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Comment by lowboy | Hacker News Reader

Without a doubt it's racist. But if you consider power structures and privilege, not all racism is equally bad. As a white male, I'd rather he not have that opinion of me based solely on my race, but I'm willing to give him some leeway due to his experiences.

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Meh that is bullshit. What makes that more acceptable than calling someones dress thuggish because it appears similar to what all the gang members you went to school with wore?

Experience doesn't get to dictate racism.

I think if he were wearing baggy jeans and gold-chains, the thuggish comment would have made more sense. His dress is more reminiscent of a gay san franciscan than a gang-banging Angeleno.

On the other hand, he's black and he's dressing different from other people at the office, so it's "thuggish"

His racist comments and the thuggish comment are both on the "bad" side of the moral scale when taken alone. But when we look at the overall situation in the US, racism against black people is worse to me than racism against white people, systemically speaking.

I wish that neither Kixeye employees nor the blogger made racist comments, but we can decry one as worse than the other.

>What makes that more acceptable than calling someones dress thuggish because it appears similar to what all the gang members you went to school with wore?

The power differential between them. This guy's racism exists on tumblr and is targeted at noone, the racism he suffered at work was going from a manager to a lower employee. It's the same reason teacher-pupil relationships are never acceptable, no matter the age or maturity of the student.

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