[noofen]

> Essentially all American white people continue to materially benefit from a long history of systematic racism in America [0], including slavery, state-mandated and state-tolerated post-slavery subjugation and segregation. Heck, many living white Americans are direct beneficiaries of overt discrimination in public programs, not to mention systematic, coordinated private discrimination.

I come from a family of poor farmers in the South. I've done some genealogical digging, and thus far I've found three 16-24 year old members of my family who died in the Confederate war. We never owned slaves; service was mandatory back then, either through law or social pressure.

Approximately ~600-700,000 people died in the Civil War. This country has made sacrifices for African Americans and racial equality, more than any other country on Earth. It will never be enough.

No matter how much they give, apologize, change the rules, white Americans will never shed their "original sin." Because of my white skin, I "continue to materially benefit" from "systemic racism," and yet, where are these benefits? I come from a place riddled with opiate addicts and alcoholism. Most of the younger people don't make it out, they have to score much higher than African Americans applying to the same colleges (as do Asians).

Everyone was on board with MLK's dream of equal opportunity for all. Racial discrimination was clearly a bad idea. But, in the last 10 years or so, some people have realized that "racism" is perhaps the most powerful bludgeoning tool in the US. Now, MLK is outdated, the new movement is about racial revenge.

[monocasa]

Like a lot of poor farmers rent or share farm equipment today, poor farmers overwhelmingly rented slaves at critical points in the growing cycle in antebellum rural South. Slaves were expensive, about $100k each in today's money, so poor farmers rented them just like any farm equipment today can be rented by those that don't have the capital to buy outright. Use of slaves was ubiquitous, even among those who didn't outright own the slaves.

And I would dig into MLK's thoughts on economic justice a bit more. The white washed view ignores his belief that equality couldn't be achieved even within the bounds of capitalism. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/21/economic-e...

And I say this all as another poor white boy from the deep south.

[noofen]

What would MLK say about billionaires using identity politics to distract the working class from any kind of solidarity? That's what I believe is happening here. A lot of identity politics started after Occupy Wall Street.

A racially divided nation is profitable, and it's much harder for workers to organize.

[adamrezich]

> A lot of identity politics started after Occupy Wall Street.

still kinda nuts to me that this isn't widely acknowledged.

[monocasa]

He had choice words for white moderate push back against change for racial equality, even if it's ugly in the moment to said white moderates.

> I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

> I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

As for connections to Occupy Wall Street, my view as some one connected to the scenes is that they're orthogonal, and instead both rise from the beginnings of a generational shift in existing power structures.

[noofen]

> "One unfortunate thing about Black Power is that it gives priority to race precisely at a time when the impact of automation and other forces have made the economic question fundamental for blacks and whites alike. In this context a slogan 'Power for Poor People' would be much more appropriate than the slogan 'Black Power'."

Martin Luther King, Where Do We Go from Here, 1967

[monocasa]

In the context of 1967, he's talking about taking to the streets and creating a separate black nation in a concept called "black separatism". Nothing about that is against the idea of a company making sure that they have a diverse set of employees across the structure of the company, if we can stay on topic. Nothing about it rails against "identity politics". He's not saying, if you read the whole book (which you should, it's fantastic), that the black struggle doesn't require a different set of tactics from the poor white struggle. Only that there exists some overlap that would be served by making sure that every person in America makes a good living (in addition to other separate struggles). Particularly since black separatism in a lot of cases meant leaving the US and the society that was built using quite a bit of under(or simply un)paid labor and the wealth that belongs to all here.

I'll give you that anyone saying that _only_ corporate identity politics can solve racial issues in America is blowing smoke up your ass, but honest looks at why companies as their employees become richer trend white and male is an important component of the fight for racial equality.

[benlivengood]

> Because of my white skin, I "continue to materially benefit" from "systemic racism," and yet, where are these benefits?

Less likely to be arrested or incarcerated, less likely to be stopped or harassed by police, less likely to be denied a job or mortgage. Those are some of the major systemic privileges White people have that Black people don't in the U.S. The statistics are pretty stark.

[monocasa]

Another example: an otherwise identical resume with the first name changed from Tyrone to Brad results in 3x as many job application callbacks.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

[tester756]

Is it same thing as making fun of names? that probably every country does - e.g saying "average Joe"?

if yes, then how is this associated with racism?

[monocasa]

Read the paper, as it's not just those two names. Black names are undeniably discriminated against at the earliest points of the employment process.

This is something I like to bring up, since it's a great example of a microcosm of discrimination that it's easy to not think about. There's a black saying that blacks have to work twice as hard to get half as far, and the data seems to be remarkably close to that assessment.

[tester756]

>Less likely to be arrested or incarcerated, less likely to be stopped or harassed by police

Truly life changing benefits.

[_etyf]

>Less likely to be arrested or incarcerated, less likely to be stopped or harassed by police

Communities which experience more crime tend to interact more with law enforcement. The perpetrators of those crimes, who generally come from the same communities as their victims, tend to get arrested and incarcerated in proportion to their rate of criminality. Most murder in the US is committed by black men [1], and mainly concentrated in a handful of poor urban areas: St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, Oakland, etc. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) [2][3], widely seen as the gold standard for data on criminal victimization, confirms that violent crime is simply a larger problem in America's urabn black communities compared to the white, Asian, and Hispanic communities. Rates of arrest, conviction, and incarceration reflect this.

It is no longer the 1960s. Body cameras and smartphones are everywhere. Racism has been taboo for decades. Police know that if they unjustly shoot or abuse a black person, there's a good chance their careers and lives as free citizens will be over. The notion that law enforcement arrests and incarcertates more black people mainly due to racial antipathy, rather than that community's starkly higher rate of criminal violence, is not supported by evidence.

Tracing back through history, the forces which led to the present situation such as slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and redlining were undoubtedly racist and systemic. However, these systemic forces are now gone. They have even been replaced in many areas by systemic counter-forces, such as in university admissions [4], law school admissions [5], med school admissions [6], access to government debt relief [7], and access to the COVID vaccine [8]. The problems which bedevil many black Americans today- disproportionate poverty, broken families, drug addiction, all resultant criminality- would appear to be the results of historical inequities, not ongoing systemic racism.

[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

[2] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ncvs.html

[3] https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/revcoa18.pdf

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/affirmative-action-50-...

[5] https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/do-underrepresented-minorit...

[6] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-chart-illustrates-graphic...

[7] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/wisconsin-dairy-farmer-sue...

[8] https://khn.org/news/article/vermont-gives-blacks-and-other-...

[benlivengood]

> Communities which experience more crime tend to interact more with law enforcement. The perpetrators of those crimes, who generally come from the same communities as their victims, tend to get arrested and incarcerated in proportion to their rate of criminality.

Over-policing and racial profiling is a large cause of the increased criminality. The base rate of illegal drug use is fairly similar for all races but arrests and convictions have been much higher for Blacks and other minorities for quite some time [0][1].

> The notion that law enforcement arrests and incarcertates more black people mainly due to racial antipathy, rather than that community's starkly higher rate of criminal violence, is not supported by evidence.

Actually, traffic stops are biased against minorities despite a similar base rate of infraction [2] yet this increases the rate at which Black people interact with police which compounds the harm caused by statistically harsher reaction to infractions. Further, sentencing is influenced by race in complex ways for which there is unfortunately limited data [3] but Blacks tend to receive longer sentences and be at risk of minimum sentences [4].

The root causes of violent offenses are even more complex and although income disparity, childhood trauma/abuse/neglect, and oppression are all potential causes I haven't found good sources with solid statistics to dig into that.

[0] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rdusda.pdf [1] https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.3054... [2] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/suspect-citizens/A399F1... [3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228718440_Reassessi... preprint; 2013 publication is behind a paywall. [4] https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi%3Fartic...

[mcguire]

Flippantly, it's entirely possible for someone to be both paranoid and to have enemies.

People who are poor, and especially those that live in rural areas, face serious difficulties. But minority Americans face those same problems, plus racism.

"Everyone was on board with MLK's dream of equal opportunity for all. Racial discrimination was clearly a bad idea."

Everyone? Clearly a bad idea? I could rustle you up a big stack of people who disagree. Weirdly, many of them are poor and rural---you'd think they would see the common cause and join together, but no. On the other hand, there's the old joke about everyone having to have someone to look down on; they may be white trash, but at least they're not black.

[threatofrain]

> The statistics are pretty stark if you start with the incorrect assumption that "all men are created equal." This is, quite simply, not the case, and will never be the case. Of course, hell will freeze over before anyone accepts that "horrific" truth.

> I'm sure you recognize different dog breeds, and possibly know that certain dog breeds are known to act a certain way. This is due to generations and generations of artificial-selection in breeding. Herding breeds were designed for herding, German Shepherds were designed for herding and protection, Shitzus were designed for companionship.

> You probably wouldn't expect to see a Shitzu herding sheep. That does not, in any way, make Shitzu's "less than" a herding breed, they're just built for a different function. Shitzus evolved in environments where companionship was prioritized over herding, obviously.

> And yet, when it comes to humans, we choose not to acknowledge this fact: geography influences evolutionary pressures, and evolutionary pressures influence the humans that evolved there. You see this in culture too. Cultures evolve just like the humans that belong to them do, and it's a big soupy mess of genetics influencing behavior/culture, and behavior/culture influencing genetics.

> Expecting African Americans to act like neurotic white protestants is fundamentally racist, you're trying to shove a square peg in a round hole. Human diversity is real, except it goes beyond skin color. On average, racial groups exhibit similar behavior, across socioeconomic spectrums. Racial groups evolved in similar geographic regions, they are optimized for survival in those regions, around those people.

> "All men are created equal" is perhaps the most harmful lie ever told.

Just to fast forward the discussion for some people so they know the conclusion noofen is leading toward.

[monocasa]

Thanks. Their comment is (flagged) (dead), which is one of my least favorite parts of HN. For a site that doesn't let you delete comments after two hours because it believes you should stand by what you say, it structurally removes your most egregious comments from view. That allows dog whistle arguments to fester and comments that mistakenly go mask off to be conveniently hidden quickly from the general discourse.

[fwip]

In America, it's better to be born white and poor than black and poor. Data from field after field backs this up - economics, healthcare, policing, housing, to name a few.

Further, I don't think you can exactly call losing the Civil War "making sacrifices for racial equality." If I've got my boot on somebody's neck, and I won't take it off until pushed off by force, my skinned knee isn't a sacrifice that I made so that my victim can get up.