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Comment by the_third_wave | Hacker News Reader

Black vikings do not model reality. Asking for 'an Irish person' produces a Leprechaun. Defending racism when it concerns racism against white people is just as bad as defending it when it concerns any other group.

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Quite a hefty percentage of the people responsible for the current day's obsession with identity issues openly state racism against white people is impossible. This has been part of their belief system for decades, probably heard on a widescale for the first time during an episode of season one of 'The Real World' in 1992 but favored in academia for much longer than that.

It's because they have a very different definition of racism. Basically, according to this belief, if you are seen as part of the ethnic group in power, you will not be able to experience noteworthy levels of discrimination because of your genetic makeup.

That sounds like a very racist defintion of racism to me.

Redefining words is what a lot of the last ~10 years of polarization boils down to.

> if you are seen as part of the ethnic group in power, you will not be able to experience noteworthy levels of discrimination

That is not a crazy idea, but it does raise the question: who is the ethnic group currently in power? Against which group will slurs and discrimination result in punishment, and against which group will they be ignored — or even praised?

Ironically, this is the exact same reasoning Neo-Nazis use for their hatred of the Jewish population. Weird how these parallels between extremist ideologies keep arising.

It's almost like the "socialism" part of "national socialism" was not in fact irrelevant. See: Ba'aathism.

I think you two are agreeing.

They indeed are, just in a very polemic way. What a funny time we live in.

Different meaning to 'reality'.

ie., social-historical vs. material-historical.

Since black vikings are not part of material history, the model is not reflecting reality.

Calling social-historical ideas 'reality' is the problem with the parent comment. They arent, and it lets the riggers at google off the hook. Colorising people of history isnt a reality corrective, it's merely anti-social-history, not pro-material-reality

I agree with you, and I think you have misunderstood the nuance of the parent comment. He is not letting google "off the hook", but rather being tongue-in-cheek/slightly satirical when he says that the reality is too troubling for google. Which I believe is exactly what you mean when you call it "anti-social-history, not pro-material-reality ".

Maybe I don't understand the culture here on HN, but not every response to a comment has to be a disagreement. Sometimes you're just adding to a point somebody else made.

Yep, it bugs me too.

Actually you're wrong because <argument on semantics> when in reality the truth is <minor technicality>.

In this case though the comment starts with a categorical negation of something that was said in a tongue-in-cheek way in the comment being replied to. It suggests a counterpoint is made. Yet it’s not.

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