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points by WillAdams 16 hours ago | 0 comments

One of the things I have of my father is an envelope which has some brass bits in it (I believe for a scale) which was mailed to my great uncle, addressed by hand, with only the county and state for an address in 1957 from Washington, D.C. with a postmark "Pray for peace" and in a box on the left of the envelope is written:

-------------------------------------------

House of Representatives, U.S.

Part of Congressional Record --- Free

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND NAACP IN COLLUSION TO FORCE SCHOOL INTEGRATION IN VIRGINIA

Address by Honorable Harry Flood Byrd before the Richmond Kiwanis Club, Richmond, Va

Extension of remarks of HON. WATKINS M. ABBITT of Virginia IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Wednesday, April 3, 1957

-------------------------------------------

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

Folks forget or underestimate how bitter the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement was.

I was taught to gut a squirrel by the son of a freed slave who lived behind the home in Virginia where my family retired to, he had worked alongside my grandfather as a sharecropper on my paternal grandmother's father's farm.

and it's worth noting that that county was one of the last to integrate in Virginia, facilitated by student teachers from a college in a nearby town whose post office is named for Watkins M. Abbitt.

[–] jfengel 15 hours ago

Folks forget or underestimate how bitter the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement is.

White folks, that is. Black Americans are acutely aware of it.

Civil Rights legislation is being rolled back, to enthusiastic cheers. A lot of people never got over the Civil War, and are still trying to prove that somehow they were right all along.

[–] dcss_gardener 15 hours ago

Gotta also remember that all these devoted segregationists didn't get removed from positions of power or influence, nor did they change their minds about the value of segregation.

You had a generation of people making legal, hiring, sentencing, admission, loan decisions that smoothly transitioned from enforcing the law to being very concerned about standards or however they personally decided was the best way to publicly approach it within their little political sphere.

Then they selected and trained the next generation of administrators, bureaucrats, and enforcers about the "right" way to do this work. A lot of things have changed but at no point did this process end in any meaningful way.

[–] paimapi 14 hours ago

There's that infamous Lee Atwater quote (former RNC chariman who helped Bush I and Reagan win on their 'no taxes, cut social services' rhetoric) that I won't quote here but is foundational to modern conservative dogwhistle politics: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...

We live downstream of that where people often parrot the same dogwhistles uncritically 40 years later without understanding how deeply racist they are.

[–] _DeadFred_ 13 hours ago

But both sides are the same and 'it doesn't matter' if these sorts come in to power and restack the FBI/courts with people with this mindset.

[–] paimapi 13 hours ago

I won't say there aren't myriads of issues with establishment we-must-appeal-to-the-moderates DNC consultation priesthood but historically and in recent times one party has generally been better about civil rights than the other:

https://journalistsresource.org/politics-and-government/raci...

If anything, you can thank most of the repeal of things like reproductive rights, the Voting Rights Act, etc and enshrinement of corporate personhood, gerrymandering, etc to the explicitly conservative project of The Federalist Society who now have the ruling majority in the Supreme Court.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/27/federalis...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_leanings_of_United...

[–] R1D3R 11 hours ago

This is such a pathetic cliche. The differences are clear. If you don’t see them it’s because you’re trying not to.

[–] pstuart 13 hours ago

Please stop with the "both sides are the same". They are very much not.

The only similarity in that regard is party leadership which is owned by the corporations and the rich.

[–] wondering5du 5 hours ago

And that only similarity is unfortunately the only thing that matters. Uniparty stays undefeated because people keep thinking in terms of parties.

[–] chuckadams 12 hours ago

The "But" and the quotes suggest that the GP reply might be sarcastic?

Poe's Law in action I guess.

[–] pstuart 10 hours ago

Good point. Hard to know -- there's plenty of people in this forum who are just fine with the way things are, politically that is.

[–] deepfriedchokes 13 hours ago

I don’t think the issue with Civil Rights legislation was the Civil War, I think the issue was equality.

As President Lyndon Johnson said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket.”

Racism isn’t about race at its core, it’s redirected anger from being exploited and abused by people in power. There is a reason people in power always blame “the immigrants” or “the Jews”; it’s redirection.

[–] InsideOutSanta 13 hours ago

This doesn't just apply to race. The whole "trans people in women's bathrooms/sports" panic was another example of people being told that a tiny minority of people are a huge threat that we all need to focus on, while we were being screwed over by a kleptocracy. Same with "Antifa."

And it worked. Politicians do this because it works.

[–] iguln 12 hours ago

True, the right used this against the left because this issue, and particularly the aspect of males in female sport, highlights a set of absurd beliefs that are unfortunately quite common on the left. Political parties pushing ridiculous views tends to be a vote loser, even if the impact of these views when translated into policy is relatively small. It's like how a flat-earther politician would put a lot of people off.

[–] InsideOutSanta 10 hours ago

> the aspect of males in female sport, highlights a set of absurd beliefs that are unfortunately quite common on the left

You're playing right into the hands of the kleptocracy by trying to start this dumb-ass discussion up again.

[–] insane_dreamer 9 hours ago

if I remember correctly, Howard Zinn covers this pretty well in his A People's History of the Unites States: racism was promoted by the wealthy in order to keep the poor divided and weak (the fear of poor whites and blacks uniting was real)

[–] Aunche 4 hours ago

Socialists like to frame everything as a class war, but reality is not so black and white. Rich people aren't a monolith and this was especially not the case with civil rights. The American elite were thoroughly embarrassed by their European counterparts laughing at their countrymen being so boorish as to lynch people for the color of their skin. Civil Rights came from the top down just as much, if not more, than it came from the bottom up. Without the Supreme Court that gave us Brown v Board and LBJ's warm reception of the NAACP, we would not have Civil Rights as we know it. At best, we'd get half measures that the kind we got under Reconstruction.

[–] close04 12 hours ago

This seems like an oversimplification and one of your own examples shows it. Aren’t “the Jews” today in power or in very close proximity, not just locally but on the world stage? Are they redirecting the anger to themselves? Or is there more to the reasons people would direct their hate or dislike towards an entire group of people?

Not saying that you’re wrong, but there’s more to it. Even when not directed by those in power, some people need an external reason for their own failures. They need a target for their anger that is not themselves.

[–] monkeywork 14 hours ago

Honest question as I'm not American and may be missing context but what Civil Rights are black Americans having rolled back on them?

[–] Arainach 14 hours ago

The Voting Rights Act has been gutted, allowing southern states to gerrymander and reduce the voting power of minorities. Not even hypothetically, Texas did so moments after the Supreme Court gutted the VRA.

States are aggressively attacking minority voting rights through several angles - reducing sites you can vote and hours you can vote at them, especially in minority areas, ID requirements that hurt people who don't own cars and thus don't need Drivers' Licenses (and are essentially a form of poll tax), and many other nefarious tactics.

[–] datsci_est_2015 14 hours ago

And mainstream conservative justification, including the US Supreme Court, is that because this is not overtly racist in its design, but just coincidentally racist in its impact, it has plausible deniability. Basically an extension of the “racism is over” school of thought.

And an extension of the progressive / conservative disagreement between how a system is designed vs. the impacts of a system determines its fairness and justness.

Edit: funny, I pre-sniped the sibling responses to your comment.

[–] HEmanZ 14 hours ago

I appreciate you called out the more fundamental disagreement here: "... the progressive / conservative disagreement between how a system is designed vs. the impacts of a system determines its fairness and justness."

I think a lot of people miss this or pretend that the conservative position is just old-school racism (although it definitely is sometimes). But there are really hard philosophical, ethical, and political questions at the base of a lot our political problems. I think it helps keep people from arguing past each other if they can find out where the really "hard" part of their political disagreement actually is.

[–] datsci_est_2015 13 hours ago

It’s called disparate impact more specifically, but that term is unfortunately increasingly politicized as it’s inconvenient.

[–] jfengel 13 hours ago

That's not "unfortunate". It was a deliberate choice. Any term used to describe the problem is treated as if it meant something bad, and then we're told we can't talk about it because it's "politicized". As if the entire point of the political process was about something other than resolving disagreements.

[–] Terr_ 12 hours ago

I highly recommend the video series "The Alt-Right Playbook" (in the sense of an expose, not a how-to) which has an episode dedicated to this, titled "Always a Bigger Fish". [0], which goes into how people might be talking "past" one-another.

______

> Your conservative friend is often baffled as to what you're even trying to say when you point out there's not enough high-paying jobs or affordable health plans for everyone.

> There's not supposed to be. The system requires an underclass. Someone's gotta clean the toilets.

> Capitalism, then, is a proving ground: it's how you demonstrate where in the hierarchy you deserve to be. Do you have more than you need, or less?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs&list=PLJA_jUddXv...

[–] watwut 10 hours ago

Conservative position is the old school racism, just with a dishonest excuse on top of it.

Those systems are not having disparate impats randomly. They were deaigned that way on purpose.

[–] HEmanZ 10 hours ago

Your framing is fundamentally illiberal. Refraining from engaging using “well deep in your heart” excuses means you can self-righteously ignore any position you disagree with and never have to face real argument. And it is wonderfully non-falsifiable, so you can always use it!

[–] 0xDEAFBEAD 14 hours ago

Progressive thinkers like Ibram X. Kendi believe every single policy issue must be evaluated on the basis of whether it happens to impact different races differently. Essentially turning the state into a gigantic social engineering project.

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-racial-crossroads/

[–] datsci_est_2015 14 hours ago

And the alternative for you is to just ignore that any law (or government action) has any different impact on race at all? Why are we arguing at the extremes? What alternative history must one subscribe to in order to believe that ignoring disparate impact won’t end in humans rights abuses? Have you even heard about something like how nuclear testing and proliferation disproportionately impacted the Navajo nation especially because they had absolutely no recourse against it? Are we just supposed to say “tough luck”? “Might makes right?” “Should’ve gotten a better lawyer?”

[–] throwitaway222 2 hours ago

I think we can start with just ignoring skin color and just be people, just be Americans.

[–] 0xDEAFBEAD 13 hours ago

>And the alternative for you is to just ignore that any law (or government action) has any different impact on race at all?

I mean, every law will inevitably impact different groups at least a little differently. I'm not a fan of obsessing about race every time a law is written, no.

>What alternative history must one subscribe to in order to believe that ignoring disparate impact won’t end in humans rights abuses?

This seems like sloppy reasoning. If a person's rights are being violated, they ought to be able to make that argument in court without reference to disparate impact.

What we've seen in the US is the 90s "judge people as individuals" paradigm has been replaced by a "racial collectivism" paradigm. In recent years, this new paradigm was initially mainstream on the left, then became mainstream on the right:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg

The "racial collectivism" paradigm is corrosive to individual rights, no matter who wields it. Furthermore, collectivist activity on the part of one ethnic group ends up being countered by collectivist activity on the part of other ethnic groups, in a doom spiral. The result is descent into hateful sectarianism. Scroll through X on any Tuesday to see what I mean.

>nuclear testing and proliferation disproportionately impacted the Navajo nation especially because they had absolutely no recourse against it? Are we just supposed to say “tough luck”? “Might makes right?” “Should’ve gotten a better lawyer?”

Consider a hypothetical where the town near the nuclear test has a population which is a perfect microcosm of the US in terms of race, gender, age, class, etc. No "disparate impact" argument can be possibly made in this hypothetical, since all of the racial "collectives" are equally harmed.

Does this change the fact that the nuclear tests are harming people? Or the best approaches to the problem?

Racial collectivism just isn't a good approach. People are more responsive to the needs of others when they view them as fellow humans or fellow citizens, not representatives of alien collectives.

[–] InsideOutSanta 13 hours ago

> turning the state into a gigantic social engineering project

What do you think the state is but a gigantic social engineering project?

[–] scoofy 10 hours ago

I hate this line of thinking. It's hard to argue that Republicans are strictly racist when you have people like Tim Scott in respected positions. Literally Condoleezza Rice was the Secretary of State. If we are going to take racism seriously, race needs to be the causal mechanism... not culture, not politics.

The distinction between cultural differences and something like strict colorism make this a difficult issue to adjudicate. Correlation does not imply causation, and looking at nontrivial counter-examples should be helpful.

It's really difficult to argue the party's goal in gerrymandering is trying to prevent black people from gaining significant positions in government when the same party is electing and appointing black folks to significant positions in government.

I say this as a lefty.

[–] Arainach 9 hours ago

The presence of token minorities doesn't change the intention or effect of their policies.

There aren't enough rich people out there for Republicans to win elections based on the votes of people their policies actually help. They use things like racism and transphobia to energize voters among groups they hurt (such as folks relying on medicaid, social security, farm subsidies, clean air and water, etc.)

[–] scoofy 9 hours ago

The presence of many token minorities, some of which are elected by popular vote, does undermine the argument that the point is to stop minorities from achieving elected office.

Again, you are conflating racism with passing policies that harm groups that correlate with race. Those are not the same thing.

The point of the Civil Rights Act was that many southern states were trying to stop black people from achieving office because they were black. They weren't trying to infringe the voting rights of white liberals. There is a world of difference between trying to end Medicare and trying to end Medicare... only for minorities.

[–] 0xDEAFBEAD 14 hours ago

>ID requirements that hurt people who don't own cars and thus don't need Drivers' Licenses (and are essentially a form of poll tax)

The majority of non-US democracies require ID to vote, and it's considered normal and un-controversial. Here in the US, there is a tempest in a teakettle because this has been deemed a "civil rights issue". It really illustrates the role that "civil rights" plays in modern US political discourse.

[–] yummypaint 14 hours ago

The nature of that ID is essential. If it used to authenticate someone for voting, which is a RIGHT, then every citizen must have a RIGHT to possess that ID. Not only that, but obtaining the ID must not pose any encumbrance beyond the effort to vote.

Americans manifestly do not have a right to possess a driver's license, it's a privilege. The process for obtaining one requires expenditure of time, energy, and money.

The only form of government "ID" that could presently meet the bar is social security cards, as every citizen has one by right. That is obviously a bad idea. There is no "move fast and break things" when it comes to democratic process. If something as important as this cannot be done right, then it should not be done. The right to vote is sacred and cannot be infringed upon, period.

[–] TFNA 12 hours ago

Drivers licenses haven't been the only form of state ID across the US for well over a generation now, and as national-level ID usable in any state there is the passport (and at less cost there was the passport card).

The physical Social Security card was never meant to be used as ID (the number on it is, de facto, another story).

Obtaining ID cards in other developed countries requires the same payment of application fees and visits to offices, so those steps being required in the US, too, aren't any refutation of the OP's comment.

[–] 0xDEAFBEAD 13 hours ago

>Americans manifestly do not have a right to possess a driver's license, it's a privilege. The process for obtaining one requires expenditure of time, energy, and money.

Just get a state ID or passport then.

[–] mos_basik 11 hours ago

28 USD for a non-driver ID in my state of residence (1) (exceptions: free if you are homeless or are a blind veteran)

65 USD for a passport card (2) (the cheapest passport option).

Both require attending in-person appointments.

For contrast:

Voting is compulsory in Australia. Citizens may register to vote entirely online, and may prove their identity using a Medicare card or citizenship certificate (or driver's license or passport, ofc) (3). (Aside: this page of FAQs explicitly calls out that these two means of proving ID have been added as a response to increasing feedback from young people, disabled people, and people living in remote areas about having less access to driver's license or passport.)

Obtaining an Australian Medicare card is free, and citizens may prove their identity using a birth certificate (no need for it to be certified) and submitting their application + supporting documents by email (or by mail, but that costs postage) (4).

Free, and no in-person appointment.

1. https://portal.ct.gov/dmv/licenses-permits-ids/get-non-drive...

2. https://travel.state.gov/en/passports/apply/adults.html#acco...

3. https://www.aec.gov.au/faqs/enrolment.htm

4. https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/enrolling-medicare-if-y...

[–] Arodex 12 hours ago

Are these REAL ID? Are they free? How long does one has to drive to find an office who can deliver those? How much paperwork is needed? How many times does one has to get back in person to that ID office?

Stop. We can all see you argue in bad faith. You are at best incurious and naive, and at worst...

[–] monkeywork 7 hours ago

Does the American left feel the same way about firearms? I've heard for years that there should be registration and licensing on them (which I actually agree with).

[–] sham1 13 hours ago

As someone from one of those non-US democracies, the reason why we can mandate IDs for votes is because they're basically trivial to get, whereas from what I've heard of the American hodgepodge of state-level IDs and "this one counts while this one doesn't" shenanigans, that doesn't seem to apply to the US. Now, I know that over there, the several states are responsible for running the elections within their borders -- that being in the US Constitution -- but some states seem to try to (and succeed in) making it unnecessarily difficult, and that may or may not be on purpose. Civil Rights groups certainly seem to think that it is, and that it affects minority populations disproportionately, because of course it does.

For a point of comparison, here in Finland we require that a voter has a valid ID, that is an ID card, a driver's licence with a photo in it, or a passport. Now what if you _don't_ have one of those IDs? Easy, you go to the police station and get yourself a temporary ID, which is by law given free of charge. You do need to get a passport photo taken for that, but those can usually be done in about 10 minutes for around 10 Euros.

And of course there are other things outside of the ID issue which make the elections not rigged against minorities. Simple things like having the actual election day on a Sunday, the polling stations being usually in walking distance in cities -- people living in the countryside most likely have a car -- and that said polling stations tend to be in schools, shops, and other such places where people would be going anyway. Oh, and you usually also get polling stations popping up before the actual election day so that people may vote in advance, in said shops, schools, and similar assorted places.

---

The US could totally start doing ID mandates, but the problem is that in the US, their usage doesn't seem to be out of a genuine worry about election integrity or other similar concerns, but out of voter disenfranchisement, which again, hits minority populations disproportionately hard.

[–] 0xDEAFBEAD 13 hours ago

>You do need to get a passport photo taken for that, but those can usually be done in about 10 minutes for around 10 Euros.

This doesn't sound like a big difference in effort from the last time I got myself an ID.

>Oh, and you usually also get polling stations popping up before the actual election day so that people may vote in advance, in said shops, schools, and similar assorted places.

Yep, the US also has early voting and vote by mail.

>their usage doesn't seem to be out of a genuine worry about election integrity or other similar concerns

Gallup says 80% of people of color in the US favor a voter ID requirement: https://news.gallup.com/poll/652523/americans-endorse-early-...

[–] Arainach 9 hours ago

> This doesn't sound like a big difference in effort from the last time I got myself an ID.

And you probably don't live in a dense urban area, or at least a minority-heavy part of one.

I grew up in Michigan. In the suburb where my parents lived, there were 8-10 voting machines for a not-large population and voting was a matter of pulling in, walking inside, casting our ballot, and leaving.

In the college town less than 20 miles away it was a very different story - far fewer machines per person, polling places far away from where students live so they have to find a ride to get there, and more - and this was an intentional tactic to discourage youth voting.

Allocation and staffing of DMV and similar offices where one has to go in order to get an ID are manipulated in the same way.

[–] K0nserv 14 hours ago

The US could make IDs free and then make election day a national holiday, in which case the resistance to ID requirements probably wouldn't be as strong. Currently voter ID laws will suppress voting, whereas the goal in a democracy should surely be that everyone has ample opportunity to vote and have their voice heard.

[–] monkeywork 14 hours ago

I'm asking something that specifically targets black Americans as a group - the VRA doesn't target them (at least as my understanding goes) but rather as you said is allowing gerrymandering which more divides down political lines than racial ones unless you are suggesting that every person of a racial group thinks and votes the same.

I guess to put it more directly if we took a hypothetical black male named Steven and a hypothetical white female named Sally who have the same job, live in the same neighborhood, etc - what rights has been rolled back on Steven that were not on Sally.

[–] YesThatTom2 14 hours ago

One example would be a black neighborhood having 1 voting machine so that the line is so long there isn’t time for everyone to vote.

Meanwhile a white neighborhood has dozens of polling places, each with many machines.

[–] 0xDEAFBEAD 14 hours ago

Here's NPR, a notoriously left-wing news source in the US

"Although we often talk in a partisan context about voter fraud and voter suppression and whether voters have access to the ballot, the reality is, over the past 25 years, we've greatly increased the convenience of voting for almost all Americans," said David Becker, the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), which authored the new report."

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/19/1238646047/voting-options-ear...

[–] teachrdan 13 hours ago

Your own source disagrees with you.

If you actually read the article, you'll see that the argument is that, since the year 2000, it has (as of 2024) broadly become easier to vote. But:

"The South, with its history of slavery and Jim Crow laws, has long lagged behind when it comes to voting access. The CEIR data shows that, although some states have slowly started expanding options for voters, generally it is still the most difficult region for voters to cast a ballot."

And it's only gotten worse since. I strongly suggest you do some cursory research in the future before making comments like this.

(Also from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2024/03/05/1235521824/voter-turnout-race... )

[–] jfengel 13 hours ago

Did you read the rest of the article?

* real efforts by some Republican-led legislatures to restrict access at the margins*

The lies about early voting, the lies about voting machines and efforts in some state legislatures to roll back some of the election integrity and convenience measures

He says that they "almost all" failed -- meaning some are succeeding, and they're always disenfranchising the same people. The average is better, but that doesn't tell you anything about those worst affected.

He's also not talking about gerrymandering, which has gotten worse and worse over time.

[–] ZeroGravitas 13 hours ago

Let's hope no one starts an ill informed and hypocritical conspiracy theory about the mail-in voting that has made it so much easier to vote.

[–] Arainach 10 hours ago

This DOES intentionally target black people. It's an intentional strategy to have "plausible" deniability dating back decades:

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...

> You start out in 1954 by saying, “N$, n$, n$.” By 1968 you can’t say “n$”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N$, n$.”

[–] josh-sematic 14 hours ago

The only reason gerrymandering works as a tactic in the first place is that neighborhoods DON’T have a statistically uniform distribution of the population. So “Steven and Sally live in the same neighborhood” is not a very good way to look at issues like these.

[–] micromacrofoot 14 hours ago

That's the problem, none of the legislation says "black people can't be allowed to vote" but we know based on statistics that things like voter ID disproportionately harm people in lower income brackets, which are disproportionately minorities. So we get these wheedling "not racism actually" rulings. There's a massive compounding effect that the restriction of economic opportunity has had over generations.

One of the more direct actions was the dismantling of affirmative action, which was an intentional set of rules set to undo some of this historical aggregated harm.

[–] YesThatTom2 13 hours ago

And yet… there have been lawsuits that surfaced memos and audio clips where GOP strategists were blatant about developing proxies for “is black”.

[–] KerrAvon 14 hours ago

Yes, in aggregate -- the whole group, not cherry-picked individuals -- racial groups vote differently from each other. In 2024, if only Black people had voted, we'd have President Harris now. This is beyond dispute.

[–] Danox 13 hours ago

It will be interesting to see what happens in the midterms, because the current administration, have been going after Hispanics and Asians without hesitation. Maybe those groups will finally learn something. If you’re black or American Indian, you know the score.

The Republicans lost California because Pete Wilson and the Republican Party in California (late 1980’s) could not shut their mouths up, demonizing Hispanics at every turn, it turned the whole state around to the Democrats, and the same group is slowly but surely turning Texas blue with every year that goes by. And the same is also true of Arizona and New Mexico, just keep demonizing Hispanics. It’s not going work out in the long term.

The next governor of California will be a democrat of Hispanic dissent the Republicans had better be nice/respectful to him because they are losing the Southwest slowly but surely, every year, and being respectful also includes Mexico.

[–] expedition32 12 hours ago

The Republicans just don't want to campaign in urban centers. Barely any major city in America has a Republican mayor. It's frankly insane for a mainstream party to just basically give up.

[–] strix_varius 14 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_v._Callais

[–] ZeroGravitas 14 hours ago

Narrator: it was not an honest question.

[–] mturmon 3 hours ago

Agree, and it has diverted the whole thread.

[–] datsci_est_2015 14 hours ago

You’re being downvoted, but it’s a fair criticism given they seemed to have a response locked and loaded to immediately give after they were given the most obvious response to their question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

[–] throw7 14 hours ago

I am much more circumspect on the civil rights movement and the top-down legislative results over the decades. There was good and bad. And the FBI telling MLK to kill yourself was heinous, just the same as to today as the FBI coercing Brian J. Cole Jr. (jan. 6 bomber suspect).

[–] eth0up 13 hours ago

I was watching video the other day, compellingly showing Cole in a location that would completely exonerate him from the charges if verified. Not getting adequate attention.

[–] theoreticalmal 15 hours ago

Are you talking about Title VII in Universities?

[–] tetromino_ 15 hours ago

My first guess would be this year's Supreme Court decision about the Voting Rights Act.

[–] atmavatar 14 hours ago

Almost immediately after the ruling, a number of Republican states immediately put forth redrawn maps breaking up majority black districts.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/14/southern-sta...

[–] duskwuff 14 hours ago

Another candidate would be the DOJ ending attempts at school desegregation:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/us/politics/justice-depar...

[–] pstuart 13 hours ago

There's a reason why the Right was up in arms about Critical Race Theory. They're currently doing everything possible to erase the past and frame the future as a White Christian country. And these people are the ones in power today.

[–] crest 10 hours ago

<rant>

So go and put them in the ground next to their disgusting traitor ancestors. The abolitionists should've made sure to break the southern slaver class any would miss them for good.

Any reasonable person knows it's wrong to deny an other human their humanity to enrich themselves. They should've retroactively made owning slaves as well as helping someone else keep slaves a crime punishable by a quick death and redistribution of all their worldly possessions among those they enslaved.

The descendants of the slavers still lust for twisted reimagined memory of former stolen wealth and power to this day. We can see it was a mistake to show them mercy. Let those southern trees carry strange white fruits!

</rant>

[–] ETH_start 11 hours ago

This is an incredibly partisan take and I don't think it's appropriate for Hacker News, which is not supposed to include flamebait comments.

Ah yes, white people are oblivious to racism and black people are systemically abused. This is just the standard Democrat narrative. And it's fine to believe that, but again, it's far from an objective non-partisan, non-flame-baity take.

[–] barake 15 hours ago

My local school system was forcibly desegrated _less than 10 years before I was born_ [1]. You can still plainly see the impact of redlining on my city [2]. I think it goes without saying that this wasn't covered in our schools, public or private, and was something I only really understood the scope of as an adult.

1: https://www.wlky.com/article/forced-busing-anniversary-50-lo...

2: https://www.louisville.com/redlining-louisville-dividing-lin...

[–] amanaplanacanal 15 hours ago

I was born and raised in liberal west coast Oregon. We sure weren't taught about the racial implications of our state's history either. When Oregon was admitted to the union the state constitution prohibited blacks from living in the state. 100 years ago the Klan was big here, and even now African Americans are less than 2% of the population.

[–] klaff 14 hours ago

St. Louis has the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delmar_Divide.

The Warmth of Other Suns is a very good book for filling some of that hole in your education. I am not sure if I wasn't taught about the Great Migration at all or was taught about it for 10 minutes but definitely did not get out of school with much understanding of this aspect of American history.

[–] graemep 14 hours ago

Her other book, Caste, was what made me understand American racism, and how it differed from racism in societies I knew. I strongly recommend it.

i have a blog post about this: https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different/

[–] klaff 11 hours ago

Thanks for the link. I'm a white American who has been lucky enough to visit Sri Lanka! I don't agree with your conclusion that American racism is inescapable, or uniquely so. I believe we can make progress on bigotries - in particular, despite the current and despicable wave against people who are transgender, non-binary, or otherwise queer, I believe we have made significant progress in reducing homophobia over the last 5 decades (the ones I can remember!). On the negative side, I did reach the conclusion (due to what I've seen during the Trump era) that much of what I thought was progress on racism was simply racists learning to code-switch. That part's depressing.

[–] graemep 11 hours ago

I do not think American racism is inescapable. I do think it is more part of the culture than it is in other places: like caste in India. It makes it more difficult escape because race is treated as an important and immutable characteristic. I find it odd that so many liberal Americans can accept the idea that gender is a matter of identify, while race is a fixed biological characteristic.

The other oddity is a tendency to lump everyone non-white together. Think of phrases such as "global majority".

[–] klaff 1 hour ago

I would have thought American liberals (like me) would mostly view race as a social construct and therefore not immutable. However I am not an expert in sociology and my experience must be shaped by not being part of any visible minority.

[–] pseudalopex 7 hours ago

> I find it odd that so many liberal Americans can accept the idea that gender is a matter of identify, while race is a fixed biological characteristic.

Liberal Americans said race is arbitrary in my experience. And people who said gender identity should be respected believed it was fixed.

[–] jimt1234 13 hours ago

I grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis during the 70s and 80s. My district was one of the last to desegregate schools in the state, fought for years to avoid it. Well, it finally happened in the early-80s, a 'bussing' program was started to bring Black kids from North St. Louis to attend schools in my district. I was probably 12 or 13 years old. I remember all the adults in the neighborhood were furious. There were protests outside my school on the first day. People threw rocks at the bus from North St. Louis when it pulled into the parking lot.

It was a little tense at school for, maybe, a few hours, but mostly it was just confusion - WTF is going on?. But after that, it was cool. All the kids quickly realized we're all basically the same - we all hated homework and were intimidated by girls, the usual adolescent stuff. I didn't know it at the time, but the school deseg program was one of the most impactful events of my childhood.

[–] JKCalhoun 7 hours ago

Redlining in Omaha's history too.

(You can kind of blame real-estate agents to a degree. There was an interesting indie documentary on it that played last year.)

[–] forinti 15 hours ago

> Folks forget or underestimate how bitter the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement was.

When you are used to privilege, equality looks like oppression.

[–] tiffer8 5 hours ago

How's that 'integration' working out for your children today?

[–] redanddead 15 hours ago

> I was taught to gut a squirrel by the son of a freed slave

Why gut squirrels

[–] ted_dunning 10 hours ago

Because you're poor and need to hunt squirrels to get protein into your diet?

Or because you have a history of being in that position and feel like it is important to pass the knowledge on?

[–] sophacles 14 hours ago

Because if you want to eat an animal you have to properly remove the bits of it that will make you sick and spoil the meat.

We do it to pigs and chickens and cows too. Its a very early step in the slaughtering and butchering process - usually the first step after the animal has been killed.

[–] cowlevel 15 hours ago

That isn't what was written on the letter, that was the commenter's own writing.

[–] igleria 15 hours ago

I mean... operation paperclip already tells you A LOT of what you need to understand about the USA for most of the 20th century. And I'm being kind because it would otherwise be unfair to most of the users of this site who were not even born then.

[–] tsunamifury 15 hours ago

I don’t think you need to be so gentle with us.

We, as Americans have had our “mask off” moment now and are openly declaring ourselves the preeminent empire on the planet. It’s simply that we are withdrawing from our globalist support structures due to a wide variety of forecast reasons along side that, which is confusing to many.

It was our liberal values and performance internally by the Democrats that gave our people as sort of comforting story before. We do it for the good of others we give we topple dictators etc.

I am a deeply “real politik” person and I don’t think you average right leaning American ever thought otherwise. It was somewhat ironically the hope yet no-change left Americans (who i have counted myself among) who tried to give it the thinnest veneer of responsibility.

The greatest thing we provided the world was order, for a time. That seems true of almost any mature empire.

[–] bongofizzbuzz 13 hours ago

The amazing thing DeepState has done or does properly is it controls the power centers of other countries, no need to deal with people or convincing others. Like using poison and neurotoxins to paralyse the other nation. Other people's trust on American order is weaponized against them.

[–] tehjoker 15 hours ago

Order for the West, chaos and death for south america and southeast asia and the middle east and parts of africa.

[–] tsunamifury 14 hours ago

I can understand your perspective here, and argue that, ultimately a market order was imposed on the world by America (and England) -- even when America interefered, removed, or otherwise altered democratic trajectories still resulted in a sort of networked world order. I'll not argue that they were not done, or even that they were done to benefit those targeted.

Simply that a type of order was enforced to build a global money-ist theory of society and and market + trade platform.

I might, wrongly, argue that many of these regions both would have continued in the chaos and death they otherwise were already participating in, but i'd also accept that the Dutch in Africa, English in the Caribbean and China, etc all introduced net new outside chaotic aspects on purpose. I'd also accept that attempts at order by the American's ultimately resulted in chaos, especially of course in the middle east.

As to south america, this I'll acknowledge of course was an history of interference, one that is hard to argue the contra-positive since communism in almost all regions of the world failed to develope a long term stable order which was both culturally, trade, and fiscally sustainable, with many falling to a worse state after these outcomes.

[–] tehjoker 10 hours ago

China and Vietnam, left mostly to their own devices, have maintained a positive trajectory and retain control of the commanding heights of the economy. Vietnam and China successfully repulsed Western occupiers which is what gave them a chance at independent development.

Every other attempt at a different path elsewhere was undercut by military coups, invasions, economic blockades. One would hope that communism/socialism would be robust to destabilization efforts, but it was not the case. Capitalism also took time to develop, such as various attempts in the Italian city states before first taking root in Denmark. Hopefully, a new system of peace and cooperation will replace our brutal empire.

[–] MomsAVoxell 16 hours ago

>Folks forget or underestimate how bitter the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement was.

It's especially jarring to understand this in the context of the utterly racist "war on terror", which is just racism under cover. Racists can't use the n-word any more, so they invented "terrorist" to continue their bigotry and hatred of cultures they've deemed inferior.

Its one thing to consider the West to be morally and technologically superior with regards to civil rights - its another thing to remember that our governments were the principle violators of civil rights, just a few short decades ago. What the hate-leaders tell us to think about the mullahs and Iran, we could easily have thought about our own nations just a half a lifetime ago...

[–] dragonwriter 15 hours ago

> It's especially jarring to understand this in the context of the utterly racist "war on terror", which is just racism under cover.

Not under that much cover, just the more overt part of it directed at a different demographic than the primary foci of earlier rounds of US racism (though it provided a lot of excuse for actions directed more in line with classic US racism, and set the stage for the renaissance of more classicly directed, out-and-proud racism that has characterized the Trump era.)

[–] bongofizzbuzz 14 hours ago

The Big Short (2015) | American Taxpayers Bailout The Banks | Steve Carell, Jeremy Strong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQGiEbj_GR0

"I have a feeling in a few years people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks. They will be blaming immigrants and poor people"

[–] MomsAVoxell 15 hours ago

See, I happen to think that racists get some kind of perverse self-actualization from manifesting degradation of cultures they consider inferior - that there is a real 'buzz' to be had from such fallacious elevation as required to justify bombing another culture into oblivion. The murder is its own reward in such circles.

The "terrorism" tranche of this hate culture is particularly jarring, since the ones claiming moral altitude over 'terrorists' are delivering far, far more terrorism than their supposed enemies. It's just been homogenized.

[–] jknoepfler 12 hours ago

The irony being that the pieces of Western culture one might reasonable feel smug about (government of checks and balances, democracy, high standard of care for the worst off, careful jurisprudence with presumption of innocence, scientific freedom and literacy, free public education, etc.) are precisely the foundations that MAGA and their ilk despise and work so hard to undermine.

Like if you're going to get patriotic about post-enlightenment values and institutions, that's one thing... if you're going to just act like a bigoted, might-makes-right, my-country-right-or-wrong, personality-worshiping, science-denying, uneducated xenophobic dipshit, then you don't have much to be proud of.

[–] chuckadams 15 hours ago

> What the hate-leaders tell us to think about the mullahs and Iran, we could easily have thought about our own nations just a half a lifetime ago...

Or where they'd still like to take us. The only problem they have with Ayatollahs is that they call God by the wrong name.

[–] zulux 15 hours ago

Well, that, and the rapeing and the murdering. And sticking their women in sacks isn't a good look for the theocracy.

[–] jacquesm 15 hours ago

The fundamentalist 'christian' groups are not much better from my vantage point.

[–] sejje 15 hours ago

It's hard to discern detail with your eyes closed.

[–] GolfPopper 15 hours ago

Are you talking about American religious conservatives in power, or Iranian ones?

[–] MomsAVoxell 15 hours ago

See, there you go, doing it.

Do you think that subsistence-working at Only Fans, or the local strip club is a better alternative?

For every 'women in sacks' argument that can be made, there is a street downtown where women put themselves in immense danger just to be able to feed their kids, pay their medical bill debts, get themselves some kind of safety net...

Same shit, different social flavor.

[–] Arodex 15 hours ago

In America women can go to jail for their husbands' crimes, men are allowed to marry ten-year-olds, and abortions in some states are illegal, even in cases of rape.

https://letterboxd.com/film/americas-war-against-women/watch...

[–] MomsAVoxell 15 hours ago

I think the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a pretty good framework by which to assess the longterm viability of a nation/state/group. States which violate the principles of the UDHR tend to be dreadful places to live in many ways - and this is as true of Western states as it is the non-Western ones.

I couldn't live in a state which allows its police forces to murder with impunity, for example.

The point is that the moral authority we claim over other states is a fallacy. Until we are actually protecting civil rights to the extent we expect of other nations, we are hypocritically justifying our own states heinous track record.

Alas, this seems to be understood pretty well by the ruling classes, who have subjugated human rights to mean "this gives us a right to justify the destruction of sovereign states and their peoples' we have deemed inferior".

[–] dodger-dog 14 hours ago

"I was taught to gut a squirrel by the son of a freed slave who lived behind the home in Virginia where my family retired to, he had worked alongside my grandfather as a sharecropper on my paternal grandmother's father's farm."

Sounds bucolic.