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Comment by minimax | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if people like Anna moving in also felt the same guilt that the author of this piece does?

I didn't care for the article, but this comment is awful and you ought to feel bad about writing it. Did black people moving into an overtly racist white neighborhood in 1960s era Atlanta feel guilty about it? No, they were probably fucking terrified.

One day in June, a black family moved into a home on Woodbine Avenue, just over the southwestern Kirkwood border in Edgewood. That night someone set fire to it.

Did you read that part? Come on.

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What rational person would purchase a home in a neighborhood in which they felt fucking terrified?

A person with limited resources and no better options. Low SES people are just as rational as high-SES people, but the choices are limited.

The answer is a black person living in Atlanta in 1960. The American south of the 1960s was a place where cultural and institutionalized racism was alive and kicking. You should think about what a "rational" choice looks like under a system that is literally built to discriminate against and undermine an entire race of people.

Were they better off in these homes which they choose to move to, or do you think they were better off where they came from? Discrimination is terrible but I don't see how it would have forced them to move next door to someone who oppressed them. I would find it more probable that they moved as an act of defiance than out of fear. In any case, I think we have to assume that the vast majority of people (including these people) who move from one area to another do so because it is in their own self-interest and that they're better off for having done so. When someone moves, it's as if they're voting with their feet in favor of their new location. I don't have any idea how bad their previous locations were, but on the whole this community was preferable.

Why, exactly, do you think I should feel bad for writing this? What message do you think I'm trying to convey?

Whatever your explanation, please reconcile it with: (Yes, I'm obviously mocking the author of this silly article a bit.)

Because you seem to be trying to establish some equivalence between Anna's circumstances and the author's. I think it's insulting. If I misunderstood the point you were trying to make I apologize.

anna feeling guilt = > absurd

ergo

the author feeling guilt => absurd

the author is being mocked for the absurdity of their feeling guilt. i think the crux of the insult is gentrification guilt is reserved for the privileged.

Both circumstances displace people of a different ethnic group. In that sense they are equivalent.

Is that the relevant thing in terms of causing guilt? Who knows? As I said, I think the only relevant thing is this guy signalling to all the other white people what a virtuous fellow he is.

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