Hacker News Reader

Comment by kutkloon7 | Hacker News Reader

Very well put. I find it very annoying when people declare something to be racist. Racism is the idea that some races are superior or inferior. Unless you literally declare that some races are superior or inferior, what you say is not racist. I do agree that some things might imply that you think some races are inferior, but by declaring something racist, you state that the author has that specific idea and is trying to convey it.

However, people usually see any non-positive comment about a cultural minority as racist (e.g. "Black people eat a lot of chicken.").

View on HN

Please don't. It's hard enough to have a substantive discussion about something divisive even when people stay on topic. Introducing adjacent generic flamewar material is not helpful.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13193640 and marked it off-topic.

However, people usually see any non-positive comment about a cultural minority as racist (e.g. "Black people eat a lot of chicken.").

I've heard a lot of references to the amount of fried chicken eaten by African-Americans, and their apparent taste for that particular dish. Not a single time have I heard it mentioned casually in passing as you describe. No, it's usually the punch line to a joke.

Given the demographics of the neighborhoods in which I see a Church's or a Popeye's, such a casual note-in-passing might (and I emphasize might) merit some discussion of the dietary tastes of various cultures. "Man, the Japanese are big on fish, huh?" "Well, sure, when you have relatively small amounts of farmland and you're surrounded by ocean, makes sense that they'd eat more fish than beef." "Oh. Duh. Makes sense." I've had that conversation, don't see a problem with it. The only discussions I've heard about the dietary tastes of African-Americans have been a lead-in to the derogatory remark the speaker wished to make. (Disclaimer: I grew up in an area where the water fountains still had the faint outlines of the letters spelling "whites only" and "colored" above them, having only recently been removed. Your conversations on the dietary tastes of racial groups might have varied.)

Any time it places someone in a particular bin because of race, it's racist - whether that's eating watermelon, or rice, or hamburgers. The harm is that the assumption gets in the way of relating to a particular individual.

What word would you prefer? How would you describe the comment "Black people eat a lot of chicken"?

Also, FYI, most (all?) dictionaries disagree with you on the definition of racism.

> the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

This kind of broad definition I find fairly incoherent, because it mixes an emotionally neutral situation(e.g. "black people eat a lot of chicken", which requires context to get any positivity or negativity from) with very emotionally charged situations("especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races"). It's the difference between "the japanese eat a lot of fish, which is peculiar" - a very natural determination for humans to make, owing to our base pattern matching capabilities and curiosity, and "the japanese untermensch feed on garbage from the sea", which is an emotionally charged condemnation of the nationality.

Mixing definitions this way allows activists to declare almost everything racist, which people immediately associate with the worst possible situation. This gives them power over conversations via a motte and bailey tactic - they will demand that their opponents and critics are racist, invoking terrible imagery in neutral observers; once the critics question this, they will retreat to their motte, qualifying their statements were just following the dictionary definition; when the critics are no longer there to rebut the statement, they will dive back to the bailey of claiming "racism" without the qualifications evoked.

That may be the dictionary definition, but it is no longer the generally accepted definition in my experience.

We have very different experiences then. But again, what word would be better? Is there anything notable about the statement "Black people eat a lot of chicken"? What adjective should we use?

Well, it's a stereotype, that a lot of people find offensive, depending on who they are talking to of course.

Ok, so do you think people should say "that was racially stereotypical" rather than "that was racist"? This seems like a really minor semantics argument. I'm trying to figure out if you and other posters here actually disagree on what kinds of comments are and aren't acceptable, or just on what we should call them.

I personally don't think it's racially stereotypical, so no. As far as I know, the stereotype came from the southern USA, is that not correct?

You call it semantics, I call it calling bullshit on moral busybodies who think they are bringing people together when actually they're driving them further apart.

Do you watch much stand up comedy?

I watch some. How could that not be racially stereotypical? It's clearly a stereotype, as you said yourself, and it's clearly applied to an entire race. I'm not sure I could think of a better example of a racial stereotype.

You can argue over whether or not it's offensive, but that's not what I'm asking.

It's culturally stereotypical, not racially stereotypical.

> it's clearly applied to an entire race

Clearly? How so?

You likely think I am playing a game of semantics, but I genuinely think if we keep playing this game of trying to find reasons to be victims, things will never get better, even if that is what all parties want!

The reason I brought up comedians is because they seem to allow normal people a view into this world, where we can admit that black people in the south eat a lot of fried chicken. Know why? Because it's cheap, and delicious!

Do some racist rednecks still say things like that with an intent to cause harm? Yes, and what should we do? Laugh at them for using such an old, tired, irrelevant, pathetic joke of an attack. Because really, it's really nothing more than that, the rest of "what's there" is often purely in our minds.

We're telling helpless teenagers that don't know any better over and over that a huge portion of the population hate them because of their race, and it is simply not true! We seem determined as a society that racism lives on forever, and it is really unfortunate.

For example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIgSQDQC0qc

What should New Zealander's do here, fire up the navy for a show of force off the coast of Sydney? Or should they crack a smile and say "good on ya mate"? Will we forever think of people who have a different color of skin than us...or actually, to be more precise, that have non-white skin, because that's what it's really about, isn't it, thinking that people who are non-white are "different" and must be handled with extreme caution. I reject that completely.

All I can say is that it is true. Look at this article, and please try to ignore the provocative headline, I just can't find a better presentation of the data: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-white-republicans-mo...

You can explore the data yourself here: https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/vfilter?keyword=&...

As you can see, 15% of white people think black people are more unintelligent than intelligent. 35% think they're more lazy than hardworking. 25% wouldn't want a relative to marry a black person. 20% wouldn't want to live in a half black neighborhood. And this is just people with conscious biases that they're willing to report on a survey.

We can argue about what counts as "a huge portion", but these percentages represent tens of millions of people. There's so many ways to show that racism is still a huge deal in America, but it's really easy to think "I'm not racist, I've never seen anyone be racist, these people must be making it up".

I doubt I'm going to convince you with this comment, but it's stereotypes all the way down. The idea that only old rednecks are racists is itself a harmful stereotype, because it simply is not true.

Thanks for that, it's a very interesting article. That's the type of thing we should be reading in the newspaper and sharing on Facebook and cordially discussing (as you and I are, I hope) so we can determine where we actually stand on this matter as a society.

Race relations are very complex, it involves (imho) deep-seated biological cruft leftover from years of evolution, racist teachings in the home (like many other people, I grew up in a home of so-called "racists"), etc. If we are going to live in non-segregated societies, we just have to work through this together. I think a lot of those numbers from your article are just going to keep going down over time, partially as older people die off, and otherwise just as people realize, from being physically near people of different cultures on a regular basis, that yes in fact they are different (contrary to what the media and various other busybodies tell us), but it's just fine the vast majority of the time. And, sometimes it isn't - there is nothing saying that the level of cultural harmony between various combinations of cultures must always equal the same value, it's a preposterous assertion.

I believe there are numerous paths one can take to reducing the various "isms" we have in our societies. OP has chosen the name and blame approach. I'm fine with that, provided it is based in fact. Is that a successful approach, we'll likely never know.

Here's another approach:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHhKMu8jrfw

In this case we do have a bit of insight into the reactions of the "host culture":

https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/5im83w/when_we_let_...

Seems generally pretty positive! I'm going to try to remember to look into what the general opinion in the physical community where these dudes live is, but then how do you know people are telling the truth? That's the benefit of anonymous forums, at least people tend to be more honest.

I just thing we as a society are really not going about this in anywhere near an optimal manner, for no good reason.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com