Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

It's not a "platitude" it's an aphorism. It reflects the principle--already ancient to Plato 2,400 years ago--that we don't solve injustice by shifting that injustice onto innocent third parties. If you can prove wrongdoing by specific people then you can punish it. But if you define treating someone differently based on skin color as a moral crime—which I think is necessary for a multi-ethnic society to function—then you can’t use differential treatment to reengineer outcomes.

Apart from enforcing neutral principles, the other solution is individualism. We need to stop reinforcing the salience of race and racial communities and treat people as individuals.

View on HN

It feels like a platitudinal aphorism to me, it’s trite and cliche and overused and was delivered as if it’s insightful in hopes of ending the debate. Google appears to agree vigorously that “two wrongs don’t make a right” is a platitude.

One problem with that platitude is that there are plenty of ways that two negative things can balance each other out or become positive in some way.

Aren’t you making deep cultural presumptions and imposing your own opinions? Affirmative action is controversial, and it’s had unintended consequences when used, but what’s the rationale for claiming it’s a “wrong” or “injustice”? Not everyone believes that.

You’re also deliberately ignoring the point that there might be no such thing as innocent third parties, but only people who aren’t aware they’re part of the problem, even if it’s subtle and unintended.

History already tried the Laissez Faire approach, and it didn’t work. Chips fell in a bad place. This isn’t about proving wrongdoing or punishment, it’s about acknowledgement of a problem, and reflection and self-improvement as a group.

An aphorism is an expression of a general principle. This one seems cliched because it reflects a principle deeply ingrained in our society. We reject “an eye for an eye” and instead say “two wrongs don’t make a right.” We have since Plato’s day. You don’t disregard core principles merely because a particular social problem is difficult to solve.

Affirmative action is wrong because we have defined treating an individual differently based on their race as a moral wrong. The act is wrong, regardless of your motivations. It’s like how stealing is wrong even if you’re doing it because someone else stole from you first.

I’m not ignoring your point that third parties may not be innocent. I said above that if you can prove wrongdoing by specific individuals, you can punish them.

> acknowledgement of a problem, and reflection and self-improvement as a group

There are no “groups,” just individuals who must be treated according to their individual merits, without regard to their group membership. That was the whole principle of the civil rights era.

> we have defined treating an individual differently based on their race as a moral wrong. The act is wrong, regardless of your motivations

No, I don’t think so, You’re conflating racism with discrimination. We humans discriminate positively and negatively all the time. People discriminate based on race and gender and age for the purposes of picking a life mate or sexual partner, and society has exactly zero problem with that. Discriminating based on race is absolutely not a morally wrong act regardless of motivations. Intent matters, and the situation matters.

This talking point about all discrimination being wrong is fairly popular, and there are a lot of people who can’t see the difference between positive discrimination and negative discrimination. This is one reason I think affirmative action should end; it’s too subtle of a distinction and we were too successful at planting the idea that discrimination is bad.

You’re also conflating law with mores in your example. There are cases where stealing something is moral, regardless of whether it’s legal. There are also cases where stealing something is legal too, for example you can legally take back something stolen from you if you do it non-violently.

> There are no “groups”

I was referring to humanity, to all of us.

I was about to post the same and that's 100% my take... sure, I didn't own slaves and I don't intentionally do anything racist... but I can absolutely acknowledge that by virtue of genetic lottery (white, with educated parents, etc) I had it orders of magnitude easier than the kids who grew up on the other side of town (black, less educated parents, etc).

I said it in another comment - affirmative action may not be the best solution, but it's tiresome to see people trot out the "2 wrongs" argument without proffering a better solution to the problem.

Thank you. Yes the whole problem and confounding factor with this argument is that racism exists, and emerged on its own. If we choose Laissez Faire, we already know the outcome, and it’s bad. The notion that we should do nothing to fix it and let the chips fall where they may would amount to institutionalized racism as opposed to institutionalized (positive) discrimination. Plus affirmative action can and should end, whereas racism does not without changes.

What about white kids on the other side of the town with drug addicted parents?

What about them? Being white doesn’t make people immune to drugs, nor guarantee anything, right? So what’s your point? Race advantage is something you can’t always see by looking at individuals, especially cherry picked examples. Bias is a statistical effect, so you may need to look at everyone in order to see it, unless we are talking about clear cases of oppression, inability to vote or slavery or violence or things like that. Most of that has been resolved, but subtle bias is still around.

>but I can absolutely acknowledge that by virtue of genetic lottery (white, with educated parents, etc) I had it orders of magnitude easier than the kids who grew up on the other side of town (black, less educated parents, etc).

How do the white kids with unfortunate life circumstances have an advantage over similarly situated black kids?

They don’t. You’re cherry picking a biased sample. Black kids have “unfortunate” circumstances statistically more often than white kids, and some of that disadvantage stems from when racism was legal and widely practiced. It can take generations to fix wealth disparity.

Such a weird perspective on human life. Where do you put white Ukrainian orphans compared to black American kids, whose ancestors were slaves on your grievance scale? Btw. you are also cherry picking a biased sample. How do you know which black kid is a descended of slaves and rich Nigerian upper class?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com