Hacker News Reader

Comment by ojnabieoot | Hacker News Reader

It is extremely problematic to claim that cooperation declined in America after the 1960s without even mentioning civil rights. Americans are certainly cooperating more insofar that it’s no longer literally illegal for gay people to have a relationship, or that black families on vacation no longer need a book indicating which gas stations and hotels will actually serve them.

The fact that white people are meaner to each other - particularly liberal v. conservative - than they used to be is in fact directly (albeit not solely) related to this, as with the polarization in formal political parties. Seeing the decline after the 1960s is really not a mystery if you think about how American society drastically changed due to Democrat-led legislation passed in 1964 and 1965, right when the graphs started nosediving.

View on HN

> Democrat-led legislation passed in 1964 and 1965

Fun fact: a greater percentage of Republican representatives (76.4%) and senators (81.8%) voted in favor of the Civil Rights act of 1964 than Democrat representatives (60.4%) and senators (68.66%).

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/88-1964/h182

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/88-1964/s409

The same is true of the 1965 Voting Rights Act: 80% of Republican representatives and 93.75% of Republican senators voted in favor, vs 75.4% of Democrat representatives and 69.1% of Democrat senators.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/89-1965/h87

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/89-1965/s78

Didn't they switch places? A lot of Southern Democrats became hard Republicans after this.

The 'switch places' narrative is absurdly simplistic. Taken at face value, it would suggest FDR and his New Deal should be viewed as a modern Republican.

I was talking about the majority of Southern Democrats.

I am aware of that, thanks, but the fact that the Democratic president was the one who led passage of the Civil Rights Act, while his 1964 Republican opponent’s campaign focused on opposition to the Civil Rights Act, means that civil rights legislation was in fact “Democrat-led.” It is also relevant that most of the Democrats who voted against the Civil Rights Act had become Republican by the 80s.

You may be confusing the actions and strategy of a single Democrat President with the prevailing wishes of the party.

Democratic President, not Democrat President. Please use the correct name of the party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

No, I don't think that I will--originally used the -ic suffix but removed it to make an unambiguous reference to the party rather than the more general notion of democracy.

Most of the actual "law" governing these areas, though, has been made by court decisions rather than statute. Those court decisions have been driven by activist judges who were Democrats. If we were actually living under the legal regime established by the statutes you refer to, without all that has been added on by court decisions, I think the state of cooperation would be better than it is.

That's because we live in a common law country. Of course most of the relevant bits will be case law.

Case law is not supposed to make new laws. It's only supposed to apply existing law to the facts of particular cases. That has to be done because no written statute can specify how it would apply to all possible combinations of facts. But there's still a difference between applying a statute to particular facts, and making new law that goes beyond anything the statute says or implies. I am certainly not the only one to believe that many court decisions since the passage of landmark civil rights laws in the 1960s have done the latter, not the former.

No, they make new law all the damn time.

For example, there's is no written definition of murder in Michigan. Look it up if you don't believe me. I can't cite a link, because there's nothing to cite. The penalties are in statutes, but the actual definition isn't. It's illegal because it's just assumed that it is and courts have made the definition through case law.

It's become less necessary to cite over time for obvious reasons, but court decisions from England from before 1776 are still valid opinions to cite in American courts as the source of law as well.

> they make new law all the damn time

I know they do, but they're not supposed to. That's the point I was making. See below.

> there's is no written definition of murder in Michigan

Yes, that's true of many common law crimes in many States. And where those common law crimes existed before any of the US States were formed, those States often continue to accept the common law definitions of the crimes, as developed over centuries of Anglo-American case law. That's not what I am saying is a problem.

What I am saying is a problem is when there is a statute that makes specific law, but courts then "interpret" things into the statute that were never there and never intended to be there by the legislature that passed the statute.

The parties were not as polarized back then and in particular the Southern Democrats and Rockefeller Republicans were both powerful factions in their party. Strom Thurmond being the most notable example of the former, pre-1964: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/28/republ...

The parties switched since then, so that point is moot. The Democratic party back then, which is the deep south for the most part, is the modern day Republican party. The deep south overwhelmingly voted against the Civil Right Act.

Democratic-led, not Democrat-led. And Democratic representatives, not Democrat representatives.

It's the Democratic party, not the Democrat party. Use Democrat only as a noun. The correct adjective is Democratic.

This is an ongoing rhetorical war by the GOP to fail to acknowledge the Democratic Party by its proper name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

Is this really a thing? To be honest, this sounds like something only Twitter would care about.

He literally linked the Wikipedia article explaining the history and dynamics of its use, dude.

Sorry, I meant my question more as is it really a thing that the average person is aware of and cares about. I consider myself pretty educated and I've never heard of this little underground war on the terminology, and I can't see many people caring except hypervigilant Twitter users. Like ask 95% of the population and they'll probably not see a difference between the words. It just seems like a silly thing to care about.

Anyone who watches Fox News is exposed to it, and the first time someone corrects them, they're liable to double-down. So, no, I don't think it's a fringe thing at all.

They literally call themselves democrats. That's their primary identity to the average person. "Democratic Party" and "Democratic representative" are rarely uttered outside the circle of democrats even by democrats. Democrat party is just a shortened form of party of the democrats. Why would any normal person refer to it to anything other than the democrat party when "democrat" is word most associated with the party? The democrats set themselves up as the democrat party.

I could understand the complaint if people were using demonrat or democRAT, but not just democrat. The Democratic Party members refer to themselves as democrats. How often does the average person hear the word democratic versus democrat? I don't understand how using the more commonly used word related to a party is some rhetorical war or epithet when people outside of the Democratic Party rarely ever hear democrats use the words "Democratic Party" or "Democratic representative". If they don't want to be referred to as the democrat party, they need to stop referring to themselves as democrats. Until then, people are going to use "democrat party" as the shortened form of "the party of the democrats".

This isn't a complaint. This is a statement of fact. It's called the Democratic Party, not the Democrat Party. The correct adjective to use when referring to its members is Democratic.

Why is this important in a larger context? Because there's a faction of this country who doesn't like to acknowledge that the US is a democracy. A faction who feels justified in maintaining existing anti-democratic structures in order to retain power while not being able to win the popular vote. That same faction wants to divorce the concept of democracy itself from the Democratic Party.

This rhetorical war didn't happen by accident, just like referring to the estate tax as a death tax didn't happen by accident. Especially in print, where there's no confusion between (small-d) democratic and (capital D) Democratic, I refuse to cede ground on this.

Lastly, you should call people like they like to be called. I am a Democratic voter, not a Democrat voter. More importantly, I'm a democratic voter.

Again, I link you to the wikipedia page on the subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

Democrat Party. You are a Democrat voter. Not an insult, just a statement. I'm saying it only because you appear so offended by it. I'm from California and no one cares dude. This is why we keep losing with the working class and regular people. Because we have our heads stuck in our asses over some terminology instead of focusing on issues that affect poor people.

Have a good day.

And yet here you are deep in the comment section of a buried HN post. Apparently you do care. If it doesn’t matter, then just use the right word. I just vouched for your comment btw.

Appreciate it. But really, we need to focus on shit that matters. There's no need to browbeat people into using words we prefer. We want to make actual progress. Is the world any better if people use the right words, but continue to do bad things?

I’m not trying to wage a war here. I just don’t the push back on this. I know it’s a trivial issue, but it’s important to me because it’s part of a larger conversation.

Taking a step back: when someone corrects me on a terminology mistake, my response is “oh, I didn’t realize that. I’ll try to use the right terminology going forward.” Not to argue that it doesn’t matter. Again, if it doesn’t matter, then just move along with your day.

To answer your question: no. Of course actions are more important than words.

> I’m not trying to wage a war here.

You are literally calling the Democratic Party's extensive use of Democrats over Democratic <whatever> a rhetorical war by the GOP. Sounds like you are trying to wage a war here to me.

> Taking a step back: when someone corrects me on a terminology mistake

Here's the problem. You did not just stop at correcting their mistake. You stated "Democrat Party" is part of a rhetorical war by the GOP. You were trying to shame someone and slander another party for the Democratic Party's own use of Democrats as the primary means of identification. The GOP is not making the Democratic Party go around referring to their members as Democrats. It certainly is not preventing Democrats from using Democratic <whatever> in their communications which the average person is exposed to.

There is a rhetorical war by the GOP which is to misuse Democrat as an adjective instead of Democratic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

When I see someone misuse the word, I cannot know if it was a harmless mistake, or whether they are intentionally engaging in the war, but I assume it was a harmless mistake.

At no point have I accused anyone in this thread of malfeasance. I have not attempted to shame anyone. I simply let jwond know that they had used the wrong word, and as a courtesy, I let them know of the on-going rhetorical war.

Again, if I misused a word, I'd want to know. If my misuse was often used as insult (even if by others but not by me), I'd especially want to know.

This is no longer a productive conversation, so this is my final reply.

> The correct adjective to use when referring to its members is Democratic.

The correct noun to use to refer to the members of the Democratic Party is Democrats. It's plastered all over their website and the host name of their site.

> A faction who feels justified in maintaining existing anti-democratic structures in order to retain power while not being able to win the popular vote.

Since when was winning the popular vote ever the criteria to "retain power" on the federal level? The Electoral College ensures the popular vote is not directly correlated with winning the presidency. The Senate was also designed to give additional power to states which were not as populous as other states.

> That same faction wants to divorce the concept of democracy itself from the Democratic Party.

How does calling the Democratic Party the "Democrat Party" do that? A democrat is someone who supports democracy. There is no divorcing of the concept of democracy when using "Democrat Party" in place of Democratic Party.

> Again, I link you to the wikipedia page on the subject

I'm sorry I cannot take that Wikipedia article seriously.

Grammar does not even come into play. Nouns are commonly used attributively: water pipe, city streets, television station, Democrat party.

Democrat rhyming with autocrat, plutocrat, and bureaucrat? Well democratic rhymes with autocratic, plutocratic, and bureaucratic so it is pointless to argue that.

As for using "Democrat Party" for the emphasis on "rat", I guess Democrats should stop denigrating themselves and call themselves something other than Democrats.

> This rhetorical war didn't happen by accident.

And again, Democrats is the Democratic Party's primary identity to the average person. The only group which started this "rhetorical war" of using "Democrat Party" are the Democrats by way of using Democrats as their primary means of identification.

Democratic Party's website:

https://democrats.org/

Joe Biden - "I ran as a proud Democrat."

https://joebiden.com/presidency-for-all-americans/

Until Democrats change their own habits and start using Democratic <whatever> in place of Democrats, Democrat is how the average person will identify the Democratic Party.

> Lastly, you should call people like they like to be called.

I did not see anyone addressing you specifically as Democrat. If you are a member of the Democratic Party, I suggest you take it up with them. They identify their members as Democrats.

I'd say "Democrat-led" is fine, just as "programmer-led" would be fine. "I am a Democrat"/"I am a programmer"; "I am in the Democratic party"/"I am in a programmers' union".

The Civil Rights Act is what drove racist dixiecrats into the Republican party which it cynically used to its advantage[1] to start winning elections and to eventually destroy the New Deal coalition[2]. You cannot compare today's parties to the pre-Civil Rights Act ideology of the parties. Today's Republican party bears no relation to the party of Lincoln. As a microcosm of this, Strom Thurmond[3] was a Democratic politician until 2003 before switching to the Republican party.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal_coalition#Decline_and...

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond

> The Civil Rights Act is what drove racist dixiecrats into the Republican party

No, Johnson’s embrace of the Civil Rights Act led to them being disaffected, as they had by integrationist and civil rights moves by Democrats before (“Dixiecrat” specifically refers to a rebellion over Truman’s integration moves a couple decades before, which led to a temporary third party defection.)

What led them into Republican arms was the Republicans subsequently leveraging that disaffection by adopting appeal to White racism as a campaign tactic in the Southern Strategy, as they had not in previous instances where the Democratic Party had alienated it's White racist faction.

Yes, at the time of the Civil Right Act, the Republicans were still the more reliable backers of equality and the Democrats, while they had a pro-equality faction, still had a large and powerful overtly White racist faction. That changed after the Civil Rights Act, when the Democrats embraced equality and the Republicans took the political opportunity that opened by embracing the racists.

Agreed. I was typing late at night and over-simplified.

The important point in the big picture is that capitalists and business interests got white labor to split between the parties, and so now neither party represents labor adequately. I'd argue that laborers no more belong in the Republican Party than non-white conservatives belong in the Democratic Party.

If by 'meaner to each other' consider that after said policies were introduced IN THE 1960's, the amount of crime and violence increased massively in all groups, but most poignantly among African Americans wherein the murder rate today is considerably higher than back in the 'nice days' (peaking in 1992).

Everyone talks about 'rights' in the 1960's while at the same time there was a massive upheaval in crime.

Imagine if you lived in a plain, boring world, and then protests started to happen, and all rates of measured crime went up by 300-800% in your neighbourhood. Having the basis of comparison to know 'what it felt like before' you might be inclined to think the world is in disarray.

Imagine if you remembered a time when many inner cities were not 'no go zones' full of extreme crime and poverty - and that those were just 'normal' neighbourhoods, imagine seeing that precipitous decline in real time. It'd be hard not to recognize that 'something' was wrong.

Drug use amd drug-related crime also increased during the 60’s. That is a confounding factor in the crime argument.

That and wars happening at the same time and also in the near past that uh, also killed a lot of people.

It’s not really the same thing, but US and European governments have lawfully sent more of their own innocent citizens to the grave in this century than any criminals ever. Then again the commenter was trying to equivocate opposition to civil rights as a law and order issue.

And ^^ the government was aware and enabling this increase in drugs/drug-related crime to disrupt political movements for, specifically equality:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#:~:text=COINTELPRO%...

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3jedcY... (cached for the ease/convenience)

Of course, there are many confounding factors - I'm not hinting otherwise.

What I am pointing out - is the near total social decay that broke out in many areas, and the otherwise obvious malaise introduced in many places throughout America that for some reason, people want to totally ignore over when it suits their agenda.

There's a generational divide between people who actually remember what Manhattan was like before it was 'cleaned up' (by hook or by crook, even that is controversial).

Don't forget lead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis

History has _a lot_ of moving parts.

Crime increased partly because we massively expanded both the definition of crime and the powers necessary to find and prosecute it. There is a role for the breakdown of community in this, of course, but, surprise, that was a product of institutionalized racism and bigotry also.

Scholarship at the time attributed it to a spontaneous breakdown of the (black) family, without mentioning how the botched implementation of integration, the moral and structural blight of "urban renewal," the canary song of the exodus of middle class manufacturing jobs, and the ever-present threat of a government crackdown on your efforts to be self-sufficient contributed to an atmosphere of hopelessness (which apparently only matters to politicians and public servants when you're hopped up on Vicodin in your double-wide) in which organized crime, and the unorganized crime that generally follows, becomes a valid option.

Black America didn't happen in a vacuum.

At humongous reputational risk, may I ask “so how did the Asians do it”?

I acknowledge all of the well-articulated points you made about Black culture and challenges.

But FOB and first-gen Asians had to work with racism (with obvious visual cues), and little/no social capital, and a radical break with native culture, and a non-Indo-European native language to boot.

Was the very strong attitude against drugs and tiger moms the cause? Would an opium war and water buffalo moms help? Did the homeland of Asia itself provide support that Africa either was too long ago or too poor/screwed up to provide. (Before you bring up colonialism, remember the Asian experience.)

I have no dog in this fight, just curious...

For many Asians being FOB was an advantage. They had not been subjected to centuries of discrimination. I believe that immigrants coming from Africa do better in the US, on average, because they usually come from the educated elite of their home country.

The opposite occurs for some Asians minorites who were poor and uneducated in their home countries, they don't do anywhere near as well as the Asians who come from a privileged background.

Does that answer your question?

It would seem that discrimination only affects non-immigrants then? Or do wealth and education allow you to succeed in spite of discrimination? Or does the US actually have a problem with discrimination against poor, uneducated people regardless of race?

Poverty is a multiplier for racial discrimination. At some level of "poor", a white person's circumstances can certainly be materially as bad as a (wealthier) black person's. But, as a comparison: no one is going to arrest Michio Kaku or Carl Sagan for breaking into his own house because he forgot his key.

Well, speaking directly out of my ass:

1) There are a lot less of them. Tight-knit, insular communities with fewer members to look after benefit from a "guerilla effect" wherein their slow-building success is harder to identify and stamp out. Considering how universities treated Jews in the early 20th century, I don't doubt that greater steps would have been taken to "box out" the higher education ambitions of Asian immigrants if the degree to which they would fill Ivies and UC schools today was known in the 70s and 80s

1b) Smaller communities foreign to American values (or at least conditioned by circumstance to value frugality) would have been insulated somewhat from the very American pressure to engage in ostentatious displays of wealth, that long-time Americans would not have been.

2) Save for one infamous exception, their successful neighborhoods and businesses weren't razed by government order (Sorry, George). Tulsa is of course the example du jour, but the much more banal "municipality running an overpass or freeway directly through the black quarter" played out dozens of times across the country as the ISHS was constructed, and there are many instances of the aforementioned "urban renewal" initiatives deeming perfectly stable black neighborhoods "blighted" in preparation for leveling them (and the businesses they contained). In comparison, most Chinatowns, Koreatowns, and Japantowns still exist in some form.

3) A significant portion of the black population didn't "start from zero," but from less than zero. The sharecropping system and mass incarceration in the South meant that the ability of many black men and families to build personal wealth was heavily curtailed by a debt regime structured specifically to keep them from investing in property, businesses, and even their own education. This is still ongoing via contemporary debt, for which black Americans broadly face worse terms (a situation which lenders are unable to explain, despite settling or losing a number of massive discrimination lawsuits).

4) The Asian experience of racism and colonialism is fundamentally different from the black experience because it didn't involve a generations-long campaign of dehumanization, which was necessary to justify race-based slavery in a Christian country. This means that anti-Asian racism is generally rooted in xenophobia and echoed in American culture socially rather than institutionally; anti-black racism, however, is deeply rooted both in social customs and policy and is aimed at directly controlling the movement and agency of black Americans.

All that said... There is a group of black Americans that don't suffer from much of the baggage that families who have been here since before the Civil War contend with. In many ways, the experience of African and Caribbean immigrants in America is more akin to that of Asian immigrants. Coincidentally, their educational outcomes are also phenomenal, and by some measures better than that of Asian immigrants. (It should also be noted here that Asian immigrants are not a monolith and that the experiences of immigrants of Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Pacific Islander, or other descent are not necessarily the same, re: experiences with colonialism, time in country, etc.)

> cooperating more insofar that it’s no longer literally illegal for gay people to have a relationship, or that black families on vacation no longer need a book indicating which gas stations and hotels will actually serve them.

This is very much aligned with free market (capitalist) thinking. It's only modern politics which have combined fiscal liberalism (free market) with social conservatism (state or locally enforced prejudice)

Ahhh. So recalcitrant bigotry is your answer?

I think the parent makes a very astute point and this response is handwaving away a huge amount of undeniable social change that is being dismissed.

People (specifically, the people who ran our public discourse) used to agree that having a persecuted underclass was acceptable. Now, some people do and some people don't, and as is common among groups who disagree about a fundamental aspect of how society should operate, there is some tension.

I believe this to be an intentional misread and malattribution of intent of modern discourse.

It's easy to tie every pillar of modern conservatism to racism through personal association and the letter and spirit of the evolution of policy. Meanwhile, the most fundamental criticism of leftist intent by the right - that progressives want to destroy the country through a totalitarian Communist revolution - is, frankly, batshit.

In short, nah.

You are not connected to reality.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com