Comment by noduerme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by noduerme | Hacker News Reader

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This reminds me of Hannah Arendt's criticism of the Boers - which was sometimes taken out of context. She was just pointing out they had become a tribe of bush-wandering savages living off, but not improving the land, themselves. They had no incentive to improve the land; labor was cheap and their own lives were cheap, and they still have made nothing of the country.

When I lived in Australia I was really surprised, because I expected to find a country much more individualistic and hardy than the soft United States. All those Crocodile Dundee movies, I guess. I had the luck of moving there with a partner who was half-Filipina, and wow was there a lot of anti-Asian racism right off the bat. But that wouldn't have been such a big deal. What really struck me were the micro-restrictions on everything.

I think local councils have a lot to do with this; in the Commonwealth model they seem to have totally arbitrary and uncontrolled power. If you squeal your wheels, they'll take your car and crush it. At least that's what I heard. If you work on roofs you have to spend an hour gearing up to have harnesses. I mean. I thought this was a frontier society, but it's not. Cameras everywhere and ...well, I lived in King's Cross, Sydney for a bit, but I heard they basically shut that down by fiat from end to end.

And the NT. Just a word about that. We pulled up to a shop in the bush outside Tenant Creek and there were approximately 40 aboriginal ladies standing outside a closed window at 9am. We walked past this line, straight inside, and bought a couple cases of beer. Asked why they were all waiting there. "Waitin for the welfare window," said the store owner. Never been to the white side of a segregation window before, but that was something to see in a first world country.

Wow, really suprised to see someone else speaking my mind. I went to Australia, from the US, with the perception that Australia was wild country where people were free and independent. Sort of like if I lived in rural Arizona or Idaho or something.

But what I found was an ultra-tedious nitpicky rules and control mindset. Really turned me off.

Just surprised to see someone else say similar.

I totally expected Idaho, too. That's why the racism didn't seem out of place. But it's like everyone there is obsessed with these little rules and they're all nannys about reminding you of them all the time. Fucking annoying, I agree, and it doesn't even make sense. Wayyyyy out in the bush I did meet people who weren't like that. Met a French guy who was roasting a kangaroo and living out in nowhere with his teenage daughter, totally illegal immigrant on the land. There's some of that. But mostly, fuck, a lot of nitpicking.

I found people in the US to be just as nitpicky about certain things.

Oh, you thought you could cross the road there, even though there are no cars around? You shouldn't do that. You should cross at the stop signs.

Oh, you thought you could just walk in the building, go up to the counter and order food? Sorry, you need to walk through the special door, which puts you in the special food-ordering queue. You'll have to leave the building and come back in through the special door.

I've moved from Australia to the US and found the US is much worse at nitpickiness.

Sure, you won't get pulled over for going a little bit faster on the freeway in the USA. But in daily life, people much more often will treat you like you're dumb, incompetent, or don't belong somewhere.

A couple of examples came up in recent news opinion pieces (both by Americans who have moved to Australia and, coincidentally, both mentioning swimming):

https://www.smh.com.au/national/where-the-hell-is-he-what-au...

"It went on like that for a while. Praise for the boy. Not a drop of concern. I looked to my right. Baz’s Nippers instructor, Al, a brawny former professional rugby player, was smiling. So were the rest of the Australian parents all around us.

I was confused at first, but I could also see in everyone an exhilaration that reminded me of my time covering the war in Iraq during its most violent months. It had been years since I’d experienced that mix of feelings – the electric shock of appreciation for life, the confidence that comes from transcending danger with others, for something that feels bigger than yourself. And it made me realise that, despite a journalism career filled with hazardous assignments, I still had a lot to learn about risk, not to mention child-rearing."

https://www.smh.com.au/national/77-shootings-within-a-mile-o...

"Taking the kids for a swim at an outdoor public pool in New York felt more like a brush with the penal system. You are not allowed to wear any colour other than white, such is the fear of a poolside eruption of gang violence. Men have to wear bathers lined with meshing, and prove to the guards at the gates they are in compliance; a guard carries out inappropriately intrusive inspections. [...] "Any form of reading matter – newspapers, books, copies of The New Yorker – is strictly prohibited. In all, there are more than a dozen regulations that have to be adhered to – and even if you comply with those, there is the Kafkaesque possibility of being confronted with new ones that have seemingly been invented on the spot."

The treatment of aboriginal people in the NT is a national disgrace, and Sydney is run by moralising religious fundies.

That being said, when I moved to the bay area I was horrified by how rickety US scaffolding was, surprised every government building (including schools!) had visible armed security and metal detectors, and thought it was ridiculous that shops had signs saying "frozen burritos bought with EBT can't be microwaved" (because that would make it fast food instead of groceries). Culture shock can be like that. You can take a lot for granted about your native culture.

> Never been to the white side of a segregation window before, but that was something to see in a first world country.

More coming: https://atlantablackstar.com/2021/08/10/it-was-just-disbelie...

I sometimes wonder if the white people proposing all these racial identity theories aren't complete racists themselves. I keep assuming they have good intentions, but racial identity is a debunked and shitty idea that really shouldn't be promoted in a multicultural society. Even though I do have one black friend who really wants reparations. I'm like, dude, just... yeah. Okay. I'll buy this round but you're buying the next one.

The principal who did that in Atlanta was black.

There's a really good book and essay called "Southern Rites" by Gillian Laub that talks about segregation in schools, particularly in Georgia, where, to be clear, _public_ schools have been called out for having segregated proms as recently as 2019.

When a white girl lobbies her principal about this, part of his dismissal is "well, you should know the black parents all agreed to this at the PTA meeting, too", as if that was some validation, rather than some amazingly awkward, duressed situation where the all white school board and PTA says "we have a motion to discuss de-segregating the prom", and some parents being quite likely fearful to vote. (I say that, because in this situation, the tie between the book and the girl is that her black boyfriend was shot dead by one of her family members for being on their property).

The notion that systemic racism in the US was a solved problem when MLK stood up and said "I have a dream..." is still far too popular.

This is alot of words that dont actually say anything other than "Georgia" bad.

Your position is that a black educator in the Atlanta Public School system that has a black mayor and is defiantly against the mainstream of rural southern politics, decided to segregate the students for what reason exactly?

I would venture to guess using this weird thing called "empathy" where i try to look at the other side in good faith is that the female POC Principal wanted to make sure there were classes where the black students werent a small minority in their classes. My understanding of how the makeup of this school in particular was that it was not made up of predominantly black students and that the classes the black students were concentrated into were about half black when it came to students.

I would further venture to guess that it was just a tone def attempt to make it so those students were around "more people like them". This is the whole rationale of poc only safe spaces on college campuses.

Alternatively there was some conspiracy where the black female principal was pressured into doing this by someone. Seeing as how the Atlanta school board immediately cracked down on it that seems unlikely. But maybe the evil pta pressured her? Let me know which scenario you think is more likely.

I didn't imply any such thing. One would think though, that if things were so meritorious, then it wouldn't have been this unadvertised, undisclosed scenario that resulted in discipline and investigations, but instead might have been touted as a worthy attempt to address educational challenges of POC.

I certainly wasn't saying that an evil PTA was threatening to lynch the principal if she didn't. But to discount the challenges faced by a system in a state which -to this day- has horrendous issues with systemic racism in the education system, and state that they entirely don't have an impact, subconscious or conscious on people within that system goes against every study and observation.

What exact systemic challenge do you think that a black principal in the atlanta public school system suffered that caused them to do this then?

Sure. Public schools in the deep south continued to hold segregated proms up til COVID hit.

Much of it was "nudge nudge wink wink private event, not school", but at least one school in Georgia had two proms every year, the "prom" and the "white prom". I'll leave it as a thought exercise to figure out, while not explicitly stated in the organization of those events, who was welcome at each.

I'm not sure what your problem is with using harnesses on roof work - it's basic safety equipment, and even with Australia's (very good) safety laws and (mostly good) safety culture, there's still around 50-60 people killed each year in the construction industry.

That statistic alone doesn’t say very much. How does the number of killed per worker compare to other countries? The fact that 50-60 die doesn’t necessarily contradict others’ claims that they are overly focused on safety.

It's a bloody roof mate, it's not worth dying for period.

> It's a bloody roof mate, it's not worth dying for period.

It’s quite clear we actually do consider a roof worth dying for. We build them knowing that some people will die after all.

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