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

How black people still need to outwit racists in rural America

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 109 posts

Re: How black people still need to outwit racists in rural America

#31

Post by Asparagirl »

Mononokay wrote: post #3

Altered headline aside: yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh; speaking as someone with a bit over a decade of experience with Missouri, if I was anything other than white or Asian I'dn't touch anywhere in it besides St. Louis and Kansas City. And even then, I'd still not touch it if I had to. This is all anecdotal, of course, but from my experience: the average culture of the state is apathetic at best to things that'd…

I’m in a long-running Sunshine Law suit with a Missouri government agency, their Department of Health and Senior Services, over a simple request for what is essentially a big genealogy spreadsheet of the names of local dead people, some from 100+ years ago. It’s a very boring request, as these things tend to go.

But I have been shocked at the number of people from Missouri who have actively responded to news of the suit on social media not on the merits of the request whatsoever, but by saying that I shouldn’t win because I’m “not from there” and therefore this is “none of my business”, or that I’m “some California coastal liberal elite” (practically an exact quote), or that it doesn’t matter that many other states routinely make this data freely available (including Oklahoma, right next door) because “well, that has nothing to do with Missouri”, and so on. At least one of these people has a giant Confederate flag as her primary Facebook banner image. Some of these people have open-to-the-world Facebook posts about family involvement in white nationalist groups, discussions of the “Seth Rich cover-up” and how Obama will be indicted any day now, and use of language that would indicate close familiarity with alt-right fever swamps.

It’s been...enlightening.

Re: How black people still need to outwit racists in rural America

#32

Post by IIIIIIIIIIIIIII »

olivermarks wrote: post #10
Mononokay wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My apologies. I'll admit I'm a bit too passionate on this subject, and worded things too strongly, sorry! Does the edit fix the problem?

it's sad that someone with real experience and open prejudices/honest thoughts shared about Missouri gets down voted. The Guardian is a UK 'champagne socialist' news organization that devotes a lot of column inches/pixels to appraisals of other societies and is highly opinionated. I read it often, not necessarily a criticism. I'd like to explore north st louis with Ed Pilkington and see his reaction to the residents…

An aside about "opinionated", because something I did a while ago gave me a different perspective.

As a foreigner (who once lived in the US for almost a decade) I try to keep up with US news. Quite a while ago I actually added foxnews.com to my reading list - because I heard so many bad things about it (I had never even gone there before, but my list of regularly read websites is very small anyway), and I wanted to know just how bad "bad" was.

I must say it turned out, in my opinion at least, that the articles are not actually all that bad. (I ignore anything anything from Hannity though - and oh boy, don't ever go to the forums.)

Anyway, I find foxnews.com is a great example of finding bias not so much in the articles - but in the topics they select! Which of course is something everybody does. Every newspaper, website, or even private blog has a bias expressed merely in the selection of topics they cover, no matter how "neutral" the articles themselves are. If you just look at the headlines foxnews.com really stands out, but so does washingtonpost.com, which I find almost equally far from the middle of the topic distribution (they are trying way too hard to report every fart of that guy in the White House).

My point is, this made it clear to me that no matter how hard you try, you can't help being opinionated because what you choose to concentrate on already is a huge factor, and that I only noticed that my own views are likely based on a similar selection bias when I looked at a very different selection from the one I had gotten used to.

Re: How black people still need to outwit racists in rural America

#33

Post by Clubber »

craftyguy wrote: post #6

> “I prayed that she’d look white, and she does,” he says. “She will be safe.” This is incredibly sad to read. I wish this government would take a zero-tolerance to racism (like they do with 'terroism'), but we seem to be regressing lately.

>I wish this government would take a zero-tolerance to racism

I know that sounds like a noble idea, but I'm not sure it would be a very good idea. For one, it's unconstitutional and limits free speech. Two, who gets to interpret what racist speech is? Under a law like this, I could easily people getting arrested and imprisoned for a joke that was misinterpreted, or interpreted by an overly sensitive person. It could easily be used to silence political opposition in bad faith. There's lots of ways it can be abused.

One truth I've learned in studying US history is you will never fully eradicate racist remarks. Tribalism is human nature, and racism in the US is older than the US. The best you can do it remove it from the legal system.

One final thought. For those of you who favor banning all firearms, consider the usefulness of them in this story.

Re: How black people still need to outwit racists in rural America

#34

Post by Clubber »

kiliantics wrote: post #16
dreta wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t make the law any more strict than it already is without sacrificing everybody’s basic rights.

They did that with terrorism, i.e. the Patriot Act. But that usually only applies to terrorism that isn't based on white supremacy, since white supremacists are useful to the state. See the recent collusion of police in CA with neo-nazis.

Are you actually promoting the US Patriot Act? There is nothing good about that.

Re: How black people still need to outwit racists in rural America

#35

Post by Clubber »

istjohn wrote: post #29

One terribly insidious aspect to racism in America is how invisible it is to white people. We are so segregated that most white people will not learn about black people's experiences with racism organically. It's only through articles like this and cell phone footage of violent police interactions that we become aware of this cruel alternative reality so many people live in. The disconnect exists within city-limits,…

You are absolutely right about that. I was brought up that racism was for poor white trash and anyone who is racist shouldn't be associated with. Of course I live my life that way, so all the people who I interact with aren't racist. Honestly, even people on the street I talk with don't say things like that. The last time someone said something like that was some old bumpkin in a truck at a gas station said something about Michelle Obama several years ago.

I know racist remarks were quite casual in the pre-Boomer generation, but they don't seem that way now, but I wouldn't know because I'm not around it.

I assume it is a lot better than the 80s, but I could never know. Of course I want to believe that racism is only a rarity today and limited to offshoots of society, and I assume many others want to believe that too.

Re: How black people still need to outwit racists in rural America

#36

Post by lostmsu »

ScottBurson wrote: post #13
craftyguy wrote: post #6

> “I prayed that she’d look white, and she does,” he says. “She will be safe.” This is incredibly sad to read. I wish this government would take a zero-tolerance to racism (like they do with 'terroism'), but we seem to be regressing lately.

Very sad indeed. Can you imagine praying to God that your newborn daughter won't look like you? I don't think I could do what he's doing: staying in a place where he so frequently encounters threats of violence. But I'm glad he's doing it.

Hearing, that people still pray to god is very sad indeed. I hope she just said that metaphorically.

Re: How black people still need to outwit racists in rural America

#37

Post by dang »

Mononokay wrote: post #7
dang wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the real experience in your post. But going into prejudicial generalization of your own (edit: that was before it was edited) helps nothing and is sure to create a flamewar. It may not be as bad as the prejudices discussed in the article, but it's bad enough to give us nothing but scorched earth, so it breaks the site guidelines. If you'd take those to heart when commenting here, we'd appreciate it. This…

My apologies. I'll admit I'm a bit too passionate on this subject, and worded things too strongly, sorry! Does the edit fix the problem?

It's much better, yes, because you moved the needle much further into personal experience and away from what I referred to as prejudicial generalization. That's the direction we all need to try to go.

I know it's not always clear in moderation comments, but the reason we emphasize this is not so much about right or wrong, as about the effects on discussion of certain kinds of comments compared to others—so it's both more empirical and less divisive than it looks. It's hard for a community this large and uncohesive to agree about large things like right and wrong, but a bit easier to find some shared interest in the kind of site HN should be. That's the hope anyway.

Re: How black people still need to outwit racists in rural America

#38

Post by redblacktree »

viburnum wrote: post #30
avar wrote: post #21

There's a great and relevant Radiolab episode published just a few days ago. It discusses the Commerce Clause of the constitution[1]. Something I didn't know is that when the US government ended racial segregation in privately owned businesses they did so not on any sort of human rights or equality basis. Rather they argued that businesses being able to deny black clients service has a depressing effect on the econom…

The US Constitution is basically obsolete and terrible and you can't run a decent society without stretching it quite a bit. It does not deserve the veneration it receives.

I would argue that this means we should fix the constitution through the amendment process, not toss the baby out with the bathwater.

Re: How black people still need to outwit racists in rural America

#39

Post by SimbaOnSteroids »

IIIIIIIIIIIIIII wrote: post #32
olivermarks wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's sad that someone with real experience and open prejudices/honest thoughts shared about Missouri gets down voted. The Guardian is a UK 'champagne socialist' news organization that devotes a lot of column inches/pixels to appraisals of other societies and is highly opinionated. I read it often, not necessarily a criticism. I'd like to explore north st louis with Ed Pilkington and see his reaction to the residents…

An aside about "opinionated", because something I did a while ago gave me a different perspective. As a foreigner (who once lived in the US for almost a decade) I try to keep up with US news. Quite a while ago I actually added foxnews.com to my reading list - because I heard so many bad things about it (I had never even gone there before, but my list of regularly read websites is very small anyway), and I wanted to k…

That's Fox's slight of hand. They appear fairly good most of the time, and as far as what they publish they're generally not too bad when it comes to being crazy, for that you go to Breitbart. However Fox's real sin is their television station, watch Fox & Friends or any of the others and its Coney Island.

Re: How black people still need to outwit racists in rural America

#40

Post by Clubber »

viburnum wrote: post #30
avar wrote: post #21

There's a great and relevant Radiolab episode published just a few days ago. It discusses the Commerce Clause of the constitution[1]. Something I didn't know is that when the US government ended racial segregation in privately owned businesses they did so not on any sort of human rights or equality basis. Rather they argued that businesses being able to deny black clients service has a depressing effect on the econom…

The US Constitution is basically obsolete and terrible and you can't run a decent society without stretching it quite a bit. It does not deserve the veneration it receives.

It's not such thing, it's just not equally applied to all demographics.
Post reply on HN