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

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

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

― dele alli my bookmarks (darraghmac), Monday, August 6, 2018 5:21 AM (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i can as easily argue that the 'obsession' 'fetishization' is the inversion of the one you're describing in me/americans....a refusal to confront the reality of a white european global legacy because american slavery has the arbitrary problem of proximity

'white privilege' feels like a woefully underpowered word for this concept, but the relative economic might of european countries across the board when compared w african ones, even countries like ireland w a historic legacy of English oppression, makes the case for an international awareness of racism essential imo. ireland's GDP relative to population towers over even a wealthy country like nigeria...european countries across the board benefit from the legacy of colonialism. the way ethnic conflicts can reflect the dynamics of larger racial ones seems to me more like an aftershock of this than some kind of unique racial paradigm.

ok

we're v much talking about different things though, when we talk about racism immigrants experience, racism poc in in america experience, and then we move on to "nigeria is poorer than ireland"

it is hopping all over the place and in that regard i think that pretence at a strong and definite unified agreement is practically impossible, and the conversation should follow that accordingly instead of tendency towards either of vehemence or lecture

and again, when you say white european global legacy, white europeans will say "not us mate, you mean the colonial powers, right?"

and they would be justified from their pov for doing so

When the colonial powers disgorged their colonies they did not disgorge the vast wealth they harvested from those colonies and so the power derived from that wealth stayed in Europe and enriched and empowered all post-colonial generations.

Same thing for the USA freeing their slaves. The former slaves were given none of the fruits of their labors, owning scarcely more than the rags they wore as slaves, so their former owners stayed powerful and the former slaves were systematically impoverished and exploited.

The willful blindness to these facts among those benefitting most from this imbalance is not surprising in the least. The Irish can at least plausibly deny any direct benefits from colonialism, but it shouldn't be too hard to make a case for indirect benefits, from riding on the coattails of the old colonial powers.

again the accusatory tone inherent in 'wilful blindness'. if the past few days of discussion have given you no reason to eschew the presumption of sufficient understanding of where the other fella might be coming from such that the projection of american attitudes are still held to be the plumb line here then idk what to say rly.

also, i dont think anybody itt is wilfully or otherwise blind to the damage done to african colonies

again, apart from a rush to claim a score on some rhetorical indefensible shit, where is the link in that to any of what's being discussed

like, forgive me, not for nuttin, etc, but tbph i dont see too many us ilxors worried about africa week in week out in discussions about race. so im very confused as to why its pertinent now?

Yes, Ireland has benefitted so much that its population is still less now than it was 1841, meanwhile England's population has quadrupled in the same period

Ireland is currently being colonized by Amazon Web Services iirc

xp look i rly dont want it to keep coming back to ireland tbh, there was plenty in the point attempted to strongly object to but the scattershot randomness of the yank attack is already a bit of a pain to coherently respond to tbh so best left

Idk where you’re getting this idea I’m trying to “score” points or w/e I’m just trying to articulate an ideology I happen to believe to be true broadly in the world ...

like, forgive me, not for nuttin, etc, but tbph i dont see too many us ilxors worried about africa week in week out in discussions about race. so im very confused as to why its pertinent now?

― dele alli my bookmarks (darraghmac), Monday, August 6, 2018 7:06 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and of course racism as a force transcends any one specific context that’s kind of the *point*. It’s pertinent now bc it’s all connected, it’s all a part of a larger system that connects attitudes in Ireland and England and America and Nigeria and rwanda and Australia

I knew a Turkish woman who hated Roma, but tbf a bunch of them had stolen her house

Lithuanian lady i used to work with always made these comments suggesting if you didn’t have blonde hair and blue eyes you weren’t white

She is a republican but tries to downplay it because she lives in california

But every so often when we’d hear about white people going on killing sprees she would say he doesn’t even look white

Her thing was to ask/find out where the parents were from and if they weren’t from a scandinavian or typically white country (germany, UK, etc) she would say they weren’t white

Really weird lady

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

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Monday, August 6, 2018 8:28 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Can you elaborate please?

I think there are lots of examples of the dynamics of racial antagonism replicating in other areas but as a kind of displaced, diet-racist energy...

That it’s not so much that the Irish are seen as black in England as they’re seen as having greater proximity to blackness than the English ... that this conflict is a proxy battle for anti black sentiment generally

haha what

the best thing about being irish is that we can laugh at stuff like this

(mainly precisely because obv we *dont* suffer the worst effects of any form of discrimination as a rule obv)

you have live knowing yr the same race as Bono though

deej is correct here, this is p basic stuff. the "darker" someone is perceived to be, the more they are discriminated against, and this is true across many (if not all?) cultures, and the connection to perceived "blackness" is p clear. I would hazard a guess that this predates the African slave trade, although that was obviously a huge magnifier of this phenomenon.

haha what

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, August 7, 2018 2:38 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I’m not the one who brought up the oppression of the Irish or whatever I’m just saying a lot of these ostensible “racial” conflicts are just displaced, replicated versions of actual racial antagonism

what is basic stuff? how irish people are treated in england?

the 'basic stuff' in question is what is addressed in the very next sentence.

deej is correct here, this is p basic stuff.

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 7 August 2018 19:47 (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

could u contribute something even once before you next drop this type of condescension

xps

yanks keep stating things that are half related or less related that are such broad statements as to mean literally nothing in context of discussion and then nevertheless remind u racism started with slave trade just to ensure you know they have taken on literally nothing of the points made

which again look its fair enough just drop the elementary school teacher routine because we all think you sound like you are slow tbph the way you just cant get beyond...well....elementary school history

well...some of the posts are good. unrelated to the thrust of the thread but not complete write-offs tbf

tbf its hard to tell if your obtuseness is deliberate or not, thus the schoolmarmery

deems afaict your only contribution to this thread is analyzing deej's post to see if they match up with the thread title or the dimensions of the conversation in your head, it's v tiresome

and the yank contributions are to remind you the only lens is american

its very tiresome

the 'basic stuff' in question is what is addressed in the very next sentence.

right - which isn't what was said.

most of this thread is discussion breaking out and then being interrupted by people who post fairly simplistic expressions of agreement with each other based on a doctrinal shared understanding of words for the purposes of one particular strain of activism.

quite frequently these interjections necessitate dismissing people's actual lived experiences, or attempts to discuss those, in a way which feels alien to the strain of activism.

at a certain point it might be worth, for the purposes of experiment, thinking 'could i be wrong here? is there something i don't know about this?'

just throwing that out there.

I took deems and Tracer's combined "haha what" and "the best thing about being irish is that we can laugh at stuff like this" to be a repudiation of Deej's restatement of conventional wisdom about relative perceived "blackness" corresponding to levels of discrimination. But maybe deems was just laughing about the implication that the Irish suffer/suffered discrimination at the hand of the English...? This is the most generous reading I can think of, but it doesn't really make sense.

its possible that the haha what and the ensuing line from myself was a reaction to the confident assertion that irish-english conflict was just a what was the phrase "a proxy for anti-black sentiment generally"

its just possible man that that is a ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous thing to say in any context and the more so in the thread in which weve been fingerwagged and been fingerwagging about americans insisting that their post-slavery-informed pov is the only way to think about whiteness

The need to weigh every single instance of historical discrimination on a preset, purportedly universal colour scale is just… myopically American? Unless we take 'white' and 'black' to be metaphysical, allegorical categories, i.e. the eternal oppressor and the oppressed (let's not).

there's the obvious religious component with the Irish-English conflict, but I thought we were talking about the racial component, and the racial component usually boils down to some sentiment such that one group is more "primitive", "bestial", "barbaric" less-than-human, and historically across cultures that is connected to perceived darkness of skin-tone, ie, blackness, and like I said I suspect this predates the slave trade, it's certainly prevalent in Roman and Greek histories, for example.

xp

obviously my point was too obtuse huh

pomenitul otm

its unfair to narrow d40s and tsorobodos posts down to just that, i will say that

but theres nothing in that sub-conversation to address either. just two ppl agreeing that the american view must be correct.