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"I would argue the supremacists are those who focus exclusively on their own ethnic group and navel gaze at their own coutry at the expense of people worldwide.

"I would argue the supremacists are those who focus exclusively on their own ethnic group and navel gaze at their own coutry at the expense of people worldwide." And sometimes they're just responding to a topical article like a link to Frederick Douglass' speech on the 4th of July

EGreg 8y ago
So was I. Fredrick Douglass spoke about the experience of the Negro being enslaved in USA. That was a powerful image. Normally, it would be quite appropriate to point out that people from the same continent, with the same skin, were enslaved also in Arab countries all through the 20th century and discuss the institution of slavery there and how it compared throughout history with the US institution. (Mamluks for example.) It can unearth a lot of interesting and historically useful information. But more to the point, Black people are being enslaved even today, but you would prefer to suppress this fact because why? Because freedom and independence wasn’t for everyone in Douglass time, IN THE USA. And what, only the USA matters? I am just trying to get you to see that if this was any other topic on HN, like eg a speech by Linus Torvalds about Git, a wide array of comments would be perfectly fine eg someone asking whether distributed VCS has really taken off, or (like I did) whether people still use centralized version control in some companies. Here we are talking about the lives of human beings. But apparently Black lives matter ONLY in the USA, women’s lives matter only in the USA, because mentioning current honor killings of women in some countries is racist. That is a perverse reaction and no, saying it’s “off topic” just makes it worse. You either don’t actually care about women's rights or ending slavery, or there is some overriding principle I am still not aware of that makes the same exact issue outside the USA so off topic as to be essentially unwelcome as a comment!

EGreg 8y ago

So was I. Fredrick Douglass spoke about the experience of the Negro being enslaved in USA. That was a powerful image. Normally, it would be quite appropriate to point out that people from the same continent, with the same skin, were enslaved also in Arab countries all through the 20th century and discuss the institution of slavery there and how it compared throughout history with the US institution. (Mamluks for example.) It can unearth a lot of interesting and historically useful information. But more to the point, Black people are being enslaved even today, but you would prefer to suppress this fact because why? Because freedom and independence wasn’t for everyone in Douglass time, IN THE USA. And what, only the USA matters? I am just trying to get you to see that if this was any other topic on HN, like eg a speech by Linus Torvalds about Git, a wide array of comments would be perfectly fine eg someone asking whether distributed VCS has really taken off, or (like I did) whether people still use centralized version control in some companies. Here we are talking about the lives of human beings. But apparently Black lives matter ONLY in the USA, women’s lives matter only in the USA, because mentioning current honor killings of women in some countries is racist. That is a perverse reaction and no, saying it’s “off topic” just makes it worse. You either don’t actually care about women's rights or ending slavery, or there is some overriding principle I am still not aware of that makes the same exact issue outside the USA so off topic as to be essentially unwelcome as a comment!