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Comment by foogazi | Hacker News Reader

> 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

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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.

> You are reintroducing group guilt concepts

Read my comment again, I never mentioned guilt.

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.

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

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.

> Groups do not have guilt, individuals do.

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

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