So you’re saying you have a problem with the term white folks? Why? What’s wrong with it?
I know white folks who use that term, and other folks. Why should anyone refrain from using it here just because it makes an odd duck like you “uncomfortable”?
16 Likes
That’s not racist, racism literally states plainly that there is a different set of rules for white folks and other races. Acknowledging that racism is a thing does not make it racist speech.
EDIT
And what insult was hurled at white people?
13 Likes
Racism: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
Your suggestion that you can't be racist against white people is - by definition - racist.
You and I agree that if a white supremacist goes into a mall and starts shooting only black people - that is a racist act. Reverse it and have a black man go into a mall and start shooting only white people and you're saying that isn't a racist act because he's black and can't be a racist.
1 Like
EDIT
For clarity, the white supremecist and the black man in your example are both acting because of the white on black racism in the United States. The white supremecist feels he needs to cleanse the country of a race, and the black man feels he needs to fight back against that oppression.
19 Likes
4 Likes
Please use a dictionary and look up the word. You literally got it wrong.
You may be entirely right. I might be oversensitive to the term and misread the intent.
But that goes to my point about trying to avoid offensive language.
Personally, I can’t stand PC enforcement, and I will stand up for free speech even from horrid white supremacists or hateful Westboro Baptist types. But that doesn’t mean we should not try to avoid insulting others.
“A party built on demonizing and attacking marginalized people is a party that will have to disenfranchise those same people if it is to survive.”
Sounds like the kind of thinking that was prevalent in central Europe some 85 years ago…
3 Likes
How so, if you’re the only odd duck who objects to the term “white folks”? Why try to avoid it if only one odd duck objects to it?
I might be oversensitive
Gee, ya think?
Look, I get that you think, ironically enough, that white people are the real victims these days because they supposedly can’t spout whatever racist shit they like, whenever and wherever they like. But for most of the rest of us here, (1) that’s delusional, and (2) we have bigger (that is, actual) problems in mind.
12 Likes
Do you see the irony in “hating pc culture” and declaring that you’ll protect the free speech rights of white supremacists and in the same breath chastising what you feel is “dismissive” language towards whites?
It’s essentially a textbook example of how a racist society operates.
25 Likes
I’m pale as death and I’ve already done my part for diversity of the species and country by having a child with my naturally tanned wife.
Thanks to the Lovings for taking their case to the Supreme Court 50 years ago to help me make that possible and legal in Virginia.
12 Likes
Yeah, and the strategy of many people had been to end racism by letting the racists die quietly in their beds surrounded by their friends and family. It feels a lot like racists decided that it was better to burn out (well, burn everything down) than fade away.
I know you raised this in your earlier post, and I was going to respond but I needed to think more. I agree that you generally don’t want to fight on your enemy’s turf. I’m actually wary of this analysis because it feels to me like it’s buying into economic “people respond to incentives” nonsense.
But I think that you are wrong that this headline uses racist tactics. To borrow from MLK, the problem with racism is being denied a room at a hotel; it’s segregation, not being able to vote, police brutality.
At some point people decided that instead of all that, the important thing about racism was talking about race. We instituted a new system where all people were theoretically seen as equally replaceable cogs in society. That system didn’t say that white people were better than black people, but it did allow people who already had power to leverage that power to accumulate more power. So because white people already had more power than black people, it perpetuated racist outcomes anyway.
Somehow the specific hotel thing from MLK’s speech got dealt with by a specific law. But segregation, disenfranchisement and police brutality are all still going on. They go on without anyone talking about race, without a law that says that it’s okay to take votes from black Americans or it is necessary to keep white children from black children.
Choosing not to talk about race in public - thinking of race as something we need to discuss quietly lest we get ourselves into trouble - has been a tool of racism for decades now.
There’s nothing of significance different between a white person and a black person except for our their experiences in a culture that differentiates between us. That is not the same as saying that there is nothing different between a white American and a black American. Being treated differently by your society is a difference and it makes a difference.
Racists will lie about anything to support racist ideas. They’ll say that white and black people are importantly genetically different even. They’ll pretend that a German Swiss and a French Swiss person are the same ethnicity because it suits their narrative of ethnic homogeneity leading to harmony. They’ll ignore the fact that you can’t apply general results about a group to individual members of a group. They’ll straight up make things up.
I think the real battleground of racists is oversimplifying. That’s the battleground that we need to stay off of. And by saying that speaking about a general trend observed in white people is like racism because it mentions race I think you are the one who is accidentally employing their tactics.
If you averaged the fraction of the people of the world who were at war or killing on another over the entire history of humanity, what would it be? If it’s less than 50% then my claim that people mostly get along is correct*. I’m not saying there is much of history where there was no conflict at all in the world. I’m saying that accepting war and hatred as the normal state of affairs is absurd.
We remember Genghis Khan because he was really unusual. If we were constantly warring and butchering each other with no end we’d have history books about that guy who didn’t kill anyone (well, actually we’d have no history books, having gone extinct before writing was invented).
* ETA: This is a joke, but I realize that literally no one will realize it is meant as one. Clearly what I said would not be at all justified if at all points in history 49% of the population was at war. But realistically the number has to be easily south of 10%.
I don’t think white supremacy is fundamental to the continued existence of capitalism. I think capitalism would be just as happy letting people die in sweatshops because they are non-American rather than because they are non-White.
But that’s a little beside what I’m saying, which is that when writing down “white people can do X but black people can only do Y” became unpopular, racism was able to continue by using colourblind language to perpetuate the same systems. It didn’t need to say, “You go to prison because you are black,” it could instead say, “You go to prison because someone has to get the short end of the stick, and that someone is you,” while choosing not to notice that those people were disproportionately black.
12 Likes
My sense is that this number is way off-base. Huge portions of human history were essentially a state of permanent war – Europe, Asia, Africa, Americas. This has been happening regularly for thousands of years. We actually live in one of the more peaceful times right now, in many ways.
Now, when it comes to the percentage of individual people involved with waging wars, you may be correct. I am talking about as societies, or in your words, tribes. Most tribes have warred throughout history – that is why they are tribes plural, and not tribe singular.
3 Likes
Yet you just sat there and tried to police the language of others.
⊙_ʘ
Your feelings and/or your personal comfort level are not relevant in this discussion, and no one here posted anything insulting White people.
If you dislike being singled out based upon your skin tone, just imagine what Black folks and Brown folks in the US have felt like, since… oh, forever.
We didn’t set the system up; your ancestors did, so if you’re feeling some kind of way, you need to look to them before anyone else.
18 Likes
I just outright don’t think this is true. We have genetic analysis now to say that for the most part tribes are not very distinct, that we didn’t really keep to our own. We’ve always been more likely to marry someone from down the road than to kill them. If the opposite were true it would be plainly impossible that we would still exist.
6 Likes
Uhm, rape and pillage was basically the way you expanded your kingdom – vikings, again the Khans, etc. etc. Just because people mated, doesn’t mean it was peaceful circumstances.
I’m really not sure which version of history you’ve been exposed to – it’s clearly not the same one I was taught.
1 Like
One of the things about this is that most humans haven’t been involved with the warring and pillaging of whatever lord/king/etc… ruled their locality. Warriors were always a select class (Veblen believed this was the first class division) and generally nowhere near a majority of the population. The non-warriors throughout history, particularly the farther back you go, simply weren’t written about/historicized.
9 Likes
Like I said, we remember warlords because they are worth remembering.
My belief about history, as I’ve suggested many times already, is based on the fact that we’re here. With 50% infant mortality and 25% of women dying in childbirth, we lived on a razor’s edge against infection and famine. If we were consistently killing each other in really large numbers we just wouldn’t be around today to learn about it. We may have tried hard to get as much carnage in as we could while still surviving, but we did survive. That means we were mostly cooperating.
9 Likes
As I said, and people seem to have missed – individually, yes. Societally, it’s a lot more violent. And let’s not forget, you didn’t have to BE a warrior, to be brutalized by a neighboring society’s warriors. And also, as I said, many times the men would be killed, and the women would be raped – this was done specifically to preserve population and subsume the other society. Anyway, I’m done with this discussion – you are welcome to hold dear your vision of the noble savage!
