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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

I don't disagree with the article but let me give a more positive anecdote. I'm Black and live in Forsyth County GA.

Yeah this Forsyth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0

We were looking for a house and were welcomed with opened arms by the builder, I can still go to pick up my son from a teen group where no one knows me and ask any random person have they seen my son and they know exactly who I'm talking about. But I've never felt the least bit of hostility and my son made friends quickly. He's dating a White girl - if he wants to date anyone in his school he doesn't have too much of a choice - and I've met her parents and they are perfectly supportive of it.

I've never experienced anything that I could perceive as racist here and neither has my family. There is probably still some of the old guard around but the county has bern growing fast, and probably is drowning out the old guard.

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That's great to hear! Thanks for posting! Nice to know that things are getting better in some places -- probably a lot of places. Not to suggest that we should ignore the problems that still exist, of course.

My guess is that your household income is at least $150k? Wealth can be a partial vaccine against discrimination.

Yes,

On that note, sure my son's girlfriend's parent seemed okay with her dating a Black kid. But when he dropped her off to our house for the first time, coming into our neighborhood of new houses where on the entry way it says "houses starting at $X" where $X denotes that we were probably upper income, and from my sons mannerism and speech you could tell that he grew up in the "right part of town".

Would he be okay if my son was the same kid but we lived in a poorer part of town? Probably not.

Or maybe people are discriminating against poverty / class rather than race.

No it's definitely both. But, while there are a lot of studies showing discriminitstion, to a point, depending on what part of the country you are in, how well connected you are, status (not necessarily income) and how well you can "fit in", it can be less of an issue.

Where I come from in the UK there isn't a lot of racism (that I am aware of) but I do see huge similarities in the way that classes treat each other to the way races treat each other in the US.

One can always find exceptions to the rule.

Is it an exception or do we mix racism with classicism? No I don't believe that racism is dead but do believe classicism is worse. Studies show that minorities have a harder time getting jobs, apartments, and are stopped more often by the police.

But studies have also shown that income mobility regardless of race is statistically rare.

I've heard a lot of classist comments from both White people (calling people "red necks" and "trailer trash") and upper income black people ("I don't want to live in a majority Black neighborhood around "them people")

In my experience as an American, it’s basically impossible for most Americans to talk about race and class problems at the same time. It seems as if for most people they exist in a zero-sum relationship; either everything wrong is because race(ism) or everything wrong is because class(ism). It’s not only exasperating, but seems to have stalemated progress on a societal level for generations.

This may be because Americans believe that class mobility is high (even though it isn't as high as it once was). But if class mobility is high, then if you're lower class, well, that's kind of your own fault. Go fix it. Move up.

But if you're of the wrong race, that clearly can't be your fault, and you can't "fix" it.

That split in how we think about class and race may be the underlying mechanism as to why we can't talk about both class and race at the same time.

> I've never experienced anything that I could perceive as racist here and neither has my family.

You'd certainly be in the minority. I've seen worse in far more "progressive" areas of the country.

I hope people don't read your comment and assume your experience is anywhere near typical.

Your anecdotes as a white man are not more valuable than his as a black man. This isn't the first time you've whitesplained to a minority on HN how their lived experience is invalid.

I'm black and I agree with his comment. Is it more valid now? I've experienced racism living in progressive California. It happens.

I don't mean to come off pessimistic either, I think we are doing better about it. My poor experiences have been distasteful, but not definitive of all my experiences. There will always be bad apples and such...

Ironic that you accuse me of whitesplaining.

Also, adding context is not invalidating.

Forsyth County is a lot of things, but "progressive" it's not - not in the liberal since. I would say it's more typical Republican than what I consider "populist".

I wasn't implying that it was progressive.

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