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A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to desegregation in the United States. White union workers voted against their labor interests, white

A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to desegregation in the United States. White union workers voted against their labor interests, white flight from major cities, municipalities closing down public swimming pools, disappearance of social clubs, etc. Community services were shut down in favor of the "free market" and we've seen the rise of pay as you go government services. Even obviously true notions like "it takes a village" were derided. Collectivism and the notion of "community" were greatly reduced in response to desegregation. The nation self immolated its social fabric in response to desegregation. EDIT: In the last sentence I wrote above “nation” should have been written as “white people of the nation”.

zrail 4y ago
> The (white people) self immolated the social fabric of the (white people) in response to desegregation. It's important to note that Black people never had access to those things to start with. They were destroyed out of spite and moved to private clubs that could get away with not admitting Black members.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dangerlibrary 4y ago
  And when they managed to build them, white people burned them to the ground out of spite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
  - yucky 4y ago
    - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
      According to the Wikipedia page your account is wrong. Do you have other sources? It says there was a single gunshot from an ambiguous source resulting from a conflict on which a white man tried to forcibly disarm a black man who was there only to try and protect the jailed man from being lynched and was willingly leaving after being persuaded that there was no need for their protection.
      - yucky 4y ago
        This leaves out the crucial fact that the police were not threatening to lynch anybody, they had the guy in jail and told the protestors who were threatening him to piss off. Then a group of armed black men escalated the situation further by entering the police station with guns which was not allowed. Predictably, someone tried to wrestle the gun out of a hand of one of the people in the armed mob that just tried to illegally take over the police station. That man was shot and killed by one of the black men, and then the riot started. It's important to tell this part since it unsurprisingly always seems to get left out. That doesn't absolve any of the white people who then went on to participate in the riot or who originally wanted the guy lynched, but during that riot a significant number of men on both sides of the riot were killed (I believe it was 26 black people, 10 white people or roughly in line with those estimates). Now, one could look at it and say well if someone didn't try to disarm one of the black men who had stormed the police station armed, then the riot never would have happened. And that's true. One could also say that if the group of white men outside of the police station weren't yelling about lynching the guy, then nobody would have stormed the police station and thus no riot. That is also true. So in reality there really is blame to go around. My point is, on every telling of this story it gets further and further from the truth. Another interesting point that gets lost is there were more than TWICE as many white people lynched in Oklahoma than black people.[1] The point is with stories like this we need to let the data and first hand accounts tell the story, not emotion. If you go off emotion you'll be believing 800 people were killed and the whole town was firebombed by the US army. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1175147/lynching-by-race-state-and-race/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1175147/lynching-by-race...
        TheCoelacanth 4y ago
    - trs8080 4y ago
      "seeing the initial shots were fired by a group of armed black men, killing several white men at the police station" This is a loose interpretation of the article which loses important context. The initial shot was fired when a white man attempted to wrestle a gun away from a black man. The gun accidentally discharged and both sides started firing. Your interpretation would lead a reader to believe that a group of armed black men began the entire event by murdering white men.
      - yucky 4y ago
        > The gun accidentally discharged and both sides started firing. Well it didn't exactly discharge into the floor, it discharged into a person and killed him. And the armed mob that stormed the police station wasn't supposed to be armed in the police station at all, so of course the situation escalated. There is blame to go around, as each side escalated it until there was bloodshed.
- syzarian 4y ago
  Yes. I made an edit to my comment as a result of you pointing this out. I did not chose my words carefully in my last sentence. Thank you for pointing this out.
AnonCoward42 4y ago
Because the white club is one uniform group. In that case I don't even need any more details, since this is such an obvious oversimplification and frankly speaking even racist. "The white response" ...
- Spivak 4y ago
  It really isn’t. You’re just uncomfortable with a group of people that you’re a member of did something bad that was directly related to their membership in that group and you want a carve out so you can feel separate from them. We’re talking about an era in the US where white people were literally in control of everything, nobody else could have done this. And the response was directly related to their whiteness and racism. So sure, it was only white racists that did this, and without a doubt you wouldn’t have been one of those had you been born back then despite it being the view of the overwhelming majority at the time.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Is there some "fellow white people" group I need to apply to ? Or you you're a "member of a group" that you never even joined or cared to get close to ? That's incredibly racist dude. It is exactly same thing actual racists do when they assume someone is <minority> therefore they will do <bad thing>.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      If you say, “you’re a white man and therefore you must like Weezer” that’s the prejudice you’re describing. But if you say white men like Weezer you see how that’s an entirely different statement, right? One is the behavior of an individual ant, one is describing the colony.
      - thegrimmest 4y ago
        > white men like Weezer This is exactly wrong though - do a majority of white men like Weezer? The right thing to say is "People who like Weezer are overwhelmingly white" (assuming it's true of course).
flanked-evergl 4y ago
> White union workers voted against their labor interests What were these interests, and was their intent at the time of "voting against their interests" to injure their own group, and if not what was it? Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions, and a clear objective understanding of their actual interests, or is this just your interpretation of their actions?
- tokai 4y ago
  I'm not into the subject but this article covers race and unions in the US. Might be relevant. https://racial-justice.aflcio.org/blog/est-aliquid-se-ipsum-flagitiosum-etiamsi-nulla https://racial-justice.aflcio.org/blog/est-aliquid-se-ipsum-...
- mannykannot 4y ago
  > Was their intent at the time of "voting against their interests" to injure their own group? This is beside the point. From the paper: However, real-world decision-making often entails making choices where harm is unavoidable (7, 8). Groups may have to choose between in-group losses and out-group gains, a circumstance that has not been previously studied and reveals that individuals’ decisions cannot be explained by existing theories. > Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions? Often we do, because people generally are not all that shy in telling one another - and the media - what they think. It is also highly improbable that a group which fought hard for union representation, or made considerable use of a public pool, suddenly decided these things were against their own interests right at the time these benefits were being extended to other people.
  - flanked-evergl 4y ago
    > This is beside the point. From the paper: I was asking someone who made a specific claim, they were not quoting from the paper. I'm asking him about the claim they made. Specifically the person said "A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to desegregation in the United States. White union workers voted against their labor interests". In the context of an article titled "Individuals prefer to harm their own group rather than help an opposing group. If the person did present an example of something claimed by the article, the article cannot be used to substantiate it, the article cannot be an example of itself, it could contain examples, but this was presented as an independent example, which needs independent justification. > > Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions? > Often we do Do we have any for the specific instance in question?
blueflow 4y ago
Implied in this: White and black people are distinct, different groups. Good luck approaching these issues with that preconception.
- ambicapter 4y ago
  Are you saying that in the US during the Civil Rights era, they weren't?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- scottLobster 4y ago
  Uh, they quite literally were under the law back when segregation existed. Yes there were rich black people and white people who marched with MLK. Zoom out to a population level however and they were clearly distinct groups and treated as such. Good luck understanding the world while refusing to apply historical perceptions to historical issues.
  - blueflow 4y ago
    The historical perception is part of the problem.
    - scottLobster 4y ago
      So are posters who want to grandstand about something other than the comment they're responding to. Original comment cited a historical example relevant to the posted article. You responded that the comment implied (in the present) that whites and blacks are two different groups, which they never did except in a historical context. Therefore you either disagree that historically whites and blacks were two separate groups in post-war America (good luck arguing that) or you're trying to contort the conversation to a discussion of "the problem" whatever that is in your mind.
      - 4y ago
runsWphotons 4y ago
lol
mikewarot 4y ago
>A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to In picking an example, you're forced to be reductive. Rather than considering the content of the character, all the comments are focused on the color of its skin. We could be having a productive conversation about how working class run societies and government (The basic core of the US experiment in self rule) were divided and conquered by the Owner class. But instead, we'd rather pick apart the example. This is far, far too common here on HN. It leads to a reduction of the value of HN as a whole. PS: What's the HN shorthand to name syzarian's comment that I'm replying to?
- syzarian 4y ago
  Indeed. And the way the ruling class divided the working class in the U.S. was by using race as the talking point instead of class. I do maintain though that this was especially easy to do because with desegregation white working class Americans had a target to blame that wasn’t the ruling class.
- x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
  Class reductionism doesn't provide a concrete example of "harming their own group rather than help the Other" as much as the changes the U.S went under in response to the end of Jim Crow.
- wittycardio 4y ago
  You're offended that someone is using white as a descriptor ?
  - lamontcg 4y ago
    You're engaging in the same behavior.
dangerlibrary 4y ago
Heather McGhee's "The Sum of Us" talks about this in detail - she refers to it as "drained pool politics." It's a great read. https://www.powells.com/book/the-sum-of-us-9780525509561 https://www.powells.com/book/the-sum-of-us-9780525509561
refurb 4y ago
White flight was more about racial unrest and riots. I don’t exactly blame people for leaving. You can support civil rights and not want to live in a neighborhood where quality of life is getting worse.
- UI_at_80x24 4y ago
  >I don’t exactly blame people for leaving. You can support civil rights and not want to live in a neighborhood where quality of life is getting worse. The quality of life declined BECAUSE the majority of tax-payers left causing city services to fail.
  - refurb 4y ago
    No the quality of life declined because of rioting in the streets.
  - rajin444 4y ago
    They left due to a rise in crime and other low trust behaviors exhibited post desegregation. That trend persists today - look at crime rates by race especially the white on black vs black on white crime rate. Controlling per capita shows an enormous disparity. And that’s just the extreme end of low trust behaviors and certainly indicating a litany of other reasons one would want to move away. It only takes 1 instance of being a victim to realize it’s not worth the risk.
    - syzarian 4y ago
      Do you know what the violent crime rate of poor blacks was vs. poor whites in 1950s/60s?
    - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
      No, I think you have the timeline backwards. Crime didn’t rise before white flight happened. Crime rose after white flight happened because there was no longer any funding for the social programs that helped keep crime down. Remember it was still legal to deny black people financial opportunities solely for their blackness at the time, so white people actively denied black peoples business loans and other necessary financial funding to build those programs that white people had happily funded for themselves.

zrail 4y ago

> The (white people) self immolated the social fabric of the (white people) in response to desegregation. It's important to note that Black people never had access to those things to start with. They were destroyed out of spite and moved to private clubs that could get away with not admitting Black members.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dangerlibrary 4y ago
And when they managed to build them, white people burned them to the ground out of spite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
- yucky 4y ago
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    According to the Wikipedia page your account is wrong. Do you have other sources? It says there was a single gunshot from an ambiguous source resulting from a conflict on which a white man tried to forcibly disarm a black man who was there only to try and protect the jailed man from being lynched and was willingly leaving after being persuaded that there was no need for their protection.
    - yucky 4y ago
      This leaves out the crucial fact that the police were not threatening to lynch anybody, they had the guy in jail and told the protestors who were threatening him to piss off. Then a group of armed black men escalated the situation further by entering the police station with guns which was not allowed. Predictably, someone tried to wrestle the gun out of a hand of one of the people in the armed mob that just tried to illegally take over the police station. That man was shot and killed by one of the black men, and then the riot started. It's important to tell this part since it unsurprisingly always seems to get left out. That doesn't absolve any of the white people who then went on to participate in the riot or who originally wanted the guy lynched, but during that riot a significant number of men on both sides of the riot were killed (I believe it was 26 black people, 10 white people or roughly in line with those estimates). Now, one could look at it and say well if someone didn't try to disarm one of the black men who had stormed the police station armed, then the riot never would have happened. And that's true. One could also say that if the group of white men outside of the police station weren't yelling about lynching the guy, then nobody would have stormed the police station and thus no riot. That is also true. So in reality there really is blame to go around. My point is, on every telling of this story it gets further and further from the truth. Another interesting point that gets lost is there were more than TWICE as many white people lynched in Oklahoma than black people.[1] The point is with stories like this we need to let the data and first hand accounts tell the story, not emotion. If you go off emotion you'll be believing 800 people were killed and the whole town was firebombed by the US army. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1175147/lynching-by-race-state-and-race/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1175147/lynching-by-race...
      - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
  - trs8080 4y ago
    "seeing the initial shots were fired by a group of armed black men, killing several white men at the police station" This is a loose interpretation of the article which loses important context. The initial shot was fired when a white man attempted to wrestle a gun away from a black man. The gun accidentally discharged and both sides started firing. Your interpretation would lead a reader to believe that a group of armed black men began the entire event by murdering white men.
    - yucky 4y ago
      > The gun accidentally discharged and both sides started firing. Well it didn't exactly discharge into the floor, it discharged into a person and killed him. And the armed mob that stormed the police station wasn't supposed to be armed in the police station at all, so of course the situation escalated. There is blame to go around, as each side escalated it until there was bloodshed.
syzarian 4y ago
Yes. I made an edit to my comment as a result of you pointing this out. I did not chose my words carefully in my last sentence. Thank you for pointing this out.

AnonCoward42 4y ago

Because the white club is one uniform group. In that case I don't even need any more details, since this is such an obvious oversimplification and frankly speaking even racist. "The white response" ...

Spivak 4y ago
It really isn’t. You’re just uncomfortable with a group of people that you’re a member of did something bad that was directly related to their membership in that group and you want a carve out so you can feel separate from them. We’re talking about an era in the US where white people were literally in control of everything, nobody else could have done this. And the response was directly related to their whiteness and racism. So sure, it was only white racists that did this, and without a doubt you wouldn’t have been one of those had you been born back then despite it being the view of the overwhelming majority at the time.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Is there some "fellow white people" group I need to apply to ? Or you you're a "member of a group" that you never even joined or cared to get close to ? That's incredibly racist dude. It is exactly same thing actual racists do when they assume someone is <minority> therefore they will do <bad thing>.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    If you say, “you’re a white man and therefore you must like Weezer” that’s the prejudice you’re describing. But if you say white men like Weezer you see how that’s an entirely different statement, right? One is the behavior of an individual ant, one is describing the colony.
    - thegrimmest 4y ago
      > white men like Weezer This is exactly wrong though - do a majority of white men like Weezer? The right thing to say is "People who like Weezer are overwhelmingly white" (assuming it's true of course).

flanked-evergl 4y ago

> White union workers voted against their labor interests What were these interests, and was their intent at the time of "voting against their interests" to injure their own group, and if not what was it? Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions, and a clear objective understanding of their actual interests, or is this just your interpretation of their actions?

tokai 4y ago
I'm not into the subject but this article covers race and unions in the US. Might be relevant. https://racial-justice.aflcio.org/blog/est-aliquid-se-ipsum-flagitiosum-etiamsi-nulla https://racial-justice.aflcio.org/blog/est-aliquid-se-ipsum-...
mannykannot 4y ago
> Was their intent at the time of "voting against their interests" to injure their own group? This is beside the point. From the paper: However, real-world decision-making often entails making choices where harm is unavoidable (7, 8). Groups may have to choose between in-group losses and out-group gains, a circumstance that has not been previously studied and reveals that individuals’ decisions cannot be explained by existing theories. > Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions? Often we do, because people generally are not all that shy in telling one another - and the media - what they think. It is also highly improbable that a group which fought hard for union representation, or made considerable use of a public pool, suddenly decided these things were against their own interests right at the time these benefits were being extended to other people.
- flanked-evergl 4y ago
  > This is beside the point. From the paper: I was asking someone who made a specific claim, they were not quoting from the paper. I'm asking him about the claim they made. Specifically the person said "A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to desegregation in the United States. White union workers voted against their labor interests". In the context of an article titled "Individuals prefer to harm their own group rather than help an opposing group. If the person did present an example of something claimed by the article, the article cannot be used to substantiate it, the article cannot be an example of itself, it could contain examples, but this was presented as an independent example, which needs independent justification. > > Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions? > Often we do Do we have any for the specific instance in question?

blueflow 4y ago

Implied in this: White and black people are distinct, different groups. Good luck approaching these issues with that preconception.

ambicapter 4y ago
Are you saying that in the US during the Civil Rights era, they weren't?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
scottLobster 4y ago
Uh, they quite literally were under the law back when segregation existed. Yes there were rich black people and white people who marched with MLK. Zoom out to a population level however and they were clearly distinct groups and treated as such. Good luck understanding the world while refusing to apply historical perceptions to historical issues.
- blueflow 4y ago
  The historical perception is part of the problem.
  - scottLobster 4y ago
    So are posters who want to grandstand about something other than the comment they're responding to. Original comment cited a historical example relevant to the posted article. You responded that the comment implied (in the present) that whites and blacks are two different groups, which they never did except in a historical context. Therefore you either disagree that historically whites and blacks were two separate groups in post-war America (good luck arguing that) or you're trying to contort the conversation to a discussion of "the problem" whatever that is in your mind.
    - 4y ago

runsWphotons 4y ago

lol

mikewarot 4y ago

>A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to In picking an example, you're forced to be reductive. Rather than considering the content of the character, all the comments are focused on the color of its skin. We could be having a productive conversation about how working class run societies and government (The basic core of the US experiment in self rule) were divided and conquered by the Owner class. But instead, we'd rather pick apart the example. This is far, far too common here on HN. It leads to a reduction of the value of HN as a whole. PS: What's the HN shorthand to name syzarian's comment that I'm replying to?

syzarian 4y ago
Indeed. And the way the ruling class divided the working class in the U.S. was by using race as the talking point instead of class. I do maintain though that this was especially easy to do because with desegregation white working class Americans had a target to blame that wasn’t the ruling class.
x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
Class reductionism doesn't provide a concrete example of "harming their own group rather than help the Other" as much as the changes the U.S went under in response to the end of Jim Crow.
wittycardio 4y ago
You're offended that someone is using white as a descriptor ?
- lamontcg 4y ago
  You're engaging in the same behavior.

dangerlibrary 4y ago

Heather McGhee's "The Sum of Us" talks about this in detail - she refers to it as "drained pool politics." It's a great read. https://www.powells.com/book/the-sum-of-us-9780525509561 https://www.powells.com/book/the-sum-of-us-9780525509561

refurb 4y ago

White flight was more about racial unrest and riots. I don’t exactly blame people for leaving. You can support civil rights and not want to live in a neighborhood where quality of life is getting worse.

UI_at_80x24 4y ago
>I don’t exactly blame people for leaving. You can support civil rights and not want to live in a neighborhood where quality of life is getting worse. The quality of life declined BECAUSE the majority of tax-payers left causing city services to fail.
- refurb 4y ago
  No the quality of life declined because of rioting in the streets.
- rajin444 4y ago
  They left due to a rise in crime and other low trust behaviors exhibited post desegregation. That trend persists today - look at crime rates by race especially the white on black vs black on white crime rate. Controlling per capita shows an enormous disparity. And that’s just the extreme end of low trust behaviors and certainly indicating a litany of other reasons one would want to move away. It only takes 1 instance of being a victim to realize it’s not worth the risk.
  - syzarian 4y ago
    Do you know what the violent crime rate of poor blacks was vs. poor whites in 1950s/60s?
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    No, I think you have the timeline backwards. Crime didn’t rise before white flight happened. Crime rose after white flight happened because there was no longer any funding for the social programs that helped keep crime down. Remember it was still legal to deny black people financial opportunities solely for their blackness at the time, so white people actively denied black peoples business loans and other necessary financial funding to build those programs that white people had happily funded for themselves.