[MathCodeLove]

Not Chinese, I also care. That comment is an example of subtle racism.

Image the following comment: "You better buy a good bike lock, else you're at risk of having it stolen by a black man."

A comment like the one above would spark near universal outrage at the commenter, and with good reason. It's racist, and the original comment here is the same. Unnecessarily racist.

[tossmeout]

You're incorrect. Chinese is a nationality, not a race, which means this isn't racism. An accurate description would be that this is stereotyping on the basis of nationality.

As such, a more accurate comparison than "black man stealing a bike" would be to something like a "Nigerian scammer," which is an archetype I don't think most of us have a problem with. Other examples I never see complaints about: "Russian hacker," "American imperialist," etc.

[komali2]

> Chinese is a nationality, not a race,

This isn't really true on it's own, and besides, isn't even a good faith interpretation. In an America where rural Asian-ethnicity people are facing discrimination because of covid being called "Chinese Virus," I think it's bold to claim that the concept of China as a country and Chinese as a racial heritage are not conflated.

[tossmeout]

> This isn't really true on it's own

How is this not true? Genuinely curious.

> In an America where rural Asian-ethnicity people are facing discrimination because of covid being called "Chinese Virus…"

That's because of the specific context of who is saying "Chinese Virus," who their audience is, and why they're saying it.

This context is different. Nobody on Hacker News who encounters the phrase "Chinese hacker" is going to suddenly start discriminating against Chinese people, any more than we discriminate against Nigerians despite the fact that "Nigerian scammer" is a cliche in tech circles.

[komali2]

> How is this not true? Genuinely curious.

I'd delve deeper beyond my comment because there's a lot of reasons I'm not the greatest source, not the least of which I'm just some white american dude with a comically terrible grasp of ONE dialect/language of Chinese and a wikipedia sourced knowledge of Chinese history.

Here's my understanding: Chinese can refer to many things that have their origin in what we call Mainland China these days. Chinese Language. Chinese History. Chinese Food. Chinese territory. Chinese government. Chinese people (citizens). Chinese people (ethnicity). The word is super-descriptive in that way, because that region, for three thousand years, was "homogenous" in a convenient way for propagandists and the history writers throughout time.

But if you delve in, you can see that it's truly absurd to refer to anything as Chinese. Chinese language - well, sure, Mandarin, right? But only because the seat of government is in Beijing, and it just picked that flavor. Nearly every city in the borders of the PRC have their own distinct dialect, or straight up separate language. The written system was invented in the 1950s based off a historical system that didn't just write Chinese, it wrote Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, and also every language in between (Guangzhounese aka Cantonese, Shanghainese, Japanese sub-languages, etc). Which is "Chinese writing?" Which language is "Chinese language?" And what about when the Huns were around? What about when the Mongolians ruled it all? Was that "Chinese?" (a PRC censor would say ABSOLUTELY NOT and probably say you were treasonous to the harmony of Chinese culture for even suggesting it).

Chinese food - different in every city.

Chinese government - which one, the Democratic one that is seated in Taiwan, or the Autocratic one seated in Beijing? Or the City State of Hong Kong? Or the dead kingdoms?

I'm trying to indicate here why trying to say "Chinese is a nationality, not race" is a silly thing to say when Chinese can mean so many things that so say it's "not" something is a hard thing to prove. On top of all this, walk up to your average American and say "Chinese" and these subtleties are completely lost - EVERYONE knows what you mean by Chinese, well, it's Orange Chicken and Communism! That's what the American education system teaches us, after all, or at least, what it taught me growing up in rural America.

Ask Chinese people, or Taiwanese people (which I have done), what it means to be a Chinese person, and you'll likely get a very careful separation of the concept of Chinese person from the PRC. Many Taiwanese people would consider themselves Chinese if they had the opportunity to ensure the distinction was being made that this didn't mean they were pro-Beijing, simply that their history and culture shared or was identical to many people that happened to be born in Beijing.

> Nobody on Hacker News who encounters the phrase "Chinese hacker" is going to suddenly start discriminating against Chinese people,

Yesterday there was a thread about the experience of Black programmers in tech and I got into some discussions there that have destroyed my ability to believe in a sentence like this. There are avowed racists on this site. I went through the history of one who danced the blade well enough to occasionally fire off comments about how African people are genetically predisposed to lower IQ, without getting flagged/banned. This is a website like any other, a good one with better rules and moderation, yes, but an internet breeding ground anyway.

[wolco]

Better censorship is what you are after? A website to censor things along the lines of how you think? A website that will protect you from racists? I heard reddit is trying really hard these days to be the censorship hot spot perhaps take a look.

The original point was Chinese are not a race they are a nationality.

You both are wrong.

Chinese are not a race. Chinese are not a nationality.

The Han Chinese are a nationality. China is made up of many nationalities.

The important story now is the government of China is forcing birth control on a minority population called the Uighurs.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia...

Save your outrage for something meanful. Real minority populations are being oppressed and your worried about your fellow Americans insulting them more by blocking ip ranges that China owns that military style hacking is coming from? If that's the case I would suggest you care more about trying to make yourself look a certain way (by putting other Americans in their place) than helping minority populations in great need. The next generation is watching, they will demand real action vs virtual signaling.

[komali2]

> Better censorship is what you are after? A website to censor things along the lines of how you think? A website that will protect you from racists?

Deplatforming racists isn't censorship.

> Save your outrage for something meanful.

Big words coming from someone that didn't mention that Black Lives Matter even once in their comment, and also didn't do anything to bring more attention to North Korean concentration camps, and hasn't even provided a donation link to an African farming initiative. See where I'm going with this?

> Real minority populations are being oppressed

Like ethnically Chinese people in the USA, or really just Asian people in American in general that get lumped under a random Chinese umbrella, for example?

> they will demand real action vs virtual signaling.

What's your point? What is anybody on this website doing besides "virtue signalling?" We're talking. That involves our virtues being put on display. Despite what conservative detractors might think, saying "you're virtue signalling" doesn't automatically win a debate any more than calling someone an SJW does. Yup, I have virtues, yup, I'm telling you what they are. Yup, I like social justice. You don't?

[jayparth]

I think most of us agree that stereotyping and prejudices are not desirable, regardless if it's by nationality, race, sex, gender, etc.

[tossmeout]

Sure, but there are degrees of offensiveness, and racism is a great deal higher on that totem pole than nationalist stereotypes (archetypes, really) like "Mexican druglord," "Chinese/Russian hacker," and "Nigerian scam," etc.

IMO, if one can't make the point that something shouldn't be said without inaccurately labeling it as racism, then one shouldn't make the point. The only thing they're accomplishing is watering down the negative connotations of racism.