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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

Yup, people who actually lift their way out of poverty are not a reliable votebank. You see this happen a lot in the U.S. where minority groups have been trapped for decades by the Democrat party especially. First with sharecropping and segregation then with class warfare, either way they're kept down on the farm.

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The people who supported segregation mostly abandoned the Democratic Party decades ago because of the civil rights issue. It’s one of the prime reasons the south used to be solidly Democratic and is now solidly Republican. Neither party is the same as it was in the nineteenth century.

In case you haven't noticed, segregation has made a huge come back, and it's mostly supported by Democrats.

I'm talking the "everything but white people spaces", militant groups like NFAC, etc. We're also now segregating federal aid based on race, with federal aid for farmers being initially restricted to all groups except white men as well as federal aid for restaurants with the same requirements. If you are a white male restaurant owner, you cannot apply for federal aid due to covid-19 restrictions until they are sure enough minority/female owned businesses get aid. There is a finite limit to aid available.

It's also a cultural segregation that's being pushed. I identified as black for a long time. All my life in fact. My mother is black, my skin is white. I have been told on a number of occasions that my identification is not valid, that I don't have a right to speak on certain topics, and that I don't belong in certain spaces due to the color of my skin.

I experience way more racism in the north than in the south fwiw.

> The people who supported segregation mostly abandoned the Democratic Party decades ago because of the civil rights issue.

Yup, that's what people like to tell themselves but much of it is wishful thinking. Look at how long people like Robert Byrd stayed around. Look at who actually supports, e.g. extreme NIMBY policies in urban areas to keep undesirable "demographics" out of the neighborhood, and "fights gentrification" to keep them boxed in with substandard amenities. How is that not modern segregation?

I agree. A lot of zoning is intentionally based on the idea of raising the cost of living so that the poorer part of the population is driven out. Things like rent control primarily benefit those who were not struggling in the first place. They just get to pay less on their expensive apartments. If you were struggling to pay rent, then rent control does nothing for you because the rents you were paying were not significantly above the mandated rent control level to begin with. However, since you are struggling, landlords are not willing to rent out units to you because any missed payment is a loss for them. They can't price that risk into their rents so they simply take someone with a better economic background.

That's how you get systemic racism without any single individual even thinking about skin color.

It’s historical fact.

Senators from West Virginia do not represent the mainstream Democrat views, so let's not cherry pick an example that ended over a decade ago. Instead, let's have a substantive conversation about policy. What specific policies are you referring to as NIMBY?

> let's have a substantive conversation about policy

Right, that's what this thread is for. Is there anyone in the "mainstream Democrat" area who actually supports UBI? Who took the step to actually mail COVID relief checks to people with few if any strings attached, Republicans or Democrats?

This has nothing to do with my question, and is suggesting that Republicans sent out more stimulus than Democrats when we passed bipartisan bills for stimulus checks under both Republican and Democrat administration. Republicans have continually taken steps to do things like limit unemployment benefits that Democrats have fought for.

Not GP, but: single-family-exclusive zoning for one, which props up home values and is the norm in almost all US suburbs. Who benefits when home prices are high? Who benefits when they're affordable?

Single family exclusive zoning also drives urban sprawl and the apparent "white flight" from areas that could be host to vibrant diversity. It's amazing how much of what we sometimes take for granted is actually the result of policy failure.

Biden is purposing giving tax breaks to cities that stop this practice.[0] How is does this support the other poster's argument?

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2021/04/14/zon...

This is a good thing and I support it. Zoning decisions though tend to be more at the local level than the federal level, and I don't think there was much of any federal policy on it until now.

Anecdata: my local area leans heavily Democratic, and exclusively single family zoning is the norm almost everywhere around here. (Though thankfully the city I actually live in is mostly an exception.)

Although there's much we likely agree on (as you can see downthread), I downvoted this comment due to your use of "Democrat party" as an epithet. I think there's room for substantive conversations about these policies that cross partisan boundaries, but epithets are going to work against that. Even if you mean "Democratic politicians" and not "Democratic voters," that's not necessarily how Democratic voters are going to interpret it, and you're reducing the chance of communicating effectively across party lines.

Related: I think many Democratic voters would be highly receptive to discussions about how policies they might support or that they haven't thought much about contribute to structural racism and class inequality. I'm one such example (registered Democrat and typically vote Democratic, but I've been reading a lot about the effect of these policies lately), and I've had such a discussion very recently within my friend group. It's not a message that's lost on us. Just don't present it as a partisan battle against the people you're talking to, because you will get tuned out quickly if you do that.

See, this would be a reasonable point of view if only we weren't currently seeing far more strident rhetoric coming from the other side, routinely accusing Republicans, white folks, those who care about traditional values, etc. etc. of furthering "racism and white supremacy".

This kind of divisiveness does far more in practice to "reduc[e] the chance of communicating effectively across party lines" than a mere quip ("Democrat party") that's essentially intended to unambiguously convey the intention to say not-really-nice things about Democratic policymakers, and that I've also striven to reasonably back with facts unlike so much recent discourse about "the evils of white supremacy".

The people you're referring to are also engaging in partisan battles. As you can probably tell, it's not very convincing to those on the opposite side (yours, in this case). I agree, it's divisive. It's why I try not to do so whenever there's a chance that I might change someone's mind.

Quip or not, it frames the conversation in partisan terms, and people on the other side are going to check out if you do that. I'm not defending partisan warfare, but being divisive in response isn't going to contribute to making the conversation any less divisive.

I can't stop you, obviously, but realize that you're doing your own position a disservice by making it less likely that people will listen.

Or, if you like, think of it this way: the country is divided about equally politically. You only need to sway a small portion of people to win an election. If you can engage with like-minded people who lean the other way but the opposing party can't, you're likely to win consistently. Don't you want to win? (Democrats, you take note too.)

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