7 ms·

As an example from my son, a 13 year old white kid, gave me is that if you have one of the "diversity cards" (minority, LGBQT+, female sometimes, or some other

As an example from my son, a 13 year old white kid, gave me is that if you have one of the "diversity cards" (minority, LGBQT+, female sometimes, or some other thing) than you get to joke and talk in a way than those that don't have such a card. So his friends that are gay or black or indian or disabled are able to tease each other about it and have more liberty to use terms that my son is not allowed to. The gay kid can joke with the indian kid about wearing a turban (they are middle schoolers, their understanding of life is still a bit shaky) or whatever. My son is on the bottom of the pack for all of that. We talk about it and we're still working through the fairness of the situation. He's an empathic kid, and is decently informed for his age, so he gets it, but it also sucks to grow up in a world of "bias is wrong except against white people and especially against white males".

jstarfish 4y ago
pessimizer 4y ago
Just commenting to confirm that they are not actually handing out anything called a diversity card that gives you permission to do anything. edit: also want to make sure that "teen mental health" includes the 75% of kids that are not straight, non-disabled white boys. If those kids are included then this probably isn't a reasonable explanation.
- gilbetron 4y ago
  So ... funny story there. There is the concept of the "N-word pass" that black kids will "give out" to non-black kids "allowing" them a use of the n-word in front of them. I had heard about this several years ago, but now several of the black kids in my son's school are giving them out occasionally. I advised my son to never use the option were he to receive one! Not a physical card in this situation, but there are stories that some kids in other schools actually give out physical cards.
  - sureglymop 4y ago
    It's not a real concept.. it's just a meme. There's no "pass" that will grant you anything, and if there is a black person who says such a silly thing to a white person it's just shenanigans. Still won't change the context of the white person using the N-word after that anyway, especially it's historical context in the US. Also what I surely find interesting is that I only ever hear white people talk about an "N-word pass"...
    - gilbetron 4y ago
      It's a very real thing, literally happens weekly in my son's friend group, and yes kids are allowed to "redeem" it. Ask a teacher at a diverse school if it is real or not.
hunter2_ 4y ago
I'm curious how white (as a percentage) the school is, as I could imagine a correlation with the extent/intensity of this experience. If white kids are enough of a majority, that alone probably offsets the effect somewhat, but where white is also a local minority, perhaps the collective privilege starts to get so cloudy that the notion of "punching up/down" starts to fall apart. And substitute "straight white male" as needed, of course, although I've refrained above in order to use the words "majority/minority" in simple terms.
mattacular 4y ago
Your white son is at the bottom of the pack because he can't openly tell bigoted jokes about his peers?
- ryan93 4y ago
  He is saying that the gay kid can make bigoted jokes about arabs to an extent.
- xeromal 4y ago
  I don't understand this intentional misreading of comments that's so pervasive. Even if they're not entirely clear, you can usually deduce what they mean. Why is his son singled out based on his skin color and unable to do things that his peers are officially sanctioned by the school? Not sure what that sounds ok to you? That seems like regular ole racism to me. That's a bit insane don't you think?
  - hunter2_ 4y ago
    You lost me at this: > officially sanctioned by the school You interpret the anecdote as involving something official? I interpreted it as pertaining to social norms being enforced by only the students themselves. Kids hassling each other for "playing nonexistent white/straight/male cards" or "playing a card they don't have" is quite different from authority figures imposing equivalent policies. I mean, on some level the subject of the enforcement is in a similar position regardless of the nature of the enforcement, but we should at least agree on what we're dealing with here.
    - xeromal 4y ago
      People tell stories on hackernews. If you don't take the story to be true, take it as hypothetical value. Not everything on the internet needs a scientific study to be discussed.
      - hunter2_ 4y ago
        I'm confused. Perhaps some threads got crossed because I didn't mean to say anything about the truth or verification of the story.
0xBombadilo 4y ago
>he gets it What is there to get?
- gilbetron 4y ago
  The systemic repression of non-white-males for many, many decades/centuries?
  - 0xBombadilo 4y ago
    I feel so sorry for your boy. He deserves a dad who loves him more than virtue signaling. Your boy is thrown into the world with no preexisting moral guilt. And you, his father, are justifying rather than decrying the racial discrimination of your own son, while apparently trying to stand on the alter of that very discrimination.
    - gilbetron 4y ago
      My son is fine, he is well loved and he knows it - I teach him compassion and understanding while still standing up for himself. I'm sorry you live in such a black and white world lacking nuance. It must be a struggle for you such that you need to tell an internet stranger how little he loves his son.
    - mrexroad 4y ago
      Huh? What a weird comment. “[born with] no preexisting moral guilt” — Is that some attempt to re-frame ignorance? I have teenage kids and they sure as hell have been raised to understand, from a young age, that while they are in an unfairly advantaged group today, a few generations ago and they would have been rounded up, stripped of everything they worked hard for, and put in camps. And yet, even that fate was objectively better than other groups at the same time. What you call “moral guilt” I call empathy. Maybe this is simply what you mean by “virtue signaling”, but I want my kids to always look for those around them who are stumbling, unable to get back up, or who may just not have enough, and then to give help. But they won’t see them without empathy for those situations, and they won’t have that empathy without an understanding of the struggles.
SamuelAdams 4y ago
I see this often with gangs I grew up around. Black people can call each other niggers in a casual, non-attack way. But as soon as a white person does it, it’s racist.
- shigawire 4y ago
  It means different things coming from different people for very clear historical and cultural reasons. Pretending not to understand this is being willfully ignorant at this point.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- tzs 4y ago
  It will be interesting to see if music changes this. I mostly listen to classical and older pop/rock/folk but recently decided to see what is current and so listened to the entire Billboard Hot 100. There was a lot of rap and hip-hop with lyrics that prominently and repeatedly used that word. I wondered then about what happens when non-Black fans sing along with such a song on radio or streaming or at a concert. I did some research and it seems that a small minority of the artists think that people who sing along should sing all the words regardless of race, with most thinking non-Blacks should not sing that word. Some in the latter group also feel that it is a losing battle to try to stop it. I think those that want to stop it can succeed--for now. If I ever feel the urge for example to sing along to some rap or hip-hop song I'll have no trouble remembering to skip the N-word part. I've long known that this is a word I should not be saying except under special circumstances where it is clear I should say it and that singing along is probably not special circumstances. That works for me because I'm adult and when I learned the word as a kid I learned it as a derogatory term. But now that the N-word is in popular music that plenty of non-Blacks listen to, there will be kids who grow up from the start with that in the music they listen to. It will be a word they naturally learn as part of normal language acquisition without learning the most negative connotations. I bet it will be lot harder to get that generation to not use it when singing alone, or to not adopt it with the positive meanings that it sometime has when used in rap or hip-hop.
evocatus 4y ago
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Knock it off. These are children who had no say in what their ancestors did.
  - evocatus 4y ago
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - dang 4y ago
      Can you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? We've already had to ask you this and, I'm sad to say, you've posted a ton of such comments. That's not ok here, and we ban such accounts. I don't want to ban you because your substantive points are interesting and welcome, but this sort of internet attack is not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
  - krapp 4y ago
    They have a say in what remains of the power structures created by their white supremacist ancestors, the privileges that system provides and the inequities those privileges feed on. They could be working to dismantle those power structures, but they have to recognize that they exist first and that yes by default all things are not equal. Ignoring that fact or obsessing over petty things like not having a pass to say the n-word doesn't help anyone or accomplish anything productive.
themitigating 4y ago
No one teaches that you because you are a minority you are allowed to tease other minorities
x3qt 4y ago
And what are the consequences of not following this rule?
radarsat1 4y ago
I understand this quite well, I've felt this myself in the past too, that feeling of being "not in the club". Thanks for your explanation. One does get over it, and one also learns eventually that it's something not restricted to race / sexual orientation etc., it can be similar just with a group of people from a certain neighbourhood etc. But having it be based on race can be hard for a kid in the "out" group. How to deal with that, basically, to learn to let it roll off your shoulders, to learn how to navigate your own position in a group, is a lesson to be learned, sometimes not easy to get the intricate ins and outs of how to behave. I completely get it.
- gilbetron 4y ago
  Thanks for the nuanced understanding! We've been giving our son basically that advice as he learns to navigate the situation. It's tough because he's a pretty strict rules-follower, and so it upsets him to hear kids breaking the "ism" rules! We say, "let it roll of you like water off a duck's butt" :) He's learning ... I think.
subsaharancoder 4y ago
Intersectionality at play here, your son is part of the "oppressor" class and is essentially viewed as beneficiary of privilege by virtue of his melanin content, therefore he is not allowed to say, do or question certain things. It's a sad state of affairs. FYI I'm an immigrant from Africa with 3 daughters but I've instilled in them the values I was raised with, that everyone is deserving of respect, dignity and are precious in the eyes of God.

jstarfish 4y ago

pessimizer 4y ago

Just commenting to confirm that they are not actually handing out anything called a diversity card that gives you permission to do anything. edit: also want to make sure that "teen mental health" includes the 75% of kids that are not straight, non-disabled white boys. If those kids are included then this probably isn't a reasonable explanation.

gilbetron 4y ago
So ... funny story there. There is the concept of the "N-word pass" that black kids will "give out" to non-black kids "allowing" them a use of the n-word in front of them. I had heard about this several years ago, but now several of the black kids in my son's school are giving them out occasionally. I advised my son to never use the option were he to receive one! Not a physical card in this situation, but there are stories that some kids in other schools actually give out physical cards.
- sureglymop 4y ago
  It's not a real concept.. it's just a meme. There's no "pass" that will grant you anything, and if there is a black person who says such a silly thing to a white person it's just shenanigans. Still won't change the context of the white person using the N-word after that anyway, especially it's historical context in the US. Also what I surely find interesting is that I only ever hear white people talk about an "N-word pass"...
  - gilbetron 4y ago
    It's a very real thing, literally happens weekly in my son's friend group, and yes kids are allowed to "redeem" it. Ask a teacher at a diverse school if it is real or not.

hunter2_ 4y ago

I'm curious how white (as a percentage) the school is, as I could imagine a correlation with the extent/intensity of this experience. If white kids are enough of a majority, that alone probably offsets the effect somewhat, but where white is also a local minority, perhaps the collective privilege starts to get so cloudy that the notion of "punching up/down" starts to fall apart. And substitute "straight white male" as needed, of course, although I've refrained above in order to use the words "majority/minority" in simple terms.

mattacular 4y ago

Your white son is at the bottom of the pack because he can't openly tell bigoted jokes about his peers?

ryan93 4y ago
He is saying that the gay kid can make bigoted jokes about arabs to an extent.
xeromal 4y ago
I don't understand this intentional misreading of comments that's so pervasive. Even if they're not entirely clear, you can usually deduce what they mean. Why is his son singled out based on his skin color and unable to do things that his peers are officially sanctioned by the school? Not sure what that sounds ok to you? That seems like regular ole racism to me. That's a bit insane don't you think?
- hunter2_ 4y ago
  You lost me at this: > officially sanctioned by the school You interpret the anecdote as involving something official? I interpreted it as pertaining to social norms being enforced by only the students themselves. Kids hassling each other for "playing nonexistent white/straight/male cards" or "playing a card they don't have" is quite different from authority figures imposing equivalent policies. I mean, on some level the subject of the enforcement is in a similar position regardless of the nature of the enforcement, but we should at least agree on what we're dealing with here.
  - xeromal 4y ago
    People tell stories on hackernews. If you don't take the story to be true, take it as hypothetical value. Not everything on the internet needs a scientific study to be discussed.
    - hunter2_ 4y ago
      I'm confused. Perhaps some threads got crossed because I didn't mean to say anything about the truth or verification of the story.

0xBombadilo 4y ago

>he gets it What is there to get?

gilbetron 4y ago
The systemic repression of non-white-males for many, many decades/centuries?
- 0xBombadilo 4y ago
  I feel so sorry for your boy. He deserves a dad who loves him more than virtue signaling. Your boy is thrown into the world with no preexisting moral guilt. And you, his father, are justifying rather than decrying the racial discrimination of your own son, while apparently trying to stand on the alter of that very discrimination.
  - gilbetron 4y ago
    My son is fine, he is well loved and he knows it - I teach him compassion and understanding while still standing up for himself. I'm sorry you live in such a black and white world lacking nuance. It must be a struggle for you such that you need to tell an internet stranger how little he loves his son.
  - mrexroad 4y ago
    Huh? What a weird comment. “[born with] no preexisting moral guilt” — Is that some attempt to re-frame ignorance? I have teenage kids and they sure as hell have been raised to understand, from a young age, that while they are in an unfairly advantaged group today, a few generations ago and they would have been rounded up, stripped of everything they worked hard for, and put in camps. And yet, even that fate was objectively better than other groups at the same time. What you call “moral guilt” I call empathy. Maybe this is simply what you mean by “virtue signaling”, but I want my kids to always look for those around them who are stumbling, unable to get back up, or who may just not have enough, and then to give help. But they won’t see them without empathy for those situations, and they won’t have that empathy without an understanding of the struggles.

SamuelAdams 4y ago

I see this often with gangs I grew up around. Black people can call each other niggers in a casual, non-attack way. But as soon as a white person does it, it’s racist.

shigawire 4y ago
It means different things coming from different people for very clear historical and cultural reasons. Pretending not to understand this is being willfully ignorant at this point.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
tzs 4y ago
It will be interesting to see if music changes this. I mostly listen to classical and older pop/rock/folk but recently decided to see what is current and so listened to the entire Billboard Hot 100. There was a lot of rap and hip-hop with lyrics that prominently and repeatedly used that word. I wondered then about what happens when non-Black fans sing along with such a song on radio or streaming or at a concert. I did some research and it seems that a small minority of the artists think that people who sing along should sing all the words regardless of race, with most thinking non-Blacks should not sing that word. Some in the latter group also feel that it is a losing battle to try to stop it. I think those that want to stop it can succeed--for now. If I ever feel the urge for example to sing along to some rap or hip-hop song I'll have no trouble remembering to skip the N-word part. I've long known that this is a word I should not be saying except under special circumstances where it is clear I should say it and that singing along is probably not special circumstances. That works for me because I'm adult and when I learned the word as a kid I learned it as a derogatory term. But now that the N-word is in popular music that plenty of non-Blacks listen to, there will be kids who grow up from the start with that in the music they listen to. It will be a word they naturally learn as part of normal language acquisition without learning the most negative connotations. I bet it will be lot harder to get that generation to not use it when singing alone, or to not adopt it with the positive meanings that it sometime has when used in rap or hip-hop.

evocatus 4y ago

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
Knock it off. These are children who had no say in what their ancestors did.
- evocatus 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - dang 4y ago
    Can you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? We've already had to ask you this and, I'm sad to say, you've posted a ton of such comments. That's not ok here, and we ban such accounts. I don't want to ban you because your substantive points are interesting and welcome, but this sort of internet attack is not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- krapp 4y ago
  They have a say in what remains of the power structures created by their white supremacist ancestors, the privileges that system provides and the inequities those privileges feed on. They could be working to dismantle those power structures, but they have to recognize that they exist first and that yes by default all things are not equal. Ignoring that fact or obsessing over petty things like not having a pass to say the n-word doesn't help anyone or accomplish anything productive.

themitigating 4y ago

No one teaches that you because you are a minority you are allowed to tease other minorities

x3qt 4y ago

And what are the consequences of not following this rule?

radarsat1 4y ago

I understand this quite well, I've felt this myself in the past too, that feeling of being "not in the club". Thanks for your explanation. One does get over it, and one also learns eventually that it's something not restricted to race / sexual orientation etc., it can be similar just with a group of people from a certain neighbourhood etc. But having it be based on race can be hard for a kid in the "out" group. How to deal with that, basically, to learn to let it roll off your shoulders, to learn how to navigate your own position in a group, is a lesson to be learned, sometimes not easy to get the intricate ins and outs of how to behave. I completely get it.

gilbetron 4y ago
Thanks for the nuanced understanding! We've been giving our son basically that advice as he learns to navigate the situation. It's tough because he's a pretty strict rules-follower, and so it upsets him to hear kids breaking the "ism" rules! We say, "let it roll of you like water off a duck's butt" :) He's learning ... I think.

subsaharancoder 4y ago

Intersectionality at play here, your son is part of the "oppressor" class and is essentially viewed as beneficiary of privilege by virtue of his melanin content, therefore he is not allowed to say, do or question certain things. It's a sad state of affairs. FYI I'm an immigrant from Africa with 3 daughters but I've instilled in them the values I was raised with, that everyone is deserving of respect, dignity and are precious in the eyes of God.