17 ms·

I know what "hate" means. I know what bigotry is, and I know what racism means. Don't you?

by metafunctor 10y ago

chronicy6 10y ago
I know what those words mean too. That's why I voted for Trump in San Francisco.
- metafunctor 10y ago
  Would you care to elaborate, because I don't understand. Usually people would like the society in general to have less bigotry, hatred, and racism. Do you think Trump will help us get there, and how?
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Well first you need to establish that Trump are actually doing those things. This is the primary issues once you actually dig into things he might just as well just be nationalist which means occupied with US citizens not world citizens. From the perspective of a nationalist the extreme measures Trump have taken are simply to secure the country. From the perspective of a globalist he is destroying the very foundation of the global society. None of those are wrong, they are just different perspectives equally valid.
    - notahacker 10y ago
      If one wanted to assess the relative merits of the respective perspectives, one could consider whether the list of nations affected and unaffected corresponded with evidence of relative security risks, what the opinions of people tasked with securing the country were on its likely efficacy, and of course whether Trump's circle discussed the order with those responsible for executing it in order to ensure it was clear and enforceable or purposely kept the vaguely worded text of the order from them until they were required to implement it, with the inevitable result of confusion, a legal challenge and people whose right to enter the country changed in mid-flight. And timed the announcement for Holocaust Memorial Day. Then one could also take into account many of his critics aren't remotely globalist and some of them have invested significant political effort into trying to destroy the very foundation of global organisations like the EU. I think based on the above no reasonable person could conclude the argument his primary focus was security has as much merit as the argument his primary focus was to cause maximum chaos to upset liberals, enthuse the elements of his base most excited by anti-Muslim gesture politics and test the loyalties of his colleagues in Congress and border agencies.
      - ThomPete 10y ago
        The list was created by Obama and is meant to look at potential current and future risk countries not who from the past might have been problematic.
    - derrickdirge 10y ago
      It would be easier to see his actions as 'just nationalist' if even one of the countries whose citizens have been banned from entering the US wasn't a Muslim-majority country.
      - ThomPete 10y ago
        20 years ago it was the Russians and communist countries. Today it's muslim countries. Risk change. I think this ban was extreme amateurish done and I am fundamentally against it. But the job of the require them sometimes to take som drastic moved. I think Adam Scott have a pretty good take on it. http://blog.dilbert.com/post/156532225711/the-persuasion-filter-and-immigration http://blog.dilbert.com/post/156532225711/the-persuasion-fil...
dongslol 10y ago
This works similarly to paradigms in science. Most of the time people don't actually define paradigms; it's implicit in the general experience of being a researcher. People similarly have a commonsense understanding of what hate, bigotry, and racism are. This works fine when everyone agrees, but once a field reaches a crisis, once you have a political climate so violently polarized, it stops working to appeal to people's basic intuitions. People no longer agree on the most basic things. You have to start calling out specifically what the other side is doing and why it's a bad idea. Simply calling someone "hateful" is an emotional argument at this point, and hurting discourse.
- metafunctor 10y ago
  So we're back to specifically having to point out why discriminating based on, say, race, is not a good idea? Good grief.
  - dongslol 10y ago
    No, everyone knows racism is obviously bad. What we're back to is having to prove that what the opponent is proposing actually constitutes racism. One argument I hear is that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with the West's values, that immigrants from those countries don't integrate well, and that the dangerous ideas within Islam aren't limited to radical fundamentalists. Under this view, a temporary ban is not necessarily a bad idea, nor is it necessarily racist except in the literal sense. I disagree with this — I think the perfectly reasonable people from those countries need to be shown compassion, not to be lumped in with their oppressors — but the discussion should be about that, not who can scream "racist" louder.
    - varjag 10y ago
      > No, everyone knows racism is obviously bad. No, everyone knows racism is ostracised. Plenty people cherish it. And now that there is less stigma with racist president in charge, they come out of closets.
    - metafunctor 10y ago
hueving 10y ago
>I know what "hate" means Do you though? If you can't distinguish the difference between fear of the unknown and hatred, then you are fortunate enough to never have experienced hatred. Since everyone likes to compare Trump and Hitler. Hitler hated the Jews, which resulted in genocide. I've talked to several people who support what he did with the ban and it has nothing to do with hating Muslims or immigrants and its all driven by fear (statistically irrational) of attacks like the ones in Germany. I vote against allowing children to drive not because I hate them, but because I fear the thought of them driving on the same road as me. Do you see the difference?
- mschulze 10y ago
  The consequence of a child not being allowed to drive and not allowing human to enter a country where they maybe have lived for years are a bit different though.
  - hueving 10y ago
    They are, but the motivation is the same. The motivation is what I'm highlighting (hate vs. fear).
- empath75 10y ago
  I'm sure lots of people supported putting jews in camps that had nothing to do with anti-semitism.
- selllikesybok 10y ago
  Between hate and fear? Sure. The administration hates, some people let it slide because they fear. Oppose both.
- John23832 10y ago
  > Since everyone likes to compare Trump and Hitler. Hitler hated the Jews, which resulted in genocide. I've talked to several people who support what he did with the ban and it has nothing to do with hating Muslims or immigrants and its all driven by fear (statistically irrational) of attacks like the ones in Germany. And Hitler drove fear of the Jewish people taking over and kidnapping and killing christian children as his catalyst to power as well. There were negative traits ascribed to Jews, just as there are now of Muslims. Prior to implementing camps and genocide, Hitler stoked an environment of fear. Fear of the others. Hell, hatred of blacks in the American Antebellum South, and the hatred that continues to this day, stemmed from white people's fear of blacks. Fear inspires hatred. While they are not the same thing, they are related.
Ygg2 10y ago
Quick question: Can babies be racist? I ask because after seeing babies being defined as racist, I have no idea what racism means.
- akvadrako 10y ago
  What do you mean by "racist"? If you mean discriminating based on race, then of course, everybody is racist. Haven't you seen those videos of babies that cry the first time they encounter a face of a different color?
  - pluma 10y ago
    I cried as a baby the first time I was put in a group with other babies (most likely of the same color as me). I think the word you're looking for is xenophobia. And while xenophobia certainly isn't any less of a problem, calling it racism makes it sound far more grandiose than it really is. Racism is a political (and ideological) issue. Feminists define racism in terms of power dynamics. Supremacists use racism to attribute different qualities to different ethnic groups. Historically racism can be seen as the latent effects of slavery and racial segregation. Xenophobia is just a mental bias that used to give humans an evolutionary advantage but is becoming increasingly counterproductive in a globalised society. It's a flaw in human thinking that leads us to irrational attitudes but that can be overcome with conscious effort and exposing ourselves to that which is foreign to us. Conflating the two is one of the main reasons race is still such a hot topic in the US. The US is culturally and ethnically diverse, yes, but that diversity is not equally distributed. In rural white majority areas "blacks" and "Jews" and "orientals" are still as foreign as ever and calling these people racist because they are afraid or unsympathetic of something they only hear about in news reports and on TV is not only unfair but unproductive, no matter how reassuring it may feel to us educated cosmopolitans who are so very progressive and distant from that backwater mindset. That is why Trump got elected. Republicans who were sick of being told they're racist and Democrats who were disillusioned with the choice of candidates. It didn't even take a record-breaking Republican turnout to get Trump elected, it just took enough Democrats being disinterested in supporting their own candidate. But I digress. I don't even have any skin in the game -- I'm not even in the US.
yummyfajitas 10y ago
No. I'm told I'm racist because I think blacks and whites are interchangeable, and because I don't care about one over the other. I'm told I'm racist for thinking the opposite. I'm told it's racist to discriminate on the basis of race. I'm also told it's racist NOT to do so. The closest principle I can find that predicts who is considered a racist is "republican = racist". Can you provide a clear definition of racism that you'll endorse, even if I can derive conclusions you dislike?
- selllikesybok 10y ago
  I'd start here - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism #1 leads to #3 leads to #2. But there is a lot more to it. Not a simple concept. There is a lot of reading to do if you'd like to understand more. Can provide some links.
  - Inconel 10y ago
    Isn't it increasing argued that the dictionary definition of racism is only one possible definition? I've heard it stated many times that the newer excepted definition involves the traditional aspect of racism coupled with the component of power. That is to say that racism is prejudice plus power. As an example, a minority in the US may be prejudiced or bigoted, but they cannot be racist since they lack the societal power that whites enjoy. Thus only whites can be racist. Just to be clear, I'm not endorsing one definition over the other, I only meant to illustrate that even seemingly well defined words can have different meanings.
    - John23832 10y ago
      Wouldn't your given definition be a working combination of the given definitions from Webster?
      - Inconel 10y ago
        You're correct. I should have been more clear. My main point was that racial prejudice alone (#3 in the above link), minus the power component, wouldn't be enough to satisfy the requirements of racism under some definitions.
calibraxis 10y ago
I believe them when they say it! Something makes people refuse to look through Galileo's telescope. (Spent his life under house arrest.) Pushed Turing to suicide for homosexuality. To aggressively deny global warming. And that's ok, they're not the audience. They'll tell you that you won't convince anyone; hopefully that discourages you from success.
nailer 10y ago
I think Trump's an idiot, but here 'racism' is being used to describe moves taken against groups that aren't actually races: illegal immigrants and Muslims. So yes, the term has become meaningless through overuse.
reitanqild 10y ago
Maybe we are not talking about you. We are talking about people who went around, even here on HN, telling that half the American population were dumb racist haters because they either voted Trump or IIRC just because they respected the election.
- davexunit 10y ago
  If you voted for Trump you are, at the very least, okay with electing a racist, sexist, xenophobic authoritarian. And half the American population did not vote for Trump.
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    I didn't. Together with most people who have been affected by Bush, Obamas and Hillarys wars (I wasn't though, lucky me) I didn't have a vote. Trump hasn't started a war yet although I am afraid that might just be a matter of time.
  - justin66 10y ago
    I'm not a bigot. I just caucus with bigots!
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13519723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13519723 and marked it off-topic.

I know what "hate" means. I know what bigotry is, and I know what racism means. Don't you?

chronicy6 10y ago

I know what those words mean too. That's why I voted for Trump in San Francisco.

metafunctor 10y ago
Would you care to elaborate, because I don't understand. Usually people would like the society in general to have less bigotry, hatred, and racism. Do you think Trump will help us get there, and how?
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Well first you need to establish that Trump are actually doing those things. This is the primary issues once you actually dig into things he might just as well just be nationalist which means occupied with US citizens not world citizens. From the perspective of a nationalist the extreme measures Trump have taken are simply to secure the country. From the perspective of a globalist he is destroying the very foundation of the global society. None of those are wrong, they are just different perspectives equally valid.
  - notahacker 10y ago
    If one wanted to assess the relative merits of the respective perspectives, one could consider whether the list of nations affected and unaffected corresponded with evidence of relative security risks, what the opinions of people tasked with securing the country were on its likely efficacy, and of course whether Trump's circle discussed the order with those responsible for executing it in order to ensure it was clear and enforceable or purposely kept the vaguely worded text of the order from them until they were required to implement it, with the inevitable result of confusion, a legal challenge and people whose right to enter the country changed in mid-flight. And timed the announcement for Holocaust Memorial Day. Then one could also take into account many of his critics aren't remotely globalist and some of them have invested significant political effort into trying to destroy the very foundation of global organisations like the EU. I think based on the above no reasonable person could conclude the argument his primary focus was security has as much merit as the argument his primary focus was to cause maximum chaos to upset liberals, enthuse the elements of his base most excited by anti-Muslim gesture politics and test the loyalties of his colleagues in Congress and border agencies.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      The list was created by Obama and is meant to look at potential current and future risk countries not who from the past might have been problematic.
  - derrickdirge 10y ago
    It would be easier to see his actions as 'just nationalist' if even one of the countries whose citizens have been banned from entering the US wasn't a Muslim-majority country.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      20 years ago it was the Russians and communist countries. Today it's muslim countries. Risk change. I think this ban was extreme amateurish done and I am fundamentally against it. But the job of the require them sometimes to take som drastic moved. I think Adam Scott have a pretty good take on it. http://blog.dilbert.com/post/156532225711/the-persuasion-filter-and-immigration http://blog.dilbert.com/post/156532225711/the-persuasion-fil...

dongslol 10y ago

This works similarly to paradigms in science. Most of the time people don't actually define paradigms; it's implicit in the general experience of being a researcher. People similarly have a commonsense understanding of what hate, bigotry, and racism are. This works fine when everyone agrees, but once a field reaches a crisis, once you have a political climate so violently polarized, it stops working to appeal to people's basic intuitions. People no longer agree on the most basic things. You have to start calling out specifically what the other side is doing and why it's a bad idea. Simply calling someone "hateful" is an emotional argument at this point, and hurting discourse.

metafunctor 10y ago
So we're back to specifically having to point out why discriminating based on, say, race, is not a good idea? Good grief.
- dongslol 10y ago
  No, everyone knows racism is obviously bad. What we're back to is having to prove that what the opponent is proposing actually constitutes racism. One argument I hear is that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with the West's values, that immigrants from those countries don't integrate well, and that the dangerous ideas within Islam aren't limited to radical fundamentalists. Under this view, a temporary ban is not necessarily a bad idea, nor is it necessarily racist except in the literal sense. I disagree with this — I think the perfectly reasonable people from those countries need to be shown compassion, not to be lumped in with their oppressors — but the discussion should be about that, not who can scream "racist" louder.
  - varjag 10y ago
    > No, everyone knows racism is obviously bad. No, everyone knows racism is ostracised. Plenty people cherish it. And now that there is less stigma with racist president in charge, they come out of closets.
  - metafunctor 10y ago

hueving 10y ago

>I know what "hate" means Do you though? If you can't distinguish the difference between fear of the unknown and hatred, then you are fortunate enough to never have experienced hatred. Since everyone likes to compare Trump and Hitler. Hitler hated the Jews, which resulted in genocide. I've talked to several people who support what he did with the ban and it has nothing to do with hating Muslims or immigrants and its all driven by fear (statistically irrational) of attacks like the ones in Germany. I vote against allowing children to drive not because I hate them, but because I fear the thought of them driving on the same road as me. Do you see the difference?

mschulze 10y ago
The consequence of a child not being allowed to drive and not allowing human to enter a country where they maybe have lived for years are a bit different though.
- hueving 10y ago
  They are, but the motivation is the same. The motivation is what I'm highlighting (hate vs. fear).
empath75 10y ago
I'm sure lots of people supported putting jews in camps that had nothing to do with anti-semitism.
selllikesybok 10y ago
Between hate and fear? Sure. The administration hates, some people let it slide because they fear. Oppose both.
John23832 10y ago
> Since everyone likes to compare Trump and Hitler. Hitler hated the Jews, which resulted in genocide. I've talked to several people who support what he did with the ban and it has nothing to do with hating Muslims or immigrants and its all driven by fear (statistically irrational) of attacks like the ones in Germany. And Hitler drove fear of the Jewish people taking over and kidnapping and killing christian children as his catalyst to power as well. There were negative traits ascribed to Jews, just as there are now of Muslims. Prior to implementing camps and genocide, Hitler stoked an environment of fear. Fear of the others. Hell, hatred of blacks in the American Antebellum South, and the hatred that continues to this day, stemmed from white people's fear of blacks. Fear inspires hatred. While they are not the same thing, they are related.

Ygg2 10y ago

Quick question: Can babies be racist? I ask because after seeing babies being defined as racist, I have no idea what racism means.

akvadrako 10y ago
What do you mean by "racist"? If you mean discriminating based on race, then of course, everybody is racist. Haven't you seen those videos of babies that cry the first time they encounter a face of a different color?
- pluma 10y ago
  I cried as a baby the first time I was put in a group with other babies (most likely of the same color as me). I think the word you're looking for is xenophobia. And while xenophobia certainly isn't any less of a problem, calling it racism makes it sound far more grandiose than it really is. Racism is a political (and ideological) issue. Feminists define racism in terms of power dynamics. Supremacists use racism to attribute different qualities to different ethnic groups. Historically racism can be seen as the latent effects of slavery and racial segregation. Xenophobia is just a mental bias that used to give humans an evolutionary advantage but is becoming increasingly counterproductive in a globalised society. It's a flaw in human thinking that leads us to irrational attitudes but that can be overcome with conscious effort and exposing ourselves to that which is foreign to us. Conflating the two is one of the main reasons race is still such a hot topic in the US. The US is culturally and ethnically diverse, yes, but that diversity is not equally distributed. In rural white majority areas "blacks" and "Jews" and "orientals" are still as foreign as ever and calling these people racist because they are afraid or unsympathetic of something they only hear about in news reports and on TV is not only unfair but unproductive, no matter how reassuring it may feel to us educated cosmopolitans who are so very progressive and distant from that backwater mindset. That is why Trump got elected. Republicans who were sick of being told they're racist and Democrats who were disillusioned with the choice of candidates. It didn't even take a record-breaking Republican turnout to get Trump elected, it just took enough Democrats being disinterested in supporting their own candidate. But I digress. I don't even have any skin in the game -- I'm not even in the US.

yummyfajitas 10y ago

No. I'm told I'm racist because I think blacks and whites are interchangeable, and because I don't care about one over the other. I'm told I'm racist for thinking the opposite. I'm told it's racist to discriminate on the basis of race. I'm also told it's racist NOT to do so. The closest principle I can find that predicts who is considered a racist is "republican = racist". Can you provide a clear definition of racism that you'll endorse, even if I can derive conclusions you dislike?

selllikesybok 10y ago
I'd start here - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism #1 leads to #3 leads to #2. But there is a lot more to it. Not a simple concept. There is a lot of reading to do if you'd like to understand more. Can provide some links.
- Inconel 10y ago
  Isn't it increasing argued that the dictionary definition of racism is only one possible definition? I've heard it stated many times that the newer excepted definition involves the traditional aspect of racism coupled with the component of power. That is to say that racism is prejudice plus power. As an example, a minority in the US may be prejudiced or bigoted, but they cannot be racist since they lack the societal power that whites enjoy. Thus only whites can be racist. Just to be clear, I'm not endorsing one definition over the other, I only meant to illustrate that even seemingly well defined words can have different meanings.
  - John23832 10y ago
    Wouldn't your given definition be a working combination of the given definitions from Webster?
    - Inconel 10y ago
      You're correct. I should have been more clear. My main point was that racial prejudice alone (#3 in the above link), minus the power component, wouldn't be enough to satisfy the requirements of racism under some definitions.

calibraxis 10y ago

I believe them when they say it! Something makes people refuse to look through Galileo's telescope. (Spent his life under house arrest.) Pushed Turing to suicide for homosexuality. To aggressively deny global warming. And that's ok, they're not the audience. They'll tell you that you won't convince anyone; hopefully that discourages you from success.

nailer 10y ago

I think Trump's an idiot, but here 'racism' is being used to describe moves taken against groups that aren't actually races: illegal immigrants and Muslims. So yes, the term has become meaningless through overuse.

reitanqild 10y ago

Maybe we are not talking about you. We are talking about people who went around, even here on HN, telling that half the American population were dumb racist haters because they either voted Trump or IIRC just because they respected the election.

davexunit 10y ago
If you voted for Trump you are, at the very least, okay with electing a racist, sexist, xenophobic authoritarian. And half the American population did not vote for Trump.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  I didn't. Together with most people who have been affected by Bush, Obamas and Hillarys wars (I wasn't though, lucky me) I didn't have a vote. Trump hasn't started a war yet although I am afraid that might just be a matter of time.
- justin66 10y ago
  I'm not a bigot. I just caucus with bigots!

dang 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13519723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13519723 and marked it off-topic.