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Comment by jpiasetz | Hacker News Reader

> Absent significant study, it is absolutely not the place of someone who is a member of the racial majority to declare the extent or impact of racism. You simply have no idea what you're talking about.

The opposite is also true: "Absent significant study, it is absolutely not the place of someone who is a member of the racial minority to declare the extent or impact of racism." Why not say simply it is not the place of someone to declare the extent or impact of racism without study?

Also I believe you are assuming the race of the parent. For all you know they could be a member of a racial minority.

More to the point what is our goal WRT racism? To eliminate associating traits with a person purely based on their race that are not backed up by a correlation? If that's the case affirmative actively works against that goal.

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> Also I believe you are assuming the race of the parent. For all you know they could be a member of a racial minority.

You believe incorrectly. I did my homework.

http://geekpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/derekclar...

But the rest of silliness about white people having it harder than minorities was the giveaway.

> The opposite is also true: "Absent significant study, it is absolutely not the place of someone who is a member of the racial minority to declare the extent or impact of racism." Why not say simply it is not the place of someone to declare the extent or impact of racism without study?

Being a minority can be a graduate level course on the extent and impact of racism. In America, most blacks and hispanics have had ample time to study up, sadly. And if you're from anywhere in the vicinity of the Middle East, god help you.

>> But the rest of silliness about white people having it harder than minorities was the giveaway.

I grew up poor, light skin (white?) part Scottish descent small part Native American Indian. I trained myself to get into the profession I love, buying my own books and writing code in several languages for a dozen years on the side while maintaining a full time job and family, before I started writing code for pay.

No one person in America deserves more than any one else based on the color of their skin.

Right, but you're light skinned. Imagine that, in addition to all the hardships you probably had to overcome, you also had to deal with systemic racism because you had dark skin.

> You believe incorrectly. I did my homework.

My apologizes you did your fact checking.

> Being a minority can be a graduate level course on the extent and impact of racism. In America, most blacks and hispanics have had ample time to study up, sadly. And if you're from anywhere in the vicinity of the Middle East, god help you.

That could all be correct however the person would still lack perspective and sample size. Without studying it on a large scale you could never be sure.

You also ignored my question of what is the goal in the end. My personal end goal is to have no one look at a person and label/judge them based on characteristic without facts to back it up and I think affirmative action takes us away from that.

The opposite is also true: "Absent significant study, it is absolutely not the place of someone who is a member of the racial minority to declare the extent or impact of racism."

People of marginalized groups are often much more familiar with racism and what is and isn't racist than people of privileged groups. It's like talking about sports with a sports fanatic and someone not that into sports. One person is going to know a lot more than the other.

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