Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

That's a hypothetical that you created, it's not a fact: The fact is that civilians do not oppress police officers. They very rarely kill them, imprison them, stop and frisk them, etc.

> I can be a penniless, poor homeless person and still be a racist piece of shit. I don't require power for that.

> Certainly issues arise when the two intersect (having institutional power and discriminating) but don't conflate the two as the same.

I didn't call them the same; they are certainly different. The point is that it doesn't matter too much if there is discrimination without power. The penniless poor person will have little effect on the passing African-American's life; the police officer can easily ruin their life.

> this whole argument rests on the fact that power is some binary thing which isn't true at all. Power imbalances exist in every facet of life and sometimes, traditionally "oppressed" classes of people have more power than "oppressor classes" in some situation or another.

I agree, I actually thought about that, but I left out that nuance (I can't write a dissertation on HN; something must be left out). But since you bring it up: Yes, anyone can suffer discrimination on the micro level. But that is much less of an issue; it doesn't rise to the level of a society issue for two reasons:

As an example, I was going door-to-door for a political campaign and one person said to me, 'get your [deleted] ass off my porch': They were in a vulnerable group and I wasn't.

First, I wasn't feeling threatened because, again, they lacked power. They couldn't call the police and have me arrested; their neighbors wouldn't beat me up. It was just one person being jerk. Think of it this way: I've knocked on doors after dark around elections (which are in November in the U.S., and polls usually close after dark). Doing that in a white neighborhood, I've thought - what if I was a black man? It would be dangerous for me.

Second, it's just an isolated event and not a macro, society-wide problem. African-Americans have been suffering widespread discrimination by almost every institution and large sections of the population, creating great harm for generations. I had a bad experience for a few seconds. While the person shouldn't have acted that way, it wasn't a big deal; it doesn't rise to the level of a major society issue requiring legislation and Constitutional amendments. It also didn't evoke a lifetime of abuse and threat; it was just annoying. I said 'ok' and went to the next house.

> How do you reconcile what you say with the fact that people do have group identities - not as their complete identity, but part of it - and act as a group and treat others as members of groups?

This has evolutionary roots in kin selection; we as primates do have some machinery that makes us favor the survival of individuals that fulfill some definition of kin. I want to make it very clear, this is a proposition of "what is" and not "what ought". Just because we do have the machinery doesn't make it right, as it can escalate all the way up to genocide. But acknowledging it is a good first step. No one is pure, no one is inherently innocent about it, but also no human is only a primate.

> That's a conceptual question but doesn't call into question the practical reality: People clearly have some identity as a group, and act against other perceived groups.

This is where the definition of identity becomes pivotal; we must not conflate an ontological identity (x is an x and only an x), and a categorical identity (x belongs to the category y). Group identities are the latter. The problem with categorical identities are the certain amount of frivolousness we are allowed about it;

Let's suppose an object a has n attributes, and object b has m attributes. For all objects n and m are infinitely many. Therefore whenever we make a comparison such that "a and b mutually share a subset between their n and m attributes, therefore they are similar" we are excluding infinitely many attributes that they do not share. Conversely, by only selecting a certain subset of those infinitely many attributes, we could claim any two objects to be in the same category. This makes categorical identity by definition a purpose specific, subjective construct. Its key function is relevance; that the attributes we chose are relevant to our goal.

This is exactly where the combination of the machinery for kin selection and inherent flexibility of categorical identity exposes us to hijack. You can convince anyone that they belong to a group by defining a group with the attributes that you find most useful for you. But that doesn't mean it was the best category to approach to the problem with. E.g. just as ethnic nationalism has exploded in Europe, racial essentialism has exploded in the US while very peculiarly missing class identity as a solid alternative that could actually address a good proportion of the grievances. Is this because the flexibility of categorical identity was (ab)used by those who wouldn't find discussions around class identity favorable, or because there was a true essence to those initial categories? My vote; it is more #1 than not.

To sum up; group identities are self-fulfilling, overly flexible and most importantly purpose built constructs. Wrongly choosing the category could as well ossify the problems it is trying to solve than to help people break free of them. I'll even one up; the meta-group of "belonging to a group" is even bigger of a problem; to convince people that the fact that they can be group-things is more important than them being individuals creates a greater host of framing issues for them.

I honestly don’t think it would. The Twitter mob is a bunch of loud voices, that’s all. A bunch of people using online. I doubt they could arrange an actual effective boycott.