Racism - It's a real thing.

B.B. Hemingway said:
I don’t know about that. I think most of the people I know, and probably in a lot of rural areas, are perfectly content being boring. Personally, I try to avoid boredom way more than boring.
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Well it doesn't always mean engaging in high-risk sports or wife-swapping. For some it's not wanting to be seen as sheep. Conspiracy theories usually rely on making the believer think they are privy to high-level information that threatens the elite powers. It's typically more exciting than the truth. 

I can come up with a whole bunch of examples of why my life isn't boring. But the truth is, it's boring. 

Exhibit A:  Facebook. 

 
Enhance said:
I'm pretty confused by this quote from Rogan in 2017.

To the bolded, I feel like the word has been ridiculously charged my entire life. I'm 32. I've never known a point in time as a white person where it was OK to say that word... or really even for anyone to say that word. It's even a big issue within the black community despite the appearances from pop culture.

Those comments just seem wildly ill-informed.
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He thinks wearing hoop earrings would get people "in trouble"?  In trouble with who?  Pirates?  Gypsy fortune tellers?

 
This isn't an explicit example of racism, but I found the execution and reaction to this Google Pixel Super Bowl ad interesting and problematic. Seems like a lot of other people did, too.

TL;DR for those who didn't see it: Google's ad shows photos of black people having their photo taken in dark environments, lamenting that it's difficult to see themselves because of their skin tone. Google then showcases that their new phone has skin tone technology to help bring out their skin color better.

The reaction to the ad seems to be REALLY hit or miss, particularly within the black community. A lot of people feel pandered too because many of the black people in the 'new' photos have lighter skin tones than the 'old' photos. Or that Google is (jokingly) calling other cameras racist. I myself found the ad a bit odd because it's pretty clear all of their new 'look we solved this problem!' photos were taken in like... broad f'ing daylight. So of course people are going to look better. Lighting is literally what makes or breaks a photo, so if you take a photo in a dark bowling alley... of course it's going to look worse than one taken in the middle of a park on a Tuesday afternoon.


 
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Enhance said:
This isn't an explicit example of racism, but I found the execution and reaction to this Google Pixel Super Bowl ad interesting and problematic. Seems like a lot of other people did, too.

TL;DR for those who didn't see it: Google's ad shows photos of black people having their photo taken in dark environments, lamenting that it's difficult to see themselves because of their skin tone. Google then showcases that their new phone has skin tone technology to help bring out their skin color better.

The reaction to the ad seems to be REALLY hit or miss, particularly within the black community. A lot of people feel pandered too because many of the black people in the 'new' photos have lighter skin tones than the 'old' photos. Or that Google is (jokingly) calling other cameras racist. I myself found the ad a bit odd because it's pretty clear all of their new 'look we solved this problem!' photos were taken in like... broad f'ing daylight. So of course people are going to look better. Lighting is literally what makes or breaks a photo, so if you take a photo in a dark bowling alley... of course it's going to look worse than one taken in the middle of a park on a Tuesday afternoon.
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It’s odd that this was the breaking point for some black people when it comes to pandering. The last couple years in particular, there have been countless moments where there seemed to be clear pandering from companies, celebrities, politicians, etc.

Also, don’t we all look worse when a picture is taken in the dark?

Guy Chamberlin said:
I watched the Super Bowl with a couple I didn't think were racist, and all they talked about was how Black people seemed to dominate everything these days. 
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So making that kind of observation makes them racist? I think people are just tired of race being attached to everything, particularly in the media. Personally, it doesn’t get much more than an eye roll out of me, if I even notice. As mentioned above, most of it feels a lot like pandering.

 
Enhance said:
This isn't an explicit example of racism, but I found the execution and reaction to this Google Pixel Super Bowl ad interesting and problematic. Seems like a lot of other people did, too.

TL;DR for those who didn't see it: Google's ad shows photos of black people having their photo taken in dark environments, lamenting that it's difficult to see themselves because of their skin tone. Google then showcases that their new phone has skin tone technology to help bring out their skin color better.

The reaction to the ad seems to be REALLY hit or miss, particularly within the black community. A lot of people feel pandered too because many of the black people in the 'new' photos have lighter skin tones than the 'old' photos. Or that Google is (jokingly) calling other cameras racist. I myself found the ad a bit odd because it's pretty clear all of their new 'look we solved this problem!' photos were taken in like... broad f'ing daylight. So of course people are going to look better. Lighting is literally what makes or breaks a photo, so if you take a photo in a dark bowling alley... of course it's going to look worse than one taken in the middle of a park on a Tuesday afternoon.
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This is moreso an exclusion/inclusion issue. 

I know jack $h!t about camera technology and lighting, but there are quite a few examples of technological conveniences that do not work as well for people of color as they do for white people. For example, those automatic faucets and soap dispensers in many public restrooms: many of them do not work well with darker skin. This technology was probably not intentionally designed to be racist, but it is a distinct possibility that the programmers or engineers or whoever makes these things were not thinking about how their censors would recognize skin tones different than their own. 

Check out this article: "Bigotry Encoded: Racial Bias in Technology". A few interesting paragraphs:

This epic design flaw may seem hilarious on the internet, but demonstrates a major issue with many technology-based companies: diversity. The soap dispenser was created by a company called Technical Concepts, which unintentionally made a discriminatory soap dispenser because no one at the company thought to test their product on dark skin.

According to Alec Harris, a fourth year Manufacturing Engineering Technology major and the Pre-Collegiate Initiative Chair for National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) chapter, this is an endemic problem within the tech industry.

“If you have an office full of white people, whatever products that come out of that office are more likely to be geared more towards white people. The less diversity there is in a workplace environment, the more likely major design flaws will be present that only affect people of color,” Harris said.
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 facial recognition software has consistently shown racial bias when identifying faces. From iPhone’s face unlock not being able to differentiate between two colleagues in China to Google Photos mistakenly tagging two black friends in a selfie as gorillas, algorithms still fail at recognizing and distinguishing people of color. I'm a black woman and I've even been locked out of my Surface because Windows Hello couldn’t detect my face. Yet the ramifications run much deeper than shoddy cell phones now that facial recognition software is being introduced into policing.

“Facial-recognition systems are more likely either to misidentify or fail to identify African Americans than other races, errors that could result in innocent citizens being marked as suspects in crimes,” according to the Atlantic. 

The consequences are clear: technology is becoming a white people’s brand. Caitlin Pope is a third year student of Applied Arts and Sciences and noted how tech companies run the risk of alienating its diverse users. “If there was more diversity in the tech industry, then not only would there be more products that suit people of every skin tone, but it will develop each company as a brand to unify themselves instead of having consumers say, ‘That’s a white brand,'” Pope said.
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Now in the case of the Google Pixel ad...of course we all look like crap in crappy lighting, and if you have darker skin you "blend in" to a darker environment when a photo is taken. That doesn't mean that the sun or our light bulbs are racist. However, if they are trying to enhance technology so that photographing people of color can be clearer and easier, why is that a bad thing? What does this say about people who have a negative reaction to this kind of accessibility?

edit: Enhance, I believe your point is about the tricky advertising, using lighter skinned models in the sunshine versus darker skinned folks in bad lighting. If their tech is as good as they say, that would be a great thing, but show an actual comparison. Is that what you are saying?

 
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B.B. Hemingway said:
Also, don’t we all look worse when a picture is taken in the dark?
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I mean, lighter colors reflect light better than darker ones. I'm not calling into question the source of inspiration for Google's ad. Black or darker skin-toned people are more difficult to see in dark environments, so we're not saying anything revolutionary there.

Guy Chamberlin said:
I watched the Super Bowl with a couple I didn't think were racist, and all they talked about was how Black people seemed to dominate everything these days. 
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If the correlation is that them saying that makes them racist, that seems like a bit of a stretch IMO. I think their comments are more obtuse or perhaps just a bit myopic than anything else.

That said, I do think a lot of white people have become hyper sensitive about their race and race relations in the last decade or so, and I get it. There are double standards in some cases. But, we're seeing more black and minority voices because of decades/centuries of under-representation, discrimination, etc. Some people just want to pretend everything is on a clean and even slate when it's not always that straight forward.

I plug this book a lot, but I think this is a good read in regards to white angst surrounding race: https://www.amazon.com/White-Rage-Unspoken-Racial-Divide/dp/1632864134/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

I'll be the first to admit that I don't agree with all the conclusions in that book, but it is an eye opening read, and it helped change my perspective on a lot of race issues in this country.

 
Ulty said:
edit: Enhance, I believe your point is about the tricky advertising, using lighter skinned models in the sunshine versus darker skinned folks in bad lighting. If their tech is as good as they say, that would be a great thing, but show an actual comparison. Is that what you are saying?
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Yeah that's effectively my point (although you do have a good post above :)  ) and what a lot of the negative feedback has been towards the ad. 

Exactly like you said i.e. show a real comparison. Don't take photos of people in broad daylight vs. those in a dark, poorly lit room. I think the issue absolutely has merit but the execution of the ad is bad IMO.

 
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