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Comment by manuelabeledo | Hacker News Reader

> Yet I have plenty of people all over the planet that I should be ashamed to have European heritage living in the USA and that it's my fault there are a lot of poor black people.

Do the "plenty" of people have an issue with you having a German ethnicity? How so?

> And that I owe them money and should "check my privilege" because of it.

You are conflating different things here.

"Reparations" aren't a way to funnel money from "you" to "black people". That's another oversimplification, akin to saying that Medicare is about taking from richer people to put money into poor people's pockets.

"Privilege" has more to do with the colour of your skin, than your ethnic background.

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> "Privilege" has more to do with the colour of your skin, than your ethnic background.

This is a ridiculous and racist statement. This places the children of Bill Gates on the same "privilege" footing as a newly arrived Mexican immigrant who happens to have enough European ancestry to have white skin.

There are a huge number of factors that may or may not give someone a foot up in life and their external appearance is just one relatively small contributing factor.

It depends on what kind of privilege we are talking about. Lumping privileges together is just as blurring as lumping experiences together based on external appearance.

One example I can think of where your two disparate examples may experience the same privilege in many parts of the USA is in a pulled over by police but prior to a driver’s license being shown scenario.

Agreed! That's exactly what I'm arguing: privilege is extremely complicated and has tons of different facets. Your ethnic background will have a much stronger influence on most of those facets than your skin color will.

That's not to say that there aren't some important aspects of privilege that are influenced by skin color. It's simply that those are overshadowed by other aspects of your background.

I disagree. One can argue your ethnic background will have an affect on your skin color , but one’s skin color is the prominent factor not the background itself when we’re talking about privilege in the United States.

Your argument seems to be that because people talk about skin color more that makes it a bigger factor in privilege. I'd say that that's evidence that our culture is obsessed with skin color, but not evidence that skin color actually gives you a greater advantage in life than other factors.

> This is a ridiculous and racist statement.

Is it "racist" to point out that a racist will not look at someone's background, and will focus on evident skin features to make a character judgement? Really?

It's called prejudice for a reason.

> This places the children of Bill Gates on the same "privilege" footing as a newly arrived Mexican immigrant who happens to have enough European ancestry to have white skin.

This is a ridiculous comparison, because you are adding a new component, which is loads of money.

I myself am a hispanic white living in the US. I'm not rich by any means. But even I can tell how differently people look at me, compared to other hispanics with darker skin.

I'm not arguing that people don't treat people differently based on the color of their skin, it's obvious that they do. I'm arguing that that differential treatment cannot be more significant than the vast array of other socioeconomic factors that contribute to privilege, and defining privilege as being primarily about skin color is racist.

> ...defining privilege as being primarily about skin color is racist.

I didn't say that. Mine was a comment limited to OP's assumption that some people (it wasn't clarified "who" these people are), think he is privileged because of him being of a certain ancestry, which is not true.

I may have misunderstood you, then. You quoted OP saying that people tell them they should "check their privilege" and you said that privilege is about skin color more than ethnic background. It seemed to me as though you were saying that OP should, in fact, check their privilege, which given what they told us about their family background seemed patently absurd.

> You are conflating different things here.

No I am not.

Race is a political grift. It has been a political grift since the beginning. It's a way for some individuals to exploit social divides for personal profit. It's a political gamesmanship.

It was a grift when "white" was first legally defined during the colonial era. It is a grift now.

The greater wedge they can drive between people the greater the potential for personal profit and political power. If you want to eliminate racism in the USA then the worst possible way you can do it is by trying to force some idiotic and unrealistic notion of "equity" on the american people in the name of racial injustice.

> The greater wedge they can drive between people the greater the potential for personal profit and political power.

And I agree with that. Also, I would say that the main issue here is money, not skin colour. Poor people are basically getting screwed so billionaires like Musk or Bezos add a couple more zeroes to their bank accounts.

But I cannot ignore the fact that there is racism embedded in the system, and that it is a massive problem.

I see this a bit like gender inequality back in the 70s and 80s. Are we going to ignore it, like our grandparents and parents did, or will be acknowledging it?

The problem that I see with the "check your privilege" approach to solving racism is that it's similar to PETA's approach to fighting for animal rights. If your rhetoric makes everyone into the enemy, then how do you expect them to turn around and support your cause? You've already "othered" the majority of the population.

There are huge numbers of white people who don't like the status quo but see the "check your privilege" rhetoric as arguing that they haven't earned anything in their lives. If you come from a working-class white family like OP's, that's a slap in the face.

The answer isn't to say that people like OP are just misunderstanding what you mean and should listen better. The answer is to change the rhetoric so that it actually reaches the target audience.

> "Privilege" has more to do with the colour of your skin, than your ethnic background.

And what's the upside to having white skin but not having the generational wealth that supposedly comes from colonialism? There's many "white" countries that never colonised anyone, are still poor and certainly don't benefit from their "whiteness" today...

You're seeing it through both a Mexican and American lens. White Mexicans look down on indigenous Mexicans and there's definitely racism in the US, but how should someone from Czech Republic, Ukraine or Finland feel about their "privilege" today?

Edit - it's also been pointed out but should be again that the word 'slave' comes from the word for Slavs who unfortunately were frequently enslaved...

Reparations are very much that.

Where does the money start? Him. Where does the money go? Them. So, reparations are a way to funnel money from him to them. You can do all kinds of wordplay and commentary and invention of new terminologies, but those are all distractions from "reparations funnel money from him to them."

> Do the "plenty" of people have an issue with you having a German ethnicity? How so?

But he doesn't have German ethnicity...? His ancestors moved to the US in the 19th century.

I guess I should have said German "genes"?

I know the US is somewhat obsessed with ancestry and that it can be figured by genes. Being German myself I can tell you there is nothing like German genes. Or French genes, or any other European nation as far as that is concerned.

I understand your point, and yes, there is a somewhat unhealthy obsession with “heritage” in the US.

Privilege has nothing to do with skin color. Do you think an average white person from Appalachia is more privileged than a child of LeBron James?

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