Hacker News Reader

Comment by chris11 | Hacker News Reader

Thinking there is a possibility someone is crazy, racist, or sexist is definitely reasonable if that person is stating they agree with a crazy, racist, sexist. I'd wonder if someone was racist if they supported David Duke.

View on HN

Hillary Clinton's 'friend and mentor' was KKK member Robert Byrd.[0]

Using the same logic all democrats are now x.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4wo9nqWrwE

Right, and if we were talking about people with Hillary's or Robert Byrd's record then I would decide that they weren't racist.

Hillary's record has shown a strong commitment to civil rights activism. Robert Byrd did do some horrible things, but he changed and apologized. The NAACP actually honored him after his death. Supporting the the KKK would prevent me from voting for any politician. But Robert Byrd actually changed. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/0... http://thegrio.com/2010/06/28/the-evolution-of-robert-byrds-...

Whereas Trump has a history of racism. There have been accusations going back years, and his public statements support those accusations. He accused a federal judge of not being able to be impartial because the judge was Mexican. And David Duke is still a leading white nationalist, and said that voting against Trump is treason to your heritage.

People can change, but you can't claim they have changed if they've ignored what they did in the past and have not done anything different.

Do you think that Hillary is just as racist as Trump? And are you voting for Trump because you actually want him as president, or because you think Hillary's worse?

The judge was a member of a group affiliated with La Raza, it was not because he "was Mexican."

Trump specifically attributed it to Curie's "Mexican heritage" when he made the comment. The organizational link is an after-the-fact rationalization. (And, also, mostly false; that is, he's a member of a lawyers group with "La Raza" in the name, but that group isn't connected at all with the advocacy group -- the National Council of La Raza -- that right-wingers who don't recognize that "La Raza" as a name element is about as distinctive and unique as "People's" think of us the organization called "La Raza".)

> chris11 Whereas Trump has a history of racism.

"Last December, after the council refused to lift the restrictions, Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Palm Beach, alleging that the town was discriminating against Mar-a-Lago, in part because it is open to Jews and African-Americans. The suit seeks $100 million in damages."[0]

Like back in 80's when Trump was fighting for blacks and jews. Read the wikileaks. Clinton campaign's gameplay memo is to create Trump is 'crazy racist' narrative through media.

[0] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB862335923489989500

Counterpoint: many of the founding fathers were crazy sexist racists, yet we still hold their other opinions in quite high regard.

No "we" don't. Not all of us. Many of us hold the Founding Fathers in deep contempt. There is now DNA evidence showing that Thomas Jefferson raped Sally Hemings. That means that all of Thomas Jefferson's writings, including the Declaration Of Independence, needs to be re-evaluated and perhaps put aside.

I'm intrigued. How could DNA provide evidence of rape?

DNA provides evidence of paternity of Sally Heming's children. Which appears to be that the father was Sally Heming's owner Thomas Jefferson. Sally Heming may have been head over heels in love with Thomas Jefferson. But on the balance of probability I would guess there might have been coercion (hence rape) from a slave owner to a slave. Evidence, not proof.

Hypocrisy of Jefferson's personal conduct doesn't change the validity (or lack thereof) of the logical arguments he made in his writings. If they held to rational scrutiny before, they still do after.

If we're going to look at historical figures through modern lenses and discredit their works if we find they don't measure up to our modern morality, we're not going to have much left. It's more than likely that Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle engaged in sexual acts with young boys, for instance - in our world, these philosophers would be on a list and couldn't live within 500 yards of a school, let alone found one, but in theirs, pederasty was common, accepted, and even lauded.

You've presented us with a logical fallacy:

http://allthetropes.wikia.com/wiki/Hitler_Ate_Sugar

That was 240 years ago. We recognize the value they added and understand them in their historical context.

That's a popular misconception, like "everyone thought the world was flat before Columbus reached America."

The immorality of slavery was recognized hundreds of years before the founding of the US. It was abolished in France in the 1300s, in Sweden in 1335, etc. It was never really legal in England and that fact was recognized in 1706, about 40 years before Thomas Jefferson was born. The founders' condoning slavery was a deeply immoral political expedient that was recognized by many as immoral even contemporaneously.

But that's besides the point. The fact that the founders were individually contemptible people doesn't mean their ideas were wrong. You can agree with many of the things Thomas Jefferson said without personally condoning slavery and rape.

The founders were not "individually contemptible" because they couldn't destroy the institution of slavery at the same time they created an independent American nation. In fact, everyday slaveholders were not automatically "individually contemptible". Involvement in widespread cultural norms like slavery should not, in itself, be seen as a personal character indictment.

It would depend on which position of Duke's they were talking about. If they say they agree with his stance on race, then yes, they're a racist. If they agree with his stance on tax policy (I assume he has one), then no, there's no evidence that person is a racist. EZ-PZ.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com