it comes to race (and other things) that discrimination can happen without a single individual person deciding "I'm going to fuck over people based on the circumstances they were born into."

That thought should chill you to the bone, but instead, you find it reassuring that everybody's hands as an individual are clean. I'd say "more power to you", but I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with you having power.

If we build a system that punches every third person in the throat, that system is a problem whether it's an example of poor design or sinister design, isn't it? And ideally we should be able to talk about that problem and why it's a problem without someone jumping into the conversation to issue us a criteria based on unprovable speculations of intention that we must fulfill before we're allowed to discuss it.

You are the problem I'm talking about in the paragraph that begins "I would submit..."

If you could find actual flaws in any of the points I raise, that would be one thing, but no, you just see an accusation of racism and you feel the need to shut it down by dredging up the motivations and feelings of a giant corporation and its employees, like they're the things that matter in a world where the system punches people in the throat based on criteria that are as identifiable as they are irrational and arbitrary.