Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

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As someone who has some (immigrant) friends which try/tried to get a foothold in Germany usually the opposite is the norm: You can do everything by the book, be the perfect citizen and in the and you are thanked by daily racism and a bureaucratic maze.

To have the strength to stay a good person through all of that is a big achievement. This is why I think showing as a society doing things the right way counts.

This is the foundation of the unwritten societal contract: if you go by the rules everything will turn out well for you. If you break the rules, act egoistic etc, you might end up in a bad place.

This is why stuff like coruption, worker exploitation, tax evasion etc is worse than just stealing the people's money — it is also undermining the trust into that unwritten societal contract.

This contract is of course fiction Which means that believing into it is either optimistic or naive depending on your country. But if it breaks down thing will only get much worse

I am curious what kind of problem had or have your friends? Usually it is quite straightforward to get citizenship in Germany. Have a job for 7 years and no criminal record, and you can apply. Source: The (formerly) foreign colleagues I know had no problem with the process.

I studied in Germany and then worked there for four years. They counted my years of study toward citizenship which was awesome. This depends on which region you were in though, some regions only counted 7 years after you started working full time.

This was years ago, so things may have changed now.

A glass is seen as either half full or half empty. All that can be perceived as racist is not necessarily so. There could be a number of reasons for unpleasant outcomes, none more likely than the other.

Terrible oversimplification. It's extremely difficult to determine what negative action is motivated by racism and which isn't.

If you're not generally at risk of experiencing racism (ie. you are of the majority ethnic group), of course it is easy to rule out. It's hardly a glass half empty/half full type of problem.

I think you've interpreted your parent post a little harshly.

These statements from your comment and the parent comment to seem to mean essentially the same thing.

> All that can be perceived as racist is not necessarily so

> It's extremely difficult to determine what negative action is motivated by racism and which isn't

The difference is how likely you are to assume possible racism is actual racism. The "glass half full/empty" metaphor expresses that difference quite well.

> The difference is how likely you are to assume possible racism is actual racism. The "glass half full/empty" metaphor expresses that difference quite well.

I addressed this quite clearly:

If you're not generally at risk of experiencing racism (ie. you are of the majority ethnic group), of course it is easy to rule out. It's hardly a glass half empty/half full type of problem.

A glass half empty/half full metaphor implies that the perception is simply down to personal optimism, which as I said, is clearly a gross oversimplification.

I am not questioning the clarity of your expression, but your narrow interpretation of the metaphor. It does not imply that judgements about racism are purely a matter of optimism or pessimism. It already incorporates the fact a person's influences cause them to make those judgements.

Of course someone who is at risk of experiencing racism is more likely to judge an act to be racist, but that doesn't make them right. In fact, they may be more likely to attribute innocent acts to racism, just as someone who rarely experiences racism is likely to make the opposite judgement more often than is justified.

My point is that we are arguing about something that was already expressed by the parent under what I believe to be a more generous interpretation of their use of that metaphor.

This conversation really isn't productive.

Agreed.

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