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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

"All of racism fits into that paradigm. Racism is a system for causing poor black folks and poor white folks to fight against each other instead of fighting with each other against the systems oppressing both of them."

Your statement contradicts itself. If in fact the oppressors are targeting both white and black people to maintain power, then they are by definition not targeting only one race and would instead be classist/elitist.

Also, not all racism is about people getting richer. Some of it was done on their (misguided) principles without financial benefit, or even to their detriment as the civil rights movement grew.

I fail to see how the citizenship test would lead to the rich getting richer.

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> Your statement contradicts itself. If in fact the oppressors are targeting both white and black people to maintain power, then they are by definition not targeting only one race and would instead be classist/elitist.

Elites don't promote racism because they're racists, they promote racism because it's a mechanism of control.

Racism as a theory is pseudoscience bullshit. There is no scientific basis for race even existing. We're all humans. The only people who believe otherwise are the victims of propaganda.

> I fail to see how the citizenship test would lead to the rich getting richer.

It could benefit them if the subset of people it prevents from voting would vote for things they wouldn't like.

Also, some policies are nothing but collateral damage. Elites get the proles fighting each other and each coalition starts demanding aversarial policies that harm the outgroup and neither hurt nor help the elites, but keep everyone distracted and fighting each other. The elites don't care which policy like that is implemented as long as it keeps people too busy fighting each other over it to pay attention to certain other things.

It benefits the rich because the proponent-victims spend their political capital to implement the policy and then the opponent-victims spend their political capital to repeal it instead of either of them spending that political capital to do anything that benefits the poor at the expense of the rich.

"Elites don't promote racism because they're racists, they promote racism because it's a mechanism of control."

That may be true, but the policy we were discussing (property tax funding education as an example of 'every policy being racist') affects large portions of both whites and minorities, and thus does not make it a racist.

"Elites get the proles fighting each other and each coalition starts demanding aversarial policies that harm the outgroup and neither hurt nor help the elites, but keep everyone distracted and fighting each other."

If that's your premise, then your position is moot. This is happening already.

> That may be true, but the policy we were discussing (property tax funding education as an example of 'every policy being racist') affects large portions of both whites and minorities, and thus does not make it a racist.

Affecting large portions of both whites and minorities hasn't generally prevented anything from being labeled racist, if they affect minorities differently than white people (as a whole, not a specific subset).

And voter literacy requirements continue to be of the same kind. You can argue that neither is bad because neither is really racist, but then you can have voter literacy requirements. You can argue that both are bad because both are racist, but then you can't have public schools funded by property tax, or even public schools at all, because after all we're talking about avoiding things over their historical implementations even if other implementations are possible.

What I haven't seen is a consistent case that you can have one and can't have the other.

> If that's your premise, then your position is moot. This is happening already.

Are you implying that it happening has had nothing to do with the inflammation of racial tensions by elites and media organizations?

"...we're talking about avoiding things over their historical implementations even if other implementations are possible."

Well that's not at all what has been discussed. If that's what you think this thread is about, then you are very off-topic. If we are truly doing that, then we need to avoid all institutions and policies since they all have some bigoted background, and there's no path forward because everyone can just unsupportively call anything racist.

"Are you implying that it happening has had nothing to do with the inflammation of racial tensions by elites and media organizations?"

You have been stating that subjecting everyone to the citizen test is racist and said that we shouldn't do it because the racist policy will lead to parties fighting each other so the elites are left alone.

I'm saying that's already happening, so you don't have any premise for why not to do this. And quite frankly, you have derailed the actual topic of thread and failed to provide any logical reasoning for your stances (paraphrased, because all past policies have been racist this one must be racist and shouldn't be implemented).

> If we are truly doing that, then we need to avoid all institutions and policies since they all have some bigoted background, and there's no path forward because everyone can just unsupportively call anything racist.

I believe this was my original point. Go back and read it again.

Well it's a stupid point. Why argue on here if you think there's no path forward? You're not contributing anything.

> Racism as a theory is pseudoscience bullshit. There is no scientific basis for race even existing. We're all humans.

Would you rather herd sheep with a pug or a border collie? They’re both dogs.

The west might have swallowed the kool-aid after a century of self, China sure hasn’t [1].

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/04/china-super-so...

Would you rather play basketball with Shaquille O'Neal or Neil deGrasse Tyson on your team? They're both humans. They're also both "black", so what's your point?

Your comparison is moot. If I were to select a squad of long distance endurance athletes, I would look to those of Kenyan stock before I’d look to Icelandic.

We are animals, it may not be politically correct but animal husbandry (science) applies.

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