4 ms·

Because race is deeply entwined with culture, and culture is in everything. Every culture owns cars, but not every subculture does things with cars that requir

• leetcrew 6y ago
  kind of a tricky topic. a lot of modifications people make to their vehicles are not legal to begin with (emissions, noise, "stancing"), and a lot of that is for legitimate safety reasons. especially with tunes, people know this and flash their ECU back to stock before going in for state emissions tests. but anyways, there is a subset of white people that also enjoy modding their cars or simply doing the routine maintenance themselves. there is certainly a stereotype about a certain kind of white person that has multiple non-functional cars rusting away on their front lawn. all of this is not to say that that particular law at that particular place and time wasn't racially motivated.
• nomdep 6y ago
  You mean american culture.
• toolz 6y ago
  There are an incredible number of topics that are deeply entwined with culture and issues of many kinds, that doesn't mean it's useful to turn a local law concerning garage mechanics into something about race. Would allowing only minorities to work on their vehicles at home solve the problem? It seems obvious (to me, at least) that it wouldn't, so why would race need to be brought into the equation when it's so much easier to communicate about the core issue rather than discuss things in the context of a more complex issue of race and equality? The likelihood that it disproportionately hurts members of a certain race wouldn't matter if the issue was solved in a way that benefits everyone.
  • 542458 6y ago
    > Would allowing only minorities to work on their vehicles at home solve the problem? This is a strawman - nobody is asking for this! > why would race need to be brought into the equation when it's so much easier to communicate about the core issue rather than discuss things in the context of a more complex issue of race and equality? Let's look at literacy tests for voters. These are similar as you can absolutely construct a plausible argument for them that never mentions race at all - "We just want to make sure that people voting actually understand what they're voting for". And there were likely advocates for these laws who believed that! And literacy tests of course affected more than just African Americans. But - the near universal consensus among historians was that the primary intent was to suppress black votes. Not discussing race when discussing voter literacy tests is avoiding the crux of the actual issue. If you only engage with voter tests on the "actually understand what they're voting for" level you're avoiding the much more important conversation of whether this law is passed in good faith. > The likelihood that it disproportionately hurts members of a certain race wouldn't matter if the issue was solved in a way that benefits everyone. And therein lies the rub - how can it be solved in a way that benefits everyone? If there was a universal benefit solution for every problem politics would be easy! In the case of literacy tests there is no such solution - there was nothing that you could give the advocates for suppression policies that would make them happy that wouldn't come at the expense of minorities. In this case? Hard to say, but I really doubt there's an amicable solution.
  • jbroson 6y ago
    It sounds like you are just angry at the mere mention of race. Like we should just go through life pretending like race plays absolutely no factor in any law, human interaction, or bias unless someone says the "n" word or something. Given our history as a country that seems INCREDIBLY foolish.
    • toolz 6y ago
      I don't intend to portray anger as I couldn't be farther from angry. I just think solutions are easier to find when you tackle problems directly rather than assume malice exists lurking in the shadows every time a situation presents itself. The world isn't angry, nor is it racist, nor is it violent. The world is full of complexity and misunderstanding far more than it's full of malice. If you go looking for malice with the assumption it exists all over the place, you'll have no trouble confirming your bias just as someone might believe rather emotionless writings portray anger if they go into a discussion believing anyone with differing values must only hold to those values emotionally.
• tomatotomato37 6y ago
  Most of that subculture divide is on type of car rather than rather they work on it in the first place. Trust me, there are plenty of car clubs consisting 90% of white boomers showing off their pristine garage queen 1960s muscle cars who would also be inconvenienced by that law.
  • 542458 6y ago
    And there are lots of people who weren’t hippies who smoked marijuana. And voter intelligence tests affected people who weren’t minorities. But that doesn’t mean the laws in question were not passed with race in mind, at least for many of those pushing for them.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• vel0city 6y ago
  Are most people working on cars at their home doing it because they're wanting to do modifications most shops won't do, or because they're trying to save the few hundred dollars an hour in labor charges to do some things that take a few minutes of reading and an understanding of lefty-loosey righty-tighty? A few of my friends and myself tend to do most of the maintenance on our cars and motorcycles by ourselves. If I had to pay for the labor in my car it would have been "totaled" a long time ago. But it still keeps running 20 years and nearly 200kmi with a new water pump, new timing belt, new main belt, new suspension, brake rotor and pad replacements, brake fluid flushes, EGR cleanout, oil pan resealing, power steering hose replacement, transmission fluid flushes, stereo replacement, power window motor replacements, and a few other things. Most of these parts over the years have been relatively cheap, but getting a shop to do the change would have been expensive as hell. I shopped around to get the struts replaced recently. Most shops quoted me over $1k for the replacement. _Good_ replacement strut/coil/spring/mount assemblies were $60/ea from reputable sources online. So for a couple of hours of my own time, knowing how to unscrew and screw in some bolts properly (torqued to spec), and $240 in parts I had a new suspension. So taking the low end of ~$1k in estimates I got, I pretty much paid myself $380/hr to do the work. And don't even get me started on motorcycle maintenance. If it were illegal for me to work on my own bike at home I probably wouldn't be able to afford the bike. Parts are stupid cheap but labor costs on motorcycles are astronomical considering its usually easier to work on a bike than a car. Not everyone working on a car in their driveway are doing something shady or illegal.
  • hindsightbias 6y ago
    If one drives down Alameda street in SF you'll see a lot of people trying to stave off a repair bill they can't afford with amateur shop night. I get not having a neighbor who runs a covert or not-so-covert shop next door, but these laws are bludgeons written for selective enforcement.
    • vel0city 6y ago
      Yeah, and IMO if someone is running an auto shop out of their garage it would be better to go after that with things like licensing or zone enforcement for using their house as a commercial property. The arguments for laws like banning repair of vehicles on residential properties seems like trying to make something that's already illegal extra illegal. Ding the people for illegal modifications or running an unlicensed/improperly zoned commercial operation, don't screw over the people just trying to save a few bucks by using their own labor.