USA Where the Poor Live Dearly
zeit.de
zeit.de
1. Got facts wrong, apparently. I'm not in a situation to know whether it did, but it seems to have, and articles that seem wrong do get flaggedby users, presumably to prevent spreading mistruths.
2. It criticized the USA. I read HN via http://www.hckrnews.com/ and thus get to see a lot of the flagged articles even long after they're dead. Articles that criticize the USA are always in that category. That doesn't mean all of HN flags those, just that there is a critical mass of users with the necessary amount of karma who dislike them.
On point 1, facts. I haven't found where to dispute the articles facts yet. Where the commenters dispute it's actually an issue of perception.
- [1] Predetory Loan and banking services such as ACE that market to predominant poor neighborhoods has a negative impact that is documented in study and pop [2]
- [3] the initial argument by power user tptacek is that the author didn't bother to check poor white parts of the country. If you assume this article was about something other than black poverty, okay I understand the argument. But it was about poverty effecting the black community.
So I don't see the factual problem.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516861 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDylgzybWAw 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516769
However, do note i said "seems wrong", not "is wrong".
As for flagging things that are critical, i don't find it very surprising. If someone from outside your country suddenly starts saying strong things about your country it can easily become difficult to differentiate between earnest criticism and trolling, even for one who has little patriotism.
I flagged for two reasons:
* First, it's off-topic for the site (see: guidelines), a story of the kind usually flagged off.
* Second, it's just a bad story, that doesn't overcome the site's presumption against stories like this by dint of superior quality.
2. "bad story" is subjective and many disagree. I didn't know that disagreeing with opinion was reason to flag.
but anyway, you're a power user. do what you like.
Maybe the author didn't spend enough time in the US to see there are vast swaths of the country full of poor Whites and Hispanics also? Nor notice that there are in fact well to do Blacks in the US? It was a dumb article. And poverty happens to people of all races.
* Ferguson is a city not just influenced by racism but literally produced by it: it's an artifact of redlining and white flight, with a majority black population and a municipal government and police force dominated by whites.
* Baltimore is a city whose government is dominated by blacks, with a black mayor, black police commissioner, and a 50/50 black/white police force; the city of Baltimore was a manufacturing and shipping hub devastated by globalization, unlike St. Louis, which has a diverse economy with strong finance and health care sectors.
* Park Slope is an economically elite section of New York City where white corporate lawyers happen to have Jamaican nannies, which apparently says something about race relations in the US, though I'm not clear what that's meant to be.
It's a dumb article. It's not that it doesn't address all forms of poverty; it's that it doesn't have anything coherent to say about any of them that any US high school sophomore couldn't conjure up the night before the due date for a social studies term paper.
Is the article dumb? It starts out in the position as a first person editorial, and one from the gaze of author in foreign land. Perhaps what seems dumb is because it's not attempting to be a reportage and as much investigative as it is just "a" perspective.
Does the article say nothing coherent? I think it does but that's my opinion. Mostly however it references thoughts I seem to have already come across elsewhere. So yeah you could argue it's not too original. But this doesn't make it useless.
I think this article offends you either because it's written by a foreigner or (and I believe the following more) it touches a topic you consider important and find this articles simplification of disturbing. I respect that debate, but not the boycott (calling for flagging).
Beyond that you're putting a LOT of effort in to put it down, more than any shitpost that isn't factually wrong deserves.
And the article also points out something that rings true to me: That difference is in part caused simply by a lack of ambition.
I come from germany, which has a very low spread of difference in wealth, due to strong measures for wealth redistribution. However i also come from east germany, which, even 25 years after the fall of the wall still sees employees earn 30% less than in west germany. And i also do see my family of younger generations, all of which i exceed by an income factor of 4 despite growing up under the same conditions, primarily because they don't believe themselves capable of becoming more, something which is reinforced to them by the environment they live in.
Btw, even in germany whenever i see black people, they're primarily in the lower-earning industries. If they're employed at all.