Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by SQueeeeeL 1067 days ago
The 'rich white people' shorthand typical serves as an obvious stand in for 'those who have the political autonomy and systemic support to fight against harmful government and corporate actions'.

The vast majority of readers can quickly make the connection between 'politically powerful' and 'rich white people' assuming they live in America. It's not on random HN commenters to be egalitarian humanities writers who deconstruct every concept

2 comments

>The vast majority of readers can quickly make the connection between 'politically powerful' and 'rich white people' assuming they live in America.

Sounds like intentional racism to me. If you want to say the rich and powerful why wouldn't you just say that instead of committing to racist comments?

The US has a long, long history of racism. It's not racist to point that out.
Saying white when you mean "rich and powerful" is intentional racism.
It also happens to be pretty factual. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 billionaires in the US. Take a guess how many of them are black.
> The vast majority of readers can quickly make the connection between 'politically powerful' and 'rich white people' assuming they live in America. It's not on random HN commenters to be egalitarian humanities writers who deconstruct every concept

They shouldn't have to make such a connection, because such sloppy racism is not in keeping with the tone of this forum, nor with any international audience.

Also it's crazy ignorant. Durango is filled with white people, all the way from poor to god level rich (their tiny town aquarium has nurse sharks in the back for the mansions around there).