Rolling 2016 Thread on Race

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).

Their website is terrible. And fwiw I think they operate in like small local chapters so the quality of analysis is prob variable? As are the local partnerships that each chapter organizes with POC-led orgs in their area.

I do think it's a long but maybe necessary trip from "painfully earnest might cry" dawning race consciousness to actually being ready to function in a useful way for movement efforts. If SURJ isn't the right vehicle for getting people there, maybe something with key differences would be better, but SURJ is kind of what we have? And the whole point is to keep the work out of POC spaces so Black and brown ppl don't have to witness white tears/fragility/etc.

I went to a meeting once. It was p awkward. The person who opened the meeting did the whole yoga-esque icebreaker. "Close your eyes, put your feet flat on the floor, and FEEL the energy coming out of your feet and FLOWING all the way down to the ground." (We were on the 10th floor.) I organized some admin stuff for them and then had to bow out because of scheduling. They would have wanted me to take on more responsibility and I have kind of a full plate tbh. There were Black, brown, and Asian folks there as well, and some people from local racial justice orgs as facilitators.

Ideally SURJ or something like it would get people ready to provide the labor to support Black-led organizing with extra resources and capacity. Need money? Ask your white allies to fundraise. Need 25 people to do behind-the-scenes work for an event? Ask for white volunteers who will take orders from your org. Need non-POC to make a safety barrier to protect LGBQTPOC at a protest? You see where this is going.

Yes, that all makes a lot more sense that the picture the website drew for me.

picturing a little animation of a cop throwing some tear gas and a white guy diving on top of it before it gets close to protestors

Nothing so heroic. It's better to think of it as white guy making uhhh protest puppets or something in a barn for a POC org to carry in the streets because he has the time to do so. But then him not going on the march itself because he doesn't represent the affected community.

from puppet master to puppet maker

http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/54183f486bb3f7d466f059ec-960/surge-movement.png

see, this is exactly why i wish and what still posted here.

The war on punctuation could have been temporarily suspended for that sentence.

(We were on the 10th floor.)

lol

I will admit that the first thing that came to mind as I read through the website was the teacher from the Kwanzaa pageant episode of The Boondocks

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).

― ¶ (DJP)

djp, since you're directly asking me a question, i'll respond, and my response is, look, i was raised in a racist and implicitly white supremacist system and that's limited what i'm able to understand and how i'm able to act. i'm pretty slow, and i'm pretty ignorant. i'm doing my best, but i simply don't think of myself as competent to engage with POC on issues of race, and frankly i'm not sure i'll ever be.

I 100% do not know how you are expecting me to respond to that so I'll just say: thanks?

you're welcome. you keep saying what needs to be said and i'll do my best to listen and to learn, and i will probably continue to misunderstand and screw up, but the teacher is not to blame if the student is poor. :)

Ilxors, keep on ilx-ing / cos it won't be too long

it's ok, I'm still trying to self-ban myself from posting on a couple threads where my comments are worthless and just read what's there, but the post button still works

rushomancy are you an american, out of curiosity?