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

the irish are backward about this kind of thing

Did you end up reading that New Yorker piece ogmor posted D-40?

"the irish" oh nice xp

you a mate of d40s school of collective responsibility are you?

what would you like to happen to #allirish now that youve a crime theyre all guilty of

this is exactly how the brits (who are remember, the progenitor nation of wite america) justified an gorta mór

can't blame it all on the brits, there were a bunch of Frenchies too, fyi

all colonisers look the same to me

Yeah how could I confuse an Ireland born catholic for an Irish person

.......

Neeson is American

It’s definitely correct to call him an Irishman tho

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n03/musab-younis/bitch-nation

thanks for your expertise wins i clearly have no idea how to categorise irishness

for instance i never knew that irish just means catholic british i mean i never knew that

Not Irish, Irishman. There’s a scorsese film coming out that will clear this up for you

My family is literally half Cavanagh’s I’m not getting shamed for being insufficiently reverent of the “Irish race”

neeson is british fyi

Classic piece of jiggery-pokery there.

if you knew the history of the cavanagh clan you wouldn't be so sure of yourself

thread text now is an example of thread title

Most ILX threads are tbf.

In the 17th century Brian Kavanagh fought for the House of Stuart in Scotland and was described as the tallest man in King James' army.

My family is literally half Cavanagh’s I’m not getting shamed for being insufficiently reverent of the “Irish race”

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Monday, 4 February 2019 18:47 (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol ok ill stop

will ye have a drink btw

Only person with thoughts on Irishness in America worth reading in this context is Liam Hogan.
https://twitter.com/Limerick1914

One of the harder things for me to realize -- not morally hard, just hard to actually comprehend -- is how many white people really do think of themselves as "white people," as an identity, a tribe. I can't relate to it -- I know I'm white, I'm aware of what it confers in terms of privilege and power, but it's not some affirmative part of my self-conception -- but it is actually a real thing for a lot of people. They may not even realize it themselves until they feel it threatened. They might deny that that's what's motivating them, what's being tapped into, but it's clearly a big part of the picture.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, July 18, 2019 4:28 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I hope tipsy mothra doesn't mind me reposting his comment here (not suggesting that this is an example of that-thing-white-ppl-do-when-they-disparage-'white ppl', but this thread seemed appropriate because it's where ilx has discussed how white people conceive of white people/whiteness?)

do you think that white people in the us become increasingly aware of their own whiteness as a larger % of the US population becomes non-white and enters positions/jobs that were previously exclusively/overwhelmingly white, or did this always make up a significant part of their identity and it's only becoming more obvious now because their supremacy is under threat?
it's a consensus opinion on the left that white people should be more aware of their own whiteness, that being able to go through life not consciously aware of your own race is an example of white privilege and that not challenging this entrenches racial inequality, and that if you are white this influences every part of your life/experiences/thinking etc, from the biggest events in your life to the smallest everyday interactions - there's not part of your existence that is somehow 'outside' whiteness - once you accept that, how can you not think of your membership of the group 'white people' as a crucial part of your identity/self-conception? and once you think that then your only choices are white shame or white pride, indifference is no longer an option, thinking of yourself as an individual whose identity is not tied to 'whiteness' is no longer an option? it seems likely that most white people will choose pride over shame because it's more pleasurable to feel pride than shame? maybe you can have whiteness be a key part of your identity and feel pride that you are one of the 'good' white people, that you're an ally who fights racial inequality, but other people would argue that 'whiteness' is inherently problematic, there's is now way that 'whiteness' can exist without racial inequality- whiteness is not something that must be eliminated, there's not a good, respectful non-racist version of whiteness?

so this idea that one can be aware of what being white confers in terms of privilege and power, but it not be an affirmative part of one's self-conception or identity is something I don't feel like I really understand - how can it not become your identity once you are aware of it? is there a way to be appropriately aware of your white privilege without 'identifying' with whiteness in the bad way?

it's a consensus opinion on the left that white people should be more aware of their own whiteness, that being able to go through life not consciously aware of your own race is an example of white privilege and that not challenging this entrenches racial inequality, and that if you are white this influences every part of your life/experiences/thinking etc, from the biggest events in your life to the smallest everyday interactions - there's not part of your existence that is somehow 'outside' whiteness

Disagree that this is a consensus opinion fwiw

consensus opinion on a certain strand of the left maybe, a consensus opinion in ilx politics threads, certainly not a concensus opionion in the world at large.

us ilx politics threads

I remember reading something around the time of Obama's election in 2008 discussing this question of why Obama was managed to succeed with white voters in a way that previous black US politicians hadn't, and people had suggested it was because Obama was somehow "less black" than his predecessors, but this article argued that it wasn't that Obama was "less black" but that he didn't make white voters uncomfortably aware of their own whiteness? obviously he did make a lot of white voters aware of their own whiteness and evidence of that is easy to find, but I feel like there's something in that?

It's possible to acknowledge and take responsibility for the broader social implications of being a 'white person' while also choosing to discard altogether the (ultimately self-selecting) notion of 'whiteness' as part of one's self-identity.

how though

and what do you mean 'ultimately self-selecting'?

"is there a way to be appropriately aware of your white privilege without 'identifying' with whiteness in the bad way?"

one can say, "I recognize that there are those who see me as white and consciously or subconsciously give me preferences due to that perception but I do not believe in dividing people by the color of their skin and refuse to assert this identity myself and fight against those who do categorize other humans by it." thereby acknowledging white privilege but not the validity of the identity group called whiteness. the rub is that i suspect many ppl desire the shame aspect of whiteness (i am white and I feel shame) and will see disavowals of this identity (aka "I am not white, though I recognize I am seen that way by others - but I do not define myself by my skin pigmentation") as an unfair way of eliding this shame. So you can't please everyone but this is internally consistent afaict.

Obama was somehow "less black" than his predecessors

gabbneb schooled us all when he revealed Obama's basic appeal to midwesterners because of his German ancestry

er "was due to his German ancestry"

I’m definitely white, no matter what ancestry.com turns up

xposts I think at least part of it is not just utilizing white guilt as a crutch that allows a person to justify exploiting your privilege because they feel real bad about doing so.

Like assuming you see 'whiteness' as a pernicious construct, what aspect of it are you identifying with such that you still need to define yourself on those terms?

(A grammatical nightmare, there, but you hopefully get the gist.)

Are you asking me? I do not identify as white at all and the construct does not resonate with me personally. I still recognize that some might treat me differently because I have light pigmentation but my primary identity group and construction of in/out groupness predates whiteness as an identity, and contains within it many members who are not white. Trying to foist a white identity on me, even if it comes attached with some guilt trip that supposedly strips the bigotry elements out of this identity function, is still racial imperialism and still reifies these categories in which I find no validity.

Nah, I'm slow and was responding to soref.

i bet you get a taxi quicker tho

xpost

xxp to mordy

but it makes no sense to deny 'the validity of the identity group called whiteness' just because you or I don't believe in dividing people by the colour of their skin when the world obviously does divide people by the colour of their skin - what you or I any other individual may be believe is essentially irrelevant compared to that fact - so the identity group called whiteness is 'valid'?
if you define 'the identity group called whiteness' as 'that group of ppl who experience white privilege' then acknowledging white privilege and acknowledging the validity of 'the identity group called whiteness' are one and the same thing

but as categorize

as per the very post you replied to "I still recognize that some might treat me differently because I have light pigmentation..." xp to tracer

to soref: "the world" is not the world.

Like assuming you see 'whiteness' as a pernicious construct, what aspect of it are you identifying with such that you still need to define yourself on those terms?

when I talk about 'identifying' with it, I don't mean that I choose or want to identify with it necessarily, but that it defines me and is therefore a part of my identity whether I want it to be or not

in what way is it part of your identity?

for instance "i can get a taxi quicker than a black person" says something sad about the society in which i live but tells me nothing important about myself

As an aside, it often fascinates me to think of the court case of Bhagat Singh Thind. There was something almost touching in his sincere belief that the SCOTUS of 1923 would recognize the obvious-to-him 'whiteness' of upper-caste Hindus.

xp but there's no 'me' that can be separated from 'society', all I am (and all anyone is) is the sum of a billion little facts like "i can get a taxi quicker than a black person" (or "I can't get a taxi as quickly as a white person" or whatever), I guess? I only exist in terms of how I relate to the world and society, there's not a 'real me' outside of that

Hopefully there’s more to your identity than the privileges you receive in a racist society but if there isn’t I can understand why one might be drawn to identify as those privileges

Mordy OTM ITT

soref, personal identity is largely self-selecting and malleable, at least to the extent that we acknowledge it as such. Yes, there's some messiness inasmuch as it's often influenced by e.g. our demographics, others' notions of us, etc., but we have an astounding degree of latitude in defining who we are. That doesn't mean it's necessarily easy, particularly to the extent that expressions of self-identity clash with societal norms and whatnot, but it's certainly possible.

This book just came across my radar recently, looks interesting:

https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Whiteness-Making-American-Working/dp/1844671453/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=wages+of+whiteness&qid=1563471609&s=books&sr=1-1

In fact he argues that the emerging industrial worker of the mid to late 19th century who was low skilled and often times a recent immigrant from Ireland or Germany had an even more powerful interest in distancing themselves from the degradation that was associated with Blacks and the jobs that they performed. While this wold seem counter intuitive, Roediger argues that many unskilled white workers gained a type of social legitimacy from separating themselves from non-white labor and gaining for themselves the status of being seen as White American workers. While the beginning of the book is a little dense as the author tries to tease out the changing meaning of different terms for labor and racial categories in the pre and post Civil War period, this only sets the stage for more concrete example in the second half when he examines the experiences of Irish immigrant laborers in the later chapters. This is and interesting book in that it examines race from the perspective of what it means to be White and the social implications of that. It reminds the reader that the social categorization of race is dependent on opposition and that this opposition is in no way a natural or concrete boundary but rather a a dynamic social construct that all Americans should be aware of.