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Dust in the Light

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Re: Dust in the Light

#131

Post by DoreenMichele »

f1refly wrote: post #128
DoreenMichele wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google "Black Wall street massacre." There are plenty of articles. We probably don't hear more about it because it makes white people uncomfortable.

Sorry for not knowing about local history from 100 years ago from a far away nation. The main reason we don't hear about this more is probably because neither offenders nor victims, both black and white, are alive anymore.

If you are unfamiliar with the history of my country, then don't speak up to dismiss my description of it as "sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory," especially without so much as googling the phrase "black wall street" which isn't at all hard to find.

We don't hear about it because whites in America aren't comfortable hearing about it. Another comment in this discussion indicates it was actively covered up and expunged from local history records.

Re: Dust in the Light

#132

Post by dragonwriter »

f1refly wrote: post #128
DoreenMichele wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google "Black Wall street massacre." There are plenty of articles. We probably don't hear more about it because it makes white people uncomfortable.

Sorry for not knowing about local history from 100 years ago from a far away nation. The main reason we don't hear about this more is probably because neither offenders nor victims, both black and white, are alive anymore.

No, it wasn't mentioned much in media for most of the 100 intervening years because it makes White people uncomfortable. (Well, and perhaps because it makes the kind of White people that almost no one in the public eye wants to acknowledge though some want to quietly court too comfortable.)

Though it did play a central role in the HBO Watchmen series' single season.

(To be fair, it does sound like a crazy conspiracy theory. When it comes to race, though, lots of things that sound like crazy conspiracy theories are true in the US, which perhaps shouldn't be all that surprising when you realize things like, for example, that the KKK, which is something of an overt crazy racist conspiracy, was a major factor in US politics well into the 20th Century.)

Re: Dust in the Light

#133

Post by luckylion »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #71
luckylion wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe when the community gets this sort of deeply inaccurate reflection of itself, it encourages a "why bother" sentiment Tbh though, on some topics, "why bother" is accurate. You can write a comment that is controversial, but it will be heavily downvoted and flagged, so indeed: why bother? The Overton Window on HN isn't as large as it appears, but it's generally accepted that you can say what you want as long…

actually engaging the outraged and offering a different point of view does not seem useful. You don't have to engage the outraged. It's not a best practice to go actively looking for the people openly and vehemently opposed to you and your views. I'm a social creature and I have something of a tendency to reply to other comments instead of leaving a top level stand alone comment. I also have a lot of controversial op…

You're right that it may arouse less anger if you don't reply, but I don't know that it works reliably. I've seen plenty of top-level comments flagged as well. So much so that I've switched off show-dead because it annoyed me so much to see the harmlessness of comments that were flagged down. Better to ignore it instead of getting angry.

And it feels like a workaround instead of a fix. Like a jolt of pain every time you put weight on your left leg and deciding to just not put weight on it. It does mitigate the symptom, but it doesn't solve the problem.

Re: Dust in the Light

#134

Post by [deleted] »

luckylion wrote: post #133
DoreenMichele wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

actually engaging the outraged and offering a different point of view does not seem useful. You don't have to engage the outraged. It's not a best practice to go actively looking for the people openly and vehemently opposed to you and your views. I'm a social creature and I have something of a tendency to reply to other comments instead of leaving a top level stand alone comment. I also have a lot of controversial op…

You're right that it may arouse less anger if you don't reply, but I don't know that it works reliably. I've seen plenty of top-level comments flagged as well. So much so that I've switched off show-dead because it annoyed me so much to see the harmlessness of comments that were flagged down. Better to ignore it instead of getting angry. And it feels like a workaround instead of a fix. Like a jolt of pain every time…

[deleted]

Re: Dust in the Light

#135

Post by samirillian »

gilbetron wrote: post #23
samirillian wrote: post #13

> Both peaceful protests and wanton destruction and looting were likely organized on social media. Interesting that in his mind the looting is the dark side of this uprising. How about the drones the riot cops use to watch the protesters' every move? Wasn't it Microsoft and AWS fighting over the facial recognition AI contract that Google finally dropped?

Were the cops organizing by social media? He's making the point that social media can be used for good or bad, what the cops use is a rather orthogonal point. (To be clear: the things you mention are bad)

What do you think this facial-recognition AI is trained on? To me it's just amazingly pedestrian to consider "I saw a blog post" an actual political analysis of social media.

Re: Dust in the Light

#136

Post by Terretta »

sanj wrote: post #31
mcguire wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" While red-lining helped shape segregation in many cities, Minneapolis was pre-emptive about its discrimination; beginning in the 1910s Minneapolis real estate deeds started to include “Covenants” that explicitly excluded African Americans. A team from the University of Minnesota has been researching real estate deeds to uncover these covenants, and created this striking time-lapse of their spread:... " Racial coven…

I'm downvoting it because it is willfully, thoughtfully, and purposefully attempting to argue that there is no racially motivated correlation between these datasets. There is. Constructing a convoluted worldview in which there isn't, and promulgating it, is racism.

> willfully, thoughtfully, and purposefully attempting to argue that there is no racially motivated correlation between these datasets.

On the contrary....

I grew up in Africa. My sister is professor of African studies with degree from UW Madison. I'm familiar with the area and the issues.

The "crescent" seen in the data is geography, not some sort of compelling argument for correlation.

Exactly contrary to your interpretation of my comment, my point is that the same data sets are correlated everywhere there's density, but I guess "the blob" doesn't seem as persuasive as "the crescent".

It's not that it's a crescent, it's just urban America.

And it's a problem.

PS. See also, "centuries worth of negative compounding at work": https://ofdollarsanddata.com/racial-wealth-gap/

Re: Dust in the Light

#137

Post by clairity »

zamfi wrote: post #124
clairity wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, sorry if what i said seemed combative, but i wanted to be very clear and direct about the mechanism of change being the protesters and not the (particularly white) onlookers who support the protesters. that's not to disdain the support (yes to support!) or the changing of sympathies with (social) media (yes to sympathies!), but the effects of those are relatively marginal to change. my secondary point is that it…

Thanks, this was helpful. I think I worry that, short of revolution, change happens because people in power acquiesce to it. :/ (Again, obviously, this is bad, and I wish it were not this way, and I don’t condone or want to justify this. I just worry that it’s what history suggests.) If that’s true — and again, I hope it’s not, and it sucks if it is — then the effects of supporters and sympathies are not actually mar…

changing sympathies helps, but nothing actually changes without the protesters. people with varying degrees of relative privilege to persecuted black folks won't jilt themselves out of complacency and share power and esteem spontaneously. there's not enough ambient incentive or imperative for that.

being aware is simply not enough. we've been aware of our collective racism for at least the last 150 years and no change to that has happened top-down. it's all bottom-up. it's all people fighting for their rights and dignity. power isn't acquiesced so much as chipped away. awareness weakens the stone so the chipping is easier, but the chips don't just fall off on their own.

that's why the (white) awareness is "marginal", not because it's not helpful, or possibly even necessary, but because it's not causative. there's nothing wrong with marginal, it's good, better than irrelevant, but it's not the catalyst of change in racial power dynamics.

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