Comment by marklacey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by marklacey | Hacker News Reader

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I haven’t read White Fragility and couldn’t read the entirety of the article linked here due to the paywall, so I cannot comment on those.

I have been trying to educate myself about the topic recently, though, and would strongly recommend looking into some of the excellent work on systemic racism in the US if you’re interested in learning more.

The documentary “13th” (available for free on YouTube at the moment), the 2nd season of the podcast Scene On Radio (“Seeing White”), and the book How to Be An Anti-Racist are three things I can recommend based on what I’ve read/heard from them so far.

What you’re calling the “recent forced redefinition of racism” is not especially recent. I first heard this argument around 30 years ago, and at the time dismissed it, but now understand why people want to emphasize that over the definition I recall learning as a child which was structured along the lines of a belief in superiority of one group over another.

Having a belief may impact how you feel towards someone and how you act towards them, and may even have an impact on that person if you are in a position to influence the course of their life.

Having a system that is designed and reinforced to encourage disparate outcomes is far more impactful to that group as a whole.

I’m not going to argue that both aren’t harmful, but I’ve certainly come around to the conclusion that systematic or policy-based racism (if you’re uncomfortable calling it racism, feel free to disregard the name and come up with something you’re more comfortable with) has disproportionately affected Black and non-black people of color in the US.

I would be willing to entertain the point that systematic racism exists if universities had roughly equivalent admission rates for all races for identical test scores, however black people tend to have significantly higher rates of admission than white people, and very significantly higher rates than Asian people.

If systemic racism exists in a specific direction as you imply, why do institutions have their fingers on the scale in favor of the oppressed race?

In fact, if students were treated identically without the consideration of race then black admission rates to universities would dramatically fall.

> If systemic racism exists in a specific direction as you imply, why do institutions have their fingers on the scale in favor of the oppressed race?

You are literally asking “if systemic racism exists, why are specific institutions taking specific steps to correct systemic racism”. Suggesting that you think that if anyone notices and attempts to address systemic racism, then it must not exist.

So why aren't whites being disadvantaged more than Asians? Asians aren't at fault for America's putative racism problems.

This would be v tribal thinking. (to generalise) white people are to blame for racism, but whites university applicants are not to blame for racism.

This paradox arises from the nebulous grouping of "white people" to include all whites, past and present, and ignoring any relevant differences or disproportion of blame.

Hence, a white 18 year old somehow inherits crimes of the past committed by white people in the past. That that white person may have entered the country just a few years ago is not taken into account - It is assumed they receive "white privilege" to amount that justifies any magnitude of countermeasure.

At some point people are going to wake up and figure out that we are all human, and we all have a collection of unique threads in our fabric. There is an recent and pervasive behavior in American media and MegaCorp that is now engaged in straight out Rules for Radicals:

"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it"

The emergent behavior in media is a closed loop cycle fueled by viewership. If we can increase outrage on each end of the "political spectrum" we can keep people watching. The same feedback loop is taking place on social networks with "The Stream(tm)".

I don't know what the solution is- But Hacker News commentators. I love you all.

>I have been trying to educate myself about the topic recently, though, and would strongly recommend looking into some of the excellent work on systemic racism in the US if you’re interested in learning more.

The fact that people write about this doesn't make it necessarily true. You should bear in mind that people are at least partly incentivised to write about this topic because it gives them soft power over individuals and society when it enters the mainstream - regardless of whether it's true. In other words you should recognize that you are potentially consuming propaganda.

>The documentary “13th” (available for free on YouTube at the moment), the 2nd season of the podcast Scene On Radio (“Seeing White”), and the book How to Be An Anti-Racist are three things I can recommend based on what I’ve read/heard from them so far.

All of this theory is based on the assumption that any two demographics with different cultures (i.e. with different notions of good/evil and just/unjust, varied attitudes toward the prioritization of work/study/sport, gender roles, etc) are equally suited, on average, for any field where we expect demographic parity. This is a fundamentally unproven modern assumption - and it doesn't make much sense when you consider how much influence culture has over individual interests and practiced abilities.

Now we are extrapolating from this unproven (and I suspect unprovable) assumption and using it as justification for discrimination against whites. Not only that, but we don't even have valid metrics for the degree to which racism influences society - because again there is no scientific justification for equal representation of all demographics in groups of individuals selected by merit.

>What you’re calling the “recent forced redefinition of racism” is not especially recent. I first heard this argument around 30 years ago, and at the time dismissed it, but now understand why people want to emphasize that over the definition I recall learning as a child which was structured along the lines of a belief in superiority of one group over another.

If you want to emphasize a new concept, you create a new word, you don't hijack an existing word and use it to denigrate or gain social power over others.

>Having a system that is designed and reinforced to encourage disparate outcomes is far more impactful to that group as a whole

Even if it were true, that all, or even the majority, of outcome disparity in modern western society is due to a broken system, that doesn't change the fact that this movement is effectively labeling white people as implicitly, innately, and inescapably evil. Where does it end? Isn't this literally the foundation for violence and atrocity?

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