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Comment by wmoxam | Hacker News Reader

> The Hutus and Tutsis didn’t start with some off-color ribbing and escalate from there

Perhaps it didn't "start" with "off-color ribbing" but the usage of 'jokes' (see: Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines) to desensitize people to hatred towards the Tutsis is well documented.

It was unpopular to speak out against this sort of thing, and certainly was something that got worse over time.

Further, racial violence in the Americas didn't start with jokes either, it started with the genocide the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and continued with the trans-Atlantic slave trade ...

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> Perhaps it didn't "start" with "off-color ribbing" but the usage of 'jokes'

Hutus and Tutsi violence didn't start at jokes. It started with German and Belgian colonists literally preferring one group over the other. Raising animosity between two groups of essentially genetically same people.

Hutus used the identity cards colonists left to target their purges.

I'd say those influenced genocide way, way more, than some radio jokes.

Edit: I think it's easier to believe that if we didn't make a jokes here and there we could have prevented an atrocity. It's an easy and quick solution to a complex question.

I think the situation was way more messy and way more muddy. Jokes didn't help but stopping them wouldn't have stopped the genocide.

Although colonialism played a role, 'it started' before that.

It's fair to at least 'talk about' the 'pyramid of hate' and maybe 'believe in it' so as to 'make a point'.

But I don't think it's ok to accuse regular, well-meaning employers of 'holding up systems of White Supremacy'.

It's also basically tone-deaf for an executive, facing a 'sensitive moment' to challenge claims of racism with 'reverse racism' - even if the executive might have a rhetorical point - it's just going to inflame the situation.

I think the execs should have basically 'not acted out of contempt', said some conciliatory things and moved on. Even if they had a legit point to make, they're supposed to be 'bigger than that'.

So I'm not sure if it's worthwhile to dig into the rhetoric, but rather, they should have just found a way past the issue.

Finally, it's a good example of how toxic this stuff can be.

And yet this whole ridiculous movement is isolated to the United States and not at all popular in nations like Brazil which got dramatically more African slaves brought to them in the time of the slave trade.

When you get sucked in by a US-centric ideology that is almost entirely based out of US universities you get these glaring holes in these theories that don't make sense as soon as you move them to another country.

Explain to me why this movement hasn't caught on in Brazil? Or any of the other numerous South American countries which were huge destinations for African slaves? I don't see this crap happening in Columbia.

This is all just elite overproduction with a bunch of professors who 40 years ago still thought communism was a great idea indoctrinating kids who have a naturally conformist mindset.

Google and Amazon can afford to have this crap but startups can't and that's why you're seeing it evaporate from the small companies first. Let the unproductive all talk no walk poser engineers obsess about this instead of writing code. The rest of us will get to work somewhere else.

> South American countries which were huge destinations for African slaves

This is a gross misrepresentation of events.

They were colonized by European countries, who imported African slaves, to work alongside the SAmerican slaves for their economic exploitation.

Actually, they were colonised by a relatively tiny group of individuals. And the profits were kept by a relatively tiny group of individuals.

> tiny group of individuals

Where did they come from? Europe.

The elite/exploiters are never the majority, in fact, they kind of need to stay “tiny”. That’s how power and leverage work, and even the concept of scalability in capitalism.

> Perhaps it didn't "start" with "off-color ribbing" but the usage of 'jokes' (see: Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines) to desensitize people to hatred towards the Tutsis is well documented.

And they were made in the context of a general propaganda/hate campaign. The medium is the same, the context couldn't be more different.

It's the context that matters 100%, not the medium (jokes in this case) in and of themselves.

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