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Comment by oceanplexian | Hacker News Reader

> I'm talking about lifting them up, correcting the wrongs, reimbursing the damage done.

I don't think people realize how dangerous trying to "repair" or "correct" history can actually be. It could literally go on for thousands of years, look at the Israeli's and Palestinians. While I'm fine if people who committed discriminatory acts are held accountable in the law, it's a period of time we should be ashamed of and need to stop revisiting.

In my opinion, the best way to respect people who were wronged is to let it go. Yes it will always be unfair, but people in history books are not "us". We are a different generation of human beings with the power to create the world we want to live in.

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The current Israel-Palestine conflict is actually less than 100 years old. The Israelis and Palestinians weren't fighting under the Ottomans, which lasted over 400 years.

Mutual dislike and occasional violence was already there under the Ottomans, once substantial Jewish immigration to Palestine began in late 19th century.

Think the reference is to the claims and counterclaims to Palestinian lands which go back thousands of years.

if you're going to go back thousands of years, you're going to have to talk about Jewish lands again.

Palestine’s stolen land is from only the 20th century. Not thousands of years.

No I don’t think people getting their land stolen in the past 100 years is okay to let go. Same sort of people usually think Taiwan stealing the island from indigenous or America stealing Puerto Rico or Hawai’i is okay too.

Stolen land is stolen land.

Is any land not stolen land?

Ask the Dutch :-) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder

Stolen from the mermaids!

Retaken. The sea stole it from us, and we took it back. With interest.

Yes! [1] (Hey, you asked.)

The ridiculousness of the reply enhances your argument though.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil

I think his point was clear enough: that almost all the places people lived used to belong to some other group back in time.

> In my opinion, the best way to respect people who were wronged is to let it go.

Let what go ?

If someone was wronged by a corporation should they let it go ?

Even forgetting slavery, black people were wronged for generations by the state, municipalities, armed forces, banks, schools, restaurants, law enforcement, sports teams - and these were not random one off situations but discrimination by a system of racists.

A whole race collectively screwed over.

They wouldn’t let people into restaurants based on skin color alone - no one considered the individual

You are reintroducing group guilt concepts, discussed higher in this thread. Groups do not have guilt, individuals do. When someone is wronged by a corporation, that is an individual.

If you remain attracted to group guilt as being valid, some thought games. Does someone white who migrates to america thereby adopt guilt for wrongs? Does that person become liable due to the move? What about someone black who migrates? What about their child? Should the child be guilty or half guilty? Should the tax system be adjusted to compensate? What about descendants of former slave owners who are not american citizens? What if their parent was disinherited along the way? How about for gender issues? Does a man inherit responsibility for past wrongs done to women?

If you accept group guilt or intergenerational guilt you are constructing a cast society, where people are defined by their lineage and physical characteristics, rather their actions as an individual. This entrenches social divisions and undermines individual agency and freedom. Western culture, nations and law are grounded in individual responsibility not group identity and are the better for it.

Groups have responsibility.

Consider the opposing argument - groups have no responsibility for anything.

Does that seem like a reasonable position?

Consider an expansion of the argument - are there still situations in which one group consistently discriminates against and abuses another?

People are already in castes, defined by their lineage and physical (and economic) characteristics.

You don't break down the walls between castes by pretending they're not real.

> Groups have responsibility.

Only those that have proxies to accountable individuals, as in the example of the corporation, and with its exceptions such as with limited liability. Or an association, which has a board and a charter.

> Consider the opposing argument - groups have no responsibility for anything. Does that seem like a reasonable position?

Apart from formal corporations/associations, that is the reasonable position. In the context of the case, "Asian Americans" have no moral or legal responsibility to give up opportunities to "African Americans".

Westerners are not in castes.

So, as an extreme case, should we jail Asian Americans because of the crimes of Unit 731? They're part of the same group, no?

One quibble with the word 'group' there, too: Ethnic groups are reference categories, not groups in the sense it'd make sense to think of groups as eg. decisionmaking entities that can be responsible for something.

If groups have responsibility as you say, then Blacks as a group would have tremendous culpability for excess ratio of interracial murder committed by that group.

That of course, is a racist idea, because it assigns group responsibility to the murders committed by individuals.

some people just don't want to throw out the baby with the caste-water.

> You are reintroducing group guilt concepts

Read my comment again, I never mentioned guilt.

> Groups do not have guilt, individuals do.

When we can treat corporations as legal individuals, then groups also have guilt.

With due respect, you've made a very poor argument here. The harms caused by many historical actions have significant, ongoing consequences to this day. You've stated that taking actions to "repair or correct" those harms can be "dangerous" without actually presenting any evidence for it. The idea of "letting it go" feels vey much like it's coming from a position of privilege. I'd be happy to discuss these ideas further if you would like to.

You're conflating pragmatism with "position of privilege". You're free to disagree whether "let it go" is ideal or not. However, assuming "privilege" here is just bad faith and discriminatory; you're making an unsubstantiated character judgement on the basis of someone's race or class.

Clearly, people, regardless of their race or class, have the ability to observe, to evaluate evidence, and to think critically. This is not a quality that's exclusive to "sacred victims". Surely it's possible that someone's race and class could introduce blindspots to their perspective (which extends to "scared victims" as well), but assuming that to be the default flaw in someone's position as opposed to actually finding that flaw in that person's position is intellectually dishonest.

Conversations about race breakdown because ideologues are more interested in enforcing their views as opposed to finding out the truth. Smear tactics like accusing someone of being blindsided by "privilege" is the modern day equivalent of writing off your opponents without actually addressing their actual points.

The idea of punishing people for something their ancestors may or may not have done based on skin color is racism.

Other commenters do not need to engage with you to refute this racism.

I’m white, and my ancestors suffered through slavery and genocide.

How much am I owed in reparations?

I’m not sure why this is downvoted. Turkey with the slavs, Britain with Ireland, and many African countries profited greatly from slavery.

the last known victim of a lynching in the USA were Italians.

https://lasc.libguides.com/mass-lynching-italian-americans#:....

I'm expecting my reparation checks anytime now.

> In my opinion, the best way to respect people who were wronged is to let it go. Yes it will always be unfair, but people in history books are not "us". We are a different generation of human beings with the power to create the world we want to live in.

Many people alive today in the USA were directly harmed by legal discrimination against black people. Explicit legal discrimination stopped in 1971, not in the history books. And of course, significant administrative discrimination continued long after, probably persisting today in some places.

The United Kingdom essentially created what we consider to be modern day Israel. It wasn’t a sovereign nation going back thousands of years.

The Ottoman Empire controlled the region until about 1922. The British came in at that time and arbitrarily drew a line dividing the region into “Mandatory Palestine” and “Transjordan”. This lasted until 1948 and the creation of the modern state of Israel.

For thousands of years people of several religions and cultures (Jewish, Muslim, Roman, Druze, Armenian) lived together in that area; like most such arrangements there weren’t clear lines that differentiated cultural groups.

The lines on the map are and were always arbitrary. Same every time and every where the west has tried to draw lines on maps.

you should read a bit more about the history of that area.

  > We are a different generation of human beings with the power to create the world we want to live in.

i get your point but i'm of two minds about it because tbh thats easy to say when one is on the advantaged side....

doesn't it make sense that nation-states that have done direct damage to communities should be held liable, just as individuals?

Lots of people also say that from the not-advantaged side. Most Indians aren’t sitting around insisting on reparations for the $41 trillion Britain took from them. They understand that it’s futile to do so, and making that the goal will only leave them in poverty long term.

FWIW, when reparations are discussed, it is usually a reference to the fact that after the civil War, the government somehow found a way to scrape down in its pockets and compensate the slave owners for their "loss of property."

One can I think reasonably ask how this government was able to find the resources to pay people for losing their slaves and not the resources to compensate slaves for the years of freedom stolen. Although it is almost certainly too late to reconcile that particular wrong directly as those slaves are now all dead.

Perhaps the payments were to appease the powerful slave owners so that another civil war does not happen. It was not done for some sort of moral duty or obligation.

The slaves had no power, and this would not pose threat of civil unrest.

This is a train of thought that appears to pull into the station of using civil unrest to balance the scales. After all, if the government only responds to power then power is the coin of the realm to purchase the justice one wants.

Interesting, and worth considering the next time there's a riot.

I think this is flawed thinking. For one thing it benefits everyone to help those who have been systematically disadvantaged. Also, respecting people = giving them needed material benefits not saying “I respect you”

We need to keep revisiting the shameful times lest they are forgotten instead of forgetting about them and moving on.

How far back do we go, right?

I'm sure I'm the descendant of people that at some point were treated brutally by someone else, but it's far back enough that the memory has been lost.

I'm all for fixing THE EFFECTS of racial discrimination in the US, but it can't be achieved by sclerotizing that incorrect view of life and dragging it into the future in perpetuity.

Yeah I mean we said sorry, what more do those people want? \s

Your opinion is noted. It's always the people who benefit from discrimination who want the people who suffer from it to just "let it go".

Most white Americans today did not “benefit from discrimination” against black Americans. Most white Americans come from families who weren’t even here during the time of slavery. And slavery hurt the vast majority of white Americans who were not slave owners, by driving down the market value of free farm labor. Slavery made a handful of landowners rich, but impoverished the south as a whole. At the turn of the 20th century, the median income in the south was half of what it was in the Midwest.

It's sadly ironic and self defeating that they claim they don't benefit from discrimination (even though they do but delusionally refuse to acknowledge it), yet they keep on systematically and purposefully discriminating, and idiotically voting against their own best interests, like single payer health care, forgiving student loans, funding education, raising taxes on the wealthy, and ending corporate welfare.

And for all their shrill protests about reverse discrimination and communist Democrats handing out welfare to black people for votes to keep them "on the plantation", the red states are MUCH more reliant on federal government handouts that the blue states have to pay for, BECAUSE of their "conservative" policy choices.

https://apnews.com/article/north-america-business-local-taxe...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leaders have spent months promoting the myth that red low-tax states are subsidizing blue high-tax states because of the deduction for state and local taxes.

An Associated Press Fact Check finds it’s actually the other way around. High-tax, traditionally Democratic states (blue), subsidize low-tax, traditionally Republican states (red) — in a big way.

How does any of that show that the average white American benefited from discrimination against black people?

It doesn’t. And they think putting something in parentheses makes it true. This is not lisp god damn it!

> the red states are MUCH more reliant on federal government handouts that the blue states have to pay for, BECAUSE of their "conservative" policy choices.

Do you have any economics paper indicating that? The much more likely explanation is that red states are more rural and blue states are more urban (so have higher income). Florida and Texas' economies are doing great. Notice even California had a Republican governor until 2011.

Not only you are wrong, you are wrong and arrogant.

California was deep red when Silicon Valley was being built. And most “red states” voted Democrat until the 1990s (with the exception of Reagan). The richest ones, like Virginia, started voted Republican before the others. And richer areas, like the Atlanta suburbs in Georgia, started voting republican before the rest of the state.

> California was deep red when Silicon Valley was being built

The GOP was much, much different when Silicon Valley was being built.

Not with respect to “single payer health care, forgiving student loans, funding education, raising taxes on the wealthy, and ending corporate welfare.” Or taxes or regulation. The GOP has gotten more liberal with respect to the “policy choices” that OP claims causes red states to be “more reliant on federal government.”

I'm old enough to remember how, back in the day, the GOP had a decidedly-liberal wing; no longer.

> Not only you are wrong, you are wrong and arrogant.

Facing facts ≠ arrogance.

> Notice even California had a Republican governor until 2011.

And? California has long been a leading indicator of societal trends. (And 2011 was a dozen years ago.)

"Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy." [0]

[0] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/biden-voting-counties-equ...

Dangerous for who, exactly?

How would you feel on the other side of this? Given how recently discrimination was still legal, is it really great that you can shrug and say "well, tough tits I guess"?

I wasn’t admitted into better colleges while minority friends with worse grades and general resumes were. It upsets me that I was discriminated against. Should I pursue some reparations? How do you factor this in?

Maybe shrug and say "Well, I hope that's over now..."

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