Well, I don’t think I’m racist, so you’re not convincing me of anything. But I think if you want to convince racists not to be racist, focus on what the issue is, instead of sinking to their level.
Did I call you racist? You, as an individual? I don’t know you and I didn’t make any assumptions about you. You, however, keep implying that I said things that I did not say.
How is talking about structures a form of reverse racism? Black people did not enter into the system of racism as co-equal partners, did they? Nor did they equally benefit from racist structures. White people did. There is plenty of historical evidence to suggest that even working class white people and white women helped to build and benefited from structural racism and continue to do so. Much the same with gender.
That is what needs to be dismantled. Not subverted so that black people and women rule. No one said that. Please stop putting words in my mouth that I did not say.
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OMFG with this.
All the multitudinous problems facing society right now are interconnected, not mutually exclusive to one another.
Not all White people are racist, but all White folks in the US have benefited from systemic racism indirectly, whether they even wanted to or not.
Sorry if that hurts anyone’s feelings to hear, but it’s the truth - the nation we live in was built on the exploitation and subjugation of non-White people, and the ramifications of that ugly history affect us all to this day. Only by acknowledging that unpleasant truth and facing it head on can we begin to figure out a resolution.
Next regarding the concept of ‘prejudice;’ it literally means to pre-judge people places and things prior to having any real understanding of said people places and/or things.
And the thing is, we all have the potential for prejudice inside us, and we’ve all done it at some point; being human, we’re prone to lazy thinking and personal bias based upon our own limited experience. (It should also go without saying that prejudice is not only limited to the manufactured construct of race.)
It takes conscious effort and practice to not arbitrarily sit in judgment on others simply because they are not familiar to us.
Lastly, trying to dictate which problems people ‘should’ focus on is highly problematic in and of itself, especially when one has no viable solutions to offer.
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I didn’t say you suggested I’m racist… You said:
All I was saying was that, you don’t need to rephrase anything for me, because I’m not racist… I’m saying when I confront a racist/homophobe my goal isn’t to punish them… it’s to change their behaviour. I don’t want them hurting any more people, so I talk to them about what they said/did.
If I were to take an adversarial approach, they’d probably go on acting the same way. If I sit down and talk to them about what’s going wrong, it’s less likely to continue.
Example: 15 years ago, when my uncle came out, my grandfather had some old fashioned ideas. We could have called him a bigot, but instead we talked to him about it and explained, it’s not something to be cured. The problem wasn’t that he’s a bad person, he just hadn’t had much exposure. He’s cool now.
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Edit: This is in response to a reply from @DixonHill that I cannot find now.
No, I am not saying that we should be nasty, but that we should be fair and not just forget about the past. As Santayana said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Let me make a confession: I have benefited from affirmative action. I used to live and work in a Northern European country. When a permanent position opened in the place where I was working, I applied to it and I was selected for that position. People from Northern, richer European countries also applied to the same position, but in that organization there were quotas so all the participant countries would have a fair representation. My country was underrepresented, so the hiring committee was told to seriously look at applicants from my country. After being hired, I was told by other applicants that the reason why I was selected and not them was because of my nationality, and they might had been right. But after more than twenty years of professional performance, I have exceedingly demonstrated that I was indeed the best candidate for the job. My life could have been very different without affirmative action. We all have subconscious prejudices, and it is very easy to make race- and gender-based decisions even when we try not to. Gender-blindness and color-blindness do not necessarily ensure a fair outcome, usually the opposite.
In what concerns to what we can do today, I would not be against to paying more taxes so disadvantaged groups would have a fairer life, or that women and people of color could benefit from affirmative action.
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Did I ever say you were? The problem isn’t individuals, it’s systems, and that’s what you’re missing. I haven’t called anyone a bad person, I’ve pointed out systemic problems that we need to acknowledge and address.
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Well I normally don’t wade into these things… but dude what @Melizmatic said. So much of this is so wrapped up in the culture it can be hard for those of us who are melanin challenged to notice how much of life is on easy mode.
If I hadn’t been reading Hap and Leonard recently where Joe Lansdale draws from his growing up in east Texas and writes about the racism of the time and the racism of more recent times as the background to the stories. Nope there are people that are just not going to get the clue even when they are beat up side the head with it. They had been keeping a low profile because it wasn’t fucking acceptable to behave like that and now we have a ‘President’ who has given a wink and a nod to the Nazis, Klansmen, and whatever other groups of racist dickbags are out there. Most of these people are true believers and you are not going to get anywhere talking to them.
You know what… Fuck the goddam broflake Nazis. We are not going back to the shit I have been just reading about lately we are not going back to the shit I heard about happening from my grandfather who grew up in Indiana which still had fucking sundown towns in the 1980s. NO. You want them to not hurt anyone fine but realize for more than some of them it will take hurting them first.
Make it not fucking acceptable to have that kind of belief. Make it clear they will be shunned. Make it clear they will not be accepted into your society. Make it clear that that shit is not fucking tolerated. If that means beating up a few Nazis then good.
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The OP here, and all the blithely oblivious comments by @DixonHill here and elsewhere, can only make me think (yet again), “Oh, to have the confidence of a mediocre white man!”
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@Mindysan33, you’ve asked me a few times now if I think you called me a racist and I don’t, honestly 
. To me, this isn’t a personal issue at all, it’s just thoughtful discussion. I just enjoy talking about it. If you’re not enjoying it, I understand.
Funny thing about that;
Your framing of that phrase is NOT an example of racism or sexism, but a snarky acknowledgment of systemic racism and ingrained patriarchy - how easy it is to have blind-spots to aspects of others’ reality when one is not directly impacted by that reality.
Also it needs to be stated:
Genuine allies for real societal progress and equality are not likely to be alienated by merely acknowledging the intersectionality of racism, sexism and classicism, or the sarcastic humor that “woke” folks often use to express that awareness.
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It’s not a laugh to me, it’s daily life. I’ll never get the respect you’ll get just for existing. I’m sorry that you don’t seem to care about that or think it’s all just an amusing intellectual exercise. it’s not for me or my daughter.
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I’ve spent the last 4 hours discussing it with you. I’m not sure how you interpret that as not caring, but I can see I’ve upset people, so I’m going to leave. I meant no disrespect. I just think we should start acting like a single race at some point, and we should stop pointing to flaws based on traits we have no control over (like skin colour), and focusing on those we do (like abusive behaviour). Have a good night.
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Yes, a lot of white guys approach the topics of racism/white supremacy and sexism/patriarchy that way.
Do you get why people would point out that it’s your white male privilege talking when you talk like that?
And no, I’m not attacking white men as a group when I say that, nor you just because you’re a white guy. It’s just a fact that being a white guy makes it much, much easier to approach these topics as mere amusing intellectual exercises.
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God damn, how about you tell that to the people who voted for Roy Moore and Donald Trump instead of me? How is it the problem of either women (or any race) or people of color, who are living under structures they didn’t create?
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ETA the denizens of this little corner of the internet thanks to the posts coming from the main site articles have been over and over this subject and I am sure we will go over it again at the next main site post of something sexist/racist. Many of us are not pasty white men and have to live with the prejudice every goddamn day and it isn’t a fucking exercise in discussion to them and for the rest of us who have been here awhile it is just mostly oh not this shit again.
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The problems exist because the default setting for almost everything is “white male”. This includes most medical research, most psych research, everything we (think we) know about being a society. You can’t deal with the “problems” until you recognise the biases that are baked into the system as defaults. If you don’t deal with them, any solutions you come up with will just keep perpetuating the same types of problems.
Root cause analysis shows that it is the prejudice that causes so many of these problems: you can fix a shorting out light socket by replacing the bulb, but you’ll be constantly changing bulbs until you fix the socket itself. The same with society. We can fix these problems again and again, but we’ll just have to keep doing it until we fix the systemic issues.
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Yup.
Race, class and gender. Gotta do 'em all at once if you want a chance of getting it right.
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Do you think we need less discussion on racism?
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