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Comment by djrobstep | Hacker News Reader

One day in the future I hope we can take classism as seriously as other forms of bigotry like racism and sexism.

Explicitly racial segregation is over, but capitalist class society segregates people by socio-economic class implicitly (it's explicit in only certain places like airplane cabins).

Of course, class is a great way to continue to run a racist society: Just cram the underclass with most of the minorities!

The only solution is to replace the class system with something that provides unconditional dignity for all.

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I have this pet theory that much racism is actually wrongly interpreted classism. In many countries, big ethnic minorities (eg African Americans and Latinos in the US, or the Turkish & Maroccan Dutch where I live) are much poorer, on average, than the national average.

I suppose that many people might think that poorer people are more likely to break into their homes, rob them on the street, sell drugs etc than richer people. So they prefer to avoid poor people if they can. I mean, that's classism in a nutshell right?

If you're black in the US or Turkish in NL, it's like having an "I'm poor" sign on your forehead. Especially if you don't dress overly businesslike.

That doesn't explain the racism against Jews, or Asians.

I think the explanation is more biological. You're hardwired to feel that people who look and talk like you are the easiest to ally with. Sometimes it even becomes a self-reinforcing loop - if blue people have a slight preference to ally with other blue people, then green people will find it easier to ally with greens than with blues, which will be noticed by the blues and so on.

> That doesn't explain the racism against Jews, or Asians.

True, but it does explain some of why white people in a super white neighborhood call the cops when a black guy is walking down the sidewalk. It's totally ridiculously bigoted but I think there's a big "this guy looks poor, is he going to break in somewhere?" component to it. And that's classism, not racism.

I'm not saying classism is any better btw. I am saying that trying to solve classism-disguised-as-racism by talking about skin color or culture is missing the mark. The narrative "most black people don't $negative_stereotype" is common, but I hardly see any "most poor people don't $negative_stereotype" messages out there.

> The only solution is to replace the class system with something that provides unconditional dignity for all.

I am really afraid of comments that state that there is only one solution for a social problem. Speaks a lot about the mindset of the commenter. Please, do not be that person.

Baselessly prejudiced discrimination is obviously bad, but whites in the west had a head start of hundreds of years of amassing wealth and power. That's how the game mostly works.

We're born, we do the work and we die. We're not entitled to anything.

>The only solution is to replace the class system with something that provides unconditional dignity for all.

Basic income, let's go!?

Your comment amounts to "whites rule, deal with it", aka blatant white supremacy.

It's a perfect example of the racism-through-classism that I'm talking about.

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