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Comment by frgtpsswrdlame | Hacker News Reader

And yet I bet that 95%+ of American white males would easily, easily, easily make the trade between 'shopping while black' and $28,000/year. I actually wonder if you took the poorest 50% of white males and asked them what poor treatment they would suffer for $28,000/year tax-free - how much would they willing endure? I dare to say quite a lot.

>Having even absurd amounts of money doesn't make bias just go away.

And having white skin and a penis doesn't make inequality go away either.

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You do not seem to be aware of just how bad poverty and inequality has gotten for everyone.

https://www.prb.org/us-inequality-poverty/

Yes, black Americans do have worse outcomes than white Americans.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/psmag.com/.amp/economics/four-f...

However, we should not be splitting hairs over who has it worse or bickering about how to make poor dumb white families pay for the injustices of systemic racism that they had no hand in creating or maintaining.

There are a lot of poor people in America and they all deserve our help. If we continue to pick and choose who we help based on what minority sub-group makes the most noise we will only accomplish division. If the top 1% can increase their wealth by 20%in a year then we can also improve schools, health care, and access to affordable financing for all poor people. Instead we get divisive platitudes that alienate poor whites and never actually help poor blacks.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/02/concen...

We should start by funding public schools equally by head count instead of from property taxes.

https://www.thenation.com/article/how-unequal-school-funding...

Then we should probably end the inane war on drugs, fix healthcare, free the slaves filling prisons that do not pose a danger to society, overturn CU, and build some affordable damn houses.

Intersectionality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality) is an interesting subject. Privilege has many axes and can vary with circumstances; it's dangerous to reduce to a one-dimensional less-than/greater-than scale. A black woman from a wealthy family may have more privilege and more opportunities than a white man from a dirt-poor family, and that must be taken into consideration if we want to make a better world. But at the same time, it remains true that the average black woman has less privilege (in most circumstances) than the average white man.

It almost like one should judge people individually and not by the groups they are a part of.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

It is politically useful to pick at partially healed wounds to make them bleed again, rather than allow them to heal completely. I hope that MLK would have fought against the current trend of re-opening those wounds and undoing any healing that had already begun.

> I hope that MLK would have ...

I once said similar things. Then I learned that MLK was told similar things then - he was constantly told that he was creating trouble by inflaming things. I strongly encourage you to read his "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" to see not only that the same things have always been said, but his response - it transformed my understanding of these issues.

> partially healed wounds ...

> re-opening those wounds and undoing any healing that had already begun.

I think we should question the assumptions that the wounds were as healed as perhaps is widely thought by people who aren't in minorities. What makes you say they are healed to the extent you think? When I ask people who have those experiences personally and directly, they almost always have a starkly different view of the amount of 'healing'.

Part of MLK's response is that, unless compelled to address it, people don't take them seriously and they linger. Racism has lingered in the U.S. for centuries. IME, people who aren't directly affected by problems tend to project their experiences onto them - they unconsciously infer that 'I don't see bad things' means 'it's not bad'.

Finally, a bit of a tangent: MLK is often adopted by white Americans because his message, misunderstood, makes them feel comfortable. MLK was very much about making people uncomfortable, and he believed (again, see the Letter) that that was the only way to foster change. (And IIRC, even after the Voting Rights Act, surveys showed that MLK had more people in the U.S. who thought negatively about him than positively.)

It's true that other people have problems, but that doesn't reduce the amount of discrimination against African-Americans and other minorities, or help the problem. An assumption behind the parent's "bet" (no evidence is given) is that discrimination against African-Americans isn't especially problematic. I think that needs to be supported against the mountains of evidence that say otherwise; IMHO, it is like claims of climate change denial - it's easy to make the claims, but the evidence is overwhelmingly otherwise.

A sad fact of HN is that there are no voices of African-Americans, or at least very few and they don't share their experiences (not that I blame them; it's a hostile place). Other people with no experience like to share their opinions, but that is as valuable as me talking about what it's like to work at Microsoft - I've never worked there so my opinion isn't worth a lot. The lack of people experienced in this subject is both an outcome of generations of discrimination - African-American families often lack the wealth, income, and educational history associated with higher education and SV jobs - and a cause of it: We don't understand the problems. We're just BSing in the dark.

You think that HN is a hostile place?

I think it is to African-Americans, women, and other minorities. For example, broad stereotypes and criticisms are made, and frequently comments that say, for example, that racism is a problem, is voted down (my GP comment was voted down to -2, for example) and commonly harshly criticized. When those issues come up, most comments criticize any differing perspective before they are expressed. On the surface, there is very little interest in listening to other points of view - though I suspect that is the intent of the inflammatory commenters, to shut down discussion.

I think if you did a survey on HN users you would see that most of them think that racism is in fact a problem - that it is not good.

Also, I think its important to consider your comments holistically when seeing how they are received by the community. Of course you believe you comment communicates one thing, but in addition to that you have tone, other claims, and defenses. Any of which can result in a downvote.

I think these are great points, and the second paragraph, in some form, should be in the Guidelines. It's refreshing and encouraging to read them.

To be clear, I wasn't asking why that particular comment was downvoted; I'm talking about a much broader pattern.

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