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

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)

Ogmor otm

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

― Things To Do For Dinner When You're Dad (Old Lunch), Friday, August 3, 2018 3:29 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe this is unfair, but feeling the need to post stuff like this always reads to me as "I (a white person) am uncomfortable with ppl disparaging 'white people', so I'll distance myself from that discomfort by making fun of white people who object to white-ppl-disparagement, as if that somehow absolves me, or allows me to avoid any wound to my sense of self", it seems an avoidance technique?

Yeah, that's roughly 180 degrees off the mark on pretty much every point.

Yeah I think the reasons for Old Lunch's relentless shitposting probably doesn't have much to do with race

^Gets it.

Lol

not sure the key to defeating racism is just to redefine it to mean whatever one believes would be most convenient to have ppl believe in order to defeat it

think that probably ppl just wont agree that the attempted redefinition is now the new definition of racism

maybe this is unfair, but feeling the need to post stuff like this always reads to me as "I (a white person) am uncomfortable with ppl disparaging 'white people', so I'll distance myself from that discomfort by making fun of white people who object to white-ppl-disparagement, as if that somehow absolves me, or allows me to avoid any wound to my sense of self", it seems an avoidance technique?

isn't it usually more 'i am excluding myself from the bad behaviour of my race/gender with this hilarious woke tweet' etc - p much the behaviour that this thread title originally highlighted.

it is a little tough sometimes to flip the newspaper open every day and see CIS white males getting ragged on, whether gay or straight. i am totally an ally with activists who fight racism and sexism, but like you catch more flies with honey, not divisions

I really don't know what you guys are trying to defend?

why do you think we're trying to "defend" anything??

We know that white people, even caught on video being extremely racist, don't believe that word represents them as it's used "colloquially."

Don't get why this matters. Most ugly people, even caught on video being extremely racist, don't believe that word represents them.

haha being caught on video being extremely ugly dammit

Why do you think I want to keep asking why when it's not furthering a single coherent thought? Anyway here is a definitive guide to Not All White People because that shit is a waste of time. https://www.theroot.com/not-all-white-people-a-definitive-disclaimer-1825835641

(What you just posted is what I was trying to say about being caught on video)

good article yerac

I was actually looking for another article about white people/men being ultra defensive all the time because they aren't used to being generalized because they are usually the default. But so much has been written about this. Too much to pick from.

its cool that that other group are always the problem wot

it'd be nice if it was possible to discuss any of this stuff without setting the kind of classic twitter debate rhetorical traps guaranteed to ensure nobody's perspective actually changes in any way whatsoever.

Otm

it's always easier to discuss things when everyone agrees with everyone else and you can close your eyes and imagine everyone nodding when you hit submit post

easiest of all to post the stuff you agree with and then behave like everyone else is being a bold child when they dont

gods work that

i've read a book which proves you're wrong on that.

it's not even a history book but hey who cares.

let me find an article i agree with. there are some.

It’s not what you say but how you say it

Like if we all avoided mass generalizations that would do good. Yeracs article was fairer than some I’ve read.

Well, again. I do think it's somewhat fruitless. It doesn't stop me from putting it out there. You either care or you don't. You either want to change/understand/listen or not. It's harder for some people not to go to being defensive all the time and shutting down. I've had to block out most of my immediate family because after decades I know they won't change. Life is too short to try to fix shitty people who won't even touch the subject.

Otm

I mean, when I hear about white woman feminism and how white women are the fucking worst, I don't feel a need to be Capt Save a Hoe. I'm like, yeah I know what you are talking about and it sucks and I need to do better because I've been this type of shitty woman in the past.

I mean use a word however you want, but I feel like if you say "only white people can be racist, no matter what bigoted attitudes a non-white person holds" it's being used in a way that doesn't make sense to most people, solely because you want it to match up with your sociopolitical outlook or somehow leverage the language to obtain goals like "actually undoing racism". Demanding everyone share your precise definition of a word rather than you modifying your understanding of it based on how it's used by vast majority of people rubs me the wrong way.

Slate interviewed Robin DiAngelo (author of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism) and I guess this is kind of what I meant by a project to get white people to make 'whiteness' central to their sense of self while simultaneously rejecting 'whiteness', and not being at all defensive about it

What’s a specific example?

I think the inability to answer with any depth whatsoever the question of what it means to be white is actually not benign. People of color know that most white people cannot answer that question. [If] I can’t tell you what it means to be white, I am not going to be able to hold what it means not to be white, what your experience is. I’m going to end up invalidating, minimizing, dismissing, and not believing. That’s what white progressives do every day.

So then what does it mean to be white?

It means many things, but it means not ever having to bear witness to the pain of racism on people of color. It means not being held accountable for the pain that you cause people of color. It means not knowing the history of this country and being able to trace that history into the present. It’s being relentlessly reinforced in superiority and then not ever being able to admit that.

OK. All of us have been shaped by the cultural water that we swim in. All white people have internalized a racist worldview. Let me own that. As a result of being raised as a white person in this society, I have a racist worldview. I have deep racist biases. I have developed racist patterns, and I have investments in not only the system of racism that has served me so well. It’s so comfortable. But I also have an investment in not seeing any of that because of what I believe it suggests about my identity as a good person. The way that I think about it is, “How do I be a little less white, a little less racist quite frankly, less defensive, less arrogant, less certain, less complacent, less passive?”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/08/white-liberal-racism-why-progressives-are-unable-to-see-their-own-bigotry.html

it defines not facing up to the brutality of 'whiteness' as an integral part of what whiteness is, and sets being "a little less white" as a goal/obligation, but at the same time it insists that you can't be less white, if you think you are that's just self-exculpation?

xpost I get what your saying because I understand how people use words, but like, I moved on from that because I kind of think it's an annoying argument to have. Be annoyed by people who do it. It's ok.

rooney's whiteness i think i don't let affect my judgement, i don't say i don't know it's there cos it's always there obviously, but i try to make a clear judgement on him as if he weren't white, iykwim?

― at-zing-two-boards (darraghmac), Monday, 10 October 2011 02:06 (17 hours ago)

^^^^^^

― nakhchivan, Monday, 10 October 2011 19:07 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sorry but I have no idea what that even means.

- You signal he's white
- You don't want that to affect your judgement
- Yet you are aware that he is white
- But you try to make a clear judgement "as if he weren't white"?

???

― Young Swell (Le Bateau Ivre), Monday, 10 October 2011 19:15 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

deems is basically saying that when we discuss rooney's popular soubriquet 'the white pele', we refer largely to the pele element -- how does rooney relate to pele, his mythos, his technical ability, how does rooney improve upon his prototype?

however, what is missed is exactly the meaning of rooney's whiteness -- why he is white? did he become white? does his whiteness derive from or merely perpetuate the tabloid rooccult?

― nakhchivan, Monday, 10 October 2011 19:31 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya

― at-zing-two-boards (darraghmac), Monday, 10 October 2011 19:32 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but without making it 'a thing' y'know

― at-zing-two-boards (darraghmac), Monday, 10 October 2011 19:33 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean use a word however you want, but I feel like if you say "only white people can be racist, no matter what bigoted attitudes a non-white person holds" it's being used in a way that doesn't make sense to most people, solely because you want it to match up with your sociopolitical outlook or somehow leverage the language to obtain goals like "actually undoing racism". Demanding everyone share your precise definition of a word rather than you modifying your understanding of it based on how it's used by vast majority of people rubs me the wrong way.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Friday, August 3, 2018 4:31 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This would make perfect sense.

but only if is language was actually static and meanings of words are not capable of changing over time,

if any conception of racism was actually divisible from a sociopolitical outlook,

if the the linguistic tools we use to engage this are perfectly suited for the task,

and if a majority of people can't be incorrect in their usage and understanding of a concept.

this is from that same interview with Robin DiAngelo

I want to be clear. I don’t see myself as redefining the term [racism]. I want to change the way the average white person understands what racism is, but I am using the sociological definition. You asked me, “What would you call the difference perhaps between Trump and me?” But I actually think, yeah, we both are racists. I see that as a continuum that I’m on and will be on for the rest of my life. In any given moment, I have to ask myself, “How am I doing on this continuum? What end am I behaving closer to? How do I know?” He and I may be on different spots on the continuum, but we’re both on it. I don’t tend to distinguish between the two of us, which probably shocks some readers, but if you’re asking me to somehow identify that difference, I would say “avowed” versus maybe “implied” or “implicit.”

So you consider yourself a racist right now?

Yes. I will always have a racist worldview and biases.
The way I look at it is I’m really clear that I do less harm than I used to. I perpetrate that racism less often. I’m not defensive at all when I realize—whether myself or it’s been brought to my attention—that I’ve just perpetrated a piece of it. I have really good repair skills. None of those are small things because they mean I do less harm. I have many more authentic, sustained cross-racial relationships than I ever had before. I can, with confidence, say there are people of color in my life who see me as a supportive and trustworthy person. I had none of that before.

I don't know this approach is scaleable as a solution, and getting white ppl to self-identify as racists and not distinguish too much between themselves and Donald Trump seems like it could have negative as well as positive consequences

So you consider yourself a racist right now?

Yes. I will always have a racist worldview and biases.

Not inviting her to Thanksgiving then.

if any conception of racism was actually divisible from a sociopolitical outlook,

I think it can. You disagree. C'est la vie

and if a majority of people can't be incorrect in their usage and understanding of a concept.

this contradicts this imo: but only if is language was actually static and meanings of words are not capable of changing over time,

ie most people do not use the term how you use it. and I think it's a vast majority. So I wonder why you would be so wedded to your definition of it, if your goal when using words is to get your thoughts across clearly to the most amount of people. You're being prescriptive with the language, which is what one does when trying to resist the changeability of language.

I genuinely am interested in changing my perspectives and the world around me but most of the rhetoric around doing so online is bullshit and totally unproductive and damaging and frequently illogical or wrong, in my opinion. And yet often built into that rhetoric, literally the way it works, like a trap, is the idea that any dissenting voice is actually a racist, or a sexist, or a homophobe or whatever, when in fact people are often just trying to find a form of something very complicated that they can actually agree with and believe in.

And it's made worse by the sheer volume of hateful, aggressive morons, who have sort of come to see their daily purpose in life as existing as the evil yin to the benevolent yang of the people posting loosely the same faintly memeified takes on social change or justice. Obviously they make it worse since they both bolster people's basic, standard position of the most simplistic possible interpretations of things, or encourage people to just repeat the same opinions or memes ad infinitum because there are still a million basic sexists who don't get it.

And so there's a kind of stasis. And even in typing this it's like I have to reveal my personality because otherwise I'm possibly an egg avatar chauvinist since nothing can be taken in good faith, obviously.

But FWIW I'm straight and white and a man, I tick two boxes on the positive discrimination part forms when I apply for a job, tho some forms don't include my race/nationality. And I'm currently in university studying in the evenings, and it's in humanities, and when I started I worried a bit that it might be strange being a dude in my 30s at university and maybe it would be like what social media is like or like what people say universities are like, or maybe like how people make universities seem on social media, both the 'you are all coddled' critics and some of the students.

But it isn't. From some initial defensiveness and arguments there's eventually just a lot of trust, despite us all being from totally different backgrounds, with a wide spread of age, race, religion and sexuality. And I never encounter the kind of reductive, hashtag-based crap that people spout online despite a lot of discussions about people's racial or religious background or their sexuality or class, as a regular part of the work we do, even when it gets heated.

And so I refute that it's 'you either care or you don't' - there are lots of ways of caring and listening and there are many people who believe in equality who can't agree even slightly about how to discuss it or what is right or wrong in those discussions.

like I'm comfortable with calling Farrakhan a racist. Nobody would be confused by what I mean when I say that. It clearly conveys my thoughts. Telling me it's impossible for him to be racist muddles the conversation we'd been having rather than fostering it.

the excerpts from the Robin DiAngelo interview were really interesting thanks for posting

Yep, thx. It made me think again about when I was younger, when I had to make hiring decisions, I would sometimes base whether someone got an interview on the name on the resume. White/anglo names just always have the go-ahead. That is some ingrained racism at work. I look back and get mad but then vow to work harder by not allowing that to ever happen again.

Xp yes that’s exactly how I feel too.