Hacker News Reader

Comment by Timon3 | Hacker News Reader

I'm trying to take your reply in good faith, but I'm really not understanding. Can you walk me through your thought process? The earlier discussion was:

>>> But people are being treated badly due to their race

>> Unfortunately, I do not think you can force racists to stop being racist. Bigotry is perfectly legal.

> Why should the affected groups, or society at large, accept this? Why shouldn't we band together to try to make things fair in light of this fact?

So the court helped black people in regards to the bigotry of racists by "preventing universities from being racist". Your solution to racism is to treat everyone equally - which in turn means that black people just have to accept the bigotry of racists. So your solution is for them to just suck it up. Am I understanding you correctly?

View on HN

"Your solution to racism is to treat everyone equally"

Yes. This is the logical solution. The way to end X is that everybody stops doing X. It's very clear, simple, and I'm sure you would agree with virtually all values of X.

Wow, so it really is just "suck it up". Do you really not understand how problematic this line of thought is for those who are being discriminated against? Or do you just think that the only racism in this world is affirmative action, and minorities aren't being discriminated against?

Not “suck it up.” End it. The exact opposite of what you just characterized.

Your thinking on this topic seems very to contain many inversions.

Why are you ignoring my point? I've brought it up multiple times. Instead of just repeating your position you could, you know, respond to my argument regarding your position.

But you haven’t offered an argument.

“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

Do you think it should be eliminated? Then why are you arguing against its elimination? Why do you claim to think it should be eliminated? Why should I be convinced that you actually believe it should be eliminated?

I will repeat the point once more, please directly engage with it.

Earlier in this comment tree the other user wrote:

> Unfortunately, I do not think you can force racists to stop being racist. Bigotry is perfectly legal.

I agree with this, so the presupposition for the rest of the comment chain is that this statement is agreed upon, unless otherwise specified. I pointed towards this statement multiple times and asked: if this means that minorities will be discriminated against (since the agreed upon statement is that racists will still exist), and the attempt at "positive discrimination" is forbidden, they are simply discriminated against. What is your solution to this problem? How do we help them to no longer face discrimination under your proposed solution?

I don't think you have a solution, as you have so far failed to bring one up (even though I asked this question multiple times). So far, your position is equivalent to "they just have to suck it up". Can you finally offer a different position?

You want me to list specific solutions, but that’s not what I’m here to do.

I’m here to limit the set of such solutions to policies that actually decrease the total amount of discrimination.

Your positive discrimination increases the total amount of discrimination. Therefore it does not qualify as a policy that decreases discrimination.

Exactly - your only solution is for them to "suck it up". You don't offer any other solution, or even acknowledge the problem. Glad we got to an agreement, even if it took repeating things 4 times!

And your "solution" is to increase the amount of discrimination? The doing of nothing at all, which you're accusing me of promoting, is obviously absolutely better than that.

I don't think it makes sense to discuss potential solutions with you, as you've already shown that you're not interested in solving the problems of minorities. Why would you not just call any potential solution "racism" if it doesn't equally benefit the whole population?

Are we speaking different languages? Read this thread back! Does it make any sense? Not to me. I can barely understand what it means.

Do you not agree that affirmative action is a discrimination based on race?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com