you keep using that word

Wed Sep 3 20:06:45 BRT 2014

the source: http://www.garann.com/dev/2012/you-keep-using-that-word/

On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 7:37 PM, Bráulio Bhavamitra <braulio at eita.org.br>
wrote:

> found this occasionally when looking on a pjax developer. it really
> reflects my thoughts! you keep using that word
>
> I keep seeing the word “meritocracy” pop up, mostly in discussions that
> seem to have stemmed from Faruk Ateş’ “A primer on sexism in the tech
> industry”
> <http://www.netmagazine.com/features/primer-sexism-tech-industry>. Do
> yourself a favor, don’t go googling. It’s the same shit:
> “Sexism isn’t real because I’m a woman and no one did the sexism to me!”
> “Women resent being treated as women instead of being evaluated solely on
> their capabilities!”
> “You’re a sexist moron!”
> “Some people called me a sexist moron after my moronic sexist blog post
> and it hurt my little feelings and I’m leaving the internet!”
> “You GUYS, remember this is supposed to be a *meritocracy*.”
>
> Except no. No it fucking isn’t. Because a meritocracy is not a real thing.
> It is a joke.
>
> The word meritocracy comes from a political satire
> <http://home.uchicago.edu/~aabbott/barbpapers/barbmerit.pdf>. It was
> never meant to be something we should aspire to. It was the opposite,
> actually, a warning about how we rationalize what we believe we’ve
> “earned”. If that sentence doesn’t seem to you applicable to the tech
> industry and our cyclical discussions about sexism, racism, and even
> occasionally classism, go get yourself another cup of coffee.
>
> There’s some dumb bullshit in one of the current crop of reaction posts
> waxing poetic about “hacker culture,” and its freedom of speech and lack of
> PC dogma. Hacker culture was a bunch of white dudes. Hacker culture is a
> great example of a meritocracy. Some of the most privileged of the
> privileged got together and formed a community around the idea that they
> were smarter than everyone else. They created an arbitrary set of metrics
> for membership and according to their metrics, they triumphed. This was the
> first time in the history of the world white men had experienced the
> elation of peer recognition.
>
> A meritocracy is not a system for locating and rewarding the best of the
> best. If it were, the “best of the best” in almost every goddamned industry
> or group on the planet would not be a clump of white men. I’m having
> trouble finding good stats on this, but white men are something like 8% of
> the world’s population. When you go to a fucking conference and you look
> around at all the white dudes, do you really honestly think, “Wow! What a
> bizarre fucking statistical anomaly it is that basically everyone with the
> special magic gift of computer programming happened to be born into a teeny
> tiny little demographic sliver of the population”? Of course you don’t. You
> don’t think about it. You focus on telling yourself that you’re supposed to
> be there, because you’re so fucking smart, and if other people were as
> smart or, if you prefer, they were “technically inclined,” they could be
> there just as easily.
>
> A meritocracy is a system for centralizing authority in the hands of those
> who already have it, and ensuring that authority is only distributed to
> others like them or those who aren’t but are willing to play by their rules.
>
> Somebody on twitter told me that when the computer industry was
> overwhelmingly female, it was due to merit. I think that makes a really
> good counterpoint to this meritocracy bullshit. Because no, it was not due
> to merit. Merit didn’t fucking enter into it. Most of those women had no
> experience in the industry and – even if we accept the lol-worthy premise
> that merit can be objectively measured – there was no way to evaluate their
> merit as computer scientists. That’s not to say we shouldn’t use that as a
> template. We absolutely should. Those women had jobs and were happy to have
> them. They worked hard. Those who stood out did so because they had
> demonstrated that their work was good (through their work, not through
> their savvy) and because standing out and advancing the field was necessary *to
> their work*. I would rather work with a roomful of those women than with
> the arrogant, privileged brats our industry too often recognizes “merit” in
> these days.
>
> If we met the utopian ideal we toss around in blog posts, we’d still have
> lots of middle-aged women in this field. We’d have black people. We’d have
> Asian people – not a smattering, but a majority, cause the world is mostly
> Asian people. We’d have an even ratio of men and women. Because if there’s
> one thing I’ve learned after sixteen years in this career, it’s that if a
> middle-class white boy who literally never had a job before getting a sweet
> internship at some cutting edge technology company can eventually, through
> practice, become a passable computer programmer, anyone can do it. If
> there’s one thing I’ve learned after thirty-three years of being alive,
> it’s that if you see middle-class white boys flocking in droves to a
> particular career path, it’s a pretty fucking easy job and you should try
> and get yourself one like that.
>
> I guess that’s a little mean. Sorry, middle-class white boys. I’m not
> calling you dumb. I’m calling you soft. I’m calling myself soft, also, and
> everyone else who works in this field. What a meritocracy really protects
> us from is challenge. If we don’t even allow most people through the gates,
> we don’t have to worry that we might pale in comparison to them (pun
> intended). There will always be a place for us in an industry we keep
> others out of. That’s why we should seek out diversity – because the lack
> of it makes us weak.
>
> If you give a shit about this industry’s goals beyond making yourself look
> smart and cool, for fuck’s sake, stop calling it a meritocracy.
>
> --
> "Lute pela sua ideologia. Seja um com sua ideologia. Viva pela sua
> ideologia. Morra por sua ideologia" P.R. Sarkar
>
> EITA - Educação, Informação e Tecnologias para Autogestão
> http://cirandas.net/brauliobo
> http://eita.org.br
>
> "Paramapurusha é meu pai e Parama Prakriti é minha mãe. O universo é meu
> lar e todos nós somos cidadãos deste cosmo. Este universo é a imaginação da
> Mente Macrocósmica, e todas as entidades estão sendo criadas, preservadas e
> destruídas nas fases de extroversão e introversão do fluxo imaginativo
> cósmico. No âmbito pessoal, quando uma pessoa imagina algo em sua mente,
> naquele momento, essa pessoa é a única proprietária daquilo que ela
> imagina, e ninguém mais. Quando um ser humano criado mentalmente caminha
> por um milharal também imaginado, a pessoa imaginada não é a propriedade
> desse milharal, pois ele pertence ao indivíduo que o está imaginando. Este
> universo foi criado na imaginação de Brahma, a Entidade Suprema, por isso
> a propriedade deste universo é de Brahma, e não dos microcosmos que também
> foram criados pela imaginação de Brahma. Nenhuma propriedade deste mundo,
> mutável ou imutável, pertence a um indivíduo em particular; tudo é o
> patrimônio comum de todos."
> Restante do texto em
> http://cirandas.net/brauliobo/blog/a-problematica-de-hoje-em-dia
>

-- 
"Lute pela sua ideologia. Seja um com sua ideologia. Viva pela sua
ideologia. Morra por sua ideologia" P.R. Sarkar

EITA - Educação, Informação e Tecnologias para Autogestão
http://cirandas.net/brauliobo
http://eita.org.br

"Paramapurusha é meu pai e Parama Prakriti é minha mãe. O universo é meu
lar e todos nós somos cidadãos deste cosmo. Este universo é a imaginação da
Mente Macrocósmica, e todas as entidades estão sendo criadas, preservadas e
destruídas nas fases de extroversão e introversão do fluxo imaginativo
cósmico. No âmbito pessoal, quando uma pessoa imagina algo em sua mente,
naquele momento, essa pessoa é a única proprietária daquilo que ela
imagina, e ninguém mais. Quando um ser humano criado mentalmente caminha
por um milharal também imaginado, a pessoa imaginada não é a propriedade
desse milharal, pois ele pertence ao indivíduo que o está imaginando. Este
universo foi criado na imaginação de Brahma, a Entidade Suprema, por isso
a propriedade deste universo é de Brahma, e não dos microcosmos que também
foram criados pela imaginação de Brahma. Nenhuma propriedade deste mundo,
mutável ou imutável, pertence a um indivíduo em particular; tudo é o
patrimônio comum de todos."
Restante do texto em
http://cirandas.net/brauliobo/blog/a-problematica-de-hoje-em-dia
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