Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by smegel 3615 days ago
> Born white and male in today’s world I won the lottery without having a clue.

Here we go. (actually I stopped reading).

1 comments

There's a couple comments to this effect. Why? It comes across as being unwilling to consider ideas at all.
Probably because Germans have won the "German lottery", Japanese have won the Japanese lottery, People from Syria "lost" the lottery. Many advanced nations in a kind of way "won" the lottery for their people. Many Americans believe Europeans won the lottery vis a vis the US because they think things are much better and more fair there. On the other hand, people from poor countries think America is a lottery and put great efforts at crossing the border...

It also has a "guilt" aspect to it.

It's a combination of a refrain we hear from people with specific views (too repetitive), an indication of stronger-than-average bias on the topic, and an accusation. For a white minority like me, it's also very false given the situation reverses completely in an area where Blacks are majority and control everything. I've always felt cursed far as societal circumstances rather than blessed by being white, male, and intellectual. Our whole childhood and then much job seeking is an uphill battle where I empathize with racial or gender minorities in other areas. And those I was in as they still existed.

So, these kinds of comments have at least four ways of causing an instant eye roll by my count. Two of which, repetitive and bias parts, aren't really caused by sexism topic so much as nature of people following sites like this on a regular basis and how we respond to certain things.

I've considered and thoroughly rejected that idea. If you choose to see the world through the lens of privilege and group grievances, my opinion of you plummets. That kind of thinking pushes us apart instead of bringing us together.

Do you have any fucking idea how unfair it is to discriminate against people, people who might have had very difficult lives, because they were born a certain way and share gonads and pigmentation with people long dead who do things that don't fit today's social mores?

If you choose the see people as group members first and individuals second, I want nothing to do with you.

Because it equates being white with privilege when it's more about socio-economic factors.

A white Eastern European probably faced plenty of disadvantage.

A white farmer in zimbabwe probably faced plenty of disadvantage.

The ancestors of someone of Irish heritage have probably faced plenty of institutional racism but managed to overcome it.