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Comment by yucca_plant | Hacker News Reader

The entire problem is that we categorize people into different buckets. "White", "Black", "Asian", etc.

Admissions must be race blind. In general our society must be race blind. "White" people were once Polish, Italian, German, etc. Yet these identities have melted away over generations in large part because society did not and does not actively reinforce these identities.

By forcing people into these buckets we reinforce the very divisions that we want to overcome.

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But people in the Black bucket are way behind economically because people in the White bucket have been stealing from them for 100s of years, and the people in the White bucket created the buckets in the first place to do the stealing.

So how do you make that right without continuing to use the buckets? The only way is to either completely dismantle Capitalism, and start over with it or something else again from scratch were everyone starts on even ground again, and it never mattered what bucket people were in. The simpler option is to use the buckets and say that people in the Black bucket get special benefits at the cost of people in the White bucket to right the wrong that happened, and this needs to continue until they're close to even again.

It's like if a friend steals money from you. The only way you're likely ever going to fix that friendship is if the friend at the very least gives the money back and apologizes. Pretending like it never happened isn't going to work.

An additional thing is that you still have people using the buckets for their benefit, or just because they don't know better. In order to counteract the actions of those people, and recognize who's hurt by them, you have to also use the idea of the "buckets".

"So how do you make that right without continuing to use the buckets? "

2 wrongs don't make it right.

How is paying someone back for a crime a wrong?

Who are you paying back to? The person who did the crime or some other people based on similarities with the criminal? How about putting on the death row everyone in the neighborhood of a murderer? This is your logic.

I'm saying that white people have inherited a lot of wealth at the cost of black people. Wealth statistics clearly show this. The average black family is 10x poorer then the average white family. The stealing was done through Jim Crow, slavery, red lining, etc.

If you inherit money that your parents stole, that money is taken away from you by the police and given back to the person it was stolen from.

In this case, white people's ancestors stole from black people, and therefore, white people should take responsibility for that and pay back black people since they are still benefiting from that theft at the cost of black people today who would have otherwise inherited the stolen wealth.

"White people" is a vast generalization, it includes people that came in US much later than the history you are talking about. How can you even consider punishing them for something they did not do, just because they are the same race as the people that did something bad a long time ago? This is racism in the purest form.

Most (all?) of Europe benefited from colonialism and slavery, it wasn't just America doing it.

They immigrated to a country built on the free labor of blacks correct? Once here they were given preferential treatment in terms of unionization and local government correct? The narrative that later immigrants didn't benefit from or engage in Jim Crow is kind of ludicrous.

>Irish immigrants, many of whom were very poor, were more of an underclass than the Germans. In Ireland, the English had oppressed the Irish for centuries, eradicating their language and culture and discriminating against their religion (Catholicism). Although the Irish had a larger population than the English, they were a subordinate group. This dynamic reached into the new world, where Anglo Americans saw Irish immigrants as a race apart: dirty, lacking ambition, and suitable for only the most menial jobs. In fact, Irish immigrants were subject to criticism identical to that with which the dominant group characterized African Americans. By necessity, Irish immigrants formed tight communities segregated from their Anglo neighbors. The later wave of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe was also subject to intense discrimination and prejudice. In particular, the dominant group—which now included second- and third-generation Germans and Irish—saw Italian immigrants as the dregs of Europe and worried about the purity of the American race (Myers 2007). Italian immigrants lived in segregated slums in Northeastern cities, and in some cases were even victims of violence and lynchings similar to what African Americans endured. They worked harder and were paid less than other workers, often doing the dangerous work that other laborers were reluctant to take on. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/alamo-sociology/chapter/re...

- So I take it Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans and Americans of Eastern-European descent, most of them having arrived in states without Jim Crow laws, won't have to pay?

- Will white people who's ancestors fought and died for the union side in the civil war have to pay or maybe they get a discount?

- Will white people who arrived in the last 20 years have to pay?

- Will poor white people have to pay?

- Does this cover rich African Americans or does the money only go to those with less money than white people?

- The average black family is 7x poorer than the average asian family. Does that mean Asians have to pay too?

Which wealth statistics? From this article, 90% of family wealth is lost by the third generation.

http://money.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/

There are so many studies on this if you're actually interested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...

Regardless of whether family wealth is lost over time, non-black families still hold more wealth than black families by several multiples.

So... whites steal from black bucket, so that makes it ok for the black bucket to steal from the Asian bucket?

There's so much to unpack here, IDK where to even start.

"I don't see color" doesn't feel helpful to many people of color. If you believe that there are prejudices, and you want to fix them, saying "everyone immediately needs to stop being prejudice and everything will be better" isn't actually a solution we can enact. What if people don't suddenly decide it's in their best interest to not be racist?

*Edited to remove off topic comment

It doesn't feel helpful to be viewed as an individual as opposed to simply a member of a group? Not every person with x skin color has the same experiences... You're taking racism and running the other way with it instead of just rejecting the premise of viewing people as tribe members as flawed. You shouldn't judge people by the groups they happen to belong to. Individuals should be judged on a case-by-base basis.

I don't think you're seeing what the parent is saying. What you are suggesting isn't actionable. We already have legislation to make discrimination illegal and it hasn't been effective at stopping it.

Of course it is - the action is to stop discrimination of any kind. And yes, yes it has been effective. Hate crimes have dropped off precipitously and minority unemployment is at an all time low. Continuing to play this reverse-discrimination game will foment resentment, especially in the group that is "allowed to be discriminated against" according to the political flavor of the times (particularly the ones that aren't winning in society) thus creating the monster that you sought to destroy.

No, it's not actionable unless you've developed some kind of machine that can change other people's opinions.

You're right that we've made significant progress on racial issues. That doesn't mean more can't or shouldn't be done. Furthermore it's not clear from your slippery slope argument that the disadvantages of reverse discrimination (of which there are of course some) are actually more significant than the advantages.

>You shouldn't judge people by the groups they happen to belong to.

And yet, in this country we did just that for hundreds of years. You don't just wave your hand and erase that legacy. We are in a transitional period that will hopefully help ease us into a society where these measures will truly have no place. We are not there yet.

That may not be sufficient, but setting institutional standards that treat people differently based on skin color is guaranteed to perpetuate racial division and prejudice.

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