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

when i was a kid everything i knew about albania came from that simpsons episode

lest we forget "iron heart" Heydrich was part Jewish, maybe if he had a Mediterranean complexion he'd have been on the other side of the ghetto. I always remember the story of the Babi Yar survivor, whose mother basically said: you leave now, you don't look Jewish.

The 'edge' cases are always interesting studies in the fluidity of US racist perceptions. Albanians, Sicilians, Turks, Moroccans, all can slide back and forth on the 'whiteness' scale and often occupy a place not much different from light-skinned 'blacks' passing for white in the Jim Crow southern USA. I'm pretty sure European racism provides some interesting edge cases and variants on the overall theme of its own. As usual, the logic of racism is wholly irrational, but the harm is all too real.

Sharivari otm

Like in Los Angeles i had an armenian colleague and i noticed on quite a few occasions that non-armenians thought he was some type of middle eastern, and this was just a year ago

I also sensed that this particular armenian guy would go out of his way to make sure i knew he was more aligned with white/US/western european countries

He once asked me what continent I thought armenia was in, and i just answered with what they taught me at school and he did not seem pleased

The interesting thing for me is the question of what happens when unambiguously non-white categories become those edge cases. By and large, Indian Americans aren’t going to get shot by the police, many have skipped the bootstraps poverty grind by emigrating to the US as grad students and slotting in to the middle class, they are increasingly being courted by the racist-right, politically, etc. Idk if there is a point at which we can say they face endemic personal prejudice but not systematic structural racism.

like being the only Asian family in Kerry, scaled up a bit!

Going back a bit - I know we have a word "antisemitism" but.

It may be tangential to the issue white supremacy (and discussions of white/black racism in the US), but... how is antisemitism not a type of racism?

loved the tsrobodo posts on meaning, 'reverse racism' & particularly the point about what discussions are had and the shape they take

as I see it

"that thing white ppl do when they disparage"

is the phenomenon, and the own-group disparaging is the reductio ad absurdum that brings it into focus

so many conversations I've had with white people about race just get turned into condemnations, and they're so often cheap, and they so often seem to be primarily about soothing anxiety about responsibility and making people feel comfortable. you offer a statement condemning something when you don't want to do anything else about it.

there was a really good recent nabisco NYT op-ed I posted a few months ago to a different thread, which got a little discussion, that dealt with the nature of internet conversations and “speech as inquiry” vs “speech as activism”, and I think this thread is a good example of how unproductive things can be when everyone involved doesn’t think about what it is they’re really trying to accomplish by engaging in these discussions

as fate would have it, nabisco himself started a different thread about this very topic years ago

In which bracket would you place dropping in it at the end of a thread to say that!

That was meant to be a question mark!

doing well until yr jerry springer wrapup there kev

i think that maybe it is a good distinction btwn those two modes, is there a case for agreeing consent at the start of each thread/bump as to whether one gets to discuss-as-inquiry or whether one gets to broadcast-as-activist?

the question as to productiveness is a false god here. its a message board. think a lot of ppl are confused on that score sometimes idk

anti-Slav racism, anti-Irish racism etc etc

― the Joao looked at Jonny (Noodle Vague), Friday, 3 August 2018 21:58 (yesterday) Permalink

Irish isn’t a race it’s an ethnicity

You guys don’t even know the meanings of the words you use

Someone will be saying there's no such thing as race next.

You guys don’t even know the meanings of the words you use

Racist.

iirc Slaves were considered a race pre-1945 and suffered discrimination

but Noodle Vague otm re: the definition of racism that some of you are pushing is so US-centric that invites objection

You guys don’t even know the meanings of the words you use

i think you're treating "race" as a Platonic form rather than a shifting, contested term with a history, but I don't wanna fight about it

holy shit that’s an unfortunate typo

Ethnicities can suffer discrimination without it being racism ...

I know race had a contested history but if we’re talking about how it is used today there is no “Irish race” and whenever people start saying shit like that they tend to be minimizing ie anti black racism which is structurally separate from ethnic discrimination

cool

No let’s hear more about how it’s America centric to not bring up the history of Anglo Saxon discrimination of the Slavs every time someone brings up anti black racism

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

i mean pity about ya that the thread isnt conforming to whatever you think it should be about and which we hqve a million threada about

pity about ya that two minor points raised in the recent discussion provoked you like this

seems tough for u

It is tough to have a conversation w people abt a serious subject when they haven’t done the knowledge yeah

"You never studied"

Consult the scripture

The only ppl reading from a script here are the ones who go “what about the Irish” any time the convo makes them uncomfortable

And that happens allllllllllllllll the time. Sheesh!

im happy to ignore the irish points tbh theyre a bit of a diversion from the topic tbs, tbs

thats not ofc to disregard d40s typically winning style in making the pt, d id say you have a wonderful mother can u confirm pls

it's really weird to me that the DiAngilo piece posted upthread actually posted a very clear and positive way for people to come to terms with their own investment and indoctrination in white suprmacy - and a framework for working on it honestly without focusing on being "offended" - it was received a sort of hostile response and everyone's been playing whataboutism games since

especially annoying because the well black and white racism are just so American it's like we learned it from watching you daaaad, good thing Britain doesn't have any kind of role in the slave trade or heavy investment in a white supremacist worldview

I'm not sure what that means?

ah yes britain

sorry about that we'll work on that thanks for listening

also, only saw positive reads on diangelo piece

two irishman a scotch and ten americans walk into a bar eh

it may idk be relevant to thread to point out that "britain" is in fact a colonial power that has held sway over ireland (and i spose despite being actually part of it, scotland) for several hundred years, many of them to quite unpleasant effect and the continued nominal/not-nominal presence of a british colony on the island to this day has been somewhat of a talking point politically

i only say this and my man ums is my man, like, to note that when online americans insist that the world is only divisible in the order of race/gender/sexual orientation/et al because this is the accepted code of conduct and the accepted rhetorical weight that wite americans must bear, that honest-to-god lads many of the people of the nations you cant colour in on a map might object to this and honest-to-god this isnt said to either troll you nor to provide you with a backyard ramp for your wite-ilxor bmx

god bless all here and i dont even bear a grudge to my uk ilx ppl who all seem sorry enough for their part in it etc

let me summarize that for you: 'what about ireland'

wait til you find out what frank wilderson thinks of the holocaust

DiAngelo:

It’s about institutional power. That’s why with the so-called browning of America, there will be adaptations, but the institutions will continue to be controlled by those who currently control it.

They say there is always room at the top, but there is only room there for those who are eager to uphold, strengthen and defend all the privileges of those already at the top.

let me summarize that for you: 'what about ireland'

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 5 August 2018 01:02 (twenty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wouldnt let you summarize the alphabet you witless child

read the thread title again, i beg you, and try to comprehend why your spectacular point-missing is only the moreso spectacular subsequent to a wite american chiding irish and scottish posters about Britain's colonial crimes in what is presumably an attempt to close down the discussion germane to the thread.

jesus its a pity /american/ tags didnt exist in a physical enough form to slap you round the ears with you dullard.

Wish I were more confrontational so I could call people “witless child”

When did I chide anyone about british colonial crimes? Lmfao

Question their relevance to this conversation sure

tbh I think a lot of this particular digression is hard to discuss in good faith due to the popularity of the ‘the Irish were slaves in America’ narrative with white supremacist Irish Americans who want to distance themselves from the idea that have racial privilege over black Americans. That’s probably a much more dominant strand of thought than ‘the Irish are genetically, rather than culturally, different from other whites’ line of anti-Irish prejudice these days, imo.

This is a good reference wrt that:

https://medium.com/@Limerick1914/all-of-my-work-on-the-irish-slaves-meme-2015-16-4965e445802a

entirely characteristic of d40 to not be bothered reading anybody elses posts ofc

sv im aware of that trash narrative and would be happy to step away from any comparison of irish historical narrative with african american for the following reasons-

- havent done it yet iirc
- dont think its comparable at all
- it appears to be a v distracting issue for ppl itt who insist the thread is about american racism
- which means that whatever the thread is about or might be about is consistently swiped right by americans barking at us to get back on track to admit our complicitude in american structural racism

The only ppl reading from a script here are the ones who go “what about the Irish” any time the convo makes them uncomfortable

my arguments here were never about irish people, i said that from the beginning and throughout. i think it's p clear that irish peoples'e experiences as immigrants in america are quite widely discussed, i was more keen to discuss groups about which i know less. i'm honestly surprised at the handwaving and kneejerk reticence to go there, like as if there's no possible solidarity in examining the discrimination suffered by other groups. i mean literally upthread we had discussions of what it's like to be an immigrant in which i'm being told what it isn't like by people living in the country of their birth.

it is strange to be forced to defend myself based on my nationality when i could literally copy and paste the 7/8 times i have had to point out i'm not talking about irish people. the only sense in which i mentioned irish people is as a frame of reference, as an immigrant myself, in which it's possible for me to imagine other immigrants having a much more difficult time integrating. to then say 'you're just saying 'what about the irish' actually comes across to me like boris johnson talking about people from liverpool. feel free to google liverpool.

tbh I think a lot of this particular digression is hard to discuss in good faith due to the popularity of the ‘the Irish were slaves in America’ narrative with white supremacist Irish Americans who want to distance themselves from the idea that have racial privilege over black Americans. That’s probably a much more dominant strand of thought than ‘the Irish are genetically, rather than culturally, different from other whites’ line of anti-Irish prejudice these days, imo.

hundred per cent. i'm surprised though that no amount of distancing from that pov is enough, or that there's seemingly no curiosity about some of the minority groups we briefly discussed itt. i mean we managed to fence in our discussion in to like 'polish people', briefly. i don't really get, even from an activist pov, how somebody tallies 'no, shut up, all immigrants stories are the same and anyway they're white so they're not that bad' with the idea that we should listen to the stories of the marginalised and not speak for them. i mean at the very least it seems hard to be certain. i wondered about, eg, romani americans upthread mainly cos i haven't got a clue what that experience would be like, and it's interesting. i dunno, i feel like specific discussions of how one group integrates into a given country are really common when travelling in europe, so it didn't feel unusual to try to have one itt.

i don't get how in some people's eyes it must, absolutely must, be a zero sum game or an attempt to belittle the issue of racism against black people when you try to discuss some groups in america who are discriminated against and lacking in privilege but are white. like surely understanding more forms of discrimination in a country widens our perspective of it generally?

if it's just because white supremacists would use this for their flat earth bullshit theories about who actually is a minority then i think it's a pretty poor concession to their logic. not least since this is a message board.

There is a bunch of interesting and important stuff surrounding, for example, the not particularly subtle right-wing attempts to re-racialise Southern Slavs as not authentically white in the Brexit narrative, the ‘Lega Nord style’ division between ‘European’ Northern Italians and ‘African’ Southern Italians, the reliance on racist tropes familiar from anti-Asian bias when discussing Russians (genetically predisposed to be cunning, devious, only respect strongmen, etc) but I can see how that all looks like a distraction from more pressing issues from a US perspective and idk if it wouldn’t benefit from a distinct thread at this stage.

The 'despotic' east. That's as old as Herodotus, right? That might be another prejudice that is kinda distinctly European.

xp like

this one?

Having just read this thread, I'm glad to have finally understood that discrimination against Romanians (or Poles or Albanians or the Irish or…) does not qualify as proper racism when filtered through the American racial paradigm which, as we know, is the nec plus ultra of hermeneutic grids. I have come at last to the conclusion that American racism is so utterly exceptional that all other forms of racism pale in comparison. Nay, they are undeserving of the appellation itself, and we would do better to avoid discussing them at all for they have not yet risen to the level of actual, extant things. Thank you.