Tribalism in politics leads to identity politics rather than governance politics. I grew up in Lebanon where there is no single religious majority. Political discourse has mostly been about how different factions (sunni, shia, maronite christian, orthodox christians, etc.) should be represented within the ruling coalition. Deadlocks are common and appropriation of ministries is mostly based on sectarian identity rather than competence. Discourse is rarely about fiscal, educational, or health policy. I think a similar unhealthy situation can exist within open source projects or professional organizations.
I've often wondered what it would be like to work on Open Source projects and contribute to something like that, but I've never done it before. This post piqued my interest, so I read it and followed the links and read the comments and, in general, spent more than an hour on reading the discussion.
Which leads me to my question: is this normal, widespread behavior in Open Source? I'm honestly interested in answers, because, frankly, to me this looked like a boatload of politics. I get enough of that at work.
Is normal, widespread behavior for humans when we are not getting what we want I think!
One practice is to be more conscious of when we're not getting what we want and pay extra special attention to how we're reacting to others as a result.
Greg says he wants Canonical to contribute more to upstream.
Mark probably wanted Greg to not badmouth Canonical.
Now neither party are getting what they want so the question is can everyone pay enough attention to their reactions to avoid a full-blown civil war?
Canonical also ships KDE/XFCE derivatives. I don't hear those camps whinging on about this.
Canonical packages the Linux kernel along with other F/OSS software and ships an ISO and some updated packages. It's not their responsibility to make other people's wishes come true.
Tribalistic thinking is something I've been trying to break myself of over the last few years.
When I avoid it, I end up being better off. I used to be firmly in the "all conservative republicans are gibbering idiots" camp, but was able to break out and have a genuinely useful discussion with one.
He and I still don't agree on most things, but we did convince each other of a few things (he no longer believes atheists are inherently amoral, which I consider a big success). Tribalism wouldn't permit that.
In my anecdotal experience, Canonical hasn't exactly been a shining example of working with the community instead of being tribal. They have open source projects, but they don't tend to go very far out of their way to make those projects useful to other organizations. The pace at which changes from outside Canonical get merged into their projects is very glacial.
But that's just my experience. I'm sure others have had plenty of great experiences with them.
You also should recognize that whether you like it or not tribalism is part of everyone. There always exists the temptation, especially when under pressure or in a crisis, to revert to a tribalist mode of thinking. Tribalism no doubt had adaptive advantages in our past in terms of group cohesion, but it can also be one of the most destructive forces.
Don’t do it because you feel intimidated or threatened or belittled.
I suppose ideally, no. However, it runs against basic psychology to fail to consider the enormity of the motivating force that is this kind of coercion throughout human history. It has untold power. So many things - good and bad, but all having enormous displacement - have been spurred by motives like proving something to someone, showing someone up, avenging an insult, publicly righting a false claim, establishing identity, going through a socially acknowledged rite of passage, validating strength, etc. Sex, money, power...
It seems to me patently self-evident that such forces underlie, in whole or in part, the actual activities of open-source developers, and technologists in general, though the level of indirection that must be navigated in order to see it is often greater than in more naked and crude testosterone plays like much hedge fund management and so on.
Don't pretend that we're somehow above the general liabilities of humanity (if that's how you see them).
First, I agree with the author on tribalism in general and technology specifically, but he falls into another common unwritten trap - all his examples are of discrimination against women or minorities. That's subtly saying - "White males, don't be tribalistic" - maybe the particular author doesn't feel that way, but certainly a lot of people tell Caucasians and men to stop hating/oppressing/discriminating, but ignore very real instances of discrimination and hate against men or Caucasians. No one bats an eye at anti-male/anti-Caucasian rhetoric, which is certainly tribalism. I haven't seen any equality movements to make everyone register equally for the military draft in the United States, for instance, or make traditionally women's work environments more open to men working there, nor are there any advocacy groups for a white person is wronged on account of their race.
Second, mildly contrarian point - if you've never lived somewhere where nationalism/tribalism is rampant, you haven't really experienced it. Yeah, it sucks and produces all kinds of idiocy. But there's actually a few good things about it that never makes it into the literature - if you've never been somewhere like South Korea, you don't really know what it looks like. Frustrating as it was for me as an outsider, I did admire a few points about it. There's an attitude of, "I am KOREAN and STRONG" built into most Koreans - this can be insufferable if you're not allowed to eat at a restaurant, but I also find Koreans to be a bit more confident and proud than people in surrounding areas, and I've some time in all of those places and admire all those cultures. I guess it's unfashionable to say this, but my eyes say there are a few limited upsides to tribalism.
I would guess that the Shirley Sherrod mess is a clear rebuttal to the statement: "no one bats an eye at anti-male/anti-Caucasian rhetoric." Not only were eyes batted, but heads rolled (even though it was an entirely false accusation of discrimination).
Other examples of widely condemned figures who are, or appear to be, anti-white or anti-male: Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and Andrea Dworkin.
I don't know, you picked three extreme nutjobs[1] and one person who looked like they were completely derelicting their duty but it turned out it the evidence was mistaken... I'm not sure there's a clear rebuttal of anything.
But regardless, that was a small part of the comment. The bigger point was about discrimination articles that focus on examples of discrimination against women and non-whites and not the other way around. Seems like that's a bad thing that teaches bad lessons in the modern world. Would you agree that's a bad thing?
[1] I should clarify - Wright and Farrakhan are serious, serious anti-Semites to the point of being totally offensive. Dworkin... well, you can google for quotes from her if you've never been exposed to it.
I was just pointing out that anti-white, anti-male bias is clearly not considered acceptable, contrary to what you stated. The evidence against Sherrod was not mistaken so much as manipulated to project an anti-white bias that immediately got her fired.
In the essay, the examples were chosen to illustrate his point, and were very non-contentious in my opinion. I see no "bad lesson," per say, but I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at.
Yes, but might I point out that it was news that it was unacceptable? It's actually a new development, compared to the past twenty-ish years.
See also the recent spate of articles about anti-poor white discrimination at colleges. Emphasis recent.
Also, the full Sherrod story if you really dig into it is yet more complicated; at first she was clearly racist in the news, then clearly not, then if you really look at the whole story you get something much more... inbetween, to be gracious about it, which when it comes to degrees of racism is still not exactly high praise. I would still not want my government full of people like that; her non-racism is more of the "some of my best friends are white"/"not that there's anything wrong with that" sort of thing than true colorblindness.
The evidence against Sherrod was not mistaken so much as manipulated to project an anti-white bias that immediately got her fired.
The evidence "against Sherrod" was not about Sherrod at all. It was about demonstrating that her audience (the NAACP) is tolerant of racism, as long as it is the right kind of racism. From the original article:
In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer[...] Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”...Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.
Go read the article - Sherrod is nothing but a minor anecdote in what is primarily a criticism of liberals, the media and the NAACP and a defense of the Tea Party.
Yes, a criticism of liberals, the media, and the NAACP, that hinges on doctoring a video to make an innocent woman look like a racist.
The dude she was allegedly being racist to, white farmer, actually went on a bunch of media shows to say how great she was and how she helped them in their time of need. Darn white-hating liberals.
> Yes, a criticism of liberals, the media, and the NAACP, that hinges on doctoring a video to make an innocent woman look like a racist.
Criticism of the media hinges on the fact that they cover some things (e.g. white kids beating up a black kid) extremely intensely, but ignores cases where the reverse happens.
Dude, give me a break. If you're a white American male, and you're gonna whine about the discrimination you face in life, you need to wake the fuck up. Literally everybody else on earth has it worse than you. Grow up and take responsibility for your own situation.
I am not a white American male. I am a young white South African.
> Grow up and take responsibility for your own situation.
This is a bullshit argument. You say that people who are discriminated against are responsible for their own situation. WTF?
If a white person cannot gain entrance into a university (because he is white) or he cannot get a job (government mandated quotas in the private industry and basically a moratorium in the public sector). Here is a simple example: I did really well in my school matric exam (in the top 3 in a province). I applied for over 30 bursaries for which I did not receive a response for an engineering degree. The same companies gave lots of bursaries to black people who cannot complete the degree in 4 years. In other words, they do an extra year of “pre-parationary classes” and then do a 5 year engineering degree (which is usually six). So people spend 6-7 years on a 4 year degree! (I passed mine in 4 years with an 88% average).
Luckily my parents dug deep and I could go to university (with difficulty). If they were just a little poorer, I would have been fucked (and would probably be doing manual labour or something).
By the way, afterwards I studied received a much more competitive and prestigious bursary to study further overseas. So apparently I was not good enough for SA universities but elite university in a foreign country is OK. That is what I am doing now.
What you should also bear in mind is that it is usually white people of lower socio-economic status that is the hardest hit. Not everyone can be an engineer, etc... Discriminatory policies create a lot of poverty among them and create a continual poverty trap. It also seems that there is a lot of hate (among both black and white people) for poor white people. It is even common to use slurs against them (e.g. white trash).
Really? You know that my parents were piss poor, and it is just through luck (and hard work) that I've achieved anything in life.
But yeah. I was recently insulted by an American person (apparently referring to someone you just met as “[Racial expletive] are the worst people in the world” is okay as far as white South Africans go). Apparently my mere existence as a white South African is offensive to some. Two months ago someone said that my first language did not exist. WTF? 6 million people speak it, I am pretty sure that it is a real language.
What would you have white South Africans do? A third immigrated and almost a third is in squatter camps. The third that is rich doesn’t really help the rest that is dirt poor. Should we just organise a mass suicide like a sect or something? Would that be acceptable to you?
Well, your parents being poor isn't a racial matter. If you were black, you'd catch more crap in most countries. In most countries on earth (and I believe this is true in south africa as well), it's just plain easier to be white. So good for you for achieving whatever you have in life and overcoming whatever obstacles you've overcome, but the world's racial intolerance of white people isn't one of those obstacles.
> In most countries on earth (and I believe this is true in south africa as well), it's just plain easier to be white.
This is your naivety speaking. A poor white person in South Africa is fucked. Here is why:
- It is impossible to get any type of government job (includes military, government owned institutions such as Transnet, Eskom, Telkom, etc…).
- White people are not eligible for any scholarships or bursaries (government or otherwise).
- Entrance into university is determined by racial quotas. For a white person going to a fancy private school, it is possible – but not for a poor white person that has to go to a government school.
- It is very difficult for a young white person to get a job in the private industry. Because companies have quotas, they have to preferentially hire black people. White people with scare skills can get a job – but for manual labour, it is easy to preferentially higher a black person.
- Rich White and black people look down on poor white people.
- Many middle income white people received “severance packages” to make space for black people (both private and government jobs). This is basically their pension as a lump sum. Many had to start business in order to survive – some made it, some were screwed. Starting your life from square 1 when you are 50 is not easy.
> So good for you for achieving whatever you have in life and overcoming whatever obstacles you've overcome,
Nice sarcasm. The point I tried to make was that, if just one little thing went different in my life, I would have been fucked.
> but the world's racial intolerance of white people isn't one of those obstacles.
You assume that the world is exactly like where you are from. The problem is that SA is a black majority country with a black government. So their intolerance towards white people is much greater (than for instance the USA government).
The difference between rich and skilled white people and poor white people is that skilled white people still have a skill that is needed (so they are not as expendable as poor white people).
I also guess that you would not view a leading figure in the ruling government (and probably next president) encouraging genocide of white people.
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I’ve recently come to the conclusion that hate for white people in South Africa – especially Afrikaans people is pretty high in the USA. It seems that the consensus is that white people do not belong in Africa and if they are poor it is either their fault or they deserve it.
The problem is that the poor are a lot less socially mobile and it is impossible for them to immigrate. They are simply stuck between a hostile government and bad economic situation.
Well, I did qualify with "I believe" on South Africa. You'd obviously know better than I would about what it's like there, but most of what I've read indicates that there isn't a ton of discrimination against white people, especially considering recent history. Sure, there has been upheaval there -- upheaval from a ridiculously racist apartheid system. Trying to claim that whites have it worse seems pretty tough to me, how do you quantify 60 years of institutionalized racism? The whole truth and reconciliation thing seems to have gone about as well as anything ever, considering the alternatives.
Zimbabwe, you'd have a definite point. There's an example of bonafide economic discrimination against white people.
> but most of what I've read indicates that there isn't a ton of discrimination against white people, especially considering recent history.
Then you read interesting material. There is quite a bit discrimination against white people. If the second most powerful person in the ANC calls for genocide against white people, don’t you think that there is no discrimination?
I’ve given you numerous examples. Here is one more: for any empowerment scheme, companies are forced to sell stock. A white person cannot buy it – yet a black person can. Here is another: A white person cannot get a loan at the Land Bank. Yet the former deputy president could get a multimillion rand loan for a new car - even though he is not a farmer.
Most people in the West take quite a bit of joy out of poor white people in South Africa. I was surprised at the level of hate among American citizens for white people. Just as you are cheerleaders for Mugabe during the 80ies and 90ies, you are now a cheerleader for the ANC government.
> Trying to claim that whites have it worse seems pretty tough to me, how do you quantify 60 years of institutionalized racism?
Yet the current government is worse than Apartheid. Let’s compare the fate of black Africans now and during Apartheid.
The Mbeki government refused to give ARVs to HIV positive people. Most white people wanted the government to do that. The policy by the black Thabo Mbeki government cost the lives of at least 365,000 people (mostly black). It seems that for USA citizens, black people killing black people are OK! (I did not even year call for sanctions for a thing that was clearly genocide).
The petty Mbeki government also refused Nevaripine to HIV positive mothers. A few pills (costing less than $1) could have prevented many AIDS infections among newborns. You know that it was white South Africans who fought tooth and nail to force the government to do that?
Life expectancy fell almost 1 year for each year after 1994. Life expectancy among all South Africans dropped 14.32 years from 1995 to 2009.
That is the black government that did it. Here we use 1995 stats for 1994 since a new statistical regime was instituted.
http://jae.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/16/5/813
2003 Broad def. Unemployment: 29.4% 2003 Broad def. Unemployment: 42.7%
1995 Narrow def. Unemployment: 17.0% 2003 Narrow def. Unemployment 30%
Unemployment increased from 2003 to 2010 too! In the 60ies and 70ies (the heyday of Apartheid before sanctions) unemployment among all populations was between 4.5% and 6.5%.
Real income also decreased significantly (1995 to 2003 period):
Agricultural work: 11.9% decline in real earnings
Domestic work: 19.1% decline in real earnings
Informal work: 82.5% decline in real earnings.
The education system also collapsed. Three leading authorities on education (one of them Steve Biko’s wife) said that the quality of schooling significantly decreased since the end of Apartheid.
> "Asmal is a man who believes he knows everything. What he did was worse than what the apartheid regime did to our education system," he was quoted as saying.
> The whole truth and reconciliation thing seems to have gone about as well as anything ever, considering the alternatives.
No it hasn’t – except for ANC fat cats. The country is in serious risk of destabilising. Recent “service delivery” and anti-Zimbabwean riots have shown that. How much do you think the poverty can increase before South Africa destabilises?
> Zimbabwe, you'd have a definite point. There's an example of bonafide economic discrimination against white people.
You know that South Africa is ten years (maybe 15) behind Zimbabwe?
Everything that happened in Zimbabwe is happening in South Africa now. [There have been calls to take white people’s farms]( http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-04-09-the-militant-pacifist), calls to nationalise the mines (this will happen in 5 years). [The ANC’s number two man has called for white farmers]( http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=vn20100310041938251C30...) to be killed (the murder rate for white farmers is already 6 times the national average – i.e. 300 per 100,000 per year).
Btw, I have not even talked about the fact that violent deaths tripled since the end of Apartheid.
> Ok so now we're being nostalgic about fucking apartheid?
You are completely misrepresenting my views (again)! It seems that you are disinterested in having a coherent argument, and just like to impress your very warped views onto others.
> I'm sooo sorry you had to start treating black people like human beings.
You know that I was 2 when Mandela was released? I had no voting power. But let’s use your argument on yourself: you are personally responsible for the deaths of one million people in Afghanistan and Iraq (hey, at least you could have voted).
You are also responsible for American slavery and Vietnam. You deserve to be poor and never have a right to anything. You are also responsible for the firebombing of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
By the way. Why are American Indians still living in reservations? You are responsible for propping up dictators (e.g. Saudi Arabia).
Don't be so quick as to wish other people's rights away for past wrongs. You will find then that Americans do not deserve any.
> At least we know what's really bugging you.
Whats bugging me is people like you which form impressions on little information but are so sure about themselves (even when they are wrong). Every argument I made, I fully backed up with statistics.
You try the emotional line. A lot of people (like yourself) like to simplify complex situations (hey 11 national languages – SA can’t be that complex!) into simple little black and white views – unable to have any nuanced views.
Such simplifications only led to pain and suffering – and some genocide (e.g. Gukurahundi).
> Literally everybody else on earth has it worse than you. Grow up and take responsibility for your own situation.
So when I was trying to go to university and my family was too poor to pay my tuition, but I could only apply to <40% of scholarships available because I was white instead of a "minority", that's better off than everybody else? How is "taking responsibility" going to fix that sort of reverse discrimination? Why is it OK for scholarships to focus on poor minorities, but it's not OK for scholarships to focus on poor caucasions?
Start your own scholarships if you're such a big believe in self-reliance.
More to the point -- yes, you still had it way the hell easier than you likely would have if you were black or hispanic. White males are not victims -- we have it easier than every other group. If you forget that, you're being an asshole.
Because there are mutual societies formed out of need for minority groups to support one another — most of them initially just for information sharing, emotional support, and legal defenses. Scholarships came later to help the children in their communities go to college.
Hell, almost all scholarships were endowed by people to help the younger versions of themselves go to college, it's just that the identity-forming characteristic is different for everybody.
Given the state of things in the US, there aren't really non-shitheads that primarily identify themselves as white.
> Go read the article - Sherrod is nothing but a minor anecdote in what is primarily a criticism of liberals, the media and the NAACP and a defense of the Tea Party.
What kind of nutjob actually reads something before opining about it? Or, for that matter, firing someone "based" on it?
> I don't know, you picked three extreme nutjobs ... I'm not sure there's a clear rebuttal of anything.
It's certainly a rebuttal of your statement "No one bats an eye at anti-male/anti-Caucasian rhetoric", because it would only take one counterexample to rebut it.
Actually I'd guess that quantifying statements as "no-one" when it'd be more accurate to say "few people", is probably positively correlated with tribalistic thinking.
> if you've never been somewhere like South Korea, you don't really know what it looks like. Frustrating as it was for me as an outsider, I did admire a few points about it. There's an attitude of, "I am KOREAN and STRONG" built into most Koreans - this can be insufferable if you're not allowed to eat at a restaurant, but I also find Koreans to be a bit more confident and proud than people in surrounding areas
If for Koreans to be self-confident it's necessary for them to ban non-Koreans from restaurants, then I'd say South Korea is a pretty fucked-up society.
Shuttleworth comes from South Africa, so he lived in a place where nationalism/tribalism is rampant.
I think the whole Gnome debate is rubbish. Canonical did a lot to the OSS-community. Look a the Ubuntu documentation project or simular things - there is more to OSS than code commits in Gnome.
The problem in South Africa is that it is a very diverse country with people of differing economic development, languages and cultures.
The idea of apartheid was that each ethnic/cultural group could have their own state (let’s not talk about the implementation but the ideology). That way each group can have self-determination.
Unfortunately this did not work. One reason for this was the industrialisation of South Africa in 60ies and 70ies. Many black people moved out of their traditional places of birth to major cities, etc...
The other idea is a very powerful central government based on majority vote. This is what is implemented now. This system (like Apartheid) doesn’t work. Each election is a census and the main aim of government is to disadvantage one group of people to benefit its majority support (while making white people universal scape goats for all ills).
None of these systems are working. The new system is just as broken as the Apartheid system that liberals in the west complained about.
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A system that could have worked was a third system: A co-social society. Each group can have their own areas in a society where they can express themselves (e.g. own sports, universities & schools in their language, etc…). There can be constitutional guarantees that a groups rights would not be infringed upon, etc…
A co-social society doesn't really work either — Belgium is basically disintegrating with the government in constant deadlock over Walloon/Flanders tensions.
It carries over to their other interactions - I generally found Koreans to be more extroverted, social, less meek, more firm, making decisions faster, and less bureaucratic than average.
There could be other factors contributing to this, though - there's mandatory military service, so a lot of the men there carry themselves like soldiers. Overall though, I was quite impressed with Koreans and Korea in general. I was lost at one point near Seoul Station, asked a police officer, and he walked me 10 minutes to where I was going while having a chat about the USA, South Korea, politics, and other things - very strong, but also very social and a good guy. I felt some hostility at certain times at Seoul, but I also haven't felt so welcome in a place since I was in Italy. Funny how that all works out.
"Tribalism": a great term for what's wrong with the world today in general. I'd been fishing for a word, calling it "the team sports mentality" for lack of something more insightful and concise.
Most of the meaningful (and most interesting/worth talking about) events in humanity's history have been because of an us-vs-them mentality. Even something good and benign like landing on the moon was partially because of a desire to best, and differentiate from, another world superpower. The critique ("wrong with the world today") is if this is a good way to go about it when it's used in the extreme (or tending towards being extreme), not the quality of the results. Does the means justify the ends?
The money comes from those with us-vs-them mentalities (your example of the Moon shots), but that isn't where the urge to innovate usually comes from.
when it's used in the extreme (or tending towards being extreme)
That's what I was trying to get across -- extreme behavior considered to be normal. Everyone on the freeways driving either 45 or 90, no sane moderation.
It's not binary. I'm speaking of a matter of degree, and about US culture specifically. Meaning: we're becoming a polarized nation, two Americas (America and 'mer'ca). Of course the human race has always had tribes. But tribalism (tribalitis?) means: too much tribal loyalty.
Just cursorily, first there were the colonies - some of which felt more British than others - who well into the 1800's were essentially nations: you had your Georgia mans and your Virginia mans and so on. Even during the secession there were more than two groups people associated themselves with.
He starts off by saying tribalism is the root of racism. Then he says it's judging people on choices they've made. These are obviously mutually exclusive definitions!
