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Comment by hushpuppy | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> 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.

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