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Comment by jtdev | Hacker News Reader

Dividing Americans down racial lines rather than socioeconomic lines literally helps the benefactors of this bribery gravy train keep their grip on America.

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It's hard not to notice that socioeconomic lines largely follow racial lines.

So what? You treat every person as an individual. "It is hard not to notice scientific breakthroughs largely follow racial lines" See how idiotic and inappropriate that line is?

Both are symptoms of a problem, don't you think?

Yeah, but pointing that out really upsets <race omitted> people.

It's not a comfortable discussion. The fact those lines often coincide is a symptom of a problem many people refuse to recognize.

A child argues that the reason their argument is valid is because it makes others uncomfortable.

Would you like to explore the reasons why it's uncomfortable to you to discuss it?

I'm fine with it.

One can’t even engage in these discussions without being accused of being an extremist/buffoon/racist/etc.

It’s literally an issue tailor made for the ruling class to divide people. The core issues here have now been weaponized and are being used to divide and control the populace.

I’m not uncomfortable at all. Largely due to education and professional experience.

The people who are the most agitated by this argument are poor and white. The only people who take your argument seriously are too stupid to recognize that dumb people can believe dumb things and it doesn’t affect them.

Yelling “white privilege” at 19 year old dumbasses in manual labor who barely get by is not a productive strategy.

Trolling IRL is the privilege of assholes and narcissists.

So feel free to discuss. Start by defining the words “empathy” and “sympathy”.

Thats a poor excuse for conflating them.

There is a correlation, but it doesn’t “largely” follow racial lines: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t05.htm

1/4 of the 48 million white male workers make $716/week or less. That’s 12 million people. That cut-off is roughly between the 25th and 50th percentile incomes for Black men. Let’s say 1/3 of Black men make $716/week or less, or about 2.2 million of 6.7 million workers in that group. So the group of male workers earning under $726/week is disproportionately Black compared to the population as a whole, but the vast majority are still white. Between just Blacks and whites (Latinos and Asians are a separate issue because there’s the whole immigrant dimension there, and studies show that their incomes converge with whites within a few generations) the under-$716 group is 85% white.

Meanwhile at the other end, Black men at the top 10% mark make a bit more than white men at the top 25% mark. So say that’s 12 million white men making above $1,800/week and 670,000 Black men. So that group is 95% white.

So yes there is obviously a correlation and disparity. These numbers overstate the disparity a bit because it’s for everyone age 16+, and there is a significant Black-white age difference (a one decade difference at the median). But the disparity is there, and it’s durable (studies show that, unlike for Latinos and Asians, the disparity is not converging, and is stable).

But the income disparity doesn’t “follow racial lines” so closely as to render race even a partial substitute for class in terms of policy considerations.

Which is what makes it so convenient for the establishment - whenever someone brings up the question of economic rights it gets quickly derailed into the question of racial antagonism. As far as the beneficiaries of the economic order are concerned if the race question did not exist it would be prudent to create one, and since it does exist it's just silly not to use it to keep the poor divided.

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