[zozbot234]

You're of course correct that mentioning so-called "race" as a legitimate category at all is extremely divisive outside of a very U.S.-centric and very intellectually-niche discourse, but there's also a sensible norm against injecting any kind of politics in quasi-professional contexts where people should be able to cooperate seamlessly across political, cultural, and intellectual divides.

These tiresome and uninteresting remarks about U.S.-centric political causes, no matter how worthwhile these causes may be on their own terms, stand out as an eminently avoidable reminder of uncomfortable social conflict.

[jfengel]

Eminently avoidable as long as you're not wearing the color of your skin out in public.

That's really the crux of all of this. There are people for whom racism is an unavoidable, daily issue. Yet there's no way to bring that up without making people uncomfortable. After being told, "You can't talk about it here; you can't talk about it there", people will eventually say, "Fine, I'm going to talk about it everywhere, because no place seems to be any worse than any other."

I personally am very conflict-averse, and much prefer it when people remain very polite. But reading HN in particular, I've come to realize that a lot of people are still going to insist that racism isn't a problem in the US and demand that others not talk about it. They assume that if they're not seeing it then it's not a problem for anybody -- or worse, they're deliberately inflicting it and hiding among those who are merely obtuse.

I find that so offensive that it overrides even my conflict aversion.

[zozbot234]

> Yet there's no way to bring that up without making people uncomfortable.

I'm pretty sure that there's plenty of ways to do that. What turns people off to the real, actual problems is casual and unhelpful claims like "the U.S. is an inherently racist/white supremacist country" or the like. What that looks like to outsiders is folks who want to seem like they're meaningfully talking about real issues that some might face, but all they manage to do is to be divisive and stir up pointless conflict for the heck of it. At that point, tuning out is a sensible response.

[jfengel]

That sounds to me like an excuse to not engage.

We all watched a man be murdered last year, and HN was filled with people making excuses for the murderer. He was convicted only because every single person watched it; others whose murders weren't caught on film escaped punishment. Much less the numerous others that are less than murder.

When people can't even agree that a murder in front of their eyes was a bad thing, I'm going to say out loud that something is deeply wrong. If that seems like a pointless conflict to you, then it's going to keep happening and I'm going to be shocked that I have to say to your face that it's bad.

If your aggravation about their time offends you more than the injustice done to them, then you know why the tone will keep getting more aggravating.