Agreed, that’s definitely how “reverse racism” is being used. I suspect the term “reverse racism” has some roots in well-meaning liberal thinking gone awry - something about the less powerful being less able to be racist or something. If so, well-intentioned and grasping at some truth, but really pretty sloppy.
…to think that we’re all free to make choices from an unlimited set of choices, I think, is just not accurate.
Well there’s your problem right there. The choices are unlimited - it’s the consequences you’re worried about.
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Can’t really disagree with that! What I’m trying to emphasize by emphasizing that structures create thoughts is that it’s impossible to see yourself without your cultural blinders on. This means Cleetus, forward-thinking iconoclast that he is, is going to have trouble finding out how to weed racism out of his society. It’s invisible to him because it’s in the very way he thinks about the world, because it’s his context. That’s to be expected. That’s part of what makes it difficult to extract. Living in beautiful Appalachia is in part caused by the racist society that Cleetus is a part of, but it’s also his home, so it’s not like he’s going to go back to Europe and just give it back to a random native american! He can’t get rid of that racism, he can’t disentangle himself from his context. The most he can do is try to change the context as best he knows how. And since he probably doesn’t know how, he should listen to minorities who know better.
To maybe make it clearer, what I’m saying is that there aren’t many places on earth that aren’t touched by the hands of white people, white culture, white thought. That carries with it white assumptions of race and institutional, historical, racism. The sun never sets on the Brittish Empire, right?
So it’s unfeasible to locate a place where white people haven’t had a hand in shaping the context already – where there’s been no history of oppression. And even if such a place could be found, it wouldn’t tell us much about how we should behave in a world that already has the context that we already have.
The Cleetuses of this world are not going to be free from the benefits of the racism in which they’re steeped. Neither can the Aamer Rahmans of this world get out of the effect it has on them. No one is free from the context that they’re in. There aren’t very many actual human beings in the world that you could ever point at and say, “Racism doesn’t affect them.”
Yes, it does. Which, I guess would be the depth of my point. But I see your point.
From a practical point of view, not only do we need laws but we need a lot more humor pointing out the foibles of our ways. Because what’s the end goal here - having enough laws to force compliance? Or not needing any laws because we all grok the problems with racism and don’t?
It is estimated that even though slavery was outlawed in 1936, between 670,000 and 700,000 Nigerians are currently enslaved .
In Nigeria.
At the end of the eighteenth century, 70 years before the slaves in America were freed, the majority of many (all?) European countries populations was still living as physical property, their bodies a tradeable good.
Everybody likes to forget that, especially Europeans.
Unless you are of inbreeding ancient nobility, you likely are the descendant of slaves. No matter what color you are.
Slavery and racism don’t have to go together.
But in America they did, and it was particularly ugly.
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So you cite an article that makes over generalizations about white Americans as if they’re such a uniform group that you can determine what they’re all like just by knowing their skin color and nationality, and you’re doing so to argue against what you perceive to be prejudice?
It’s not full of over generalizations – it is indeed true that, as the article says, white people often do that. It doesn’t say they all do that.
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I should do a better job of explaining where I’m coming from, about my rejection of the conventional definition of racism. Of course I recognize that definition – I’ve known the basic concept of it since early childhood. Most of us have. Avoiding and overcoming racial prejudice is a common theme in children’s books and children’s television and in public school curricula.
Are these prejudices at the core of the oppression and exploitation of people of color by white people? I don’t believe they are, and I believe that treating prejudice as the core of the issue is a means to avoid addressing the real core of the issue.
In my freshman year of high school, we read To Kill a Mockingbird, and talked about racial prejudice, and “reverse racism”. We didn’t talk about the nature of the police, the courts, or the prison system. We didn’t talk about the economic life of the US South in the first half of the 20th century. Instead, we talked about these appalling ideas certain people had – specifically, appalling ideas (poor) white people in the South had about black people.
This high school was in an agricultural town in the California Central Valley. In my college prep-track classes, nearly all of my fellow students were white. Many of them were from families that owned farms in the area. In a high school with about 300 students, there were three or four black students. About half the students in the school were Latino. In my college prep classes, we all knew well how to despise people who openly expressed racial prejudices. We talked about our opposition to racism, but it was always in terms of white versus black, and in terms of abstract, irrational ideas that people had.
Meanwhile, I was in an effectively segregated campus, in a town whose economy was based on agriculture – specifically on vegetables, harvested by seasonal, migrant workers, who were paid less than minimum wage, and who were nearly all Latino, working on farms owned by white people.
Once, in my junior year, I started to suggest that in the school newspaper, we might want to have an article discussing why we had two separate wings of the campus, and the students rarely met each other. The room full of students fell silent. After an awkward minute or two, the advising teacher said that it wasn’t a good idea, that it would only cause trouble. She didn’t say why. And I didn’t pursue the matter. (I am, after all, the product of my circumstances as well, and it was quite some time before I looked back and saw what was in this blind spot.)
Part of what I’m getting at is something about how class works. The middle and ruling classes are rigorously trained in the art of not letting the left hand know what the right is doing. Oh, no, we’re not racist. It’s only those uneducated white people, who we hire to drive trucks and supervise migrant laborers on our farms, who are racist. Really, it’s unfortunate, but not our fault at all. Nothing but honeyed words ever come from our lips.
So this is why I’m contemptuous of a definition of racism that is primarily about racial prejudice. It’s all too easy to stop at this superficial level of analysis, and not look at the real structural issues.
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I’m not sure what your point is… it sounds like you are saying that when you point and laugh at people you risk making them offended because they don’t get the joke just like any other person feeling marginalized. Difference is, you (and to a lesser degree Aamer) saying “fuck 'em” is doing harm and is allowing bigoted arguments to gain a little traction with some people who can understand why that person became offended.
This belongs in the “You’re not helping” file.
Is it ever popular to be non-japanese while in japan as more than a tourist?
QFT.
IMO the progress is actually pretty impressive, from an historical perspective.
Yeah, but dude is himself Arab. That’s the thing. The Arabs were heavily involved in the slave trade , long before Columbus. And they, along with black tribes, were important links in the American slave trade throughout it’s history.
The guy is defending his own anti-white racism, by making the point that whites have overwhelmingly been the villains in history. While white crimes have been massive, it’s frankly a pretty euro-centric and perversely egocentric view.
(edited by moderator. removed insult)
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In short, fuck collective guilt, and fuck collective pride.
You aren’t guilty for the crimes of people who share any distinguishing characteristics with you.
You didn’t ask for your race, gender, or nationality.
Similarly, you should take no pride in where you are from, the color of your skin, or your gender.
You should take pride in your individual achievements, and shame in your individual failures.
I can’t be sympathetic to any attempts to further ingraine or justify group mentality in the world. It’s a poison.
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I think this is a case where we just have to disagree. I don’t think choices are unlimited. I do believe in agency, yes, but not without limitations. I think the point about theories on race, gender, sexuality, and class is to point out how peoples agency is limited by those factors. All people do not have the same set of choices available to them.
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No, that’s not what I’m saying. And all I can say at this point is, go and read my comment again. It’s really not that hard to understand.
I disagree; what Aamer is saying isn’t "bigoted., nor is it “allowing bigoted arguments to gain a little traction” with pretty much anyone.
What makes you think he’s “Arab”? I don’t normally cite Wikipedia, but it says,
Aamer Rahman (Bengali: আমার রহমান; born 17 October 1982) is an Australian stand-up comedian of Bangladeshi descent.
Are Bangladeshis somehow “Arab”? Or did you just look at his name and face and assume he must be?
The guy lives in Australia, a context in which, yeah, whites have indeed overwhelmingly been the villians in history, and the results of that villiany live on in the very problems he points out in his satiric, social-activist comedy. The fact that Arabs also traded slaves, or Romans, or some other distant group, has little bearing on current Australian race relations, and frankly, it’s mighty white (and typically diversionary) of you to claim it does. Finally, he didn’t say anywhere that only people who declared themselves “white” have been slaveholders.
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Reading this I’m reminded of Dylan’s “Only a pawn in their game”
Totally agree.
There are two branches of activism.
Diagnostic activism is the hard work of analyzing what’s wrong with the world. And I’m OK with ‘privileging’ some people’s views over others, based on their life experience, skin color, sex, sexual orientation, or gender. In this realm, people who disagree with each other can still both be right.
Prescriptive activism is the hard work of doing something about what’s wrong with the world. It’s full of chewing gum and bailing wire solutions, and it by necessity must engage more than one problem at a time. And it’s a realm where being in a minority most definitely does not privilege one’s voice. As long as my ideas don’t hurt black people more than white people, then they are no less valid than those of a person of color. To assert that my voice can’t count as much because of my skin color, that’s not reverse racism, that’s just racism.
The overall goal should be a world that works for everybody. I don’t think that’s so hard or so crazy. But it’s tempting to get hung up on the ‘easy’ part, describing what’s wrong- at the expense of doing what’s right.
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Absolutely true, but privilege exists for some of us whether we ask for it or not. As a straight white male in the U.S. I’ve been afforded more opportunities and faced less discrimination that most other people. The least I can do is acknowledge that.
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