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Every change in America requires someone wealthy. If your poor or not white, your voice has no traction. This is from an outsider, but after all those months o

Every change in America requires someone wealthy. If your poor or not white, your voice has no traction. This is from an outsider, but after all those months of BLM protests, what changed?

dundercoder 6y ago
I would argue that functionally the US behaves more like a plutocracy, in which money matters an order of magnitude more than race or any other factor.
- astrange 6y ago
  This was somewhat true 10 years ago (maybe even 5) but if you pay attention to things recently the moneyed interests have been 1. left-wing (because of Actblue and Bernie fans donating $25) 2. losing (Steyer, Bloomberg, every non-Trumpist Republican) or 3. both (Bernie, Amy McGrath). The guy who just won the presidency had the worst fundraising and spent the least. What actually happens in the US is that rural and elderly middle-class voters control everything, and they mostly want entertaining culture war and no policy changes. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-culture-2020-election-theory-polls.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-cu... Democratic donors are more left-wing than voters: https://twitter.com/dbroockman/status/1254924463952388097 https://twitter.com/dbroockman/status/1254924463952388097
  - dillondoyle 6y ago
    to be fair issues/petitioned amendments are very much money pays. It's pretty expensive to get signatures to get on ballot. Lots of states have rules like getting _% in each local HD or whatever. And then the money spent on persuasion. Uber recently in CA comes to mind. Kind of beautiful in its blunt honesty; a legal method for corporations having a good chance of changing the law specifically how they want without having to deal with those pesky lawmakers. Of course citizens can do it too! We got decriminalized mushrooms here in denver because of it!
    - astrange 6y ago
      The CA proposition system is bad, but I think it's because it makes us vote for things we don't understand. All kinds of interest groups regularly get on there, not just the plutocratic/corporate ones, but it's usually to do bad things. The worst one is Prop 13 but everyone really did benefit at the time - of course it ruined the state for anyone who hadn't been born or moved there yet. And the reason there's a really confusing prop about dialysis every election is that a labor union is putting them all on the ballot literally to troll the dialysis companies they're trying to unionize. Nobody actually wants them. It does seem to work when representatives would be too embarrassed to vote for something, so that's why states are using it to legalize drugs.
      - dillondoyle 6y ago
        It might be similar here in Colorado? The language has to be approved by a committee so it's supposed to be 'fair' and clear. But I know campaigns poll it before they submit. The first sentence is really important. Especially in Colorado at least before we're tilting blue it was impossible to pass tax increases (we have TABOR which generally in most cases throws new tax measures to the citizens) so they always focused on for instance shall _ fund education by increasing __ by .1% etc That's how we passed MJ legalization! I worked on that campaign did digital ads. We focused on medical stories, showing a young girl (I think seizures). And Denver just decriminalized mushrooms. Very exciting. But the opposite can be true unfortunately. Even in CA prop 8 is a sad example of group think discrimination. A danger of majoritarian Democracy.
lai-yin 6y ago
America is worse off after months of BLM protests. So you could argue that being broke, woke, and violent can make a difference.
harlanji 6y ago
My years of inquiry have lead me to understand that white means wealthy. Poor white person is virtually an oxymoron: estranged or excommunicated children of wealth, but they may cease to be white. Poor caucasian with fair skin? Not much to see in the way of privilege there.
- frongpik 6y ago
  If we define whiteness as the amount of reflected sunlight, where will be the boundary between white vs non white?
  - tweetle_beetle 6y ago
    Related - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale
  - jfengel 6y ago
    Whiteness is far, far from the amount of reflected sunlight. It's about the curl of your hair, the shape of your face, the accent, and a host of other clues. There's no sharp line. It's however people choose to define you. If they identify you as non-white, you get treated as non-white. Which means automatic negative judgments that wouldn't apply if they identified you as white. That doesn't mean whiteness by itself gets you into every corridor of power. But non-whiteness excludes you from a lot of places, or gets you treated with suspicion when you're allowed to be there at all. It's a permanent set of bricks in your briefcase, on top of all the other ones that affect everybody.
    - frongpik 6y ago
      That's not whiteness, but culture fit. To get into important clubs in say China, one needs to look like them, speak like them, have common background. Same here. The problem with blacks in America is that they don't want to change. Many in fact do the opposite, they fight the whites' culture, e.g. studying too much in school is "acting white". Some even try to bend the majority, I mean these attempts to shame whites, tell them to be "less white".
api 6y ago
Racism is real in America, but money is far more powerful. A rich person of color is more "white" than the white poor. Our political system with its for-profit lobbying industry is basically legalized systematized bribery. Search for lobbying firms and you can probably get a price quote on what it costs to influence legislature.
dang 6y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26470874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26470874.

Every change in America requires someone wealthy. If your poor or not white, your voice has no traction. This is from an outsider, but after all those months of BLM protests, what changed?

dundercoder 6y ago

I would argue that functionally the US behaves more like a plutocracy, in which money matters an order of magnitude more than race or any other factor.

astrange 6y ago
This was somewhat true 10 years ago (maybe even 5) but if you pay attention to things recently the moneyed interests have been 1. left-wing (because of Actblue and Bernie fans donating $25) 2. losing (Steyer, Bloomberg, every non-Trumpist Republican) or 3. both (Bernie, Amy McGrath). The guy who just won the presidency had the worst fundraising and spent the least. What actually happens in the US is that rural and elderly middle-class voters control everything, and they mostly want entertaining culture war and no policy changes. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-culture-2020-election-theory-polls.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-cu... Democratic donors are more left-wing than voters: https://twitter.com/dbroockman/status/1254924463952388097 https://twitter.com/dbroockman/status/1254924463952388097
- dillondoyle 6y ago
  to be fair issues/petitioned amendments are very much money pays. It's pretty expensive to get signatures to get on ballot. Lots of states have rules like getting _% in each local HD or whatever. And then the money spent on persuasion. Uber recently in CA comes to mind. Kind of beautiful in its blunt honesty; a legal method for corporations having a good chance of changing the law specifically how they want without having to deal with those pesky lawmakers. Of course citizens can do it too! We got decriminalized mushrooms here in denver because of it!
  - astrange 6y ago
    The CA proposition system is bad, but I think it's because it makes us vote for things we don't understand. All kinds of interest groups regularly get on there, not just the plutocratic/corporate ones, but it's usually to do bad things. The worst one is Prop 13 but everyone really did benefit at the time - of course it ruined the state for anyone who hadn't been born or moved there yet. And the reason there's a really confusing prop about dialysis every election is that a labor union is putting them all on the ballot literally to troll the dialysis companies they're trying to unionize. Nobody actually wants them. It does seem to work when representatives would be too embarrassed to vote for something, so that's why states are using it to legalize drugs.
    - dillondoyle 6y ago
      It might be similar here in Colorado? The language has to be approved by a committee so it's supposed to be 'fair' and clear. But I know campaigns poll it before they submit. The first sentence is really important. Especially in Colorado at least before we're tilting blue it was impossible to pass tax increases (we have TABOR which generally in most cases throws new tax measures to the citizens) so they always focused on for instance shall _ fund education by increasing __ by .1% etc That's how we passed MJ legalization! I worked on that campaign did digital ads. We focused on medical stories, showing a young girl (I think seizures). And Denver just decriminalized mushrooms. Very exciting. But the opposite can be true unfortunately. Even in CA prop 8 is a sad example of group think discrimination. A danger of majoritarian Democracy.

lai-yin 6y ago

America is worse off after months of BLM protests. So you could argue that being broke, woke, and violent can make a difference.

harlanji 6y ago

My years of inquiry have lead me to understand that white means wealthy. Poor white person is virtually an oxymoron: estranged or excommunicated children of wealth, but they may cease to be white. Poor caucasian with fair skin? Not much to see in the way of privilege there.

frongpik 6y ago
If we define whiteness as the amount of reflected sunlight, where will be the boundary between white vs non white?
- tweetle_beetle 6y ago
  Related - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale
- jfengel 6y ago
  Whiteness is far, far from the amount of reflected sunlight. It's about the curl of your hair, the shape of your face, the accent, and a host of other clues. There's no sharp line. It's however people choose to define you. If they identify you as non-white, you get treated as non-white. Which means automatic negative judgments that wouldn't apply if they identified you as white. That doesn't mean whiteness by itself gets you into every corridor of power. But non-whiteness excludes you from a lot of places, or gets you treated with suspicion when you're allowed to be there at all. It's a permanent set of bricks in your briefcase, on top of all the other ones that affect everybody.
  - frongpik 6y ago
    That's not whiteness, but culture fit. To get into important clubs in say China, one needs to look like them, speak like them, have common background. Same here. The problem with blacks in America is that they don't want to change. Many in fact do the opposite, they fight the whites' culture, e.g. studying too much in school is "acting white". Some even try to bend the majority, I mean these attempts to shame whites, tell them to be "less white".

api 6y ago

Racism is real in America, but money is far more powerful. A rich person of color is more "white" than the white poor. Our political system with its for-profit lobbying industry is basically legalized systematized bribery. Search for lobbying firms and you can probably get a price quote on what it costs to influence legislature.

dang 6y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26470874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26470874.