It's only a race issue because it started out that way. Nobody is turning it into anything that it wasn't already. The whole "turning everything into a race issue" is a copout used by those who'd rather forget the past and justify their ignorance. People too quickly forget that it was only two generations ago that non-whites were mostly deprived of civil liberties. The massive disadvantages of minorities and their families will continue to ripple through US society for decades, possibly centuries to come.
Despite having 403 billionaires, there is only one black billionaire in the US, even though blacks make up 12.4% of the population. Do you think this is a coincidence?
Race is one of the foundations of the American experiment, we refer to it as the ‘original sin’ (slavery). We never did anything about it until the Civil War, and then again with Civil Rights. It still lingered, as black/white were bisected in society. Then further subdivisions amongst other races. It’s part of our dilemma, we’ve been circling this problem since the beginning of the country.
America in general really struggles with the impulse to gate-keep opportunity. It’s true, America has the most opportunities in the world, but the natural human impulse to gate-keep kicks in. It can happen with race (‘we don’t want too many of ______ in our neighborhoods), it can happen with immigration (‘we don’t want too many _______ in this country), it can happen with class (‘Not everyone deserves what we deserve’), and so on.
My fear is the solution is still drenched in the same gate-keeping. The solution is not to gate-keep back the other way (‘they excluded us, so let’s now exclude them’). Same problem.
The investment portfolio rebalancing strategy doesn’t sit well with me. Life is not a weighted ETF where you can just go ‘divert the 50% of funds from commodities into a new distribution of 10/10/10/10/10 of crypto, gold, treasuries, etc).
Americans have a virtualization problem. Most Americans see that their country is diverse on TV and the Internet, but in their day to day, they really don’t intermix. Even if we do intermix, it’s still generally virtualized in such a way you only see them, like on TV or on the Internet. It’s even worse in non-major cities. It’s easy for most Americans to fool themselves into thinking they are open-minded, but it’s a whole different thing being comfortable watching another race on YouTube, than sharing a neighborhood with them.
I’ve mixed two different views here, apologies, but it’s a convoluted problem in America. It should be out of our minds by now, yet it isn’t. It’s so bad (or has been so bad) that we are literally setting race/gender quotas at this point, truly sad state of affairs.
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Edit:
I just want to add a small anecdote on how disconnected the discussion about this is. Usually we try to offer a chance to people who come from underprivileged backgrounds. This discussion usually falls on deaf ears because many Americans cannot fathom what it was like to go to an inner-city public school. They can’t imagine (no experience) what it’s like to sit next to classmates in the 12th grade who read at a 4th grade reading level (but are on track to graduate high school). If you can’t imagine that, then of course the discussion is a non-starter and will sound completely unfair. I’ve sat in those classrooms and all I could think was ‘holy shit you are gonna need all the help you can get’.
It’s just a country of a bunch of entry-level inexperienced citizens. Neither side has exposure to the other side.
I find it CorporateSpeak to say that race is becoming a greater and greater issue. It's long been a great issue. Wars have been fought over race, and the concept of race.
I didn't make race a core part of everyone's identity. America did that long ago. What I am doing is pointing out that system still exists and how much trouble it still causes.
I understand why "ignore it and it will go away" is appealing to people. It sounds like way less work! But part of the way racism and sexism operate is by discouraging examination of those systems. By making the empowered group the default, the norm, and refusing to look at the differential treatment. For example, look at Mitch McConnell's recent division of "Americans" vs "African-Americans": https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2022/jan/21/mitch-...
And that's just one example of a very widespread phenomenon. Here's another https://xkcd.com/385/
So ignoring the problem ends up supporting the problem. However much we would like to pretend that this problem will get better on its own, history tells power systems rarely if ever just give up on their own: https://thenib.com/great-moments-in-peaceful-protest-history...
The reason I mentioned race is because so many people around here want to ignore it. To ignore it is to ignore the reality that most Americans do not relate with minority groups. Bad news in a minority group is like bad news from the other side of the planet.
If your solution to a problem requires unity, you probably need to find another solution. America is not united.
The US is completely obsessed with race. It's utterly bizarre to me. I often ask people what race has to do with anything, but they never seem to provide me with a convincing answer...
Are you saying that it's beyond the pale to even have a conversation about diversity and immigration policy? Are you assuming that an inflow of people from anywhere in the world is always good or neutral?
No one cares. Your race/DEI/BIPOC/whatever is a tool used by super genius puppet masters to wage a multi century war on other races. You think Bill Gates cares about black people? You think [soulless middle manager] cares about black people? It’s all a game and you should exploit these companies to the max.
The systemic problem is the huge overlap of class (aka being poor) and race (aka being black) in the US. And that, along with general racist views, makes it such unique, and utterly racist, system. Ignoring that overlap means ignoring the root cause, for the US that is. in other countries, things are different.
A lot of people on HN and other places on the internet believe that everything is the result of class problems. And class problems are completely independent of race.
The entire world revolves around the American Race Problem. As it always does from inside your bubble.
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