[anewguy99]

This isn't the first time that I've seen anti-white racism on Hacker News[1]. The emotion behind theories of class privilege gets separated from its intellectual content, and people think it is okay to say things like this to their fellow hackers. It isn't.

[1] For example, a previous comment thread blamed Elon Musk's success on the fact that he is a white male (as if every white male were a billionaire). I didn't comment at the time because I was logged-in to my main account, and defending white people against racism is un-PC. But I do worry that this kind of attack is accepted here and goes uncommented.

[TheZenPsycho]

repeat after me. there is no such thing as reverse racism.

By comparing this (oh no, someone called me white on a blog, and said I was successful) to the experiences of oppressed minorities, belittles history, it belittles their experiences. and it makes you look like a spoiled privileged white boy.

[jlgreco]

anewguy99 did not say anything about "reverse racism". He was talking about racism.

[TheZenPsycho]

"reverse racism" is what it is called when someone claims that someone is being "racist" against the privileged majority. It's nonsense. It doesn't make sense that there is systematic oppression against ... the cohort that is undeniably and unshakably in power. If you insult someone for being white, yes it might hurt their feelings. Do the same to an unprivileged minority and it is potentially life threatening. There is no comparison.

[jlgreco]

> systematic oppression

> Do the same to an unprivileged minority and it is potentially life threatening. There is no comparison.

Racism must be systematic in order to be 'real' racism? Instances of racism must be comparable to one another in severity in order to be 'real' racism?

These implications of severity and comparability are entirely your own invention. anewguy99 was not suggesting anything of the sort, you have assumed that he was because your pet definition of 'racism' requires that those implications be present when the word is used.

If you want to use another definition than the casual/traditional one, that is fine. But don't expect others to take your pet definition seriously, and don't expect to extract legitimate meaning from what others are saying when those others are using the common meaning of the word.

[TheZenPsycho]

See: Derailing. When instances of oppression occur, the most important thing to do is not point out the hypocrisies of the victim. It's not to whine about the oppression that YOU have to deal with yourself. It's not to compare your minor suffering to their systematic bullying. Everyone suffers, everyone has their own battles. Now is not the time to dredge it up as if it's more important, or just as important as what is happening here.

No, name calling is not racism. not on its own. It must indeed be backed by a system of oppression. A system of belief about the inherent qualities of a particular race. You apparently believe that all you need to do is call someone a name to be racist. It is your definition of racism that is skewed and uncommon, not mine.

[rjknight]

I'm seriously not trying to undermine you here, but there's a massive empathy failure across this entire thread and I think this needs to be pointed out.

What you mean when you say "racism" is not what the parent means. The dictionary definition[1] of racism is actually quite broad and basically says that you're both right - the word "racism" can be used to describe a systematic system of oppression of racial minorities, but it can also be used to describe any instance where race is used as a discriminating factor.

You're not going to persuade very many people by simply asserting that the word means what you think it means, when other reasonable people could disagree about that meaning. You'll end up in pointless semantic arguments, and if you're doing this on HN then you'll be arguing with people who can make some very nuanced arguments about semantics.

There is a whole discourse about race, privilege, oppression, gender and so on which has acquired its own vocabulary, often by applying very specific meanings to words which have historically broader meanings, and which places emphasis on systematic or aggregate effects of oppression/privilege. Communities which are not steeped in this tradition do not share these word usages or these emphases; the average HN user is going to see a reference to "...white dudes..." as "racist" because it's a phrase that invokes race and gender when these factors are otherwise irrelevant, and they're going to focus on the individual case rather than where this fits in the aggregate sum of all racism/sexism across humanity.

In other words, your average HNer is probably follows deontological ethics[2] and is likely to evaluate individual instances of behaviour according to general rules. If invoking race is bad, invoking race in relation to white people is therefore bad, and therefore the "white dudes" comment is bad. You can't easily argue (to a deontologist) that it's "not racism" because this means that sometimes the "rules" don't apply.

Now, I'm not saying who is right or wrong, only that it's something that reasonable people can disagree about. I doubt that there is a right or wrong. My belief is that it should not be impossible to agree on how to tackle discrimination, but in order to engage everyone in doing so we'll need to appeal to a range of different ethical viewpoints, and trying to argue that the other person's ethics are simply wrong is unlikely to be persuasive.

[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/racism?s=t [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics

[anewguy99]

Dehumanizing individuals by identifying them with some genetically defined class is always wrong, even if the individual is a member of a class that it is PC to hate on.