rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

fyi there's no good youtube video of the Wayne Brady question from the Chapelle "Negrodamus" sketch

xposts

don't think asian americans are viewed by white people as white

they need more tumblrs

people from North India and Pakistan are Aryans (can't get more white than that, at least if you're Hitler). not that that makes much difference to yer average redneck.

Sharia vs. Santorum-approved theocracy seems like narcissism of small differences to me but sounds like total end of the world hysteria to our local zealots. "We're cool with the subjugation of women but God forbid they have to cover their hair, that's insanity!".

I don't think non-european immigrants end up unassimilable tho! every time I hang out at the queens mall I gawk in amazement at how people from every country in the world can turn into the same annoying american teenagers.

there is def a 'whiteness' and a 'white-ness' and maybe the first can eventually exist outside of the second, but I think it's simplifying things to say that, idk, some jewish or italian guy who could pass as a wasp due to the way he looks isn't different from someone who never, ever will be able to 'pass as a wasp'.

come on guys, whiteness in america means "absence of race." nobody gives a fuck that my kashmiri peasant relatives are "Aryan" according to some defunct wack racial typology

i do

i kinda miss the days when theocracy was anathema to American Catholics across the board ... b/c of the shit that JFK had to go through, plus a general sense of self-preservation (even now, this country is still largely Protestant and an American theocracy would most likely be a Protestant Evangelical one).

I don't think non-european immigrants end up unassimilable tho! every time I hang out at the queens mall I gawk in amazement at how people from every country in the world can turn into the same annoying american teenagers.

i don't mean unassimilated culturally! the swarthy hairy/hijab-ed yemenis on the corner are assimilated culturally! i mean assimilated as white. at some point cartoons of irish americans made them look like apes. eventually that stopped happening, because there were other people to caricature as apes.

i mean, even now Tim Tebow is more likely to be the First American Ayatollah than Rick Santorum (however Santorum may pander to the evangelicals).

Tim Tebow? no.

"We're cool with the subjugation of women but God forbid they have to cover their hair, that's insanity!".

― joygoat, Tuesday, February 28, 2012 11:46 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the selective appearance of feminism in conservative rhetoric whenever islam comes into view is seriously the most annoying thing

again I think there are certain limitations to 'assimilated as white' that come inherent w/ the way people look.

like I'm half arab-jewish and am a bit darker than 'average white person' and my dad is quite certainly 'not white'. but I pass as white. mostly.

and if my dad were from africa, that would not be the case.

I guess I'd rather have the Catholic theocracy than the Protestant as there would be a higher probability of having booze around, though either would still allow for ham on Easter.

the selective appearance of feminism in conservative rhetoric whenever islam comes into view is seriously the most annoying thing

it's second-most annoying behind selectively quoting passages from the Qu'ran without textual or cultural context

again I think there are certain limitations to 'assimilated as white' that come inherent w/ the way people look.

yeah, sure. i think you're wrong, though, that that's all it's about when it comes to say, asian americans. there's a whole unstable incoherent mythology that comes into play.

for the way this has worked historically see walter benn michaels article "the difference between white men and white men."

I don't think that's all it's about! I just think it's not something you can completely discount.

like I'm half arab-jewish and am a bit darker than 'average white person' and my dad is quite certainly 'not white'. but I pass as white. mostly.

and if my dad were from africa, that would not be the case.

you have no idea if this is true or not

and in the case of the yemenis on the corner these days, it's less about their skin color (some of them look "white," some don't) than about the fact that the women are wearing headscarves.

well yeah, it depends and 'passing as white' would not be unrelated to the actual darkness of my skin.

xp

i pass pretty easily as white

I AM DESCENDED FROM THE FIRST WHITE WOMAN BORN IN NORTH AMERICA

THE FIRST

WHITE

WOMAN

― max, Tuesday, February 15, 2011 4:38 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

PM me if u want an autograph

i working on a book, Whites: an Anatomy that's going to clear all this up, fyi.

well yeah, it depends and 'passing as white' would not be unrelated to the actual darkness of my skin.

please show me an example of "passing as white" that is unrelated to the actual darkness of the person's skin

no he's agreeing with you about that

lol

all i'm saying is that there's a non-empirical component to the imagination of whiteness

okay maybe I should get lunch because I don't understand the point iatee is attempting to make at all

and that in america "whiteness" is imagined against blackness, basically. which affects the history of how non-african/non-african american groups get racialized.

Dan, i think he was arguing against my cultural studies-ish take on race, that there is something real and observable about people's perceptions of race.

which is true, but people like to think of it as stabler and more empirical than it is.

don't think asian americans are viewed by white people as white

― horseshoe, Tuesday, February 28, 2012 12:43 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is true - couldn't tell you how many times I've been asked "oh, so when did you move to america?" ffs I was born here.

although you'd have to ask a third or fourth gen AA to be sure. wonder what stories gary locke has to tell

I guess it's a natural question to ask when you own up to the fact that you have never watched an episode of dawson's creek in your life

yeah I think it's different in california actually, like I have been in groups that included asian people and the group was referred to as 'white people'

haha i put that a lot more mildly than i meant it. i have been told by white people that they don't even think of me as not being white before and i always think, you're lying.

xxp

i feel like what they mean is "i don't group you in my mind with scary blacks and latinos" which is NOT THE SAME THING

lmao there is nothing funnier than white people fronting like they are not constantly thinking about race

Whiteness is not imagined against blackness explicitly; whiteness is imagined against "non-whiteness", which usually defaults to "the darkest person in the neighborhood whom I'm not used to seeing around all of the time".

xp: those last two horseshoe posts OTM

"I don't even think of you as non-white!" is such dumb, loaded, offensive bullshit

yeah horseshoe is killing it itt

Whiteness is not imagined against blackness explicitly; whiteness is imagined against "non-whiteness", which usually defaults to "the darkest person in the neighborhood whom I'm not used to seeing around all of the time".

yeah i should have said that more precisely. whiteness v blackness is historically freighted in the american context.

i have a lot of thoughts, guys. and a lot of coffee.

plus my "someone is talking about muslims on ilx" alarm went off

where's louis when you need him

"I don't see people as color, just in images of black and white."

Whiteness is not imagined against blackness explicitly; whiteness is imagined against "non-whiteness", which usually defaults to "the darkest person in the neighborhood whom I'm not used to seeing around all of the time".

yeah i should have said that more precisely. whiteness v blackness is historically freighted in the american context.

― horseshoe, Tuesday, February 28, 2012 1:18 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

circling closer to what i mean, i feel like anti-black racist ideology necessitated the birth of "whiteness" in america.

at the same time there also is a (multiple) 'white culture'(s) which 'whiteness' is tied to (and the aforementioned literal 'white-ness')

basically this is a subject for which we need more words

I said something inadvertently racist yesterday and I felt bad about it