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Comment by teawrecks | Hacker News Reader

After a few hundred years of race/gender based policies working in favor of whites/males, I don't know what else we would expect from a deliberate effort to reverse it. You can't expect to play a game, give one team an advantage for the first half, give neither team an advantage in the second half, and call it a fair game at the end. Yeah, it sucks for individuals in the meantime, but we were simply never going to achieve an equal opportunity society without taking from the group who was unfairly advantaged.

If it stays this way for an extended period of time, then yeah, we will end up creating the inverse problem, but for now I don't know what else anyone expected. We just need to keep an eye on it, use science, don't hide any data, and have a well informed plan on how to ease back affirmative action as we determine that we have succeeded in undoing centuries of unfairness.

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> You can't expect to play a game, give one team an advantage for the first half, give neither team an advantage in the second half, and call it a fair game at the end.

The game you are referring to is one in which you presuppose dividing people into ‘teams’.

I.e. you are simply assuming that racism is forever and that the only fairness comes dividing people by race and then balancing resources according to racial groups.

This is just more racism. It’s not the only solution.

We don’t have to ignore the effects of racism. There is nothing wrong with looking at the kinds of disadvantage it has produced and then acting to support those who are impacted.

However if we apply that support through racialized policies, we will never solve the problem.

For example, we can see that black people historically are disproportionately impacted by policies that have prevented wealth building, such as redlining. Of course so have groups of low class white people been denied access to assets, just to a lesser extent.

A racist solution would be to give advantages to black people.

A non-racist solution is to support anyone who has been less advantaged in wealth building.

This will still disproportionately benefit black people but will be self-balancing and won’t perpetuate racism or permanently embed it into our political and legal systems.

> This is just more racism

You never hear the tree-hugger saying, "it's my turn to clear-cut forests with unsustainable abandon". No, the goal is to stop clear cutting forests with unsustainable abandon. That's how I was raised to think of racism. You don't straighten up by stopping racism over here while increasing it over there. You stop racism by stopping racism.

"The way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race."

I heard someone else phrase it that the current "anti-racist" movement isn't trying to eliminate the jack-boots, they're trying them on for size, instead.

Antifacist is to fascist as positron is to electron.

> A racist solution would be to give advantages to black people.

Let's try it and find out.

Love to see us even try to give black people an advantage. In the US, it take 200 years and 12 civil wars.

Current admissions policies in many universities and schools explicitly give black people an advantage. This is not a secret.

> In the US, it take 200 years and 12 civil wars.

It’s unclear what you mean by “12 civil wars”.

Yea black people always getting that advantage, you should let more people know. I mean, people just don't understand how hard it is to be white these days with twitter hate and everything. Be the voice! Let me know how it goes.

> Current admissions policies in many universities and schools explicitly give black people an advantage.

Are you denying that this is true, or are you simply unaware of it?

Why do you think a college would have an "advantage" for someone black that would not be available to someone white? Is it possible, hear me out, that maybe white people are still at a massive advantage getting to college and that colleges are trying to equalize the playing field?

> Yea black people always getting that advantage, you should let more people know.

I was simply responding to your sarcastic denial that black people have an advantage in college admissions.

Your sarcasm made you appear intellectually dishonest. Now at least we know you are not denying that preferential admissions take place.

"intellectually dishonest" as opposed to physically dishonest or...?

Preferential admissions, sure. And that's not new, admissions take a lot of things into account besides race, like religion, family members who were alumni, hell you can even just pay to get in. You think maybe white men get more preferential treatment in life though? "BUt THaTs NOt WhAT We ArE TALkiNg AbOuT". Huge difference between situational advantage and systematic disadvantage.

> The game you are referring to is one in which you presuppose dividing people into ‘teams’.

No, you're arguing against an artifact the analogy instead of acting in good faith to understand the meaning.

Consider a game where all players are independent, but the "referee" arbitrarily chose half of the players to get an advantage. Let that be team 1, and everyone else be team 2. We got a new referee in the 2nd half, and that ref wants it to be a fair game; would it be unfair for them to acknowledging and try to correct for the 1st ref's team choices?

(Now if you argue that there is no "referee" in real life, I'm going to assume you are being willingly obstinate.)

> A non-racist solution is to support anyone who has been less advantaged in wealth building.

So socialism, totally agree, in general that is the direction we should move back towards.

But take note that you'll then have minorities who were forced to work 10x harder than their white peers say, "wtf?! I put in all that extra work to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and now you're just going to hand out success to everyone? I feel disenfranchised!"

In a "fair" race, that person who worked 10x harder than their peers should be appreciably further along in the "game". The only way to make that correction is to acknowledge the divide already drawn by the first "referee".

As far as I can see you just restated the idea of dividing the world into teams based on race. That isn’t an artifact of the analogy.

That is the basis of racism.

We can accept that a game like this was played, stop playing it, and work to undo the damage without continuing to play the game.

>> A non-racist solution is to support anyone who has been less advantaged in wealth building.

> So socialism, totally agree, in general that is the direction we should move back towards.

No, I don’t view socialism favorably and it’s not implied. Creating institutions or programs that facilitate higher levels of economic participation by those who start with less does not imply socialism.

No, no individual or group consciously decided how races should be divided, that happened naturally. What you're saying its that acknowledging the divide exists is racist, which is the classic "color blind" excuse.

> No, no individual or group consciously decided how races should be divided,

I think the Portuguese, the British, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, and the Danish consciously chose Africans to be imported as slaves to America. Don’t you?

Jim Crow laws were consciously written by people who were deciding how races should be divided.

Race isn’t even a natural category.

> that happened naturally.

Are you seriously suggesting that slavery and Jim Crow happened ‘naturally’?

> What you're saying its that acknowledging the divide exists is racist, which is the classic "color blind" excuse.

This is false. If you can find somewhere I argue for that, you’ll be able to quote it.

Here is something I did say:

“We don’t have to ignore the effects of racism. There is nothing wrong with looking at the kinds of disadvantage it has produced and then acting to support those who are impacted.”

> Are you seriously suggesting that slavery happened ‘naturally’?

Are you seriously suggesting that humans aren't naturally occurring? Are you suggesting that there is something inherent about the "Portuguese, British" etc that gave them the power and influence needed to enslave other races? Of course not.

Randomly populate a geologically non uniform landmass with humans, and over time some will exploit natural advantages over others based on arbitrary factors. The fact that the British colonized everyone wasn't because they were somehow genetically superior or more predisposed to colonization, they just randomly got dealt the best hand.

> If you can find somewhere I argue for that, you’ll be able to quote it.

I'm referring to your core argument that,

> A non-racist solution is to support anyone who has been less advantaged in wealth building.

You're saying that even though we can clearly see how past societies drew their lines when determining how to stunt the "wealth building" of future generations, we should rotate that line so that it's orthogonal to race and only focus on the people who have had the most trouble building wealth.

Consider a hypothetical scenario where we had a "perfectly equal past", where there was no slavery or systemic racism and everyone had been treated fairly based on their own ability. Even in this world, you'd still have some people who fall short at "building wealth" compared to others. You'd still see a "line" drawn based on natural ability. This is the only scenario in which I'd agree with you.

But the natural ability line isn't the only one that history has drawn. We can see the lines that history drew. Lines based on race, based on geography, based on gender, etc. and I think it would be ignorant of us to ignore the existence of any of those lines. It's not an either/or situation.

One day, I hope to get to a point where we're approaching a "perfectly equal past", but until then we have more than 1 line to account for.

> Are you suggesting that there is something inherent about the "Portuguese, British" etc that gave them the power and influence needed to enslave other races? Of course not.

No. I’m saying they made a conscious choice to enslave other races, just as abolitionists eventually made a conscious choice to oppose it.

> You're saying that even though we can clearly see how past societies drew their lines when determining how to stunt the "wealth building" of future generations, we should rotate that line so that it's orthogonal to race and only focus on the people who have had the most trouble building wealth.

Yes, why not?

This is what it means to stop being racist. You stop enacting race based policies, and you take steps to counteract the impacts of past racism on people in the present.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge that racism was a cause. If you claim that is what I am saying then you are just lying.

Consequences of racism are the largest historical reasons black people as a statistical category have had trouble building wealth.

There is nothing wrong with recognizing this as a priority. As I point out, the groups with the biggest problem will benefit disproportionately by default if we address this.

However black people are not the only ones who have suffered from impediments. Racism is one cause, but there are others.

A person who is struggling today should be helped regardless of their own skin color or the skin color of the grandparents.

What is wrong, is to continue the racist practices of past societies by enacting race based policies.

> You stop enacting race based policies, and you take steps to counteract the impacts of past racism on people in the present.

But by definition, that's not what ignoring race does.

> This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge that racism was a cause.

By definition, that's what "rotating the line to be orthogonal to race" does.

> However black people are not the only ones who have suffered from impediments. Racism is one cause, but there are others.

> A person who is struggling today should be helped regardless of their own skin color or the skin color of the grandparents.

Agreed, that's why I said: "We can see the lines that history drew. Lines based on race, based on geography, based on gender, etc. and I think it would be ignorant of us to ignore the existence of any of those lines. It's not an either/or situation."

> But by definition, that's not what ignoring race does.

The only person talking about ‘ignoring race’ is you.

> This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge that racism was a cause.

> By definition, that's what "rotating the line to be orthogonal to race" does.

No it doesn’t not ‘by definition’ or by any other reason. Your arguments don’t suddenly become true just because you say ‘by definition’.

You can acknowledge race as a cause, while not enshrining it as a solution.

Your solution requires that we must continue to be identified by the racial categories created by historical slave owners.

Not good.

"Rotating the line to be orthogonal to race" is a bit of a confusing statement, but I don't think it's fair to say that it implies not acknowledging race. What it does imply is enacting policies that are not solely based upon race.

I agree with Zepto. You can't just easily quantify the effects of all of the past injustices against different groups of people. Imagine if today the federal government decided to pay reparations for slavery. How would you decide who receives the money? Do you have to be 1/2 black? 1/4? Do you receive less money if you're less black? What about other minorities? How much are they entitled to?

It becomes messy very quickly. This is a simplified example, but this is why it's best to take enact policies that help those who struggle today regardless of their skin color, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

However, it is still important to acknowledge, teach about, and remember racism and other inequalities from years past (and some which continue today)

> After a few hundred years of race/gender based policies working in favor of whites/males, I don't know what else we would expect from a deliberate effort to reverse it

White hasn't even meant the same thing for over a hundred years in America. Treating "white males" as a monolithic group is a vast over-simplification of all the different sub-groups and cultures who were not equally advantaged.

The great irony of this logic is that you are totally embracing might is right politics. As long as your team wins. But that's not how might is right works.

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