Why People Feel Like Victims • Hacker News Board

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#261

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:42 AM UTC

havernator wrote: post #145

kodah wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on where you live in the US, this actually did happen. I'm one of the people who bought into that crap.

White "Elder millennial" here, who grew up in red states with a Boomer dad who tried really hard not to drop the N-word in anger around me, but I still heard it a couple times. The "programming" worked on me great . I was all primed for this post-hate, post-racial society. I believed it. Legitimately. I was dedicated to judging people by the content of their character. Men, women. White, black. Whatever. IDK how it w…

[deleted]

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#262

Post by SilverRed » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:43 AM UTC

hyko wrote: post #231

WTF is this shit? Blame the victim hood ? If you’re living in an unjust world, the solution might not actually come from within; perhaps we could modify it somehow? Don’t bet the farm on findings from psychology.

Telling someone they are a victim and there is nothing they can possibly do to better their situation is not a helpful or productive action. You end up with entire generations who believe there is no point trying because its all pointless since they are a victim to something that happened generations ago.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#263

Post by Thorrez » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:54 AM UTC

qchris wrote: post #250

breakyerself wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This list is more tailored to highlight systemic racism in criminal justice, but the economic side is just as important. There are much higher levels of poverty in black communities and that can be directly tied to the fact that in many ways black people were systematically prevented from building wealth for most of US history while white people were provided trillions of dollars in government subsidized economic opp…

Is there a way I'm missing to save comments on HN besides also commenting on them so they can be revisited later? I'd like to save this. This is one of the best meta-summaries I've ever seen, on any topic.

There are 3 ways to save a comment within HN: comment, upvote (your list of upvoted comments is visible to you only), favorite (your list of favorited comments is publicly visible). To favorite a comment you have to visit that comment specifically (click on its timestamp).

There are of course other ways to save comments, such as bookmarking with your browser or other bookmark applications.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#264

Post by dr_dshiv » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:54 AM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #137

breakyerself wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can debate all day long about the merits of explaining systemic racism to young black kids vs keeping them ignorant about it. However the people ignoring the facts are the ones who deny systemic racism exists. It may be better for children of color to be ignorant about it, but certainly not adults of any racial background.

True. I don't see how you can possibly deny the existence of systemic racism in a country where all the top educational institutions actively discriminate against asians.

What do you think about Affirmative Action? Is it systemic racism or systemic antiracism?

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#265

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:55 AM UTC

qchris wrote: post #250

breakyerself wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This list is more tailored to highlight systemic racism in criminal justice, but the economic side is just as important. There are much higher levels of poverty in black communities and that can be directly tied to the fact that in many ways black people were systematically prevented from building wealth for most of US history while white people were provided trillions of dollars in government subsidized economic opp…

Is there a way I'm missing to save comments on HN besides also commenting on them so they can be revisited later? I'd like to save this. This is one of the best meta-summaries I've ever seen, on any topic.

[deleted]

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#266

Post by DoreenMichele » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:56 AM UTC

bourgwaletariat wrote: post #255

DoreenMichele wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a woman and in some sense I had sort of a sheltered childhood. I was one of the top students in my graduating high school class and I had a lot of firsthand experience with being taken seriously, having my opinions respected and feeling just as entitled as anyone else to speak my mind, etc. And then I became an adult and life did not go how I thought it would and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what we…

> long after it's become obvious that the person in question is simply abusive and taking advantage. Do you consciously notice this change in your own perspective? In real time? I only do this in retrospect. I can look back and see the thing that should have been obvious, but wasn't at the time. All the red flags. I have found my ability to detect them has accelerated and my tolerance for them has declined. We are su…

I'm older than I used to be. I've gotten better at figuring it out "in real time" and that's been enormously helpful. Life is better than it used to be.

I feel like my gender still contributes to some people wanting to play the sympathy card and justify their crap. I think they actually know better and they know it's BS but they think I will fall for it anyway for whatever reason.

It gets tiresome to deal with people like that and I think my next big development stage is getting better at shutting people down and finding some way to signal "That's a hard no and stop bothering me. You know better."

Some people will just keep pushing on the slightest excuse or opening and they have very selective hearing where if 98 percent of what you say is no and 2 percent is something that could be twisted into a justification, they are all over that 2 percent. And I think the fact that they are clearly being abusive at that point is on them but as a purely tactical thing I am trying to figure out how to deny such cretins that slight opening.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#267

Post by missedthecue » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:57 AM UTC

tasogare wrote: post #236

breakyerself wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Systemic racism isn't intentionally deceptive. It's self explanatory, but just like anything the more you investigate the more layered and multifaceted it becomes. For me it's 3 main things. 1. The way historical oppression can set a group behind another group even after any specific policy has been repealed. Poverty is often a cycle that can go on indefinitely for generations especially depending on things like upwa…

"Systemic racism" is a conspiracy theory. It is a very convenient term because it is not disprovable easily yet allow to make a whole group of people responsible to all the problems of another one.

It is true that many people have attributed a wide range issues to it, on offentimes shaky reasoning, but there are also very clear examples of codified rules and laws keeping minority races down, for instance the minimum wage.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#268

Post by jokoon » Fri, May 07, 2021, 5:57 AM UTC

My father told me, when I was 10, that I might have never been born if my grand parents got caught during WW2.

I take social darwinism and competition very personally and seriously. I have the most difficulty accepting social hierarchy because they remind me of people being better than others for arbitrary reasons.

I often rationalize that what happened in germany, also happens to a certain degree between human beings in normal times, and it disgusts me. I feel like eugenics won many battles, just not the war, and that if Nazism happened, it tells a lot about the human nature of people around us.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#269

Post by danShumway » Fri, May 07, 2021, 6:00 AM UTC

toomuchredbull wrote: post #256

danShumway wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other people have linked direct stats in this thread, and I encourage looking around at them. But also, just think about your theory in the abstract for a second. Less than one full generation has passed since redlining was made illegal. It's been less than 60 years since segregation was ruled illegal across the board. Do you really believe that the entirety of society has been reshaped in that amount of time and eve…

I've never been in a room on a hiring committee where they were like, you know what? let's give this white guy a chance. I have been in the room where were like, let's give this minority an extra chance literally dozens of times. I find it very hard to believe that there is an elaborate rouse being played on me personally and that despite not knowing any single person who would actively discriminate against someone,…

> and that despite not knowing any single person who would actively discriminate against someone

I've met plenty of people who I believe would actively discriminate against someone because of their race, and I'm an asocial white person who avoids public spaces. I just replied to a comment on this very page that openly argued that unequal outcomes in Black communities were the result of biological differences. I don't know what word to use for the belief that Blacks are biologically inferior other than the word 'racist'. I can't speak to anyone else's experiences, maybe you've been fortunate to interact with better communities than me, but I don't personally think this stuff is particularly rare.

If we're going off of what is and isn't hard to believe, I don't find systemic racism to be far-fetched. There was, objectively, an omnipresent, elaborate rouse being played on Black communities for the entirety of American history leading up to at least the civil rights act. That part isn't debatable. So for me, the wild conclusion to draw is that after >180 years of targeted oppression, everyone involved in those systems immediately vanished after a law was passed.

60 years is not enough time to fix wealth gaps in a preexisting neighborhood, not unless we take active steps to fix them. It's just really obvious to me that the reason many ghettos exist is because we built them; there's records of banks deliberately choosing not to invest in those areas because of race. We never did any kind of restitution plan or went back and gave those communities the investment money we denied them earlier. Those areas didn't immediately become rich or get better schools just because a law was passed.

But if you want to look at statistics instead of anecdotes, this is also something that has been studied a lot if you're willing to put in the effort to research it. There's a lot that people can debate around systemic racism, but at the very least, it's pretty hard not to acknowledge that there are unequal outcomes happening. I know you saw breakyerself's comment, do you think that none of those stats are worth being concerned about?

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#270

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, May 07, 2021, 6:05 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #210

anigbrowl wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the OP might not have intended it this way, that's also a formula for perpetuating any 'difficult circumstances' that happen to be profitable for others. A simple example which was in the news this week due to a Supreme court case: crack sentencing disparities. You made a bad life choice and sold 50 grams of cocaine and got caught, you might go away for 2 years and then turn your life around. But if you sold 5…

FWIW, I strongly disagree with harsh sentences for drug crimes. I also strongly disagree with harsh sentences for juveniles - note that I qualified my statements with "adults" not children.

But you're not in charge, so having nice attitudes or empathy isn't really helpful to anyone. What is helpful is to acknowledge up front that those kind of problems exist rather than being so aggressively upbeat.

Your approach to dealing with life is valid, but you push it so aggressively it makes you sound like one of those yoga evangelists who is so into their thing that they lose sight of how it's not the answer to every problem.