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>You can argue that the evils of race-based discrimination against black families ended long enough ago that they are no longer felt today Nobody can credibly

>You can argue that the evils of race-based discrimination against black families ended long enough ago that they are no longer felt today Nobody can credibly argue this, and it isn't the argument I'm making. > but I don't see how you can argue that they are, but that we are obligated to do nothing about them. I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that we need help all people who are suffering in poverty, regardless of whether that resulted from race-based discrimination or any other social-ill, which are many. >By the logic you're employing, there has been no point in the history of the US where any kind of active support for black families has been justifiable; I'm saying its always wrong to treat people different based on the color of their skin, no matter what your intention or goal. >Why is it OK to discriminate against children born to families of means, but not to discriminate against non-minority families? Because wealth and power are not immutable characteristics. By definition the wealthy and the powerful have advantages is society. No wealthy and powerful child is suffering because a poor and powerless child got a hand up. Malik Obama doesn't need a hand up, while the white child who lives in a shack in the mountains of Appalachia certainly does.

tptacek 8y ago
I'd like to venture that you haven't really considered my argument. Again: take a black family and a white family of equivalent income levels. The black family, statistically, lives in a poorer neighborhood than the white family. The harms that come from being poor are not the same as those that come from being a member of a historically disfavored minority. Both sets of harms are real. But we if solely address the class-based harms, we ratify and perpetuate the race-based harms. It's not a complicated argument. How are you rebutting it?
- StanislavPetrov 8y ago
  >The harms that come from being poor are not the same as those that come from being a member of a historically disfavored minority. That's where you are fundamentally wrong. Every person who worries about where their next meal is going to come from, or whether or not they are going to be homeless next month because they can't afford the rent is equally important. Nothing matters less than the "historical" reasons why people are mired in poverty. What matters is that we have a fundamentally broken society where hundreds of millions of Americans are a paycheck away from being destitute. There are far more whites than blacks living in poverty. The destitute white child living in a trailer in Appalachia, born to a single, drug-addicted mother has absolutely no privilege. To suggest that we should favor someone of a different skin color because their ancestors had different historical disadvantages is absolutely absurd. >But we if solely address the class-based harms, we ratify and perpetuate the race-based harms. Again, your logic is absolutely upside down. By codifying race-based favoritism, we are perpetuating the racist policies of the past that you are decrying. Suggesting that we should factor the skin color of the child born into a poverty-ridden, drug-addicted slum when considering how much help he deserves from society is not only disgusting, its offensive. That it is our official national policy is an absolute disgrace, and one of many symptoms of our sick society. If we want to evolve as a society, we need to move past our archaic, artificially created divisions. Those of you who seek to judge people based on the color of their skin are all the same, whether or not you wear the hoods.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    We're not "codifying race-based favoritism". I don't think you're reading what I'm writing. That's OK; there's no reason we'd expect the two of us to resolve this debate on HN.
    - detcader 8y ago
      Is this person debating, or just acting economically? Does a moth fly towards the light because it believes in any explicit ideas in its brain, or because statistically moths flying towards light means a better off situation for moths as a whole? Does a baby _decide_ to cry?
- Veedrac 8y ago
  I don't understand the relevance of your second paragraph, either as part of the argument presented, or as a response to the parent.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    The simple idea that economic means testing doesn't capture the total harm done to black families.
    - Veedrac 8y ago
      I thought your claim was that the harms to black families aren't just the sum of the different averages of their economic environments. That second paragraph was saying that the two are correlated. Am I misunderstanding? The claim that racial differences are incidentally correlated (whether true coincidence or particulars of history) with economic environments is not a good argument that we should tackle inequalities in those issues at the racial level. Surely the latter only holds if you can point to causal effects.

tptacek 8y ago

I'd like to venture that you haven't really considered my argument. Again: take a black family and a white family of equivalent income levels. The black family, statistically, lives in a poorer neighborhood than the white family. The harms that come from being poor are not the same as those that come from being a member of a historically disfavored minority. Both sets of harms are real. But we if solely address the class-based harms, we ratify and perpetuate the race-based harms. It's not a complicated argument. How are you rebutting it?

StanislavPetrov 8y ago
>The harms that come from being poor are not the same as those that come from being a member of a historically disfavored minority. That's where you are fundamentally wrong. Every person who worries about where their next meal is going to come from, or whether or not they are going to be homeless next month because they can't afford the rent is equally important. Nothing matters less than the "historical" reasons why people are mired in poverty. What matters is that we have a fundamentally broken society where hundreds of millions of Americans are a paycheck away from being destitute. There are far more whites than blacks living in poverty. The destitute white child living in a trailer in Appalachia, born to a single, drug-addicted mother has absolutely no privilege. To suggest that we should favor someone of a different skin color because their ancestors had different historical disadvantages is absolutely absurd. >But we if solely address the class-based harms, we ratify and perpetuate the race-based harms. Again, your logic is absolutely upside down. By codifying race-based favoritism, we are perpetuating the racist policies of the past that you are decrying. Suggesting that we should factor the skin color of the child born into a poverty-ridden, drug-addicted slum when considering how much help he deserves from society is not only disgusting, its offensive. That it is our official national policy is an absolute disgrace, and one of many symptoms of our sick society. If we want to evolve as a society, we need to move past our archaic, artificially created divisions. Those of you who seek to judge people based on the color of their skin are all the same, whether or not you wear the hoods.
- tptacek 8y ago
  We're not "codifying race-based favoritism". I don't think you're reading what I'm writing. That's OK; there's no reason we'd expect the two of us to resolve this debate on HN.
  - detcader 8y ago
    Is this person debating, or just acting economically? Does a moth fly towards the light because it believes in any explicit ideas in its brain, or because statistically moths flying towards light means a better off situation for moths as a whole? Does a baby _decide_ to cry?
Veedrac 8y ago
I don't understand the relevance of your second paragraph, either as part of the argument presented, or as a response to the parent.
- tptacek 8y ago
  The simple idea that economic means testing doesn't capture the total harm done to black families.
  - Veedrac 8y ago
    I thought your claim was that the harms to black families aren't just the sum of the different averages of their economic environments. That second paragraph was saying that the two are correlated. Am I misunderstanding? The claim that racial differences are incidentally correlated (whether true coincidence or particulars of history) with economic environments is not a good argument that we should tackle inequalities in those issues at the racial level. Surely the latter only holds if you can point to causal effects.