Why People Feel Like Victims • Hacker News Board

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#271

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

erulabs wrote: post #113

rayiner wrote: post #30

> So victimhood is a learned behavior after a certain age. As a brown guy with kids in the school system, that's why recent trends in education alarm me. I don't want my kids to be taught that there's this amorphous but pervasive "systemic racism" and "white supremacy" out to get people who look like them, but which they can't do anything about. It's dangerous experimentation with kids' psychology. Growing up as one…

I value what you've written, and I agree although my experience was (possibly?) the inverse. I was a poor white kid in a wealthy white area. While I lived in that area, I only got to briefly attend a private school because of my mothers boyfriend. Everyone knew I was the "poor kid", and my mother, who did her best, was _obsessed_ with the fact that everyone knew we were "imposters" - not wealthy, not married, from a…

> the great irony is that kids who grew up in wealth and surrounded by healthy parents seem oblivious or to not care whatsoever about such judgements from others. Are they ignorant or inoculated?

I think that we learn from experience, and experience has shown these people that judgement from others do not have any real effect on their lives.

Oppose that with people in less favorable positions, who have been badly affected in real life as a result of the judgement of others.

That’s where a lot of the difference comes from I think, in how different people later in life relate to judgement from others.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#272

Post by jakelazaroff » Fri, May 07, 2021, 6:10 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #185

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.

> 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. Because “systemic racism” is a term used mostly by college educated white people for other college educated white people. Not only that, it deliberately repurposes a label that ordinarily refers to prejudi…

> Because “systemic racism” is a term used mostly by college educated white people for other college educated white people.

But we can agree that it exists, right? Whatever term you’d use, the phenomenon it describes is real. And it refers to present injustices as well as historical ones.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#273

Post by dr_dshiv » Fri, May 07, 2021, 6:10 AM UTC

neartheplain wrote: post #125

tstrimple wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO one of the big civil rights achievements was to get rid of that divide. This never happened. You can't just eliminate explicitly racist laws from your books and expect all the racism and bigotry which led to those laws in the first place to disappear by magic. Pretending like there aren't different outcomes and general experiences between races also doesn't magically eliminate those differences. If you can’t me…

>>IMO one of the big civil rights achievements was to get rid of that divide. >This never happened. Speaking as an American raised in the 1990s, the cultural programming of my childhood at least made progress in that direction. I was raised on popular TV shows like Sesame Street, Captain Planet, and Power Rangers, which showed people of all races coexisting in settings where race did not divide them. When the issue o…

I share this concern and miss the 90s. It created a positive desire to promote diversity because it is the right thing to do and there aren't downsides.

Nowadays, many people may reject POC in social and business settings because of political fears. For instance, if I hire, could I fire without being viewed as racist? Or, if I befriend someone, could they end up accusing me of racism in a devastating way?

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#274

Post by breakyerself » Fri, May 07, 2021, 6:10 AM UTC

toomuchredbull wrote: post #254

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…

Number 2 for instance, is such a small chance it is not really worth mentioning. I believe white people get hit by lightning something like 6 times more likely than blacks and it happens way more than being unarmed and shot by police.

The population of white people is about 6 times bigger. That should mostly explain the lightning disparity.

The statistics on unarmed people being killed by police account for differences in population sizes. Also while that is a hot button issue it's really the tip of the iceberg for this subject. The body of work showing systemic racism is an ongoing problem in the US holds up just fine if you ignore police shootings altogether.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#275

Post by redis_mlc » Fri, May 07, 2021, 6:12 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.

> This is one of the best meta-summaries I've ever seen, on any topic.

Gee, thanks for the virtue signalling - like HN needs more of that.

It's not a good summary since it doesn't mention what underlies most of those links:

- the destruction of the nuclear family

- the effects on school children from the above

- companies can't hire people who don't graduate from even high school.

Detroit has had a black city council for decades, and those links equally apply there. Same with many other US cities.

Any black leader will tell you the real problems start with families, and no amount of PC talk will solve that. In fact, they've warned other communities that statistics about single-parent households show the same problems headed their way.

Rewriting history with the 1619 project is a stark example of evading solving actual problems.

Source: I'm from the Detroit area, which is a vivid example of what burning downtowns 50 years ago and underfunding the police result in.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#276

Post by ohduran » Fri, May 07, 2021, 6:15 AM UTC

> You only need to spend only a few minutes watching or reading the news, in any country, to hear and see victimhood raging.

Isn't here the true relationship, rather than a made-up "sickness" called TIV (sounds a lot like untreated depression, but *no expert*) between safetyism and the constant barrage of clickbait-y, outrageous news we can do nothing about?

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#277

Post by yosito » Fri, May 07, 2021, 6:16 AM UTC

seigando wrote: post #218

Generally speaking, a victim is someone who didn't/doesn't have the power to keep themselves from being a victim.

If you encourage someone to believe that they don't have the power to keep themselves from being a victim, generally speaking, that's a good way to turn them into a victim.

Better approach: teach people to recognize and use the power they have to avoid becoming a victim when they encounter a potential victimizer.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#278

Post by tnzm » Fri, May 07, 2021, 6:17 AM UTC

breakyerself wrote: post #259

tnzm wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would just say that anyone who claims they won't get ahead even if they try because of systemic racism is being ignorant. They might have to try harder than a white person would. They might face some adversity, but there really is no excuse for not trying. It would literally perpetuate the problem. Not only does systemic racism exist, not only has the environment succeeded in inducing a victim mentality in this pe…

It's true that if a black person gives up without trying because they assume they can't succeed then their failure contributes to the inequality between the races. I'm sure I could have put it better. I was most concerned about pushing back on the notion that this subject should be taboo because somehow discussing systemic racism is the real cause of inequality.

>It's true that if a black person gives up without trying because they assume they can't succeed then their failure contributes to the inequality between the races.

Not really my point. But what you're saying is legitimate too. Though who are we to judge, considering we don't even have unambiguous language to discuss the subject without risking to offend each other's sensibilities.

>I was most concerned about pushing back on the notion that this subject should be taboo because somehow discussing systemic racism is the real cause of inequality.

I'm not sure if I can resolve the nesting of those clauses. IMHO, taboos are generally counterproductive because avoiding the taboo gives it more power. And enforcing a particular language, tone, or other mode of discourse about race relations can be used to perpetuate thinking that reinforces racism "in the name of fighting racism".

This whole thing is starting to look more and more like we need to find out if we're even capable of discussing systemic racism without freaking out, so we can try to conclusively establish what systemic racism is, so that we can look for a solution to systemic racism, so that we can finally stop cops from shooting civilians for being the "wrong" color. This yak shaving is truly the work of a higher intellect...

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#279

Post by kenjackson » Fri, May 07, 2021, 6:25 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #30

> So victimhood is a learned behavior after a certain age. As a brown guy with kids in the school system, that's why recent trends in education alarm me. I don't want my kids to be taught that there's this amorphous but pervasive "systemic racism" and "white supremacy" out to get people who look like them, but which they can't do anything about. It's dangerous experimentation with kids' psychology. Growing up as one…

If they are teaching about systemic racism well then they are teaching what you can do about it. It’s not a ghost.

And teaching kids the truth in these matters is rarely a bad thing. Being able to identify things like using prison populations to prop up the population of conservative districts is something that only can be addressed if recognized to begin with.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#280

Post by JamesBarney » Fri, May 07, 2021, 6:25 AM UTC

tolbish wrote: post #260

esyir wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. The current narrative of systemic racism and the victimhood culture it creates isnt helping, it's exacerbating the issues and reinforcing itself. By conditioning people into believing that an outside force is the primary, if not only factor impacting their lack of success, you demotivate them from trying to adjust other factors that could improve their situation. The issue isn't that we addr…

Wouldn't it logically follow that issues of systemic racism are a bigger problem than the narrative of systemic racism? Can't that be true without being a brainwashed white guilted liberal?

One problem is the narrative makes it harder to make progress on systemic racism.

Outside of very liberal strongholds identity politics can't get passed and they get in the way of any progress you want to actually make at trying to minimize the difference in outcomes between races.