Comment by learc83 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by learc83 | Hacker News Reader

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1. The person I'm replying to has never lived here so they have no idea what they're talking about.

2. Group A systematically robbed and cheated Group B for centuries. Now that Group B has some political power and legal protections, Group A wants to pretend that "they can't see color."

Despite the fact that Group B has 1/10th the household wealth of Group A, are more likely to be arrested for committing the same crimes, receive harsher sentences for the same convictions, are much less likely to receive callbacks for job interviews, less likely to be hired for jobs they are equally qualified for, less likely to be approved for mortgages, less likely to be rented to, their dialect is considered linguistically inferior to Group A's, they are less likely to be picked up by a cab, and their children are even disciplined more harshly in fricking kindergarten.

Can you not understand how Group B isn't thrilled with the status quo with Group A's insistence that "they can't see color."

>something that you're accusing the "rednecks" of attempting to do.

1. They don't need to change laws to take race into account, because the system already does that for them.

2. Every single Trump supporting "redneck" I know supported the Muslim ban. And nearly every single Trump supporting "redneck" I know supported requiring Muslims to register with the government for tracking. According to survey's about 10% of them don't approve of mixed race marriages. And I guarantee from personal experience that the real number is much higher than that.

The only reason they don't get to enact the laws they want to, and the only reason they are afraid to publicly espouse their racist beliefs is because of the hard work of those left leaning Americans you despise.

Those left leaning American's you hate so much are the only reason most non white immigrants are even allowed to be in this country in the first place. The majority of my family doesn't even support birthright citizenship and would remove any non white citizens who's parents haven't been in this country more than a few generations if they could.

1) I live here so I know what I'm talking about. Either way, anecdotes are useless.

2) What is this nonsense about group A and B? Are we responsible for our ancestors? Are you prepared to say everyone in group B is responsible for any and all harm they collectively do? The answer is no, you would elect to treat people as individuals instead, so it seems it's you that treat the different groups differently by assigning collectively responsibility to only one of them.

3) "can't see color" is absolutely the correct way forward. We've spent decades proving that what you look like has nothing to do with your talents, motivations, interests, passions and character. We will never progress forward if you continue to discriminate and treat people by the very characteristic you claim is being used to discriminate.

4) The system is nothing but laws. Anything else would be up to how a specific individual deals with those laws, which is a problem with that person and not the system.

5) Anecdotes are useless. The travel ban is not what you claim it was, but perhaps you should look at how members of that religion handle racism first. You won't find any multiculturalism there, that's for sure. As a foreign-born naturalized US citizen, I don't support birthright citizenship either. It's unique to only the US and Canada, not the norm, and repealing it would solve many problems.

6) I don't hate left-leaning American's. This is your projection, clouded by your bias and judgement. I only hate policies that enact the very discrimination they aim to solve, created by people who are ignorant in the problems they aim to fix while ignoring all consequences of those solutions and further blocking any potential discussion or feedback.

7) No, the modern left is not responsible for any of that. America is a melting pot and has been for centuries. This is not some new development, it existed for generations before you and there are no serious attempts to stop it. Again you keep using anecdotes to say a few people are representative of the whole. Is there a country without criminals? Does that mean we all commit crime? Clearly not, so why don't we look at what actually is the reality instead.

Do you think that systemic racism exists? That is do you believe Black people when they tell you their life is harder because they are Black. Do you believe that job interviewers discriminate against Black sounding names? Do you believe that Black people receive harsher prison sentences all else being equal? Do you believe that Black people have a harder time renting homes? Because there's hard evidence to back up every single one of those claims.

All of those issues and more combine to create a reinforcing feedback loop that creates a permanent lower class within our society, that erodes trust in institutions, increases crime and, directly impacts our economic development.

What specifically do you propose we do to end that feedback loop?

2. This isn't about blame. It's about ameliorating an issue that harms all of us. And it's only indirectly about our ancestors. There are people alive today who were directly harmed by the laws that were put in place by the municipalities, states, and the country they live in today. People who were never compensated for that harm.

3. Pretending that you "don't see color" is an absurd response. Of course you do. Everyone does and everyone has implicit biases. The key is to recognize those biases, and sometimes to consciously correct for them.

4. > The system is nothing but laws.

That is naïve to the point of absurdity. I'm sure if you think about it you can come up with a few counter examples.

5. If anecdotes are useless, why do you keep brining them up?

> The travel ban is not what you claim it was, but perhaps you should look at how members of that religion handle racism first.

The travel ban that Trump called for during the campaign that won him votes was much more expansive than what was actually enacted. He also suggested that we should register all Muslims.

A survey in 2016 said that 40% of Americans called for a registry of Muslims, the results were heavily correlated with party affiliation. I'm going to give you 1 guess on which party favored registering Muslims.

>but perhaps you should look at how members of that religion handle racism first. You won't find any multiculturalism there, that's for sure.

What happened to treating people as individuals not as part of a group?

6. >It's unique to only the US and Canada, not the norm, and repealing it would solve many problems.

I thought the US was an amazing unique melting pot? There are many conservative and liberal argument for how the melting pot is helped by birthright citizenship.

https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/birthright-citi...

7. You really need to read a bit more history if you think this is true. Look up the 1965 immigration act.

> America is a melting pot and has been for centuries.

The Chinese exclusion act, and country based immigration quotas favoring European countries were the norm through most of that time.

>there are no serious attempts to stop it.

Here's a conversation between Steven Bannon and Stephen Miller (Trump's current lead advisor on immigration) --------------------------------- “Isn’t the beating heart of this problem, the real beating heart of it, of what we gotta get sorted here, not illegal immigration?” Bannon asked Miller. “As horrific as that is, and it’s horrific, don’t we have a problem? We’ve looked the other way on this legal immigration that’s kinda overwhelmed the country?”

Bannon goes on to decry the “oligarchs” of Silicon Valley and Washington and call the number of immigrants in the United States “scary.”

Miller’s response is affirmation: “The history of America is that an immigration-on period is followed by an immigration-off period,” he said. -----------------------------------

Bannon and Miller are both obsessed with preserving "western"(European) culture. If you aren't from a European country, you very likely would not have been allowed here had Steven Miller been in power when you immigrated.

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