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

You don’t think there’s a better word for ppl who discriminate against Catholics than “racist”?

howzabout "bigots"?

The year is 2251. White Genocide has eliminated all trace of the Irish Race. All...save one

In the ruins of South Boston, one Irish dad struggles to feed his family as war threatens from all sides. One Irishman...will take a stand.

This Summer, Mark Wahlberg is Sole Dad O'Brien

— Jeff Van Fundme (@lbourgie) August 11, 2018

an oasis of mild lol in a desert of

So his family isn't Irish?

Soledad O'Brien - Mexican Irish.

Xxxp Ha + ha xp = 2 has out of 5

#peaktwittercomedy

The Lone Irish starring Atahualpa is a tale of one man’s race to rescue his entire village. But will his very race survive the horses trodding on the rich, bloody veins of the earth he calls home?

[Liam Neeson voice]

as the token irish person to be told how to irish itt pls no more discussion of irish

No ones telling irish ppl how to irish bud

☘️

bedad, deems, you're only irish because you were born there and lived there most all your life. you never had to work at it like the american irish have to.

an oasis of mild lol in a desert of

― the Joao looked at Jonny (Noodle Vague), Saturday, August 11, 2018 1:56 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

brits deflecting self awareness

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/08/11/donald-trump-charlottesville-anniversary-condemn-all-racism/965715002/

yes but you see he realizes that only those who have both prejudice and power are racists

the thing is D-40, and i'm gonna rise to this once and then promise myself i'll keep out of this thread, i have no problem with self-awareness, no problem acknowledging the global structures of racism, no problem with accepting my own complicity and privilege within those structures, and no problem listening to people's experience of being victims within those structures and trying to understand how i can work to resist and change my own complicity.

but i've got a massive problem, embarrassingly so, with being spoken to like i'm a racist 5 year-old by somebody who believes they're the keeper of the eternal changeless truth of all politics and language and is pathologically incapable of analyzing their own beliefs and how they discuss them with other human beings

Deej as explained I was more amused than offended by your post but I could have taken offense because "if you guys still see 'racism' as 'frothing at the mouth' you don't actually understand what racism is" is a pretty dumb and condescending thing to say to a non-white person. You've homed in on that phrase despite the fact that it was pretty obviously exaggerated for effect and that I might actually have a more nuanced definition of racism that acknowledges it might take other forms as well.

One of the reasons you keep running into trouble on this thread is that you keep trying to explain racism to people who have experienced it, or whose families have. At the very worst you are effectively saying that some of those lived experiences can't actually be racism because they don't fit into a framework of yours that people keep pointing out is inadequate.

At this particular moment in the UK there are white people who are being mysteriously turned down for jobs for which they are perfectly well qualified, whose homes and businesses are being vandalised, who are suspected of being terrorist sympathisers, and would be repatriated by far right groups in the unlikely event that they were to attain a degree of power. All for no reason other than where they're from. If that isn't racism then it definitely looks like it to me, it would be accepted as such under the UN definition of racism, and I don't think that acknowledging that devalues the racism experienced by black and Asian people.

The UK has never really made a clear distinction between race, nationality and ethnicity - socially or legally. On the census, ‘white British’ and ‘black British’ are separate ‘ethnicities’, ‘racial hatred’ laws specifically cover ethnicity and nationality alongside race (largely because nobody can unpick the precise differences imo), if you ask most people to self-describe their ‘ethnicity’ they’ll tell you their race or the nationality of their parents/grandparents, etc. If you ask white people to tell you their race, there’s probably an even chance they will say ‘British’ rather than ‘white’. It may be incorrect in the abstract but that’s absolutely how it’s used in practice. You can be a British national, be ‘culturally British’, etc, but the idea of being ‘ethnically British’ is a deeply loaded and exclusionary term and not something that is straightforwardly conferred by speaking English, drinking tea, watching Inspector Morse, etc.

No-one even knows what 'British' means, especially in England.

Semi-relevant

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/opinion/sunday/speak-for-yourself.html

Agree with that. There are times when the "as a" posturing becomes so extreme that I wonder why the writer then insists on a byline. If speaking as a member of a group is that important, the op-ed should just be credited to "A _____".

i enjoyed that column and was considering posting tl race thread

Drawing attention to certain identities you have is often a natural way of drawing attention to the contours of your beliefs, values or concerns.

i wish this line of thought had been developed more

like how do you do that properly without sliding into asserting authority

but i've got a massive problem, embarrassingly so, with being spoken to like i'm a racist 5 year-old by somebody who believes they're the keeper of the eternal changeless truth of all politics and language and is pathologically incapable of analyzing their own beliefs and how they discuss them with other human beings

― the Joao looked at Jonny (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 12 August 2018 12:03 (six hours ago) Permalink

2 days ago:

Itt i keep feeling like im getting accused of thinking im better than everyone or thinking i have access to 'the truth' better than them. if it helps the debate at all, i don't feel that way, but i DO feel like this effort to marginalize my perspective as being wholly based on some american discourse 1. is ignorant about this argument's origins in the first place, but more importantly 2. don't actually understand what arguments are being made.

I think it’s *interesting* how my side is the one seen as coming from this condescending place when there hasn’t been a moment when it didn’t feel like I was being ganged up on or talked down to give or take a post by shake or matt

One of the reasons you keep running into trouble on this thread is that you keep trying to explain racism to people who have experienced it, or whose families have. At the very worst you are effectively saying that some of those lived experiences can't actually be racism because they don't fit into a framework of yours that people keep pointing out is inadequate.

― Matt DC, Sunday, August 12, 2018 7:22 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I literally don’t care if white people are telling me they’ve experienced racism and I’m not being sensitive to it. Lol. It’s not a “framework of mine”. This is pretty commonly understood, by lots of people ! And I never assumed I was only talking to white people or they haven’t suffered from racism But 99% of what keeps coming up in arguments with me feels like efforts to deflect or argue any kind of discrimination or conflict is a result of racism, to nuance racism into being about literally any kind of hatred or bigotry when it’s really not that. As was written in that piece I linked upthread, race and ethnicity are asymmetrical concepts, and conflating the two is something conservative politicians who want to downplay the significance of racial discrimination.

Something *done by

I don’t care if “frothing at the mouth” is hyperbolic the point is thats Crash the Oscar Winning Movie understanding of race to assume racism is a matter of people’s anger or individual moral choices instead of the overarching system. There was no frothing at the mouth or anger behind my conflation if the Sudanese and Rwandans; yet that’s racism and someone refusing to vote for Kennedy because they hated Catholics is not.

I’m sorry to you and noodle vague if saying these things somehow seems like being talked down to like 5 year olds (?) but I’m not going to defer to your worldview if I think you’re arguing from a POV that misrepresents it misunderstands what is being said

I think it’s *interesting* how my side is the one seen as coming from this condescending place when there hasn’t been a moment when it didn’t feel like I was being ganged up on or talked down to give or take a post by shake or matt

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), 12. august 2018 20:38 (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is one of the greatest things ever written.

For the record I also think it's 'interesting' that I'm the one who is constantly accused of not knowing what I'm talking about with regards to US politics when not I day goes by where I don't feel like I'm smarter than everyone else on here. So how do you all account for that, eh?

Serious question, D-40. If the sources, mechanisms and effects of racism and a non-racist bigotry were more or less identical, would it matter to you as much that one of them is racism, while the other is not? iow, if a particular institutionalized bigotry operates exactly like institutionalized racism, what would be the harm in conflating them, other than an imprecision of language?

fwiw D I regretted losing my cool about 20 seconds after posting that but I do feel like this is a circular clusterfuck where we're talking past each other and I'm gonna shut up because I've got nothing I want to add to this specific convo

Serious question, D-40. If the sources, mechanisms and effects of racism and a non-racist bigotry were more or less identical, would it matter to you as much that one of them is racism, while the other is not? iow, if a particular institutionalized bigotry operates exactly like institutionalized racism, what would be the harm in conflating them, other than an imprecision of language?

― A is for (Aimless), Sunday, August 12, 2018 2:09 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The sources mechanisms and effects are not the same and they don’t operate exactly alike so I reject the framing of the question

For the record I also think it's 'interesting' that I'm the one who is constantly accused of not knowing what I'm talking about with regards to US politics when not I day goes by where I don't feel like I'm smarter than everyone else on here. So how do you all account for that, eh?

― Frederik B, Sunday, August 12, 2018 2:06 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

and he has issues with the self-awareness of others

oh a wonderful mother, definitely

I don’t care if “frothing at the mouth” is hyperbolic the point is thats Crash the Oscar Winning Movie understanding of race to assume racism is a matter of people’s anger or individual moral choices instead of the overarching system.

This wasn't my assumption and I don't know why you keep assuming I don't already know and understand this.

deej i am positive that matt and pretty much everyone else itt knows that modern-day racism is part of the deep structuring of capitalist society, and not just a matter of individual animus. at the risk of mattsplaining. and i certainly know that American racism is the legacy of slavery, and that even, say, third-generation Indian migrants in Boston face consequences in their personal and professional lives that are a product of the endless, malignant reverberations of it, even though they're not black. i doubt anyone in this thread would disagree with any of that. right? sorry if all that seems basic but it feels like we keep getting hung up on it.

i do think it's important to recognise and understand the specificity of American-style racism, and the ideological project that constructed it as an essential component of slavery. and i think you're right that that project was so malignant, and America so influential, that American racism has burst its bounds and is ordering the practices of institutions and individuals all over the globe. but let's not forget to be good intersectionalists - there's all sorts of other non-American racism that people get to be fucked over by as well - with its own specificity and historical grounding in other ideological projects

maybe i'm wrong but i feel like it's important to see

lol i forgot to erase that last bit

new board desc obv

Irish isn’t a race it’s an ethnicity

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

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), 4. august 2018 12:58 (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), 4. august 2018 21:36 (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), 4. august 2018 22:19 (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), 5. august 2018 00:55 (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I just want this thread to stop at this point, but D-40, this is literally your first four posts in this thread, so you have no business now complaining that people are unfairly calling you condescending. Try just and take a moment and consider that in fact people are 'ganging up' on you because it's really really obvious to everyone that you have in fact been wrong, condescending and annoying.

How have I been “wrong”??

The sources mechanisms and effects are not the same and they don’t operate exactly alike

Glad to have your assurances on that. A bit of elaboration would be welcome, since you seem to have analyzed this already to your own satisfaction.

btw, by 'sources' I do not mean historical accidents, but rather social or personal sources which tend to create and enforce bigotry. By 'mechanisms' I mean both formal and informal, and both micro and macro social structures.

Of course, societies differ quite widely, as do the targets of racism and bigotry within those societies, so it would not be pertinent to differentiate between how racism and bigotry operate within one society to dismiss the possible similarities between the operations of racism and bigotry in all societies.

Tracer fwiw I see nothing wrong with your post but none of the posts I’ve responded to in this thread have made that particular point; or in pointing out that America has a unique racial history they simultaneously minimized their own, or suggested that the framework of an overlying racial system was the pure product of that American racial history, that it had no basis in ie colonialism or enlightenment thought

I’ve never argued america’s racial history is not in some ways distinct, but itt those “distinctions” were brought up less to point to differing ways of dealing with race than to dismiss the notion that racial issues external to the United States were any different than ethnic conflicts or anti catholic bigotry or etc

Fred I’m not responding to tone police bs like ppl weren’t being just as flip in response & also bc the point of this convo imho isn’t to validate me but to gain attention for a contested point

in pointing out that America has a unique racial history they simultaneously minimized their own

Do you have any examples of this?

(I'm not saying it didn't it happen, I just can't remember it happening)

(also I'm not sure the second part of your sentence is true either)

How about any reference to an American “obsession” with race?

I'm not sure that minimizes racism in their own nations - at this point it might be salient to point that that there are indeed people from different nations and cultures on this thread who seem to be being lumped together as 'European' who, in a very European way you might argue, don't seem to be arguing the same thing.

ace and ethnicity are asymmetrical concepts, and conflating the two is something conservative politicians who want to downplay the significance of racial discrimination.

FWIW making the distinction between the two is something right-wing politicians in Europe do sometimes, as I noted upthread, to downplay the significance of ethnic discrimination.

I don't think D-40 is wrong -I think the point that he* and others are making is right, that there is an underlying / overlying framework that distorts and poisons social conditions around the world and that it is distinct from ethnicity-based bigotry, that these are two different things with different sources and so on. This racism is, not seems to me, roughly equivalent to the situationist idea of "the spectacle", we're all just inside it and damaged by it, but the point of it is to damage some people more than others.

Where I disagree with D-40 is that I believe there is another definition of racism, one that is not the definition of a cultural condition but instead a definition of a set of stated or unstated beliefs and behaviours which enforce bigotry and discrimination. As I noted upthread, this is a recognised, viable and in-use definition. Just saying "that's not racism", like this definition never existed or has been abandoned, isn't enough. As a result it wouldn't be right to say that using this definition is "nuancing racism" as if it's an unhelpful re-framing of the word to minimise the effects of the cultural-condition definition.

I would really like to hear an argument that was "OK people have been using the word racism for years to include ethnic discrimination but I think that's harmful and should stop and here's why" - I could be persuaded for sure. "You guys don't even know the meanings of the words you use" probably wouldn't be the most helpful starting point for that discussion.

*(? apols if that's not the right pronoun)

I have no problem with the assertion that Britain has a unique racial history and as a country it is perhaps uniquely bad at acknowledging the more shameful episodes of its history. France and Belgium may be as well but I don't have enough first hand experience to judge.

You can tell by the way that slavery is seen as a shameful thing that happened in American history but Britain's role tends to be soft pedalled or just not really talked about. But there are plenty of other examples.

The fact that Britain's racial makeup and British racism (which is pretty difficult to ignore at this particular point in time) are so tied up in Empire means that things play out differently to the US and for that matter much of Europe. But its also a reason why I'm uncomfortable with anti-Irish bigotry being excluded from any definition of racism.

i went to my neighborhood dive bar on 9/11 and a tourist i had never seen before tried to fight me. he was restrained by nearly the entire bar, since i was a regular, though he was not 86’d

he was irish (as in visiting the us from ireland for a week)

about a year after that i was accosted outside a club i frequented by some navy seal type dudes (not sure if actually seals proper or force recon or what). they wanted not to fight but simply to brag about how many people they’d killed who looked just like me.

if you guessed they were african american you guessed right

discus