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this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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Yes, but the racism is a smaller portion of the overall problem so labeling it as race discrimination narrows it. While it transitively is racist, labeling it as such narrows it to only a portion of the problem. It's unlikely the execs of the companies are saying "let's charge white people less", they're doing it by area and income. If that unintentionally becomes racist, going after them for racism won't get anywhere.
If two people in neighboring communities are paying drastically differently for the same service, but they're both the same race, there's still a problem but it's not racist.
We should be trying to just give all Americans equivalent internet options, regardless of race. The race part is just one piece of the overall problem and the outcome of of a different problem.
I get what you're saying and I partially agree, but here's how I see it:
Class struggle is race struggle and vice versa. You can't help or hurt all poor people without helping or hurting a lot of people of color and anyone who's paying attention knows that.
Why does that matter, you may ask? Because, while the false notion that systemic economic inequality is the fault of impoverished individuals more than the system and those in charge of it is still widely believed, holding the same notions about racial inequality is deservedly regarded as abhorrent.
The rich and powerful disproportionately abusing the working poor doesn't inspire anywhere near as much righteous indignation as them disproportionately abusing people of color, even though the actions themselves are identical.
Regardless of intention, racist outcomes are a stronger argument for systemic change than anti-worker outcomes when it comes to countries like the US where regulatory capture and demagoguery favoring money and power over humanity IS the system.
Yes, totally agree.
While I agree, I think this is where we differ. I don't think we should then just limit our "fighting back" as being about race. I won't be satisfied by this bill if all it does is makes sure that ISPs fuck over people in certain areas, but do it equally across races. ISPs could fuck white people harder so then it's not a race problem. Or they could fuck people of color slightly less, but still have drastically different pricing in Kentucky than in California. At that point race is no longer a real argument, but the class war continues and the problem still exists.
I just don't think we should reduce the arguments to an argument of race. While that may fire people up more in the current climate, it's narrowing the issue.
If that's the case, than we can fight this as a class war and still solve the other issue. The underlying issue is class and financial fleecing, which is itself also racist, but solving the race problem doesn't solve the whole issue. People need to see this for what it is to solve it, and "distracting" away from the core of the issue makes it harder to solve.
Why not both?
That's what I'm trying to say: it IS about both, so it behoves us to focus on both rather than completely ignore the racial aspects in favor of a less comprehensive strategy of only mentioning the aspects that are least likely to garner headlines and wide public support.
I'm no fan of demagoguery, but when the TRUTH is an effective argument bound to illicit the kind of emotional reaction necessary to make any headway in a broken media and political system, you don't just discard the most effective argument.
I don't think your argument comes off that way, but i guess that's subjective.
The original article outlines how they're pushing a bill to stop discriminatory pricing. That lower income areas and areas with fewer white people tend to have less tech / higher price. It then goes on with multiple quotes about race. And how people of color don't have the same access.
The original comment says they don't think it's just race, that it's a larger class issue.
You then start talking about how it IS race and is racist.
We know. The original article posed that angle. The comment you responded to said it was a broader problem. Youre coming back around to the race thing again, which sounds a lot like you're saying the race thing is a bigger deal or something.
Again, the article outlined both and hammered on race. The commentor says it's also a class issue. You then come back "disagreeing" which doesn't sound like you think it's both. Like I said, it sounds like you're trying to re-narrow the argument.
TL;DR: Intersectionality is a thing and forcing the separation of intertwined issues is counterproductive as well as unjust.
I have consistently said that it's both from the start. In fact, the original statement I took issue with was this:
My argument was and still is that it's both and that ignoring the race component by pretending that it's ONLY a class issue is both misleading and bad strategy.
Such bad strategy, in fact, that it was probably the biggest reason within the campaign's control that Bernie Sanders didn't become president in stead of Trump. His economic policies would have helped everyone except for billionaires and abusive anti-labor corporations, but he and the rest of the campaign didn't make it clear enough to the black and brown voters in the South that economic justice is racial justice and vice versa.
Yeah, okay, enough of this pedantic bullshit. We're all aware. You're not dropping some grand unknown knowledge. You keep making sweeping arguments about some general scheme, instead of you know, the conversation at hand.
Yeah. That's definitely it. There's definitely not a whole slew of other things here.
You've clearly made the only real point you had here, and have gone off the deep end. This isn't really productive anymore. Nor has it been because of a staunch refusal to read what's going on.
No, I'm responding to first someone who claimed that it wasn't about race at all and now you misrepresenting that as me saying that it's ONLY about race.
I'm not widening the perspective to be histrionic, I'm putting it into a general context to make it easier for you to understand what I'm ACTUALLY saying.
Good job ignoring qualifiers. Saying that it was the biggest problem with the campaign within its own control is in NO WAY the same thing as saying it was the only one, or even the only one within the control of the campaign itself.
I'm not being a pedant, I'm correcting your bad faith/lack of reading comprehension interpretation of what I'm saying.
If you don't understand by now, after I've been very clear over many more paragraphs than should have been necessary or than I wanted to, you never will and we might as well stop here.