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Comment by kharak | Hacker News Reader

I've heard, that people from the USA understand the term 'race' differently than Germans. A direct translation into German would be 'Rasse', a term reserved for dog breeds and history lessons.

From how I see the word 'race' being used in the USA, I can't see the difference to the German word 'Rasse'. For me, the racism in the USA begins with the insistence of separating people according to their 'race' and this race based thinking has permeated their entire culture. Doesn't matter where you look, old school liberals vs woke, republicans or democrats, they all divide people according to their race. It's even on their ID card.

And yet some claim 'race' is a totally different concept compared to 'Rasse'. I don't buy it, not one bit. The USA will never overcome racism, until they stop thinking in races.

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> The USA will never overcome racism, until they stop thinking in races.

That is a necessary but not sufficient condition. You also have to (a) somehow stop the people who like discriminating based on race ("racists"), and (b) do something about the systems that were intentionally setup to discriminate based on race ("systematic racism").

Since you say you're not from the USA, I'll give you some context which is that your talking point is frequently used by people here to argue against addressing (a) and (b). And often it is particularly brought up by people accused of discriminating based on people's race, as though pointing out that someone is being racist is worse than actually being racist.

> That is a necessary but not sufficient condition. You also have to (a) somehow stop the people who like discriminating based on race ("racists"), and (b) do something about the systems that were intentionally setup to discriminate based on race ("systematic racism").

Agreed. I don't believe you can achieve that continuing to use race as concept. The important divide is between socioeconomic classes. Identify people in need of support, help them. People in poor neighborhoods will receive the same help, no matter their skin color. With that, you'll have widespread support for the measures, at least as far as that is possible for such measure in the USA. Bring race into the mix and you introduce another point of division, as neighbors with the same socioeconomic class would be treated differently for racist reasons.

Abandon race as concept, identify people in need of help by socioeconomic metrics and provide support to them.

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