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Comment by ArnoVW | Hacker News Reader

Law is not symbolic logic. Language has semantics and is uttered in a societal context.

The position of white males and immigrants are not equal. When people make statements about whites or males, it is generally not about all males. And no one in society is advocating that we "send back all whites".

I imagine you are arguing sincerely, but I believe this type of situation is what is called 'whataboutism' or even false equivalency.

As an neighbor of the Germans, I hold them in high regard. They have a very robust democracy, and as a nation are more principled than most. It took three wars but they learned their lesson. Hate leads to suffering and all that.

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In the UK ALL immigrant groups are wealthier, have higher income, better educational outcomes, etc than the median white male.

It's only by lumping those at the very top of society with those at the bottom that this mythical privileges white male strawman exists.

All the anti white male rhetoric and policies does is harm those at the bottom and margins of society, poor white males, for the benefit of those in the middle and top, middle class and upwardly mobile immigrants.

That this is championed and accepted so openly is just naked class hatred from the international middle and upper class in my opinion.

I looked for stats on this and came up with https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education...

From looking at the maths results I came to a very different conclusion than you did.

The position of all people is equal before the law. A statement therefore ought to be treated in the same way whether it targets group x or group y.

> When people make statements about whites or males, it is generally not about all males.

That's neither here nor there. This is to be interpreted based on the actual statement. "immigrants blah blah" targets immigrants as a group in the same way as "white males blah blah" targets white males as a group. If the rest of the statement is the same in both cases and unacceptable then both statements are equally unacceptable.

axiosgunnar above has a point that the same statement targeting "white males" instead of immigrants would have been equally unacceptable, and would have fallen equally foul of the law.

>The position of all people is equal before the law. A statement therefore ought to be treated in the same way whether it targets group x or group y.

That might be a nice ideal, but just not true in practice or history.

Like the law referenced in the article:

>hate speech, which is banned under German law if it threatens the peace or incites violence against minority groups.

“Minority group” =/= “Any group”

> That might be a nice ideal, but just not true in practice or history.

That's how it is in practice. Everyone's equal under the law. Specifically on these issues, all groups are equal (meaning all races, ethnicities, etc.)

In Germany, and European countries in general, targeting groups based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc. is illegal. It does not matter whether a group is a "minority group", whatever that means (quite sensibly so, of course).

For example, I believe that this German law is generally applicable:

"Whosoever, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace:

1. incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins, against segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or

2. assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning an aforementioned group, segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population, or defaming segments of the population,

shall be liable to imprisonment from three months to five years." [1]

> > hate speech, which is banned under German law if it threatens the peace or incites violence against minority groups.

Based on the above, I think that the article has it wrong.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung

> That's how it is in practice. Everyone's equal under the law. Specifically on these issues, all groups are equal (meaning all races, ethnicities, etc.)

If this were true in the US, for example, then the following would not be true:

> Black men and women are imprisoned at higher rates compared to all other age groups, with the highest rate being Black men aged 25 to 39. In 2001, almost 17% of Black men had previously been imprisoned in comparison to 2.6% of White men. By the end of 2002, of the two million inmates of the U.S. incarceration system, Black men surpassed the number of White men (586,700 to 436,800 respectively of inmates with sentences more than one year). In the same year, there were also more Black women behind bars than White women (36,000 to 35,400). African-Americans are about eight times more likely to be imprisoned than Whites. The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization, released in 1990 that almost one in four Black men in the U.S. between the ages of 20 and 29 were under some degree of control by the criminal justice system. In 1995, the organization announced that the rate had increased to one in three.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...

Wikipedia has become such a cesspool of fake data that I find this hard to believe.

> Black men and women are imprisoned at higher rates compared to all other age groups

According to [1], the rate for white men is far above the rate for black women. So this is probably a lie.

Also since when are black, men and/or women "age groups"?! If you can't tell race and sex from age, how can I trust your statistics?

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/252871/imprisonment-rate...

Your data [1] shows that the number of black males imprisoned per 100,000 residents is 2,203 and it shows that the number of white males imprisoned per 100,000 residents is 385. The former is greater than the latter, in accordance with the quote.

For more data, we can also look at just the Federal Bureau of Prisons [2] and we see that 38.2% of inmates are black while 57.8% of inmates are white despite the fact that only 16.1% of the US population is black while 75.7% of the US population is white.

As far as your comment on age groups, you're just going to have to re-read it until you understand what it's saying.

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/252871/imprisonment-rate...

2. https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_race....

You are arguing a different point, the post said that black men and black women are the most imprisoned groups. Black men are more imprisoned than white men, yes, but white men are more imprisoned than black women.

Womens issues and black issues are completely different, don't just mix them up randomly like this.

> Black men and women are imprisoned at higher rates compared to all other age groups

Aha, then they're just misreading that sentence then. It obviously means black men and black women as a whole are imprisoned at higher rates.

Thanks for sharing the legal text of the law that was referenced by the article.

After reading that, it seems that yes the article may have casually redefined the concept of 'minority groups'.

That said, the Wikipedia entry (in English at least) begins:

>Volksverhetzung, in English "incitement to hatred" (used also in the official English translation of the German Criminal Code),[1][2] "incitement of popular hatred", "incitement of the masses", or "instigation of the people"

I know German-English translations can be tricky, but based on that, and more so the not-so-ancient history that brought the policy about, it would seem we'd be denying practical and historical precedent in claiming:

>The position of all people is equal before the law.

Perhaps the parent comment was specifically referencing modern German/EU law. If that's the case I wouldn't argue, as I believe in the ideal.

However presented as an axiom? It doesn't hold practically or historically.

Volksverhetzung was passed not 30 years after the Nuremberg laws were passed. Here in the US it took a constitutional amendment to recognize women's right to vote; and after that it took additional acts of congress to outlaw discrimination based on race/religion/origin/sex/origin/orientation.

I don't know... but based on Volksverhetzung, the 19th Amendment, and the Civil Rights Act, it would seem it might be a fairer statement to say that, lately, we're collectively trying to use the legal system as a means to ensure equal position of people before it.

> The position of all people is equal before the law.

This is untrue, people of diminished mental capacity for example are treated quite differently in every legal system I know of. In the US Gender (bathrooms), age (alcohol), religion (religious exceptions), and race (gerrymandering) all have many legal implications.

Immigration is an action, it isn’t an inherent quality or protected by law in most countries. Not that this matters, but if you think it does: I’m an immigrant.

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