Every time I see something dedicated to POC, I can't help but think how the inverse would sound and how odd people think these days.
There should be no reason that "Black X thing" and "White X thing" should be perceived any differently, however, strangely, you'd never see a "White History Museum" anywhere, whereas "Black History Museum" is considered something which "should be".
Just a few hours ago I saw an ad for a new BBC documentary: "Black Nurses: The Women Who Saved the NHS", and this, again, really puzzles me. I wonder how people would react to "White Nurses: The History of the NHS" (Since historically, before POC came to britain, nurses would be white).
Usually, the "liberal" response I get from my more left-leaning friends is somewhere along the lines of "POC have been mistreated, they can't be racist, they deserve an advantage, they deserve more attention, etc.".
I find that a very facinating and disturbing view. One which is becoming more prevalent.
Why couldn't the museum be named "African Museum", or "Caribbean Museum", or "Rastafarian Museum", or something a bit less divisive and racial? Like, how can you have a museum about "black people". What does that even mean? A museum about things that "black people" like to do? Isn't that racist in itself? It's all so backwards and hypocritical to me!
EDIT: I seem to have stepped on a progressive mine! Don't worry, I won't debate the hive narrative again folks :)
This. I was going to say culture instead of history, but right on.
If everything you know about black people is from the internet, TV, rap music, and pop culture in general, you are missing a lot of what being black in America is really about, and at how much interesting culture and history there is in black communities.
Because nobody needs one. In a place where white people were systematically enslaved and excluded from history, one would make sense. In the US, a white history museum would just be a duplicate of a normal history museum.
Okay, so what about a "White History Museum" in Africa? Or China? Or Brazil? That is definitely perceived differently, and also it's content would not represent the "normal" history of the parent location.
I think a White History Museum in Africa would be fine, but it would be about the history of white people specifically in Africa, which is not very pleasant. It would be mostly imperialism, slave trade, apartheid, etc.
The black history museum is not supposed to represent the "parent country" it's supposed to represent black people in America. A white history museum would do the same.
> I think a White History Museum in Africa would be fine, but it would be about the history of white people specifically in Africa, which is not very pleasant. It would be mostly imperialism, slave trade, apartheid, etc.
That seems surprisingly narrow minded and makes me wonder whether you feel that there is a particular narrative that needs to be followed. European/white descended people and organizations have done some pretty amazing stuff in Africa. And continue to do so.
One might ask how much time must pass after an event before it is considered history? Given that the Smithsonian African-American includes sections on Barack Obama and Anita Hill, as well as photos and memorabilia relating to sports stars, including LeBron James, it seems that the necessary time must be quite brief. As such I would expect an honest White History Museum in Africa would include the many significant positives.
It would also be a history of agricultural prosperity. It would also have to include the billions of dollars of charity sent to Africa for decades by Western Countries, quite notably by the United States. Probably should illustrate how much better economically black people in the United States have over the countries they were removed from, as Muhammad Ali notably stated.
Because there is in fact no such thing as a "white person".
Believe it or not, there is a coherent shared cultural identity of American black people, most of whom are descended from slaves brought here from Africa who had their original cultures stripped from them, and who belonged to a community segregated against legally into the 1970s. That those people came from several different countries on the continent of Africa is of little meaning, because their culture was deliberately cut off from its roots, and was built largely anew in the United States.
Your inclination is to assume that if "black culture" is a thing, then "white culture" must also be a thing. No, that is not the case. What there is in addition to "black culture" is:
* Irish-American culture, which has a museum, parades, and a holiday,
* Italian-American culture, which has a museum, parades, and a holiday,
* German-American culture, which has a museum and parades,
* Polish-American culture, which has a museum, parades, and a holiday
I can go on.
The notion that there is some notional "white culture" is artificial, a lie begun in earnest in the 20th century. No, really. Before "white culture", the Anglo- and Germanic-American communities in the US targeted Italians, the Irish, and the Polish (as well as Catholics of all nationalities). When the writing appeared on the wall for end of Jim Crow, "white culture" emerged as a solidarity movement among those people prejudiced against blacks and black culture.
This is a big part of why talking about "white history museums" generates so much flak. It's ahistorical, doesn't make much cultural sense (the Irish and Germans do not in fact have a huge overlap in music, art, language, or food), but is very much connected to 20th century racism. It's an Occam's Razor problem: the simplest thing to conclude someone would be talking about with a "white history museum" is racism.
People can hardly be blamed for wondering aloud about this stuff. After all: practically every government form you fill out asks your race, and has "white" as an option. These forms aren't all designed to perpetuate racism --- in fact, most of the forms that offer you the option of declaring yourself "white" have the opposite intention. But the concept of "whiteness" actually does derive from racism (again: the concept of "Irish-Americanness" does not!), and while the concept of "blackness" does as well, black people really do have an important, coherent, complex, historically rich culture built inside that racist framework we forced them into.
Worth checking out, also because it's just kind of amazing that you can: the Baldwin/Buckley debate:
> There should be no reason that "Black X thing" and "White X thing" should be perceived any differently
But they already are. These things aren't created in a vacuum where we pretend racism is already over. It would be nice if we could all forget about race, but doing so would be ignoring all the racism that has and continues to exist.
When you make an American history museum, you'll find that basically every important figure is white. Is that just random chance? Is it ok to cover your eyes and say "I'm colorblind, this is just an exhibit about the most important historical figures regardless of race"?
I'm sure you're not racist, but you can't ignore the people and institutions that still are, and you can't ignore history. Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away.
But read my reply further. I'm okay and I'm sure most are with an "African Museum", or something like that. That museum would be dominated by POC, just like an "American History Museum" would be dominated by White people. It's not racist. It's history.
Also, surely you can see the shortfalls in trying to solve today's racism with treating one race over another, right?
This opinion is extremely naive and ignorant. White people controlled history through imperialism and colonialism for centuries, and the histories were all written by white people. Of course all the other museums feature white people only, because in the western world white people were the dominant, oppressive class. It is important to preserve these stories and histories that would have otherwise been lost in a white narrative
While I agree that these stories and histories are worth preserving, I would rather they were integrated into current historical accounts and current museums, creating more complete picture, rather than the racial segregationist approach this museum represents.
Fair, but there is a lot of institutional racism in the art world and academia, so progress on these counts is extremely slow moving. Also, some would argue that as a result of how history is written, that it is important to have black owned institutions with black curation because the narratives and histories between black and white Americans is so vast that it is important that black people get to control their narrative and history to prevent cultural erasure. A post racial world is ideal, but simply not possible
My concern with this approach is that it seems it will only keep old resentments alive, as opposed to celebrating their culture. If every nation, race, and culture in the world held on to every atrocity committed against them, the planet would be covered in perpetual war...
There's definitely a lot of institutional racism in academia. Outright favoritism for people of color for no other reason than their skin color. In Admissions programs, hiring practices, scholarships as well as many instances during normal campus life. Campuses go out of their way to not be racist to the point where they are racist. Absolutely ridiculous. And it really hurts the self-esteem of people to be given special treatment b/c of their color.
I think that's just kind of impractical. There are slavery and civil rights exhibits in American history museums, but the full topic is just too expansive for a couple exhibits. It's the same concept of having a Thomas Jefferson museum, or a suffragette movement museum, or any individual topic.
Highlighting black people does not place them "over" anyone. We are not replacing another museum with this one. There are plenty of African exhibits in the Natural History museum and elsewhere and those are great, but it's not the same.
Do you not think slavery, Jim Crow, civil rights, etc. is a worthwhile topic? Is it not clearly an extremely important area that deserves an entire museum, rather than a couple exhibits here and there?
And finally, imagine a hypothetical country where we enslaved black people for 100 years, and then ceased all slavery and racism completely. One day there were slaves, the next slavery is abolished and nobody is racist. Is the problem solved? Are black people now equal to everyone else? No, because history didn't disappear, they still used to be slaves. They have no money, no land, no friends in power, no education, etc. Their lives still suck, no matter how impartial everyone else is. Again, you can't solve a problem by ignoring it. Pretending black people have no disadvantages and can be treated exactly the same as white people is just naïve, and impractical. It is not racist to acknowledge existing racism, and try to counteract it. There is a line, and it's completely possible for racism to negatively affect white people, but building a black history museum does not come anywhere near that line.
Great question! Why don't we ask Black people? :) After all there isn't really an "objective" measure of oppression, its simply the sum total of people's experience, which museums like this try to capture.
you forget given all the race mixing done during the period of slavery, there were plenty of people from the beginning of slavery that really just did these things because it was part of culture. Many many african americans have european blood in them. And many of them are descendents of people who were in loving yet secretive relationships.
It is undeniable that some slave-owners owned slaves in order to keep them as workers, and they weren't necessarily "mistreated" more like they were safer as slaves and couldn't be released anyway.
This is kind of a weird comment. Racism and prejudice work off of skin color, not DNA. Having "European blood" does not help you. Having "loving" ancestors is not helpful either.
I think it's good that some slaves were treated well, but I'm not sure how that's relevant here. They were still slaves.
And many were raped. Repeatedly. In a culture where this was thought of as normal. How can a relationship be consensual and loving when one partner literally has the right to order the other, to harm the other in any way, to literally kill the other? If there were so many consensual and secret relationships, why did white slave owners talk so openly about rape of black women (and white women actually, read William Byrd Carter II's diary, it's a shocking horrible thing), and speak so strongly against any sort of liason between white women and black men? Black slaves lived in a world where killing your rapist would get you found guilty [1]. Surely there were some loving relationships (people are diverse), but just as surely the majority were not.
And what were slave-owners trying to protect slaves from? If slaves had it so good under slavery, why did thousands and thousands attempt to flee at great risk to their own life? Why did they overwhelmingly vote for the Republican Party after reconstruction, again at great cost to their own lives? Why did so many who did flee write about the evils of slavery, and campaign against it, and no free black wrote for it? All slaves were owned to extract economic value of them, they were huge capital investments.
Considering the US wasn't the only country with slavery, I'm curious if other countries have museums dedicated to the subject? It seems whenever someone brings up slavery everyone automatically thinks of America.
Slavery was very widely popular in China, south east asia, and most notably the middle east during that era.
I've also heard there's still as many slaves today in Africa as there were in the 1800's America:
Maybe it's a good thing Americans are so interested in the subject, as everywhere else that legacy, and in the case of modern Africa the reality, is not being confronted. But at the same time I feel like there are risks of seeing it as a uniquely American issue rather than a human one that the majority of the earths population's has had some connection to in the past.
The larger narrative about Jim Crow laws and state sanctioned racism in the modern era is still somewhat unique to the US though - at least in the western world.
Otherwise this is largely the consequence of America being the dominant media and news engine for the world. It gets the greatest amount of inward reflection regarding their responsibility for the guilt of past human failures.
I agree, slavery should be documented and confronted everywhere. I do think other countries have museums, which is good. There's a fairly well known one called House of Slaves in Senegal, for example. I'm sure there are many more elsewhere.
The United States ended slavery. I mean it still exists in some regions of Islam, but we ended it in the West. We should be proud of this part of our history. Many lives were lost during this period. Thank goodness for the Lincoln and the Republicans for ending slavery as well as for voting for civil rights in the 1960s. Democrats were awful. Democrats I think have a lot of underlying shame over this, which is why they often virtue signal to avoid coming to grips with the evils of the Democratic Party.
So you're saying that standard museums of history are majority white in the US/UK and that is fine because it's the truth.
That proves the reason for the existence of a black history museum then, because there are people that are overlooked. Do they not deserve to have their story told? Because that's the point of a museum.
Stating that act of creating a museum for black history is racist towards white people makes as much sense as a museum for wooden boats being an affront to the metallic boats.
It's very easy to see that there would be value in having a black history museum in a country where the majority of people are white.
You can say the same for a "white history" museum in a country where being white is not the majority.
However, what you'll find is that a lot of countries have a colonial history that ties into their history significantly. Where white Europeans came along and by force conquered them.
Anyway, did you even read the article? It gives plenty of context for the museum. I don't see you arguing against it however, instead you've just latched onto it being a "Black" History museum.
So the answer is more racism and segregation?? If we want inclusion, why not build an exhibit that includes all races? Or why wasn't this exhibit added to the already existing one? How can these two exhibits be equal to one another if they are separate from one another?
We have many museums and exhibits that include all races. And I imagine this one does too, although I haven't been there yet. You can't talk about slavery and civil rights without talking about white people, in both negative and positive roles.
There are exhibits on this stuff in existing American history museums, but it's a very big topic. For any historical topic, if you can fill an entire museum, trying to fit it into a few exhibits is just impractical.
Really? Wow. Well, still, I do see examples of things called "Black X thing", so the point still holds, just not in this case. Talk about a misleading article. HN these days :/
You don't see a White People Museum because, in the US and Europe anyway, that is the default: they are all white people museums unless otherwise stated.
Well, yes, because those countries / continents are historically white. Just like an African museum would be "black people", since Africa is historically black.
And, okay, to really shut this one down, what would you say to a "White History Museum" in Africa? That's a real exception to your hypothesis!
There would not be a problem with a "White History Museum" if there was enough of an historical presence of white people in that place to support it. I don't know enough about the history of African countries to know if there is one that meets this criteria. The same could be said for any "non-default" minority "type" anywhere.
>if there was enough of an historical presence of white people in that place to support it.
Who has the authority to establish that threshold? Seems quite arbitrary and problematic. White History Museum in South Africa? What about Zambia? DRC? All have a white historical presence, and in places like Zimbabwe, an argument could be made that the culture has suffered a certain persecution (I am not taking a side on this argument here).
Actually, the desire is to realize that everyone has prejudicial tendencies. It's a natural part of the human psyche. The desire is for people to know this about themselves and try to catch themselves before mistreating someone based on false prejudice. I.e. don't neglect to put the hot chile on a white persons order because they're white. it's the "because they're white/black/Asian/etc" part that causes issue.
Because, at least in the UK and US, white history forms the majority of a countries actual history.
Black history museums are interesting because they offer an insight into the achievements of a transplant group in a country where they are a minority. It's not really about their history prior to immigrating. It's about their history after they've gotten into this new country, and the story of their integration.
I don't think it has anything to do with race, it's a cultural thing - groups that identified with a common history in a strange land.
For example, in the UK, despite being also predominantly white, I'm sure there would be a remit for a polish history museum, or even an irish history musuem.
Thing is though, "polish" and "irish" correspond to, clearly, the country's history only. "Black" refers to literally anything about black people, which is a totally different idea.
They're identical ideas. The Irish-American community is the American community descended from Irish immigrants. The same is true of Polish-Americans, Italian-Americans, and German-Americans, all of whom have (a) museums, (b) pride parades, and (c) actual communities in most major US cities.
You seem not to be aware that these things exist. They very much do. African-American museums celebrate the community of Americans descended, primarily, from people brought here as slaves from Africa. They have an immense shared culture and heritage, stemming in large part from the way the law of this country segregated them until just a few decades ago, and thus have a cultural identity here more coherent than those of (say) Irish-Americans (who do indeed have a museum, and most of whom couldn't name 3 cities in Ireland or tell you what Gaelic is).
To strengthen your remark, there's a Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle - a lot of Scandinavians settled here years ago. There is also an Asian American museum. Unsure about other <x>-American museums.
> Usually, the "liberal" response I get from my more left-leaning friends is somewhere along the lines of "POC have been mistreated, they can't be racist...
You should have asked your friends why a black person can't be racist, because to most white people it's an absurd proposition. So allow me to explain a bit here.
Racism, unlike what we mostly think, is not a state of mind or an emotion. Racism is a sociological system that transcends the intentions of any one individual. In case US history is not forefront in anyone's mind: 150 years ago, a black person had the same legal status as a pig; 100 years ago, it was illegal for a white person to marry a black person; 60 years ago, it was illegal for a black person to drink at a water fountain.
Today, the likelihood that you'll be shot by a cop if you're black is astronomically higher than if you're white. If you have a black sounding name, you're less likely to have a company respond to your job application.
These things are institutional. When we say a black person can't be racist -- we don't mean they can't be prejudiced. They can, just like all people. But the privileges and paved roads that a white person enjoys simply aren't there by default for a POC, so they can't benefit from institutional racism.
TL;DR - false equivalency. "Black X Thing" is in the context of a historically disenfranchised people overcoming an entire country hellbent on keeping them disenfranchised. "White X Thing" is ridiculous because it's redundant: "Thing" is already White by default.
> Racism is a sociological system that transcends the intentions of any one individual
I think that's a rather ambitious definition of racism. Racism is the discrimination of some person/group due to their race. You are either denying that being white is a race (Caucasian more specifically), or you are denying the global definition of the word. Both are wrong.
Anyway, onto your pseudo-fact opinions, since these are always sad to see purported as facts on HN:
> Today, the likelihood that you'll be shot by a cop if you're black is astronomically higher than if you're white.
...Because black crime is 4x greater, not from any mass cop bias. False correlation. Also, "astronomical" is a totally inappropriate exaggeration. Please, look at statistics before hurling words at screens.
> so they can't benefit from institutional racism.
But, that is not even "racism". That is an expansion of the term that is not the term itself. It's irrelevant. Also, have you seen US University GPA requirements? I think you'll find that it favors POC more than anybody, and makes it hardest for Asians, then whites. So. That's not universally correct right off the bat.
> "Thing" is already White by default.
Another exaggeration.
Regardless, I definitely do disagree with your general opinion that negative past events towards POC should mean they are treated specially now. Like in another comment, don't you think that trying to "revenge" on historical racism by being racist again with opposite races, is a little, well, stupid? You can already see that it doesn't work by how dissatisfied white people are with this mindset.
Why is that? Why is it that every voice like yours stops the analysis there. "Black crime commit more crimes, end of story". Ask the 5 why's! You don't think there are institutional and socio-cultural (history driven) issues that lead to this?
Ironically, could it be black culture that causes it?
You have all sorts of terrorist groups like BLM that are telling, instructing, pleading all black people to commit crimes. That's definitely not anecdotal.
Well, you don't get to define what's "worse-off" for another culture. And should that give us pause about current policies that may cause the same behaviour later on?
My eyes were opened to this when I was able to have an honest and open conversation with an African-American friend (I'm not American and never understood the history), and he described the level of victimisation that is passed on from generation to generation after traumatic events that span multiple generations. There is a deep wound in American history that is unique to the African-American experience.
Museums like this try to capture some of it. But really, America should be looking to Truth and Reconciliation commission type of platforms that has worked in other places. Finish what was started in the Reconstruction-era, or continue to suffer from this wound.
And yet when questioned about crimes they commit, criminals provide testimony by and large that has nothing to do with what you are saying. We have a lot of testimony from criminals. Your excuse is not their excuse. Which means you are inventing a victimhood narrative. This harms black communities.
BLM is a terrorist group? I didn't realize they were put on a list by the southern poverty law center or the American department of homeland security. Can I have a link? Extremely interested.
So how do we know if it's a terrorist group if there isn't an organization that recognizes them as a terrorist group? Not even organizations that specialize in discerning terrorist behavior can discern their actions as terrorism, so what metric do we use? Is there evidence that certain social movements are given more leeway to terrorism than others, and if there isn't due to inability to study this subject for black-favorability culture, how does one objectively determine whether or not a black favorability culture exists to the point where terrorism occurs?
Many people would love to know Why blacks commit more crimes per capita. And you can compare it to poor whites and they don't equal out even there. Why is that. Why is it that you excuse people of the crimes they commit b/c of socio-cultural history. If your sister was raped, would you accept the socio-cultural buzzword excuse by the offender?
We've banned this account for continuing to post political and ideological rants after we've asked you repeatedly to stop. That's not what this site is for, and it's an abuse to use it primarily for that purpose.
> "Today, the likelihood that you'll be shot by a cop if you're black is astronomically higher than if you're white."
That's actually false and it's an impression being carried out by the media. When interacting with the police, you are more like to to be shot if you are white than if you are black.
If you look at the linked study they're careful to point out that they're only looking at what happens when you're already stopped by police. Blacks in America are much more likely to be stopped overall, so it's not definitive.
They're looking at P(shot|stopped by police and white) and P(shot|stopped by police and black) not P(shot by police|black) and P(shot by police|white).
Well, it makes sense that blacks are more stoped by the police in the USA than whites, since they are the ones committing - by a great margin - most of the violent crimes. The black community in the USA (representing 12% of the population) commits more homicides and attempted homicides than all the white community (which is 5x times larger). Thereby, of course they have more interaction with the police.
> Today, the likelihood that you'll be shot by a cop if you're black is astronomically higher than if you're white.
This is not true. Not only is there no astronomically higher probability, there is no higher probability.[1] Other studies found that officers hesitate longer before shooting an armed black suspect than they do white or Hispanic suspects.[2]
Read into the perspective of Roland G. Fryer (an african american), the author of the study you cite [1]. His conclusion is a little bit more nuanced then the one you are driving to.
Also I'm not driving to anything. I'm pointing out that research, as opposed to narrative, shows that blacks are not shot by police at astronomically higher rates.
This "racism is a system" always sounded to me a bit a rhetorical voodoo, because it allows people to claim that there's still "racism" even if they have no evidence beyond what's in their heads besides the difference in socioeconomic outcomes between different races.
This, however, is absurd. In economics, there's a crucial distinction between historical processes (e.g. accumulation of wealth or economic development) and general economic processes (e.g. the pricing of a good) in that historical processes are not mean-reverting. They're subject to certain rules (e.g. preferential attachment, positive feedbacks, increasing returns) which make them generally path dependent[0]. As a result, initial differences will perpetuate themselves for an indefinately long time.
For example, a familial lineages might remain poor or rich for an arbitrarily long time purely through inheritance. New York might remain more populous than Dallas for an undefined amount of time since the economic benefit of moving into any of those two cities is a function of their population (through economies of agglomeration[1]). And Peru might remain much poorer than the United States for an eternity, because how much capital and labor countries draw to themselves if proportional to how much innovation going on there, which is itself a function of those variables.
History, even as completely blind process, will still produce self-sustaining inequalities. But none of this has anything to do with "racism", but with the fact that the past matters and we live in a world of crucial events. In a mean-reverting world, in all likelihood, there wouldn't even be such a thing as an European colonization of America. In a sense, you might be right in thinking that non one wants all this. But calling these process a result of "racism" is beyond stretching the meaning of the word.
There's no way to maintain a reasonable expectation that different entities (nevermind races) should attain equal outcomes unless the "Just World Hypothesis" is assumed.
I think it's bizarre how "People of Color" became an accepted PC term. Prior to that I thought it was a racist relic from the 50s. It's weird how they think the world can be grouped into white people and everyone else. Do Chinese, Nigerians, and Bolivians have so much in common they should be grouped into one category, other than "human" that is?
I'm Chinese with a close mentor of a Nigerian American. We absolutely have related issues with regards to being treated differently because we are not white. We have things we both relate to in ways our mutual white friends can't really follow.
Pretty much everything celebrates white america. You don't name it so because it is already implied. Unfortunately you are so insecure that when a bunch of historically opressed people try to make room for themselves you feel like you are the one being opressed. Highly ironic.
Oh, no, I don't feel oppressed. I am pointing out the ironic nature of a museum, and a general culture, that has the mindset of trying to "account" for past racism with treating one race differently to another, far since the effects of the past have dwindled to nothing but natural human impulses.
I think this is maybe the core of your argument, that racism and its effects are no longer noticeable, so this kind of thing isn't necessary. I would encourage you to look up the many studies of how simply having a black sounding name can affect job prospects and other things, and ask some black people if they've ever been affected by discrimination.
a) there hasn't been many studies. Many headlines about few studies which makes you think there are lots however...
b) If you read past the headlines into the correlation and probability theory of each study, you'll find that the reason why there is the difference is because of education and lower ambitions and goals of black people. You could say there is no real racism, only perceived racism, which then mentally affects the perceiever, and dissaudes them from getting better qualifications and therefore worse job prospects.
That is not in itself racism. That is a false perception of reality ends up affecting reality later on. I think it's called the self-fulfillment fallacy.
> a) there hasn't been many studies. Many headlines about few studies which makes you think there are lots however...
The social sciences suffer massive publication bias. Results ranging from failure of the study to support the hypothesis to the gathered data having being politically incorrect lead to research being abandoned.
This sort of seems like a semantics argument. If the effects of "perceived racism" are the same as the effects of real racism, isn't it still a problem? Don't we still need to deal with it?
You need to stop using the word "race" this way. It's not a museum about "race". It's a museum about a cultural history shared among millions of Americans. It's got slavery, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement, but also James Baldwin's passport. Black history in the US is an enormous rich topic; it would clearly deserve a museum even if blacks had never been discriminated against.
This is an exceptionally tired and stale argument. (In the same vein as "why isn't there a White History Month" and "why isn't there a White Entertainment Channel").
It's also exceptionally not explained, since after a total lack or real arguments and coherence it always resorts to name calling to the ones asking these questions.
> EDIT: I seem to have stepped on a progressive mine! Don't worry, I won't debate the hive narrative again folks :)
First, name-calling potshots like this don't belong in HN comments; you should be editing them out, not in. The topic is inflammatory enough without getting meta-snarky.
Second, you've broken the HN guideline that asks you not to start flamewars (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). There are interesting things—in HN's sense—that could have been discussed about this article; by posting the most predictable of all responses ("I can't help but think how the inverse would sound"), you created the most predictable of all flamewars. Then you kept it going by posting way too many comments. Flamewars should be starved, not fuelled.
I don't at all think you were ill-intentioned, but doing these things lowers the quality of discussion and makes HN the sort of place we're hoping to avoid becoming, so please don't do them here.
On a related note, if you're ever in Seattle and enjoy these types of things, the Northwest African American Museum (naamnw.org) is worth checking out, and it's right next to the just-renovated Jimi Hendrix Park, since he grew up in the general area it's located in.
Judkins Park across the street (23rd Ave), or walking east towards the pedestrian/bike path along the I-90 floating bridge (Sam Smith Park), are also worth checking out! Especially biking across the bridge over Lake WA.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadThere should be no reason that "Black X thing" and "White X thing" should be perceived any differently, however, strangely, you'd never see a "White History Museum" anywhere, whereas "Black History Museum" is considered something which "should be".
Just a few hours ago I saw an ad for a new BBC documentary: "Black Nurses: The Women Who Saved the NHS", and this, again, really puzzles me. I wonder how people would react to "White Nurses: The History of the NHS" (Since historically, before POC came to britain, nurses would be white).
Usually, the "liberal" response I get from my more left-leaning friends is somewhere along the lines of "POC have been mistreated, they can't be racist, they deserve an advantage, they deserve more attention, etc.".
I find that a very facinating and disturbing view. One which is becoming more prevalent.
Why couldn't the museum be named "African Museum", or "Caribbean Museum", or "Rastafarian Museum", or something a bit less divisive and racial? Like, how can you have a museum about "black people". What does that even mean? A museum about things that "black people" like to do? Isn't that racist in itself? It's all so backwards and hypocritical to me!
EDIT: I seem to have stepped on a progressive mine! Don't worry, I won't debate the hive narrative again folks :)
Have you been to a museum?
If everything you know about black people is from the internet, TV, rap music, and pop culture in general, you are missing a lot of what being black in America is really about, and at how much interesting culture and history there is in black communities.
The black history museum is not supposed to represent the "parent country" it's supposed to represent black people in America. A white history museum would do the same.
That seems surprisingly narrow minded and makes me wonder whether you feel that there is a particular narrative that needs to be followed. European/white descended people and organizations have done some pretty amazing stuff in Africa. And continue to do so.
One might ask how much time must pass after an event before it is considered history? Given that the Smithsonian African-American includes sections on Barack Obama and Anita Hill, as well as photos and memorabilia relating to sports stars, including LeBron James, it seems that the necessary time must be quite brief. As such I would expect an honest White History Museum in Africa would include the many significant positives.
Believe it or not, there is a coherent shared cultural identity of American black people, most of whom are descended from slaves brought here from Africa who had their original cultures stripped from them, and who belonged to a community segregated against legally into the 1970s. That those people came from several different countries on the continent of Africa is of little meaning, because their culture was deliberately cut off from its roots, and was built largely anew in the United States.
Your inclination is to assume that if "black culture" is a thing, then "white culture" must also be a thing. No, that is not the case. What there is in addition to "black culture" is:
* Irish-American culture, which has a museum, parades, and a holiday,
* Italian-American culture, which has a museum, parades, and a holiday,
* German-American culture, which has a museum and parades,
* Polish-American culture, which has a museum, parades, and a holiday
I can go on.
The notion that there is some notional "white culture" is artificial, a lie begun in earnest in the 20th century. No, really. Before "white culture", the Anglo- and Germanic-American communities in the US targeted Italians, the Irish, and the Polish (as well as Catholics of all nationalities). When the writing appeared on the wall for end of Jim Crow, "white culture" emerged as a solidarity movement among those people prejudiced against blacks and black culture.
This is a big part of why talking about "white history museums" generates so much flak. It's ahistorical, doesn't make much cultural sense (the Irish and Germans do not in fact have a huge overlap in music, art, language, or food), but is very much connected to 20th century racism. It's an Occam's Razor problem: the simplest thing to conclude someone would be talking about with a "white history museum" is racism.
People can hardly be blamed for wondering aloud about this stuff. After all: practically every government form you fill out asks your race, and has "white" as an option. These forms aren't all designed to perpetuate racism --- in fact, most of the forms that offer you the option of declaring yourself "white" have the opposite intention. But the concept of "whiteness" actually does derive from racism (again: the concept of "Irish-Americanness" does not!), and while the concept of "blackness" does as well, black people really do have an important, coherent, complex, historically rich culture built inside that racist framework we forced them into.
Worth checking out, also because it's just kind of amazing that you can: the Baldwin/Buckley debate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFeoS41xe7w
But they already are. These things aren't created in a vacuum where we pretend racism is already over. It would be nice if we could all forget about race, but doing so would be ignoring all the racism that has and continues to exist.
When you make an American history museum, you'll find that basically every important figure is white. Is that just random chance? Is it ok to cover your eyes and say "I'm colorblind, this is just an exhibit about the most important historical figures regardless of race"?
I'm sure you're not racist, but you can't ignore the people and institutions that still are, and you can't ignore history. Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away.
Also, surely you can see the shortfalls in trying to solve today's racism with treating one race over another, right?
Surely?
Do you not think slavery, Jim Crow, civil rights, etc. is a worthwhile topic? Is it not clearly an extremely important area that deserves an entire museum, rather than a couple exhibits here and there?
And finally, imagine a hypothetical country where we enslaved black people for 100 years, and then ceased all slavery and racism completely. One day there were slaves, the next slavery is abolished and nobody is racist. Is the problem solved? Are black people now equal to everyone else? No, because history didn't disappear, they still used to be slaves. They have no money, no land, no friends in power, no education, etc. Their lives still suck, no matter how impartial everyone else is. Again, you can't solve a problem by ignoring it. Pretending black people have no disadvantages and can be treated exactly the same as white people is just naïve, and impractical. It is not racist to acknowledge existing racism, and try to counteract it. There is a line, and it's completely possible for racism to negatively affect white people, but building a black history museum does not come anywhere near that line.
It is undeniable that some slave-owners owned slaves in order to keep them as workers, and they weren't necessarily "mistreated" more like they were safer as slaves and couldn't be released anyway.
I think it's good that some slaves were treated well, but I'm not sure how that's relevant here. They were still slaves.
And what were slave-owners trying to protect slaves from? If slaves had it so good under slavery, why did thousands and thousands attempt to flee at great risk to their own life? Why did they overwhelmingly vote for the Republican Party after reconstruction, again at great cost to their own lives? Why did so many who did flee write about the evils of slavery, and campaign against it, and no free black wrote for it? All slaves were owned to extract economic value of them, they were huge capital investments.
[1]http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/celia/celiaacc...
Slavery was very widely popular in China, south east asia, and most notably the middle east during that era.
I've also heard there's still as many slaves today in Africa as there were in the 1800's America:
> Forced labor in Sub-Saharan Africa is estimated at 660,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_contemporary_Africa
Maybe it's a good thing Americans are so interested in the subject, as everywhere else that legacy, and in the case of modern Africa the reality, is not being confronted. But at the same time I feel like there are risks of seeing it as a uniquely American issue rather than a human one that the majority of the earths population's has had some connection to in the past.
The larger narrative about Jim Crow laws and state sanctioned racism in the modern era is still somewhat unique to the US though - at least in the western world.
Otherwise this is largely the consequence of America being the dominant media and news engine for the world. It gets the greatest amount of inward reflection regarding their responsibility for the guilt of past human failures.
That proves the reason for the existence of a black history museum then, because there are people that are overlooked. Do they not deserve to have their story told? Because that's the point of a museum.
Stating that act of creating a museum for black history is racist towards white people makes as much sense as a museum for wooden boats being an affront to the metallic boats.
It's very easy to see that there would be value in having a black history museum in a country where the majority of people are white.
You can say the same for a "white history" museum in a country where being white is not the majority. However, what you'll find is that a lot of countries have a colonial history that ties into their history significantly. Where white Europeans came along and by force conquered them.
Anyway, did you even read the article? It gives plenty of context for the museum. I don't see you arguing against it however, instead you've just latched onto it being a "Black" History museum.
There are exhibits on this stuff in existing American history museums, but it's a very big topic. For any historical topic, if you can fill an entire museum, trying to fit it into a few exhibits is just impractical.
For some reason it excludes Egypt, big part of South America and other African countries ;-)
And, okay, to really shut this one down, what would you say to a "White History Museum" in Africa? That's a real exception to your hypothesis!
Who has the authority to establish that threshold? Seems quite arbitrary and problematic. White History Museum in South Africa? What about Zambia? DRC? All have a white historical presence, and in places like Zimbabwe, an argument could be made that the culture has suffered a certain persecution (I am not taking a side on this argument here).
Black history museums are interesting because they offer an insight into the achievements of a transplant group in a country where they are a minority. It's not really about their history prior to immigrating. It's about their history after they've gotten into this new country, and the story of their integration.
I don't think it has anything to do with race, it's a cultural thing - groups that identified with a common history in a strange land.
For example, in the UK, despite being also predominantly white, I'm sure there would be a remit for a polish history museum, or even an irish history musuem.
You seem not to be aware that these things exist. They very much do. African-American museums celebrate the community of Americans descended, primarily, from people brought here as slaves from Africa. They have an immense shared culture and heritage, stemming in large part from the way the law of this country segregated them until just a few decades ago, and thus have a cultural identity here more coherent than those of (say) Irish-Americans (who do indeed have a museum, and most of whom couldn't name 3 cities in Ireland or tell you what Gaelic is).
You should have asked your friends why a black person can't be racist, because to most white people it's an absurd proposition. So allow me to explain a bit here.
Racism, unlike what we mostly think, is not a state of mind or an emotion. Racism is a sociological system that transcends the intentions of any one individual. In case US history is not forefront in anyone's mind: 150 years ago, a black person had the same legal status as a pig; 100 years ago, it was illegal for a white person to marry a black person; 60 years ago, it was illegal for a black person to drink at a water fountain.
Today, the likelihood that you'll be shot by a cop if you're black is astronomically higher than if you're white. If you have a black sounding name, you're less likely to have a company respond to your job application.
These things are institutional. When we say a black person can't be racist -- we don't mean they can't be prejudiced. They can, just like all people. But the privileges and paved roads that a white person enjoys simply aren't there by default for a POC, so they can't benefit from institutional racism.
TL;DR - false equivalency. "Black X Thing" is in the context of a historically disenfranchised people overcoming an entire country hellbent on keeping them disenfranchised. "White X Thing" is ridiculous because it's redundant: "Thing" is already White by default.
I think that's a rather ambitious definition of racism. Racism is the discrimination of some person/group due to their race. You are either denying that being white is a race (Caucasian more specifically), or you are denying the global definition of the word. Both are wrong.
Anyway, onto your pseudo-fact opinions, since these are always sad to see purported as facts on HN:
> Today, the likelihood that you'll be shot by a cop if you're black is astronomically higher than if you're white.
...Because black crime is 4x greater, not from any mass cop bias. False correlation. Also, "astronomical" is a totally inappropriate exaggeration. Please, look at statistics before hurling words at screens.
> so they can't benefit from institutional racism.
But, that is not even "racism". That is an expansion of the term that is not the term itself. It's irrelevant. Also, have you seen US University GPA requirements? I think you'll find that it favors POC more than anybody, and makes it hardest for Asians, then whites. So. That's not universally correct right off the bat.
> "Thing" is already White by default.
Another exaggeration.
Regardless, I definitely do disagree with your general opinion that negative past events towards POC should mean they are treated specially now. Like in another comment, don't you think that trying to "revenge" on historical racism by being racist again with opposite races, is a little, well, stupid? You can already see that it doesn't work by how dissatisfied white people are with this mindset.
Why is that? Why is it that every voice like yours stops the analysis there. "Black crime commit more crimes, end of story". Ask the 5 why's! You don't think there are institutional and socio-cultural (history driven) issues that lead to this?
You have all sorts of terrorist groups like BLM that are telling, instructing, pleading all black people to commit crimes. That's definitely not anecdotal.
Museums like this try to capture some of it. But really, America should be looking to Truth and Reconciliation commission type of platforms that has worked in other places. Finish what was started in the Reconstruction-era, or continue to suffer from this wound.
That's actually false and it's an impression being carried out by the media. When interacting with the police, you are more like to to be shot if you are white than if you are black.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evid...
They're looking at P(shot|stopped by police and white) and P(shot|stopped by police and black) not P(shot by police|black) and P(shot by police|white).
This is not true. Not only is there no astronomically higher probability, there is no higher probability.[1] Other studies found that officers hesitate longer before shooting an armed black suspect than they do white or Hispanic suspects.[2]
1. http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399 2. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9133.12187/a...
https://www.ft.com/content/89b97964-b88a-11e5-b151-8e15c9a02...
Also I'm not driving to anything. I'm pointing out that research, as opposed to narrative, shows that blacks are not shot by police at astronomically higher rates.
This, however, is absurd. In economics, there's a crucial distinction between historical processes (e.g. accumulation of wealth or economic development) and general economic processes (e.g. the pricing of a good) in that historical processes are not mean-reverting. They're subject to certain rules (e.g. preferential attachment, positive feedbacks, increasing returns) which make them generally path dependent[0]. As a result, initial differences will perpetuate themselves for an indefinately long time.
For example, a familial lineages might remain poor or rich for an arbitrarily long time purely through inheritance. New York might remain more populous than Dallas for an undefined amount of time since the economic benefit of moving into any of those two cities is a function of their population (through economies of agglomeration[1]). And Peru might remain much poorer than the United States for an eternity, because how much capital and labor countries draw to themselves if proportional to how much innovation going on there, which is itself a function of those variables.
History, even as completely blind process, will still produce self-sustaining inequalities. But none of this has anything to do with "racism", but with the fact that the past matters and we live in a world of crucial events. In a mean-reverting world, in all likelihood, there wouldn't even be such a thing as an European colonization of America. In a sense, you might be right in thinking that non one wants all this. But calling these process a result of "racism" is beyond stretching the meaning of the word.
There's no way to maintain a reasonable expectation that different entities (nevermind races) should attain equal outcomes unless the "Just World Hypothesis" is assumed.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration
b) If you read past the headlines into the correlation and probability theory of each study, you'll find that the reason why there is the difference is because of education and lower ambitions and goals of black people. You could say there is no real racism, only perceived racism, which then mentally affects the perceiever, and dissaudes them from getting better qualifications and therefore worse job prospects.
That is not in itself racism. That is a false perception of reality ends up affecting reality later on. I think it's called the self-fulfillment fallacy.
The social sciences suffer massive publication bias. Results ranging from failure of the study to support the hypothesis to the gathered data having being politically incorrect lead to research being abandoned.
Am I allowed to say that in itself is an overused technique of shutting down debate?
Ironic-ness intensifies.
First, name-calling potshots like this don't belong in HN comments; you should be editing them out, not in. The topic is inflammatory enough without getting meta-snarky.
Second, you've broken the HN guideline that asks you not to start flamewars (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). There are interesting things—in HN's sense—that could have been discussed about this article; by posting the most predictable of all responses ("I can't help but think how the inverse would sound"), you created the most predictable of all flamewars. Then you kept it going by posting way too many comments. Flamewars should be starved, not fuelled.
I don't at all think you were ill-intentioned, but doing these things lowers the quality of discussion and makes HN the sort of place we're hoping to avoid becoming, so please don't do them here.
Judkins Park across the street (23rd Ave), or walking east towards the pedestrian/bike path along the I-90 floating bridge (Sam Smith Park), are also worth checking out! Especially biking across the bridge over Lake WA.