Comment by omginternets | Hacker News Reader

Comment by omginternets | Hacker News Reader

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>There's really no difference between a person proudly declaring they only like "white" people and a person declaring they only like "tall" people.

I get where you're coming from -- criticizing people for what they are, rather than for what they do, is exceedingly unfair -- but I can think of at least three important differences, chief among which are:

1. The shortness of men (barring outright dwarfism) has never been the object of widespread theories about their fundamental inferiority, nor have such theories been enshrined into widespread law.

2. Social institutions have never explicitly conspired to marginalize short men.

3. Redlining, lynching, the selling of persons into slavery, ghettos, etc. have no equivalent in the realm of height.

And to be frank, it's rather shocking that you would suggest otherwise. I don't doubt that you've been treated unfairly, and you are perfectly entitled to complain about it, but that doesn't require you to twist reality.

Height does appear to be correlated with income[1]. So it’s entirely possible that discrimination has existed and continues to exist. People seem to think that because something is difficult to measure, it isn’t there, but that simply isn’t true. Lookism could also be a big problem, but the causal effects of being unattractive are hard to identify. Imagine trying to assemble a treatment and control group for that. Who is going to self identify as being ugly?

I understand your objection to drawing an equivalence between racial discrimination, but even if it isn’t as “bad” can’t it still recognized as a lesser form of bigotry?

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~apostlew/paper/pdf/short.pdf

>even if it isn’t as “bad” can’t it still recognized as a lesser form of bigotry?

Yes. In fact, that's exactly what I said.

It's also worth calling out the sheer madness of equating height discrimination to racism, and pretending not to see the problem.

They are equated under the principle of injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. You could make the argument that Black people have suffered more at the hands of society, but the injustice of both are in the same class: prejudice.

>You could make the argument that Black people have suffered more at the hands of society, but the injustice of both are in the same class: prejudice.

Again, this is exactly what I am saying.

I am also saying that you go further, and engage in an intellectual slight-of-hand. This happens precisely when you say "there's really no difference [...]".

Yes there is. There are several, important differences that render irrelevant their belonging to the same category. Abraham Lincoln and Pol Pot both belong to the category of "heads of state", but it is laughably incorrect to claim that there are no differences between them. So too with your example.

What you are failing to understand that there can be "no difference" between doing things, yet there is a large difference when one of them is done a lot more and more intensely than the other.

That's the difference between anti-short and anti-Black, not the anti-ness itself.

"There's no difference between anti-shortness and anti-Blackness, except the intensity and commonality" is certainly a statement, its I guess correct in the tautological sense that "X and Y are not different if you exclude all the differences between them", but it's also not a useful statement at that point.

I'd ask in what way the point you're trying to make is useful, either analytically or rhetorically. I don't see how it is offhand.

They are not equivalent and I disagree with the OP's example. Racism is significantly worse. That doesn't mean heightism/lookism is not an injustice worth examining and discussing however

The difference here is that height is also correlated with nutrition and by proxy social class. Whatever that study says, eradicating that type of confounding from statistical associations is hard/impossible.

It's not as hard as you think, and the correlation with nutrition and social class is disappearing and even non-existent in many places.

See Japan: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/02/12/national/scienc...

There's an increase in low birth rate babies (not due to malnutrition), probably due to increased survivability of smaller more frail babies. The fact that they grow up and lead healthy lives means that their society is indeed selecting for the survivability of smaller people.

Right, but selecting for in the present tense (ie past 30 years) is going to have a negligible impact on population statistics.

Also, ruling out that kind of confounding -is- hard… as mostly practiced any measurement error in confounders reduces our ability to ‘control for’ them… but most epidemiology and all nutrition research just glosses over this.

Height and income relationship could be modest or nonexistent if you look at a genetically and socially homogenous population and consider earnings through age 65 or 75. Also, note that as you get up to the retirement age, tall people are more likely to be dead or disabled than short people.

no one is comparing the historical treatment of short people to slaves; they are comparing how preference for some unchangeable attributes are somehow acceptable but preference for others are not.

you are forcing additional context where there is none.

That's just untrue. The claim is that there is "really no difference" between discriminating against Blacks and short people. There are several important differences, and they relate directly to the historical treatment of Black people.

You are arguing in bad faith, just like the OP.

There is no difference in the comparison because they're both based on immutable physical characteristics. There's a difference in the historical context, which you highlight.

This does not follow. There is a difference in historical context, which has a bearing on the real-world effects of height-vs-race discrimination, ergo there are differences between the two.

In exactly the same way: Abraham Lincoln and Pol Pot are both heads of state, but it is incorrect to say there are no differences between them.

You're describing a difference in the outcome, which is the action + the context. I'm not saying the outcomes are the same, I'm saying the action is the same, but the context is different. Subtle distinction, but it may not even have been what the person you originally commented to meant, so I am going to abandon further discussion on this :)

It's a comparison they are never totally the same. That's the point. If women complain they are treated like slaves, do you stop them to explain they aren't actually treated like slaves?

If Abraham Lincoln shoots someone in the head, and Pol Pot shoots someone in the head, in both cases someone's killed someone else.

But for whatever reason we might say that racism has led to violent strife or wars, but has social tension between tall and short men led to war? Heavy conflict does not seem to organize along lines of tall vs short.

And on a related question, what is the essence of sexiness, and is attraction to the sexy wrong?

> You are arguing in bad faith, just like the OP.

Can we keep discussion civil? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - "Assume good faith."

> There are several important differences,

Historically. But if the historical context of slavery did not exist, it would still be just as unacceptable to treat Black individuals differently.

In essence, historical context is largely irrelevant to whether an action is right or wrong. An action is right or wrong in itself (with respect to the contemporary common moral framework, (which may itself be influenced by history) etc.)

As such, treating Black individuals differently is not more or less wrong than treating short individuals differently.

I believe I am being civil. I also think bad faith can be demonstrated, and that it has been.

>As such, treating Black individuals differently is not more or less wrong than treating short individuals differently.

Again, as I have mentioned repeatedly, we agree on this point. Where we disagree is in the assertion that there is "no difference" in effect, precisely because of the historical context.

Historical context does not influence whether an action is right or wrong in itself. You should not need atrocities to be recorded in history to tell you if you are doing the right thing.

Deja vu, I have been in this place before.

It's amazing how circular the responses in this comment thread are getting. There appears to be disagreement on the surface, but in reality almost everyone is presenting a view which is at least compatible with each other's -- if not in direct agreement.

One side is equivocating “shortism” with racism. The other side is pointing out that that’s fucked up.

It's not fucked up. Racism isn't bad because of the historical context. It's bad because it's bad. "Shortism" is quite literally exactly as bad as racism.

You keep bringing the argument to the literal definition of “no difference” which no one is arguing against you on. One is heigh and one is race. They aren’t literally the same thing but it’s also clearly not what is being compared here.

There is no difference in the sense that if you can root out the act of discrimination and prejudice here in this instance then you can root it out in other instances (racial discrimination, sexual orientation discrimination) because as others point out they all have the same cause: prejudicial biases based on immutable (and irrelevant to whatever is causing the bias) characteristics.

This is in essence why MLK said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, because injustice is all the same.

We don’t fight racism just because we owe black people. We fight it because it’s fundamentally wrong, and not because black people just happened to have suffered a lot.

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