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Comment by perfmode | Hacker News Reader

black people, too! we were so strong and resilient and good at labor that humans paid for our travel across the seas and gave us the opportunity to help build America! we were fed and housed and everything, oh my! gosh

> Shadow with me while I'm steppin' on my own resentment

> Life scatter in all directions, I was overzealous

> Overcurious, Momma worry her days get better

> I know she heard me, a timid voice in her stormy weather

> And Poppa taught me our ancestors were tarred and feathered And brought across the sea, bodies swinging from poplar trees

> I wore a modernesque version, my burden haunted me I cautiously approach the rather daunting sea

> By nightfall I face the man I'm 'sposed to be All this grief, been eatin' away my stomach lining

> It's hard to eat when my poppa image stuck inside me

> I wore his death mask,

> smilin' through the trauma

> In his honor,

> I'm expounding

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Animals are not people and they do not occupy the same moral category.

blacks weren't people then, either.

back then, blacks didn't occupy the same moral category as the humans who bred and traded them.

afterwards, blacks were upgraded to 2/5ths human.

now, we still struggle for acceptance and parity.

morality is a process.

Animals are categorically not humans. This is a scientific fact which you can quantify and measure. Blacks are humans. That is another scientific fact which you can quantify and measure.

blacks being humans didn't stop us from slotting them into an inferior moral category. and back then, we asserted as scientific fact that they were inferior. the apparatus of justification is something which changes over time. it is interesting to me to observe your invocation of our present day apparatus of justification. :)

Yes, but we came to see blacks as equal because they are, in fact, humans, just like whites. Animals will never be humans, no matter what. They will always remain a separate moral category. Here's a simple thought experiment that should illustrate this:

Imagine a scenario in which you can save one of two lives: a human or a dog. You can't pick both. Just one. The question is not, "Which would you save?", but instead, "Would you final moral fault in a person who chose to save the dog?". Almost everybody would hold a person who chose to save the dog morally culpable for the death of the human. But they would not hold them morally culpable for the death of the dog if they chose to save the human.

That will never change. Because animals are not humans.

that's post-hoc rationalization.

we came to see blacks as humans because lots of people shed blood and fought for their rights. nothing was handed to anyone for free.

So you'd find no moral fault in a person who chose to save a dog instead of a human?

It is disappointing to observe you argue so strongly from a position of deep and profound ignorance on this topic. have you no doubt?

Recommended reading: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-animal/

Why would I be persuaded to change my mind when you A) won't answer a simple question, and B) think it's reasonable to take the position that I am wrong because I won't spend several hours digesting some link you've provided, which you can't be bothered to spend three sentences summarizing?

My premise is simple: almost every single person would find a person who chose to save the life of an animal over a human morally culpable for the death of the human. Whereas they would not find a person morally culpable for the death of the animal if they chose to save the person instead. That asymmetry directly speaks to the different moral stations that animals and humans occupy.

You have yet to level a single actual argument against that premise.

I am not responsible for your education. Take responsibility for yourself and have a nice life.

Who says that we should draw the line at species level and not in any other arbitrarily chosen category? Science is not.

wait.... what

I realise this is satire, but the quality of life of Africans living in the USA now is substantially higher than their ancestral cousins who remained in Africa.

are you really attempting to justify transatlantic slave trade?

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