How black people still need to outwit racists in rural America • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by dang » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 12:22 AM UTC

istjohn wrote: post #14

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…

I would hope calling cruel bigots in Missouri or anywhere else "some of the worst of humanity" is not divisive. > In 2014, a group of 15 white schoolgirls blacked up their faces for a game of football. A few months previously, as riots blazed in Ferguson after the police shooting of Michael Brown, a group of Sullivan residents, Wehmeyer’s neighbour among them, staged a KKK march through town. In as much as his commen…

There are many kinds of cruelty. It's possible to eschew one without practicing another, and very much in the community interest.

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

#62

Post by maxerickson » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 12:46 AM UTC

aaron-lebo wrote: post #53

leetcrew wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> parents often live in communities that don't pay taxes that support public schools how? pretty sure in the US everyone pays property tax (directly or indirectly), some of which is used to fund the school system. you can't just opt out of paying into that system at all.

Highland Park is a city within a city that pays no taxes to DISD. Zuckerberg grew up in Dobb's Ferry, which is just outside of New York City's limits. He ended up at a private high school with an endowment of 1.15 billion. Now he's worth 70 billion. Not to pick on him (just an example), but there are many ways the elites segregate themselves.

Highland Park and Dobb's Ferry have public schools though:

https://www.dfsd.org/

http://www.hipark.org/

Median incomes in Highland Park are lower than Detroit and the school system there basically failed a few years ago.

I think there's probably a pretty good argument to be made about how schools are funded. Just pointing out that not all properties are inside of large cities isn't it.

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

#63

Post by ScottBurson » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 12:57 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #46

I don't disagree with the article but let me give a more positive anecdote. I'm Black and live in Forsyth County GA. Yeah this Forsyth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0 We were looking for a house and were welcomed with opened arms by the builder, I can still go to pick up my son from a teen group where no one knows me and ask any random person have they seen my son and they know exactly who I'm talking ab…

That's great to hear! Thanks for posting! Nice to know that things are getting better in some places -- probably a lot of places. Not to suggest that we should ignore the problems that still exist, of course.

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

#64

Post by dang » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 1:01 AM UTC

lostmsu wrote: post #36

ScottBurson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Religious flamewar is not allowed on HN, and we ban accounts that do it. Please don't do it again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#65

Post by dang » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 1:01 AM UTC

Digit-Al wrote: post #26

ActsJuvenile wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more about setting the tone. If top figures in the government and legislature take an inclusive stance and stamp out any racists issues, populous tend to pick up on that vibe.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Good luck with that with Trump in charge of your country. No one, absolutely no one, loves black people more than Trump does /s

Please don't do this here.

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

#66

Post by jeffdavis » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 1:23 AM UTC

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.

The Constitution mostly restricts the federal government, and gives a lot more leeway to the states (though obviously the Bill of Rights places limits on the states, as well).

So arguing that it's a terrible document without a lot of stretching is basically arguing that states are far too small, and a giant central government is necessary.

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

#67

Post by opportune » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 1:43 AM UTC

Asparagirl wrote: post #31

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 s…

I'm originally from a state like that and living in a bit more enlightened one. I have very mixed feelings about the prevailing mindset/attittude in my home state, those similar to the people you saw on Facebook. Those people are my family members, friends' parents, and even teachers. It's somewhere between anger, pity, and disgust.

You have to understand that these people are unhappy (mostly due to economic reasons) and are being spoonfed media bullshit all the time. Some of them are legitimately hateful, but a lot are just not very bright and have terrible bullshit filters. It doesn't help that the South's culture is pretty generally reviled elsewhere in the US and that they get brain-drained pretty bad.

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

#68

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 1:57 AM UTC

gottathrow wrote: post #59

scarface74 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The disconnect isn't just between Black and White it's between the poor and not poor. You'd be surprised if you heard the conversations between some upper middle class Blacks and if you didn't know what color they were, you would think they were some of the most racist White people in the world. (I'm Black).

Your comments in this thread are fascinating and I'd love to hear your take on something. In the upper middle class, largely liberal society that I'm part of, I sometimes get an uncomfortable feeling from how people talk about racism. They believe in racial equality and tolerance, which is great. But something uglier seems mixed in too. To me it feels like a class prejudice that wants to see the poor as beneath them,…

I came from a middle class neighborhood, but I have been around poorer minorities and become more aware of the issues that poorer Whites have.

I have a group of five friends that I keep in touch with from a former job. We have a private Slack channel and meet for lunch occasionally - all tech people in our mid 40s. Three White, two Black. I don't think any of them are racists, but two of them say things that show their complete ignorance of the real world. We were talking about the difference between the education system in one part of the metro area - where the school system had lost accreditation and the school systems where we live - all top ranked in an affluent part of town.

Their solution was, why don’t they just move? In the part of town with the unaccredited school on the opposite side of town average rent was $650/month. On our side of town, rent is $1600 a month. On top of that; public transportation is basically non existent because the county didn’t want to connect to the metro system because it made it too easy for the “wrong element” to come up here.

Not to mention they blamed the housing crisis in 2008 on “poor people getting loans they couldn’t afford”. I had to explain to them how things really worked in real estate from someone who used every trick out there to get real estate without putting any skin in the game, did “strategic defaults”, and bought a new house three years later. Poor people couldn’t do that.

Last but not least, I had to explain that welfare and other benefits to the poor was such a small amount of their tax dollars it wasn’t even worth worrying about.

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

#69

Post by ikeyany » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 2:08 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #46

I don't disagree with the article but let me give a more positive anecdote. I'm Black and live in Forsyth County GA. Yeah this Forsyth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0 We were looking for a house and were welcomed with opened arms by the builder, I can still go to pick up my son from a teen group where no one knows me and ask any random person have they seen my son and they know exactly who I'm talking ab…

> I've never experienced anything that I could perceive as racist here and neither has my family.

You'd certainly be in the minority. I've seen worse in far more "progressive" areas of the country.

I hope people don't read your comment and assume your experience is anywhere near typical.

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

#70

Post by aaron-lebo » Mon, Feb 12, 2018, 2:09 AM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #62

aaron-lebo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highland Park is a city within a city that pays no taxes to DISD. Zuckerberg grew up in Dobb's Ferry, which is just outside of New York City's limits. He ended up at a private high school with an endowment of 1.15 billion. Now he's worth 70 billion. Not to pick on him (just an example), but there are many ways the elites segregate themselves.

Highland Park and Dobb's Ferry have public schools though: https://www.dfsd.org/ http://www.hipark.org/ Median incomes in Highland Park are lower than Detroit and the school system there basically failed a few years ago. I think there's probably a pretty good argument to be made about how schools are funded. Just pointing out that not all properties are inside of large cities isn't it.

That's not the same place.

Yes, they do have their own public schools, but that's ignoring how isolated and segregated those schools are that tax base is from the rest of the community.

In the 2015-2016 school year, HPISD had a student population of 7,171 people, of whom 2,114 were at Highland Park High School. The areas from which HPISD draws, Highland Park and University Park, have a reputation for being affluent, predominantly white areas. The numbers show that although the student body used to be almost 99% white, by 2015 a lower 86.5% of the District was white. The next biggest sections are a 6% Asian population and a 5% Hispanic population. In terms of affluence, it is true that 0.0% of the District's students are economically disadvantaged. The rate of violent or criminal incidents at every single campus in the District in 2015-2016 was 0.0%

Dobb's isn't that bad, but its demographics and income is still well above many nearby areas. Go through the Dobb's high site and count dark skinned people. It's an 80% majority community with a family income well over nearby areas.