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Comment by raclage | Hacker News Reader

> It’s not the “melting pot” idea of America that I was raised with, where everyone contributes their own unique culture to a unified American whole.

Then I don't understand why your response to someone trying to create a platform to express their culture strikes you as "Fracturing."

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Because it’s encouraging separatism. I would much rather have a startup that promotes black creators to the broader culture than one exclusionary by design.

Looking at top musicians, artists, and other cultural figures, it seems to me like this is already largely the case. Hip hop sales come in large part from white people. I want more of this cultural sharing, not isolationism.

While I agree with "not wanting separatism," I find it infuriating that the burden of analyzing and debating "separatism" (or etc) always gets foisted on the minority or marginalized populations create a space for themselves. And relatively never the mainstream, dominant culture and institutions that have left out, pushed out, or outright exploited them in the first place.

I didn't really see anything in the design I saw as exclusionary!

> because we appreciate the HN community taking time to hear our story, for a short period of time, we’re making some of our original black TV shows available for free on our site

Like thousands of business before them they're marketing to an audience but it seems like they're more than happy to build a broader audience.

You seem to think there is a monolithic "culture" that needs to be augmented. This has never been the case. There are always a dominant culture that is not necessarily named and multiple subcultures per minority group. Why are folks more sensitive to black sub-culture manifestations in the US vs other minority groups?

America does have a relatively monolithic culture and this translates into its businesses, government, and everything else. This is easy to observe if you live outside of America.

Are you being serious when you say America has a relatively monolithic culture? Relative to whom?

Yes, by and large Americans have the same basic values and interests. The most popular entertainment figures, sports, musicians, and other cultural elements come from a very wide range of backgrounds. Values like individual freedom or the importance of voting are fairly universal among Americans.

As I said, this is easy to observe from abroad, where there is no space to differentiate between black Americans and white Americans. They’re all just Americans and they mostly act the same way.

It's not cultural sharing now, it's appropriation. See also the endless monologues about dreadlocks.

Remember that twitter isn't real life. For every college freshmen tweeting about the sushi counter being cultural appropriation, 98% of people disagree.

Just because someone is loud and inflammatory does not mean their views are widely held.

Unfortunately, it isn't confined to Twitter. Now a family friend is giving her kid crap over wanting dreads.

Having a separate platform per “culture” (although what culture is “black”? That’s a skin colour) definitely sounds like a fracture to me

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