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

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.

Also, how was the identification of moral or bestial darkness with skin-tone a given in Antiquity? If anything, one could point towards a vaguely Mediterranean sense of 'civilised' superiority over against, say, the Northern 'barbarians'. What mattered above all was belonging to the Empire, and Roman slavery was not grounded in the rather anachronistic notion of 'race'. We may speak of a proto-racism, perhaps, insofar as whatever ethnic group is seemingly closest to the Empire's real or imagined origins was (and still is) indeed likelier to maintain power, but I fail to see how this is fundamentally, universally a problem of black vs. white skin colour – unless, once again, we resort to changeless, archetypal categories, in which case we might as well pull out our signed copies of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.

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.

Have you ever seen an Irishman? I think Ireland's little problems w/ England started sometime in the 12th century, anyway about 400 years before there was any religious aspect in play.

no I've never seen an Irishman, they are as mythical to me as this mysterious Jordan Peterson fellow

I wouldn't say it was a "given" in Antiquity but ancient views/opinions of their foes in Carthage and Asia Minor spring to mind

I regret ever saying we were a day from solving this

i did much the same thing on the last day of a three-week trip out of ijmuiden once, one hour out of home harbour and the boat heaving with whiting and i declared it a total success and within three seconds the engine gave out, twelve hours adrift and every man blamed me

witing, sorry

freudian slip

freudian slipway cmon man

"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much." Heart of Darkness.

written a long time after ppl starting beating each other over the head with rocks, ymp. well past the point at which weve suggested that current US perspective year-zero of racial strife/whiteness origin began, which- look, in my mind anyway- is the main bone of contention at present itt

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

― dele alli my bookmarks (darraghmac), Tuesday, August 7, 2018 2:56 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think it was kind of a nod and wink when nakh created the thread. It comes off as really odd to me when people not in north america, mostly those in the twitter hordes who somehow think they're part of the american political right even though they've never left sweden, buy into the bullshit hierarchy we've created on these shores

honestly, "whiteness" in the usa has very little to do with europe or any of the social animosities there, unless it's coming from someone who's an outlier or recent immigrant. it's a marker of assimilation, or perceived assimilation. and it's not even a one-way assimilation where speaking american-accented english and conforming to certain stereotypes makes you "white" because a number of groups that were immigrants at some point had their foods and some traditions pulled into mainstream american culture

people who visit the usa or immigrate but are from countries where there's an assimilated ethnic population get coded as "white but foreign". some groups are perpetually at the fringe and code as "white" in some areas but not others. finally, there are some genetic characteristics (skin color being the obvious one) that can make people unable to be coded as "white" due to institutional bias

the concepts exist elsewhere to differing extents but it's a dynamic that's completely different in the uk, ireland, continental europe

I think there are other lenses -- every area has its own -- but the nuances are so different that the only commonalities are groups that are universally *not* white

i'm not aware of much racial description of Carthaginians in Classical literature nor of Classical racial slurs that don't originate out of cultural difference but i'd love to see some pointers in that direction

Worth a read: https://newrepublic.com/article/106497/rethinking-other-antiquity-erich-gruen

:-0

beyond the grave we're still dancing on nakhs strings u say!

lookit.

ill bump a formorian thread and we'll leave ye all to it. g'luck.

https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html

food for thought

White – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.

Heh.

"cultural difference" is a soft way of demonizing The Other and esp. back during the era of the Roman Empire helped to delineate the Civilized (Greek/Roman purity) from Barbarians (everyone else)

something about those 1997 OMB standards on race have horrible resonances with the DSM

https://www.census.gov/data-tools/demo/race/MREAD_1790_2010.html

this is even more of a clusterfuck. hover over the specific decade and you get some of the rationale

it mostly comes down to "what group has an active wave of immigration or we think is distinct for some reason"

having koreans and people from the indian subcontinent in one group is a total mess unless you throw it under a socioeconomic/assimilation lens, and then it's... incredibly clumsy

NV otm

xp to nv how bizzarre

the Civilized (Greek/Roman purity) from Barbarians (everyone else)

the Roman Empire was massively diverse with few or no racial/ethnic barriers to citizenship by the mid 2nd century CE

citizenship didn't guarantee acceptance, and many exploited mercenary groups and the like famously were not accepted as "Real Romans" and took their anger out on sacking cities and shit

I think a lot of those sackers were kind of blond and blue eyed.

Nell Painter talks about the white/black binary as a specific product of slavery, the US and "Enlightenment" Europe iirc. i'm not sure it's in the interests of anti-racism to try to universalize that binary or to wave away its political and economic roots

kudos to the Roman Empire on having a shitload of Emperors who weren't "real Romans", wherever that idea came from. must've been pretty awkward.

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

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Tuesday, August 7, 2018 7:30 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ahh. I mean yeah as far as any kind of exoticism is defined in relation to a normalised whiteness, there are tons of avenues where it plays out without having to engage that tension

haha well they aren't unique in that regard. that whole ancient practice of recruiting/raising rulers from foreign ethnicities is kind of fascinating.

xp

cough windsors cough

there was a definite thing in some ancient and medieval city states of getting a kind of "neutral" in as ruler to keep the warring classes in balance

i'm just being sarcy about Rome tho, it is famously multicultural throughout the Empire, i don't even know why i'm arguing the point

America is famously multicultural too

cough windsors cough

cough plantagenets tudors stuarts cough

mostly not *invited* in tbf

I was thinking more of these dudes, but there are lots of examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamluk

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).

― pomenitul, Tuesday, August 7, 2018 8:22 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

See, I would see interpret the idea that any such colour scale is an American invention as myopically American.

It didn't come exclusively from the Atlantic slave trade or Slavery. It was borne out of a nascent global modernity. The way we continue to talk about race the way we do despite it having no bearing on how we scientifically understand human beings to work, was set into play by the (primarily European) thinkers of late renaissance to victorian period.

yr first sentence is not clear there

lets try again then,

Assuming that the colour scale, has to be an American invention affords the American conception of race a uniqueness that is entirely unearned.

The idea that this dynamic is alien to Europe or wherever else is completely baffling to me.

has anyone said that, though? the specific "white ppl" stereotypes that are prevalent on the american-centric parts of the internet are american-centric

that doesn't seem like a revelation

I think it was kind of a nod and wink when nakh created the thread. It comes off as really odd to me when people not in north america, mostly those in the twitter hordes who somehow think they're part of the american political right even though they've never left sweden, buy into the bullshit hierarchy we've created on these shores

honestly, "whiteness" in the usa has very little to do with europe or any of the social animosities there, unless it's coming from someone who's an outlier or recent immigrant. it's a marker of assimilation, or perceived assimilation. and it's not even a one-way assimilation where speaking american-accented english and conforming to certain stereotypes makes you "white" because a number of groups that were immigrants at some point had their foods and some traditions pulled into mainstream american culture

people who visit the usa or immigrate but are from countries where there's an assimilated ethnic population get coded as "white but foreign". some groups are perpetually at the fringe and code as "white" in some areas but not others. finally, there are some genetic characteristics (skin color being the obvious one) that can make people unable to be coded as "white" due to institutional bias

the concepts exist elsewhere to differing extents but it's a dynamic that's completely different in the uk, ireland, continental europe

I think there are other lenses -- every area has its own -- but the nuances are so different that the only commonalities are groups that are universally *not* white

― mh, Tuesday, August 7, 2018 9:18 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well you have for one if I'm reading the bolded correctly.

And its case in point that for the people you're describing no leap is required for them to internalise a hierarchy that by your reasoning should distant
and otherworldly to them.

Nothing you've described about how whiteness is coded in America isn't also true of Europe.

handily obscured by "I'm not white, I'm FRENCH!" (or whatever) thinking in Europe.