Hacker News Reader

Comment by nharada | Hacker News Reader

Nobody is saying every single person in the midwest is only friendly to white people. This is so obstinate it doesn't even seem genuine to me.

At the risk of feeding the trolls -- I grew up in the midwest. I can tell you that I both experienced racism myself and saw a lot of it in my high school both in students and from my classmate's parents. Of course everyone isn't racist, and most folks are friendly and accepting. But comments like this downplay the experience that many people in these places do have. In my experience, it takes a relatively small number of racist people and a whole bunch of folks who don't call that shit out to make it less comfortable for someone who isn't white in their day to day lives.

View on HN

OP: "What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white)."

P: "Of course everyone isn't racist, and most folks are friendly and accepting."

If these statements are equivalent, you have my apologies. English is not my native language. I think I will have to study for 10 lifetimes to understand.

"Some people are friendly only if you look like them" would be a more defensible claim. Probably that is true everywhere on earth.

But, the text of the original statement is about the behavior of Midwestern people [1] generally towards non white people generally.

[1] Not all Midwestern people are white in any case. Nebraska: 86%, Ohio: 82%, Illinois: 71.5%

They sorta are, if you actually read the context of each.

They're generalizing from different ends: one is saying that there are _some_ people who are not friendly if you're not white; the other is saying that _most_ people are friendly. The implication is that there is a subset of the populace that is unfriendly, and a subset that is friendly. Both comments say basically the same thing.

"What you will find is that people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white)."

should be

"What you will find is that most people are friendly, as long as you look like them (white)."

So you are correct in noting the statements are not equivalent.

By leaving out the word ‘most’ for whatever reason (typo, bias, etc.), the communication efficiency of the comment was reduced. Good catch.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com