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Comment by methoddk | Hacker News Reader

That bit of context is irrelevant. He frequently used the extremely general term, "Dumbwhite motherfucker.", which is blatantly racist and makes his complete argument null and void, because the comments he makes in this post are no better than the crap he heard at his job.

Sincerity and respect for a person's race does not take a backseat just because someone made racist remarks to someone else. I've been the victim of racist remarks and I'm white, that doesn't make it okay for me to refer to the other person by their race. In fact, it makes it WORSE.

Being tolerant of ANYONE using racism for ANY reason is not okay.

EDIT: The more I read your comment, the more it looks like you support racism as a means of retaliation to racism. This is why racism still (and always) exists.

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> He frequently used the extremely general term, "Dumbwhite motherfucker.", which is blatantly racist

Agreed.

> makes his complete argument null and void

No, actually it doesn't. That's really not how logic works.

This is an audience problem. This post was pretty clearly not meant to be an intellectual tour de force; it was a rant, and a step away from frothing at the mouth. The author doesn't claim to be perfect, nor is he. For an audience like HN, it's completely inappropriate, because it doesn't take into account our biases and worldviews; but I seriously doubt he expected to be on the HN front page.

Except it really does. I fully support a good rant to get something off the chest. The OP is so intensely focused on the race of his attackers, that it is debilitating to the rest of his problem. It makes him look just as bad as his attackers for stooping to the race level.

'Oh yes it does' is a powerful assertion, but doesn't really constitute an argument.

Except he never used that sort of language towards his coworkers at a professional setting.

So racism is okay as long as it's not in a professional setting?

His racism is not the subject of dispute here. The racism that the story focuses on is the one that created a hostile workplace and is the subject of legal action.

Why isn't it? The use of racism regardless of any factor is wrong. You are still condoning one person's use of racism over another. Setting does not dictate when racism is okay.

Edit: Also legal action? Im sure his use of "dumbwhite motherfucker" in court will go over very well. Come on...

>which is blatantly racist and makes his complete argument null and void, because the comments he makes in this post are no better than the crap he heard at his job.

Oh hey, it's the rare explicitly stated ad hominem attack.

I don't think this is an example of an ad hominem fallacy. Rather it seem to be tu quoue fallacy (attempting to discredit by asserting hypocrisy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque) Technically I suppose that is a form of an ad hominem fallacy, but describing it as that seems off to me.

(Not that that's any better.)

Even the wikipedia article mentions that this is a type of ad hominem. But thanks for teaching me an even more specific term! :)

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