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My point with B was merely to say that if the issue is lingering economic after effects, rather than currently held racist attitudes, we should address the prob

My point with B was merely to say that if the issue is lingering economic after effects, rather than currently held racist attitudes, we should address the problem differently. The solution to a community being treated poorly because they're poor is different than a community being treated poorly because they're black. I think of it like this: I don't want to be diagnosed sick, but if I'm sick, I want to be diagnosed. You can't treat what you can't accurately identify the cause of, in many cases. I also think a lot of you are being uncharitable: I was involved with many of the civil rights issues before they came to mainstream awareness, and am merely frustrated with being spoken to about "facts" which are highly questionable, and usually detract from a deeper, underlying issue to draw attention to an easy-to-digest side issue. That kind of sound-biting is insidious in that it is both a common human fault in thinking and a kind of control mechanism: it distracts us from deep, complex issues like the roles of social class and the police in the US -- which needs to be talked about, because it spans from violence to freedom and privacy to social control, and has reached dire straights -- and instead sidetracks us in the politics of race, at a time when race relations are the best they've been in hundreds of years and progressing in virtually every dimension we can measure. As a black man once asked me, "Do you think it's coincidental we're talking about issues skin deep when we're both economic slaves?" I don't think that there aren't race issues in the US, I don't think that there aren't issues with race and the police, but I do think that the modern movement about the two is a) likely going to go nowhere, because it's probably mostly not fresh racist attitudes and b) distracts from our deeper conversation about the role of police in the US, by making about racism, not police misconduct.

Mz 10y ago
I also think a lot of you are being uncharitable: I am sorry you are feeling ganged up on, but I am an individual, not part of some group "lot of you." I am a medically handicapped woman with a shitty life who just likes talking with people and that's it. I was in no way judging you as an individual and I started out with stating that I have sympathy for some of your points. But as a woman who has really had to deal with a lot of shit on HN and gets told all the time that I am basically imagining things, and as a homeless person who has very much experienced classism and exclusion while homeless, I think that "small percentage" that is attributable to the color of their skin is significant and not to be dismissed. I try really hard to talk about just treating all people decently and in some places that gets my remarks routinely deleted. I am a white woman and part of my so-called "white privilege" is that I have a predominantly white genetic disorder that is the root cause of my poverty and homelessness and I get a whole lot of fuck you over that. With being homeless, I am presumed incompetent and people tell me to go seek out charity and are incredibly dismissive of my attempts to try to figure out how to establish an earned income that works for me in spite of my medical situation. There are a lot of things I have dealt with in the last few years that are a huge head fuck and often make me suicidal because I feel strongly that my financial problems should not be anywhere near as bad as they are and are made far worse by classism and the assumption that a homeless person must be a total fucking loser with nothing of value to offer. And there are times when this just seems like an impossible trap that cannot be escaped. I expect that I will escape it, but I have my moments where it just feels really hopeless because of the shitty attitudes and behaviors of other people unnecessarily compounding my problems. So how do you propose to magically solve their poverty if that is "the real issue"? Because from where I sit as a homeless person, that comes across as an excuse to not deal with racism, which is real and does have an impact. And maybe you can stop for a minute and think about how you are lumping me and others together because we happened to have all spoken to you in this one discussion and aren't all in agreement with you and that's the basis for this grouping and accusation that we all, as a group, are being uncharitable. And then wonder what that says about the personal experiences shaping people of color and other groups who do not know how to separate their color or other traits from persistent poverty. If you have no solution for that poverty, how useful is it to say that is the "real" problem? Thank you for replying.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  The comment about being uncharitable was more part of the wider context of my comments, not directed at you in particular. (There were some common threads to complaints about my posts; I wanted to address them one place so I could reference it. The medium gives a certain incentive to "speak to the crowd" so your posts read as a consistent voice, rather than several conversations.) > I think that "small percentage" that is attributable to the color of their skin is significant and not to be dismissed It's not nothing, that's true. However, it's a smaller effect this decade than it was last decade, and the one before that. So it's going away if we just stay the course. We've got that problem not solved, but solving. (Well, as far as I can tell from the data, anyway.) The issue of how the police respond to class is a much bigger issue (at present), which isn't getting better over time (and might be getting worse). I can only deal with so much, so I think we should focus on the ongoing, growing problem that impacts everyone rather than the smaller, already improving problem that impacts just some people. I think the focus on "racism" in the policing is distracting from that -- it's treating the last 5% as the main 95% of the problem -- and worse, splits the two biggest demographics on a topic they really should align on. It's not that the racist component is unimportant -- it's that it's just considerably less important than the underlying problem, so while they're right about there being racism, they're wrong about racism being the problem with the police. There'd still be a problem with the police killing blacks even if it were at the same per capita rate as whites! (And arguably, it already is under the "equal" rate, and police should kill more blacks to be "fair" or "not racist".) > So how do you propose to magically solve their poverty if that is "the real issue"? Because from where I sit as a homeless person, that comes across as an excuse to not deal with racism, which is real and does have an impact. I don't propose to magically solve their poverty. I expect to incrementally chip at the causes and traps while hundreds of thousands or millions suffer and die needlessly, because economic and social shift is hard. But there are economic policies we know of that can address poverty, and we are making in-roads at that problem, even if it's been hard. My argument is that telling police who are already responding to economic and cultural incentives, not racial ones "don't shoot them because of their skin" does absolutely nothing, and worse than nothing if it discharges our emotional energy we might have used to tackle the real issues with class instead. In that way, correctly identifying the cause helps us even if we can't do anything about it directly -- at least we're still mad about it, instead of thinking it's all good when really, things will continue to deteriorate.

Mz 10y ago

I also think a lot of you are being uncharitable: I am sorry you are feeling ganged up on, but I am an individual, not part of some group "lot of you." I am a medically handicapped woman with a shitty life who just likes talking with people and that's it. I was in no way judging you as an individual and I started out with stating that I have sympathy for some of your points. But as a woman who has really had to deal with a lot of shit on HN and gets told all the time that I am basically imagining things, and as a homeless person who has very much experienced classism and exclusion while homeless, I think that "small percentage" that is attributable to the color of their skin is significant and not to be dismissed. I try really hard to talk about just treating all people decently and in some places that gets my remarks routinely deleted. I am a white woman and part of my so-called "white privilege" is that I have a predominantly white genetic disorder that is the root cause of my poverty and homelessness and I get a whole lot of fuck you over that. With being homeless, I am presumed incompetent and people tell me to go seek out charity and are incredibly dismissive of my attempts to try to figure out how to establish an earned income that works for me in spite of my medical situation. There are a lot of things I have dealt with in the last few years that are a huge head fuck and often make me suicidal because I feel strongly that my financial problems should not be anywhere near as bad as they are and are made far worse by classism and the assumption that a homeless person must be a total fucking loser with nothing of value to offer. And there are times when this just seems like an impossible trap that cannot be escaped. I expect that I will escape it, but I have my moments where it just feels really hopeless because of the shitty attitudes and behaviors of other people unnecessarily compounding my problems. So how do you propose to magically solve their poverty if that is "the real issue"? Because from where I sit as a homeless person, that comes across as an excuse to not deal with racism, which is real and does have an impact. And maybe you can stop for a minute and think about how you are lumping me and others together because we happened to have all spoken to you in this one discussion and aren't all in agreement with you and that's the basis for this grouping and accusation that we all, as a group, are being uncharitable. And then wonder what that says about the personal experiences shaping people of color and other groups who do not know how to separate their color or other traits from persistent poverty. If you have no solution for that poverty, how useful is it to say that is the "real" problem? Thank you for replying.

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
The comment about being uncharitable was more part of the wider context of my comments, not directed at you in particular. (There were some common threads to complaints about my posts; I wanted to address them one place so I could reference it. The medium gives a certain incentive to "speak to the crowd" so your posts read as a consistent voice, rather than several conversations.) > I think that "small percentage" that is attributable to the color of their skin is significant and not to be dismissed It's not nothing, that's true. However, it's a smaller effect this decade than it was last decade, and the one before that. So it's going away if we just stay the course. We've got that problem not solved, but solving. (Well, as far as I can tell from the data, anyway.) The issue of how the police respond to class is a much bigger issue (at present), which isn't getting better over time (and might be getting worse). I can only deal with so much, so I think we should focus on the ongoing, growing problem that impacts everyone rather than the smaller, already improving problem that impacts just some people. I think the focus on "racism" in the policing is distracting from that -- it's treating the last 5% as the main 95% of the problem -- and worse, splits the two biggest demographics on a topic they really should align on. It's not that the racist component is unimportant -- it's that it's just considerably less important than the underlying problem, so while they're right about there being racism, they're wrong about racism being the problem with the police. There'd still be a problem with the police killing blacks even if it were at the same per capita rate as whites! (And arguably, it already is under the "equal" rate, and police should kill more blacks to be "fair" or "not racist".) > So how do you propose to magically solve their poverty if that is "the real issue"? Because from where I sit as a homeless person, that comes across as an excuse to not deal with racism, which is real and does have an impact. I don't propose to magically solve their poverty. I expect to incrementally chip at the causes and traps while hundreds of thousands or millions suffer and die needlessly, because economic and social shift is hard. But there are economic policies we know of that can address poverty, and we are making in-roads at that problem, even if it's been hard. My argument is that telling police who are already responding to economic and cultural incentives, not racial ones "don't shoot them because of their skin" does absolutely nothing, and worse than nothing if it discharges our emotional energy we might have used to tackle the real issues with class instead. In that way, correctly identifying the cause helps us even if we can't do anything about it directly -- at least we're still mad about it, instead of thinking it's all good when really, things will continue to deteriorate.