race – Pertinent Observations

On cultural appropriation

Over the last few months, I’ve come across this concept of “cultural appropriation” several times. I don’t claim to get it completely, but I think I understand it enough to comment about it.

Going by Wikipedia, cultural appropriation

is the adoption or use of the elements of one culture by members of another culture. Cultural appropriation, often framed as cultural misappropriation, is sometimes portrayed as harmful and is claimed to be a violation of the collective intellectual property rights of the originating culture

The list of celebrities who’ve been accused of cultural appropriation runs way too long to list here, but it’s basically a popular topic of outrage among the modern left, commonly described by their detractors as “social justice warriors” (SJW).

In any case, my attention to the topic was drawn by a recent essay on the topic by philosopher Kenan Malik. In “In defence of cultural appropriation“, first published in the New York Times, Malik writes:

But who does the policing? Every society has its gatekeepers, whose role is to protect certain institutions, maintain the privileges of particular groups and cordon off some beliefs from challenge. Such gatekeepers protect not the marginalized but the powerful. Racism itself is a form of gatekeeping, a means of denying racialized groups equal rights, access and opportunities.

In minority communities, the gatekeepers are usually self-appointed guardians whose power rests on their ability to define what is acceptable and what is beyond the bounds. They appropriate for themselves the authority to license certain forms of cultural engagement, and in doing so, entrench their power.

In fact, reading the rather long essay, it was hard for me to disagree with him. In fact, it started to make me wonder why cultural appropriation is a matter of debate at all – controversial enough that at least three editors who defended it have lost their jobs (per Malik). In fact, Malik himself was victim of significant online abuse and trolling following his article.

So thinking about this topic during a work break the other day, I found compelling evidence about why the concept is bullshit – basically, it’s one-sided.

The whole concept of “cultural appropriation” hinges on there being a “superior community” and a “marginalised community”, with members of the former not allowed to adopt practices of the latter. This is a one-way street – if you turn the argument around and say that a person from a traditionally “marginalised community” should not adopt cultural practices of a “superior community”, you’re essentially being racist or casteist or whatever.

Consider this, for example – “Dalits should not recite the Vedas because by doing so, they are appropriating the culture of caste Hindus“. It is unlikely that any self-respecting SJW would condone this statement. But turn the communities around, and the outrage on cultural appropriation become legit!

This makes the entire concept problematic, since it rests on a prior of certain communities being “marginalised”. In other words, it rests on a prior of a partial ordering of “communities”, with some considered more advanced than the other. Take away any such ordering or hierarchy, and the concept of cultural appropriation falls flat.

To me, the outrage about cultural appropriation smacks of a sort of “white man’s burden” among SJWs in an attempt to seemingly protect seemingly marginalised communities. All this achieves, as Kenan Malik mentions in his essay, is to empower the self-appointed leaders of these marginalised communities.

Axes of diversity

Companies and educational institutions, especially those that have a global footprint and a reputation to protect, make a big deal about diversity policies. It is almost impossible to sit through a recruitment or admissions talk by one such entity without a mention to their diversity policies, which they are proud of.

And they have good reasons to have a diverse workforce. It has been shown, for example, that diversity leads to better decision-making and overall better performance. Having a diverse workforce brings together people with different backgrounds, and since backgrounds influence opinion, a more diverse team is more likely to have more diversity of opinion which results in better decision making. And so forth.

The problem, however, is that it is not easy to simultaneously achieve diversity on all possible axes. Let’s say that we have defined a number of axes, and are looking to recruit an incoming MBA class. If we want diversity on each of these axes, selection of each candidate is going to rule out a large number of other candidates and we will need a really large pool to choose from. In other words, it is akin to the eight queens problem (where you have to place eight queens on a chessboard such that no two of them are on the same row, column or diagonal). For those of you not familiar with chess, think of it like a Sudoku puzzle.

Since the pool of candidates large enough to achieve diversity on all axes is simply not feasible, firms and schools choose to prioritise certain axes over others, and seek to achieve diversity in these chosen axes. And since they can arbitrarily choose axes that they can prioritise, the incentive is to pick out those axes where diversity is most visible.

And so when you go to a global organisation or school that preaches diversity, you will notice that they indeed have a very diverse workforce/student body in terms of gender, race, and nationality, which are fairly visible dimensions. Beyond this, the choice of dimensions to impose diversity on is a matter of discretion. So you have organisations which seek diversity in sexual orientation. Others seek diversity in age profile. Yet others in educational backgrounds. And so forth.

The result of prioritising more “visible” dimensions to ensure diversity is that organisations end up becoming horribly similar in the “sacrificed dimensions”. Check out this excerpt from Peter Thiel’s Zero to One, for example, on the founding members of paypal:

The early PayPal team worked well together because we were all the same kind of nerd. We all loved science fiction: Cryptonomicon was required reading, and we preferred the capitalist Star Wars to the communist Star Trek

Now, remember that this was a fairly diverse team when it came to ethnicity, nationality and sexuality. But in a less visible dimension, the team was not diverse at all. And Thiel mentions it in his book as if it’s a good thing that they all thought so similarly.

On a similar note, I once worked for an organisation that made great shakes of its diversity policy, and the organisation was pretty diverse in terms pretty much every visible axis of diversity. And the seminars (some compulsory) they organised helped me significantly broaden my outlook on issues such as race or sexual orientation. But when it came to work, the (fairly large) team was horribly similar. Quoting from an earlier blogpost (a bit ranty, I admit):

First, a large number of guys building models come from similar backgrounds, so they think similarly. Because so many people think similarly, the rest train themselves to think similarly (or else get nudged out, by whatever means). So you have massive organizations full of massively talented brilliant minds which all think similarly! Who is to ask the uncomfortable questions?

So essentially because you had a large organisation of people from basically similar educational backgrounds (masters and PhDs in similar subjects), their way of thinking became dominant, and others were forced to conform, leading to groupthink, which might have potentially led to mishaps (but didn’t, at least not in my time).

And what of the Ivy League schools that again pride themselves on (visible forms of) diversity? Here is an excerpt from William Deresiewicz’s excellent 2008 essay:

Elite schools pride themselves on their diversity, but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race. With respect to class, these schools are largely—indeed increasingly—homogeneous. Visit any elite campus in our great nation and you can thrill to the heartwarming spectacle of the children of white businesspeople and professionals studying and playing alongside the children of black, Asian, and Latino businesspeople and professionals. At the same time, because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes, they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it.

So the next time you want to make your organisation diverse, think of which axes you want diversity on. If you are public-minded and want to brag about your diversity, the obvious way to go would be to be diverse on visible axes, but that leaves other issues. On the other hand you could put together a team of people that look the same but think different!

It’s entirely up to you!

On the wife looking Hispanic

So the wife had mentioned to me sometime in the past that many people here in Barcelona mistake her to be Hispanic, and instinctively talk to her in Spanish, which she is not very good at (though she is much better than me, and is taking regular lessons in her university). She claimed that it was because of her skin colour (“fair” by Indian standards, but much darker than white), and “features”.

Now, as far as I can see, she has no Hispanic blood. She is a born and thoroughbred Gult (though her ancestors migrated to Karnataka generations ago). So when she first mentioned this to me a few months back, I didn’t particularly believe her. And then it happened last night.

We were taking a RyanAir flight from Budapest to Barcelona. I was in the aisle seat and she was in the middle seat, and as the drinks cart passed by us, I asked for a Coke (and was offered a Pepsi, and must mentioned that the Pepsi I thus got is nowhere similar to the oversweet Pepsi we get in India. It was actually good), and held a conversation with the steward for over two minutes, speaking in English all the time.

Once the steward had handed me the can of Pepsi and two glasses with ice, the stewardess on the other side of the drinks cart said “that would be two Euros fifty”. Since I wasn’t carrying money (our division of labour (and hedge) during the trip was that I carried the local currency and debit card, while the wife carried Euros), the wife shuffled into her pocket for change.

The stewardess promptly noticed this and immediately said “dos cincuenta” – Spanish for “two fifty”. Clearly she thought the wife was Hispanic! And it is not that the stewardess hadn’t heard me speak to the steward all the time so far, in fairly chaste English!

This must go down as a bizarre occurrence, except that from what the wife tells me this is a rather common issue with her. And she treats this as a feature, not a bug.

Anyway, here is a picture taken on the day that the wife told me that people in Spain mistake her to be Hispanic. This picture was taken in October, on the first day of my first visit to Barcelona.