Rolling 2016 Thread on Race

i fucking hate talking about race because it's such a minefield, but against my better judgment i did anyway, and against my better judgment i'll post it here.

One of the reactions I have seen to Donald Trump's election is white people being very concerned about other white people. We wanted to believe we were different than we are, or we wanted to believe that the color of our skin didn't matter.

We don't get to live in a post-racial world, because that's not the world we made. When we gave up on busing, it became a delusional fantasy. We don't get to live in a world where women are equal to men. We gave up on that when we failed to ratify the ERA.

I didn't grow up around black people or Hispanics. I've been told that when I was in preschool, I had a black friend. I don't remember him. When I was older I did have a black friend, but I didn't recognize him as black, though I was aware of the abuse he got on account of his skin and his heritage.

We don't get to decide to not be white any more than my friend got to decide not to be black (even though his dad was white).

I think a lot about Rudyard Kipling. I read a lot of him as a child, in school and out of it. One of his most notorious poems, one I definitely read, is about "The White Man's Burden". On consideration, I think that Kipling was essentially right to talk of the white man's burden, but was wrong about its nature.

The white man's burden is shame. White shame is the appropriate counterpart to black pride. Because white pride, white superiority, is what we were raised with, and Donald Trump's election give us the chance to step back and recognize how much of a fucking lie it always was.

And this is not, this is not a fucking hashtag #notallwhitemen thing. I know you didn't vote for Donald Trump. I've already said it's not your fault. This is about living in the world everybody else already lives in, a world where people get judged and blamed for stuff they have nothing to do with based on the colour of their skin. We can't challenge injustice and pretend we're immune from its consequences. If we want to be equal, we have to feel the same things. White people have to accept the collective burden of shame, or we will never be able to lift it.

i'll take my lumps now.

This is going to come across as harsh, and it's not meant to because you're coming from a good place, but more white liberal guilt is probably fairly low down on the list of priorities at the moment. Leaving aside whether white people should feel a collective burden of shame, it's not going to happen and it's not a particularly useful aim for any movement. No children from minority groups are going to get a better education because you feel bad about things. It's not going to help any parents put food on the table. Compartmentalisation also makes it perfectly possible to feel bad about things and remain entirely complicit in them - plenty of meat eaters feel bad about factory farming but aren't going to give up burgers, i'm sure Samantha Bee feels terrible about Donald Trump getting elected but it apparently hasn't stopped her family from fighting the desegregation of the school her kids go to. One of the reasons far-right polling seems to be off the mark at the moment is that some people recognise that admitting to voting for UKIP, Trump, Le Pen, etc is perceived as socially shameful but it doesn't stop them doing it. Shame isn't guaranteed to overcome self-interest.

To some extent, and again, it's not aimed at you, affluent liberals telling working class white conservatives to feel bad about white supremacy masks the fact that a lot of the former group have benefited much more from it. The latter would be perfectly entitled to turn around and say 'why should i do anything when your activism, from a position of much greater privilege, appears to be limited to trying to make me feel guilty?'.

Recognising that everyone, whether they consider themselves personally bigoted or not, is working within a system of white supremacy, and in many cases having that system work for them, is essential - but the question remains what are they going to do about it? Would this conversation have been much less necessary had a more benign face of white supremacy been elected on the 11th?

Harsh is good. My words were harsh. I was ready to take my lumps, and I think that your words were fundamentally fair and respectful, and I basically agree with what you have to say.

I'm struggling with how much to respond here. In the past when I've spoken about things where I'm not confident in my beliefs, as I'm not now, I have a tendency to dig myself deeper. At the same time, I kind of feel like it's a risk I need to take, that talking about race can't just be "I believe this", to which someone else responds "Well, I believe this," and then I say "OK" and we go no further.

What I do a lot, one of my biggest flaws as a writer as a person, is I tend to blur "I" and "we". It's deliberate. I don't only want to speak for myself. A lot of other people, all those people who voted for Trump, are trying to speak for me as a white man, claiming to possess my voice, and I don't really know what the best way to respond to that is, but I don't think that it's to claim that I stand alone.

Back to the "I". I was raised to believe that shame was always a bad thing, that I shouldn't acknowledge it or feel it or let anybody else put shame on me. And I was raised to believe the same things about fear, and about anger. And having reclaimed fear and anger for my own, I also have a desire to reclaim the mantle of shame.

And... I don't want to sound like a nitpicker, but words are important to me, really important to me. So I do absolutely disavow white guilt, I absolutely disavow blame, I disavow self-hatred, I think these things are useless at best and actively harmful at worst. Shame, however, I think has its place for me.

I was raised to believe in a post-racial society, even though the society I was raised in was not post-racial. And so I have had a long struggle to accept... I don't even want to use the word "white privilege", because it's become such a loaded word, but to accept that I am a white man and understand what that means, to know that the color of my skin does make a difference and to understand all the ways in which it does.

When I say "shame", I understand that white conservatives as well as white liberals, the vast majority of white people, will understand it as, you know. Guilt, blame, self-hatred. And for me, it's just about context. If I can be proud of Lyndon Johnson for pushing through the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, I can be ashamed of Woodrow Wilson for firing all black people from government. If I can be proud of Cassius Marcellus Clay, I can be ashamed of Bull Connor.

Maybe I just need to find a different word to use. Words are important.

I am not in a position to tell other white people how to feel, but my personal belief is that denial of white shame will lead inevitably to white exceptionalism and, from there, to white supremacy. To answer your final question, yes, I believe that this conversation was, at some point, going to be necessary. That electing Hillary Clinton on the 8th only would have delayed it.

My starting point is that white supremacy is not an idea, or a risk, it's a system of social, economic and political power that has already been in place for hundreds of years. Racism / white pride are pillars used to support it but it has an independent structural character. It probably needs to be recognised to be dismantled but recognition alone is never going to be sufficient and I have a question mark over whether shame is a right tool for the job. But, ultimately, anything you can do as an individual to chip away at it is positive and the more you can do with actions as well as words, the better.

Back to the "I". Hi there, I think I have found your problem.

Cosign. Followed by, potentially, more digging. :)

I agree with what you're saying, that collective shame is not a sufficient response. I think that it may nonetheless be a necessary response. We need to better navigate what responsibility we bear as individuals, and what responsibilities we bear as a member of the system, the class construct, known as "white people".

So for instance, talking about Sam Bee. I don't know the details of what you're talking about regarding her family fighting school desegregation, but I have to ask- is she personally fighting against school desegregation? And if she's not, I don't think it's right for us to hold her responsible for what her family does. I have family members who voted for Trump, and I've declared them dead to me, and I have other family members did not vote for Trump, and have not declared those family members who did vote for Trump dead to them.

How far do I go? How much responsibility do I assign? Should I also declare the family members who did not vote for Trump dead to me as well on the grounds that they're still talking to the family members who did? We have to force people to make hard choices right now, but how hard, exactly, do the choices have to be?

I am not proposing shame as a social value. I am not proposing that we undertake to shame others. What is important for me, and I think might potentially be helpful to others (though it might not), is for us as individuals, of our own free will, to accept shame as a legitimate part of our common heritage as white people.

Back to the "I". Hi there, I think I have found your problem.

― Andrew Farrell

I'm so glad to hear it! That's a relief. Thank you.

http://www.wyff4.com/article/fire-destroys-beaufort-black-chamber-of-commerce-building/8283393

^ ugh. shouldn't that be on the WaPo or NYT site's front pages?

If you want to be harsh, I think the only thing white people will do to battle white supremacy is to die off. Young white people pretty much just as racist as old white people, in the US, in the UK, in DK. But there's fewer.

So you're off the hook as moral actors, white people! Take a break!

What hook? White people has never ever been 'on the hook' as moral actors, still aren't.

why does white people never want to hook

for my small part, now that we have people "ironically" flying Nazi flags in my neighborhood, last night I sat my daughter down had "the talk" with her about racist language, anti-semitism, etc. and how these things are used to dehumanize and disempower minorities, including us. I had to get explicit about what the n-word was, its context/history, and why she should never use it or any other ethnic slur. and if she sees/hears this kind of language directed at anybody, herself or otherwise, she needs to speak up that it is not okay and she needs to tell an adult.

tbh she was mostly bored by it (outside of the history lesson aspect, which always engages her) but it seemed like now was the time to do this.

l-r: Shakes, l'il Shakestress

https://frinkiac.com/img/S03E17/1236063.jpg

lol

always very cool when a bunch of white people compete to see who hates white people the most

always very cool when a bunch of white people compete to see who hates white people the most

Competition's not over until Whiney gets here.

I plead nolo contendre

I was going to complain about the turn this thread has taken but tbh the election pretty much showed that the most critical issue facing Western civilization right now is how white people feel about each other, so carry on

http://i.imgur.com/ChDhqVu.jpg

Uh, has anybody checked out the Showing Up for Racial Justice group?

This group: http://www.showingupforracialjustice.org

I mean

I just

even Rachel Dolezal is looking at that website and going "you guys, your heart is in the right place but this might be a bad idea"

seems very obvious that's a honeypot?

oh i guess there's an actual website behind hte landing page

SURJ is real! They're not my movement fave but I think they're all right?

http://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/about

i was looking at it the other day (i believe based off of a HOOS suggestion on facebook? apologies to him if i'm remembering incorrectly) but i have no experience with them.

My side-eye is coming from the "this is a group for white people who want to fight for racial justice" rhetoric.

Because, why does there need to be a separate white-only group for this?

I don't think it's meant as a white-only thing, I think it's geared for an easy access point for really self-conscious white folks who want to get involved and learn how to talk about these things. Entry-level stuff, I guess

iirc the rw on this is that wp should be shutting up for racial justice non

SURJ is a national network of groups and individuals organizing White people for racial justice.

you know, out of context...

They're a response to the "it's not POC's job to educate whites about racism" point. So

There can be an impulse for White people to try to get it right- to have the right analysis, language, friends, etc. What SURJ was called upon to do at our founding in 2009 was to take action- to show up when there are racist attacks, when the police attack and murder People of Color in the street, their homes, our communities, in challenging structural racism, immigrant oppression and indigenous struggles. We maintain ongoing relationships, individually and organizationally with leaders and organizations led by People of Color. We also know it is our work to organize other White people and we are committed to moving more White people for collective action. We can't re-build the world we want alone- we must build powerful, loving movements of millions taking action for racial justice.

I mean do you really want to be in a room with 70 white ppl who just figured out that they're racist and might start crying about how bad they feel? YOU DON'T?>?! Getting people from that point to being useful to racial justice is sort of SURJ's job.

the more i think about it, the larger the scope of that job seems

Everybody go read this so you understand my metaphor: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/10/the-cost-of-survival

It's probably been tried and done, and done again, but to my knowledge - and I know all about the fucking Cremaster Cycle, for crying out loud, I guess the NYer felt it was good for a cultural drip like me to read about it - nobody has ever bothered to put on the 36 (or 72? or 120+?) -hour film cycle about the long, slow, sometimes stealthy, and frequently overt attempt to wipe out African-Americans from the face of this country.

The only reason we don't talk about the attempted holocaust against black people in America is because it hasn't succeeded. There has been a (thankfully) unmanaged, poorly administrated, fucked up attempt at wiping out black folks going on since before Lincoln even got shot in the head. That's what white people need to fucking understand. That's what every black person in this country already knows. Get that through your fucking head.

And everything we do as "upstanding white people" that isn't stepping in front of the bullet - putting ourselves and our families in its way - is basically a box check to feel a little less bad. What most black people go through in this country is pretty fucking terrible. And the way you fight it, as far as I can tell (on top of living with and around blacks, integrating your workforce, whatever you can while we're in "peacetime") is to scream at the top of your lungs whenever some piece of shit tries to act like it's okay to discriminate and talk shit about how darker people aren't people. In actual public. Not later on FB. Not on Twitter. Not on ILX.

I make these boasts because I hope they guilt me, later, into right action at the right time, when it's actually hard and the plurality of me wants to do nothing.

xp to DFW burbs - if California secedes they'll need to make urban Texas some kind of city-state dependencies and airlift goods to us - Dallas County went 60% Hillary last I saw, I'm sure Travis was close to that.

Yeah but it's easy to paint y'all with broad brushes when you live in DC (also a prime candidate for post-Calexit cargo cult formation)

the broad brush of suburbs is fair, they're all shitholes

After Donald Trump’s election as president, Pamela Ramsey Taylor, who was director of Clay County Development Corp. in Clay, a tiny town outside Charleston, reportedly posted about the move from Michelle Obama to Melania Trump on Facebook, saying: “It will be so refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady back in the White House. I’m tired of seeing a Ape in heels,” according to NBC affiliate WSAZ.

The news station reported that the town’s mayor, Beverly Whaling, then replied, “Just made my day Pam.”

...

The two women have apologized for their remarks.

“My comment was not intended to be racist at all,” Whaling said in a statement to The Washington Post. “I was referring to my day being made for change in the White House! I am truly sorry for any hard feeling this may have caused! Those who know me know that I’m not of any way racist!

“Again, I would like to apologize for this getting out of hand!”

hang 'em high

oh shit I didn't mean to get out of hand

My side-eye is coming from the "this is a group for white people who want to fight for racial justice" rhetoric.

Because, why does there need to be a separate white-only group for this?

― ¶ (DJP)

because america is already filled with white spaces. because to challenge white supremacy we need POC thought in white spaces. because most white americans, liberal and conservative alike, instinctively ignore and marginalize POC thought, because POC thought makes them feel uncomfortable.

when POC speak, i need to shut the fuck up and listen, and then i need to carry that message, as best i possibly can, to the many, many places where POC are not allowed.

NAACPWP

anyone who talks shit about Michelle Obama should be jailed

At Upenn a lot of the black freshman were added to a racist GroupMe thread and began receiving messages from white supremacists based in Oklahoma. Apparently one of the OK racists was accepted at the school (though never attended) and was added to the Class of 2020 FB group which he used to gather personal information on black students.

because america is already filled with white spaces. because to challenge white supremacy we need POC thought in white spaces. because most white americans, liberal and conservative alike, instinctively ignore and marginalize POC thought, because POC thought makes them feel uncomfortable.

when POC speak, i need to shut the fuck up and listen, and then i need to carry that message, as best i possibly can, to the many, many places where POC are not allowed.

I really don't know which level of irony to tackle first here. Do I start with "white person proclaims need to listen to people of color while simultaneously not listening to or understanding the question/objection being posed by the black man looking at this group for the first time" or do I ask again "how is this group listening to the voices of POC if it is for white people/by white people as the verbiage on the website led me to believe" and wonder if the more explicit framing will get you to answer the actual question I was asking (which other people on the thread DID answer, btw; the website is terrible and makes the group look like something it is not unless you are familiar with them already, so I'm not 100% sure why you non-answered my question).