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Comment by machinehermit | Hacker News Reader

The problem is these protest are not effective, period.

All this is ultimately doing is making racist people more racist.

I am a white guy and my girl is black. You know how much we talk about race? None, zero, never. It only ever comes up when racist people point out we are not of the same race. Our values, taste and upbringings are literally the same. If you think black people can't be racist try dating a black woman as a white guy, lol.

The way to get past racism is not to be a racist and divide people on the basis of race. That is it.

What is happening right now is going in the wrong direction.

You would have a hard time helping the cause of racist assholes more than these protest.

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For what it's worth I personally do think that the focus on race is missing the bigger point, which is police brutality and impunity. They've been beating up white people too.

I think about the shooting of Daniel Shaver very often. A cold-blooded execution of a middle class white man caught on video and the officer was acquitted. We need to address both police brutality as well as racial inequality, and I wonder if it's more difficult to do both at the same time.

> We need to address both police brutality

There's a bigger legal+cultural problem if people are cold-blooded executed by police and the officer is tried and acquitted. The investigators, prosecutor, and jury are complicit.

Protest is an effective means of political participation. I mean that literally, not ideologically. Protest gives society a channel for communicating political grievance. It leads to organized political activism. It gets people elected and others kicked out of office. It also communicates to people in power, often isolated from the concerns of the grassroots, what the grassroots cares about. Don't underestimate this last bit. In countries where there is no right to protest and no free media, the elite in power literally have no clue what problems ordinary people are facing. Total "let them eat cake" situations.

> I am a white guy and my girl is black. You know how much we talk about race? None, zero, never.

This comment reminds me of this comment https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/sport/denver-broncos-coach-ra...

> The problem is these protest are not effective, period.

I struggle with this one because I think it's true.

> The way to get past racism is not to be a racist and divide people on the basis of race. That is it.

> What is happening right now is going in the wrong direction.

You seem to think the protests are primarily about race. I don't. I frame this as only police reform.

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