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Comment by 7Z7 | Hacker News Reader

You are doing exactly what the article and the comments above are slating the left for doing: turning the issues that actually affect the other side every day, or which they want treated as important, into "imaginary issues".

You think identity politics are imaginary to the various minorities (of all descriptions) who just want equal footing and the ability to not deal with race and gender every day of their lives?

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If that was their real concern, they wouldn't subscribe to feminism and/or social justice. E.g. even the idea of women being a minority is bullshit (they're actually a majority). Feminism focuses on solving problems for a specific group of people. That's bigotry, pure and simple. Let's rather focus on solving problems for everyone who's affected. And that was exactly what Sanders was doing - economic inequality is largely at the source of all the issues described (e.g. the fact that blacks commit more crime - which in turn pins "whites" (i.e. the majority) against them - could largely be solved by removing them from poverty). Identity politics is largely just an elite "divide and conquer" tactics that's making the lower/middle class groups hate each other.

As I minority, I will tell you that I trust Sanders far more with social justice than HRC.

Also there's nothing bigoted about folks working to make sure women get the same wages as men, or to break the cycle of poverty black folks in Chicago's south side are stuck in. Those are problems plain and simple, and they need to be solved.

I don't think wage gap is a problem. Most statistical analyses explain the gap (via different education and occupation choices, work experience and hours, and negotiaiton skills). Sure, women could increase their wages by negotiating better and getting education that pays better (e.g. STEM). Just as some (many?) men. It's important that we tell them that, but there's no point targeting a specific group with this message.

Yes, there could be other discrimination (e.g. there probably is some discrimination against women achieving high management positions) (although it's really hard to measure) - I agree that's a problem and needs to be solved, but it doesn't appear to me that the public discourse revolves around it (it usually ends at the "70 cents to the dollar" myth), and I think the current tactics are actually counter-productive (e.g. they're making men afraid of working with women, lest they say something inappropriate or wear the wrong t-shirt).

I'll agree with you that the feminist movement adopts tactics that are counterproductive sometimes (not everyone does everything correctly) but I disagree with you in that there is a point helping out a certain group.

Consider a resource A. All humans should have equal access to this resource, but because of various social, cultural, economic and historical factors, minority groups B and C have less access to A than the rest of humankind. I don't think there is anything wrong with targeting those specific groups to help them engineer better access to resource A.

But woman don't have less access to resource A. They only have less access in average! So if you target women, inevitably you'll help some women (Hillary Clinton comes to mind) that are (individually) much more privileged than some (individual) men. I don't think that's fair.

Very true, that does happen, and it is unfair, but it's a cost of helping the oppressed. Welfare is a great example of this: let's say for a population of 12 that gets welfare, 4 recipients become welfare queens (able to work but choosing not to so they can live off the dole) and the remaining 8 are helped enough so that on top of all the hard work that they do (think of single mothers working multiple jobs who are still below the poverty line), they are able to live and raise their kids with dignity.

Yes those it's unfair those 4 people take advantage of welfare, but for me, that's an acceptable cost for helping the other 8 who need it. I'm happy my tax dollars go to that.

Of course you can argue forever about whether the cost is worth the benefit, and whether basic income is better than welfare in this form and yadda yadda, but I'm trying to illustrate to you that in a system designed to help a population (I don't agree with you that women are not disadvantaged, but substitute them with any other minority group like black people), some people will inevitably abuse the system, but that's okay as long as there are enough people who benefit to justify the cost of the small number of abuses. In sum: helping a population with less access to resource A is not bigoted and, if implemented right, is a very reasonable approach.

You're ignoring the case where resource A is finite, or relatively so, health care, especially in the US where the Federal government controls the number of new doctors and hospital beds and requires emergency room care for all is a great example of that. As soon as the Federal government can no longer can borrow money a essentially zero percent real interest rates, you'll find that's even true for things like "welfare queens".

I don't understand how you're addressing my argument, but I'm arguing in favour of the concept of targeting a specific population to help them and saying that this approach is not bigoted. I'm not talking about the how, but about the why, and that there are lots of cases where this is justified. I agree that this approach can be badly implemented (maybe healthcare as in your example is one), but it is a useful tool in the right context. Examples: targeting immigrants to help them assimilate, or targeting kids in inner-city schools who don't have the resources of rich suburban school to help them get into college.

In other words, you see the resources being used in "targeting a specific population" as essentially infinite, not to mention that the extraction of them is without serious problems.

That's simply not the world I see myself living in; to quote Margret Thatcher, "The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money".

And for today's object lesson on that, see Venezuela, where those that are not pure money problems are inherent and unavoidable in the political process you're endorsing to "target a specific population". As shown by the very word target; in the case of Venezuela, replacing competent STEM types with politically reliable ones, 18,000 in the first wack, and then favoring current production over longer term investment necessary to maintain production levels.

I think you're confusing my suggestion (it being okay to help black kids escape the cycle of poverty using tax dollars) with blanket socialism? I didn't say anything about socialism.

How would you differentiate between your definition of identity politics, and recognizing the very real, factual discrepancy between how society treats white males and most of the rest of the population. Do you believe in white privilege, or do you consider it just another example of identity politics?

In other words, if I say 'The law enforcement and legal systems of the United States treat African Americans very differently than white Americans, and this needs to be changed.' - is that recognizing a problem that needs attention, or am I engaging in irrelevant, invalid 'identity politics'?

As I said, I think if you ensure economic equality for everyone, the problem will solve itself soon enough.

Having said that, if you want to tackle the problem of discrimination separately (e.g. because you believe you can solve more quickly and easily than the economic inequality problem), then the tactics currently used (i.e. feminism - complaining, protesting, self-victimisation, and shaming reasonable conter-arguments) are the wrong way to go about it.

Lets for a moment consider a similar, yet different problem. Rape. Men are statistically more likely to rape women than women are (feminists are happy to point that out). I don't think it's correct to villify men as a group for that, but I do think it's reasonable for women to be extra cautious when interacting with men (e.g. it may be a better idea if a drunk woman asks a female friend to take her home, than a male friend, or to cross the street to avoid strange men at night). Nothing personal, just statistics - and oponents can scream "sexism" as loud as they want, but you can't put a price on personal safety (of course, feminists won't scream "sexism" in this istance, because it's fashionable to shame men).

Same with blacks and crime. Blacks statistically commit more crime, so it's not unreasonable to be more afraid of or cautious with blacks than with whites (or asians). Sure, it could be plain racism (pre-judice), but it could also simply be pattern-matching based on statistics (post-judice). And even if you consider those instincts to be wrong, it's hard to fight against them, after all they've been keeping us alive for thousands of years!

If you nevertheless want to fight those instincts, I guess the best way is more information, and emphasizing that people should be treated as individuals, not as a group. Unfortunately, feminism/social justice/identity politics isn't very good at either. In particular, if you attack (verbally or physically), shame, fire, riot against those whose opinion you want to change, I can't imagine you'll achieve much.

Anyhow, that's my thinking, although I fully accept it's wrong/there's more to it - here in the EU, I'm quite a bit removed from racial issues...

In particular, if you attack (verbally or physically), shame, fire, riot against those whose opinion you want to change, I can't imagine you'll achieve much.

When it comes to the disemploying and physical violence, I assure you that you'll indeed accomplish a lot, just not anything you want. The verbal abuse of course doesn't help, either, and has helped to harden attitudes prior to this period where disemployment and physical violence are rising to the fore.

Okay, let's stipulate that the notion of "white privilege" is real. The shattered people who voted for Trump, who spend their lives being called "white trash" by "coastal elites," are clamoring for a share of that privilege. How do you address them?

They already possess white privilege. No matter how bad their situation, all other things being equal, if the color of their skin were black instead of white, they would be treated worse by the society around them and our social institutions. They would have found it more difficult to get a good education, more difficult to get a job, more likely to be harassed by the police, more likely to be thrown into jail for offenses that would merit a slap on the wrist for a white person.

I do not know the best way to convey this to poor whites. It certainly presents a difficult task to tell someone who has struggles with life, or has overcome almost unsurmountable obstacles, that they have it easier than others. But some have given it a try:

http://thoughtcatalog.com/gina-crosley-corcoran/2014/01/expl...

Huh? Im a Democrat and I always believed the Dems should focus on economic and social equality.

The GOP plays with identity issues (God, Guns, Flag, etc).

The Dems need to stay away from that and get back to the populist roots and focus on the working folk. That is what made the Dems a successful party in the past.

That's all.

Most of the very wealthy people I've met work very hard indeed, yet they are not considered to be "working folk". Why be antagonistic toward powerful people in the core jargon of the party plank? Would honesty of language, or perhaps even inclusiveness, work better than emotional resonance and tribalism?

> the ability to not deal with race and gender every day of their lives?

Sometimes, a thought percolates up from my poor rural white-boy hind-brain, that maybe instead of absorbing themselves in thinking and protesting and teeth-gnashing about these issues, they might be happier if they focused on themselves and things they can do to improve their own lot in life. If you constantly pick at a scab, it takes forever to heal.

I have to remember to not let these forbidden thoughts dribble out. Damn...

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