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Comment by carabiner | Hacker News Reader

The crazy thing is that we still criticize China's concentration camps. We have a larger proportion of our population enslaved than they do.

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What's genuinely crazy is that you would equate the forced internment of an ethnic or religious minority with the confinement of convicted criminals. I can hardly imagine two things less alike.

I think using the minority argument here actually doesn’t fill the point you think it does in this specific context, explicitly because America has historically enslaved and criminalized ethnic minorities. Practices like redlining, which is the intentional withholding of economic benefits from certain geographic populations where minorities are located, as well as historically destroying minority communities through lynch mobs as well as eminent domain to build highways, have directly made minority communities harder to avoid poverty. Additionally, America has a problem with not doling out punishments equally- minorities are put into prison earlier, for longer, for lesser crimes.

We can talk about how we got here, why the crime statistics are what they are, and what to do about it, but none of that makes imprisoning a convicted rapist or murderer equivalent to the forced internment of an ethnic minority with little pretext. They simply aren't equivalent in any way, our history notwithstanding.

I've noticed that there seems to be something in the progressive mindset -- and here I'm speaking generally, not about you -- that says, in effect, "if we can describe a reasonable causal chain that led to a behavior, then we can excuse that behavior." I don't think this follows. A description of the hardships that led to violent behavior, say, is not universally exculpatory (neither morally, in my own view, or as a matter of law).

I never said anything about specific criminals, only that when it comes to the criminal system minorities are imprisoned earlier and longer for less severe violations of the law, and that talking about the treatment of minorities is not the strong counterpoint originally argued. At most it is a weak comparison where America doesn’t actually look significantly better. If we even looked outside the criminal system (where slavery is legal) the immigration system of the United States is also cruel, with forced family separation and reported forced sterilization procedures.

There you go again, doing the naughty thing. Thinking critically to trash our sacred cows. The world has to be divvied up into good and evil, right? And if we can't do that, if we start to see everything as complicated systems with layers of history and context, then there are no heroes, and part of my identity is lost.

Of course that’s exactly what you’re doing in this comment, which is to say you’ve invented a caricature of my position — I’m a simpleton with a sacred cow, clinging to the idea that the world is black and white, because to do otherwise is to lose a part of my “identity” (or something) — and then yourself divided the world into the enlightened and the rubes, the people who see layers and complexities (i.e. people who agree with you) and the morons who can’t (i.e. people who disagree with you).

It’s a neat trick, but it begs the question. There’s no evidence that you see complexities I don’t, as nice as that would be for your ego. I assure you, I’ve thought about it. We simply disagree.

while I agree with you that there isn't an equivalence between imprisoning someone who has committed a crime with someone who hasn't, I do think it is universally barbaric and evil to practice slavery.

Is it barbaric to force children to do chores?

Not only a larger proportion, but a larger number in absolute terms.

~2,000,000 in US vs ~1,700,000 in China.

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/262961/countries-with-th...

Yeah, I await the “At LeAsT wE cAn TaLk AbOuT iT” crowd to say how we are still better than China, because talking ensures some restitution at some point? How many decades have we had these camps?

Freedom of speech is a privilege without teeth.

There are a few things to note here the first is that China executes at least 8,000 people per year vs. 25 per year in the US. The other is that the 1.7 million number is an estimate.

Well at least they aren't disproportionately ethnic minorities. /s

That doesn't include the 1-3 million Uyghurs detained, I believe.

Simply mind blogging that you have managed to find a connection between both situations, when in one case an autocratic state has decided homogeneity is the end state; and mass detentions, forced sterilizations, and genocide is the way.

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