that thing white ppl do when they disparage 'white ppl'

otm

its how its not working alright

there are white ppl complaining that 'white ppl are garbage' type tweets are wrong and racist against white ppl, and other ppl putting a lot of effort into attempting to convince them that they're misguided and 'white ppl are garbage' type tweets aren't wrong and that by definition you can't be racist against white ppl - I don't think that they're ever going to convince more than a small minority of white people to take this view

Twitter isn't the world.

Granted, my friends and I made "men are trash" "white people are evil" remarks on fb all the time, explicitly to get kicked off since that is what fb likes to patrol.

but a lot of the 'you can't be racist against white people' people are also the people who push the idea that white people should be consciously, constantly aware of their own whiteness, both on twitter and in every other aspect of their lives, how everything you see, think, say, create, do is defined by your whiteness - from any art you might create or an intervention you might make in politics or charity or your love life and relationships with other people - none of it transcends whiteness

this seems implicitly crucial to a lot of people on the left's whole political project, I don't think it can just be limited to a few tweets. white people should simultaneously make whiteness a key, inextricable part of their self-image/sense of self, but that they should also be traitors to whiteness, fight against whiteness and not identify with it. In practice it seems usually leads either to hypocrisy and denial (white ppl who disparage 'white ppl' but do mental gymnastics so that they are somehow not included in that category, "I'm one of the good ones" etc) or this snake-eating-its-own-tail spiral of greater and greater displays of self-abnegation/"this is just another form of white supremacy/white narcissism/white complicity" etc/more self-abnegation

1. There's no such thing as being "racist against white people" because racism is systemic, not interpersonal. It doesn't matter what percentage of "people" (which people?) believe this, because just like no matter how many flat-earthers or anti-vaxers there are, it doesn't make their beliefs true-er or falser.
2. "White ppl are garbage" is not what anti-racism is about. At all. And in fact is almost certainly a construct meant to discredit anyone who can be framed as trying to increase equity or mitigate the harms of racism.
3. Like how are we even talking about this when every day my fb feed has a whole new story about a white person somewhere calling the police on a black person for giving out socks to the homeless or standing in their own damn yard or walking down a street or breathing air?

xp Idek what you're talking about tbh, you must be seeing something that I don't see. Also, get off twitter and go talk to some people who do this stuff irl.

It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.

— Moby Dick (@MobyDickatSea) August 2, 2018

White people are beautiful garbage

soref , I am kind of lost too. Are you saying white people can't/shouldn't take responsibility or acknowledge a system that was designed to keep white people, especially white men, in economic and societal power because..(reasons), oh well?

There's no such thing as being "racist against white people" because racism is systemic, not interpersonal

"He is a racist" vs "He is part of a racist system"

We're all part of a racist system, not necessarily through any particular fault or choice of our own. When we say a person is racist, what we mean is they have racist beliefs which they act on and/or express. Those beliefs are taught to them and incentivized within a system that rewards some groups for their group identity and punishes others, again through no act or fault or virtue of the individuals. I mean...?

Also it's just language, a word can do more than one thing.

To be racist, you have to have both prejudice and power. ...For a white man living in poverty, the struggle is real for sure. Economic inequality is as pandemic in the U.S. as racial inequality. But a poor white man is more likely to be (to pick one random, small example of the privilege that comes with his skin color) given the benefit of the doubt that he’s unarmed, or at least legally armed, if he is pulled over for speeding and has a weapon. That’s an extreme effect of white privilege.

Prejudice can be that people of color assume white people are all a certain way, which might be what some of those survey respondents are feeling. But since people of color don’t historically have power as a whole in America on anywhere near the same level as white people, those assumptions aren’t able to be weaponized the way that white prejudice against people of color can be, even if they hurt some white people’s feelings.

https://hellogiggles.com/news/racism-against-white-people-doesnt-exist-in-america-and-heres-why-it-never-will/

yes I've heard all that for years, but as "racist" is used colloquially there isn't a power requirement. idk just always struck me as a pedantic "well actually" point to make.

whether a person has power doesn't change the underlying mindset (ie if white people lost all power overnight in US society, are all the people who were white racists the day before now just white prejudiced people?), and I think that's what 99.9% of people mean when they label someone racist.

If this magical event happened overnight that also erased a history that gave all wealth and accrued inherited wealth in the US to white people...ok? We know that white people, even caught on video being extremely racist, don't believe that word represents them as it's used "colloquially." I really don't know what you guys are trying to defend?

#notallwites

I mean, I think most racist or faux derpy white people/men are a lost cause. Energy and money is better spent putting it towards supporting people of color and women.

Institutional racism is a subtype of racism, but is by no means the only kind of racism. "Racism equals prejudice plus power" is a good summation of what institutional racism is, but unhelpful as a slogan to try to pound this idea into people's heads or whatever. "Racism against white people doesn't exist" is pure bullshit. It basically supports the conservative idea that racism towards white people is somehow "reverse racism" as opposed to simply "racism."

Uh, hello, not everyone lives in the USA, believe it or not.

I put US in one of my posts (because I knew someone would need the specification) and this stems off the discussion of the NYT and an american/asian writer.

I assume Moby Dick is not an American whale.

But he's still a racist

The last great American whale iirc

Also a cousin of Andy Dick, so that's strike 2

sperm count of 1 puts him over another threshold of assumed guilt iirc

Institutional racism is a subtype of racism, but is by no means the only kind of racism. "Racism equals prejudice plus power" is a good summation of what institutional racism is, but unhelpful as a slogan to try to pound this idea into people's heads or whatever. "Racism against white people doesn't exist" is pure bullshit. It basically supports the conservative idea that racism towards white people is somehow "reverse racism" as opposed to simply "racism."

― how's life, Thursday, August 2, 2018 5:45 PM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im having trouble following this argument at the end. racism at its conception and in its centuries of implementation is about elevating the interests of white people as a constructed social class. prejudice against white people cannot be divorced from this. interpersonal racism is an outward expression of that societal power. if i get called mayonnaise boy, it doesn't reinforce a system of power against me by degrading my humanity. it's not nice, but it's not racist.

I think racism was conceived even before there were “white” people

Most people learned the word “racism” as “hating someone because of their race” which is why most people think that’s what it means.

Suppose there might be some white people who are not Americans - dunno tho someone should check.

If there are any in Britain there are probably very few of them - in such a small eh, minority you might say, they're unlikely to be discriminated against.

americans are garbage

by virtue of being human, yes indeed

fuck every douchebag who doesn't agree

Malcolm Young had a good take on the Sarah Jeong thing, which was to simply repost the old Stokely Carmichael chestnut: "If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem."

Sarah Jeong does not have any power to negatively affect 'white people' as a group, and if you honestly believe* that she does, then you are just staggeringly ignorant of how power is exercised in the U.S. today.

* I'm unclear about whether or not this should apply to trolls, who will never cop to 'honestly believing' anything, but who at least *pretend* to believe that a progressive political coalition of SJWs has seized control of the country and is in the process of stripping away their rights.

Malcolm Young had a good take on the Sarah Jeong thing

“Let There Be Rock” is a hell of a song but I don’t know that I need sociopolitical guidance from the guy.

sorry I meant Malcolm Harris

this guy https://twitter.com/BigMeanInternet

we live in a world full of people who can't or won't differentiate an individual from a class or sex from gender. the rest follows naturally.

Such a typical ILXor thing to say.

I think racism was conceived even before there were “white” people

― President Keyes, Thursday, August 2, 2018 8:36 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no, it wasn't. racism is literally an idea borne out of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. there are books. https://www.versobooks.com/books/1645-racecraft

Most people learned the word “racism” as “hating someone because of their race” which is why most people think that’s what it means.

― President Keyes, Thursday, August 2, 2018 8:40 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's a useless definition that should be challenged at all times. this is (mostly) white ppl avoiding responsibility for divesting themselves of their undue racial power. bc if racism is simply "someone doesnt like someone else bc of color" then anyone can be guilty of it and there is no power component to consider. if it's all insults and bad manners and personal moral defects, then white people have very little work to do AND can lay claim to victim status within this framework of racism. but if racism is a caste system which creates discrepancies in wealth, mental and physical health, housing, dignity, self-regard, nutrition, education, criminal punishment, etc, then white people can't just passively avoid racist statements ("i'm not racist!") but must actively work to dismantle the institutions which reproduce these conditions (anti-racism).

White Supremacy is a more useful term
Academics telling people to unlearn a meaning of a word is a bad look imo

m bison otm

racism is the system that upholds white supremacy but the two should not be conflated. also, getting people to unlearn their poorly understood definitions seems p important for actually undoing racism. (and ime it's not "academics" broadly who are pushing for this either).

xp

think most ppl's idea of the term white supremacy would still be the KKK or whatever tho so you've got the same issue there

phrases like "bad look" apply primarily to the method and not to the substance. if we want to talk about effective strategies by all means do so (and i think there are effective strategies - most people understand intuitively that advocating white power isn't equivalent to advocating black power, even if they don't understand why), but we should at least acknowledge that's a separate conversation from whether or not "academics" are correct.

if it's all insults and bad manners and personal moral defects, then white people have very little work to do AND can lay claim to victim status within this framework of racism.

this is kind of why the term is a problem. if you use a word that most people associate with personal moral defects then people think about personal moral defects.

*insert white people being fragile meme

That's extremely offensive and unfair. (shatters into pieces)