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Comment by throw101010qwe | Hacker News Reader

This is a politically charged discussion but I think it demonstrates some of the problem. Left arguments, just like the right, devolve into a theme of you are with us or a racist. There is no middle ground. I am no longer in the Bay Area but I still remember one of the depressing defining moments of this during the BLM protests. Shop owners would throw up signs that literally would say “We are minority owned, please don’t destroy our shop”. In my mind it’s the wrong way to think about it, does that mean we are giving the ok to destroy non-minority businesses? If you were to ask that question at that time, you would get labeled quite quickly as a racist.

The shame about everything these days is you cannot have a discussion anymore, maybe it never existed. I am not a republican but I also cannot stand the outspoken left shouting over everyone else in CA. Does that mean I am antiwoke?

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Let me share the perspective I have as a member of a class of people that have been subject to racism for thousands of years, including enslavement, arbitrary murder, and systematic mass murder. Please forgive me, but being quiet didn't seem to work so far.

At least hundreds of thousands of polite, quiet, reasonable, assimilated urban Jews were murdered in the holocaust. It is deeply wrong that African Americans and other minorities or mentally ill people live in a world where the police can be every bit as dangerous as the gestapo. I feel like it's wrong that millions of women have been murdered simply for not doing something a man wanted. Millions or billions of women aren't treated as if they have the same value as men.

Please look at the bully pulpit standing against us. Most of the power in American society is concentrated in the hands of a very few white men. How loud do you think someone has to be when they have to stand against the megaphone of society? When someone needs to stand up against trillions of dollars in wealth?

Pretty loud as it turns out!

Hear, hear.

I am not sure what your reply has to do with my comment. Be as loud as you yourself want to be. The issue with the left is the same that as the right in America. The handful of extra vocal folks set the tone. You are unable to have any real discussion as it’s too easy to quickly get labeled a racist or some other classification. If you don’t agree with a position, well you must be a nazi of some sort. That is/was the typical vocal left in CA.

The comparison of police being gestapo is just silly. In the general case police are underpaid for what they are tasked with. I am no fan of the police but it’s naive to think they are the gestapo. Severely under paid and undertrained to then have to take care of the same neighborhoods all the time. I also think your narrative of finger pointing does not really attack any of the issues. Instead of pointing fingers nobody wants to sit down and ask why certain communities have poorer outcomes than others. Poor police outcomes are a symptom of the problem, not the cause.

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