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

ok i move to officially end the policy

meet ye back here after lunch, next motion let me see hmm: james gunn for democratic nominee wait is this right

white people is definitionally people who are white

got it. albinos.

if the theory were true, those bucks would obv be running thongs, QED

running thongs, theres a fucking concept

Depends on if you mean the undies or the flip-flops

would a red neck be sufficient to definitionally disqualify a person as white? Or does one's whiteness appertain only to certain areas of the body? if so, which ones?

bedsheets

Of course there are distinct aspects to American racial discourse but the notion of racism as distinct from ethnic discrimination or ethnic cleansing or ethnicity in general is an international concept. I’m not claiming the superiority of an American frame for understanding racism; I think a pervasive sense of “whattaboutism” is happening whenever people bring up ethnic conflict as a response to concerns about racism or anti blackness, and that this problem transcends national boundaries

This is not saying ethnic conflicts are irrelevant or not important just that it is definitionally not an example of racism

http://www.writtalin.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/photo-11.jpg

Ethnic conflict between hutu and Tutsis in Sudan, or Irish and English in Britain, are not examples of “racism”. This does not mean that Sudanese people will not suffer disproportionately on the national stage due to racial caste structures of ie colonialism than the British

I pretty much agree with all that but the USsplaining on ILX gets pretty relentless at times.

And Sudan is nowhere near Rwanda by the way.

Ha. My unintentionally racist brain fart is a very good example of how racism & ethnic conflict are different things!

its an agreeable response to an argument nobody was really making, the thread was not about that, the revive was not about that but some ppl- afaict all americans- insist that it must be about that

when you say its not really about that its turns into an accusatory "zomg why dont you want to talk about that!"

like

its easy to say something everyone agrees with but even if once or a million times isnt enough thats not to say that there's never room for anything else, tangentially related or otherwise

so i mean. where were we? whitesplaining to whites about what whites can discuss and how on a thread about what whites do when they disparage whites

its perfect but its not good

I am not trying to police this convo beyond the fairly narrow point I was making which does contradict things people were saying in the thread so I’m not even sure what the issue is here

is it right to say that a lot of the arguing about this Sarah Jeong thing relates to this question of 'what is the correct way for white people to perceive their own whiteness'?

I think this thread is correct when it says that you are never going to get more than a minority of white people to sign up for the pov that 'white ppl are garbage' statements are good and accurate and shouldn't be objected to and that they deserve to be hated, and any plan that doesn't take this into account is doomed to failure

like that 'women are entitled to hate men' article from the other month - it may be objectively right, but only a minority of men are ever going to agree, and even the ones that do agree can only do so in a compromised contradictory way, - that being the case, what does it mean in practice?

I see some white guys trying to square the circle by saying that it's all jokes, that when non-white ppl on twitter say "white men are bullshit" they don't really mean it - but this seems kind of presumptuous? I think people do mean it in general, or at least as much as people mean most of what they say.

― soref, Thursday, 2 August 2018 18:29 (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

was a good q and thoughtful post and entirely not what the thread became

the notion of racism as distinct from ethnic discrimination or ethnic cleansing or ethnicity in general is an international concept

my uncle says muslim is not a race and he goes abroad all the time!

I'm surprised that a man with your knowledge of Rwandan history doesn't think that the colonial powers helped stir up racial difference, or consider what was said about Tutsi's "cockroach" physiology during the massacres racism

is the divide at play here as simple as:

american ilxors mistrust any suggestion that white ppl can/do/should be able to identify as other than white as a primary personal identifying characteristic because to do so is an abnegation of an inherent moral duty to recognise the multifaceted and inalienable privileges accruing as a result of being white as well as making it too easy to not identify with the group culpable for slavery and the ensuing structural racism inherent in the system

whereas white european ilxors (in the main):

commonly identify as at least one (nationality) and possibly many (religion, region, ethnicity, political affiliation) primary personal characteristic before it would occur to them to think of themselves as white; other baseline differences spiral from that point.

(gender, sexuality, class, income, etc etc)

my uncle says muslim is not a race and he goes abroad all the time!

I'm surprised that a man with your knowledge of Rwandan history doesn't think that the colonial powers helped stir up racial difference, or consider what was said about Tutsi's "cockroach" physiology during the massacres racism

― ogmor, Monday, 6 August 2018 01:05 (seventeen minutes ago) Permalink

How does this change the underlying structural dynamic at all? I don’t see how this contradicts anything I’ve said.

And of course Muslim is not a race though there’s a very racialized perception of it in many places

is the divide at play here as simple as:

american ilxors mistrust any suggestion that white ppl can/do/should be able to identify as other than white as a primary personal identifying characteristic because to do so is an abnegation of an inherent moral duty to recognise the multifaceted and inalienable privileges accruing as a result of being white as well as making it too easy to not identify with the group culpable for slavery and the ensuing structural racism inherent in the system

whereas white european ilxors (in the main):

commonly identify as at least one (nationality) and possibly many (religion, region, ethnicity, political affiliation) primary personal characteristic before it would occur to them to think of themselves as white; other baseline differences spiral from that point.

― dele alli my bookmarks (darraghmac), Sunday, August 5, 2018 8:20 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This assumes racial hierarchy doesn’t exist in Europe or that slavery is the sole origin point of racism instead of colonialism! Does the fact that a “raced” European might *not* identify as their national identity “first” not make you wonder if European white identity doesn’t play a similar or parallel role to American white identity—a false “neutral” that enables an international white supremacy

Otm

Whiteness doesn't buy you shit in a cute little European nationalist country facing down a fellow white person with a badge when the white person has a citizenship, first language, and völkische network you can never hope to get. This doesn't invalidate American concepts of racism for America -- my whiteness still buys me plenty there. The shadow side of American exceptionalism is the tendency to universalize American sins. Of COURSE there is racism in Europe -- it works differently. Why wouldn't it?

I think the main division between European and US posters might be how monolithic racial categories are seen to be, maybe?

Taking Rwandans, white Brits and, with some caveats, Romanians out of their their home countries and fitting them in to a US racial hierarchy, you would perhaps group the Rwandans as black, the British and Romanians as white and view differences within categories as cultural, tribal, religious, historical, etc.

White British ppl, on the other hand, would be much more likely to see Romanians as racially distinct from them, to a degree that either questions whether they qualify as ‘white’ or whether, if they do, whether ‘whiteness’ is meaningful as a term. In large part stirred up by the Belgians, Hutus and Tutsis often see each other as fundamentally biologically different, not just divided by culture.

I think that's true. Another problem is that I think that it's really quite difficult to fully and rationally understand and explain the workings of racism and racist nationalism if you don't, at least temporarily for the sake of the understanding, accept the validity of dumb-but-complex racist taxonomy. The racism of color is at least an easily grasped bad stupidity.

I think the idea that black people (for example) haven’t suffered more from European imperialism than ie romanians ... simply isn’t borne out by the history of colonial exploitation ... again, this idea that Europeans treat ethnicities as races seems odd to me... there’s a dehumanization that happens to the colonial subject at a level that exceeds ethnic conflict

Again I look to the shirt Andre 3000 is wearing in the photo i linked upthread... how do white Europeans explain this issue without saying “racism,” since “Romanian” is apparently a race now

“Suffered more” isn’t really good phrasing but I mean that there is a violence of a different type rather than kind towards ppl of the African diaspora

Romania is a pretty bad example since a lot of it was colonized by the Ottoman empire...

As was most of Southeast Europe for centuries. I don't think many Europeans think of Romanians as a different race, Romani maybe.

Romania is an example in part because it was part of the Ottoman Empire. A lot of European racists would see Romania as tainted by its association with Turkey, a lot of Romanian racists would argue their Dacian heritage is intact and that they're fundamentally different from Turkish people, etc. It's all malleable and contested.

I'd assume that nobody would argue against the idea that the most pressing racial justice issues in Europe at the moment are those relating to people who are defined as non-European - African, Syrian, Iraqi, etc refugees, the African and Asian disasporas in France, Germany, and the UK, and so on - and that a huge amount of the prejudice, alongside culture and religion, relates back to skin colour.

The question seems to be more whether intra-European (or intra-Asian, intra-African) conflict based on the socially-constructed idea that Group X is biologically different from Group Y should also be considered racism, given that this, at its worst, it has underpinned the genocide of neighbours.

There's no right or wrong answer but that might be where the division is.

Your average racist shithead walking the picturesque streets of Lower Austria does not have more contempt for Somalians than Bosnians, no. Austria is extreme, but so is the US. The concept of taint and racial inferiority is common and terror of people who once made you very rich & powerful and oops those days are over uh-oh is also common. The Austrian shithead is terrified by a different demographic. It's still bullshit and it's still a headspace that's unpleasant to get into, even to analyze it.

The shadow side of American exceptionalism is the tendency to universalize American sins.

^^^^

is the divide at play here as simple as:

american ilxors mistrust any suggestion that white ppl can/do/should be able to identify as other than white as a primary personal identifying characteristic because to do so is an abnegation of an inherent moral duty to recognise the multifaceted and inalienable privileges accruing as a result of being white as well as making it too easy to not identify with the group culpable for slavery and the ensuing structural racism inherent in the system

whereas white european ilxors (in the main):

commonly identify as at least one (nationality) and possibly many (religion, region, ethnicity, political affiliation) primary personal characteristic before it would occur to them to think of themselves as white; other baseline differences spiral from that point.

― dele alli my bookmarks (darraghmac), Sunday, August 5, 2018 8:20 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This assumes racial hierarchy doesn’t exist in Europe or that slavery is the sole origin point of racism instead of colonialism! Does the fact that a “raced” European might *not* identify as their national identity “first” not make you wonder if European white identity doesn’t play a similar or parallel role to American white identity—a false “neutral” that enables an international white supremacy

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Monday, 6 August 2018 01:29 (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Otm

― Οὖτις, Monday, 6 August 2018 01:39 (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no it doesnt.

it sets out an posited observable fundamental difference from which other observable distances flow.

in short:

european: might this be the difference

american: what difference why would you pretend theres a difference what are you running from?

american #2: otm (how could anywhere be different)

also

the fact that you have to turn around a frame it as "why would u not admit race as the #1 personal identity characteristic here are some conspiracy theories" as opposed to looking at the possibilities inherent in it being true for any of the others- not because we solved racism but because of any number of other historical causes and cultural differences at whatnot- the fact you have to do that really shows the level of eh obsession at play in the mindset

You can't really discuss continental European racism without talking about how the 'volk' / 'folk' is different from both 'race' and 'ethnicity' and 'people' too for that sake.

I think the idea that black people (for example) haven’t suffered more from European imperialism than ie romanians ... simply isn’t borne out by the history of colonial exploitation ...

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Monday, 6 August 2018 07:54 (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this has never been entered into the record as the method of keeping score - i kean how bizarre, what a fetish- but tell you what- had an irish person done so in any kind of comparative exercise (which ugh) i know who would have popped out to lecture on whataboutery

x-post

Dunno about different, but it subsumes those concepts and adds some more. Volk is an all-consuming "us" that includes genetics and culture and history and food. At the heart of it, it's a sophistical way of saying "us, as opposed to them". Been translating a lot of 20s and 30s German legal philosophy -- it's a wink-nudge disguised as a heavy concept intrinsic to humanity.

the idea that there is one ultimate taxonomy of peoples which has an unavoidable reality that trumps all others and is applicable everywhere just seems ignorant to me. the fact that lots of ppl have a vested interest in remaining oblivious to or denying how white supremacy & anti-black racism structures their society in a way which benefits them does not make its categories fixed or universal. you can see as they've been spread around the world that whiteness and blackness are not stable categories, and that they are not always the difference that makes a difference, even amongst the ~40% of people who aren't asian.

the distinctions between taxonomies of ethnicity and race and religion are not always clear and the meanings of their terms can blur and shift. englishness has been used variously as a religious, ethnic, racial and political category, and has become a nebulous concept which contains elements of each. the belgians differentiated tutsis from hutus in terms of innate character underpinned by ideas of geographic origins, biblical origins, and evolutionary development. one of the things that is most famously striking about the british empire is how sensitive it was to the different forces and orders structuring different societies, and how successfully it embraced & exploited these different systems of division to its advantage. that is not to say that these systems all function in the same way or with the same perniciousness, violence or ideological underpinnings, but they are not always distinct or in competition. the inequalities produced by the british imperial system cannot be adequately understood or addressed through any one lens of difference.

The shadow side of American exceptionalism is the tendency to universalize American sins.

^^^^

― Father Ted in Forkhandles (Tom D.), Monday, August 6, 2018 8:47 AM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Surely the shadow side of American exceptionalism is defined in the overlooking of American sins and any universalising comes from the pushback against it?

Either way, whatever tendency there is to conflate the European and American models of racial taxonomy isn't at all unfounded. They emerged in corollary at a time when European powers held sway over a majority of people on the planet, ruling and organising them according to those principles. The scientific racism throughout the latter half of the last millennium that guided colonial endeavours, helped shape America and is still present in how discourse is carried out today.

The question seems to be more whether intra-European (or intra-Asian, intra-African) conflict based on the socially-constructed idea that Group X is biologically different from Group Y should also be considered racism, given that this, at its worst, it has underpinned the genocide of neighbours.

There's no right or wrong answer but that might be where the division is.

― Wag1 Shree Rajneesh (ShariVari), Monday, August 6, 2018 8:30 AM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In the vast majority of "intra-racial" conflicts I can think of over the last century, evidence of a taxonomy that favours proximity to an idealised whiteness can be found. This is true of the Hutu Tutsi conflict and also underlies why Romanians tend not to automatically pass as white in Britain as you mentioned upthread.

This isn't to say that whiteness is the sole lens through which all racism and racial conflict must be evaluated, but the tools with which we discuss racism are really bad at taking that dynamic into account. So we get the borrowing of "white-supremacy" an already well associated and loaded term to describe the phenomenon at large and the "Racism as power plus prejudice" definition.

I don't think the way these ideas are expressed is perfect (expected as the topic doesn't lend itself to logical categorisation) but I do think they're necessary and bring to the fore concepts that would otherwise be impossible to shorthand.

The lack of a definitive answer here is only a problem as far as people are prepared to point to the use of any one definition as a rejection of all others.

Which is where this tangent came in, I guess. Fully agree that racism against POC is the structuring/underpinning expression of racism in The West and its satellites today. The Nazis existed within living memory tho and their legacy is going strong.

The lack of a definitive answer here is only a problem as far as people are prepared to point to the use of any one definition as a rejection of all others.

― tsrobodo, Monday, 6 August 2018 12:19 (thirty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

everyone thinks that everyone else is doing this is one of the things

I just moved to the UK so I am curious to learn more about Romanians not being viewed as '100%' white. Is it due to the general European tendency to conflate us with the Roma (not that there isn't any overlap, mind you)? Thus far, everyone assumes I'm American due to my Canadian accent but the name does elicit raised eyebrows (hardly a UK-specific phenomenon, though).

That’s the single largest factor. Roma / Romanian are sometimes used interchangeably by people with no understanding of the complexities.

Beyond that, I think there is a tendency to view Romania and Bulgaria as part of a different, more oriental, ‘East’ to Poland, for example - partly because of the association with Turkey, Orthodoxy, etc.

Certainly, in relation to a lot of the Brexit stuff, the press seemed to play up the idea of Romanians and Bulgarians as swarthy and suspicious irrespective of whether they were Roma or not.

German-speaking racist Europe definitely also has an anti-Romanian thing going on that is very separate from their anti-Sinti and Roma thing they also have going on.

SV's explanation seems right to me. romania is seen as just that bit too culturally foreign/asiatic, and it's associated with poverty and criminality, so if you've grown up in canada I don't think those stereotypes would be applied to you. seems telling that the scenes from the borat film that were set in kazakhstan were shot in romania.

nigel farage:

"Any normal and fair-minded person would have a perfect right to be concerned if a group of Romanian people suddenly moved in next door."
...
Mr Farage was asked what the difference was between having a group of Romanian men and German children as neighbours. "You know what the difference is," Mr Farage replied.

Coincidentally, I worked with a Bulgarian woman who was not averse to making outrageous anti-Roma statements - mind you, I worked with a Scottish woman who did the same.

You asked about Europe, the UK being a culturally distinguishable subset of that that doesn't want to be a subset any more. I think if you're going to include native German speakers in your concept of whiteness, you've got to pay attention to their racist concepts. (What's at stake for me here is that smart continental racists are aware of the Anglophone world's focus on color when thinking of race and try to get by and get allies by focussing on white-skinned folks that they consider Untermenschen and trying to play it off as "cultural difference", a dumb racist hack on par with "Islam is not a race".)

Oh, that's hardly a coincidence. No one is more unapologetically racist towards the Roma than Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Serbs, etc., in part (and this is obviously not a valid reason) because they're fed up with being systematically identified as gypsies in Western Europe.

Anyhow, I appreciate the thoughtful answers regarding Brits' perception of Romanians. It sounds worse than in France – partly due to the occasional French appeal to a common 'Latinness' that lessens the xenophobia even as it potentially heightens it towards other groups (and, more broadly, because Brexit has aggravated matters for all non-Brits) but I hope to be proven wrong. Besides, like ogmor said, I assume most interlocutors will focus on my Canadian-ness anyway.

xp

years ago i did some music stuff in bucharest and hung out with a lot of locals - they were mostly liberals/hipster types but one mention of gypsies and it was a really vicious dislike cloaked in all kinds of justifications and distancing.

Yes, the Bulgarian woman I spoke of was very nice, liberal and tolerant, most of her workmates were Afro-Caribbean and I think her boyfriend or ex-boyfriend was Turkish - the Scottish woman was a standard issue embittered bigot.

In the vast majority of "intra-racial" conflicts I can think of over the last century, evidence of a taxonomy that favours proximity to an idealised whiteness can be found. This is true of the Hutu Tutsi conflict and also underlies why Romanians tend not to automatically pass as white in Britain as you mentioned upthread.

This isn't to say that whiteness is the sole lens through which all racism and racial conflict must be evaluated, but the tools with which we discuss racism are really bad at taking that dynamic into account. So we get the borrowing of "white-supremacy" an already well associated and loaded term to describe the phenomenon at large and the "Racism as power plus prejudice" definition.

I don't think the way these ideas are expressed is perfect (expected as the topic doesn't lend itself to logical categorisation) but I do think they're necessary and bring to the fore concepts that would otherwise be impossible to shorthand.

The lack of a definitive answer here is only a problem as far as people are prepared to point to the use of any one definition as a rejection of all others.

― tsrobodo, Monday, August 6, 2018 7:19 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

don't you think that this is kind of a proxy for underlying racial antagonism--conflict distanced from that original antagonism that takes its shape