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Comment by omonra | Hacker News Reader

What does LCK being white have to do with anything?

I am starting to notice people mentioning white people's race - which I just don't get. If someone does not position/think of themselves as a "color X", why bring it up?

Also - Woody Allen and Seinfeld are jewish comedians. While they are certainly white, it's probably as relevant as them being male or human. Ie a person can obviously have overlapping identities, but if one identity is shared with 15m people and the other with a billion, the former one matters more.

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There's an idea taught by marxist academics that being white means living life on "easy mode"[1]. A lot of people on hacker news believe it because there is a high level of average education on HN. This belief is often used to denigrate the achievement of white people. In Wisconsin, the K-12 school system asks white students to wear a brand to remind them of how privileged they are for being white[2].

There are a lot of poor, underprivileged white people in the country, but racism is not logical.

[1] Stuff like this is taught in class: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th...

[2]http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-schools...

> There are a lot of poor, underprivileged white people in the country

So your argument is that if a particular race of people had it a little easier than other races, there wouldn't be any poor people in that race?

On the whole, the white male does have a slight advantage.

Fair enough, but that advantage is well deserved if they worked to build it.

Honestly, if you want to be on top in 10 years, spend your weekends toying with bitcoins, drones and/or 3D printers.

These areas will give birth to the new Facebook, and it's mostly white males who are playing with them right now. Get into it now, don't come whining in 10 years when a Hollywood movie is made about it and it suddenly becomes cool.

> Fair enough, but that advantage is well deserved if they worked to build it.

But the point is we didn't work to build it. Merely being born were I was gave me extremely high odds of being amongst the richest people in the world.

At most you could claim my ancestors "worked to build it", but that's still a massive stretch - the main reason for the wealth I grew up around was oil and European imperialism.

yay lets nerf those undeserving white men. that will make the world a better place

How does recognizing you are lucky imply "needing" them? Telling well of American children to keep in mind their privilege and that most people in the world don't have what they have hardly seems like Marxism to me.

'Privilege' implies shame. 'Culture' implies pride.

I prefer to teach our kids culture.

Pride (or shame) in other people's actions seems irrational to me (unless you had some involvement).

Why should I feel proud that I am from the same country as Isaac Newton? Or shame about the bombing of Dresden? I had nothing to do with either of those things.

No. Wrong. Privilege implies no such thing. Privilege is not a moral judgment: it is a description of a condition. You are privileged when you have advantages due to your religion, birth class, sexual orientation, or other socially relevant criteria.

You are a dick when you refuse to recognize when you are privileged and act to reinforce your privileged position.

"well deserved if they worked to build it"- does that still apply if it involves centuries, decades of colonization, oppression, slavery?

" if you want to be on top in 10 years, spend your weekends toying with bitcoins, drones and/or 3D printers."

how many black kids- or poor kids in India, for instance (consider Ramanujan) do you think are going to have the OPPORTUNITY to spend their weekends toying with bitcoins, drones and/or 3D printers?

There's a REASON it's mostly white males who are playing with those areas, and it's not "White Men Work Harder".

African mothers work harder than anybody else, walking tens of miles everyday to bring home water to their kids. Where's their well-deserved advantage?

You realize that when someone says 'white male' they are saying it in the context of other types of people in the same society? Ie we're still talking about the First World - just juxtaposing them to black males, asian females, white females, etc.

The existence of 5-odd billion non-white people around the world isn't really discussed :)

Aren't there plenty of minorities in the western world by now? And Bitcoin mining could be done by anybody...

Whatever the correct term is for people who use privilege outside academic discourse is, Marxist is not it. I would suggest Social Justice Warriors™, they're the kind of people who don't believe in racism against white people or sexism against men, as possibilities.

There's an idea taught by marxist academics that being white means living life on "easy mode"[1]. A lot of people on hacker news believe it because there is a high level of average education on HN.

Marxist Academics believe x. Hacker news readers are intelligent. Being intelligent means believing in x.

I see what you did there...

LCK is also half Latino which makes the "white dude" comment even more ridiculous.

Assuming that "white dude" is a race, not an ethnicity; then that has nothing to do with it. Race is culturally defined. If most people perceive him as being white, he's white.

His father is a Hungarian Jew who immigrated to mexico at a young age. He has no Latino blood. Both of his parents were ivy league academics: so he had a big genetic advantage, but that's just life.

From Wiki: "C.K.'s paternal grandfather, a Hungarian, immigrated to Mexico, where he met C.K.'s paternal grandmother, who was a Catholic Mexican of Spanish and Mexican Indian ancestry".

I am not sure what to make of your "big genetic advantage" comment however having educated parents can definitely be considered an advantage in some circumstances.

Deafness does not adversely affect IQ, nor does blindness. Compared to those obstacles, having uneducated parents is a trivial disadvantage.

> What does LCK being white have to do with anything?

Even though in this context, absolutely nothing, Louis C.K. has discussed being white in his stand-up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY (NSFW audio)

Interpretations vary, of course. I think he's underhandedly criticizing the discussion of white privilege; other people who saw that special with me disagreed.

>I think he's underhandedly criticizing the discussion of white privilege; other people who saw that special with me disagreed.

Arguably, it's that ambiguity that gives depth to that bit.

The implication is if you are white, and especially if you are male, you don't deserve what you have, or your opinion doesn't count.

This is the implication only if you're looking to shove vitriol into everything.

In the context of my comment, his whiteness and maleness are rough heuristics for the similarity of his product to Woody Allen and Seinfeld.

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