"SBF played the game on the meta level, and traded social currency — hoodwinking the Western financial establishment and the crypto industry alike in the process." - Arthur Hayes @cryptohayes
>For now, let’s be clear that I hate using them, but for the sake of brevity and ease of understanding I shall continue to use these misguided – and frankly, insidious – labels.
I read the article, I'm just pointing out that asking someone who is provoked by an intentionally provocative article — even if just for clicks — is silly. Not to mention that "white" or "black" has different connotations than "white boy" or "black boy".
It's not particularly surprising that people would criticize someone focusing on a bad actor's ethnic group, whether it's Kanye West going on a Twitter tirade or a "crypto influencer" writing a deliberately provocative headline to drive clicks.
The actual article is more nuanced than its title suggests, almost acknowledging the obvious fact that a blue-collar "white boy" in Ohio has nothing close to the "social currency" that someone like Bankman-Fried did. It's still clearly provocative to suggest Bankman-Fried's Stanford educated, genuinely "privileged" upbringing as the son of well known Stanford professors is somehow reflective of hundreds of millions of people rather than his own circumstances. Doing something for clickbait doesn't somehow make it not provocative.
"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."
That rule exists for precisely this sort of occasion. I read part of the article and—agree or disagree, like or dislike—there's actually a lot there to have interesting responses to, if one wanted.
To pick the single most shallow and obvious provocation and then respond in a predictably indignant way isn't "discussion"—not in HN's sense of the word. Rather, it's the sort of reflexive response we're trying to discourage. We want thoughtful, reflective, curious conversation here. There are plenty of other places for everyone's nervous systems to get reflexively activated.
Yup, SBF clearly had the whole schtick of "MIT genius tech bro" scam down to an art. It would have never worked if he were not a from a supposedly elite institution (which increasingly, is viewed by many to be a dumpster fire) and was not of the right with the correct socioeconomic status.
The title of this article is pretty offensive. I don’t want to read it. Is there some context that makes the racial slur appropriate here? Or we allow it because racism against white people is in vogue?
I agree that it is offensive. He's an elite, based on his education. And I guess he was high-IQ, too. He's probably Jewish, too, and history tells us that (some, not all) Jewish people have only been considered "white" until recently. Lesson: race is relative, and this author of the article is race-baiting for clicks.
Italian American here, my mom wasn't considered "white" until she was an adult. That was then, I'm white now. Did you read the article? I'm not sure it counts as "baiting for clicks" when he spends half of the article talking about the history and structure of the American caste system and how SBF's (perceived) status as a white male impacted his trajectory. I don't think it's bait, when it's the thrust of the essay.
> how SBF's (perceived) status as a white male impacted his trajectory. I don't think it's bait, when it's the thrust of the essay.
It's provocative and dishonest for him to not once acknowledge SBF's privileged circumstances or well-connected family, something which directly aided in his success and that the vast majority of people wouldn't be able to replicate. The post is generally well-written and makes some salient points, but it's obvious that the author shoe-horned in SBF. A different person, like the topically relevant Elizabeth Holmes, may have made a more cohesive argument.
> It's still clearly provocative to suggest Bankman-Fried's Stanford educated, genuinely "privileged" upbringing as the son of well known Stanford professors is somehow reflective of hundreds of millions of people rather than his own circumstances. Doing something for clickbait doesn't somehow make it not provocative.
What? The article talks specifically about his upper-crust background and his professor parents. You're the one laser-focused on race here. You got triggered by the headline, and you missed the forest for the trees.
> What? The article talks specifically about his upper-crust background and his professor parents.
It vaguely alludes to his parents being upper-class Stanford law professors. It does not specifically talk about SBF's father being an influential law professor and scholar[0], SBF's mother leading a powerful democratic PAC[1], SBF's brother having worked on Capitol Hill and the "Democratic Party-aligned consulting firm Civis Analytics"[2][3] — let alone Caroline Ellison's alleged family connections. I am not insinuating that there's a grand conspiracy theory — this should all be taken with a grain of salt — my point is that SBF's unique personal circumstances gave him access to capital and connections in government and industry that were pivotal to his success.
It would be like saying that the disgraced "DreamWorld" project was able to scam thousands of people and receive funding from Y Combinator because the founder was an upper-class white male; there's obviously a grain of truth in that statement, but it's a dishonest portrayal of events because it does not mention that his co-founder was friends with someone at Y Combinator and that perceived endorsement was what lead so many people to trust the project.
> You're the one laser-focused on race here. You got triggered by the headline, and you missed the forest for the trees.
I did not get "triggered by the headline", I read the entire article and pointed out that it fails to acknowledge SBF's personal privilege and family connections because the author was dead-set on writing an article about race and needed an archetype — he literally admits to this in the article.
) I have been itching to write this essay for some time, but lacked a foil and context to make it relevant to my readers.
As I've said in another comment it's a worthwhile read, but his explanation of why SBF was able to dupe so many people falls a bit flat.
> In Pax Americana, it is verboten to suggest that the caste system is alive and well. If you are approaching this essay with that mentality and you aren’t interested in opening your mind, please stop reading here. If you’d prefer to continue believing in the fairytale of American exceptionalism, you can subscribe to the establishment’s whitewashed narrative of the implosion of the Death Star by just picking up a copy of the New York Times.
I'm not sure what you're trying to imply with that quote; I am not American, nor do I believe in American exceptionalism. I also don't think that SBF is a “well-meaning wunderkind [who] tried to do too much good at once”, but that doesn't mean I agree with the article.
If you're not American, I can see why you wouldn't understand the cultural context that the article, and my response above, presumes intimate knowledge of. If you're curious, you could read Zinn's A People's History of the United States which is a pretty good primer.
> If you're not American, I can see why you wouldn't understand the cultural context that the article, and my response above, presumes intimate knowledge of.
Where did I indicate that I didn't understand it? I have American family and friends.
I simply pointed out why calling someone a "White Boy" could be considered inflammatory, and you responded with a non-sequitor implying that I'm trying to ignore America's problems.
Let me try to bridge the gap as someone who used to find it offensive but no longer does.
When people complain about "whiteness", they're talking about the social construct of the racial majority in the US and how this prevents certain disadvantages from being conferred on the individual based on that individual's race. The lack of race-based disadvantage is labelled "privilege". It's a shame that such divisive terms like "whiteness" were chosen, because the phenomenon is broader than a specific skin color. Han Chinese in China also benefit from their version of "whiteness", with Uyghurs and other minorities being disadvantaged. But they aren't white. Same with Jews in Israel, Turks in Turkey, and so on. There is undeniably an advantage (privilege) to bring a Turk in Turkey and not a Kurd.
If you're part of the racial majority, there can be an empathy gap that leads you to not see the disadvantages that certain minorities face. So then any claims that you have privilege (defined as the absence of race-based disadvantaged) seem farfetched if not malicious and racist. But it isn't racism, it's a sociological explanation of cause and effect.
Now, many people go to far and do actually turn it into clear cut anti-white racism. I really don't think that was what Arthur Hayes was going for, though. He was aiming for a sociological explanation of SBF's rise. Which, in those case, I happen to believe was rather flimsy and unsupported by evidence.
> There is undeniably an advantage (privilege) to bring a Turk in Turkey and not a Kurd.
Certainly. And there was undeniably an advantage to being white in America fifty years ago (and even twenty, probably). But we now live in a nation where the stated policy of many institutions is to favor non-whites. And in California, non-Hispanic whites aren't even the largest ethnic group.
The assumption that white people have never experienced "race-based disadvantage" seems to be likewise rather flimsy and unsupported by evidence.
As for SBF, I suspect that being wealthy and well-connected was far more helpful than being white. Indeed, if he had been black or Hispanic, he would have been celebrated for that reason alone, whereas, as we see in this article, being white is cause for opposition.
> As for SBF, I suspect that being wealthy and well-connected was far more helpful than being white.
Nobody would argue with this. What they would say is one of the contributing reasons he was wealthy and well-connected is because he was accepted as a member of the racial majority. Which is certainly partly true. Just because there are no laws that are directly de jure racist, doesn't mean there isn't systemic racism (which is partly cultural, not only legal) that reduces the statistical probability of success of people who aren't in the majority group.
> as we see in this article, being white is cause for opposition.
This is a stretch. My understanding of the article is that it's a cause for explanation. What we go and do with that explanation is up for discussion.
> The lack of race-based disadvantage is labelled "privilege"
For some reason we seem to be changing the meaning of words lately. It's troubling to me.
We already have a word for lack-of-disadvantage. It's called advantage.
Privilege is a loaded word, it implies "unearned" advantage, this word is chosen for it's negative connotations. Accusing people of unearned advantages is inflammatory does nothing to address the real problems of inequality.
"Check your privilege" is really just coded speak for calling someone racist to win an argument. Shades of Godwin's Law anyone?
The art of subtly/persistently changing the meaning of words is a weapon used in politics and cultural wars. Orwell wrote extensively on this.[1] Once you understand how this works you begin to understand why politicians speak the way they do.
A journalist can choose to call a group of armed men "freedom fighters" or "terrorists". Each word has a very clear/strong connotation, one group good the other bad. Once you've got a definition like this to stick, you've set hard limits for what is deemed acceptable discussion and debate. Once a group is labelled as terrorist it becomes hard to say "what they are doing is good", as you're in effect saying "terrorism is good". This was the entire point of Orwell's idea of Newspeak in his novel 1984, where the official language was engineered to make it impossible to hold the idea "Big Brother is bad".
I'm not making a judgment here on anything related to the present and past history of racism in this country, and what should/shouldn't be done about it. I'm merely pointing out that I am seeing that more and more we aren't using words the way we used to, and this seems (to me) being done on purpose to win political arguments, shutting down entire avenues of reasoned/civil debate. I don't know to what ends this will lead us, but I do know it doesn't end well when a group with a political power begins subtly defining an out-group.
Whether or not you believe anti-white racism is a real thing or not, I worry that the use of the term is on the rise. And that this may not be a bug, it may be a feature.
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."
Yes, it's loaded, which is why I never use the word "privilege" myself. But the reason it's loaded is because these terms were created by people who largely don't believe in advantage that's "earned". They believe all outcomes comes down to circumstance outside of an individual's control (lucky genes that predispose them to hard work, born into a wealthy family, born into a good country, born in a good area). Or that any effort expended to achieve an outcome is done in a context that enables that effort to exist (partner who takes care of menial work), and enables that effort to be productive (being a member of the upper caste that affords you opportunities so you can turn effort to money, or being part of a rich society that can afford to give you money for your effort). The effort -> outcome pipeline isn't context free. This all comes from the usual leftist perspective on things.
So while I partly agree with your point here (although with less cynicism), that doesn't detract from the case that there are large societal consequences to having a social construct of a racial majority, which is divisively and unfortunately labelled "whiteness" in the US. You shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater in your criticism.
Oh, please, do go on about how disadvantaged you are, subjected to assumptions and bias in every aspect of your public and working life, as you navigate your path through this white-dominated culture. [rolls eyes]
Where I grew up wasn't white dominated. Once again you foolishly assume you know what every white person experiences, and exhibit the very assumptions and bias you scoff at.
And you're just trolling with that "[rolls eyes]". Take that nonsense to Twitter.
Oh, so it’s the language argument HN just had in the “The Erasure of Women From Online Pregnancy Literature” thread.
That discussion is about the notion that because a trans woman doesn’t breast feed their child, the act must be called something other than “breastfeeding.” Or something like that. The notion is that doing so is “erasure” of the population of trans women with hungry babies.
Because you are the rare exception to the rule that white people in America are, in fact, exceptionally advantaged in our culture and society, no one must state that white = privileged. Because it’s “erasure.”
Gotcha. Well, I acknowledge that you feel you were disadvantaged by comparison to your neighbours as a child, and co-workers and employers as an adult. I would have hoped you and your minority friends all had the same opportunities, at least relative to ability.
No, it's about something much more significant than what word you use.
The concept of privilege is often linked with attempts to correct for privilege by giving advantages to underprivileged people (which is equivalent to giving a disadvantage to those labelled privileged).
And when someone does that, but incorrectly classifies underprivileged people as privileged, they end up giving disadvantages to underprivileged people.
So when someone assumes all white people are privileged, they're facilitating discrimination against people who are white, but nonetheless underprivileged (for a variety of other reasons).
You say "I would have hoped you and your minority friends all had the same opportunities, at least relative to ability" but you must realize that isn't the case. Surely you've heard that most universities admit black and Hispanic students with significantly lower qualifications than white students (even if the students lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same schools). Surely you've seen employment applications that ask what race you are, but not what class you are, when seeking to increase "diversity".
The article discusses issues of privilege and how this is a tool that enables fraud like SBF's. While the title may be a trigger for some, the article itself is well written.
Author is Arthur Hayes, founder of the late crypto exchange BitMEX. The essay is less inflammatory than the title suggests, and I read it for the finance insights—- after all BitMEX was accused of frontrunning customers (too?)
“ As a student at Penn, I received a crash course education on the finer nuances of whiteness. The Fraternity system allowed the groups of same-caste whites to congregate together. There were Jewish, Southern White, WASP, and International White frats. While they didn’t put a billboard up saying “if you are not this or that, please don’t apply”, everyone surmised pretty quickly which house was which. My house was one of the traditionally more diverse fraternities, at least as far as Penn fraternities go. In the early 1990’s, the house got into a bit of trouble when a member of the WASP frat called a black brother by a racial slur. One of our house’s brothers or pledges retaliated by kidnapping a brother of the WASP frat, tying him to a flagpole in the black West Philly ghetto with a boombox playing Malcom X speeches.”
This dude clearly has serious issues with race. The framing of that is insane, it’s still an interesting article but it is heavily inflammatory
The situation is probably less racially charged these days thanks to the diversity movement but — one man’s politically incorrect accuracy is another’s insane framing? I have no rat in the race race but where I went to school (a R1 uni) tribally segregated frats and student clubs were huge part of the background. Police would often intervene in racially motivated incidents involving residents. I would be surprised if all that disappeared. There were native american and Latino living arrangements, which exuded a subtle sort of animosity towards the larger community. The Ukrainian and Russian clubs are still probably not that friendly towards one another. Not to mention the Jewish dorm vs the Muslim societies.
There is something to the “not the right kind of white” take, though it isn’t so much white as a cultural elite which happens to be 99.99% white. Consider that Nouriel Roubini, who is the right kind of white by Hayes def (academic, child of elites) hasn’t tried to publicly accuse SBF of fraud, while having gone further against CZ and Arthur. Consider that Brian Armstrong, not being the right kind of white, has gotten hit pieces from NYT.. Consider that headlining econo-digerati of the colored variety is wildly a non thing
I'm actually happy to see discourse like "The right kind of white" because it shows a thoughtfulness I don't see with more offensively generalising notions like "white privilege". The message is essentially the same but the author seems to have the intelligence to realise that the privilege of some white people is not necessarily afforded to all white people.
I'll take it over the discourse I normally hear but my standards are low.
58 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 59.7 ms ] threadThe actual article is more nuanced than its title suggests, almost acknowledging the obvious fact that a blue-collar "white boy" in Ohio has nothing close to the "social currency" that someone like Bankman-Fried did. It's still clearly provocative to suggest Bankman-Fried's Stanford educated, genuinely "privileged" upbringing as the son of well known Stanford professors is somehow reflective of hundreds of millions of people rather than his own circumstances. Doing something for clickbait doesn't somehow make it not provocative.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines quite badly lately. Could you please stop doing that?
What the title of the piece means and its implications is up for discussion.
If you don't like it - don't read it.
To pick the single most shallow and obvious provocation and then respond in a predictably indignant way isn't "discussion"—not in HN's sense of the word. Rather, it's the sort of reflexive response we're trying to discourage. We want thoughtful, reflective, curious conversation here. There are plenty of other places for everyone's nervous systems to get reflexively activated.
Direct and not PC about making its points.
It's provocative and dishonest for him to not once acknowledge SBF's privileged circumstances or well-connected family, something which directly aided in his success and that the vast majority of people wouldn't be able to replicate. The post is generally well-written and makes some salient points, but it's obvious that the author shoe-horned in SBF. A different person, like the topically relevant Elizabeth Holmes, may have made a more cohesive argument.
> It's still clearly provocative to suggest Bankman-Fried's Stanford educated, genuinely "privileged" upbringing as the son of well known Stanford professors is somehow reflective of hundreds of millions of people rather than his own circumstances. Doing something for clickbait doesn't somehow make it not provocative.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33662014
It vaguely alludes to his parents being upper-class Stanford law professors. It does not specifically talk about SBF's father being an influential law professor and scholar[0], SBF's mother leading a powerful democratic PAC[1], SBF's brother having worked on Capitol Hill and the "Democratic Party-aligned consulting firm Civis Analytics"[2][3] — let alone Caroline Ellison's alleged family connections. I am not insinuating that there's a grand conspiracy theory — this should all be taken with a grain of salt — my point is that SBF's unique personal circumstances gave him access to capital and connections in government and industry that were pivotal to his success.
It would be like saying that the disgraced "DreamWorld" project was able to scam thousands of people and receive funding from Y Combinator because the founder was an upper-class white male; there's obviously a grain of truth in that statement, but it's a dishonest portrayal of events because it does not mention that his co-founder was friends with someone at Y Combinator and that perceived endorsement was what lead so many people to trust the project.
[0] https://twitter.com/JagoeCapital/status/1590805884556673024/...
[1] https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/6/21046631/mind-the-gap-si...
[2] https://archive.ph/GndX4
[3] https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/guarding-against-p...
> You're the one laser-focused on race here. You got triggered by the headline, and you missed the forest for the trees.
I did not get "triggered by the headline", I read the entire article and pointed out that it fails to acknowledge SBF's personal privilege and family connections because the author was dead-set on writing an article about race and needed an archetype — he literally admits to this in the article.
) I have been itching to write this essay for some time, but lacked a foil and context to make it relevant to my readers.
As I've said in another comment it's a worthwhile read, but his explanation of why SBF was able to dupe so many people falls a bit flat.
> In Pax Americana, it is verboten to suggest that the caste system is alive and well.
I'm not sure what you're trying to imply with that quote; I am not American, nor do I believe in American exceptionalism. I also don't think that SBF is a “well-meaning wunderkind [who] tried to do too much good at once”, but that doesn't mean I agree with the article.
Where did I indicate that I didn't understand it? I have American family and friends.
I simply pointed out why calling someone a "White Boy" could be considered inflammatory, and you responded with a non-sequitor implying that I'm trying to ignore America's problems.
As a white boy, this is pretty funny to me.
Being white doesn't mean you know what every white person experiences.
When people complain about "whiteness", they're talking about the social construct of the racial majority in the US and how this prevents certain disadvantages from being conferred on the individual based on that individual's race. The lack of race-based disadvantage is labelled "privilege". It's a shame that such divisive terms like "whiteness" were chosen, because the phenomenon is broader than a specific skin color. Han Chinese in China also benefit from their version of "whiteness", with Uyghurs and other minorities being disadvantaged. But they aren't white. Same with Jews in Israel, Turks in Turkey, and so on. There is undeniably an advantage (privilege) to bring a Turk in Turkey and not a Kurd.
If you're part of the racial majority, there can be an empathy gap that leads you to not see the disadvantages that certain minorities face. So then any claims that you have privilege (defined as the absence of race-based disadvantaged) seem farfetched if not malicious and racist. But it isn't racism, it's a sociological explanation of cause and effect.
Now, many people go to far and do actually turn it into clear cut anti-white racism. I really don't think that was what Arthur Hayes was going for, though. He was aiming for a sociological explanation of SBF's rise. Which, in those case, I happen to believe was rather flimsy and unsupported by evidence.
Certainly. And there was undeniably an advantage to being white in America fifty years ago (and even twenty, probably). But we now live in a nation where the stated policy of many institutions is to favor non-whites. And in California, non-Hispanic whites aren't even the largest ethnic group.
The assumption that white people have never experienced "race-based disadvantage" seems to be likewise rather flimsy and unsupported by evidence.
As for SBF, I suspect that being wealthy and well-connected was far more helpful than being white. Indeed, if he had been black or Hispanic, he would have been celebrated for that reason alone, whereas, as we see in this article, being white is cause for opposition.
Nobody would argue with this. What they would say is one of the contributing reasons he was wealthy and well-connected is because he was accepted as a member of the racial majority. Which is certainly partly true. Just because there are no laws that are directly de jure racist, doesn't mean there isn't systemic racism (which is partly cultural, not only legal) that reduces the statistical probability of success of people who aren't in the majority group.
> as we see in this article, being white is cause for opposition.
This is a stretch. My understanding of the article is that it's a cause for explanation. What we go and do with that explanation is up for discussion.
For some reason we seem to be changing the meaning of words lately. It's troubling to me.
We already have a word for lack-of-disadvantage. It's called advantage.
Privilege is a loaded word, it implies "unearned" advantage, this word is chosen for it's negative connotations. Accusing people of unearned advantages is inflammatory does nothing to address the real problems of inequality.
"Check your privilege" is really just coded speak for calling someone racist to win an argument. Shades of Godwin's Law anyone?
The art of subtly/persistently changing the meaning of words is a weapon used in politics and cultural wars. Orwell wrote extensively on this.[1] Once you understand how this works you begin to understand why politicians speak the way they do.
A journalist can choose to call a group of armed men "freedom fighters" or "terrorists". Each word has a very clear/strong connotation, one group good the other bad. Once you've got a definition like this to stick, you've set hard limits for what is deemed acceptable discussion and debate. Once a group is labelled as terrorist it becomes hard to say "what they are doing is good", as you're in effect saying "terrorism is good". This was the entire point of Orwell's idea of Newspeak in his novel 1984, where the official language was engineered to make it impossible to hold the idea "Big Brother is bad".
I'm not making a judgment here on anything related to the present and past history of racism in this country, and what should/shouldn't be done about it. I'm merely pointing out that I am seeing that more and more we aren't using words the way we used to, and this seems (to me) being done on purpose to win political arguments, shutting down entire avenues of reasoned/civil debate. I don't know to what ends this will lead us, but I do know it doesn't end well when a group with a political power begins subtly defining an out-group.
Whether or not you believe anti-white racism is a real thing or not, I worry that the use of the term is on the rise. And that this may not be a bug, it may be a feature.
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."
[1] https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...
So while I partly agree with your point here (although with less cynicism), that doesn't detract from the case that there are large societal consequences to having a social construct of a racial majority, which is divisively and unfortunately labelled "whiteness" in the US. You shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater in your criticism.
And you're just trolling with that "[rolls eyes]". Take that nonsense to Twitter.
That discussion is about the notion that because a trans woman doesn’t breast feed their child, the act must be called something other than “breastfeeding.” Or something like that. The notion is that doing so is “erasure” of the population of trans women with hungry babies.
Because you are the rare exception to the rule that white people in America are, in fact, exceptionally advantaged in our culture and society, no one must state that white = privileged. Because it’s “erasure.”
Gotcha. Well, I acknowledge that you feel you were disadvantaged by comparison to your neighbours as a child, and co-workers and employers as an adult. I would have hoped you and your minority friends all had the same opportunities, at least relative to ability.
You can see what HN thinks of the erasure argument here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33674562
The concept of privilege is often linked with attempts to correct for privilege by giving advantages to underprivileged people (which is equivalent to giving a disadvantage to those labelled privileged).
And when someone does that, but incorrectly classifies underprivileged people as privileged, they end up giving disadvantages to underprivileged people.
So when someone assumes all white people are privileged, they're facilitating discrimination against people who are white, but nonetheless underprivileged (for a variety of other reasons).
You say "I would have hoped you and your minority friends all had the same opportunities, at least relative to ability" but you must realize that isn't the case. Surely you've heard that most universities admit black and Hispanic students with significantly lower qualifications than white students (even if the students lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same schools). Surely you've seen employment applications that ask what race you are, but not what class you are, when seeking to increase "diversity".
SBF is Jewish. The ‘right kind of white boy‘ is an antisemitic dog whistle.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/02/the-rise-and-fall-of...
“ As a student at Penn, I received a crash course education on the finer nuances of whiteness. The Fraternity system allowed the groups of same-caste whites to congregate together. There were Jewish, Southern White, WASP, and International White frats. While they didn’t put a billboard up saying “if you are not this or that, please don’t apply”, everyone surmised pretty quickly which house was which. My house was one of the traditionally more diverse fraternities, at least as far as Penn fraternities go. In the early 1990’s, the house got into a bit of trouble when a member of the WASP frat called a black brother by a racial slur. One of our house’s brothers or pledges retaliated by kidnapping a brother of the WASP frat, tying him to a flagpole in the black West Philly ghetto with a boombox playing Malcom X speeches.”
This dude clearly has serious issues with race. The framing of that is insane, it’s still an interesting article but it is heavily inflammatory
I'll take it over the discourse I normally hear but my standards are low.
It's the US that has serious issues with race, not black people like Hayes.