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It’s not concise, it’s not valuable. Is everyone supposed to know who this is? If so, the comment is straightforwardly disallowed; if not, I think as part of the compact of making non-sneering comments you are obligated to at least gesture at saying something informative and you know, make an actual point.
I agree that the commenter should not have darkly hinted, but I feel like you're being deliberately obtuse here...
To make the point explicit - the name "Tatishe Nteta" strongly suggests that the author's race is sub-Saharan African (and we can look at his faculty page to clear up any doubt), so the fact that he carried out a poll that supposedly shows public support for DEI (i.e. state-backed anti-White discrimination) gives another example on a long list of non-White (but especially Black) intellectuals for whom almost all of their published works are attempts to critique and undermine White people/identity.
I'm guessing, beyond the poor forum ettiquette, you also take issue with what is actually being darkly hinted at here. Perhaps you just don't believe in HBD (in which case there isn't much to say, since I would agree with academics like Ntete under ~HBD) - but if you do believe in HBD, then what do you think is wrong with what Magus implied?
My honest first reaction was simply what I said: “is this guy supposed to be famous or is there some in-group reference I’m missing?” Even linking his faculty page like you did would have been a more effective point and IMO a valid comment. In fact, pointing him out as someone with an obvious career stake and bias towards finding bias IS a good point. I just strongly believe (and the rules are aimed at) putting a little extra effort into being explicit about things is healthier for discussion. It’s not good to habitually rely on people guessing at meaning, and deliberately underbaked comments allow the worst kind of motte and bailey because it necessarily involves some degree of projection.
You're saying that you didn't think to yourself - "that sounds like a Black man" (even given that the topic of the OP was DEI in the US, a practice that heavily rewards Black people)?
Sure, but that is an additional point, going beyond the original comment. The point of the original comment is just to point out that the author is Black - we can infer he has a particular bias towards finding bias because he is a Black intellectual (so the alternatives to systemic racism would be especially unflattering to him) - Magus' point still makes sense even if we couldn't see any of his works/publications.
You might believe that judging him on his race is morally or factually wrong. But I don't think that expressing such beliefs should count as a rules violation if done plainly and in a calm tone, so while this comment is rule-breaking, the implied point should still be expressible on the forum (e.g. if Magus had explicitly said "the author is Black"), without having to add further justifications and context about his career choices, publications, etc
I had the same reaction as @EverythingIsFine - the name, alone, isn't clearly indicative of anything (unless you're attuned to what seems to be tacitly acknowledged to be a genuine racial dog-whistle). See, also, the comment by @ulyssessword about the name:
To my awareness, there is no racist meme in which you list someone's name and just say "oh". If we are really reaching, I suppose this falls into the general paradigm of "Noticing" (that would be a dogwhistle, since it's just a normal word that has a secret related meaning that was arbitrarily assigned to it to allow for people to make controversial statements that sound innocuous to someone unaware)
There is no shared context you are missing here. Just the common context we all have from living on the same planet.
There probably is a way that a linguist could deduce much more than just him being Black from the name alone, and there's probably also some jargon that could help precisely describe what about the name "sounds SSA". (If I think about it a bit, I suppose the consecutive consonants "Nt" in particular sound SSA)
But we do not need any advanced linguistic machinery to make this inference in this case, anymore than someone needs to understand General Relavity (or even Newtonian gravity) to infer that if I let go of an object in mid-air, it will fall to the ground.
As I said, I don't think this is really the reaction any of you had to the comment. Charitably, I think that you feel this way consciously, because you dislike racism, and so you avoided letting your mind make this hard-to-explicitly-articulate, but obvious inference.
I guess I'm also being a little obtuse here though. I think what you guys are getting at, is that it is unfair to make an inference based on the professor's race, as opposed to his work, because he has no control over the former. If he doesn't want people to assume he hates White people on the basis of his work, he can try and address this by softening the tone, or even reconsidering the substance - but if someone assumes things about him because of his race... what is he to do? It's not like he can stop being Black.
And I agree (at least from the perspective of the person who is being discriminated against) it is really unfair and sucky to be judged on the basis of something entirely beyond your control and decided at birth (whether that is your race, sex, disability, etc) - and on this basis, you can make an argument that, as a society, we should uphold this tacit norm where we avoid acting on, or even openly acknowledging, the information given by these characteristics (and instead wait for them to tell about their nature through their behaviour)
But this is a pseudononymous internet forum whose principle goal is truth-seeking (or at least acknowleding the truth when presented before us), even when said truth is offensive, hurtful or upsetting. So even if we want to maintain the "no-Noticing" social norm for society (I have mixed feelings about that), I strongly disagree that we should do that here, because it prevents us from seeing the true nature of reality.
I mean I know it's the internet and all but I really do try to be genuine in all of my posts. I am 100% serious when I said that looking at "Tatishe Nteta" doesn't clock any particular ethnicity to me. Like, sure, maybe if I sat and looked at it for 30 seconds or so I might make some guesses, but that's not where my brain went, and I'm not in the habit of staring deeply into every single comment. Again my first reaction was "I feel out of the loop - did I miss something?" because I also tend to assume good faith first. My brain, in other words, got sidetracked by trying to guess the OOTL bit, then skipped past the comment until I saw there was a mod post below. It took me ages to clock who this Hanania guy is and still I don't really have a strong sense, for example, so random unfamiliar name-drops aren't unexpected, that's my stronger prior expectation.
Anyways, I object to posts on this forum that rely too much on innuendo and consensus-building and things like that, so even if it didn't have a racial angle I'd still be annoyed at a comment just going "Oh." We aren't mind-readers, and shouldn't have to be, and often overly-short comments waste everyone's time on extended side-bars because they aren't explicit enough. In other words, everyone here should have a vested interest in avoiding Poe's law traps. I think you agree, right? Someone is welcome to make offensive statements and argue for them, but they have to argue for them, not just rely on innuendo to do all the work. And honestly, I never even disputed the fact that his name might be relevant information -- I just want it to be, again, explicit.
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I'm Noticing (and I have read the book) that a piece of information which lacked significance to myself and others was 1) intended to be interpreted in a specific way and 2) interpreted that way by certain readers, who then responded as though the significance were clear.
I guessed the wrong gender, and the given and family name, separately, don't sound SSA to me, though the syllabic flow of them together gives a SSA vibe, after re-reading it. My first impression was that was from an unfamiliar Asian language, however.
Well, perhaps you'll update, based on my above statement.
Most people don't change their names. If the original comment had been "The author's given name was [Boring American Name], but they changed it to 'Tatishe Nteta,' which means [Pretentious Thing] in [SSA language]," the stereotype might have had some credence.
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It also strongly suggests he was raised to be an activist. Normie Africans name their kids things like ‘John’ or ‘Mary’ and normie AADOS use names which are, yes, dumb, but recognizably Anglo.
Not uniformly. African-origin names are common in many Commonwealth Southern and West African nations.
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