This is false. But let me charitably engage your argument and ask you the following -- if your premise is correct, that means that lower access to education and economic attainment among under represented people of color has nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with...something. What is that thing? Why would it be the case that, as Philosopher Liam Bright says, "the people who have the stuff still tend to be white, and blacks must still sell our labour to them if we are to get by"?

No.

So it's not about race. (I just gave you proof.)

It's about wealth and social class. Sure, those might correlate with race, and even be caused by racism (past or present), but virtually all real world consequences are downstream of wealth (in particular the ones mentioned: where you live, what you can afford, the amount of free time you have, your health, your nutrition, access to education/jobs, ...).

If you ignore wealth and focus on race, you're racist.

But you're not arguing that we give opportunities to people without good access to education and poor finances. You're arguing we give opportunity based off race. In fact, there are far more white people in the US with poor access to education. If you really wanted to increase opportunities for such people you wouldn't accomplish it by judging by race.

More total or more per-capita?

The people who study this stuff seriously end up concluding that cultural and domestic factors are the biggest predictor. There are plenty of minority groups who at one point didn't have any stuff, and were discriminated against (Jews, Irish, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, etc.). The main difference seems to be cultural values that prioritize the nuclear family and educational attainment. The SAT isn't racist, poor black people who study do far better than rich white people who don't.

If America was so racist, the single most successful ethnic minority wouldn't be Nigerians. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the culture, family, and values you grew up with.

Do you have a source for this? Not for debate, I'm genuinely wondering where the information comes from. From time to time I've heard things about people from Nigeria being hardworking - haven't looked into it very deep though.

FWIW and from anecdotal accounts of acquaintances of mine (not a lot but in the double digits), this comes down to a cultural focus on education and family structure from a young age. Compare to the culture and family values promulgated elsewhere.

This might actually be the best plausible argument in favor of affirmative action and D&I policies targeted towards these folks. By making it easier for them to enter especially high-skilled industry sectors such as tech we strengthen their incentive for adopting more effective cultural norms, which has significant benefits in the longer run.

(Unfortunately, this won't do any good if the educational system as a whole is not up to reasonable standards - if you're uneducated, you're still practically barred from the most productive and lucrative careers. And U.S. K-12 public education sucks.)

Wasn't there a Harvard study that concluded the biggest factor was a 2 parent household?

https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/01/new-harvard-study-w... (Slate: What’s the most important factor blocking social mobility? Single parents, suggests a new study.)

https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/129/4/1553/1853754 ("Where is the land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States")

Oh that's right... racism.

What is their average household income?

What countries in Africa do most of them come from?

Where do I read more about this?

Wealth, Poverty, and Poltics reads like a textbook, but provides a wealth of information about causes of disparity that have nothing to do with racism. Similarly, conquest and cultures talks a lot about disparate impact throughout history.

One of the foundational tenets of CRT is that all racial disparity is caused by systemic racism, and, therefore, that all racial disparity must be addressed by systemic change until there are equal outcomes. This idea is fundamentally wrong on a billion levels, and also insanely harmful to society. It is one of the main reasons, if not the primary reason, why CRT is so wrong and so dangerous. When you diagnose the illness so completely wrong, and then diagnose the cause of the alleged illness so completely wrong, then, your prognosis is not only going to fail to improve anything, it's going to make things worse for everyone!

Edit: according to this study, there is no race achievement gap—it is entirely accounted for by poverty

https://edsource.org/2019/poverty-levels-in-schools-key-dete...

These things aren't mutually exclusive, stop trying to project them as such.

Yet there are more white people in poverty than black people in the US. If we are trying to give opportunity to impoverished people we would judge by poverty. If we want to live in a racist society then we would judge by race.

Where are you people getting these stats? This is being repeated elsewhere and is not based in reality at all.

You may be thinking of poverty rates or proportional percentages if you think the above is untrue. The data is there for you to manipulate for your purposes as you wish, though.

True: There are more white people in poverty (~5.5% of population) than black people [in poverty (~2.5%)] in the US.

False: There are more white people in poverty (~5.5%) than black people [in or out of poverty (~13.6%)] in the US.

But it also shouldn't be surprising. There are almost 6x as many white people in the US as black people. Poverty rates amongst white people is about half of black people. Do the math.

You've given the exact reason why your statement is a completely useless red herring. Say there was a minority in the U.S., the Romulans. Let's say literally every single Romulan in the U.S. was impoverished due to hundreds of years of systemic, intentional racism. But there's only, say, 500,000 of them. Half a million.

Your argument is "we shouldn't give more opportunities to the Romulans to counteract the very obvious and intentional systemic racism that put them in the shitty position they're in, because way more white people are in that shitty position. We should only focus on poverty, so that we help 36 white people for every 1 Romulan helped. Even though the Romulans are impoverished because of intentional, systemic racism. Even though their towns were literally bombed if they dared get too successful. Nope, we have to help 36 white people each time we help 1 Romulan." Do you see why that sounds racist?

Your first inclination when someone ask for the source of the statistic you cite is to ask why it's important?

Do you expect anyone to take your argument seriously after doing that?

Asians sure, but I would think diversity programs generally try to include them too.

Discriminating against a group of human beings for an arbitrary detail such as the color of the skin is indeed racist. No matter if that human being is a freaking north-europe-blonde-arian-white or whatever. No matter if that human being is or not opressed or whatever. Judging people by the color of the skin is WRONG. This ideological bullshit that US is expelling that pretends to normalice racism against white people is atrocious and must end and everyone, like you, that follows this line of thought must be called out and being exposed as what you are, which is being a fucking racist.

Seriously, it is beyond me.

How uncharitable. I never said either racism was bad, just that one has less weight behind it.

> Also, stop assuming that the whole world has the same historical context as the US.

This is a thread about a US based company so assuming the historical context of the US matters is fair.

Also anti-black racism exists across the world.

> This is a thread about a US based company so assuming the historical context of the US matters is fair.

I was talking in general terms given that I've encountered this US ideological racist garbage in many places at this point.

> Also anti-black racism exists across the world.

Not at least where I'm originally from (Africa).

I cannot get my head around any of these arguments other than pure and simple indoctrination. As soon as you apply basic common sensical logical reasoning to it, you see how outrageous and ridiculous is.

The whole "prejudice + power" thing is a late social studies invention. Which is fine - different fields of study often have their own terminology, including using words in ways that do not directly match their regular meaning. What's not fine is people from those fields of study lecturing everyone else on how we're supposedly using it wrong. It's like biologists going around randomly yelling at people that tomatoes aren't vegetables whenever the subject comes up... except biologists don't do that.

Of course you can. And it's really easy, too. You simply discriminate against their race (or, as you have described, their skin color).

In case you haven't figured it out by now, if a human being can be lumped into a race, then racism can be levelled towards that person. That's literally baked into the meaning of the word racism.

Tell me you do not know the history of the USA. I’m a fucking Canuck and even I know that post-war housing support for the returning troops was starkly racist, that lenders were blatantly racist in their policies, that every fucking aspect of the #1 way to establish future generational prosperity - owning a house in a nice neighbourhood - was stacked against blacks.

The poverty exists On. Fucking. Purpose. It is racism that has created impoverished black neighbourhoods in America.

FFS, Black Wall Street was bombed by White America because racism prevents black people from getting ahead.

My god.

So mind your own “fucking” business, hoser. You think your country has none of its own problems to solve?

I would have banned the two of you, but I don't want to ban you without a warning and I'm not going to let you off the hook while banning the other person, so I'm going to let you both off the hook. However, please don't ever vandalize HN like this again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You can't vandalize HN like this, no matter how right you are or feel you are. And you've done it elsewhere recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33148354. That's not ok.

I actually banned you just now, but decided to undo it because the other user was also way over the line. If you don't want to be banned on HN, please respect the rules from now on.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html