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Comment by mise_en_place | Hacker News Reader

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What are you even talking about? My family is Argentine and 100% assimilated, speak English, love and embrace American culture and values. No one has ever treated us any differently in any context both in middle America and on the coasts.

It’s not a racial issue either, because my friends who are first generation Asian, Indian, etc, would all share the same sentiment. America is the most welcoming place on Earth for immigrants who are willing to put up even the smallest effort to assimilate into the culture.

So racism has been (more or less) eradicated in the US? Just trying to understand your comment before I respond more substantively because that’s a very striking claim and I want to be sure that’s actually what you mean.

Not OP, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say racism is “more or less eradicated” in the US. People’s experiences vary a lot by region, by urban vs rural areas, and even by neighbourhood and institution within the same city. Some places are clearly more inclusive than others, and disparities still show up in things like housing, policing, and employment within the city. So it’s hard to generalize.

Totally agree with you. My question is if they think it is largely not a problem in the US anymore, because their comment heavily suggests otherwise.

This will shock people, but America is not all that racist by world standards. Talk to someone from Asia for starters.

I’m not aware of anywhere with no racism. Humans are tribal and broad stereotypes are intellectually lazy but easy.

> This will shock people, but America is not all that racist by world standards. Talk to someone from Asia for starters.

I’m not shocked. I also don’t believe that “not as bad as…” is the same as “not a real problem.”

Getting stabbed twice in the side missing a major organ/artery isn’t as bad as getting shot twice in the heart, but both are very serious and painful.

I'm not making a normative judgement here, it's just my observation as the child of immigrants myself. There are of course exceptions to the rule. I'm making an argument in the context of political economy, please don't take it personally.

No, you’re not making an argument in the context of political economy. You’re making an argument based on nothing: no data, no studies, just anecdote and personal opinion.

I don’t take seriously your attempt to hide it behind a supposed “observed factual reality.” This is similar to how eugenicists made up their own fake science to try to justify racism.

People are well within their rights to take xenophobic hate personally.

I don't understand this comment. Are you saying that Masad is not assimilated into the US because he doesn't support Israel's genocide against his people? Israel is not the US and supporting it is an increasingly unpopular position in the US. If anything he's more assimilated due to his position.

The majority of Americans are of British ancestry and the polarization between Dems and Reps is pretty high. You think that a coastal elite immigrant British descendant and Asian-American are farther apart than the same chap and a similar counterpart in Appalachia? I doubt it.

> The majority of Americans are of British ancestry

No they aren't. Even if you narrow it down just to white Americans, British ancestry is almost even with German and does not hold a majority once you include Irish, Italian, etc. [1]

I don't blame you for thinking they are tough, as Anglo culture and language has been unusually dominant, probably because the original 13 colonies were very Anglo and the whites that trickled in later largely assimilated. "Albion's seed" is an interesting book on this topic.

[1]: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/10/2020-census-d...

Edit: British doesn't usually denote an ethnic group so I took it to mean Anglo, but if you take it to mean Anglo+Celtic then it would indeed make a majority of whites in the US due to the very large Irish population.

Sorry, yeah, I meant the majority of Whites and I should have said British Isles. Thank you for correcting what I said, which was indeed wildly inaccurate. I do think British ancestry is underreported because of an exoticism bias but we can ignore that.

> I do think British ancestry is underreported because of an exoticism bias but we can ignore that.

That's fair but I'll also point out that pan-Germanic (including Nordic) ancestry is actually the majority in many Midwest and West coast states, while the northeast is obviously very Anglo. So you can get a very different impression depending where you spend your time.

> The majority of Americans are of British ancestry

Wildly inaccurate

That’s a fair point - as demonstrated by Amjad’s high regard for libertarian values.

People are multifaceted. We’re complex and sometimes irrational. I can also believe that you can share certain views yet still not be fully embraced or respected for them.

As a crude example, a Caucasian man who was born and raised in Japan thought of himself to be Japanese ideologically. Yet to the Japanese he was always an outsider - as a result, he has never felt truly at home anywhere.

I will remind you that most of the world and many Americans consider what is happening in Gaza a genocide: the intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. Israel intends ethnic cleansing by genocidal means and continues to attack civilians despite a "ceasefire". Just today I got a terrified text message from a teacher as they airstriked in her camp while she lives in a partly destroyed house that cannot be repaired. They previously bombed the ppl in tents outside who had run from the north with nothing.

I hope there is some humanity left in this country.

He seems assimilated as fuck. What are you talking about?

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