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Comment by wsxcde | Hacker News Reader

"I think you're so focused on detecting a dog whistle that you're missing the key point being raised."

There is no need to detect a dogwhistle. We have an explicit statement from Wax (http://www.thedp.com/article/2017/08/amy-wax-penn-law-cultur...) where she says Anglo-Protestant cultural norms are superior. "I don't shrink from the word, 'superior,'" she said, adding, "Everyone wants to come to the countries that exemplify" these values. "Everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white Europeans."

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The article you link to undermines you core claim that she implicitly claims "inner city blacks are incompatible with an advanced free market economy." She explicitly states the opposite:

“Bourgeois values aren’t just for white people,” she said. “The irony is: bourgeois values can help minorities get ahead.”

An aside, I grew up in a small Midwest town. There was one black family in town. One of the sons was in the grade above me in school and people would joke that he wasn't really "black". This was because he had been raise in a small Midwest town and had small-town values and habits. He and his family were an accepted part of the community because they had the same values.

If a member of the Bloods had moved in town, they would very much have been rejected because they would have been acting with very different values. Further more, they probably would have starting acting in ways that were contrary to cultural norms.

Is it racist to say that I think small-town Midwest values are superior to inner-city black values?

Is it racist to say that I think that the lives of inner-city blacks would be improved if they adopted small-town Midwest values?

What if I switch the statement and say that I think small-town Midwest values could improve the lives of all poor people in the inner city. Is that "dog whistling"?

You're assuming that "inner-city black values" is a thing, and that black people living in inner cities all have the same values. That's the part that's racist.

My sister taught in Memphis for 3 years. The kids she taught were of raise significantly differently than we were raised.

I will grant you that not all black people living in the inner city have the same values but I think it is factually incorrect to say that low income African Americans living in the inner-city do not have a common culture and common values.

My phrasing might be racist, if that is the case, can you point out how to express the same idea in a more neutral way so that I don't make the same mistake in the future?

I'm not sure how to answer that, because I still don't believe what you're saying is correct. Living and teaching in Memphis for three years certainly gives one more perspective than not doing so, but a school-district-sized parcel of Memphis likely doesn't even speak for Memphis as a whole, let alone all US cities.

I do expect that all low-income black people living in cities share some values, but that can be applied to any group. I wouldn't claim that low-income white people living in cities all have the same culture, either, despite the fact that they almost certainly share at least some of the same values.

Look, I'm not trying to say you're an evil racist. You just have biases (unconscious and conscious), just like all of us do. I just worry when people try to label a group of people so narrowly and homogeneously when there's more to it than that.

Thank you for the kind reply, it was kinder than I deserved.

All discussion of culture is generalization. If you can't deal with that, you're going to have a very tough time. We can talk about cultures that generally fall along ethnic or racial lines with the understanding that the values don't hold for every person of that race or ethnicity.

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