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Comment by deepl_derber | Hacker News Reader

>The idea that the only cure for discrimination is discrimination is akin to saying the only cure for violence is violence. It’s abject insanity that such a notion is being advanced in society.

Absolutely not. The idea that any of this is fixable with 'forgiveness' is far more insane. You can't undo hundreds of years of systematic disenfranchisement and subjugation with forgiveness - you have to discriminate in the opposite direction.

To quote LBJ, "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." That's what Kendi is saying, and he's completely right.

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> You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair."

It's not fair. Neither is discriminating in the other direction because these people are not at fault for what their ancestors did, not to mention that affirmative action policies divide people along racial lines rather than the factor more relevant to today, class lines.

Ask yourself whether a black student with wealthy parents should benefit from preferential admissions to colleges over a white student from a poor background.

you hear people from minority group all the time saying they want to keep the bloodline pure and not dare someone from a different races.

If a white people said this everyone would say he is a nazi.

Similarly when immigrant minorities gravitate to particular localities for their shared culture and background, this is a wonderful example of diversity. When white people do this, its called white flight and is akin to nazism.

> To quote LBJ, "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." That's what Kendi is saying, and he's completely right.

My problem with this quote is it intentionally ignores the plight of anyone who has nothing and isn't African American. Kendi's approach is an inherently selfish one and that's what makes it so polarising.

The answer to the societal issue of wealth disparity is not to give the poor of one racial group an advantage over the poor of another. It's to actually address the source of the problem in a manner agnostic to race. Doing anything else only serves to stoke division and racism.

Where Kendi and I (appear to, I haven't read his book) disagree is the idea that your antiracist policies must be _explicitly_ discriminatory to work. You can implement universal social goods like "everyone gets housing and health care" which in practice give far more to black people (because on average they're starting further back) but which apply to everyone and get the right outcome.

Certainly I wouldn't argue for a second that we should implement policies that ignore or exclude poor white people.

if you care more about what happened hundreds of years ago (racism against group A) than what is happening now (racism against group B). you are part of the problem!

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