I love Ben Thompson's writing and I like how he accurately connects the history of institutional racism to the events of today. I have seen a few articles of this kind, and it seems like in today's America vast majority of people (except a few Trump holdouts) have acknowledged that the historical arc of slavery to segregation to white flight to real estate discrimination has led to where we are.
However, what I don't hear is radical solution to this problem. Even in Obama's medium essay, the solution is deep police and criminal justice reform. Which, while important, is incremental. What we need here is a step change to course correct 400 years of history. And incremental changes do not cut it. Here are some step change suggestions
1)Trillions of dollars of reparations
2) A generous UBI
3) Free healthcare
4) Trillions of investment in schools in poorer neighborhoods
5) A dramatic rise in minimum wage
In pre-COVID world, I would accept a reasonable pushback against this suggestion was "deficit" "debt" etc. But COVID has exposed these pushbacks was hypocritical (puts a stark spotlight on the hypocritical Tea Party movement). We printed trillions of dollars overnight to save small and big businesses, and employees. Why can't we move at that scale ? If we can suddenly print that much money, what is stopping us from massive investments in our most disadvantaged communities to undo 400 years of history ?
Tangent:
For anyone who wants to learn more about the history of instutional racism in the US, in particular the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, The Color of Law (https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segreg...) goes into detail about the history of red lining and how it was GOVERNMENT-supported. For those bothered by the curfews imposed across the US, I'd also recommend Sundown Towns (https://www.amazon.com/Sundown-Towns-Hidden-Dimension-Americ...), which discusses how many metropolitan areas had unofficial but very much enforced curfews for minorities.
Economic parity would go a long way towards solving these problems, I don't think they can happen before white racial resentment is solved. It's interesting that so many working class whites are so willing to vote against their own economic self interest - particular where the possibility of raising the levels of working class blacks is concerned. Last Place Aversion is a very real thing it seems.
Economic Parity doesn’t have anything to do with police mistreatment and racial profiling. My family lives in the most affluent part of our metro area, my son grew up in the burbs all of his life, as an experienced software engineer by definition we have higher than the median income for our area, and people still thought we were up to something when we walked through our house as it was being built while other couples freely walked in and out of unsold homes.
Last year, I was outside talking to our (White) yard guy. His truck with the name of his lawn service was parked out front. He was dressed in beat up jeans, dusty, and holding the lawn mower while I had just come from work - in slacks and button down shirt. A neighbor walked over to us and asked him how long has he been living here while completely ignoring me. He looked like he was going to say something and I quietly nudged for him not to. I politely said I would see them later and walked into the house.
She was embarrassed - point made. When she left, I walked back outside with a bottle of water for him and we started back talking. I told him I just walked into the house to make a point and we both laughed.
I agree that this has to be part of the solution. There are some activists who have called for the US to go through a national truth and reconciliation proceedings to establish a common narrative.
Maybe they don’t say that but how many farmers who voted for Trump because of his platform about deporting “illegals” are now complaining that they can’t find anyone to work their farms because Americans won’t work the fields at any price?
And they are going to vote for him again?
How many “good Christians” support him even after the recording came out about him “grabbing a woman by the p%%%%”?
Farmers are rich, though, and they're doing fine for labor. The trade war hit them worse by tanking pork prices.
For working class people, neoliberal economics have done nothing for them. Plants in town have closed and they don't see any investment in their community from their tax dollars.
If neither party is going to look out for you, it's perfectly rational to sigh and pick the one that at least doesn't villainize you as some sort of oppressor.
If the democrats want to win back the white union vote, they need to actually offer something besides "vote for us or you're racist". I guess there's always 2024.
A non-trivial percentage of White Americans feel like African-Americans have already been made whole for the hundreds of years of wrongdoing done to them, and some even feel like Black people actually have more privilege/opportunity than White people in America and that America is now "reverse racist". Anecdotally, they tend to be poorer Whites who feel aggrieved that they haven't gotten the wealth they feel they deserve, but not always.
Basically the type of people who think saying "Black Lives Matter" means you hate White people.
The term was coined by Publius [1] in his blog. It's resentment towards black people due a belief of having *"been significantly deprived of various things because of minorities".
Also, WaPo recently used one question from historical surveys by the ANES (American National Election Studies) to measure what they consider "white resentment", and there seems to be a large correlation between that and other political positions. [2]
(Skip to the "Here’s how we did our research" part and the graph if you're not a fan of WaPo)
I am definitely not White - but when Democrats say that the “white trash” only care about guns and the Bible, why wouldn’t they vote for Trump? You never win votes by insulting the people that you want to vote for you.
Obama was caught in an uncharacteristic moment of loose language. Referring to working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses, the presidential hopeful said: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
This entire subthread is based around the premise of "they're too stupid/racist to know what's good for them".
Whether or not the specific phrase 'white trash' is said or not said doesn't matter. It could be 'clinging to guns and religion', could be 'deplorables', etc.
Racism totally does exist among the demographic we're talking about but it's not the only motivator anyone ever has.
I said nothing about him calling them “white trash”. I was quoting the parent. I said that Democrats claimed that rural America only cares about “guns and the Bible”. A slight misquote from memory. But it wasn’t an “internet Rando” that expressed that sentiment like you claimed.
Trump can afford to say “much worse” just like republicans in the past could afford to use the “Southern Strategy” and dog whistle to their constituents.
news.ycombinator.com is another amazing echo chamber. Racism going one way, one-sided political views, forum sliding, dissenting posts flagged, down moderated, censored from view. One more Leftwing echo chamber to radicalize, brainwash and mislead. Training techno Marxists to destroy their own critical thinking, side always politically left, ridicule and embrace censorship of their enemies, and to bury awareness that their hungry, deathful ideology has historically killed 100 ~ 200+ million of their own people.
Covid had definitely exposed flaws in pure free market capitalism. We are modern human beings who can control Darwinism for the sake of greater good if need be.
Please explain why I, a tax paying citizen who isn't a racist and hasn't discriminated against anyone, should have my money taken away at the point of a gun to fund all these programs. Also all the government spending for COVID was also misguided. Not the federal government's role and our debt is at dangerous levels.
> Also all the government spending for COVID was also misguided. Not the federal government's role and our debt is at dangerous levels.
What is the role of the federal government, if not "to provide basic services to its citizens in times of extraordinary need"? In the face of a generational pandemic, from which nobody is unaffected, why should the government throw up its hands and not spend?
I recognize that that is something of an ideological statement, and we're not going to get anywhere with non-falsifiable statements. So let's think of it a different way: you say that "debt is at dangerous levels" - how would you quantify danger? US Treasury yields, how we "finance" debt, are at all-time lows - which means that private buyers are willing to pay higher prices than ever for the safety of Treasury bonds. There is absolutely no quantitative evidence that more US government debt is dangerous; in fact, the evidence points squarely towards investors demanding more debt issuance, and thus government spending, given the extremely low rates.
Federal government's purpose is international relations, trade, and defense. Everything should be handled by the states, counties, and towns.
Part of what makes federal debt dangerous is the fact that we can't possibly run the country without issuing large amounts of debt at this point. If debt continues to grow at the rates that is has been, eventually tax revenue won't even cover the interest on said debt. At some point the US will have to be issuing debt to pay off interest on other debt, assuming we aren't there now - haven't checked in a while. Even assuming that investors never realize how much of a house of cards this is, this continual increase in the money supply will eventually lead to a large amount of inflation, which will devalue the currency, increasing debt required, which feeds back into the loop.
Currently, we don't have a major problem manifesting, but judging from pretty much every other country that has run massive debt for an extended period, it is just a matter of time.
> Federal government's purpose is international relations, trade, and defense.
Ahh but the idea of defense runs straight into the chicken and the egg of public health. Correct me if you disagree with me, but if anything, the ability of COVID to have completely overwhelmed our medical infrastructure and overrun our country and really the world has made me deeply question whether we as a country have adequate defenses to any possible bioweapon attack. If we can't muster a good response to this, what happens if a modern version of smallpox or Spanish Flu hits? I mean, Congo has just been hit by a second Ebola outbreak.
This assumes that the money has been earned completely fairly. Every law or norm restricting black people (redlining, restrictive covenants, discriminatory hiring practices, etc) is effectively a subsidy to white people. Therefore, some of the dollars in their pockets are stolen, in a moral sense. Restoring some of those dollars is only fair.
Mind you, I'm not sure if it's practical, but that's the logic.
You end up paying one way or the other. You either pay it upfront, or you pay it through social unrest, heavy militarization, boarded ups stores, 100K dead in 2 months, and society on the brink
Because you are the beneficiary of hundreds of years of policies and systemic racism that has benefited you at the cost of your fellow man.
Imagine your parents stole a fortune from your neighbor and passed it on to you when they died. Does that money belong to you, or your neighbor/their children? I think the answer is common sense. The fact that you weren’t the one who originally stole the money is irrelevant.
What about if you go back three or four generations? five or six?
I'm conflicted on this issue, I really understand the need and can persuade myself either way but it's not obvious.
Being black in America may be a special case that's worth trying to correct directly with something like reparations, but I'm not convinced you can right all historical wrongs by this logic generally. A lot of groups have faced terrible persecution throughout history.
You can't reason with them. They won't even look at the data proving that Mexicans and Blacks were used by another group for warfare. Cohencidence that "the projects" all look like soviet block? Haha! Mass immigration is indistinguishable from warfare.
Would that imply taxation (to fund such) on recent immigrants from Asia and Europe and Africa, whose ancestors were not involved in the horrors of slavery?
It's not about personal responsibility, or ancestral responsibility. Immigrants in the United States chose to become part of that country, with all the benefits, privileges, and responsibilities that entails.
edit: To make an analogy, if you move into a condo, and its roof needs to be replaced the next year, it's not your fault that the building's reserve fund can't cover the cost, but that doesn't exempt you from paying the special levy.
Agreed. But if I just moved in yesterday, I wouldn't be happy if other tenants cursed me out and blamed me personally for the fact that the reserve fund hadn't been funded for the last twenty years.
I don't see why not ? I also don't think we may not need Nordic country level taxation. Since the US treasury can print unlimited money and still see extremely low yields, why even raise taxes ?
> And no matter what upheaval lies ahead, I am certain that the light that illuminates that dust so brightly can never be put away. There are no more gatekeepers, oftentimes for worse, but also for better.
I am not so sanguine. People in power all over the world are seeing the threat to their power from the Internet and working to curtail it. China is probably the most ahead, but I am sure everyone else is hard at work.
The centralization of the Internet makes it a much easier task. If you get Google, Facebook, and Twitter on board, you basically control the flow of information to most of the West.
In the West it probably won’t be overt coercion but more likely via monetary and legal incentives. Immunity or liability from lawsuits for user posted content will be the big carrot and stick that will be used to get these companies to do the governments’ bidding.
I fear that the George Floyd video equivalent 10 years from now will get immediately deleted by ML algorithms as too disturbing and the uploaders automatically banned
I don't think China is ahead of the west, they just take a slightly different approach. People have a really short memory, they already forgot about Snowden, prism, Room 641A: that shit never stopped.
Please don't get me wrong I'm not trying to equate China and the west, China is a lot worse but strictly looking at the reaction of those in power to the internet... People in power in the west are definitely reacting strongly.
China is more 1984 and the west is more brave new world.
I’m in Minneapolis. There are already suspicions that posts post-curfew to Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook are being blocked or are seeing significant post delays. It’s unconfirmed, but local news is started to dig into it a bit. I have acquaintances who believe they have been censored.
Leaving riots and looting on the snapmap could be seen as first hand journalism, showing people what is really happening, or as giving a voice to those glorifying destruction.
Hiding or delaying riots and looting from the snapmap could be seen as censorship or keeping the peace, by preventing everyone from jumping to join in until its over.
An editorial delay to perceived live events, in the interest of public safety, in an interesting wrinkle in the debate between censorship vs fanning the fire.
I think ordinary people will eventually realize that once you stop giving so much of your attention to Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. there's a whole internet out there for you to discover.
I think the problem is the select enforcement of the ever-changing rules and not applying them equally across the board, which is getting blatantly obvious on twitter, reddit, etc. There are hundreds of examples, probably more, of tweets promoting violence being allowed to stay up, unaltered. Here's just one simple example of a tweet from a reporter directly violating Twitters policies and inciting violence telling people to "burn that shit down, burn it all down" and being allowed to stay up: https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1267127192330346500
Please look at the Presidents original tweet that got labeled and logically compare it to that one and justify why one should be labeled and the other stay up unscathed.
Of course this same journalist quickly changed his tune when they came to his own upper-income gated neighborhood (2nd pic in above tweet) and started calling them "animals."
So how do you propose that a government that can’t police fairly, regulate speech fairly?
When geeks (of course not used an insult I am a huge one) didn’t like the status quo when it came to the dominant software platforms, they created their own alternatives. If conservatives don’t like the platforms that are available - they can create their own.
So let’s say a platform censored “Focus on the Family” and “Black Lives Matter”, which one do you think the current government would fight for?
But the current administration claimed the reason to get rid of Network Neutrality was to “reduce regulation”. If they don’t like the current platforms they should create their own. Isn’t that the entire mantra of conservatives to let the free market address such problems?
These essays are fueled by throwing some facts and nuance around so that we appear to be a thoughtful person but then roughly sums it up with "isn't it great we have cellphones and facebook?"
yeah, i've read a few of these analyses, and while they're mildly interesting, they're not nearly as earth-shatteringly insightful and counter-intuitive as many seem to think they are. it's mostly bog-standard strategic analysis you learn during MBA school, but to ben's credit, well laid out, organized, and appropriately cited.
this particular post seems to marvel at how big tech provides otherwise-sheltered people a lens on the wider world, and by extension, a (rather tiny) mechanism of change. it claims more significance for this mechanism than, you know, masses of people marching on the streets, because that's the vantage point of the author and it's relative importance to him.
edit: i just listened to Funmilola Fagbamila on yesterday's take two [0], and she was incredibly articulate and insightful about the protests and organizing for change: https://www.funmilola.com/
> it claims more significance for this mechanism than, you know, masses of people marching on the streets
Sure, seeing large marches are great at grabbing attention, but seeing actual video evidence of police brutality is _much_ more persuasive. Now almost everyone has high-def cameras, and the ability to stream live to everyone (so people will see it even if the police take/destroy your phone). I think that makes a big difference, though I'm not arguing that tech alone deserves credit for improving things. Having people in the streets still matters.
> "Sure, seeing large marches are great at grabbing attention, but seeing actual video evidence of police brutality is _much_ more persuasive."
again, for you. the people marching didn't need to see the video to be angry and mobilize for change. they were already angry, a long-simmering anger of an even longer and more widely tolerated injustice and oppression. when people protest, we should listen to them, believe them, because protesting is not without its risks and costs. that the video matters so much to you relative to the protesters is exactly the criticsm of perspective leveled here.
Yes the people marching don't need to see the video, but the unfortunate reality is you DO have to convince everyone else. That's why the attitudes of non-black people towards police brutality are have shifted significantly in the past 10 years [0], at least in my opinion. I'm not saying there should have to be video in order for victims of police violence to be believed, but the larger public won't start believing it otherwise. That's my belief on why the marches we're seeing since Floyd's murder involve more non-black people.
> it claims more significance for this mechanism than, you know, masses of people marching on the streets, because that's the vantage point of the author and it's relative importance to him
I mean, the masses of people marching on the streets would very likely not be there but for the widespread sharing of the video.
no, see that's exactly the misestimation afforded by insulation. we've had protests and rebellions recently and for millenia without social media influence. it's just not a required feature of masses of people being angry at injustice.
But when was the last time we had this level of protest in support of a minority group? The million man march? And that required how much organization in comparison?
No one is arguing that it’s a required feature for masses of people being angry at injustice.
What they’re arguing is that it changes which injustices are visible.
> "But when was the last time we had this level of protest in support of a minority group?"
so injustice doesn't matter when it's just minorities, only when some (presumably white) people "support" them?
> "What they’re arguing is that it changes which injustices are visible."
...to him. the injustices are painfully apparent to the population affected.
look, all things being equal, it's better that he's now startled out of ignorance by a tragic and now-sensationalized video of someone's death, but sorry, that's not the central mechanism of change here.
Wait, I'm not sure why you are taking a combative tone, as I'm pretty sure we agree -- and if we don't, I'd like to see where.
Perhaps I was unclear.
First: injustice absolutely matters in all cases, not just when it's visible to white people.
But, injustice towards minority groups has, for most of American history, been invisible to and/or ignored by majority groups (obviously not to the minority groups experiencing it, thanks, or even to others). To be clear, this is BAD.
Second: pervasive cellphones (+ cameras) and social media is changing that, making injustices directed at minority groups visible to majority groups, and harder to ignore by those majority groups.
Are you saying that this is not happening, or that it is bad? Or that it's not because of cellphones and social media? What is the central mechanism of change?
(Whether this visibility will ultimately help change anything remains to be seen, for sure. And there are also clearly downsides to social media that make other things worse, too.)
yes, sorry if what i said seemed combative, but i wanted to be very clear and direct about the mechanism of change being the protesters and not the (particularly white) onlookers who support the protesters. that's not to disdain the support (yes to support!) or the changing of sympathies with (social) media (yes to sympathies!), but the effects of those are relatively marginal to change.
my secondary point is that it shouldn't need to take a video to convince (white) people. just listen to the protesters, carefully and earnestly, as well as the investigative journalism around what they say. that should be enough, if folks care enough to not ignore the injustices.
I think I worry that, short of revolution, change happens because people in power acquiesce to it. :/ (Again, obviously, this is bad, and I wish it were not this way, and I don’t condone or want to justify this. I just worry that it’s what history suggests.)
If that’s true — and again, I hope it’s not, and it sucks if it is — then the effects of supporters and sympathies are not actually marginal to change, and the ability for those without power to attract the sympathies and support of those with it is both a Big Deal, and new — media has long been closely gatekept by power.
But I’m not a particularly strong student of history, and I’d love to be wrong here.
To your secondary point: I wholeheartedly agree, it should be enough.
changing sympathies helps, but nothing actually changes without the protesters. people with varying degrees of relative privilege to persecuted black folks won't jilt themselves out of complacency and share power and esteem spontaneously. there's not enough ambient incentive or imperative for that.
being aware is simply not enough. we've been aware of our collective racism for at least the last 150 years and no change to that has happened top-down. it's all bottom-up. it's all people fighting for their rights and dignity. power isn't acquiesced so much as chipped away. awareness weakens the stone so the chipping is easier, but the chips don't just fall off on their own.
that's why the (white) awareness is "marginal", not because it's not helpful, or possibly even necessary, but because it's not causative. there's nothing wrong with marginal, it's good, better than irrelevant, but it's not the catalyst of change in racial power dynamics.
It seems more of a complement to the existing visuals and more story telling oriented approaches being provided via other forms of media and news.
The income disparity graphs personally provided more understanding as to why the issue appears to happen in certain locations.
If it makes it approachable to undergraduate MBA types who feel more comfortable in seeing spreadsheets and data science analysis and understandable to a wider, different audience that doesn't seem like such a bad thing.
That said, I'd be really interested in being pointed to better sources for data science approaches to understanding the issue(s) - in addition to the more narrative based suggestions provided.
for the most part they're not bad analyses, just giving folks without relevant background a measure of calibration on the information therein: decent, but worth reading critically rather than with wholesale acceptance.
I think you nailed with your comment, I'm even more critical however.
His writing doesn't deliver in a chain of reasoning that you would expect in undergraduate argument papers. Despite their organization and polish the meat of argument is just not there.
As "internet/media analyst" he genuinely seems unaffected by the events of the last 8 years. It's disturing that there are people still out there with this bovine of an outlook. 2020 and techbro discovers redlining and racism were a thing for the last... Most of his essays are just the same way but in different topics.
edited -- wrong guy same outlook
He lives in Taiwan. He doesn’t see the first hand accounts by the local news stations like someone in the US. He probably isn’t talking to people who are close to what’s going on. Whether that leaves him more objective or out of touch is an exercise for the reader.
> sums it up with "isn't it great we have cellphones and facebook?"
Well, isn't it? I mean yes, that's not the only conclusion to be drawn here. But without their ubiquity, this would never have become a story in the first place.
Ben’s writing on this is so powerful. It should be at the top of HN with a million points. I’m glad to be a supporter of his. As a subscriber I got to hear him read this and it was moving.
Zooming in on the commentary on Facebook/Twitter's approaches to Trump's post, I just want to say that in my opinion, Twitter did the right thing in this case and also in the previous case of misinformation about mail-in voting.
We need to innovate in terms of how we keep democracies healthy, given the dramatic change to the flow of information caused by social media and the internet.
Adding a "get the truth" notice to posts that contain misinformation is a great way to strike a balance between censoring misinformation and letting it spread unchecked, and this approach is an interesting new tool in the toolkit we have for keeping conversations healthy on the internet. I applaud Twitter for their work in developing and experimenting with this tool.
Likewise, limiting the viral spread of posts that threaten violence (by preventing likes and retweets) is also a useful tool. It's interesting to note that the reason this post wasn't removed entirely is because public figures like Trump get a "newsworthiness" exception in Twitter's Code of Conduct that allows them to essentially say whatever they want, even if it violates the CoC.
Poor people are not more violent. Black people are more violent. Christian Ethiopians are not more violent... Lefties are too scared to use their beloved scientific reductionism, which they praise elsewhere, for even a moment on this topic. Because they're not interested in science or truth - just adherence to their religion of scientific atheism.
It’s weird hearing Ben act like he’s gives a shit about what’s happening when he spent years drumming up support for trump & Facebook. Yeah he couches it in “they’re not great” but at the end up the day he’s kind of a bootlicker
When someone presents all these negative outcomes for minority groups (education, poverty, incarceration, etc.) it's difficult to not see that in a racial light.
"Madison is one of the greatest places to live, just stay out of the black neighborhoods." - how are the people living in the white neighborhoods to be blamed for that?
The lenders for white neighborhoods formed explicit covenants to keep blacks out. White people chose to live in those neighborhoods and voted for lawmakers who supported redlining and other segregationist measures. They didn’t speak up for their black neighbors with less opportunity. For decades they have been silent and complicit as they live in their white neighborhoods and build generational wealth that has been denied to blacks. They may not have explicitly shunned blacks from their neighborhoods, but they certainly turned a blind eye.
Sounds racist to say that black communities need access to white communities in order to create positive outcomes. Why can't the black communities stand on their own?
Because they tried that and white assholes burned "Black Wall Street" to the ground. Then (whites in power) promptly began changing building codes to prevent them from rebuilding on the theory that it burnt to the ground not because crazy racist assholes torched it but because it was a slum not built to adequate standards.
There were no convictions for any of the charges related to violence. There were decades of silence about the terror, violence, and losses of this event. The riot was largely omitted from local, state, and national histories: "The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was rarely mentioned in history books, classrooms or even in private. Blacks and whites alike grew into middle age unaware of what had taken place." It was not recognized in the Tulsa Tribune feature of "Fifteen Years Ago Today" or "Twenty-five Years Ago Today". A 2017 report detailing the history of the Tulsa Fire Department from 1897 until the date of publication makes no mention of the 1921 fire.
Sorry for not knowing about local history from 100 years ago from a far away nation. The main reason we don't hear about this more is probably because neither offenders nor victims, both black and white, are alive anymore.
No, it wasn't mentioned much in media for most of the 100 intervening years because it makes White people uncomfortable. (Well, and perhaps because it makes the kind of White people that almost no one in the public eye wants to acknowledge though some want to quietly court too comfortable.)
Though it did play a central role in the HBO Watchmen series' single season.
(To be fair, it does sound like a crazy conspiracy theory. When it comes to race, though, lots of things that sound like crazy conspiracy theories are true in the US, which perhaps shouldn't be all that surprising when you realize things like, for example, that the KKK, which is something of an overt crazy racist conspiracy, was a major factor in US politics well into the 20th Century.)
If you are unfamiliar with the history of my country, then don't speak up to dismiss my description of it as "sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory," especially without so much as googling the phrase "black wall street" which isn't at all hard to find.
We don't hear about it because whites in America aren't comfortable hearing about it. Another comment in this discussion indicates it was actively covered up and expunged from local history records.
Look up articles on what happened to downtown Brooklyn and Barclays center. Black communities getting destroyed to "improve" the area. So something like Fulton Street mall goes from being a black community to just another strip mall of cheap/luxury chain stores and luxury apartments that few who lived there previously can afford.
So you can't really have a positive outcome in your community if developers and the city government decide it's time to displace you in the name of progress. How do you stand on your own in this situation?
I’m not going to spell it out for you because I don’t think you are interested in learning. If you really want to know the answer to this question, then go to a school in a poor black community. Visit their libraries, hospitals, and grocery stores. Then do the same for nearby white communities. Go do the work and educate yourself. Separate but equal is not equal.
It would be racist to say that, if you were describing two communities starting at an equal historical footing, with equal starting resources, and one community didn't have it's knee on the other community's neck
I just heard Tim Wise make an interesting argument that one of the perpetuating factors in systemic white supremacy is that there is an aspect of its culture that blinds its adherents to the truth. In his argument, the blinder was the idea of American Meritocracy, where one's lot in life is decided by how hard one is willing to work.
Just based on the evidence we have, this is plainly not the case. Last I read, the biggest factor in determining your level of wealth is how wealthy your parents were a few years before you were born. But from an institutional perspective, this belief makes it easy to point to black people and say 'they are poor because they are lazy and we have some degree of wealth because we worked so hard'.
You lunatics actually think you're going to get MORE INTEGRATION, after all of this? Good luck with that.
And if you really believed whites were evil and oppressive towards blacks and were responsible for all of blacks' dysfunction, you would be the staunchest supporters of segregation. That you unwaveringly oppose it proves you don't believe your own BS narrative.
Of course all of the problems in the black community stem from whites. If whites hadn’t been too lazy to pick their own cotton there wouldn’t be a black underclass in America, just the educated African immigrants like every other immigrant group. Whites don’t get to drag a whole population here against their will and then just say “figure your own shit out.”
It mentions redlining, quotes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but then mostly argues that Twitter's filter on Trump's tweet made it spread wider, the reverse of the action they wanted, implying they did the wrong action, or that it would not work in the future, which is pretty bad logic.
The tweet became more notable because Twitter has never done this before. It got reproduced because it was the first time Twitter did it, not because people wanted to read the "shocking tweet". If twitter were to do this often, or dump Trump, we'd stop talking about it again. Cf Milo.
And then it ends with this whole "The internet is the new industrial revolution, and that is both good and bad" thing. Kind of like, Ben couldn't stop himself from Internet Thoughtleadership for a minute. After 4 minutes of commenting on Race in America he had to go back to musing about Platforms.
I get it, you want to (and can!) tie it in to your expertise. But you just kind of failed at that.
You could talk about the huge tech titans making it worse: Amazon's Ring doorbell, the $10B JEDI contract with the DoD, Facebook's extremist groups/lack of moderation, Twitter not banning Trump the first time around, the Adtech industry in general pushing surveillance everywhere it can, to gather datapoints. Or the way tech has made income inequality worse. The homogenous makeup of the tech industry. The social construction of "nerdiness" as whiteness. The tech industry (and everyone on the Internet)'s unquestioning acceptance of the capitalist approach, and only being accessible to people with money and app solutionism.
But instead it ends with "I am hopeful there are fewer gatekeepers, and can therefore see racism more clearly now". Like, that's it?
At least put a couple links to non-profits in the footer. Doesn't this guy make a few million $ a year from his newsletter? Donate it!
The peaceful protest with Kaepernick kneeling and “can we all just get along” was part I. People should have listened then instead of excusing the President for calling him a “son of a bitch”.
Were the cops organizing by social media? He's making the point that social media can be used for good or bad, what the cops use is a rather orthogonal point.
What do you think this facial-recognition AI is trained on? To me it's just amazingly pedestrian to consider "I saw a blog post" an actual political analysis of social media.
Interesting that in your mind drones are the dark side of the uprising. Really says something about the tech bubble and priorities. I can assure you that drones are the least of protestors' problems right now.
"While red-lining helped shape segregation in many cities, Minneapolis was pre-emptive about its discrimination; beginning in the 1910s Minneapolis real estate deeds started to include “Covenants” that explicitly excluded African Americans. A team from the University of Minnesota has been researching real estate deeds to uncover these covenants, and created this striking time-lapse of their spread:...
"Racial covenants were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1948, but the effect remains; compare the racial covenant map to the racial dot map Blank referenced above — the blue (which is white people) adheres to the blue of racial covenants:...
"A map of racial covenants closely matches a map of Minneapolis' population
"That red cross, meanwhile, is the location of the homicide of George Floyd, in the decidedly non-blue portion of the map."
I have downvoted your comment, not because there's anything specifically wrong in it, but because I cannot believe focusing on the word "crescent" and disregarding any context could be anything other than an attempt to diminish the discussion.
I'm downvoting it because it is willfully, thoughtfully, and purposefully attempting to argue that there is no racially motivated correlation between these datasets.
There is. Constructing a convoluted worldview in which there isn't, and promulgating it, is racism.
> willfully, thoughtfully, and purposefully attempting to argue that there is no racially motivated correlation between these datasets.
On the contrary....
I grew up in Africa. My sister is professor of African studies with degree from UW Madison. I'm familiar with the area and the issues.
The "crescent" seen in the data is geography, not some sort of compelling argument for correlation.
Exactly contrary to your interpretation of my comment, my point is that the same data sets are correlated everywhere there's density, but I guess "the blob" doesn't seem as persuasive as "the crescent".
It's not that it's a crescent, it's just urban America.
However, what I don't hear is radical solution to this problem. Even in Obama's medium essay, the solution is deep police and criminal justice reform. Which, while important, is incremental. What we need here is a step change to course correct 400 years of history. And incremental changes do not cut it. Here are some step change suggestions
1)Trillions of dollars of reparations 2) A generous UBI 3) Free healthcare 4) Trillions of investment in schools in poorer neighborhoods 5) A dramatic rise in minimum wage
In pre-COVID world, I would accept a reasonable pushback against this suggestion was "deficit" "debt" etc. But COVID has exposed these pushbacks was hypocritical (puts a stark spotlight on the hypocritical Tea Party movement). We printed trillions of dollars overnight to save small and big businesses, and employees. Why can't we move at that scale ? If we can suddenly print that much money, what is stopping us from massive investments in our most disadvantaged communities to undo 400 years of history ?
Last year, I was outside talking to our (White) yard guy. His truck with the name of his lawn service was parked out front. He was dressed in beat up jeans, dusty, and holding the lawn mower while I had just come from work - in slacks and button down shirt. A neighbor walked over to us and asked him how long has he been living here while completely ignoring me. He looked like he was going to say something and I quietly nudged for him not to. I politely said I would see them later and walked into the house.
She was embarrassed - point made. When she left, I walked back outside with a bottle of water for him and we started back talking. I told him I just walked into the house to make a point and we both laughed.
And they are going to vote for him again?
How many “good Christians” support him even after the recording came out about him “grabbing a woman by the p%%%%”?
For working class people, neoliberal economics have done nothing for them. Plants in town have closed and they don't see any investment in their community from their tax dollars.
If neither party is going to look out for you, it's perfectly rational to sigh and pick the one that at least doesn't villainize you as some sort of oppressor.
If the democrats want to win back the white union vote, they need to actually offer something besides "vote for us or you're racist". I guess there's always 2024.
Basically the type of people who think saying "Black Lives Matter" means you hate White people.
Also, WaPo recently used one question from historical surveys by the ANES (American National Election Studies) to measure what they consider "white resentment", and there seems to be a large correlation between that and other political positions. [2]
(Skip to the "Here’s how we did our research" part and the graph if you're not a fan of WaPo)
-
[1] https://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/08/my-on...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/01/1...
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/31/trump-whi...
Or, with humor, from Dave Chappelle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH-wCe5oAv8
Unless you grant that Republicans say that "blacks are lazy and violent" because right-leaning Internet randos say it online.
The presumptive Democrat candidate put out words of unity, compared to Trump's verbal shit splatter.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/14/barackobama.us...
Obama was caught in an uncharacteristic moment of loose language. Referring to working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses, the presidential hopeful said: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Whether or not the specific phrase 'white trash' is said or not said doesn't matter. It could be 'clinging to guns and religion', could be 'deplorables', etc.
Racism totally does exist among the demographic we're talking about but it's not the only motivator anyone ever has.
Trump can afford to say “much worse” just like republicans in the past could afford to use the “Southern Strategy” and dog whistle to their constituents.
What is the role of the federal government, if not "to provide basic services to its citizens in times of extraordinary need"? In the face of a generational pandemic, from which nobody is unaffected, why should the government throw up its hands and not spend?
I recognize that that is something of an ideological statement, and we're not going to get anywhere with non-falsifiable statements. So let's think of it a different way: you say that "debt is at dangerous levels" - how would you quantify danger? US Treasury yields, how we "finance" debt, are at all-time lows - which means that private buyers are willing to pay higher prices than ever for the safety of Treasury bonds. There is absolutely no quantitative evidence that more US government debt is dangerous; in fact, the evidence points squarely towards investors demanding more debt issuance, and thus government spending, given the extremely low rates.
Part of what makes federal debt dangerous is the fact that we can't possibly run the country without issuing large amounts of debt at this point. If debt continues to grow at the rates that is has been, eventually tax revenue won't even cover the interest on said debt. At some point the US will have to be issuing debt to pay off interest on other debt, assuming we aren't there now - haven't checked in a while. Even assuming that investors never realize how much of a house of cards this is, this continual increase in the money supply will eventually lead to a large amount of inflation, which will devalue the currency, increasing debt required, which feeds back into the loop.
Currently, we don't have a major problem manifesting, but judging from pretty much every other country that has run massive debt for an extended period, it is just a matter of time.
Ahh but the idea of defense runs straight into the chicken and the egg of public health. Correct me if you disagree with me, but if anything, the ability of COVID to have completely overwhelmed our medical infrastructure and overrun our country and really the world has made me deeply question whether we as a country have adequate defenses to any possible bioweapon attack. If we can't muster a good response to this, what happens if a modern version of smallpox or Spanish Flu hits? I mean, Congo has just been hit by a second Ebola outbreak.
This assumes that the money has been earned completely fairly. Every law or norm restricting black people (redlining, restrictive covenants, discriminatory hiring practices, etc) is effectively a subsidy to white people. Therefore, some of the dollars in their pockets are stolen, in a moral sense. Restoring some of those dollars is only fair.
Mind you, I'm not sure if it's practical, but that's the logic.
Imagine your parents stole a fortune from your neighbor and passed it on to you when they died. Does that money belong to you, or your neighbor/their children? I think the answer is common sense. The fact that you weren’t the one who originally stole the money is irrelevant.
I'm conflicted on this issue, I really understand the need and can persuade myself either way but it's not obvious.
Being black in America may be a special case that's worth trying to correct directly with something like reparations, but I'm not convinced you can right all historical wrongs by this logic generally. A lot of groups have faced terrible persecution throughout history.
American Indians, Jews, etc.
I personally don't find this line of questioning fruitful. The trouble is that word 'should'.
Philosophers call it an is-ought problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
edit: To make an analogy, if you move into a condo, and its roof needs to be replaced the next year, it's not your fault that the building's reserve fund can't cover the cost, but that doesn't exempt you from paying the special levy.
I am not so sanguine. People in power all over the world are seeing the threat to their power from the Internet and working to curtail it. China is probably the most ahead, but I am sure everyone else is hard at work.
The centralization of the Internet makes it a much easier task. If you get Google, Facebook, and Twitter on board, you basically control the flow of information to most of the West.
In the West it probably won’t be overt coercion but more likely via monetary and legal incentives. Immunity or liability from lawsuits for user posted content will be the big carrot and stick that will be used to get these companies to do the governments’ bidding.
I fear that the George Floyd video equivalent 10 years from now will get immediately deleted by ML algorithms as too disturbing and the uploaders automatically banned
Please don't get me wrong I'm not trying to equate China and the west, China is a lot worse but strictly looking at the reaction of those in power to the internet... People in power in the west are definitely reacting strongly.
China is more 1984 and the west is more brave new world.
I think the scarier truth is that they did not so much forget about it, but that people really didn't care.
Both can be bad, but they're not the same thing. China leads on both.
Hiding or delaying riots and looting from the snapmap could be seen as censorship or keeping the peace, by preventing everyone from jumping to join in until its over.
An editorial delay to perceived live events, in the interest of public safety, in an interesting wrinkle in the debate between censorship vs fanning the fire.
Coming soon to Twitter: Automated trigger warnings
The current administration is already trying to “shut down Twitter”.
Edit Citation:
https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/trump-twitter-f...
Please look at the Presidents original tweet that got labeled and logically compare it to that one and justify why one should be labeled and the other stay up unscathed.
Of course this same journalist quickly changed his tune when they came to his own upper-income gated neighborhood (2nd pic in above tweet) and started calling them "animals."
When geeks (of course not used an insult I am a huge one) didn’t like the status quo when it came to the dominant software platforms, they created their own alternatives. If conservatives don’t like the platforms that are available - they can create their own.
But the current administration claimed the reason to get rid of Network Neutrality was to “reduce regulation”. If they don’t like the current platforms they should create their own. Isn’t that the entire mantra of conservatives to let the free market address such problems?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologia
for large tech monopolies.
These essays are fueled by throwing some facts and nuance around so that we appear to be a thoughtful person but then roughly sums it up with "isn't it great we have cellphones and facebook?"
this particular post seems to marvel at how big tech provides otherwise-sheltered people a lens on the wider world, and by extension, a (rather tiny) mechanism of change. it claims more significance for this mechanism than, you know, masses of people marching on the streets, because that's the vantage point of the author and it's relative importance to him.
edit: i just listened to Funmilola Fagbamila on yesterday's take two [0], and she was incredibly articulate and insightful about the protests and organizing for change: https://www.funmilola.com/
[0] https://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2020/06/01/20889/
Sure, seeing large marches are great at grabbing attention, but seeing actual video evidence of police brutality is _much_ more persuasive. Now almost everyone has high-def cameras, and the ability to stream live to everyone (so people will see it even if the police take/destroy your phone). I think that makes a big difference, though I'm not arguing that tech alone deserves credit for improving things. Having people in the streets still matters.
again, for you. the people marching didn't need to see the video to be angry and mobilize for change. they were already angry, a long-simmering anger of an even longer and more widely tolerated injustice and oppression. when people protest, we should listen to them, believe them, because protesting is not without its risks and costs. that the video matters so much to you relative to the protesters is exactly the criticsm of perspective leveled here.
[0]: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-lots-of-white-democ...
I mean, the masses of people marching on the streets would very likely not be there but for the widespread sharing of the video.
But when was the last time we had this level of protest in support of a minority group? The million man march? And that required how much organization in comparison?
No one is arguing that it’s a required feature for masses of people being angry at injustice.
What they’re arguing is that it changes which injustices are visible.
so injustice doesn't matter when it's just minorities, only when some (presumably white) people "support" them?
> "What they’re arguing is that it changes which injustices are visible."
...to him. the injustices are painfully apparent to the population affected.
look, all things being equal, it's better that he's now startled out of ignorance by a tragic and now-sensationalized video of someone's death, but sorry, that's not the central mechanism of change here.
Perhaps I was unclear.
First: injustice absolutely matters in all cases, not just when it's visible to white people.
But, injustice towards minority groups has, for most of American history, been invisible to and/or ignored by majority groups (obviously not to the minority groups experiencing it, thanks, or even to others). To be clear, this is BAD.
Second: pervasive cellphones (+ cameras) and social media is changing that, making injustices directed at minority groups visible to majority groups, and harder to ignore by those majority groups.
Are you saying that this is not happening, or that it is bad? Or that it's not because of cellphones and social media? What is the central mechanism of change?
(Whether this visibility will ultimately help change anything remains to be seen, for sure. And there are also clearly downsides to social media that make other things worse, too.)
my secondary point is that it shouldn't need to take a video to convince (white) people. just listen to the protesters, carefully and earnestly, as well as the investigative journalism around what they say. that should be enough, if folks care enough to not ignore the injustices.
I think I worry that, short of revolution, change happens because people in power acquiesce to it. :/ (Again, obviously, this is bad, and I wish it were not this way, and I don’t condone or want to justify this. I just worry that it’s what history suggests.)
If that’s true — and again, I hope it’s not, and it sucks if it is — then the effects of supporters and sympathies are not actually marginal to change, and the ability for those without power to attract the sympathies and support of those with it is both a Big Deal, and new — media has long been closely gatekept by power.
But I’m not a particularly strong student of history, and I’d love to be wrong here.
To your secondary point: I wholeheartedly agree, it should be enough.
being aware is simply not enough. we've been aware of our collective racism for at least the last 150 years and no change to that has happened top-down. it's all bottom-up. it's all people fighting for their rights and dignity. power isn't acquiesced so much as chipped away. awareness weakens the stone so the chipping is easier, but the chips don't just fall off on their own.
that's why the (white) awareness is "marginal", not because it's not helpful, or possibly even necessary, but because it's not causative. there's nothing wrong with marginal, it's good, better than irrelevant, but it's not the catalyst of change in racial power dynamics.
The income disparity graphs personally provided more understanding as to why the issue appears to happen in certain locations.
If it makes it approachable to undergraduate MBA types who feel more comfortable in seeing spreadsheets and data science analysis and understandable to a wider, different audience that doesn't seem like such a bad thing.
That said, I'd be really interested in being pointed to better sources for data science approaches to understanding the issue(s) - in addition to the more narrative based suggestions provided.
His writing doesn't deliver in a chain of reasoning that you would expect in undergraduate argument papers. Despite their organization and polish the meat of argument is just not there.
As "internet/media analyst" he genuinely seems unaffected by the events of the last 8 years. It's disturing that there are people still out there with this bovine of an outlook. 2020 and techbro discovers redlining and racism were a thing for the last... Most of his essays are just the same way but in different topics. edited -- wrong guy same outlook
Well, isn't it? I mean yes, that's not the only conclusion to be drawn here. But without their ubiquity, this would never have become a story in the first place.
If insight on demand was achievable, we'd be living in a different world.
We need to innovate in terms of how we keep democracies healthy, given the dramatic change to the flow of information caused by social media and the internet.
Adding a "get the truth" notice to posts that contain misinformation is a great way to strike a balance between censoring misinformation and letting it spread unchecked, and this approach is an interesting new tool in the toolkit we have for keeping conversations healthy on the internet. I applaud Twitter for their work in developing and experimenting with this tool.
Likewise, limiting the viral spread of posts that threaten violence (by preventing likes and retweets) is also a useful tool. It's interesting to note that the reason this post wasn't removed entirely is because public figures like Trump get a "newsworthiness" exception in Twitter's Code of Conduct that allows them to essentially say whatever they want, even if it violates the CoC.
"Madison is one of the greatest places to live, just stay out of the black neighborhoods." - how are the people living in the white neighborhoods to be blamed for that?
There were no convictions for any of the charges related to violence. There were decades of silence about the terror, violence, and losses of this event. The riot was largely omitted from local, state, and national histories: "The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was rarely mentioned in history books, classrooms or even in private. Blacks and whites alike grew into middle age unaware of what had taken place." It was not recognized in the Tulsa Tribune feature of "Fifteen Years Ago Today" or "Twenty-five Years Ago Today". A 2017 report detailing the history of the Tulsa Fire Department from 1897 until the date of publication makes no mention of the 1921 fire.
We probably don't hear more about it because it makes white people uncomfortable.
Though it did play a central role in the HBO Watchmen series' single season.
(To be fair, it does sound like a crazy conspiracy theory. When it comes to race, though, lots of things that sound like crazy conspiracy theories are true in the US, which perhaps shouldn't be all that surprising when you realize things like, for example, that the KKK, which is something of an overt crazy racist conspiracy, was a major factor in US politics well into the 20th Century.)
We don't hear about it because whites in America aren't comfortable hearing about it. Another comment in this discussion indicates it was actively covered up and expunged from local history records.
So you can't really have a positive outcome in your community if developers and the city government decide it's time to displace you in the name of progress. How do you stand on your own in this situation?
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/nyregion/a-worry-that-tre...
http://www.bkmag.com/2017/04/05/fulton-street-now-most-expen...
http://www.bkmag.com/2017/04/05/fulton-street-now-most-expen...
A century early, the space for NYC's Central Park was 'acquired' by forcing out 1600 residents of Seneca Village.
At about the same time Indians were being forced onto reservations. Why couldn't the Indian communities stand on their own?
They aren’t necessarily to be blamed for that. This blog post isn’t really assigning blame to white homeowners.
Just based on the evidence we have, this is plainly not the case. Last I read, the biggest factor in determining your level of wealth is how wealthy your parents were a few years before you were born. But from an institutional perspective, this belief makes it easy to point to black people and say 'they are poor because they are lazy and we have some degree of wealth because we worked so hard'.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/25/opinion/coronavirus-race-...
And if you really believed whites were evil and oppressive towards blacks and were responsible for all of blacks' dysfunction, you would be the staunchest supporters of segregation. That you unwaveringly oppose it proves you don't believe your own BS narrative.
Whites (and Hispanics, Asians, and other non-blacks) have every right to peacefully separate themselves from this population.
It mentions redlining, quotes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but then mostly argues that Twitter's filter on Trump's tweet made it spread wider, the reverse of the action they wanted, implying they did the wrong action, or that it would not work in the future, which is pretty bad logic.
The tweet became more notable because Twitter has never done this before. It got reproduced because it was the first time Twitter did it, not because people wanted to read the "shocking tweet". If twitter were to do this often, or dump Trump, we'd stop talking about it again. Cf Milo.
And then it ends with this whole "The internet is the new industrial revolution, and that is both good and bad" thing. Kind of like, Ben couldn't stop himself from Internet Thoughtleadership for a minute. After 4 minutes of commenting on Race in America he had to go back to musing about Platforms.
I get it, you want to (and can!) tie it in to your expertise. But you just kind of failed at that.
You could talk about the huge tech titans making it worse: Amazon's Ring doorbell, the $10B JEDI contract with the DoD, Facebook's extremist groups/lack of moderation, Twitter not banning Trump the first time around, the Adtech industry in general pushing surveillance everywhere it can, to gather datapoints. Or the way tech has made income inequality worse. The homogenous makeup of the tech industry. The social construction of "nerdiness" as whiteness. The tech industry (and everyone on the Internet)'s unquestioning acceptance of the capitalist approach, and only being accessible to people with money and app solutionism.
But instead it ends with "I am hopeful there are fewer gatekeepers, and can therefore see racism more clearly now". Like, that's it?
At least put a couple links to non-profits in the footer. Doesn't this guy make a few million $ a year from his newsletter? Donate it!
Interesting that in his mind the looting is the dark side of this uprising.
How about the drones the riot cops use to watch the protesters' every move?
Wasn't it Microsoft and AWS fighting over the facial recognition AI contract that Google finally dropped?
This is part II.
(To be clear: the things you mention are bad)
An alternative plausible explanation is it's a half circle because the town center is on the southern end of the lake.
Way too much being made of multiple sets of data points and pins on a map around a lake, without mentioning density, with a lake.
"Racial covenants were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1948, but the effect remains; compare the racial covenant map to the racial dot map Blank referenced above — the blue (which is white people) adheres to the blue of racial covenants:...
"A map of racial covenants closely matches a map of Minneapolis' population
"That red cross, meanwhile, is the location of the homicide of George Floyd, in the decidedly non-blue portion of the map."
I have downvoted your comment, not because there's anything specifically wrong in it, but because I cannot believe focusing on the word "crescent" and disregarding any context could be anything other than an attempt to diminish the discussion.
There is. Constructing a convoluted worldview in which there isn't, and promulgating it, is racism.
On the contrary....
I grew up in Africa. My sister is professor of African studies with degree from UW Madison. I'm familiar with the area and the issues.
The "crescent" seen in the data is geography, not some sort of compelling argument for correlation.
Exactly contrary to your interpretation of my comment, my point is that the same data sets are correlated everywhere there's density, but I guess "the blob" doesn't seem as persuasive as "the crescent".
It's not that it's a crescent, it's just urban America.
And it's a problem.
PS. See also, "centuries worth of negative compounding at work": https://ofdollarsanddata.com/racial-wealth-gap/