Hacker News Reader

Comment by disease | Hacker News Reader

Economic parity would go a long way towards solving these problems, I don't think they can happen before white racial resentment is solved. It's interesting that so many working class whites are so willing to vote against their own economic self interest - particular where the possibility of raising the levels of working class blacks is concerned. Last Place Aversion is a very real thing it seems.

View on HN

Economic Parity doesn’t have anything to do with police mistreatment and racial profiling. My family lives in the most affluent part of our metro area, my son grew up in the burbs all of his life, as an experienced software engineer by definition we have higher than the median income for our area, and people still thought we were up to something when we walked through our house as it was being built while other couples freely walked in and out of unsold homes.

Last year, I was outside talking to our (White) yard guy. His truck with the name of his lawn service was parked out front. He was dressed in beat up jeans, dusty, and holding the lawn mower while I had just come from work - in slacks and button down shirt. A neighbor walked over to us and asked him how long has he been living here while completely ignoring me. He looked like he was going to say something and I quietly nudged for him not to. I politely said I would see them later and walked into the house.

She was embarrassed - point made. When she left, I walked back outside with a bottle of water for him and we started back talking. I told him I just walked into the house to make a point and we both laughed.

I agree that this has to be part of the solution. There are some activists who have called for the US to go through a national truth and reconciliation proceedings to establish a common narrative.

Do you think any of those people actually think to themselves "I'm going to vote against my economic self-interest because of Last Place Aversion"?

Maybe they don’t say that but how many farmers who voted for Trump because of his platform about deporting “illegals” are now complaining that they can’t find anyone to work their farms because Americans won’t work the fields at any price?

And they are going to vote for him again?

How many “good Christians” support him even after the recording came out about him “grabbing a woman by the p%%%%”?

Farmers are rich, though, and they're doing fine for labor. The trade war hit them worse by tanking pork prices.

For working class people, neoliberal economics have done nothing for them. Plants in town have closed and they don't see any investment in their community from their tax dollars.

If neither party is going to look out for you, it's perfectly rational to sigh and pick the one that at least doesn't villainize you as some sort of oppressor.

If the democrats want to win back the white union vote, they need to actually offer something besides "vote for us or you're racist". I guess there's always 2024.

Can you expand a little bit on the white racial resentment and what you mean by it ?

The term was coined by Publius [1] in his blog. It's resentment towards black people due a belief of having *"been significantly deprived of various things because of minorities".

Also, WaPo recently used one question from historical surveys by the ANES (American National Election Studies) to measure what they consider "white resentment", and there seems to be a large correlation between that and other political positions. [2]

(Skip to the "Here’s how we did our research" part and the graph if you're not a fan of WaPo)

[1] https://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/08/my-on...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/01/1...

A non-trivial percentage of White Americans feel like African-Americans have already been made whole for the hundreds of years of wrongdoing done to them, and some even feel like Black people actually have more privilege/opportunity than White people in America and that America is now "reverse racist". Anecdotally, they tend to be poorer Whites who feel aggrieved that they haven't gotten the wealth they feel they deserve, but not always.

Basically the type of people who think saying "Black Lives Matter" means you hate White people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com