Katherine Maher thinks race based reparations are the way to go

[Vigilant]

https://twitter.com/krmaher/status/1219374231437352960

The newest dipshittery at the WMF around 'equity' makes a ton more sense now.

Her twitter is a cornucopia of strangeness.

[Midsize Jake]

Hmm... somebody must have shown her that "percentage of Wikipedians who are non-white" number again.

[CoffeeCrumbs]

The rest would be politically off-topic, I think, but I'm gobsmacked she didn't realize that there were slaves in New England. Someone who apparently fell behind by about the third grade is just the person to head an information technology non-profit.

Prepare for a tweetstorm when Maher finds out that we had a war with Mexico or that states have equal representation in the Senate.

"I'm not sure who has seen this, but I was reading an article and did you all know that before the Lincoln was a car, there was a *president* named Lincoln? Why isn't this better known?"

[Moral Hazard]

So many are doing so much to elect Trump.

When you are losing, do not divide your coalition.

When you are losing, do not unite the opposition.

[Poetlister]

There's no need for Katherine to know anything personally. That's not the Wikipedia way. Obviously, any statement she makes will be reference dto a reliable source, and any errors will be corrected speedily by crowdsourcing.

[Giraffe Stapler]

The rest would be politically off-topic, I think, but I'm gobsmacked she didn't realize that there were slaves in New England. Someone who apparently fell behind by about the third grade is just the person to head an information technology non-profit.

I don't find it hard to believe that she was never taught about slavery in New England when she was a child. She knows now. Isn't that better than staying ignorant?

[Midsize Jake]

I don't find it hard to believe that she was never taught about slavery in New England when she was a child. She knows now. Isn't that better than staying ignorant?

Agreed... it's actually fairly common for Americans to believe this, or at least not know one way or the other — secondary education in the USA has always been notorious for historical whitewashing. It's only recently that some people have figured out that having all high-school textbooks be produced almost exclusively under Texas' standards is a serious problem. So, to this day, you can still get a complete high school education in the USA and never learn that eugenics even happened in America at all, for example. And we shouldn't forget that Maher got a lot of her college-level education in the Middle East.

That said.... as I sort-of vaguely implied earlier, supporting (or appearing to support) slavery reparations is just a smart business move for the WMF at this point, given that they're shifting their priorities away from trying to competently run their encyclopedia-like websites and towards being a "global equity movement." To be a proper global equity movement, they'll need to improve their participation percentages among non-white-male folks, and they'll have to do it soon. The real issue is whether or not the WMF's "movement" would end up being a positive or a negative force for equity, given their history of not being able to do much of anything competently and generally being an almost definitional exemplar of the law of unintended consequences.

And as for me personally, I'd much rather have the US government spend money on such reparations than almost anything the Trump Administration seemingly wants to prioritize, such as ecological destruction, war in the Middle East, personal aggrandizement, and so on. Hopefully I'm not alone in this regard.

[Vigilant]

Another angle on this is that en.wp is largely viewed as a neutral entity in the ongoing Kulture Wars.

Taking a hard tack in SJW land is likely to make them a soft target for of lot of online agitators that have largely left them alone or pissed on individual contributors for the perceived left wing slant of many articles.

[Poetlister]

And as for me personally, I'd much rather have the US government spend money on such reparations than almost anything the Trump Administration seemingly wants to prioritize, such as ecological destruction, war in the Middle East, personal aggrandizement, and so on. Hopefully I'm not alone in this regard.

Don't forget the wall on the Mexican border, since for some reason the Mexican government seems to have declined Mr Trump's polite request to pay for it.

[Cla68]

And as for me personally, I'd much rather have the US government spend money on such reparations than almost anything the Trump Administration seemingly wants to prioritize, such as ecological destruction, war in the Middle East, personal aggrandizement, and so on. Hopefully I'm not alone in this regard.

Don't forget the wall on the Mexican border, since for some reason the Mexican government seems to have declined Mr Trump's polite request to pay for it.

Mexico has increased their enforcement of their southern border, which is probably not cheap. So, indirectly, they are helping pay to reduce immigration to the US. BTW, even if Mexico did agree to help fund the wall, the Democrats in Congress would block the legislation to try to keep President Trump from claiming victory.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I'm opposed to the WMF hiring executives with radical leftist political positions. It makes it easier to claim that Wikipedia is politically biased and controlled by activists and Bernie-bros. I wonder, though, if Ms Maher has given any thought to her future employment prospects? Because publicly expressing extreme political opinions isn't always a wise move.

[Poetlister]

I wonder, though, if Ms Maher has given any thought to her future employment prospects? Because publicly expressing extreme political opinions isn't always a wise move.

Maybe she thinks that Mr Sanders will be the next president, and is staking a claim to a position in Washington, or to succeed him in his Senate seat.

[Midsize Jake]

Anyway, I'm not sure if I'm opposed to the WMF hiring executives with radical leftist political positions. It makes it easier to claim that Wikipedia is politically biased and controlled by activists and Bernie-bros.

Well, maybe, but since you'd presumably do it anyway...

I wonder, though, if Ms Maher has given any thought to her future employment prospects? Because publicly expressing extreme political opinions isn't always a wise move.

Doesn't seem to have done much harm to Steve King, Louie Gohmert or most of the other Republicans in the US Congress. (Not to mention you-know-who.)

Personally, I don't think Katherine Maher is really a "leftist" in any coherent sense of the term. She's clearly focused on the WMF (or whatever they're going to end up calling it) trying to become a major worldwide "movement" now, and logic would suggest that their goal is to create some sort of political influence for themselves, if not actual power. She (and by extension, the rest of the WMF leadership) wants their public perception to be on the same level as "Hollywood" or "Wall Street" or "the gun lobby" or "cable news," or at least close enough to those nebulous entities for the WMF to actually matter. To do that, they really do need more diversity among their core constituency, i.e., their users.

They probably won't get it, but it won't be from want of "virtue-signaling," as they say. Virtue-signaling is pretty easy. Actually having the virtues themselves is much harder.

[Vigilant]

Actually having the virtues themselves is much harder.

[ArmasRebane]

Another angle on this is that en.wp is largely viewed as a neutral entity in the ongoing Kulture Wars.

Taking a hard tack in SJW land is likely to make them a soft target for of lot of online agitators that have largely left them alone or pissed on individual contributors for the perceived left wing slant of many articles.

The people who think this are probably already over at Conservapedia working on removing the whiff of socialism from the Bible.

[Vigilant]

Future WMF employee right here...

https://twitter.com/DearSplenda/status/ ... 3055681539

[Moral Hazard]

Future WMF employee right here...

https://twitter.com/DearSplenda/status/ ... 3055681539

Tease!

a woman in a logan square coffee shop saying that her co-op housemates did not understand that "fruit and cheese combinations" on pizzas represent an exclusive expression of class that makes the pizza less available to economically marginalized people & people of color

the woman who ASKED this QUESTION added "we're pathologizing something that probably doesn't need to be pathologized, i mean neurodivergence, right, i've started following a lot of disability activists on twitter"

GREAT news, she wants to “build a collective liberation library” and has a “HARD PROMISE to myself” not to read books by white men

She wants to decorate with juniper and sage from Diné [Navajo] land — “but I don’t really know how to pronounce it”
“I try to refer to the place by its indigenous name but I don’t know how to pronounce it”

I'd love to change the world but I don't know what to do