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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I read the whole article. And yes, I agree that "Actual progress on racism [is] orthogonal to what the author was talking about." But that's not what I'm critiquing. I'm critiquing his premise, that this thing he calls "third wave anti-racism" and whose characteristics he describes in his ten-point characterization is actually representative of the views of people who are concerned about racism today. I don't believe they are. They are certainly not representative of my views or of anyone I know. And he doesn't actually cite any sources. He just states it as if all this were common knowledge and beyond reasonable dispute.

Well, I dispute it.

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I see. I’m on a college campus in the United States right now, and I can confirm what he describes exists here exactly as he describes it. There may be a generational or geographical gap between our experiences.

OK, I'll take your word for it. But I have a hard time imagining what that experience could even look like. I mean, do people go around quizzing each other on their anti-racist credentials? In my world, this doesn't even come up in day-to-day conversation. The only reason it's on my radar screen at all is that I wrote a blog post about it a few months ago that ended up blowing up in my face.

I don't know about quizzing each other, but when my youngest sibling, an unemployed community college dropout, got super involved in the Portland antiracist scene, to the point that they stopped talking to our family (because we represent white oppression, basically what the author described) it has been really rough to see our love for them weaponized to push this particular cult. Having a family member join a cult doesn't make day-to-day problems (they don't even speak to us anymore), but that doesn't mean it's not a major social trend

If it sounds cartoonish, that’s because it is. The manifestation I’ve seen around me is that groups of 3–4 will pretend to befriend unsuspecting victims, inviting them to events and parties etc., then yell at/berate/abuse them at the first un-“woke” comment (no matter how innocuous), command that person to be better, and then completely cut contact. A person will think they have new friends, then a switch is flipped out of nowhere and those friends are gone.

> and whose characteristics he describes in his ten-point characterization is actually representative of the views of people who are concerned about racism today.

OK, this just isn't credible.

> Silence about racism is violence. But elevate the voices of the oppressed over your own.

You've never heard the slogan "Silence is violence"?

> Show interest in multiculturalism. But do not culturally appropriate. What is not your culture is not for you, and you may not try it or do it. But—if you aren’t nevertheless interested in it, you are a racist.

You didn't see the national outrage over a girl wearing a Chinese dress to prom?

> When whites move away from black neighborhoods, it’s white flight. But when whites move into black neighborhoods, it’s gentrification, even when they pay black residents generously for their houses.

You've never heard of "white flight" or "gentrification"?

I simply don't believe you if you are saying the arguments put forth in his ten-point characterization are uncommon.

As for me, I certainly recognize several of the positions he describes, so I don't think it's a complete straw man. But I also haven't observed several of the attitudes he describes.

Seems to me maybe what he's seeing is not a religion where people are required to hold two incompatible beliefs in their head, but the result of public discourse where basically rational and consistent, yet angry, people fall on different sides of an issue and their voices in concert become incoherent.

In which case, the solution is perhaps: don't get sucked into the sturm und drang based on everything you read on Reddit. Be compassionate. Pay attention to what's around you. Look for opportunities to make a difference.

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