Rolling 2018 Thread on Race

weird that we don't have a racism in europe thread so putting this here

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/travel/racism-travel-italy-study-abroad.html

This is a racism thread. It covers racism anywhere. The predominance of US racism as a topic here is merely a byproduct, not a dictate.

it's cuz we're so good at it

youtube is recommending me a video where a young white man with a beard calling himself "the pop song professor" explains the lyrics to "how much a dollar cost"

please try to remember this the next time somebody asks why white people hate themselves

I don't get it.

Also I don't hate myself for being white, I'm not American. Can you please start saying 'why (some) white Americans hate themselves' instead? Thanks.

I don't get it.

― pomenitul

give it a couple years and perhaps the pop song professor will have a video explaining it

I don't get why someone – even, yes, a white dude – explaining that song to people who don't get it is a problem. Not everyone who watches YouTube is American and intimately familiar with your history, for starters.

I haven't seen the video so I have no idea if he does it well, though. But the implication that such a thing is simply inconceivable due to his skin colour is frankly absurd.

pomenitul have you heard the song

I have and I still don't get your point. Why don't you spell it out for me, since I clearly need to have it explained?

because i didn't come here for a stupid internet argument

i'm sorry i insulted someone who turned out to be your favorite streamer or something

Suit yourself. I frankly have no idea what you're talking about at this point and your refusal to accept that only reinforces the notion that, yes, there might be some value in explaining what's going on in that song and in this 'argument' both. There are people out there learning English in part through songs like this one who might be tempted to search for its 'meaning' online, whether on YouTube or elsewhere. I see no harm.

I've never watched this guy's videos. For all I know they're complete shit. I just take issue with the argument that his being a white dude with a beard tackling this topic somehow justifies white self-loathing.

rushomancy laying down the semiology of beards

a really, really sad story, at the intersection of america's problems with guns and racism

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/11/12/1812296/-Chicago-Man-is-Shot-and-Killed-by-Police-For-Being-a-Hero-Security-Guard-While-Black

Jemel Roberson, 26, was working early Sunday at Manny’s Blue Room ― a bar in the predominantly black Chicago suburb of Robbins, Illinois ― when a patron who was part of a drunken group that had been kicked out returned with a gun at 4 a.m. and opened fire, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Several people were shot.

Roberson, who was armed at the time, grabbed one of the men, held him down and waited for police, according to witnesses.

However when the police arrived, one of the officers shot at Roberson, who died later.

[A witness] said the officer shot an innocent man and that people on the scene tried to warn police that Roberson was a security guard.

“Everybody was screaming out, ‘Security!’ He was a security guard ... and they still did their job, and saw a black man with a gun, and basically killed him,” Harris said.

This interview with Wesley Yang is interesting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/17/us/kansas-official-master-race.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

But Mark Loughry, the administrator of Leavenworth County, which is just outside Kansas City, said in a statement that Mr. Klemp’s comments were misconstrued and had nothing to do with Nazism.

Mr. Loughry said Mr. Klemp had used the term “master race” several times in the past year to refer to people with gaps in their front teeth, and his comment was meant to include both Ms. Penelton and himself.

annie olaloku-teriba who wrote the piece on afro-pessimism i linked upthread in may had an interesting interview on the groundings podcast with some particularly interesting stuff on the relationship between afro pessimism, anti blackness and black nationalism

https://groundings.simplecast.fm

Dorchester historical society apologizes, says it's horrified by Christmas card it sent out to advertise an upcoming event. pic.twitter.com/144ukLTxj5

— WBZ NewsRadio (@wbznewsradio) November 27, 2018

I feel like I'm missing something here. I mean, it's obvious they're talking about snow. "Dreaming of a white [fill in the blank]" is an extremely common phrase about hoping it will snow. Why is this so obviously a racist faux pas? Is it because they used "Dorchester" instead of "Christmas"? I guess usually it's Christmas but idk, I still feel like that's a stretch.

can't believe they misspelled 'genocide' as 'dorchester', that's a real fuckup

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/12/07/unc-teaching-assistants-go-strike-over-confederate-monument

Several dozen teaching assistants at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill started a strike Friday, saying that they will withhold student grades as long as the university moves ahead with the idea of constructing a building to house the Confederate monument known as Silent Sam. The strike comes after classes have finished for the semester and students are preparing for final exams and normally would be soon receiving final grades.

the comments... god help me i read the comments...

I don't want to start a 2019 race thread just to share this one amazing tweet. Just read it and be amazed.

Here’s my only nativist beef: Hispanic people who look and sound Mongolian and who I therefore don’t realize I could just communicate with in Spanish instead of English which they don’t speak particularly intelligibly. I’m cool with Spanish, just not being super-confused.

— Liz Mair (@LizMair) January 2, 2019

oooof.

tbftts i too might try to pass as mongolian if it seemed to make her not communicate with me

I am so confused by this ^^^. Mongolian? I had to look her up. Ok. She's an idiot.

I'm assuming she's saying "latin american person who looks indigenous" in the most racist way possible

Lol, she made a loooong thread defending that tweet, and complaining that people don't realize how anti-racist she is. She's a never-Trump'er, don't people realize how important an ally she could be?

The non-apology thread is breathtaking.

That tweet is despicable and depressing. I’m not surprised that kind of language is catching on even among the (vanishingly small) “never trump” right.

It’s the most dangerous kind of thinking in the world, that dehumanizing shit

Sorry—i know that was all redundant. There is just something super bleak about racism being couched in this flippant, trendy twitter speak.

via a former ilxor

https://youtu.be/hcSAp-nBwR8

"What kind of language has then to be found that would not be a re-imprisonment of Black lives? Does it still belong to philosophy? Does it still belong to literature? For sure, this issue requires the opening of a yet unheard space. Afro-Pessimism might be its name. A name born in prison."

this entire Jussie Smollett story is a bummer.

https://thegrapevine.theroot.com/it-looks-like-jussie-smolletts-case-is-headed-to-grand-1832700715

what an absurd story

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/05/us/trump-teacher-fort-worth-anti-immigration-trnd/index.html

I'm putting this here because there isn't a 2019 thread and because I can't get over the fact that this person was a teacher

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/450757-analysis-black-homebuyers-more-than-twice-as-likely-as-whites

https://www.rrstar.com/news/20190617/man-arrested-while-attached-to-iv-machine-says-he-was-racially-profiled

It's just

Schroeder said the IV was removed by a professionally-trained FHN employee and that police followed the proper protocol when they realized Dukes was having a medical event.

...WHICH YOU CAUSED BY WITHHOLDING HIS MEDICATION THAT WAS LITERALLY FLOWING INTO HIS VEINS AT THE HOSPITAL'S DIRECTION.

good news everybody
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/james-fields-jr-avowed-neo-nazi-in-charlottesville-car-attack-set-to-be-sentenced-for-federal-hate-crimes/2019/06/27/fcead458-9849-11e9-830a-21b9b36b64ad_story.html?utm_term=.7f7ad220c013

That is fantastic news

re: dude who was arrested for following doctor's orders, I really want the hospital to weigh in on this

half expected the cops to claim they mistook the IV for a weapon

did they think the hospital gown was a disguise?????

They thought they had someone they could brutalize who wouldn't fight back.

"Police urge people not to rush ‘to judgement against the police without all the information..."

Dukes was ultimately charged with disorderly conduct, after an investigation revealed he had no intention of stealing the IV stand, said Freeport police Lt. Andrew Schroeder.

A full investigation revealed that after coming all this way police were able to determine that the suspect who was by the way no angel was clearly guilty of something because otherwise we wouldn't be here now would we? Case closed!

"disorderly conduct" is cop-speak for not being appropriately deferential to the thin blue line that separates us from the savages/not thanking them for hassling you

Police urge people not to rush ‘to judgement against the police without all the information’

Should I give the site the benefit of the doubt and assume the reason they used this quote to lead the article is out of irony?

For anybody interested, I highly recommend Angela Saini's book 'Superior' on this very issue.

that’s where these ideas always end up leading. Why else would there be so much effort at repeatedly reviving and funding them time and time again?

They are not leading there. They have arrived there and are teaching at Harvard, publishing in the NYT, and advising the British PM. How do you think we should respond?

I’ve already said upthread and you seem determined that that’s not a good enough answer.

Admittedly, I'm somewhat heated and posting quickly but, no, it wasn't obvious to me. The main thing I was getting from your posts was that rational scientific arguments and education won't work and play into the hands of racists. Did you mean that your favoured response is to ignore these people, avoid giving platforms where we can, and continuing to stress the moral wrong of racism?

Yes, that’s why I said those things across several posts.