[HN Gopher] From buggies to buses, the first Black-owned US auto...
___________________________________________________________________
From buggies to buses, the first Black-owned US automaker did what
few dared
Author : irtefa
Score : 33 points
Date : 2021-03-11 20:49 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| datavirtue wrote:
| I used to live in the area and I pass through Greenfield often.
| Most of the buildings are likely still there and I don't think
| Greenfield ever recovered from the 1894 depression. It's also
| loaded with racists...quite the reversal. The only law
| enforcement around is in the next county over.
| Huwyt_Nashi030 wrote:
| Keep an eye out for this subtly anti-White dogwhistle trend among
| many mainstream media oulets: "Black" is capitalised in every
| use, "white" never is
| InitialLastName wrote:
| There are two reasons for this:
|
| - Other ethnicities tend to be capitalized, and Black people
| often don't actually have black skin, so the word is more of a
| description of a cultural identity than a color adjective
|
| - The use of capitalization in the word "white" has for ~a
| century been coopted by white supremacist organizations (of the
| openly racist, cross-burning, murdering people for looking at
| their daughters funny variety) as their own dogwhistle.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't feed the trolls. More here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26429910
| zionic wrote:
| For the curious, this was changed in the AP style guide
| sometime between 2019-2020.
|
| Not making a value statement, just sharing.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| I've heard the term "neo-racism" to describe this kind of
| thing.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| The first comment?
|
| Really guys?
|
| Just, wow.
|
| I was hoping we might get some elevated discussion about
| relative manufacturing feasibility between early 20th century
| America and early 21st century America. But here we are.
| fwn wrote:
| I'm going to regret participating under a link with a
| racially charged bait, but I'm curious:
|
| What's the reason Ars Technica capitalizes the one ethnicity
| and not the other?
|
| Actual question, not a native speaker.
| krapp wrote:
| White isn't capitalized because white people tend to self-
| identify with other ethnic groups (Italian, Irish*, German,
| etc.) There is no "White" culture per se, outside of the
| historical revisionist beliefs of white supremacists.
|
| Black is a culture, and capitalized as such, because the
| descendants of the African slave diaspora brought to the US
| were denied the ability to identify with their country or
| ethnicity in the same way as white people, so the only
| identity they could form after getting their freedom was
| one based on their collective racial identity. They weren't
| allowed to be anything other than "Black" so "Black" is
| what they became.
|
| * although interestingly, the Irish weren't always
| considered "white." Race is a weird social construct.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Their justification is that it's okay for black people form
| an identity behind their race, so they capitalize Black to
| emphasize they're talking about the Black identity. Yet
| they say whites can't because reasons.
|
| In reality, it's all an attempt to exploit the societal
| fear of racism in order for minorities to gain power and
| justify anti-white discrimination and shaming.
| andrewzah wrote:
| "okay for black people form an identity behind their
| race"
|
| Probably because they get referred to as black and get
| discriminated against due to their physical appearance
| regardless of their actual heritage or where they're
| from? It's not so much a choice as something that they
| get constantly reminded about.
|
| Anecdotally speaking, there are Black communities, but
| I've never seen a "white" community (aside from white
| supremacist type groups)- just communities of
| nationalities or ethnicity. I grew up in Romanian
| communities and none of us ever used "white" as an
| identity.
|
| Not everything is about you or me.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| I get referred to as white. I put "white" on job
| applications and census forms. I face an increasing
| amount of discrimination, from affirmative action making
| it harder to get jobs to subtle cultural discrimination
| like this or seeing stereotypes everywhere.
|
| Growing up, we didn't have white communities. But I and
| my age group was raised under the ethos that we should
| judge each other not by the color of our skin, but by the
| character of our hearts.
|
| "Not everything is about you." Imagine saying that to a
| black person when they were complaining about perceived
| racism that you disagreed with.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Actual answer:
|
| Until recently, most publications didn't capitalize "white"
| or "black", but capitalized everything else ("Indian",
| "Native American", "Asian", etc.).
|
| Recently, there has been increasing recognition that Black
| isn't just a (lowercase) skin color, but an identity like
| the rest and thus ought to be given the same capital-
| letter-recognition "Black". A large number of publications
| have made this change in the past couple years.
|
| The reason "white" still isn't capitalized is because many
| people are uncomfortable recognizing white identity --
| because in the past and still ongoing, that is often linked
| to white supremacism.
|
| So as long as capitalizing "White" continues to carry (even
| unintended) associations of white supremacism, it's
| probable that most publications will keep it lowercase.
|
| To be clear, I'm not expressing any opinions here as to
| whether this is right or wrong or desirable or not (edit:
| or even whether white identity exists). This is just a
| description of the reasons for things currently.
| andrewzah wrote:
| "because many people are uncomfortable recognizing white
| identity"
|
| There is no unified "white" identity. I am white, my
| ethnicity is Romanian. There is no shared identity
| between me, and for example someone with German heritage.
| So to capitalize "White" is silly in my eyes.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| There's no unified black identity either though. There
| are millions of black people in both USA and Africa, but
| their cultures and lived experiences are so incredibly
| different. Not to mention the diversity within the
| country.
| andrewzah wrote:
| ...black people universally get discriminated in a
| systemic fashion in the US based on their appearance.
| This is not unique to any one state.
|
| Obviously people in different states lead different
| lives. It's still possible to have a shared identity
| through facing similar struggles and discrimination.
|
| Just because I grew up in IL and my cousin grew up in CA
| doesn't mean we can't have a shared identity as Romanian-
| Americans either.
| crazygringo wrote:
| To be clear, neither is there any unified "Black"
| identity, any unified "Native American" identity, etc.
|
| Identities are generally fluid and reflect matters of
| degrees of commonality and shared experience.
|
| In your case, there are certainly _some_ things you share
| in common with Germans, e.g. you share an Indo-European
| linguistic heritage which you don 't share, for example,
| with someone who has Japanese heritage.
|
| Of course that's simply an academic point -- you're free
| to _feel_ whatever degree of identity affinity you like,
| which is what matters. Identity is constructed.
| andrewzah wrote:
| They are doing it to disambiguate between the color black,
| and identity Black. [0]
|
| If your question is "why not african-american"? It's likely
| because not every black person is from Africa, or is
| American. Personally I think African-American is a poor
| term and Black American is better (if they're American,
| obviously).
|
| [0]:
| https://apnews.com/article/71386b46dbff8190e71493a763e8f45a
| devwastaken wrote:
| Don't feed trolls, and don't look at the first comment as
| being the "best". It's there because it's the _only_ top
| level comment. Downvote and post a better top level comment.
| [deleted]
| tired-dev wrote:
| Yeah, given the sorts of comments that gain traction around
| here, I wish I could say I was surprised, but I'm not.
| dang wrote:
| " _Don 't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them
| instead._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Feeding trolls like this actually does more damage than they
| do. A flagkilled comment with no replies is the proper
| outcome for the GP--it's what minimizes damage to the
| container. We can come along and ban the account later.
|
| In egregious cases, heads-ups to hn@ycombinator.com are
| welcome.
| president wrote:
| Identity politics killed all rational thought and debate in
| America
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-11 23:00 UTC)