Why do you think others here are having trouble getting what you’re getting at?
Discourse needn’t be only a matter of making sure you have your say. Why not also try to understand more what others have to say about what you said?
Right?
So many people-- so many of them men, I’ve noticed-- only converse in order to say what they think. Or feel. They’re really losing out! And shutting out-- other voices, that they could learn from, and that should not have to struggle to be heard.
It would have to be a lot more open to even consider it. Because the key thing is that right now, our society doesn’t even treat black people as equal to white people, let alone give them the option to be identified as white. Because those aren’t cultures, they’re rough social castes. And so long as that’s the case, white people choosing to be identified as black are still expressing white privilege that the others don’t have – like a noble who decides to dress as a commoner, they get to pick and choose, rather than actually belonging to the people who have to take what they are given.
Additionally, society is not getting more and more open for people other than white cis het guys. It’s getting quite the opposite. Revoking civil rights for people of color & queer people- don’t say queer bills. Abortion rights lost. Trans healthcare being outlawed. Increased hate crimes.
And on and on. That’s a huge, clueless misrepresentation of people’s lives today. Many of us are afraid to travel to and live in many states.
Their current queen is German.
I get a lot of murder hornet content in my YouTube feed, because apparently if you like entomology, the algorithm feels twenty percent of your insect diet should really be murder hornets.
Same shit, different day.
As a naturalized Japanese citizen, I consider myself to be Japanese, but that’s my nationality and not my race, so there is always going to be an asterisk next to Japanese to clarify that point.
I would never call myself Asian because I am not. I made a choice to become Japanese, but no, I don’t have any say in what race I am.
By cops and others inclined to be prejudiced towards mere appearances? Absolutely.
And by people insisting they understand the experiences of POC better than they do themselves…
Fuckin’ A; it’s beyond insulting.
I would submit all of that stuff is happening because we’re getting more open and diverse. Great replacement and all that. It’s all backlash against a clear and growing trend towards more diversity and far more general acceptance.
For all of the racial issues in America, which again, I’m not in any way disputing, we ARE becoming less white and it’s hard to argue that PoC are worse off today than in the 1970s. I remember when pride was a fringe thing in a handful of cities, instead of something every Fortune 500 company pandered to as a marketing strategy for a solid month every year. Since I finished school, trans people went from being regarded as the village freak to openly serving in dozens of appointed and elected public offices at the state and federal levels. Support for marriage equality has literally gone from 70/30 against to 70/30 for:
The whole reason conservatives are fighting so hard right now is because their worldview isn’t the default position any longer. These trends are very clearly and steadily moving in a direction I think everyone here approves of, even if the severity of the pushback obscures that. The thing that’s changed isn’t that Roe was overturned, it’s that the majority of people are angry about it.
I see that trend continuing- almost certainly, as I suggested in my original comment, further and in less predictable ways than most people today would imagine. Because that’s usually how history happens. No matter how progressive you may be, your grandkids will think of you as embarrassingly conservative. They will just go ahead and judge us by their own standards the way we do our grandparents’ generation.
If we can step back for a moment, I do try to understand everyone’s perspectives, but I see where I give the opposite impression. I think I am prone to arguing in a way that sounds more dismissive than I intend it to be. I worry that I fail to get across when I agree with an overall statement, and mean to expand or compare, rather than refute it.
I wrote more about that but it got way too meta and tangential. I’m going to sleep on it and post those thoughts as a separate thread that’s a little more abstract.
But it’s easy to argue that they’re worse than 5 years ago. Along with LGBTQ people and women.
But not you.
Or you could save yourself and the rest of us the trouble and listen to people from those communities and let them speak for themselves.
We already know our history and issues better and more deeply than your reading a Wikipedia article. We lived it and made it. We had all these discussions ourselves. We’re not an interesting problem for your beautiful mind to solve for us.
Not your place.
Yep, keep pissing on people’s shoes and tell them it’s raining… people LOVE that shit, man. /s
I mean, holy shit, women can’t get basic reproductive care. They are LITERALLY trying to legislate trans people out of existence. They’re no doubt coming for gay marriage, and have already started to destabilize all the hard won rights by claiming that religious people should not have to abide by the law when it comes to public accommodations.
At the end of the day, “well it’s not as bad as it was” doesn’t mean it can’t get fucking shitty as hell. Talking over people who are being attacked right now and assuming that the hard work is already done will only lead to the fascists being further emboldened. They’ve already tried to impose their will on the country via an attempted coup. WE ALL SAW THAT as it happened. It’s not up for debate. These are the people who want to destroy everyone who is not like them working to get back into power. We can see them working at the state level right now. Anyone saying “well, it’s fine though, because it’s not like it was in the 70s” is being willfully ignorant of what’s happening right now.
Progress isn’t a thing that happens. It’s something we MAKE happen. And far too many of us, frankly speaking (if we’re white, straight, cisgendered, financially comfortable, etc) have gotten far too complacent about the fact that shit can go sideways. And the reality is that SHIT IS GOING SIDEWAYS as we speak here. To NOT acknowledge that is a failure of imagination and ethical principles that many of us believe that we hold.
We need to listen to those who are in the line of fire, rather than assuming that we should speak for them. It’s not that difficult.
WTAF. I would take the '70s again in a heartbeat - inflation and all. Why? Because we were not dealing with what led to BLM to anywhere near the same degree, nor having to bring back the goddamned Green Book, or seeing the resurgence of Confederate flags beyond KKK rallies, certain bands/sport fans, and The Dukes of Hazzard on TV. Gun culture has invaded our churches, schools, supermarkets, etc. - we’re being harassed, assaulted, jailed, or killed for being Black in public now.
Now, now. You just don’t know what you’re talking about. As they say at the University of Chicago: That’s All Well and Good in Practice, But How Does it Work in Theory?
Everyone knows, especially those wise assholes in the Chicago school of economic theory, that history ONLY progresses!!! Things can’t possibly get worse!!! That’s CRAZY talk!!! /s
Gee, ya think??
Dude, the problem is that you’re approaching all of this as an “argument,” and then wading in as if you’ve got something to say that people with actual skin in the game haven’t already heard literally hundreds of times before.
Why? Just what purpose would that serve?
Again, as a person who clearly has what amounts to a privileged and naive perspective on this topic, you’d only be saying more that others have already heard, some of it would be WRONG, and you’d be demonstrating again your refusal to listen.
Writing certainly can be a great way of working through your thoughts, but when it comes to topics lived and struggled with on the daily by people different from you, how about committing such musings to something like a private jounal?
Iran used to be a democracy with women attending universities. Making things more progressive is not a guarantee, it is a fight, and if it usually happens it is only because the fight is important to so many people. Treating it as if it were nigh inevitable is ignoring how much work goes into it, and if enough people do that it makes it less likely to happen.
Please listen to the POC and LGBTQ+ people here, who know more about all this than you or I ever will on our own. When lots of them disagree with us, it means we’re missing something important.
