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Social status/class and race are closely related in the USA. But I didn't read "wealthy young white people" as an indication of obsession with race. Race and cl

Social status/class and race are closely related in the USA. But I didn't read "wealthy young white people" as an indication of obsession with race. Race and class aside, white Americans, Black Americans, Chinese Americans, etc. have different cultural traditions. Wealthy Americans have different habits and status markers than not-wealthy Americans. A wealthy white American has different habits and markers than a wealthy Black American. Just look at how Jay Z dresses compared to Elon Musk or Bill Gates. All wealthy but different kinds of status display.

foofie 3y ago
> Just look at how Jay Z dresses compared to Elon Musk or Bill Gates. What point were you hoping to convey? That different people dress differently? Because you could also compare how others dress, like Eminem and Obama, and what would your point be?
- gregjor 3y ago
  See my longer comment above in the thread.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>Just look at how Jay Z dresses compared to Elon Musk or Bill Gates. What's that to do with their skin color? They dress differently because one is a singer/pop-star, the other are tech nerds. Eminem also dresses differently than Musk and Gates and they're all white. People dress according to their profession and social status they want to flaunt, not based on skin color.
- gregjor 3y ago
  How Jay Z and Bill Gates dress has nothing to do with race per se, that was my point. It has to do with social status, social group, cultural background, and in the case of celebrities their public persona. We can maybe agree that Jay Z and Bill Gates both qualify as "wealthy," at least among Americans. Yet they don't have much in common in terms of cultural background. Skin color is one aspect of that but not the only or most important aspect. The article in question mentions race and uses the word "white" exactly once. The sentence in question: > The New York Times recently referred to the “obligatory uncurtained windows” of Brooklyn Heights, a rich enclave in New York City, and The Root pointed out that this seemed common among wealthy young white people living in gentrified urban areas. Brooklyn Heights is 75.2 white people[1], with a median age of 35.3[2] (young, in other words). and the term "gentrified" applies. So describing Brooklyn Heights as a place with a lot of "wealthy young white people living in [a] gentrified urban area" seems factually correct. Pointing out the mostly white population doesn't make anything about the statement racist. Asking how it got so white, or the history of gentrification, may bring up questions about racial inequality in America. But the article is about curtains, not about race. Finding out that not having curtains, or leaving them open, is more widespread among wealthy people of high status and security (the literal and only point of the article), then using Brooklyn Heights as an example of a place with lots of uncovered windows and also lots of wealthy young white people is just supporting evidence. If the authors wanted to present a more rigorous study of no curtains they should have looked at other neighborhoods with different demographics. They're talking about a fashion trend and status marker. They could have talked about $1,000 sneakers and probably landed on a very different demographic. Reading the sentence above as racist seems a stretch. Using it to make some kind of sweeping generalization about American racism, and implying that America has some unique obsession with race you don't find in other countries is simply not borne out by research or experience. Xenophobia, which very often gets expressed in terms of race because skin color is such an obvious marker of difference, is a widespread human tendency, known since ancient times, everywhere. It's not something Americans invented or suffer from more than, say, Germans. In any case the article was about class and status, not about race, so reading racism into it says more about the people commenting in that vein that it does about the article or the authors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_Heights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_Heights [2] https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/NY/Brooklyn/Brooklyn-Heights-Demographics.html https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/NY/Brooklyn/Broo...
  - subjectsigma 3y ago
    “Man I’ve crunched all the numbers, and I just can’t figure out why stereotyping people might be annoying to them!” If race wasn’t important to the article why mention it at all? Where did the OP say the article was racist? (as opposed to just being rude, annoying, unnecessary, etc.) I got the impression from your comments that you’re American. You also seem to think Americans don’t have weird and problematic opinions about race. I further noticed that you take pains to capitalize “Black” and lowercase “white” when describing a person’s race, a weird and problematic habit that only American leftists have. Can you elaborate on that?
    - gregjor 3y ago
      Where exactly did I stereotype anyone? Race was as important to the article as the location and the relative wealth and age of the place mentioned -- Brooklyn Heights. I guess they could have said they noticed the no curtains thing in some American urban area and left it at that, but as writers tend to do they added some detail to paint a picture: wealthy, gentrified urban, young, and white. For some of us just writing "Brooklyn Heights" would communicate all of that but just maybe the writers thought they might need to describe that neighborhood for readers not familiar with Brooklyn's demographics. As for "rude, annoying, unnecessary, etc." that's in the eye of the beholder. An article can't inherently have any of those properties; those describe reactions a reader might have to the article. I didn't have any of those reactions and I'd be surprised if The Atlantic receives bags of mail complaining about the fluffy curtains article. I don't know what "weird and problematic" might mean. I've met lots of people, Americans and otherwise, who have opinions about race that don't match mine. I was just in Japan a couple of months ago, and as a non-Japanese I noticed I got treated differently. Weird and problematic? Those words didn't pop into my head but I know people who have found Japanese culture and what looks like endemic racism off-putting. My capitalization of Black and non-capitalization of white are legacies you can blame on my age, rather than another "problematic" or leftist habit. It's one of the accepted styles of writing, one that I learned a long time ago. You can find examples yourself, for example [1] and [2]. Speculating about someone's motivations, political associations, weirdness, problematic-ness, etc. when you know nothing about them comes across as rude and, if I can use the ugly word, problematic. You can find out from my HN profile that I was born in America but no longer live there -- not trying to hide my heritage. By all means go on stereotyping and insulting Americans, and people you describe as "leftists." I'll steer clear of that kind of immature behavior. [1] https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php [2] https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-cultures-race-and-ethnicity-us-news-ap-top-news-7e36c00c5af0436abc09e051261fff1f https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-cultures-race-and-e...

foofie 3y ago

> Just look at how Jay Z dresses compared to Elon Musk or Bill Gates. What point were you hoping to convey? That different people dress differently? Because you could also compare how others dress, like Eminem and Obama, and what would your point be?

gregjor 3y ago
See my longer comment above in the thread.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>Just look at how Jay Z dresses compared to Elon Musk or Bill Gates. What's that to do with their skin color? They dress differently because one is a singer/pop-star, the other are tech nerds. Eminem also dresses differently than Musk and Gates and they're all white. People dress according to their profession and social status they want to flaunt, not based on skin color.

gregjor 3y ago
How Jay Z and Bill Gates dress has nothing to do with race per se, that was my point. It has to do with social status, social group, cultural background, and in the case of celebrities their public persona. We can maybe agree that Jay Z and Bill Gates both qualify as "wealthy," at least among Americans. Yet they don't have much in common in terms of cultural background. Skin color is one aspect of that but not the only or most important aspect. The article in question mentions race and uses the word "white" exactly once. The sentence in question: > The New York Times recently referred to the “obligatory uncurtained windows” of Brooklyn Heights, a rich enclave in New York City, and The Root pointed out that this seemed common among wealthy young white people living in gentrified urban areas. Brooklyn Heights is 75.2 white people[1], with a median age of 35.3[2] (young, in other words). and the term "gentrified" applies. So describing Brooklyn Heights as a place with a lot of "wealthy young white people living in [a] gentrified urban area" seems factually correct. Pointing out the mostly white population doesn't make anything about the statement racist. Asking how it got so white, or the history of gentrification, may bring up questions about racial inequality in America. But the article is about curtains, not about race. Finding out that not having curtains, or leaving them open, is more widespread among wealthy people of high status and security (the literal and only point of the article), then using Brooklyn Heights as an example of a place with lots of uncovered windows and also lots of wealthy young white people is just supporting evidence. If the authors wanted to present a more rigorous study of no curtains they should have looked at other neighborhoods with different demographics. They're talking about a fashion trend and status marker. They could have talked about $1,000 sneakers and probably landed on a very different demographic. Reading the sentence above as racist seems a stretch. Using it to make some kind of sweeping generalization about American racism, and implying that America has some unique obsession with race you don't find in other countries is simply not borne out by research or experience. Xenophobia, which very often gets expressed in terms of race because skin color is such an obvious marker of difference, is a widespread human tendency, known since ancient times, everywhere. It's not something Americans invented or suffer from more than, say, Germans. In any case the article was about class and status, not about race, so reading racism into it says more about the people commenting in that vein that it does about the article or the authors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_Heights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_Heights [2] https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/NY/Brooklyn/Brooklyn-Heights-Demographics.html https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/NY/Brooklyn/Broo...
- subjectsigma 3y ago
  “Man I’ve crunched all the numbers, and I just can’t figure out why stereotyping people might be annoying to them!” If race wasn’t important to the article why mention it at all? Where did the OP say the article was racist? (as opposed to just being rude, annoying, unnecessary, etc.) I got the impression from your comments that you’re American. You also seem to think Americans don’t have weird and problematic opinions about race. I further noticed that you take pains to capitalize “Black” and lowercase “white” when describing a person’s race, a weird and problematic habit that only American leftists have. Can you elaborate on that?
  - gregjor 3y ago
    Where exactly did I stereotype anyone? Race was as important to the article as the location and the relative wealth and age of the place mentioned -- Brooklyn Heights. I guess they could have said they noticed the no curtains thing in some American urban area and left it at that, but as writers tend to do they added some detail to paint a picture: wealthy, gentrified urban, young, and white. For some of us just writing "Brooklyn Heights" would communicate all of that but just maybe the writers thought they might need to describe that neighborhood for readers not familiar with Brooklyn's demographics. As for "rude, annoying, unnecessary, etc." that's in the eye of the beholder. An article can't inherently have any of those properties; those describe reactions a reader might have to the article. I didn't have any of those reactions and I'd be surprised if The Atlantic receives bags of mail complaining about the fluffy curtains article. I don't know what "weird and problematic" might mean. I've met lots of people, Americans and otherwise, who have opinions about race that don't match mine. I was just in Japan a couple of months ago, and as a non-Japanese I noticed I got treated differently. Weird and problematic? Those words didn't pop into my head but I know people who have found Japanese culture and what looks like endemic racism off-putting. My capitalization of Black and non-capitalization of white are legacies you can blame on my age, rather than another "problematic" or leftist habit. It's one of the accepted styles of writing, one that I learned a long time ago. You can find examples yourself, for example [1] and [2]. Speculating about someone's motivations, political associations, weirdness, problematic-ness, etc. when you know nothing about them comes across as rude and, if I can use the ugly word, problematic. You can find out from my HN profile that I was born in America but no longer live there -- not trying to hide my heritage. By all means go on stereotyping and insulting Americans, and people you describe as "leftists." I'll steer clear of that kind of immature behavior. [1] https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php [2] https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-cultures-race-and-ethnicity-us-news-ap-top-news-7e36c00c5af0436abc09e051261fff1f https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-cultures-race-and-e...