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Comment by ethanbond | Hacker News Reader

“Never?” One can argue we’ve gotten as close as possible to a level playing field or even over shot in some areas, but to say that the cultural changes that have been fought and won over the last 100 years or so have never been about leveling the playing field is utterly detached from reality.

You do realize that, for example, a husband could legally rape his wife in any US state until the 1970s? This wouldn’t be illegal in every state until 1993!

Let me reiterate that: there were people in the United States of America who did not have any legal protection from rape until 1993.

Subjugation of women (and of minority groups) is not some mythical injustice and it’s not even a distant injustice.

We’re talking about thousands of years subjugation and vast amounts of progress being made in the last 50-100 years. It’s insane to refer to this as “never” been about fixing real problems.

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Minor nit: hundreds of thousands?! Maybe let's just take this back to the beginning of recorded history in 2600BC? And ancient Egypt was apparently OK for women (or at least not worse than for men), to pick a random example.

No disagreement with the rest though.

I had typed an argument of that nature, but closed the tab because I didn't want to spend time arguing.

Now that you mention it, though, my problem is with the word subjugation, which isn't an accurate descriptor of what was happening 200,000 years ago when we were living in small bands in the woods, starving, being hunted by animals stronger than us.

There is no reason (that I’m aware of) to think that prior to recorded history we were somehow more restrained with groups/individuals who were weaker than us or outsiders.

But hey, I suppose you never know.

Edited to be sure not to distract from the actual thrust of the argument :)

Is the problem solved?

I mean, who measures at which point "women and minority groups" are not subjugated anymore? Is there any incentive for this moment ever coming to pass?

By the way, I'm not even against whatever progress was made. I do question whether the progress created actual improvement, but in truth I do not really care.

These are important and difficult questions and 100% distinct from the claim “this was never about leveling the playing field.”

I sincerely doubt that had any real implication. Transport was quite bad those days and dragging them across 50 states would be quite taxing on a horse. The law changed accordingly as the situation evolved

We're talking about affirmative action. These programmes are not designed to level the playing field, but to reward friends and punish enemies.

“Affirmative action” as an American legal concept emerged in 1961, 3 years before the Civil Rights Act and 14 years before women in America had a legally-protected right to apply for credit.

Feel free to argue that affirmative action was a mistake or is complete or has overshot its goal, or that it’s used as a tool of corruption in some instances, but you are simply incorrect when you suggest that these reforms originated out of some spontaneous ambush on reformers’ “enemies.”

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