Comment by dpwm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dpwm | Hacker News Reader

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> Race is a relatively new dimension in this conversation, largely imported from the USA. Conventionally, English society is divided by class, not race.

Absolutely, and the class structure in the UK is very still prevalent and cohesive. I also add that the beneficiaries of the slave trade and imperialism were predominantly one class, with a few crumbs dropped.

In the context of the comment and this article, imperialism and slavery are central. I think you understand why there is a backlash against any kind of redress for slavery, you only have to consider what is at stake: it’s not such a great leap from tackling race inequities to tackling class inequities – and didn’t those ideas get buried already?

I also believe this is true in the US, and why there is similar reaction to race inequities being raised: it’s no coincidence civil the rights movement and socialist movements were interlinked. In the US, the lives of poor white people don’t matter so much, either; that is not to deny that there is not and has not been a substantial race element too.

There is this idea that the US is a classless society, but it still has a class of wage labourers and a class of bourgeois – along with the inevitable class that mediate between the two but are actually the former. It looks remarkably like the UK class system today, with the key difference being the aristocratic remnants in the UK.

> The roots of class are in land ownership. And how far back must we unwind that to achieve equity?

Land ownership, inheritance and distribution are fascinating topics, especially when considering equity on a global scale and how the utility of natural resources has changed.

Land reform in the UK was itself a substantial political theme throughout the 20th century, and we still see elements of it resurface in debates on housing policy and environment, even if the blatant inequities are conveniently ignored.

I think the practicalities of the unwinding are actually central to the key point of all this: what do we do about it?

Litigating history to try to work out who is benefiting from a historical injustice is almost infinitely complex.

Race and class and other identity categories have extremely fuzzy edges. Everyone will have a bad actor somewhere in their group. Nobody is pure victim or pure oppressor.

> I think the practicalities of the unwinding are actually central to the key point of all this: what do we do about it?

I don’t think you can unwind – you can create a more unfair or less unfair society, but even how you measure fair is to be debated in a context where money buys both influence and reach.

It’s not just the class- or race-inequities – it’s the whole ideology: the alternative explanations, the justifications and what look like churches surrounding it.

> Litigating history to try to work out who is benefiting from a historical injustice is almost infinitely complex.

It’s also very backward-focused, and very subject to interpretation. Not to mention it is taking place in a world where the publishers tend to be owned by members of the class that stands to lose the most.

It’s also not just a historical injustice: it is perpetuated and maintained to this day. Some would argue that the maintenance of such statues is offensive. To me, statues have always marked people who were important to the state – and slave traders and colonisers were. A friend once remarked that there was seldom a statue that didn’t deserve all the abuse it got from birds.

> Race and class and other identity categories have extremely fuzzy edges. Everyone will have a bad actor somewhere in their group. Nobody is pure victim or pure oppressor.

Absolutely – in fact they’re largely abstract when you factor in phenomena like albinism and environmental changes for race alone, without even getting into "scientific" racism. Defining class results in substantial reports that have a few interesting observations, but don’t really provide a definite result.

I have almost certainly directly benefited from the imperialism. I don’t think it agrees with my values, but I don’t really see an alternative beyond a sort of tolerated hypocrisy.

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