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Comment by jolux | Hacker News Reader

It's actually pretty difficult not to be racist. I'm racist, for example, as are pretty much all other white people in the US. I try hard not to be, but I think it would help white peoples' understanding to assume that you are racist and realize that it's sort of a nasty default state of being born white in a white supremacist society that needs to be actively fought against to be eliminated.

No white person is wholly racist or wholly not racist, it's all shades of gray, the most important part is that we understand why it's important to combat racism and do so actively in ourselves and when it happens in public. The only solution to racism is active anti-racism and the destruction of "white" as a category afforded special privileges by our culture and institutions.

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> It's actually pretty difficult not to be racist. I'm racist, for example, as are pretty much all other white people in the US...No white person is wholly racist or wholly not racist, it's all shades of gray...

It's incredibly easy to not be racist if you're not racist. I've spent zero effort to continue not being racist this year (same as last year).

I'd say that it's weird that you're singling out white people in the US (which is also amusing, because opposed to what other country?) as racist, but you've already self-reported as a racist. It appears that you're working on this and I wish you the best of luck.

Also, anyone can be racist, not just white people.

>It's incredibly easy to not be racist if you're not racist. I've spent zero effort to continue not being racist this year (same as last year).

This is just one of those things where if you think you have it licked, you probably don't. It's less about understanding how to reach the end goal than it is understanding the process we need to get there. I realize you probably think you're not racist, but there is a high probability you have at the very least some implicit bias against non-white people if you are white and were brought up in a largely white community.

I'd like to think I'm not racist, but unfortunately going around to people yelling "but I'm not racist" doesn't really do a lot to solve the very real and persisting problem of racism even if it were entirely true in the first place. Curiously the racists I know are also the most likely to loudly and frequently proclaim that they aren't racist, often just before they say something racist. Even if you are a perfect angel yourself I think in most if not all moral frameworks you still have a shared responsibility of fighting against racism if you are white.

>I'd say that it's weird that you're singling out white people in the US (which is also amusing, because opposed to what other country?) as racist, but you've already self-reported as a racist.

I'm not sure what your point is here, I think Americans are a lot less racist than most people in Europe but we still have a lot of work to do.

>Also, anyone can be racist, not just white people.

Yes, that is very true. I apologize for forgetting about internalized oppression. Internalized racism is an extremely difficult problem and speaks to how deeply white supremacy pervades much of Western culture and governance. Again, the solution is recognizing that it exists and taking steps to change that while doing what we can to protect the people it affects.

> This is just one of those things where if you think you have it licked, you probably don't...there is a high probability you have at the very least some implicit bias..

No, sorry, I reject your ideology and manipulations. Repeating it in a different way, slightly more generally isn't any more convincing.

> Even if you are a perfect angel yourself I think in most if not all moral frameworks you still have a shared responsibility of fighting against racism if you are white.

I don't want to join your club and I do not want to give you legal privilege or power. If you want to improve the quality of life for people, go tutor kids or donate your time or something.

> I'm not sure what your point is here, I think Americans are a lot less racist than most people in Europe but we still have a lot of work to do.

Then why frame it that way? If you go looking for racism everywhere, you're going to find it. It's like a Baader-Meinhof phenomenon for people that really need to be twitter-followed for not having crappy/silly judgments about physical characteristics of people.

> Yes, that is very true. I apologize for forgetting about internalized oppression. Internalized racism is an extremely difficult problem and speaks to how deeply white supremacy pervades much of Western culture and governance.

Wait, what? Non-white people can be racist against white people. Are you trying to troll?

>No, sorry, I reject your ideology and manipulations. Repeating it in a different way, slightly more generally isn't any more convincing.

There's a lot of data on implicit bias, but you're right, it's still not 100% of white people, even if it is a vast majority.

>I don't want to join your club and I do not want to give you legal privilege or power. If you want to improve the quality of life for people, go tutor kids or donate your time or something.

How about all of the above? All of these things are important. I teach kids robotics and programming, I donate my time to arts programs for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities, and I also engage in anti-racist action and combat racism and misogyny in my daily life when I'm able to. I'm not really asking for legal privilege or power from you, not sure where that came from.

>If you go looking for racism everywhere, you're going to find it. It's like a Baader-Meinhof phenomenon for people that really need to be twitter-followed for not having crappy/silly judgments about physical characteristics of people.

Or it could be because there's just racism everywhere? I don't see how the frequency illusion is relevant, once you understand what racism is and the forms it takes you start seeing it more and more. The same is true for learning about basically anything. Think about how you used software and got frustrated with software before you knew how to write software, for example. There was a moment in particular when my perception flipped from "how hard could this problem possibly be" to "I'm amazed that this even works as well as it does."

Again, I don't give two shits if you follow me on Twitter, I actually don't even use Twitter except for reading others' feeds. I myself am going to fuck off after this post because this seems like a lost cause, and I really need to learn to stop engaging with people like you.

>Wait, what? Non-white people can be racist against white people. Are you trying to troll?

I'll admit that was a little cruel. However I think it bears repeating that while non-white people can be racist against white people, I only ever see this being used as a reason for why I shouldn't be confronting anti-black racism and racism against people of color more generally. The most prominent forms of racism against "white" people from people of color that I can think of is something like the Nation of Islam's vicious anti-semitism, which rest assured I oppose completely.

More broadly while racism against white people is theoretically possible, structural and institutional racism against white people are basically nonexistent, at least in the US. (and a lot of the West, I avoid absolutes where I'm not sure of things)

This conversation and many that I've had before are depressing, because for me at least they constitute a denial of solid sociology and anthropology on the level of conservative climate denial. Likewise as the question should not be whether global warming is actually occurring but what to do about it, I think the question with white supremacy should not be whether or not exists but what we should do about it. Like global warming, it's well-documented and blatant enough that I'm flabbergasted when people ask me to prove it.

I realize at this point that I'm definitely not reaching you and that you probably don't want to be reached. I'm sorry I tried, it seems like it was a waste of time.

I'm going to be very direct with you as I believe it's been a long time since anyone has treated you like an adult.

> I donate my time to arts programs for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities, and I also engage in anti-racist action and combat racism and misogyny in my daily life when I'm able to. I'm not really asking for legal privilege or power from you, not sure where that came from...Or it could be because there's just racism everywhere?

You're playing identity politics and inventing racism and misogyny in order to have something to "combat." If you're just looking to be offended for the sake of community, you're free to do so, but don't confuse this with social progress.

> racism against white people is theoretically possible...This conversation and many that I've had before are depressing, because for me at least they constitute a denial of solid sociology and anthropology on the level of conservative climate denial...I think the question with white supremacy should not be whether or not exists...Like global warming, it's well-documented and blatant enough that I'm flabbergasted when people ask me to prove it.

You're trying to weasel out of this conversation by blowing out the scope to confuse yourself and others into thinking you had a cogent point or substantial argument. Anyone that lets you re-frame an argument so that you can feel like you've won is doing you a massive disservice by patronizing you.

It's obvious that it's more important for you to feel like you've had a moral victory than it is for you to understand what you're talking about.

> I really need to learn to stop engaging with people like you...I realize at this point that I'm definitely not reaching you and that you probably don't want to be reached. I'm sorry I tried, it seems like it was a waste of time.

If you want to apologize, do so to yourself for getting wrapped up in such nonsense and for allowing yourself to be manipulated out of critical thinking.

>You're trying to weasel out of this conversation by blowing out the scope to confuse yourself and others into thinking you had a cogent point or substantial argument. Anyone that lets you re-frame an argument so that you can feel like you've won is doing you a massive disservice by patronizing you.

I actually feel like I've lost at this point, especially because now I've come back after I said I wouldn't. If you came into this expecting there to be a winner, my apologies. I also don't think you actually mean cogent as it is rigorously defined, because if you do, neither of us has a cogent argument. (that is, a well-formed inductive argument) I'm also not trying to weasel out (whatever that means) by acting like I had an argument. I was only trying to say that I'm really not the first person to make this argument and that it's extremely well-trodden ground in the social sciences, and that the social sciences are too often unfairly dismissed by technologists like you and myself. I used to do it a lot too, then I decided to minor in philosophy ;).

>If you want to apologize, do so to yourself for getting wrapped up in such nonsense and for allowing yourself to be manipulated out of critical thinking.

You mean my whole fallacy is wrong?

Just to clarify my argument here and make sure we actually disagree on the fundamentals before we go any further:

Hypothesis: People of color are oppressed in American society in ways that white people aren't.

For the purposes of the following, "fighting oppression" is defined as taking those actions which eliminate structures and attitudes that perpetuate racial oppression, such as supporting affirmative action, properly investigating and if necessary indicting cops that kill people, directly protecting people of color from violence and discrimination, teaching black history in public schools, etc.

Deontological proposition: Not fighting the oppression of people of color violates the categorical imperative. ("act as if your actions were to become universal law")

Utilitarian proposition: We are obligated to fight the oppression of people of color because the human cost of this oppression in bodies is high and consistent and it will decrease if we fight oppression.

My intuition is that you disagree more with the initial hypothesis than my belief that if the hypothesis is correct that action is justified in either of the two dominant moral frameworks, though I could be wrong (in which case it's kind of silly we're still arguing at this juncture). In the interest of focus, would you mind articulating what specifically you disagree with in my specific hypothesis? You'll probably say I'm trying to shift the burden of proof here, and I'll admit that it can have that effect but moreover I've lost track of the actual disagreement between us in all this.

My best guess is that mjolk perceives that your hypothesis is the following:

* Americans (as individuals) are racist,

whereas your hypothesis is:

* America (as a society) is racist.

The latter acknowledges that a society can be racist because of past actions even if all present members are non-racist, whereas the former assumes every member to be guilty of racism unless proven innocent. That's a very strong (and in my opinion, inaccurate and unfounded) accusation towards individual Americans, and it shifts the burden of proof in a way that is unjust towards the accused.

In short, the challenge is to diagnose and fight systemic racism without unjustly blaming individuals caught up in that system, even if said individuals appear to be the beneficiaries. The same is true for the fight against sexism.

As for the "all people can be racist" issue, remember that because systemic racism against white people is minuscule, the personal majority of racism that white people do experience is personal racism, an in this area minorities are just as bad as white people, if not more so. As an Asian-American I have encountered some personal racism, the vast majority of that from blacks and latinos while in middle and high school.

> whereas your hypothesis is:

> * America (as a society) is racist.

If that is what jolux meant I have misread too.

To me it reads like jolux is speaking about us as individual racists, which more or less obviously is easily interpreted as an attempted insult.

This ambiguity with the usage of the word 'racist' is part of a common motte-and-bailey gambit used by progressives when discussing race and discrimination. After starting with accusations of racism (meaning that the individual will discriminate against others according to their race), they retreat behind their redefinition of the word, claiming they just meant that systemic bias does exist. When this claim (which is hard to refute) is accepted, they take the acceptance as an admission of individual discriminatory behaviour.

You can see this in action above where jolux starts out using the first definition ("there is a high probability you have at the very least some implicit bias against non-white people") then switches back and forth.

Yah, I don't actually think mjolk or you are willfully discriminatory, and I think you misunderstand. Because implicit bias is subconscious, it requires conscious effort to recognize and and correct it. I'm not saying and will not try to argue that people say and do things that they know to be racist because they want to be racist, because nobody does want to be racist. However if it is so probable that you have implicit bias against non-white people I would ask why is it a bad thing to try and change that?

Also it doesn't really matter to the person being discriminated against whether it's a question of individual will or implicit bias, and we are still responsible for both. I will even argue that there's a high probability most white people have a lot of explicit bias as well, the reason I didn't mention that is because you can't test it empirically in the same way as implicit bias.

> However if it is so probable that you have implicit bias against non-white people I would ask why is it a bad thing to try and change that?

It's because most people by default adhere to a toxic combination of virtue ethics and retributive justice. Under that system, if you do bad things, the obligation isn't on you to improve yourself and your actions, but on others to make you suffer because you are a "bad person". People don't want to suffer, so they reject the initial premise.

Virtue ethics has its positives, but retributive justice needs to die in a fire.

I think the core thing that both sides of an argument like this need to agree upon before engaging, is defining the word racism. As an observer, it's clear that you both have different understandings of what you're discussing. The traditional view of the word is different to how progressives typically mean it.

That's with no judgment intended on either argument :).

>The traditional view of the word is different to how progressives typically mean it.

Racism is discriminating others based on their RACE

100% correct. Beware that the social justice movement wants to add "from a position of power" to that definition, so that only white people can be racist. It excuses the poor choices, actions, and ideas of non-white people and ascribes their situation to their non-whiteness.

jolux, just wanted to say I appreciate where you're coming from.

It might be that what is being stated as racist, is better described as racial bias. Bias' are generally subconscious, whereas usually the term racist is reserved for outward, and aggressive bigotry.

Understanding ones own bias' is important in understanding how to help correct the problems.

> I'm racist, for example

Really?

> as are pretty much all other white people in the US

Oh, I see now.

> it's sort of a nasty default state of being born white in a white supremacist society

Yes, so people with white skin all think/feel a certain way, mhmm?

>Yes, so people with white skin all think/feel a certain way, mhmm?

No, it's not like everyone consciously chooses to be racist, it's just that you sort of learn it subconsciously if you're not really careful. It's sort of like if the first programming language you learn is PHP then your use of other languages will be colored by it unless you make a conscious effort to unlearn.

> I'm racist, for example, as are pretty much all other people in the US

FTFY.

I think that a part of human nature make us distrust those who are different, whatever the difference is.

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