The White Man in That Photo | Hacker News Reader

The White Man in That Photo

griotmag.com

302 pointschoult96 comments

> Peter Norman is absent from this statue.

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/10/12/part_2_john_carl...

"...Pete, I have a concern, man. What’s this about you don’t want to have your statue there? What, are you backing away from me? Are you ashamed of us?" And he laughed, and he said, "No, John." He said—you know, the deep thing is, he said, "Man, I didn’t do what you guys did." He said, "But I was there in heart and soul to support what you did. I feel it’s only fair that you guys go on and have your statues built there, and I would like to have a blank spot there and have a commemorative plaque stating that I was in that spot. But anyone that comes thereafter from around the world and going to San Jose State that support the movement, what you guys had in ’68, they could stand in my spot and take the picture."

Whoa what a guy!

I poked around a bit to learn more and found their ESPY award clip. It's touching, too, and provides a bit more context also.

Pt1 of 2 (Part 2 is next in the playlist): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNe5uxccDj4

This might be the first time a HN comment made my jaw drop. Thank you for finding this supportive material!

That is just one of many amazing things Peter Norman has said. My eyes well up with tears just thinking abut him.

Peter Norman's actions (as well as those of John Carlos and Tommie Smith) were even more impressive in light of the racist undercurrents in both white and black culture at the time.

The three basically took a stand against both the white majority establishment AND a strong trend in contemporary black counter-culture that opposed race equality and integration.

The picture of them carrying him to his grave honestly brought a tear to my eye.

That's the first that I'd heard of this 'strong trend in contemporary black counter-culture that opposed race equality and integration' in the years around 1968.

Any references where I can read more on the subject? I looked up the black panther page on Wikipedia, and it referenced black nationalism undertones existing in its earlier phases (until around 1964). Still, I couldn't see that it was a trending force.

Perhaps the wikipedia article on Black Nationalism [1] or a more recent article on the alliance (!) between the black panthers and the American Nazi Party [2]. You're better off reading early 70s reportage books, though; I'm far too young to remember the 70s, but my parents had old Doonesbury strips around, but as I remember that their resident Black Panther character was wavering between wanting to be included and not wanting to associate with 'whitey'.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_nationalism#Malcolm_X

[2] http://www.vice.com/read/when-malcolm-x-met-the-nazis-000062...

It's worth noting that the article is heavily editorialising. That 'one man facing the country alone' with respect to his 1972 troubles? 1972 is a notable year for civil rights in Australia - Whitlam was elected, and he brought in the Racial Discrimination Act, set up the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, and initiated legislation to support indigenous land rights. Abolished the WAP, opened up foreign trade, and recognised China. Did a ton of other stuff around equal rights and welfare[1]. Whitlam was a great statesman, but he didn't do it alone - Australia had a civil rights movement just like everwhere else did in the '60s; equal rights were rising everywhere and colonial empires were crumbling. The idea that Norman was a lone voice is simple myth.

It's also weird to see Australia called an apartheid regime. For all the terrible things done to the indigenous here, things weren't arranged as in South Africa. The US treated it's indigenous in a similar manner to Australia (though not quite as bad), and had legal segregation in the South (cue photo of water fountains), but we wouldn't characterise the US as an apartheid regime. Apartheid was a political system limiting people of colour in order to maintain power in the hands of minority whites - both Australia and the US had significant white majorities, with whites in easy control of the political machine.

Finally, the article is also wrong to call Norman the biggest hero on the podium. Norman should be lauded for his actions, but he was still doing 'support' - the main act was done by Smith and Carlos. Had they not acted, there would be no notable photo.

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/gough-...

What they did was for themselves but what he did was selfless. Thats a true mark of a hero and that's why he is the biggest hero on the podium.

What? How did it improve their personal well being? They were ostracized from the sports community.

Perhaps what was meant was that they were part of a movement to improve the lot of their ethnic group. That movement seems to have worked. However, Norman had nothing to gain - he could only lose, unless he valued human rights more than his personal situation.

Whether you’re white or black, protesting racial inequality always seems to come down to valuing the well-being of humanity as a whole over valuing your own well-being.

It’s in the same category of decision as economic games like the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Arms Race, Chicken, or Moose Hunt.

And this, to me, is the root of all of humanity's self-inflicted problems. Too many "good" people, at the end of the day, wimp out and take the personally safe route, not just not taking action but also staying silent so as not to risk their social and economic standing. The Holocaust, slavery, racism, the shame felt by rape victims, police injustice[1] could not have happened if those who felt the stirrings of their conscience didn't then snuff those feelings.

[1] http://www.vox.com/2015/5/28/8661977/race-police-officer

He's doing a good thing, and that should be lauded, but it can't make him the biggest hero on the podium.

It's an obvious oversimplification, but it be useful to think of measuring the good you do in the world in terms of game points.

Basically, if you're benefiting unfairly from a system since birth, you've started off with negative points. You owe the world something to balance off what you've gotten "for free" (really, at others' cost).

If you hate the system, you recognize the unfairness, and you actively fight against it, you can certainly move into positive points, but you're not starting off the same as people who grew up with the short end of the stick.

So when (for example) the vast majority of the white Australians at the time seemed perfectly happy with the awful system in place, and Peter Norman wasn't, and actually made this statement in a very public way, that was 10 minutes of serious bravery (and then many years of paying for it, afterwards -- which he surely knew was coming).

Also to his credit -- see the quote above about the statue. He pretty clearly wasn't putting himself in the position of "greatest hero on this podium" either; but rather probably shamed that more of his countrymen weren't even taking the smallest steps in the same direction.

-- edit -- I'm not saying he's "not a hero"; I think it's awesome what he did, and I'm not at all sure I'd have had the courage. I'm just adding some context to why saying he was "the biggest hero on the podium" rubs me the wrong way (and it would have rubbed him the wrong way as well).

Is this a parody or something? You're saying he cannot possibly be the hero because he's... white? Stop with the victimization schtick, evaluate actions for what they're worth and don't inject race, gender or whatever classifications you want to come up with into everything. The whole victimization game is quite literally just trying to invent your own new form of superiority over another group, a group who by virtue of some immutable characteristics (gender, skin color) is ineligible or somehow innately worth less than another group? I'm tired as hell of hearing everyone scream racism at every little thing, but that is flat out racism.

I don't understand how this is reacting to what I said...?

I'm not saying he wasn't a hero. I'm saying he's coming from a different starting point; and that he himself explicitly said he wasn't doing what the other two were (and didn't belong on the statue).

Victimization what? Who's a victim here? Whose superiority over whose?

I don't think anyone of any color/background/whatever is better than anyone else. I do think that if you spend your life benefiting from unfair systems (not just racism, all kinds of things in life are unfair), you owe the world some effort to right the balance.

-- edit: I thought of a better way to access this idea. Everyone seems to already agree to this implicitly when talking about money. E.g., if someone who builds an amazing business and gets rich, it's a bigger accomplishment if their parents were poor, they had a poor early education, etc., than someone who builds an equivalent business, but they went to the best schools, their parents helped fund it, etc..

I just apply the same approach to all the other areas in life where some people are simply born into unfair advantages; and extend it a bit to say that if you have a ton of resources handed to you by life on a silver platter, that's not the same as "earning" them, and (in my opinion) you need to make more of an effort before you'll be making a positive impact on the world.

I guess the parent is taken notice to,

>Basically, if you're benefiting unfairly from a system since birth, you've started off with negative points. You owe the world something to balance off what you've gotten "for free" (really, at others' cost).

Which is basically saying that no matter what you do, since you are white, your actions are of less value, and you should do more to achieve the same "points" as others. Which I would say is actually quite a racist view, but hey, no one cares about racism against whites, because that's just impossible.

Of course, I doubt that you in any way intended that interpretation, but am merely stating what the reaction is based on.

Your money analogy is a bit better, although I do not agree with the stance that white people (or wealthy, or any other group for that matter) somehow "owe" the public anything more than anyone else, simply because of their birth. That though, is entirely my personal opinion though.

> no matter what you do, since you are white, your actions are of less value

I'm saying, no matter what you do, your actions have the same value as anyone else's; but if on balance you've benefited from unjust systems, yeah, in my mind your starting point is different. This is part of how I judge my own accomplishments; I'm on the "favored" side in most of these systems.

It's not as simple as "if you're white", since of course there are a lot of unfair systems in place in the world, not just racism.

But just in the context of racism -- if Peter Norman had been aboriginal Australian, it seems quite unlikely he would have even been there, and thus never in a position to make a statement anyone would notice in the first place. Though it's hard to say, since this was still around the time the state was deciding it should stop forcibly removing Aboriginal children to be adopted into "proper" homes.

Honestly, it's a bit weird to me that this idea gets such a negative reaction. Most people have this as a basic moral principle on a small scale.

If you had an awful teacher at school who only liked kids with blue eyes, and he gave you a bag of sweets but nothing to the less-blue-eyed kids, would you feel some duty to share the sweets around on the playground, or would you sit in a corner and eat them all?

If you join a card game, notice the dealer is an old friend (and he suggests he can "help" you win a bundle)... do you switch tables, or just figure it's your lucky day?

On a small/simple scale we feel a responsibility to correct small injustices, and to avoid profiting from them. For larger, longer-lived (and more complicated) injustices... that feeling just tends to go away.

> Finally, the article is also wrong to call Norman the biggest hero on the podium.

Completely agree with this. It seems to recenter the conversation away from the (black) folks who were taking the initiative to praise the (white) person acting in solidarity.

And, quite honestly, I have trouble with phrases like “The biggest hero.”

Social activism is not a contest. Every action matters. It is not for me to judge how difficult it is for you to do such-and-such a thing, and whether overcoming those difficulties is “heroic.”

Peter Norman’s actions are turning out to be even more important in hindsight than they were at the time, in part because the focus at the time was on the black men on the podium, so their stories have already been told.

When he passed away, there was more attention paid to his story, and thus his actions reach through the decades and helping to change minds today. That’s amazing, and wonderful.

I need not try to compare this to how much the other men have suffered or accomplished to take of my cap and stand in wonder and appreciation.

I agree completely with your excellent response. Thank you.

> It's also weird to see Australia called an apartheid regime. For all the terrible things done to the indigenous here, things weren't arranged as in South Africa.

Tell me again how denying Aboriginal Australians the right to be considered citizens - still the case in 68 - is "better than South Africa". Black South Africans may have been treated like shit, but at least the whites didn't pretend they weren't even humans.

If you stop projecting and read my comment again, you'll see that I'm not saying that life was better for the indigenous folks in Australia. I said that 'apartheid' was a weird term to use for the Australian experience. I said 'arranged'; you inserted the word 'better'.

'Apartheid' is a description of a particular political idiom. It's not a catch-all term for 'colonial oppression'.

It's fascinating how much backlash there can be for supporting big social equality shifts. Almost certainly many of the people that caused so much trouble for Peter Norman for his participation in that protest were not malicious, overt racists. Some of them probably didn't think they were racists at all. So much of the time resistance to advancement comes about because people are afraid to rock the boat, because they are distressed about being called out, because they don't want to be forced to choose a side. They just want everything to be better at no personal cost. As has been said, evil triumphs when good men do nothing. It's amazing how much truth there is in that, and how much depth. If you insist on burying the issue every time it comes up or if you insist on "waiting until the right time" you're not helping.

So many people today think that it's fine to just be neutral. And in a way that's alright, it's certainly better than actively participating in hate, but it doesn't make you a good person. A good person takes a stand, a good person makes an effort to make things better, even if it comes at a cost.

One trouble is that we don't know what's right when we're in the thick of it. Who would have guessed it was OK to be gay? I mean it's not OK to be a pedophile or zoophile, which aren't fundamentally different. The rules keep changing so you can't blame people for sticking to what they're used to.

That's the thing though: they are different, and applying some thought will bring to light the way in which they are different. But most people who are against these things apply their efforts at conflating them due to their similarities, not understanding the importance of the differences.

Just look at the way abortion arguments go. You can't just go around saying "abortion is murder" and "a fetus is a person" without completely failing to consider the ways in which you could be wrong. And that's fairly easy to do, because there are plenty of people trying to tell you otherwise.

I am trying to appreciate your position on this: the problem is, we ought to know what's right 'in the thick of it' using the two C's - choice and consent. Like discriminate-against minorities (disclosure: I am black), gays do not have a choice to be who they are. Therefore, their position, if you will, is a biological one (as is mine). You mentioned pedophiles and zoophiles, who, could also (possibly and unfortunately) have the disposition of just being who the are without choice. Yet... the difference is consent - no one should get the right to take away the rights of innocent children, or innocent animals for that matter, much less kill, enslave, or otherwise harm them (as was the case with blacks, etc). There is no harm in my being black to anyone who is white, just as there is no harm in being Aboriginal or gay. The rules didn't change. The point is that they (human rights) need to apply equally to everyone.

Pedophile and child molester aren't the same thing. Looking at pictures of naked children is something parents and doctors do all the time but pedophiles go to prison for it. "kill, enslave or otherwise harm" is OK for animals according to current popular opinion - ask any meat eater or dog owner. Consent is not required for animals (by our current standards) because we freely allow them to have sex with each other without checking for consent.

My point is that things really aren't as black and white as they seem to people when everyone they know agrees with the same ideas.

I'll delegate to Jon Stewart on this one:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/18/1202810/-Jon-Stewar...

[video clip] FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY UNDERSECRETARY ASA HUTCHINSON (4/16/2013): It's important because we as a nation have to get this right. I look back at history to the time during World War II, that we interned some Japanese-Americans. At the time, it seemed like the right and proper thing to do. But in the light of history, it was an error.

JON STEWART: I'm sorry, just excuse me for a second, I just need to check something real quick. I just need to.... (takes out cell phone and dials a number)

----

GEORGE TAKEI: Hello, Jon.

JON STEWART: Hey! Hey, is this George Takei?

GEORGE TAKEI: Hi, how are you?

JON STEWART: I'm very well, sir. How are you?

GEORGE TAKEI: Just great.

(audience cheering)

JON STEWART: It's Jon Stewart. I have a quick question for you. When you were four years old, and your family were taken from your home and placed in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans — at the time, did that seem like the right and proper thing to do?

GEORGE TAKEI: No! It did not.

(audience laughter)

JON STEWART: OK, thanks a lot, George.

GEORGE TAKEI: Anytime, Jon.

JON STEWART: All right, bye-bye.

----

(audience cheering and applause)

JON STEWART: Yeah, that's what I thought! See, the thing about a moral compass is, if you take it out and check it from time to time, you don't have to wait for history to tell you you're facing the wrong direction.

Jon Stewart is glib. That's his act, but at the core it's just current received wisdom. It's the easiest position a person could possibly take.

I'd like to see him play the same scene on an issue that almost nobody feels comfortable about. Say the decision to use atomic weapons to end the Pacific war.

First he could call a Japanese orphaned child and ask if it seemed right and proper at the time to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to avoid more Allied casualties in the alternate invasion scenarios.

Then, playing the counterfactual, he could call an American mother who lost her son in the invasion of Japan, for which hundreds of thousands of casualties were projected on each side, and ask if it seemed right and proper to waste her son's life when an alternative existed that would have precluded the invasion.

Stewart's approach is a garden variety example of studying the past only in order to look down on the past's inhabitants.

Engaging in consensual sex with other adults is indeed fundamentally different than sexually assaulting partners that do not or cannot consent.

Who would have guessed such a thing? Well, anyone who spent any time thinking about it who actually cared about the principles of individual liberty.

Despite qualifying for the subsequent 1972 Olympics 13 times, Peter Norman was denied the ability to represent Australia. Despite an apology in 2012 from the Federal Parliament, the Australian Olympic committee still denies any wrongdoing.

Here's what I read on Wikipedia:

>Despite Norman running qualifying times for the 100 m five times and 200 m 13 times during 1971-72, the Australian Olympic track team did not send him, or any other male sprinters, to the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, the first modern Olympics since 1896 where no Australian sprinters participated. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Norman)

Did no one represent Australia in the events he would've participated in?

I guess sending no-one was deemed better than sending slower runners.

Here's an interview with Peter and others who knew him a few years ago on ABC TV news program 7.30: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3571974.htm

"LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Tonight, long overdue recognition is finally being paid to one of the nation's greatest athletes.

Peter Norman won a silver athletics medal at the 1968 Olympics in the 200 metres in a time so fast that he still holds the Australian record more than 50 years later.

But that Olympics was Peter Norman's last. Many people believe he was overlooked for the next Games and forced into retirement for participating in a black power demonstration at his medal ceremony.

Finally, more than 40 years later, Federal Parliament is offering a posthumous apology."

Desktop browsing should not have momentum scrolling and iphone-line scrollbars, very distracting

I beg to differ, as that's how Mac OS X works. They should certainly not be retrofitted on devices that don't do that natively, though.

I couldn't read it, the page would not stop moving. I eventually gave up and closed it.

> Today I discovered the truth: that white man in the photo is, perhaps, the biggest hero of that night in 1968.

Ok, I don't want to downplay what he did. Sure, it took courage for him as well. On the other hand something rankles about taking one of the most iconic moments from the civil rights movement and making it all about the white guy. I mean, come on, the biggest hero of the night? Really?

A great hero from Australia.

Such blatant institutional racism in Australia in 2000! So sad :(

"some of which consisted of forced adoptions of native children to white families."

They still are doing that, and at a higher rate.

That is nonsense. You obviously know nothing about Australia.

I know a lot about Australia. The raids on families in the Northern territories (and else where) are taking children hundreds (thousands) of miles from their homes.

Children are being taken from their mothers in Aboriginal communities at a faster rate since the apology for the "stolen generation" than before.

Australian society is unfathomably racist. On my visits there and conversations with Ozzies here (Aotearoa) I am constantly reminded just how thoughtlessly and thoroughly racist to its core is Australian society.

The "apartheid" laws are gon. Since 1967 (?) indigenous Australians are counted in the census, are no longer classified as fauna and can vote. But their settlements do not get anywhere near the same services as white settlements and in the guise of "child saftey" children are abducted at a great rate by the state.

2 minutes of searching on the net (aboriginal children Australia abductions racism) gets this article by John Pilger:

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22659-australia-is-again-...

Please do not make your own fancy scrollbars with JavaScript. I already have a scrollbar in my browser, I most certainly do not need yours!

Browser scrollbars sucks tho.

Browser scroll bars are perfectly fine. This is a solved problem. It doesn't need to be re-solved in a thousand different ways.

Now, many people downvote you, but i am honestly curious.

What are the specific downsides browser scrollbars have?

And, if it does, how does the JS implementation on that website improve on them?

It's not just browser scrollbar - its the OS scrollbar.

Yeeees? Go on?

So by the way, this is the OS that I run on my computer and it provides the scrollbars that I like. If I don't like them I can change the window manager (and I run X11 so yes, I can do that) to something that I do like.

The designer of that, or any, website does not know what I like, or what works for me and best suits my abilities. They should certainly not attempt to change it based on what they want and what suits them on their device.

actually, I'm a bit flabbergasted when this kind of thing happens, I really am not sure why I would want to allow any application (much less a page on a computer the other side of the world being shown by that application) to change the way my computer interfaces with me.

Don't change basic OS behaviour.

They take a load of space, they look like a leftover from the nineties, they take different space on every browser so if you want a precise layout positioning you can't, they don't reliably report positions or events, they can't be reliably scrolled at a specific relative position on every browser and more.

I'm fine with the downvotes, people around here downvote to disagree even if they don't actually know what suffering and misery cross browser development is.

You're getting downvoted because your complaints are either rather vague (doesn't measuring viewport size exclude scrollbar size, so their size is irrelevant to you?) and indicate a desire to mess around with what is very much not yours to mess around with (size, styling, position of scrollbars) which simply means you don't respect your users.

that's a load of work for some fake internet point.

and no on some browser the scrollbars consume layout space and on some they don't. (remember to add the ios/safari monstrosities into the mix)

heck, just open this http://www.matanich.com/test/viewport-width/ on edge/ie11/chrome and see yourself how reliable clientWidth is (especially test edge fullscreen vs edge windowed but fullscreen it will blow your mind)

So your answer is to make the user experience miserable because you don't like doing work?

Alright, so some browsers like Edge will report the full screen width available even with scrollbar visible, because it fades out the bar after a while. You could've just said that.

That is understandable as a reason. Although i still think it's a pretty bad reason to use to force "smoOoOo--oOoth" scroll on everyone, instead of only browsers that are known to be broken.

Scrolling has OS/browser-specific behaviour that is dependent on user configuration. Read that as, "it takes your own preferences into account". For example as I mentioned above, I despise smooth scrolling and this website is forcing it on me.

They suck less than what this page does. I couldn't tell you if all pages that do scrolling themselves are annoying, because I probably wouldn't notice a good example, but I can tell you that many of the pages that do do because they do something to scrolling that's not as intended. If your custom scrolling feels noticeably different or breaks a feature, it's broken. And honestly, I doubt many developers are able to build a reliable, cross-browser, non-broken implementation.

http://jscrollpane.kelvinluck.com here, I don't know what that guy uses but this is a good implementation

It is certainly better (because it doesn't mess with the way scrolling feels), but also isn't bug free: the scrollbars partly cover text, middle-click-scrolling is broken and according to the bugtracker there are issues with iOS.

Indeed... no better way to piss me off and detract from a good article than by forcing smooth scrolling on me when I specifically disable it...

It doesn't just have smooth scrolling, it's some kind of super slowly deaccelerating scroll, that makes it impossible to go to any specific place in the page.

Not just that, but the floating header takes up a full 210 pixels, leaving little room for the article.

I think there is a problem in this article. In other articles, the header contracts to 48 pixels.

Which is better, but still 48 pixels bigger than it should be.

A nice side effect from using NoScript is that pages appear more in the way the "web developer" Tim Berners-Lee intended. :)

Indeed. Also Ghostly had removed the iffy scrolling for me. I had to turn it off to check it out in all its glory.

I hate when websites fuck around with my middle mouse button, the scrolling behavior of the page and the scroll bars.

Also those navbars should be eliminated from all webpages, especially if you are on mobile.

If you don't like my scrollbars you don't need to visit my site.

Bye then!

You've been able to style the scrollbar with CSS for years now. JS lets you control the positioning of the scrollbar. There's no excuse for recreating it.

There's no excuse for styling scrollbars.

The scrolling on this page was so broken I had to look at the page source to read it. It kept jumping around to random places whenever I tried to get to where the text of the page started.

Worked for me with scriptblock (ytimg unblocked).

I'm sure you're factually accurate in your statements but I just want to comment on the structure of your argument (and I don't at all mean this in a snarky or negative light).

Racism is about more than being race-conscious. I think we all recognize that. I can say 'Obama is black' and 'John Boehner is white' and 'How many Asian senators are there?' None of these questions subjugates anyone.

For systemic oppression (and Racism), there has to be a group in power and a set of institutions created by those in power to subjugate others.

Back to the point: speakers often speak about Racism (which, as above, requires the power to create oppressive institutions) in the same way they speak about what you described as 'opposition to the majority establishment and a black counter-culture that opposed race equality and integration.' This probably happens because the nuanced description you gave doesn't roll of the tongue.

My ultimate point: it's not clear to me that an ethnic group that is not part of the 'majority establishment' can be 'Racist'.

Racism is very clearly defined.

With your logic whites could not be racist in South Africa, because of black majority.

I'm not sure I follow your logic - are you equating 'majority establishment' with 'majority'?

To give you another example, then: Pre-Apartheid, Mahatma Ghandi campaigned for improved rights for Indians. Only. He explicitly did not support giving blacks the same rights he wanted for Indians, and explicitly accepted continued white supremacy. Indians in South Africa at the time were an oppressed group, with substantially curtailed rights - they were by no means part of the "majority establishment".

I am sympathetic to threat expressions by oppressed groups with more leniency, but trying to redefine racism to avoid labelling it as such I find extremely offensive - it does not just affect the "majority establishment", but also other minority groups.

> I'm not sure I follow your logic - are you equating 'majority establishment' with 'majority'?

Are you not equating it? A demographic majority is an enormous source of power. It seems like you're trying to avoid the dynamic and highly local nature of power by putting everything on "institutions" to paper over all the subtlety. Institutions are not monolithic, are not all aligned with one another, and are not the sole source of all power.

It is never the case that a group has no power whatsoever. Anyone who uses their power out of racial animus is a racist.

What you're proposing is like when feminists claim that anyone who is for equality is a feminist, but then in practice self-described feminists care much more about the gender disparity in corporate officers than the gender disparity in prison. It's a bait and switch. Which causes reasonable people to object to the equality-for-me-not-for-thee feminism and start a civil war with other people who also actually want equality, because the leaders lie about who they are and what they want.

When racism is defined as "power exercised under racial animus" then everyone can agree that it's wrong. As soon as you try to redefine it as "power exercised by white people", you're not going to be able to convince white people that that is wrong. Acceptance of your definition of racism will cause white people to stop accepting racism as wrong. That is not OK.

Its important to understand the word majority has two different meanings. There is the mathematical majority which we are all familiar with on here but majority used in these cases is not referring to the mathematical definition of majority but the sociological definition of majority which is the group that holds [the majority of] the social power. In sociological contexts the word majority never refers to population size.

It's not that important. His point is that (neo nazis|white supremacists|whatever) are not racist as they are not part of the social majority. That's twisted.

I am not entering the conversation in any way other than to point out definitions as it is a common misunderstanding.

Important distinctions. But redefining 'racism' to suit a particular dialog isn't going to play well. It rings of an exclusionary tactic common in activism to mark outsiders as wrong because they don't know the 'new truth'.

Short answer: we all know what racism is.

> My ultimate point: it's not clear to me that an ethnic group that is not part of the 'majority establishment' can be 'Racist'.

I truly loathe this argument because it allows people to engage in hatred based on race while saying that their hatred is not racism. Hatred breeds hatred. I don't understand why people would judge me based on my skin and say that I have a hand in oppression, when I have no power over them. Why am I judged for actions of people who are not even my ancestors, because the color of our skin is the same? Is that not the very problem that we're trying to solve?

I feel conflict and resentment when I am told that I am oppressing people and that I should be hated for it because I am simply white, and frankly I think that's the end goal for the media as they are fanning the flames of racial tension. Don't give in: judge individuals on their merits. Judgment based on race is racism.

Your sentiments are totally understandable - but lets take this to a broader, less emotional level.

We, as Americans, are responsible for poor working conditions in large parts of the world. People recycling metals from computer parts (a topic HN users probably think about) develop neurological disorders, based on what we do.

Am I harming someone directly by not thinking about recycling more often? No, but I'm still part of a system that perpetuates these effects.

Your conflict and resentment stem from what some people before us have done. I have conflict over the families whose breadwinners die due to my electronic excess. But the answer isn't to deny the system I live in but to be more thoughtful.

This argument in no way provides any kind of reason for defining away non-institutional racism.

None of the issues you outline are racial issues.

Feel free to call a system racist; I'll likely agree depending on the merits of your argument. But people that hate others due to their race are racist, no matter how you couch the issue.

The conflict and resentment that people feel when they are accused of being racist due to only their race works counter to the cause of solving problems, not towards resolution. It encourages in-group/out-group mentalities on both sides and is unproductive toward the goal of equality. When you say that one class of person engaging in the same act as another is different because of their race, you are saying "we will never be equal."

Essentially you're making an argument from original sin.

I've also heard this line of reasoning referred to as "the soft bigotry of lowered expectations", due to its implication that not all groups of people can be held to the same standards of behavior as society as a whole.

No, there does not need to be any group in power or set of institutions created by those in power to subjugate others for there to be racism.

Trying to redefine terms to avoid having to accept that minority/non-establishment groups can also be racist is ludicrous.

If you have not experienced minority groups being racists, lucky you. Meanwhile I've fairly regularly had members of minority groups expressing fairly crass racist views to me, presumably under the assumption that I as a white man won't take offence when they express racist views about other minority groups.

So rejecting/wanting to harm people that are not of "your race" is only racism if your race forms the "majority establishment"?

A black person in the US denigrating chinese people isn't racist, a white person doing the same is?

And reversed in an area politically dominated by black people?

If you are allowed to redefine any word you want and completely remove it from its common usage and any vestiges of its actual meaning then you are certainly free to say something like "it's not clear to me than an ethnic group that is not part of the 'majority establishment' can be 'racist'" -- you're just saying nothing more than "I'd like to redefine racism as something that can only be done by white people". Which is fine, you just need to make it clear when you use the word that you don't mean actual racism, you mean your new definition of "white-only" racism, or you need to use a different word if you don't want people to be confused. What's wrong with using 'systemic oppression' to describe systemic oppression (or even just oppression if you want something shorter) and 'racism' for actual racism?

It seems very extreme the mental contortions that are required to say to a white kid in an inner city school that when other students beat him up for being white they aren't being racist. Or when a hispanic person uses the n-word to describe a black person they aren't being racist.

Then once we've agreed on the definition of words we can argue whether or not there's any context in which white people can experience systemic oppression in the US (I think probably not but perhaps there's an argument to be made)

Why not just use the dictionary definition of "racism" in the way that most people understand it, and use the phrase "institutionalized racism" when that's what you mean? Redefining words is a pretty juvenile rhetorical trick that will only work on the unintelligent. Most people will just think less of you and your argument when you try to use these cheap tricks.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10368844 and marked it off-topic.

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