When Whites Just Don’t Get It | Hacker News Reader

When Whites Just Don’t Get It

nytimes.com

11 pointsr0h1n14 comments

What is this absolute trash doing on HN?

HN posting guidelines:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Please stop trying to drag SJW issues onto HN, there are enough outlets online for that as it is.

I guess we found whom the article was targeting.

As a non-American, I was shocked by this bit:

"The net worth of the average black household in the United States is $6,314, compared with $110,500 for the average white household, according to 2011 census data. The gap has worsened in the last decade, and the United States now has a greater wealth gap by race than South Africa did during apartheid. (Whites in America on average own almost 18 times as much as blacks; in South Africa in 1970, the ratio was about 15 times.)"

Net worth of American households overall is shit.

Americans don't save money for retirement, they expect Uncle Sam to take care of them.

Yet another way in which America, whose left-wing politicians like to pretend is some kind of capitalist nation, is just another socialist shithole.

In that case the UK is in an even worse predicament:

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/fraser-nelson/2014/08/why-brita...

( Why Britain is poorer than any US state, other than Mississippi )

> Yet because of the de facto segregation of America, whites are unlikely to have many black friends

As a non-American I find this surprising. After absorbing American movies and TV shows I honestly picture average middle class America, at least in the Northern states, as being a true mingle of races where almost every white guy or girl would have at least 1 or 2 black friends in their immediate social circle. Similarly in the workplace.

Is that really not an accurate picture?

Not accurate at all. The vast majority of stock photos, tv show cast of characters, hypothetical situations, etc, all feature "diversity"; race, ethnicity, religion, whatever.

It's done to be politically correct and to protect yourself from accusations of racism, and it's laughably obvious.

It's the reason why the black kid on South Park is named "Token"- the shows creators needed at least 1 black kid, so he's the "token" black character.

African Americans are just over 12% of the population. The average adult has how many "friends" and how many of those are spouses of other friends and friends of family? I think that even if we there was zero racism people would still tend towards marrying those similar to ourselves. On a back of the napkin calculation this means any group might have less friends of other groups based on the overwhelming influence of family and friends of siblings and such alone. I think we have to look deeper than this stat.

In northern states, that would require black people to work overtime and befriend everyone. There simply aren't enough to go round, even if black people weren't segregated by housing, jobs, and social status.

Yeah... when I was in grade-school, I lived in a majority-black area, and so had lots of black friends... but then in high-school we moved to a different state, and I don't think I even saw another black person until I entered college...!

"The gaps demand a wrenching, soul-searching excavation of our national soul, and the first step is to acknowledge that the central race challenge in America today is not the suffering of whites."

While true, this is misleading in that it points the reader in the wrong direction. The real cause is the same that facilitates expensive internet access with no competition, the crazy cost of education, the indiscriminate surveillance of citizens and foreigners, a militarized police and of course our arrogance on the international stage.

The rich elite have a vested interest in this status quo. I don't see this changing in my lifetime.

it doesn't take a genius to realize america indeed has the racial problem. just look at the popular tv shows targeting at black audience, e.g. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (it's a fun show, watch and count how many whites in it?)

I'm not sure Fresh Prince is a good example. Fresh prince had a huge following amongst all types of people and was specifically created to show another type of African american social exprience much like the Cosby Show. Both show an aspect of reality though, people tend to have friends that look like themselves.

And tell me, New York Times, what is it that blacks don't get?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com