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It is not helpful to blanket condemn the HN community. Yes, the vast majority are white men. Yes, a significant portion hold political positions on minority p
by kingkawn 13y ago
It is not helpful to blanket condemn the HN community. Yes, the vast majority are white men. Yes, a significant portion hold political positions on minority peoples that do not take into account the history and structural disadvantages of being both not-white and not-male. But that position is a meaningful way to survive in a system that for hundreds of years would have punished or killed even white men for acknowledging the humanity and difficulties of those peoples.
So, while I disagree with them, telling them that they're all assholes is useless.
Building equality is not a zero-sum game between those who-have and those who don't. It is the elevation of our collective humanity through empathy.
- detcader 13y agoAlthough you have to realize that there are people who see 'equality' as mythological, based on analyses of gender and race that see them as inherently hierarchical through their social construction (basic reasoning reveals that race isn't just skin color and gender is not sex organs and characteristics). Unfortunately these people are few in number, and they're mostly women and non-white people, so no-one listens to them anyway. If we sympathize with those folks, HN comment threads become even more futile.
- kingkawn 13y agoI understand that it seems like it will magnify the futility, but the way you are describing is the way that has been tried forever. It has resulted in slow change, usually only being realized when society as a whole has been influenced enough to forget the old perspective. There's a lot of power into both taking the full fears of another into consideration while simultaneously trying to present the full fears of their Other to them.