Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

841–850 of 888 posts

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#841

Post by ETH_start »

dools wrote: post #678
ETH_start wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we levelled all wealth, life would be limited by the finiteness of resources, and only economic development - which this levelling would inhibit - would alleviate such scarcity. Consider what would have happened if society had followed John Stuart Mills' advice in 1848 and maximized for equal distribution of income, resulting in per capita GDP barely increasing from its $2,000 level over the last 170 years: "…

Eliminating involuntary unemployment doesn’t require levelling of all wealth, it just sets the floor price for labour and maintains a buffer stock of employed people ready to be hired rather than a buffer stock of unemployed people who are less ready to be hired.

Without forcing people to work, it is impossible to eliminate involuntary unemployment. The government using tax dollars to offer people jobs that don't match what they're seeking would result in them refusing to take those jobs, and remaining involuntarily unemployed.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#842

Post by chengiz »

rayiner wrote: post #838
chengiz wrote: post #835

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privileged compared to most around him? I'm not comparing OP to the Kennedys but just because he came to the US with a few hundred bucks and worked hard does not mean he is not privileged. The generational poverty thing is a disingenous distraction. Hypercompetitive environments like the bay area is rife with OP-like cases, the parents go after the boxes to check to get into the top schools, the kids check them. OP's…

> All that has happened is that the gaming Indian parents do doesnt work as well as it once did because others wised up to it. I see nothing wrong with promoting someone who has "unforced" talent, and in some cases race may be a poor way in some cases to base that upon, but in general it is not so bad. So what you’re saying is that it’s “not so bad” for colleges to pick the upper middle class Hispanic kid over the up…

1. Yes.

2. Affirmative action is not racism.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#843

Post by rayiner »

chengiz wrote: post #842
rayiner wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All that has happened is that the gaming Indian parents do doesnt work as well as it once did because others wised up to it. I see nothing wrong with promoting someone who has "unforced" talent, and in some cases race may be a poor way in some cases to base that upon, but in general it is not so bad. So what you’re saying is that it’s “not so bad” for colleges to pick the upper middle class Hispanic kid over the up…

1. Yes. 2. Affirmative action is not racism.

Justifying affirmative action based on stereotypes of Indian parents "gaming" the system is absolutely racism.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#844

Post by helloworld11 »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #811
helloworld11 wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly, what the hell? First, the guy in question is from India and isn't an Anglo/European white man who "benefited" from centuries of exploitation of blacks in the United States. Secondly, many white people in the United States today also managed to build a life for themselves without having done so. Your notion of historical guilt really is more like the absurd religious idea of original sin than a realistic or gen…

> Why would you completely misinterpret a fairly straightforward argument in the most emotionally charged, simplistic and negative way possible? Why would you ignore basic facts? White families in the US stole from black families for centuries. Today the average white family has more than 10x the wealth of the average black family. This must be fixed. It is not a "historical wrong". It is a wrong that is occurring no…

I think you have an extraordinarily skewed idea of how wealth is usually created, how productivity works and how legal redress should handle these things in a functional society. All this aside from your very emotional, contextually ignorant claims about me being racist and other people being guilty of exploiting African Americans because those other people happen to have been successful in some way.

An immigrant from India (or anywhere really), who arrives to the US and then works hard to exchange some sort of value for voluntary compensation from others is most definitely not making themselves better off by sharing in "stolen wealth" from some previous century. They're doing what all of us (of any color or creed) do every day to stay mutually economically solvent. By your logic, even modern African Americans would be guilty of the same thing because their increased standard of living is a part of the same economic participation in exchange of "stolen" wealth.

Too much to unpack here in further argument, but i'd suggest more carefully considering these positions.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#845

Post by RigelKentaurus »

chengiz wrote: post #835
rayiner wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bangladeshi-American father here. “Privileged” compared to who? It would be one thing if Ivy League universities accepted Appalachians and rural Georgians stuck in generational poverty. Ironically, people like Clarence Thomas—minorities who grew up in real poverty—are not the main target of AA. The whole reason this is a problem here is that these policies aren’t actually based on privilege. It’s racial gerrymanderin…

Privileged compared to most around him? I'm not comparing OP to the Kennedys but just because he came to the US with a few hundred bucks and worked hard does not mean he is not privileged. The generational poverty thing is a disingenous distraction. Hypercompetitive environments like the bay area is rife with OP-like cases, the parents go after the boxes to check to get into the top schools, the kids check them. OP's…

If gaming the system means cultivating good study habits, taking rigorous classes over 4 years, generally pushing yourself to realize your potential, maintaining balance through sports and exercise, we're guilty. These are good habits that will serve him well no matter where he goes.

I think you may be projecting your own thoughts and insecurities here.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#848

Post by chengiz »

RigelKentaurus wrote: post #845
chengiz wrote: post #835

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privileged compared to most around him? I'm not comparing OP to the Kennedys but just because he came to the US with a few hundred bucks and worked hard does not mean he is not privileged. The generational poverty thing is a disingenous distraction. Hypercompetitive environments like the bay area is rife with OP-like cases, the parents go after the boxes to check to get into the top schools, the kids check them. OP's…

If gaming the system means cultivating good study habits, taking rigorous classes over 4 years, generally pushing yourself to realize your potential, maintaining balance through sports and exercise, we're guilty. These are good habits that will serve him well no matter where he goes. I think you may be projecting your own thoughts and insecurities here.

In that case you should not be too hung up about him getting admission into a "lesser" (according to you) school. But here you are.

Oh absolutely I am projecting my thoughts. I was lucky but I know many Indians who have been pushed by their parents and are miserable. I also dont think a university environment dominated by such kids will be good either for the school or for them down the line. I am pretty positive your son will have a great experience in whatever school he goes to vs whatever ideal school you had in mind for him. Diversity to me is ipso facto a good thing.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#849

Post by cbsmith »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #733
cbsmith wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We love to scapegoat the media. If you could capture the public's attention and make tons of money focusing on class, someone would do it and dominate discourse. Maybe not existing institutions, but certainly there's nothing preventing someone else from taking to the field. Indeed, there is no shortage of media that do focus on class issues, but they are invariably small & marginalized. Media will literally eat poop…

Suggested reading: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate https://kottke.org/20/01/jim-lehrers-rules-of-journalism-1 Conclusion: We're not being harsh enough. We've been lowering the bar, not raising it. And it shows.

To clarify, I wouldn't deny that the bar is lowering (as you said, it shows). The narrative scapegoating of the media invariably implies that the media is detached from the public and is following its own agenda on this matter. There's lots of ways that the "media elite" are detached from the public and consequently are disconnected from the marketplace; this is NOT one of them.

The unacknowledged truth behind "Actual news outlets covering actual news have an enormous incentive to cut corners on this stuff", and "that all sells better than Lehrer’s guidelines do" is that it's consumers of media who are firmly driving this trend. If the audience valued Lehrer's guidelines more, there'd not be an enormous incentive to cut corners. If anything, the folks who work in media overvalue Lehrer's guidelines as compared to the market. It's not them who is doing it.

Re: American society is so focused on race that it is blind to class

#850

Post by danenania »

Spooky23 wrote: post #241
danenania wrote: post #46

Class can be a big part of racism--often what appears to be racism is really more about class. There are many people who look down on anyone they perceive to be "low class", regardless of race, and who will accept people of other races if they perceive them to be "high class". In areas where the lower classes are over-represented by racial minorities, this can look like racism, when classism is much more the culprit.

Race often enhances that effect.

Agreed.
Post reply on HN