You nailed why I used this as the example... because it's so easy to dismiss. Here you are giving an example of system racism a pass for being a result of stupidity (not thinking) rather than malice (a deliberate choice). Sorry, Hanlon's razor is not a system for sorting the magnitude or importance of problems, nor determining what is excusable. It's merely a warning against attributing malice.
You will note I have not attributed malice. I'm using the HP product as an example of how systemic racism works and the results it can produce, in conjunction with the broader issue of how racially biased (and racially biasing) media gets put out when everyone we collectively listen to agrees that racism is bad. I'm specifically excluding malice as a possibility here.
But is it not ludicrous to think that HP would ever have shipped this thing if it worked great under even non-optimal lighting conditions for people with darker skin but was finicky or non-functional for white skin?
I think the worst QA process in the world would have caught that if it even made it as far as testing... because the product would have been developed by, calibrated for, and tested with white people. They either didn't test it with a wide enough range of skin colors or they didn't think it mattered that it worked so poorly with darker ones compared to lighter ones because they perceived white-skinned folk as the "more mainstream market".
Either way, arguing about how not malicious it is misses the point... and it's exactly what I was talking about when I said that conversations get derailed into discussions of the motivations and feelings of the people perpetrating/perpetuating racism.
The system that produced this device is racist. The people involved are one component of that system and they don't get a pass, but I'm not mentally fitting them for Klansmen robes.
Anyway, all of those things you list are things that need addressing (and things I've addressed, in some cases), but you're acting like the choice to use HP as an example of systemic racism was done at the exclusion of doing something about it. This is actually a form of derailment... "Why talk about this when there are worse things happening?"
That's great, but there are always worse things happening. The point of this post wasn't to create a big action committee to stir up and agitate against HP. It was to point to an illustration of a phenomenon.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2009-12-22 02:11 am (UTC)You will note I have not attributed malice. I'm using the HP product as an example of how systemic racism works and the results it can produce, in conjunction with the broader issue of how racially biased (and racially biasing) media gets put out when everyone we collectively listen to agrees that racism is bad. I'm specifically excluding malice as a possibility here.
But is it not ludicrous to think that HP would ever have shipped this thing if it worked great under even non-optimal lighting conditions for people with darker skin but was finicky or non-functional for white skin?
I think the worst QA process in the world would have caught that if it even made it as far as testing... because the product would have been developed by, calibrated for, and tested with white people. They either didn't test it with a wide enough range of skin colors or they didn't think it mattered that it worked so poorly with darker ones compared to lighter ones because they perceived white-skinned folk as the "more mainstream market".
Either way, arguing about how not malicious it is misses the point... and it's exactly what I was talking about when I said that conversations get derailed into discussions of the motivations and feelings of the people perpetrating/perpetuating racism.
The system that produced this device is racist. The people involved are one component of that system and they don't get a pass, but I'm not mentally fitting them for Klansmen robes.
Anyway, all of those things you list are things that need addressing (and things I've addressed, in some cases), but you're acting like the choice to use HP as an example of systemic racism was done at the exclusion of doing something about it. This is actually a form of derailment... "Why talk about this when there are worse things happening?"
That's great, but there are always worse things happening. The point of this post wasn't to create a big action committee to stir up and agitate against HP. It was to point to an illustration of a phenomenon.