We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20485568 and marked it off-topic.

You might want to look at the account’s entire comment history - appears to be far right astroturfing, and yes, I know we don’t throw that around lightly here.

Also see account vwdhx.

If you ban me for pointing this out, then I really am done here.

Is there any evidence that this has ever explained anything, or is it just racism? Seems like it's the go-to argument of some people to explain away just about any situation where some other country has something desirable and the US doesn't. "We can't have nice things because black people"?

No it’s not because of Black people - it’s because when you don’t have racial homogeneity, people are worried about “them” taking advantage of the system.

It’s a lot easier to be generous to people who “could be their child/relative”. You see the same thing in the justice system.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/47159874.pdf

What does the data say?

Your kids are not going to be kidnapped by black people either.

No they don't. Gypsies are a large ethnic minority in many eastern european countries. Also, although a religious minority instead of racial, there are a large percentage of Muslims in many of those countries too. Don't forget that the last european genocide over ethnic and religious lines happened in eastern europe too.

Also don't forget their is currently an ONGOING war in the Ukraine over divisions between those who are ethnically Russian and those are ethnically Ukranian.

I'm not preaching diversity as a virtue in itself but the idea that places like Eastern Europe are some kind of ethnic utopia where you can leave your doors unlocked and kids play on the streets just because everybody is white is just absurd.

The war in Ukraine is not about ethnicity.

Saying that a country like Romania is not ethnically homogeneous is absurd. Gypsies exist but in low numbers and stay in ghettos. Muslims only exist in some countries of the south of the Balkans.

Ok fair enough, but then why is Romania such a sh*t-hole? (Sorry Romanians). Surely the racial homogeneity there should mean that things are better over there?

I'm form different Eastern European country so I can explain it to you pretty easily.

Communism. It's pretty much same reason in whole Eastern Europe. Some countries managed to recover faster for various reasons whether it was more useful industry which was pretty much centrally planned in whole Soviet block from Moscow, so some countries where more industrially orientated and other remained pretty much agriculture only.

Second important reason is geographical location, especially presence of wealthy neighbors - compare Czechia with Germany and Austria as neighbors to Romania whose economically best performing neighbor is Hungary (which is economically worse off than Czechia itself).

Absolutely, you are right about that. My point was more to argue against the idea that in eastern europe, kids can run free on the streets because its a mostly white society. More likely is that the kids run free because the parents are not infected with american-style parenting and media-induced fear of everything. Literally nothing to do with race at all.

>Saying that a country like Romania is not ethnically homogeneous is absurd.

My team has two people who came from Romania. My company's site here has many more. I know a bunch of them. Your statement is absurd. I've had more than one Romanian literally tell me he doesn't hang out with that other Romanian because of the ethnic differences between them.

(Not hostility, just a lack of common culture).

Really? This statement about a place where the word “Balkanization” comes from?