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Comment by brookst | Hacker News Reader

> And someone from one of those groups, knowing that, is going to experience those jokes differently.

This is the absolutely critical point that people are either too privileged to have ever thought of, or too disingenuous to admit.

Yeah, I'm a relatively wealthy (by global standards) white guy of European descent. You can joke about genociding me and I'll laugh because it's a ridiculous thought.

People who grew up genuinely at risk of genocide, or who had recent ancestors killed, don't see that same joke that same way. Worse, the people making those jokes about populations that are currently being exterminated are just doing the old "hey I'm a nazi, ha ha just kidding, can't you take a joke" thing. Which, great, free speech. But at some point if you're goose stepping in jest on a daily basis, that's just who you are.

Kurt Vonnegut said it: we are what we pretend to be.

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> This is the absolutely critical point that people are either too privileged to have ever thought of, or too disingenuous to admit.

...or fundamentally disagree with? Yes, you're describing something real. You're also setting a double standard. Is it possible to understand the premises but come to different conclusions?

> white guy of European descent. You can joke about genociding me and I'll laugh because it's a ridiculous thought.

Do you by any chance have any Italian ancestors? It took a large amount of lynchings, a significant public uproar and finally a threat of war from Europe for the US to finally elevate Italians to "white" . Americans ingrained need to be racist against everyone they could almost causing WWI (with all the interwoven alliances) is an interesting thought.

> Americans ingrained need to be racist against everyone

Have you ever been anywhere in the world which you found less racist than the USA? (Bonus points if it actually has a substantial population and racial/ethnic mix to test that, and it's not just theoretical.)

A lot of places have hidden hatred of groups which acts like racial hate, but doesn't appear that way to people from the USA where the divide (black/white) was so stark and visible. Turks/Armenians, Shia/Sunni, etc.

The USA isn't perfect, but I can't think of anywhere else that I could so unreservedly recommend to anyone around the world. Not Canada, not Germany, maybe the UK, sorta Singapore if you're not certain races, etc, etc.

> This is the absolutely critical point that people are either too privileged to have ever thought of, or too disingenuous to admit.

You are also too privileged to think anyone might not be offended by those words, or even allow them the chance to speak for themselves. The banning of r/2balkan4u was a great exercise in the White Man's Burden of freeing the poor helpless "minorities" from Balkan inside jokes

There's a genocide against white people going on right now in Ukraine.

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