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Aamer Rahman (Fear of a Brown Planet) - Reverse Racism

FEAR OF A BROWN PLANET · 3.4M views · 2013-11-28 · 2:49

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Overview

Aamer Rahman of Fear of a Brown Planet delivers a stand-up routine on so-called reverse racism, arguing about power imbalance and why criticism of a dominant group is not equivalent to racism.

On Hacker News

Pointed to as a comedic but clear explanation of power dynamics in discussions of race and diversity in tech.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2013–2016

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What people said

spacemanmatt · 2015-04 · Strong recommendation

There are a lot of ways to explain that power imbalances are critical context to racist statements. Yes, when black people say racist things in America, it's racist, but when white people do it, it's racism. But the very best explanation is long-form stand-up comedy. If you don't understand, you really should watch this. [VIDEO]

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smtddr · 2015-04 · Recommendation

First, I downvoted your comment for the excessive negativity/abuse in it. You could have made your point just as clear without them. Second, I'm going to take your comment to point out something I've noticed when talking about sexism/racism. I'm going to call this theory of mine "Calibration". When I hear people say stuff like "What about letting [underrepresented group] choose what they want to do with their lives?" , I've come to believe that most are not trolls and they're probably not actually actively racist[1]. It's a difference in calibration. Perhaps you believe by default these kids are at a neutral(zero) level and have the full power of choice right now. But, what I see is that society actually puts them at like a negative 5. You see these efforts as forcing them to go into tech, a +5 if you will. I see it as just bring them up to 0 from the -5 society put them at so they have the same sense of free choice you & I do. This vid I think is also based on the calibration idea when it comes to "Reverse racism" [VIDEO] . Basically, it talks about the underlying assumption that the current state of things is neutral for everyone so any effort to improve standings for a group is unfair to the groups not getting help. It's like how every year on Google+, when the LifeAtGoogle account posts something like Black Appreciation day during Black history month, someone always asks "When is White appreciation day?" . Or when people talk about BlackGirlsCode.com, someone says "I bet

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jdunck · 2013-12 · Recommendation

That people are reading this subthread and finding common cause with this right here... Do you realize how ridiculous you are? If you would like to know what racism is and why criticism of a dominant group on the basis of race isn't in, here's one take: [VIDEO] But you'd have to listen to get it, and you'd definitely have to give up your bullshit self-serving circular "logic".

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Sources

Video by FEAR OF A BROWN PLANET, played through YouTube.

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