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Comment by blackoil | Hacker News Reader

A person snatched stick of a blind man and threw it, another helped him cross the street. Both treated him differently because he was blind. Only one of them was asshole.

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Try this argument the next time someone calls you racist for assuming all Asians are good at Math.

Maybe the blind guy did not want to be patronizingly helped with crossing the road. Maybe he would have asked for help if needed it and could have done without a sighted knight.

If these arguments sound perverse just swap out some other 'issue' and they will start sounding familiar.

I'm not sure I understand your counterpoint analogy. Regardless, I take issue with your second statement on the blind person asking for help if needed. Minorities do ask for help, I think it's disingenuous to imply that minorities have never requested assistance in being treated more like the majority. I think many times we push responsibility for achieving equality onto those who are treated unequally, the old 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps'. Martin Luther King Jr: "it's a nice thing to say to people that you oughta lift yourself by your own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he oughta lift himself by his own bootstraps."

You don't have to apply for funding.

Sure, if you believe a race is any less able.

Race isn't a disability. The analogy has pretty awful implications. "We need to help them because they can't help themselves" Even if that's not true today it will become the truth in the future as more people take advantage of the special treatment. The reality is that you actually need to put in the hard work. Yes it sucks but there is no free lunch.

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