4 ms·

The matters of race occupy a much smaller percentage of the brains of people outside of the USA. I say this completely without malice. It simply means that th

The matters of race occupy a much smaller percentage of the brains of people outside of the USA. I say this completely without malice. It simply means that the trauma of segregation is still too raw in American society. The rest of your statement doesn't make any sense. One went to a gulag for opposing the Soviet government, not for having a particular ethnicity. Stalin was ethnically Georgian. Many prominent members of the politburo were Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, or Jews. In the later Soviet Union there were many politicians from the "ethnic" republics who had high-powered careers. In fact, look at the list of Russian politicians who are currently under international sanctions and tell me with a straight face that they are all white and Russian. Well, they are Russian of course, but not in the way you meant.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago
> It simply means that the trauma of segregation is still too raw in American society. It feels more calculated than that -- there are people trying to keep it alive for use as a partisan wedge issue. Replace first past the post voting (and therefore the two-party system) with score voting and see what happens to the issue.
- esseph 1y ago
  There have been a ton of states passing laws, starting in 2022 but really hitting stride in 2024/2025, where the Republican party has pushed laws or changes to state constitutions to prevent Ranked Choice Voting. Example, in Missouri there was a ballot initiative called Amendment 7. The first part of the Amendment was to enshrine banning non-citizens from voting. I want to be clear, this was already against state law. This didn't change anything. The second part of Amendment 7 was to ban ranked choice voting and require a plurality. That was the REAL intent of the Amendment. People got duped, badly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_Un...
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    Ranked-choice voting sucks anyway. It's nominally better than first past the post, but only because FPTP is so broken that it can still be the loser in a competition between bad voting systems. Use a cardinal voting system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rated_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rated_voting And framing this as a partisan issue is how you lose. Changes to the voting system that allow multiple parties aren't going to cause Democrats to win more seats in Missouri. Missouri is red regardless of which voting system you use. But it will cause Republicans to lose seats, to libertarians or some other right-leaning third party running candidates there. Which is perfectly to the advantage of the right-leaning voters there, because it better represents their interests. It's not to the advantage of the incumbent party insiders, who then trick people with crooked amendments like that. But if you pin that generically on "Republicans", implying a contrast with Democrats and need for all right-leaning people to line up against you, you're not going to win in Missouri. You have to pin it specifically where it belongs, on the fat cats trying to sustain their privileged position as a one-party monopoly in the state at the expense of all voters.
    - esseph 1y ago
      Not one of these laws were put forth or passed by anyone other than Republicans in any of these states, and there is more pending legislation in other states before the end of the year. If it makes noises like a duck, looks like a duck, does duck things, it's a duck! I'm not running for office, just applying proper attribution! The "game" is not worth playing, especially now. Time to bail. Sucks. (Reminder that there are far more registered independents than any political party affiliation.)
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        You can play the same game and call them "Americans" or "adults" or "politicians" but the reason you want to call them Republicans is that you're stuck in a partisan frame. If you need majority support in a state where Republican candidates get 60-70% of the vote then you need to get some "Republicans" on your side, which in turn means you need to distinguish between the ones who are your enemies and the ones who could be your friends.
pavel_lishin 1y ago
> The matters of race occupy a much smaller percentage of the brains of people outside of the USA. I say this completely without malice. But do you say it with first-hand experience? Having gone back to Russia to meet with relatives, it was very clear that they considered "Tajiks" to be somewhere below them on a social ladder, and one relative directly inquired whether I felt safe living in America with all the "Africans" living in New York. (Granted, that last statement could back up your point that it only matters in America - but it didn't feel that way at the time.)
- ponector 1y ago
  And don't forget Jews. Jews have always been the number one to be hated by common tovarish, as well as modern russians.
  - riehwvfbk 1y ago
    Antisemitism in Europe has a long history stemming from the church wanting to paint Jews as "Christ-killers" and "other". There was a much more famous and murderous contemporary antisemitic movement in Germany. Singling out Russia is simply weird. The Jews in the later Soviet Union did still face discrimination, but it was of the variety of being denied university admissions due to quotas. Kind of like what the Ivy League does to kids of Asian descent in the USA these days.
    - throwaway3060 1y ago
      There is so much wrong in this statement, but more history required to explain it than a single post can cover. I'll try to cover only a few right now: - The more famous antisemitic movement in Germany, while still fully responsible for its actions, used earlier Russian-published conspiracy theories as its foundational documents. - The antisemitism of the late Russian empire was to the point that millions left to escape it. - In the late Stalin years, Jewish figures of note would end up either assassinated or imprisoned, with rumors abounding of a mass deportation coming. - In the years beyond and up to the collapse, Jewish culture, language, and religion were almost completely suppressed. References to the Holocaust could not mention Jews as victims. Systematic and state antisemitism was tacitly allowed, even encouraged. - By the time of the collapse, almost all Jewish cultural knowledge had ceased to exist, only the most basic and vague knowledge remained. (Contrary to popular belief, the Nazis only played a partial role here once they lost - much of this culture still existed in 1945). To diminish the intense level of antisemitism by comparing it to anything in America is absurd, and highly problematic.
ponector 1y ago
Right, no etnic cleansing, no mass starvation of etnic non-russian regions. No forced deportations to the Syberia. No one of mentioned high ranks could freely use native language. You probably know how they called USSR the prison of nations.
- riehwvfbk 1y ago
  Yes, like all propaganda, the Western version is great at producing catchphrases. The Iron Curtain. The Axis of Evil. The Prison of Nations. Or, self-referentially, the White Man's Burden and Manifest Destiny. For internal consumption there are epithets like Convicted Criminal and Sleepy Joe (take your pick). The best propaganda relies on some degree of truth before adding the imagery. But I am willing to bet that most commenters here have a fuzzy mental image of some vaguely menacing tyrant in a fur hat making people starve just for kicks. Other than Holodomor - can you name another mass starvation of an ethnic non-Russian region?
  - ponector 1y ago
    >> can you name another mass starvation of an ethnic non-Russian region Asharshylyk. And it's not the only one I can name. Maybe western propaganda is good in creating labels, but russians are good in killing is own people. Stalin killed more people in USSR than Hitler. Even now in their army ethnic minorities have disproportionally high KIA and WIA rates.
  - watwut 1y ago
    > The Iron Curtain That was literal iron fence with multiple rows guarded by army who killed anyone who tried to cross. > Other than Holodomor - can you name another mass starvation of an ethnic non-Russian region? One genocide is not enough? > menacing tyrant in a fur hat making people starve just for kicks That is what was actually happening.
    - ponector 1y ago
      >>One genocide is not enough? No, not for russians.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

> It simply means that the trauma of segregation is still too raw in American society. It feels more calculated than that -- there are people trying to keep it alive for use as a partisan wedge issue. Replace first past the post voting (and therefore the two-party system) with score voting and see what happens to the issue.

esseph 1y ago
There have been a ton of states passing laws, starting in 2022 but really hitting stride in 2024/2025, where the Republican party has pushed laws or changes to state constitutions to prevent Ranked Choice Voting. Example, in Missouri there was a ballot initiative called Amendment 7. The first part of the Amendment was to enshrine banning non-citizens from voting. I want to be clear, this was already against state law. This didn't change anything. The second part of Amendment 7 was to ban ranked choice voting and require a plurality. That was the REAL intent of the Amendment. People got duped, badly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_Un...
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  Ranked-choice voting sucks anyway. It's nominally better than first past the post, but only because FPTP is so broken that it can still be the loser in a competition between bad voting systems. Use a cardinal voting system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rated_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rated_voting And framing this as a partisan issue is how you lose. Changes to the voting system that allow multiple parties aren't going to cause Democrats to win more seats in Missouri. Missouri is red regardless of which voting system you use. But it will cause Republicans to lose seats, to libertarians or some other right-leaning third party running candidates there. Which is perfectly to the advantage of the right-leaning voters there, because it better represents their interests. It's not to the advantage of the incumbent party insiders, who then trick people with crooked amendments like that. But if you pin that generically on "Republicans", implying a contrast with Democrats and need for all right-leaning people to line up against you, you're not going to win in Missouri. You have to pin it specifically where it belongs, on the fat cats trying to sustain their privileged position as a one-party monopoly in the state at the expense of all voters.
  - esseph 1y ago
    Not one of these laws were put forth or passed by anyone other than Republicans in any of these states, and there is more pending legislation in other states before the end of the year. If it makes noises like a duck, looks like a duck, does duck things, it's a duck! I'm not running for office, just applying proper attribution! The "game" is not worth playing, especially now. Time to bail. Sucks. (Reminder that there are far more registered independents than any political party affiliation.)
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      You can play the same game and call them "Americans" or "adults" or "politicians" but the reason you want to call them Republicans is that you're stuck in a partisan frame. If you need majority support in a state where Republican candidates get 60-70% of the vote then you need to get some "Republicans" on your side, which in turn means you need to distinguish between the ones who are your enemies and the ones who could be your friends.

pavel_lishin 1y ago

> The matters of race occupy a much smaller percentage of the brains of people outside of the USA. I say this completely without malice. But do you say it with first-hand experience? Having gone back to Russia to meet with relatives, it was very clear that they considered "Tajiks" to be somewhere below them on a social ladder, and one relative directly inquired whether I felt safe living in America with all the "Africans" living in New York. (Granted, that last statement could back up your point that it only matters in America - but it didn't feel that way at the time.)

ponector 1y ago
And don't forget Jews. Jews have always been the number one to be hated by common tovarish, as well as modern russians.
- riehwvfbk 1y ago
  Antisemitism in Europe has a long history stemming from the church wanting to paint Jews as "Christ-killers" and "other". There was a much more famous and murderous contemporary antisemitic movement in Germany. Singling out Russia is simply weird. The Jews in the later Soviet Union did still face discrimination, but it was of the variety of being denied university admissions due to quotas. Kind of like what the Ivy League does to kids of Asian descent in the USA these days.
  - throwaway3060 1y ago
    There is so much wrong in this statement, but more history required to explain it than a single post can cover. I'll try to cover only a few right now: - The more famous antisemitic movement in Germany, while still fully responsible for its actions, used earlier Russian-published conspiracy theories as its foundational documents. - The antisemitism of the late Russian empire was to the point that millions left to escape it. - In the late Stalin years, Jewish figures of note would end up either assassinated or imprisoned, with rumors abounding of a mass deportation coming. - In the years beyond and up to the collapse, Jewish culture, language, and religion were almost completely suppressed. References to the Holocaust could not mention Jews as victims. Systematic and state antisemitism was tacitly allowed, even encouraged. - By the time of the collapse, almost all Jewish cultural knowledge had ceased to exist, only the most basic and vague knowledge remained. (Contrary to popular belief, the Nazis only played a partial role here once they lost - much of this culture still existed in 1945). To diminish the intense level of antisemitism by comparing it to anything in America is absurd, and highly problematic.

ponector 1y ago

Right, no etnic cleansing, no mass starvation of etnic non-russian regions. No forced deportations to the Syberia. No one of mentioned high ranks could freely use native language. You probably know how they called USSR the prison of nations.

riehwvfbk 1y ago
Yes, like all propaganda, the Western version is great at producing catchphrases. The Iron Curtain. The Axis of Evil. The Prison of Nations. Or, self-referentially, the White Man's Burden and Manifest Destiny. For internal consumption there are epithets like Convicted Criminal and Sleepy Joe (take your pick). The best propaganda relies on some degree of truth before adding the imagery. But I am willing to bet that most commenters here have a fuzzy mental image of some vaguely menacing tyrant in a fur hat making people starve just for kicks. Other than Holodomor - can you name another mass starvation of an ethnic non-Russian region?
- ponector 1y ago
  >> can you name another mass starvation of an ethnic non-Russian region Asharshylyk. And it's not the only one I can name. Maybe western propaganda is good in creating labels, but russians are good in killing is own people. Stalin killed more people in USSR than Hitler. Even now in their army ethnic minorities have disproportionally high KIA and WIA rates.
- watwut 1y ago
  > The Iron Curtain That was literal iron fence with multiple rows guarded by army who killed anyone who tried to cross. > Other than Holodomor - can you name another mass starvation of an ethnic non-Russian region? One genocide is not enough? > menacing tyrant in a fur hat making people starve just for kicks That is what was actually happening.
  - ponector 1y ago
    >>One genocide is not enough? No, not for russians.