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Comment by raarts | Hacker News Reader

That depends on your interests. Being from the Netherlands, where racism and slavery are less of a hot topic compared to the US, I was interested, and I can offer you some things that I personally found interesting. For example this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFqVNPwsLNo (esp @24:00). And Thomas Sowell's book on the history of slavery, here's an interesting part of the audiobook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuAf8XL2xQI

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I'll watch both eventually, but the first note from that interview at 24 minutes is that the breakdown of the black family is a huge issue in the US. That kids are much more likely to grow up and commit crimes if there's no father figure in the house. And he's right, it is. But he skips the reasons behind them, and comes to the incorrect conclusion that that's not a "white cop's fault".

1. Those families often don't have dads because they were arrested on minor drug offenses, or killed by said cops.

2. America's social safety net is packed full of means testing. That includes means testing on welfare, which leads to broken families because there will be significantly less public assistance if there's a father in the picture than if there isn't.

I would urge you to sit on your hands so to speak, and fact-check your own intuitive responses. For example (1) might be true, but how often? And Larry Elder seems to mean that 75% of black women is not married, how did that happen? 2) You're probably not wrong, but he frames it as: the government may be (inadvertently?) discouraging marriage, which backfires on black kids (boys mostly).

Anyway, listening to the right has certainly enriched my thinking in various aspects.

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