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Comment by arionhardison | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes... racism is just racism, not mental illness. There seems this huge rush for people to "white wash" away all of the characteristics they don't like in someone; this is intellectually cowardly. The man was a great programmer...and a racist. The two things are not mutually exclusive but when people like you choose to just gloss over this and other acts of racism it helps to continue the cycle of racist patting each other on the back and telling each other its OK, wink wink

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We detached this hellish subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17913084 and marked it off-topic. (Edit to be clear: it wasn't that this root comment was so bad, but that it inevitably led to the same flamewar that has raged many times over the years on HN, which causes people to break HN's rules badly.)

All: continuing this flamewar will get your account banned. Find some other place to do it, or get your fix by searching for the countless previous times people got nasty and abused each other about this exact issue.

That's a lot to unpack.

I'm not saying we should condone the racism, but he was mentally ill, and I'm sorry, you do get a bit of leeway with that. The guy was schizophrenic, thought he was hearing voices from God, then killed himself. The courts have decided that if someone is proven to be mentally ill, they're not fully responsible for their actions, and if Terry doesn't qualify as "mentally ill", I don't know who does.

I am not saying that he should have been un-banned from HN, I'm not saying we need to pat him on the back, and I really appreciate you trying to imply that I'm ok with racism because I engage in some form of empathy when a mentally-ill human does some awful stuff.

None of us are immune from this; all of us are just one head injury away from some kind of mental illness or brain damage. If I start hearing voices from God telling me to be racist, I would hope that people would engage in at least some level of understanding.

I'm not trying to "gloss over" anything; I pretty specifically said that he will be remembered for his racism, but I think we should always remember his illness.

Okay... but Davis was literally mentally ill. Not euphemistically, not as some hand-wave, but literally, actually ill. So yes, it is completely fair to not define a person by something that they have no control over.

When telling someone that something they said was racist, it's important to keep it focused not on the person but the act. Racism and prejudice is learned, and it can certainly be unlearned. Unfortunately, you cannot unlearn mental illness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Ti-gkJiXc

Aside from his brazen use of racial slurs how exactly was he racist? His racism always sounded like paranoid nervous talking. He was schizophrenic. Until you can actually show he was racist beyond clips of him using inappropriate language, stop spreading this. Racism is and always has been much much deeper than word choice. A homeless schizophrenic has absolutely no power to enact any kind of racism against anyone, and as a matter of fact was probably victim to a similar amount of discrimination due to his own position.

He's not. It was just a neologism for him.

I don’t think it’s illuminating or productive to call him a racist. He was obviously mentally ill to a life-changing extent.

People I respect sometimes say dumb stuff when they are drunk or tired or are having a terrible day or whatever; they can have a rest and return to “normal”. Terry couldn’t.

And sometimes it’s a misguided attempt at shock humor. And sometimes it’s self-sabotage. We don’t know what he really believed or wanted to achieve. The one thing we do know is he was sick. No sensible person will take the rantings of an obviously sick person and think racism is ok.

Your indifference to the hardships of having a mental illness is nauseating. You think bigotry is a good tool to fight racism?

If you post like this again to Hacker News we will ban you. No matter how wrong someone else is, you can't attack others like this here.

No more name-calling and no more flamewars, please.

Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules.

Your indifference to the troubles and hardship of people that have to deal with racist is nauseating. You think ignoring it and calling it by a different name is a good tool to fight racism?

Posting like this will get you banned. No matter how wrong someone else is, you can't attack others like this here.

No more name-calling and no more flamewars, please.

Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules.

You have no idea what psychosis does to you do you? Also you know nothing of my stance on racism. But I can clearly read how much of a bigot you are.

I don't know why someone flagged the parent to this. I didn't really agree with him but I don't think he violated any rules.

It was a low effort ad hominem post. Not really something we want on HN.

Its a bit ironic to be called a bigot by someone who is upset that I refuse to praise a racist.

Again you are putting words in my mouth. I'm upset of your lack of understanding for the mentally ill.

I'm going to assume that you didn't see the comment I posted warning you that we would ban you if you continued this flamewar.

Please stop now.

yeah yeah, I didn't see it. I'll refrain from engaging him any further.

That's a subtle way of sticking the blame on the other person. This is not about "him". It's about respecting the community and its rules.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> you didn't see the comment

Aside: occurrences like this are what amaze me at (a) HN's lack of a built-in system of notifying users when others reply to them, or at least a linear view of all replies; and (b) the resulting reliance that people either discover and use third-party scrapers, or be experts with the F5 key and the Mark-1 eyeball.

I agree with you completely, and I think you would not be getting downvoted if the demographic of Hacker News readers was different. Being mentally ill doesn't mean that racist things you say aren't racist.

There are several reasons why HN users would correctly downvote and flag this subthread. First, it's a flamewar topic that has burned itself out on HN countless times in the past, that amounts to nothing more than people calling names at each other and worse.

Second, none of the people who do this kind of flamewar have any substantial notion of the relationship between schizophrenia and socially taboo language. Nor is that a topic that can be discussed on an internet forum at all, since any knowledgeable comment would immediately be buried by angry ignorant ones.

It's mindless, and those of you abusing each other should be ashamed of yourselves.

I agree; I apologize for fanning the flames here.

[flagged]

This is not the place to discuss this. But it is baffling to me that you think your disparage for the mentally ill is standing up to racism. You are no better than racists that refuses to understand socio-economic causes, and link behaviour to ethnicity no matter what. Try empathy instead of hate.

Stop it w/ the straw man BS. No where did I "disparage" the mentally Ill.

BTW: My mother has been committed since I was 2 and is still going in and out of institutions. ( Im 35 )

First, I'm really sorry about your mother. That is a heavy fate, for both of you. And I see that you have deep reasons for having strong feelings on both sides of this question.

In case it helps, the flags and moderation are not because you're outnumbered or because HN is full of racists or racist sympathizers. It's because this is a flamewar topic that rages in the same way every time it comes up and for some reason leads people into behaving extremely badly. This site has rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and they are the way they are for good reason.

And it's because no matter how one feels or how right one is, it's impossible to have a principled discussion about racism in the context of a comic book feud about a schizophrenic homeless man whom people on the internet have been treating as their personal mascot for many years. The only sensible reaction to that is nausea and—if you're responsible for this site, as I am—shame.

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