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It has become impossible to have objective discussions about something like this --or anything political-- on HN. In this case you'll be labeled as racist if y

It has become impossible to have objective discussions about something like this --or anything political-- on HN. In this case you'll be labeled as racist if you disagree with the article (already happened in one post I saw). So, there's no discussion at all. Game over. Done. I happen not to agree with much of what this writer said. I have lived in four cultures in three continents in my life. The USA is most definitely NOT what this author paints us as being. I have noted how, for at least the last twenty years, the overwhelmingly left leaning media has made it their job, perhaps unintentionally, to destroy the US from the inside. This is nothing less than despicable. While working in Europe fifteen years ago I noted that CNN and TV shows out of Hollywood were the primary exposure to "America" most of the world got. And what an ugly, unfair, one-sided, twisted and hateful image it is. I would hate us too. No, this article is hateful and highly biased. Go ahead, call me a racist if you must. It'll only add to the nonsense.

ams6110 11y ago
We've always had people who make their living on causes. Maybe they first got involved out of genuine concerns but at some point, to paraphrase Upton Sinclair, a person can't be expected to find solutions when his salary depends on the existence of the problem. Also, and related to another post[1] on the front page right now, we have the rather recent element of twitter and other social media that is deliberately manipulated to create and amplify emotional, flash-mob types of dust-ups over isolated events in order to make it appear that there is a huge systemic crisis happening. That gambit is as old as politics, but the rise of social media and the "report first, get the facts later" type of approach to "news" reporting taken by many blogs and even some previously objective media sources has made it much more efficient. ---- [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9826200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9826200
ScottBurson 11y ago
Where have you lived in the US? Edited to add: I don't read Younge as suggesting that all Americans are racists. If it were that bad, I suspect, he would have left a long time ago. And I think it's very odd to see a piece like this as an attempt "to destroy the US from the inside". I think he is pointing out real problems that affect a lot of people, and that we need to deal with. To me that's constructive criticism; why you read it as something else is not clear to me. Here's another post along the same lines (though much shorter), by Bernard Tyson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141204174020-261404895-it-s-time-to-revolutionize-race-relations https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141204174020-261404895-it-s...
underwater 11y ago
Perhaps the reason we can't have a discussion is because you post rambling meta-commentary complaining about HN, insult your audience, and then post unrelated rant-ish statements complaints about left leaning media.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  Nope, it's mostly because some in the HN audience fail to recognize "Emperor Has no Clothes" situations mostly due to indoctrination and a refusal to truly think things through. It is astounding to see how otherwise intelligent people fall pray to some of the most obvious ideological manipulation. I can only ascribe it to youth and lack of life experience. I mean, here we are actually lending credence to the idea that the US is a racist society, when in reality, the vast majority of Americans are not. At all. This is utter nonsense promulgated by political actors that benefit greately from minorities, racial and ethic groups being angry at "America". Having these groups remain angry, poor and disenfranchised is a strategic political goal aimed at creating large voting blocks. After elections they are dropped on their heads because improving their standing in life would lose them votes. This is sick. And this isn't limited to the US. Your profile says you work at Facebook. If this country is overwhelmingly racist, how many of your coworkers would you say are racist? 50%? 25%? 10%? I mean, you have over 10,000 coworkers from all walks of life. Surely there are a bunch of fucking racists in there since the USA is such a racist nation, right? How about at Apple? Google? Tesla? SpaceX? Surely Microsoft, don't you think? No, your shit doesn't stink. The racists have are "those" people. Over there. The old couple living on a farm who own three shotguns. The fucker who watches Fox News, she is a racist, yeah, every las one of them! Or is it more likely that the correct explanation is that racists (who are despicable pieces of shit) might be just as abundant as rapists, child molestors, murderers or criminal thugs. In other words a very small segment of human manure that is the sad reality in any society. The vast majority of the people in this country are good honorable people. You, your parents, siblings, extended family, circle of friends, their families and friends, etc. Chances are most of them are great people who don't hate anyone and would not hurt a fly. Yet here we are lending legitimacy a pile of bullshit pushed forward by a sick ideology that uses people like pawns for political gain. If I am wrong, please, pray tell, how many people in your family and life are racist? Surely your family, friends and coworkers are no different on average from similar circles around the nation. You see, when you slow down to think a bit and bring things down to a relatable level the perpective is quite different. Does racism exist? Of course. Is it rampant? Of course not?
bruceb 11y ago
HN isn't Gawker. One or two people saying another person is racist isn't some group mob burying a poster. I agree that some people in other countries have a warped view of America based on movies and news. That being said I suggest viewing news from many different news sources such as Al Jazeera, Russia Today, NHK, etc. Gives a more rounded perspective than just watching Fox news or CNN.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  I completely agree with you on getting news from more than one source. The problem is most people don't do that at all OR they consume multiple sources that push the same ideology. At home we speak five languages (to varying degrees of fluency) and end-up consuming news, information, movies and tv shows from many cultural vantage points. This is, of course, the exception in the US, where a good chunk of the population has very narrow cultural and ideological exposure. And this is dangerous because it creates a population that is easy to manipulate through media carpet bombing with ideology. This last point is one of the biggest problems I have with US media and Hollywood. They've mutated into ideology delivery vectors. I am sick and tired of taking my kids to see a movie only to be exposed to two hours of pushing an ideology. Or, news and commentary shows blatantly pounding away promoting ideological extremes. This is very wrong. Hordes of people have their opinion formed by the relentless messaging. And this is true regardless of ideology. Even if one agrees with the ideologies being pushed an intelligent person would take pause at this. Why? Because the mechanism can be used to manipulate the masses to nefarious extremes. The first thing any dictator does it take control of the media and the messages. While we don't have a dictatorship we do have media that is complicit in creating a frenzy around racial, ethnic and minority issues that is very, very far from the truth. America is not a racist nation. True racists are probably an insignificant percentage of the population. There might be race related biases or profiling but that is not racism. BTW, "racism" doesn't mean "whites who are racist towards blacks". Racism occurs with all groups and in all directions to different degrees. Having a multicultural family and having lived in multiple countries in my life I've seen this first-hand everywhere, not just the US. Jews prefer to hire Jews. So do Arabs, Mexicans and Chinese. Japanese don't like to work with Koreans or Chinese, etc. This isn't always racist, it can be pragmatic when culture, language and behavioral constructs are considered. For example, this will never happen in the US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFXi1cM9vO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFXi1cM9vO0 We are different enough culturally that it is simply impossible to even imagine this. Certain cultural groups would actually consider bowing to the train and passengers to be demeaning. Most everyone would consider having to work that fast and hard to be abusive. Unions would certainly not allow it. In fact, unions would pretty much guarantee that we'd have almost exactly the opposite results as what is seen in this video. I have a lot of experience working with and around unions. Don't get me started on that one. And so, to an ethnic group used to a certain way of thinking, speaking, behaving and relating to each other "Americans" can seem like inconsiderate uneducated brutes. When they live here and live in relatively closed clusters they develop this idea of "we are better than them", where "them" is everyone who isn't of their ethnicity or "Americans" in general. I studied Aikido and Karate in Japan for a while. In those highly traditional groups the way we behave can be highly offensive. Something as simple as crossing your arms or speaking when you are not spoken to can be seen as grave offenses. Is this racism? Nope. Not at all. I don't see it that way. It's probably a natural result of the way culture and customs are constructed and adhered to. So, the stereotype of "blacks are loud" or "asians show no emotions" or "Jews only care about money" or whatever are simple-minded ways for people to classify others. Is there a degree of truth to them? I am not going there except to say that there are distinct behavioral patterns in different cultural groups that are very real and identifiable. You are not going to see a typical "American" wedding result in people making Arab yells as they exit the church. You'll never see coworkers kissing each other on the cheek every day as you might see in places like Buenos Aires. These things are real. They are not racism. When people see certain behaviors played out on TV and carpet-bombed all over the place 24/7 their view of a group might be reinforced or modified. Seeing young black males burn down everything in sight in a town and loot stores right and left does not do the black community any good at all. It is quite damaging. And it could take years to repair that damage. This is why it angers me to see our leaders use these events for political gain. They see them as opportunities to solidify voting blocks. They don't care that they are destroying lives. They don't care that feeding these flames will result in the black CEO of a large US corporation experiencing someone being apprehensive about crossing paths with him while walking down the street. That's not racism. That's politicians and the media manipulating the population to create a result that is of benefit to them. Doing damage to these communities is to their benefit. They ultimately do not care about these groups at all, they are tools they use to support their political agenda. And they are really good at doing this. I wish more people would stop, think and realize that we are all being played like finely tuned instruments. It's sad to see so much blindness. It's sad to see cargo cult that fails to see that the emperor has no clothes. Asking for an ID when paying by credit card or demanding that people who vote in the US prove they are US Citizens isn't racist. Yet these and other situations are being paraded around as racism to feed the fire. Is racism real? Of course it is. Yet it is not as rampant and tv as politicians would want you to believe. I don't know any racists. Do you?

ams6110 11y ago

We've always had people who make their living on causes. Maybe they first got involved out of genuine concerns but at some point, to paraphrase Upton Sinclair, a person can't be expected to find solutions when his salary depends on the existence of the problem. Also, and related to another post[1] on the front page right now, we have the rather recent element of twitter and other social media that is deliberately manipulated to create and amplify emotional, flash-mob types of dust-ups over isolated events in order to make it appear that there is a huge systemic crisis happening. That gambit is as old as politics, but the rise of social media and the "report first, get the facts later" type of approach to "news" reporting taken by many blogs and even some previously objective media sources has made it much more efficient. ---- [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9826200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9826200

ScottBurson 11y ago

Where have you lived in the US? Edited to add: I don't read Younge as suggesting that all Americans are racists. If it were that bad, I suspect, he would have left a long time ago. And I think it's very odd to see a piece like this as an attempt "to destroy the US from the inside". I think he is pointing out real problems that affect a lot of people, and that we need to deal with. To me that's constructive criticism; why you read it as something else is not clear to me. Here's another post along the same lines (though much shorter), by Bernard Tyson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141204174020-261404895-it-s-time-to-revolutionize-race-relations https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141204174020-261404895-it-s...

underwater 11y ago

Perhaps the reason we can't have a discussion is because you post rambling meta-commentary complaining about HN, insult your audience, and then post unrelated rant-ish statements complaints about left leaning media.

rebootthesystem 11y ago
Nope, it's mostly because some in the HN audience fail to recognize "Emperor Has no Clothes" situations mostly due to indoctrination and a refusal to truly think things through. It is astounding to see how otherwise intelligent people fall pray to some of the most obvious ideological manipulation. I can only ascribe it to youth and lack of life experience. I mean, here we are actually lending credence to the idea that the US is a racist society, when in reality, the vast majority of Americans are not. At all. This is utter nonsense promulgated by political actors that benefit greately from minorities, racial and ethic groups being angry at "America". Having these groups remain angry, poor and disenfranchised is a strategic political goal aimed at creating large voting blocks. After elections they are dropped on their heads because improving their standing in life would lose them votes. This is sick. And this isn't limited to the US. Your profile says you work at Facebook. If this country is overwhelmingly racist, how many of your coworkers would you say are racist? 50%? 25%? 10%? I mean, you have over 10,000 coworkers from all walks of life. Surely there are a bunch of fucking racists in there since the USA is such a racist nation, right? How about at Apple? Google? Tesla? SpaceX? Surely Microsoft, don't you think? No, your shit doesn't stink. The racists have are "those" people. Over there. The old couple living on a farm who own three shotguns. The fucker who watches Fox News, she is a racist, yeah, every las one of them! Or is it more likely that the correct explanation is that racists (who are despicable pieces of shit) might be just as abundant as rapists, child molestors, murderers or criminal thugs. In other words a very small segment of human manure that is the sad reality in any society. The vast majority of the people in this country are good honorable people. You, your parents, siblings, extended family, circle of friends, their families and friends, etc. Chances are most of them are great people who don't hate anyone and would not hurt a fly. Yet here we are lending legitimacy a pile of bullshit pushed forward by a sick ideology that uses people like pawns for political gain. If I am wrong, please, pray tell, how many people in your family and life are racist? Surely your family, friends and coworkers are no different on average from similar circles around the nation. You see, when you slow down to think a bit and bring things down to a relatable level the perpective is quite different. Does racism exist? Of course. Is it rampant? Of course not?

bruceb 11y ago

HN isn't Gawker. One or two people saying another person is racist isn't some group mob burying a poster. I agree that some people in other countries have a warped view of America based on movies and news. That being said I suggest viewing news from many different news sources such as Al Jazeera, Russia Today, NHK, etc. Gives a more rounded perspective than just watching Fox news or CNN.

rebootthesystem 11y ago
I completely agree with you on getting news from more than one source. The problem is most people don't do that at all OR they consume multiple sources that push the same ideology. At home we speak five languages (to varying degrees of fluency) and end-up consuming news, information, movies and tv shows from many cultural vantage points. This is, of course, the exception in the US, where a good chunk of the population has very narrow cultural and ideological exposure. And this is dangerous because it creates a population that is easy to manipulate through media carpet bombing with ideology. This last point is one of the biggest problems I have with US media and Hollywood. They've mutated into ideology delivery vectors. I am sick and tired of taking my kids to see a movie only to be exposed to two hours of pushing an ideology. Or, news and commentary shows blatantly pounding away promoting ideological extremes. This is very wrong. Hordes of people have their opinion formed by the relentless messaging. And this is true regardless of ideology. Even if one agrees with the ideologies being pushed an intelligent person would take pause at this. Why? Because the mechanism can be used to manipulate the masses to nefarious extremes. The first thing any dictator does it take control of the media and the messages. While we don't have a dictatorship we do have media that is complicit in creating a frenzy around racial, ethnic and minority issues that is very, very far from the truth. America is not a racist nation. True racists are probably an insignificant percentage of the population. There might be race related biases or profiling but that is not racism. BTW, "racism" doesn't mean "whites who are racist towards blacks". Racism occurs with all groups and in all directions to different degrees. Having a multicultural family and having lived in multiple countries in my life I've seen this first-hand everywhere, not just the US. Jews prefer to hire Jews. So do Arabs, Mexicans and Chinese. Japanese don't like to work with Koreans or Chinese, etc. This isn't always racist, it can be pragmatic when culture, language and behavioral constructs are considered. For example, this will never happen in the US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFXi1cM9vO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFXi1cM9vO0 We are different enough culturally that it is simply impossible to even imagine this. Certain cultural groups would actually consider bowing to the train and passengers to be demeaning. Most everyone would consider having to work that fast and hard to be abusive. Unions would certainly not allow it. In fact, unions would pretty much guarantee that we'd have almost exactly the opposite results as what is seen in this video. I have a lot of experience working with and around unions. Don't get me started on that one. And so, to an ethnic group used to a certain way of thinking, speaking, behaving and relating to each other "Americans" can seem like inconsiderate uneducated brutes. When they live here and live in relatively closed clusters they develop this idea of "we are better than them", where "them" is everyone who isn't of their ethnicity or "Americans" in general. I studied Aikido and Karate in Japan for a while. In those highly traditional groups the way we behave can be highly offensive. Something as simple as crossing your arms or speaking when you are not spoken to can be seen as grave offenses. Is this racism? Nope. Not at all. I don't see it that way. It's probably a natural result of the way culture and customs are constructed and adhered to. So, the stereotype of "blacks are loud" or "asians show no emotions" or "Jews only care about money" or whatever are simple-minded ways for people to classify others. Is there a degree of truth to them? I am not going there except to say that there are distinct behavioral patterns in different cultural groups that are very real and identifiable. You are not going to see a typical "American" wedding result in people making Arab yells as they exit the church. You'll never see coworkers kissing each other on the cheek every day as you might see in places like Buenos Aires. These things are real. They are not racism. When people see certain behaviors played out on TV and carpet-bombed all over the place 24/7 their view of a group might be reinforced or modified. Seeing young black males burn down everything in sight in a town and loot stores right and left does not do the black community any good at all. It is quite damaging. And it could take years to repair that damage. This is why it angers me to see our leaders use these events for political gain. They see them as opportunities to solidify voting blocks. They don't care that they are destroying lives. They don't care that feeding these flames will result in the black CEO of a large US corporation experiencing someone being apprehensive about crossing paths with him while walking down the street. That's not racism. That's politicians and the media manipulating the population to create a result that is of benefit to them. Doing damage to these communities is to their benefit. They ultimately do not care about these groups at all, they are tools they use to support their political agenda. And they are really good at doing this. I wish more people would stop, think and realize that we are all being played like finely tuned instruments. It's sad to see so much blindness. It's sad to see cargo cult that fails to see that the emperor has no clothes. Asking for an ID when paying by credit card or demanding that people who vote in the US prove they are US Citizens isn't racist. Yet these and other situations are being paraded around as racism to feed the fire. Is racism real? Of course it is. Yet it is not as rampant and tv as politicians would want you to believe. I don't know any racists. Do you?