alt Hacker News> I don’t see your joke as being in any way harmful towards Sanjay aside from potential knock on effects of Jeff Dean being more popular
I mean… yeah. When two people are peers and comparably well regarded, and one is elevated above the other and enjoys increased popularity, familiarity, and respect, and the elevation is because that person's name comes from a culture that is more aligned with the dominant culture and easier for them to engage with… that is a pretty textbook example of systemic racism.
I'm not at all saying this to demonize Kenton. We can make mistakes and reflect on them later, and that's laudable. But it is important to recognize these systems for what they are, so that we can notice them when they happen all around us every day.
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I don't think it's really fair to call it racism. That is such a loaded accusation to levy today that it should only be used if someone really wronged another person.
We all have cultural biases and familiarities, is that wrong? By this definition, we're all racist. Maybe that's true but it kind of ceases to be a useful distinction at that point. I wholeheartedly agree with your last sentence, but I don't know if throwing around the r-word is helpful.
I see. I hadn't thought of it from a perspective of dominant culture. Looking at it that way, it can appear racist.
I looked at it from the perspective of syllable count. Jeff Dean is easier to say by that measure. If Jeff were instead named Alexander Chesterton, would he still be the obvious choice to head the facts? My takeaway from this is that a single-syllable name is perhaps a great boon.
> that is a pretty textbook example of systemic racism.
It’s not “racism.” There’s plenty of Indians with names that are easy for English speakers. Conversely, the same situations would’ve presented itself if the other person was any sort of white Eastern European.
In fact, calling this “racist” is itself racist. I have close friends with family names from Poland or Croatia where we don’t even try to pronounce their names correctly. Nobody feels bad about that. But for some reason if it’s a “brown person” we’re suddenly super sensitive about it. That is differential treatment based on race.
People get awkward about how to pronounce my name because I’m brown. But it’s hard to pronounce because it’s misspelled Germanic! They wouldn’t act that way if I was a white guy with the same name.
Thanks, you explained this better than I could.
I'm not calling myself Hitler here, I think it was a mild offense. But in retrospect the site could have been about both of them, with competing facts, and that could have been really cool. Oh well.
I find the assumption that Jeff Dean sounded better with these jokes because it sounds American to be a bigger issue than immediately acknowledging that it’s probably because it’s less syllables. These type of jokes are rapid fire and a lengthy name just fits better whether it’s ‘Jeff Dean’ or ‘Neel Patel’.