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Comment by justathrow2k | Hacker News Reader

This is an incredibly racist way to look at the issue.

Recognizing that, in practice, racial identity in the US has a significant correlation to various differences in life experience is not racism.

It is when it ignores class and takes people of different ethnic and economic groups and treats them as homogeneous based on skin color alone.

Racism generally does ignore class. One of my best friends is a very successful man who happens to be black - and large, and very dark-skinned. He's a doctor and hospital administrator with strong financial expertise, definitely a one-percenter. How safe do you think he is if he gets pulled over by the cops? If he's walking down the street toward a white person, do you think they get that twinge of fear, or do they think "Actually, he probably makes about ten times what I do, so why would I be afraid he'd mug me?"

Class isn't immediately visible. Skin is.

>It is when it ignores class and takes people of different ethnic and economic groups and treats them as homogeneous based on skin color alone.

You mean just like a racist society does (which makes the statement even more accurate)?

Because even a "rich/european/etc" black person is still a n... when it comes to a racist society, and while his experiences might be better, they'd still be shaped by racism.

I would agree, that's not racism. However, I would say that a blanket statement about all members of a race such as this, 'black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works.', is.

We all know that blanket statements are just a convenient way to speak for what a group does or tends to do "in general".

The fact there are outliers doesn't mean a blanket statement is "racist" as long as it's accurate for the most. It's doubly not racist if it's positive (and "understanding how the world really works" is a positive thing).

'We all know that blanket statements are just a convenient way to speak for what a group does or tends to do "in general".'

Given that blanket statements such as that, which are meant to imply "in general", are indistinguishable from actually bigoted blanket statements which are meant to be taken literally, it probably is a good discipline to always include "generally" or "typically" as a qualifier, each and every time. It has fallen out of fashion, but let's try to bring it back.

> However, I would say that a blanket statement about all members of a race such as this, 'black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works.'

Context matters: in a discussion of percentages of a population holding particular views, where it is offered to explain why a certain percentage of blacks holding a view is improbable, that's not a blanket statement, its a statement about the relative frequency of experiences relevant to the belief in question.

It's an incredibly racist way for the world to work, but in practice it does. Fixing that requires noticing it, acknowledging it, and finding the reasons for it.

There's absolutely nothing racist about that statement.

It's actually a very accurate description of how a group that historically is facing systematic injustices and racism get to have fewer illusions than the comfortable majority.

If anything, it's ANTI-racist.

Not being racist is not the same as believing that racial minorities have absolutely the same experiences and outlooks as the majority.

A group of who had the cops enforce Jim Crow and segregation on them, or arrest, harass and shot them far more often than another group, has a different outlook on this "justice" thing.

So, I hope I'm using this term correctly, but it seems like you're building a straw man here. I certainly never made the claim that everyone has the same experience and outlook regardless of race. However, as I mentioned in another one of my replies, making a blanket statement that 'black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works.', reeks of racism to me. In this day and age, people are born into many diverse situations, regardless of shared racial makeup.

>In this day and age, people are born into many diverse situations, regardless of shared racial makeup.

The problem is that racists don't look into "diverse situations", just racial makeup.

E.g. is there any more diverse situation compared to a poor black guy from the ghetto, than being the President? And yet, even the President is often described, from private discussions down to protest banners in racism terms -- heck, even as a n....

Not sure why you're reading racism in that. Around a third of black men spend time behind bars in the US:

http://www.alternet.org/story/154587/1_in_3_black_men_go_to_...

In the USA, the legal system is quite racist.

Fixed: most black people have no alternative to understanding how the world really works

Now it's not "racist". Can we move on?

EDIT: Clarified that it never was racist.

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