Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

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I don't call everything oppression, I only call oppression oppression. Slavery was oppression. Jim Crow was oppression. Discrimination against Irish, Italians, Hispanics and black people was and is oppression. Denying people the right to be who they are, restricting their rights based on who they are, denying them rights that other people enjoy, is oppression.

The issue is that conservatives have always tried to force people to go along with their views, and reacted with oppression and violence towards anyone who didn't fit into their straightjacket.

> progressives haven't wanted the same rights for everyone for decades

It's been a developing journey. It started with rights for people who weren't noble born, then men who weren't rich, then women and ethnic minorities, then gay people, then transgender people. It's a gradual expansion of rights until everybody is able to enjoy the same rights.

> The issue is that conservatives have always tried to force people to go along with their views, and reacted with oppression and violence towards anyone who didn't fit into their straightjacket.

All valid, but as always, there's nuances in how people think about assimilation and other things: Normative-ness shouldn't be mistaken for intentional racism. As for normative-ness being systemic racism, there's good deal of changes to be sought there as well, but social institutions that rely on social norms often resist dramatic changes without dramatic escalation in social struggle. The thing with escalation is, it brings about social unrest, which most would prefer to not deal with at all, especially those (who believe in) climbing up the social ladder, or are (relatively) less harmed by the status quo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normativity

Valid point. Of course society needs norms. And I suspect every healthy society has norms. The big difference is what you do when those norms turn out to be unreasonably restrictive to some people. Do your norms override individual freedom even to the freedom to exist and be yourself?

There has to be a point where norms have to give way to freedom, but where do you draw that line?

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