5 ms·

Makes you wonder what all the current anti-straight-white-male ideology will amount to in the long run. Hate should be called out for what it is no matter the

by xd 4y ago

Makes you wonder what all the current anti-straight-white-male ideology will amount to in the long run. Hate should be called out for what it is no matter the group it's aimed at - to set a clear example of civil expectations but I don't see that happening in my lifetime if ever. Edit: I would love to have a dialogue with the downvoters - my email is in my bio.

handsaway 4y ago
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  The hell there isn't. I've had several people say things to me recently that, were the colors flipped, would be much less tolerated by the archetypical American liberal. One example was a Hispanic woman talking to me at the bar about renovating her grandma's house that she bought, and she was glad she did it. It is in an old "brown" neighborhood and she didn't want some white guy coming in and buying it. She said this without irony and also without any real anger, just as a matter of fact, to me, a white man who she presumably found decent enough to chat with.
  - handsaway 4y ago
    The idea that statements can have the "colors flipped" and be equivalent assumes a context where there exists racial and ethnic equality, which there isn't. A white person saying "I don't want brown people to move into this neighborhood" and a brown person saying "I don't want white people to move into this neighborhood" are only equivalent if you evaluate those statements without a social and historical context. In this example how do we think that a legacy of redlining, gentrification, and racial wealth inequality would impact the motivations of the speakers?
    - unethical_ban 4y ago
      I understand there is historical context. I even can comprehend why a good person would have such feelings. I can also assert that it is racist nonetheless, and that we should either admit some level of racial bias is acceptable in parts of society, or we should admit that even "understandable" racism should be discouraged.
    - no-dr-onboard 4y ago
      > are only equivalent if you evaluate those statements without a social and historical context This is presupposed by moral relativism, which can disintegrate the whole conversation incredibly quickly if we're not careful. I think that most people would agree that truth can exist outside of a given context. To argue that all truth requires context is a _very_ slippery slope that most aren't truly committed to. With that being said, something is racist regardless of who says it. There isn't a differentiation based on any sort of perceived, favored group. It's incredibly difficult to be consistent with the opposing stance.
- ZainRiz 4y ago
  As someone who is not a straight-white-male, and someone who grew up feeling generations of oppression against me perpetrated by straight white males, the level of privilege attributed to that group seems like a gross mischaracterization to me. The abusers are merely a tiny percentage of straight-white-males (lets' call the SWMs for short). Most SWMs are average joes, many are living in poverty, and are folks who I wouldn't want to trade places with. Yes, I may have had some additional challenges to deal with in life due to not being a SWM, but there are plenty of SWMs who've had to deal with their own challenges which I didn't have to face. The real problem IMHO is a set of narcissistic, self-serving, almost psychopathic personalities which our current systems of governance tends to let rise to the top. For example, did you know that CEOs are 5x more likely to meet the clinical definition of "psychopath" than the general public? And if you break it down into the specific negative attributes that they display, you'll prob find an even higher prevalence among the top brass.
  - handsaway 4y ago
    I completely agree the primary root cause of minority oppression is a societal pressure to create division within groups that hold shared economic interests (poor whites and poor blacks, for example). We historically see cross-racial class movements being cracked down on _hard_ by "the powers that be" as it were. See the Reconstruction-era Farmer's Alliance, MLK's Poor People's Campaign, Fred Hampton's organizing, etc. I never meant to imply that 100% of SWMs are directly responsible for the oppression of minorities. I'm simply pointing out that the rhetoric of characterizing a social movement as "anti-white" or "anti-man" or "anti-straight" is in itself a predictable reaction from people accustomed to certain privilege. In fact I would argue that this rhetoric plays directly into the divisions I mentioned previously.
- kelnos 4y ago
  I agree that it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that there's an "anti-straight-white-male ideology", but I am a bit bothered by the fact that it seems to be ok in some quarters to use "cishet white male" as a pejorative term. (To be clear, I'm not saying everyone does this! But it happens often enough to make me uncomfortable.) If it's not ok to use people's sexual orientation, gender, or race as a slur when that person is part of a historically marginalized group, then it is also not ok to do the same when the target is someone who is not part of a marginalized group. This isn't "fragile masculinity" or whatever; this is just "treat others as you want to be treated".
- xdennis 4y ago
  There are so many cases of people (especially professors) saying things like "whiteness is an incurable parasitic condition", "gas white people", "white people are villains", "abolish whiteness", etc mostly without consequences (I don't mean legal). Just some examples: * https://nypost.com/2021/06/10/psychoanalyst-calls-whiteness-incurable-parasitic-like-condition/ https://nypost.com/2021/06/10/psychoanalyst-calls-whiteness-... * https://jonathanturley.org/2021/04/28/barnard-professor-triggers-free-speech-controversy-after-writing-about-detonating-and-gassing-white-people/ https://jonathanturley.org/2021/04/28/barnard-professor-trig... * https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2019-11-11/noel-ignatiev-dies-race-whiteness https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2019-11-11/noel-ign... * https://nypost.com/2021/10/29/rutgers-professor-calls-white-people-villains/ https://nypost.com/2021/10/29/rutgers-professor-calls-white-... * See more: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=anti+white+professors&t=ffab&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=anti+white+professors&t=ffab&ia=we... Can you imagine that being said about any other group of people? Is that equality?
  - handsaway 4y ago
    Yes, if I deliberately search for people saying ridiculous things I will find them. Doing so does not indicate a broader, systemic "anti-white" tendency in society. Racism is actually significantly more complicated than "people saying mean things" based on race. If there were "anti-white" bias in society then why is there significant difference in the favor of white people across basically every health and economic outcome we can measure? The inflammatory rhetoric of a handful of people (professors or otherwise) is in no way equivalent or comparable to the historic and systemic racism faced by black people (or the discrimination faced by other minority groups). The conflation of these demonstrates a lack of understanding of what is even _meant_ by "racism".
- PeterWhittaker 4y ago
  As a straight-white-guy, I couldn’t agree with you more. Well said.
no-dr-onboard 4y ago
It looks like someone cleaned up the comments to this.
- xd 4y ago
  Yeap.. I guess they breached some community guidelines or maybe was just a whim of some self serving mod. edit: I've emailed HN for comment.
  - dang 4y ago
    Not sure what you guys mean, but one comment was flagged by users (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32428254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32428254) sufficiently to become [dead]. You can see [dead] comments if you want to by turning 'showdead' on in your profile. Does that help?
    - xd 4y ago
      Hey Dang, I've always had showdead on.. but no-dr-onboard is correct in that some comments have vanished way beyond the delete time limit.
      - dang 4y ago
        Ok, I'll have to look into this later - there are not currently any deleted comments in this subthread. Possibly a mod detached some? I'm not sure yet.
        no-dr-onboard 4y ago
        Thanks for bringing them back.

by xd 4y ago

handsaway 4y ago

unethical_ban 4y ago
The hell there isn't. I've had several people say things to me recently that, were the colors flipped, would be much less tolerated by the archetypical American liberal. One example was a Hispanic woman talking to me at the bar about renovating her grandma's house that she bought, and she was glad she did it. It is in an old "brown" neighborhood and she didn't want some white guy coming in and buying it. She said this without irony and also without any real anger, just as a matter of fact, to me, a white man who she presumably found decent enough to chat with.
- handsaway 4y ago
  The idea that statements can have the "colors flipped" and be equivalent assumes a context where there exists racial and ethnic equality, which there isn't. A white person saying "I don't want brown people to move into this neighborhood" and a brown person saying "I don't want white people to move into this neighborhood" are only equivalent if you evaluate those statements without a social and historical context. In this example how do we think that a legacy of redlining, gentrification, and racial wealth inequality would impact the motivations of the speakers?
  - unethical_ban 4y ago
    I understand there is historical context. I even can comprehend why a good person would have such feelings. I can also assert that it is racist nonetheless, and that we should either admit some level of racial bias is acceptable in parts of society, or we should admit that even "understandable" racism should be discouraged.
  - no-dr-onboard 4y ago
    > are only equivalent if you evaluate those statements without a social and historical context This is presupposed by moral relativism, which can disintegrate the whole conversation incredibly quickly if we're not careful. I think that most people would agree that truth can exist outside of a given context. To argue that all truth requires context is a _very_ slippery slope that most aren't truly committed to. With that being said, something is racist regardless of who says it. There isn't a differentiation based on any sort of perceived, favored group. It's incredibly difficult to be consistent with the opposing stance.
ZainRiz 4y ago
As someone who is not a straight-white-male, and someone who grew up feeling generations of oppression against me perpetrated by straight white males, the level of privilege attributed to that group seems like a gross mischaracterization to me. The abusers are merely a tiny percentage of straight-white-males (lets' call the SWMs for short). Most SWMs are average joes, many are living in poverty, and are folks who I wouldn't want to trade places with. Yes, I may have had some additional challenges to deal with in life due to not being a SWM, but there are plenty of SWMs who've had to deal with their own challenges which I didn't have to face. The real problem IMHO is a set of narcissistic, self-serving, almost psychopathic personalities which our current systems of governance tends to let rise to the top. For example, did you know that CEOs are 5x more likely to meet the clinical definition of "psychopath" than the general public? And if you break it down into the specific negative attributes that they display, you'll prob find an even higher prevalence among the top brass.
- handsaway 4y ago
  I completely agree the primary root cause of minority oppression is a societal pressure to create division within groups that hold shared economic interests (poor whites and poor blacks, for example). We historically see cross-racial class movements being cracked down on _hard_ by "the powers that be" as it were. See the Reconstruction-era Farmer's Alliance, MLK's Poor People's Campaign, Fred Hampton's organizing, etc. I never meant to imply that 100% of SWMs are directly responsible for the oppression of minorities. I'm simply pointing out that the rhetoric of characterizing a social movement as "anti-white" or "anti-man" or "anti-straight" is in itself a predictable reaction from people accustomed to certain privilege. In fact I would argue that this rhetoric plays directly into the divisions I mentioned previously.
kelnos 4y ago
I agree that it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that there's an "anti-straight-white-male ideology", but I am a bit bothered by the fact that it seems to be ok in some quarters to use "cishet white male" as a pejorative term. (To be clear, I'm not saying everyone does this! But it happens often enough to make me uncomfortable.) If it's not ok to use people's sexual orientation, gender, or race as a slur when that person is part of a historically marginalized group, then it is also not ok to do the same when the target is someone who is not part of a marginalized group. This isn't "fragile masculinity" or whatever; this is just "treat others as you want to be treated".
xdennis 4y ago
There are so many cases of people (especially professors) saying things like "whiteness is an incurable parasitic condition", "gas white people", "white people are villains", "abolish whiteness", etc mostly without consequences (I don't mean legal). Just some examples: * https://nypost.com/2021/06/10/psychoanalyst-calls-whiteness-incurable-parasitic-like-condition/ https://nypost.com/2021/06/10/psychoanalyst-calls-whiteness-... * https://jonathanturley.org/2021/04/28/barnard-professor-triggers-free-speech-controversy-after-writing-about-detonating-and-gassing-white-people/ https://jonathanturley.org/2021/04/28/barnard-professor-trig... * https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2019-11-11/noel-ignatiev-dies-race-whiteness https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2019-11-11/noel-ign... * https://nypost.com/2021/10/29/rutgers-professor-calls-white-people-villains/ https://nypost.com/2021/10/29/rutgers-professor-calls-white-... * See more: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=anti+white+professors&t=ffab&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=anti+white+professors&t=ffab&ia=we... Can you imagine that being said about any other group of people? Is that equality?
- handsaway 4y ago
  Yes, if I deliberately search for people saying ridiculous things I will find them. Doing so does not indicate a broader, systemic "anti-white" tendency in society. Racism is actually significantly more complicated than "people saying mean things" based on race. If there were "anti-white" bias in society then why is there significant difference in the favor of white people across basically every health and economic outcome we can measure? The inflammatory rhetoric of a handful of people (professors or otherwise) is in no way equivalent or comparable to the historic and systemic racism faced by black people (or the discrimination faced by other minority groups). The conflation of these demonstrates a lack of understanding of what is even _meant_ by "racism".
PeterWhittaker 4y ago
As a straight-white-guy, I couldn’t agree with you more. Well said.

no-dr-onboard 4y ago

It looks like someone cleaned up the comments to this.

xd 4y ago
Yeap.. I guess they breached some community guidelines or maybe was just a whim of some self serving mod. edit: I've emailed HN for comment.
- dang 4y ago
  Not sure what you guys mean, but one comment was flagged by users (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32428254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32428254) sufficiently to become [dead]. You can see [dead] comments if you want to by turning 'showdead' on in your profile. Does that help?
  - xd 4y ago
    Hey Dang, I've always had showdead on.. but no-dr-onboard is correct in that some comments have vanished way beyond the delete time limit.
    - dang 4y ago
      Ok, I'll have to look into this later - there are not currently any deleted comments in this subthread. Possibly a mod detached some? I'm not sure yet.
      - no-dr-onboard 4y ago
        Thanks for bringing them back.