Why People Feel Like Victims • Hacker News Board

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#471

Post by breakyerself » Sat, May 08, 2021, 8:31 AM UTC

throwawaysea wrote: post #456

breakyerself wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I just say this makes me really happy to see this getting around. The list I shared here is my own compilation. It's nice to see others have found it useful.

It’s interesting that it has gotten around even without your knowledge. If I may ask do you have a large following on some social media platform, from where it originated or spread out?

No I've just posted it around Facebook and reddit. Mostly Facebook. Once in a while someone will post it to /r/sports and credit me with it, but besides that I didn't know anyone was sharing it.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#472

Post by breakyerself » Sat, May 08, 2021, 8:33 AM UTC

nec4b wrote: post #432

epakai wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if a certain group of laws (say drug laws) was created specifically so police could target certain minorities? There isn't any particular motivation in the law to arrest more black people for marijuana use, but despite similar usage by race (2-4% difference https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2017/08/11/char... ) arrests for Blacks happen at 3-6 times Whites. There's lots to suggest the war on drugs is…

>What if a certain group of laws (say drug laws) was created specifically so police could target certain minorities? Could you point to such a law or even better cite a paragraph from such a law where you feel it targets certain minorities? How do police officers from minority background do their job?

Are you not aware of the sentencing disparities between crack and cocain?

Also the war on drugs started under the Nixon admin was an intentional effort to target black people and anti-war activists.

https://www.businessinsider.com/nixon-adviser-ehrlichman-ant...

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#473

Post by breakyerself » Sat, May 08, 2021, 8:43 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #449

epakai wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voter ID laws disproportionately affect racial minorities to this day, and are tantamount to a poll tax until the State bears the burden of providing ID. https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-...

False. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/21/18230009/v...

Regardless that was the motivation. It may have been a failed effort, but it was absolutely the intention and it's got to hurt being a black person in this day and age and know that lawmakers are still looking for ways to exclude you from our democratic system.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#474

Post by vinay427 » Sat, May 08, 2021, 10:01 AM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #348

vinay427 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since it’s selecting people based on race. This can also apply to antiracism, which as I understand it [1] is policy that attempts to undo structural racism, not policy that is absent of race-conscious treatment. I think this question would also be more interesting to answer because everyone already agrees that affirmative action literally does factor in race. The more controversial part is whether it serves to rei…

Racism. But we'll call it anti-racism!

From this perspective (Kendi, etc.), it is very much not the same as racism and is not just "racism" being rebranded. The term "anti-racism" really only makes sense when you consider this dichotomy using the more specific definition of racism.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#475

Post by KwisatzHaderack » Sat, May 08, 2021, 10:34 AM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #441

gherkinnn wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you can. It’s just that sooner or later you’ll look silly. Tweeting “fuck the system” from an iPhone? Fine. Everybody needs a phone, iPhones last a long time, and the SE models are cheap. Preaching about the perils of consumerism and demonising anybody along the way whilst working at Amazon and always buying the latest tech? Solid hypocrite.

> Preaching about the perils of consumerism and demonising anybody along the way whilst working at Amazon and always buying the latest tech? Solid hypocrite. I just don't see this that often. Also - while you may denounce some cause - it doesn't mean you can't work at some place that might promote parts of that cause. After all - if you were a proponent of socialism or communism - how could you work at just about any…

> I just don't see this that often

I see you don’t go on Twitter much.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#476

Post by bingbong70 » Sat, May 08, 2021, 10:37 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #453

bingbong70 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Learning this history is the first step of "doing something about it". Brown/black people should know their history too, we can't just paper over the historic criminality of certain groups of people because it feels uncomfort…

The job of education is to maximize the potential of my kid, not to use my kid as a vehicle to fix society’s problems. As to your claim of immigrants “sucking up”—if I wanted to suck up to elite whites I’d embrace teaching kids of color about “white supremacy.” If I didn’t think it would hurt my kid I would have no incentivize to oppose it.

>if I wanted to suck up to elite whites I’d embrace teaching kids of color about “white supremacy.”

I completely disagree. White supremacist systems have operated across the globe for a few centuries now, the actual white elites/beneficiaries (not just the group I suspect you dislike), the British Royal family for example, hate the idea of history like the 1619 project being spread to the masses because the affected may find the common thread that weaves through their histories. WS thrives on ignorance and inaction.

When 90% of the planet has a common understanding of white supremacist systems and the vulnerabilities, the fragility of these systems is exposed and the foundation starts to crumble with minor shifts in behavior (especially economic) at the individual level on a mass scale.

TLDR Anyone arguing for less exposure of WS history and the history of racism in general is very suspect.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#477

Post by bingbong70 » Sat, May 08, 2021, 11:10 AM UTC

kian wrote: post #455

bingbong70 wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Jewish parents "save their children" from history lessons and postpone them? When is the holocaust and other info about historic anti-semitism introduced? I would be surprised to hear that they delay this, I believe some of these historical stories/events are part of their religious studies as children. Giving the oppressive system a pass for X number of years and letting children walk through society ignorant of…

We are not saying to "postpone" history lessons, but to contextualize them with other historical facts that are more important. While the holocaust is extremely important, I believe that a celebration of their shared culture, including the Torah, occurs first in Jewish homes, as the accumulated wisdom, the greatest and longest-lasting achievement of the Jewish faith and peoples. Likewise, in a documentary series on a…

>We are not saying to "postpone" history lessons, but to contextualize them with other historical facts that are more important.

Please give me some examples of these "facts that are more important" where racism and WS are concerned.

>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.

That final qualifier is the red flag to me, nobody teaches that "they can't do anything about it" (stating that seems purposely dishonest), the goal of these teachings is in large part about changing/fixing systems through awareness.

Side note: This history is also for white children who in many cases are negatively affected by these systems in non-obvious ways and are an important population to inform as they are potential future participants in the correction.

My intuition tells me when important and uncomfortable historical facts come up and certain people bend over backwards to make you look away, the goal is to distract, hide, and obfuscate.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#478

Post by DreamScatter » Sat, May 08, 2021, 11:15 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #436

bourgwaletariat wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's that you're a woman or that you're empathetic, good natured, choose to avoid conflict, in addition to being technically skilled. There does seem to be a correlation between the two, but in my experience, what you're discussing here isn't unique to women. I see it happen to a lot of men as well, including myself. They are manipulators. Their skill isn't in getting their job done, it's in manipulating…

I have reason to believe that my gender is a factor. I'm absolutely not suggesting that no one ever does any men dirty. I did some volunteer work in town for a couple of organizations that are supposedly trying to do economic development and I was trying to use that as a means to make connections and develop a better income. I had applied for a job locally and the guy that got it fits your terrific description: He's…

Well, I have to disagree. I don't believe your story has anything to do with you being a woman in that situation. There are plenty of male people who also don't have a network and who get taken advantage of and have their ideas stolen without credit. This happens all the time on a daily basis and has absolutely nothing to do with gender. It's a real problem, but in my impression it seems to be a quite standard problem with humanity and not gender.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#479

Post by 10000truths » Sat, May 08, 2021, 12:23 PM UTC

welcome_dragon wrote: post #395

livinginfear wrote: post #243

I always considered the current culture of cultivated-victimhood to be rooted in the manner Western people fundamentally define themselves by their triumphs against adversity. In the absence of real adversity, people seek and create surrogate adversity for themselves to triumph over. From this process they can rationalise themselves as having the inner-strength to overcome such barriers.

This is similar to my belief as to why modern American politics is the way it is. It's so much left vs right, red vs blue, etc. During the cold war, we had a common enemy in communism. Sure there were disagreements, arguments, fights, but at the end of the day, most everyone could agree that we had to stand up for America. Now those common enemies aren't such a threat, so we look across the aisle for our enemy. It us…

> we had a common enemy in communism

Communism wasn’t a “common enemy”, it was a boogeyman used as a cudgel by the government to strike down inconvenient dissent and ruin innocent peoples’ lives. There were plenty of Americans with Communist ideals, and plenty more who were branded as “communists” for suggesting such outrageous things as poverty reform or labor rights, including Martin Luther King Jr. See COINTELPRO and the Red Scare for examples of the government’s abhorrent treatment of suspected communists.

Re: Why People Feel Like Victims

#480

Post by DoreenMichele » Sat, May 08, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

DreamScatter wrote: post #478

DoreenMichele wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have reason to believe that my gender is a factor. I'm absolutely not suggesting that no one ever does any men dirty. I did some volunteer work in town for a couple of organizations that are supposedly trying to do economic development and I was trying to use that as a means to make connections and develop a better income. I had applied for a job locally and the guy that got it fits your terrific description: He's…

Well, I have to disagree. I don't believe your story has anything to do with you being a woman in that situation. There are plenty of male people who also don't have a network and who get taken advantage of and have their ideas stolen without credit. This happens all the time on a daily basis and has absolutely nothing to do with gender. It's a real problem, but in my impression it seems to be a quite standard proble…

The guy who stole my ideas would have done anyone dirty. He's just like that. But I'm confident he got away with it as long as he did at least in part for a variety of reasons rooted in my gender.

It's a small town. I post online under my real name. There's limits to how much I'm willing to say for the sake of an argument with an internet stranger.

You have a great day.