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Comment by akie | Hacker News Reader

This Covid vaccine was created by a German company founded by the children of Turkish immigrants.

In this time of open racism and public hostility to immigration, this needs to be pointed out and repeated.

It was children of Turkish immigrants to Germany.

no idea why this is getting downvoted. This is super relevant. Germany has had at best handled their Turkish immigrants in a step-motherly fashion and until today you're automatically at a huge disadvantage with a Turkish sounding name / look in a lot of roles and industries. Heck the government even had a plan up until the 90s around "sending them back to Turkey".

So if anything the German media needs to do a way better job of highlighting this.

Yeah, even people who honestly believe that they are firmly pro-immigrant often have trouble accepting them in any role beyond cleaning services or running a kebab place. In reaction to this, some third generation descendants of immigrants seem to identify less with the country they have never left longer than a short vacation than their parents and grandparents.

It is very valuable for both immigrants (+descendants) and natives to see such a nice example of success far outside of typical immigrant roles.

It doesn't matter where they are from. This was the work of a group of dedicated individuals working together. Their national origins are irrelevant. If you want to end the "open racism", focus more on individuals and less on groups.

I disagree. It breaks the false narrative of "immigrants are just a burden for the society".

I don't think anybody really thinks that, only a few pockets of ignorant right-wingers and left-wingers. USA is all about the brain drain against other countries and that's the way it should be for a successful nation. Immigration has been more successful with the USA than probably any other nation. Illegal immigration on the other hand does cause issues with schools, jobs, taxes, hospitals etc and for those with a vested stake in the area, they should be pissed about that.

With the exception of the small group of racists and alt right nutjobs, I'm not seeing it. I see complaints against illegal migration, but that's not the same thing. We should not conflate the two.

I'm so proud of this as a turk living in EU.

I'm so proud of this as a German and Mainzer!

Edit: To be clear: I am proud that it was Turkish immigrant's children who did this, and that Germany made it possible for them to do it.

I'm so proud as a human being.

Me too!

I'm also proud as an American living in the USA. Racism will never end when it's the first way we define ourselves. What a stupid world we live in.

Looks like this was a perfect combination to (maybe) save the world. A Turkish - German - American collaboration, so to say. Wow. Who would have thought.

The fact you're downvoted to grey saddens me. For heaven's sake this is a tech forum and especially us techies should very well know that immigration and open exchange of people and ideas is the key to success.

Occasionally I wish I could take some karma and use it to upvote other comments - this is one of those occasions.

Edit: I would upvote parent comment as well as grandparent.

Edit: I think it would be fair to this at some kind of ratio (e.g. spend 10 karma to for each upvote or something).

Because people are tired of identity politics being shoved down their throats, not because they're against immigration per se. The fact of someone's race or origin is far less interesting than the story of these individuals, their personalities, their minds. If race or origin comes into it, it's if it plays into these deeper stories. But we don't want people telling us that they should be "pointed out and repeated". It's both irksome and facile.

I don't think open exchange of people is useful, or ever has been. What has helped the U.S.'s "success" (in kicking ass, generally speaking) is one-way brain-draining of other countries.

There are many people in science who go to the US for research for a couple of years and then go back home - and people from the US going abroad to escape uncertain funding, enjoy new perspectives (CERN!) or the myriad of other issues that the US has (healthcare, discrimination, public schools, transportation).

Those people leaving the U.S. doesn't benefit the U.S.

And the U.S. has excellent healthcare, public schools, and transportation for anybody who's productive.

Seems rather convenient to focus only on a positive exception and look away when the news paints a less rosy picture of the aggregate. For instance, a majority of Turks in Germany voted for Erdogan.

> Seems rather convenient to focus only on a positive exception and look away when the news paints a less rosy picture of the aggregate.

It seems like an exception because the news paints a less rosy picture of the aggregate. Stupid.

Rest assured that there is also a large fraction of Turks in Germany who have a fiery hate for Erdogan. I personally know some of them. But yeah, it's troubling whenever wanna-be dictators get so many votes. Do you know if this percentage is "of all Turks" or "of all who voted"? I could image that those who don't like him simply didn't vote.

From a logical standpoint: If this should be pointed out specifically, should the same be done for crimes commited by immigrants? If not, isn’t that technically disingenious or at least a double standard?

It depends on what you want to achieve.

Do you want to have race based discrimination and murders? go with the selectively pointing out the crimes committed by immigrants are committed by immigrants. This will give the illusion of causation(Immigrants do this because they are ).

If you want to have a society where people are judged by merit but you still have people arguing that it’s the race we should be looking for, go with pointing out the success of the immigrants. This will break the "Turks commit crimes because they are Turks" claim and inspire people to look to replicate the success of the successful ones.

you make it sound like these people were successful BECAUSE they were immigrants or because they were turkish. the way I see it is that these are gifted people that were (more) successful because they moved to Germany. people that are against immigration fear their country adopting cultural/political ideas from countries that people emigrate from.

Is that really relevant? Plenty of technological breakthroughs are made by immigrants/children of immigrants, and everyone on this site already knows this.

I think the point is that it should be mentioned in the media in general, not specifically here on HN.

Indeed. For bad news, e.g. crime, the (German) media takes great care to mention whether suspects or convicts are immigrants or of direct immigrant descent. Attaching this information to good news is done less frequently but would be required to paint a more realistic picture.

Fear of Turkey joining the EU was a significant factor in the Brexit campaign:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/dominic-cummings-how-the...

And now with Turkey vs France thingy, it seems pretty unreasonable to think that turkey would really join right?

Don't member states have veto powers?

"Turkey has been moving further away from the European Union. Turkey’s accession negotiations have therefore effectively come to a standstill and no further chapters can be considered for opening or closing and no further work towards the modernisation of the EU-Turkey Customs Union is foreseen."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_Eur...

That is news to me. German police and media normally go to great length not to mention names/personal information of suspects (and victims), a crass difference to the US.

Until 2017 this actually was a rule (not a legally binding, just the "honor code") for media, but this got changed after the AfD and other Nazis whined for years that police and media would not "tell the truth" about migrant crimes, "suppress" or "hide" them (https://www.migazin.de/2017/03/24/presserat-aendert-richtlin...).

A very sad day for our society.

Indeed.

Every time the AfD is mentioned, I have to remember this: https://politicalbeauty.de/mahnmal.html, and it makes it a little bit better.

Are you saying that facts should be suppressed because someone might use them the wrong way? Serious question.

Well, your personal information are facts too. Would you like them posted? As long as the crimes are only alleged, not proven, there is no question to me that the interest of the people at large is second to the privacy protection of the suspects.

Journalism should report the relevant facts to a case. And the nationality/ethnicity/skin color rarely is a relevant fact in a criminal case, with the notable exception of racist-motivated or ethnic conflict (e.g. Kurds vs Turks) crimes.

For "everyday" crimes, think of pub brawls, petty theft, robberies, sexual misconduct of all forms, the ethnicity is absolutely irrelevant and its mention by police/media is only likely to further racial hatred.

Would you like to also know if a perpetrator was left-handed or ginger or blood type A?

No. Because that doesn't matter. Just as ethnicity doesn't matter. Criminal is a criminal.

Governments are able to choose which nationalities are allowed entry via immigration policy.

Some might find criminal representation very relevant to that policy decision. Perhaps you do not. That’s certainly your prerogative. But outright denying the relevance is absurd.

So make anonymized statistics about it. The nationality of any given individual who is alleged to have committed a crime, is not relevant.

That I agree with.

And newspapers should report on those statistics then? That’s probably a lot more explosive than reporting individual cases.

I'm not claiming it itrelevant to law enforcement. It's irrelevant to (or shoudld be irrelevant to bon-racist) news recipient.

But we're discussing an article that specifically calls out the researchers ethnicity and the fact they are immigrants.

Or are you saying we should only talk about a person's ethnicity when it's in a positive light?

Maybe this article should have just said "a German husband-and-wife dream team"?

> Or are you saying we should only talk about a person's ethnicity when it's in a positive light?

Yes, because integration can only work when people have role models to look up to. This is also why (even if she's as "top cop" as it can get) the appointment of Kamala Harris is so important, or Barack Obama winning in 2008 - it is a "ceiling breaker" event, it shows to people that even if one is not part of the "usual old boys club" it is possible to achieve success.

Painting ethnicity in a negative light, especially when it's totally unrelated and irrelevant, however was judged as "potentially inciting or furthering racial division" in German media codex.

If they wouldn't haven given an interview, or otherwise indicated that they want the world to know, it's nobodies business which nationality they are, or that they are husband and wife. It's simple as that.

If it turns out left handed people are significantly overrepresented in crime statistics, then yes, that would be interesting to know. Either something is wrong with the system or with left handed people. This notion of withholding information from voting adults just because it doesn't further a particular social engineering agenda is repulsive to be honest.

Oh come on, your argument is self defeating. If doxxing individuals would be the only way for a voter to learn "if left handed people are significantly overrepresented", you would need to make all properties of everyone public, because there could be significant overrepresentation for any property.

And if you already know that "left handed people are significantly overrepresented" from some other source, you don't have to make the information public for these cases -- you know it already. Probably from a proper statistic made by the government. Not by counting a media-reported incident also reported the person to be left-handed.

And your argument is a mix of a strawman and taking GP’s point ad absurdum. Not withholding information doesn’t equate to doxxing, and just because you can’t find out all the correlations doesn’t mean you shouldn’t even try to find any in the first place.

Not personal information, but country of birth or nationality.

Which is personal information. But I don't think they write it that often. The reverse has become a meme on right-wing forums: "tHeY dOn'T SaY tHere[sic] NAme so We NOw[sic] wHich RaCE iT Is".

That the initial comment was downvoted tells me that it should be mentioned more on HN, too, to be honest. It's quite disappointing to see.

Yeah it's extremely relevant. Has never been more relevant. You have the American vice-president of a thoroughly racist administration claiming credit for this vaccine on Twitter, even though it was children of migrant workers in another country who actually did the science and all of the hard work. Credit where credit is due, especially since the ones who handed society this big win are from a marginalized and often unduly criticized background.

It’s as relevant as a black US president. Or a female Vice President.

aka identity politics

It helps to counteract preconceptions and prejudices about certain groups.

Here’s the story of a lady inspired by the character of lt. Uhura on the original Star Trek:

https://today.duke.edu/2013/10/maejemison

In the future there are going to be similar stories about people inspired by president Obama and Vice President Harris because these models show them how far they can go.

It’s not about identity politics, it’s about showing people they can escape the box society appears to capture them in.

There are plenty of successful german Turks though, to the point where such propaganda might have the reverse effect: why would anyone assume they can't escape.

The most visible group of Turkish immigrants are people whose ancestors came from underdeveloped backwaters of Turkey and who have effectively formed a bit of a conservative time capsule. When progressive urban Turks happen to come to Germany (this is rare) that group seems quite alien to them. Surely not as alien as Amish would seem to modern day Swiss or Germans (the German Turkish time capsule is much younger and clearly doesn't rule out technology consumption), but it's the same kind of disconnect.

That group is highly visible because all the others basically blend in with the natives, which creates the illusion that they are representative of all Turks. That's why pointing out successful individuals who are clear counterexamples to the antiprogressive time capsule is highly relevant. It can help natives to stop assuming that everybody with a Turkish sounding name is a time capsule victim until proven otherwise and it can inspire those at risk of growing up to be the next generation of time capsuleers.

Most of the hostility is towards illegal immigration. As long as left-wing politicians and media merges illegal and legal immigration, and promotes abuse of asylum and rescue at sea systems for illegal immigration, such hostility will continue, and even increase.

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