White Americans abandoned democracy and embraced authoritarianism when they realized brown people would soon outvote them

[Melz2]

@Hutz

So I can use any language I like to refer to people of other races.

That isn’t what I said, or even implied… but sure, go ahead; no one’s stopping you.

Just don’t be surprised when there are unpleasant consequences and repercussions for whatever you may choose to say.

Intent matters; I speak the way I do because that’s how I was raised. It has nothing to do with actively trying to offend anyone else. But if you decide to call Asian people ‘yellow’ out of spite simply because you dislike being called ‘White,’ that’s ill intent, because your prime motivation would be to cause offense.

If that’s the kind of person that you are, then have at it.

[Medievalist]

@anon50609448

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.

Bam! That’s American structural racism, succinctly. Well put.

I believe this is becoming harder to fight over time (especially with the tactics I’ve been denigrating) simply because a few individuals always manage to beat the system - in 1980 complacent middle Americans couldn’t say “obviously there’s no problem, since we’ve had a black President - color is no barrier to success”. Now it’s easier for them to make this mistake, easier for Ma and Pa Kettle to believe the lies of political demagogues who blame racial disparities on the victims.

@anon50609448

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.

I’ll cheerfully agree with the first sentence! But you are misunderstanding me completely if you think I object to mentioning race. I object to making categorical statements that demonstrably serve to alienate people who would otherwise be critically important allies, full stop.

I can easily teach my poor Southern relatives everything they need to know about authoritarianism and how their own behavior can help or hinder its spread, as long as nobody else gets there first and tells them they are all part of a category of evil determined by the color of their skin.

It is harder for me to undo the damage caused by this kind of rhetoric from the left than it is for me to disprove the lies of the racist right. I know this because I integrated my family reunion - I ain’t talking about theory here.

Martin Luther King Jr. used to talk about these issues in much the same way you and I do. He understood that you don’t change a nation by alienating potential allies, you do it by converting your opponents, and he knew that economic power bases have titanic influence on racial inequality.

@anon50609448

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.

Again, this is really a beautiful illustration of what I see going on in my communities, what I see as the bedrock of structural racism.

@anon50609448

If we were consistently killing each other in really large numbers we just wouldn’t be around today to learn about it

Without addressing that directly, let me say that war that kills people in really large numbers is a modern thing. Throughout history it’s rare.

But constant, undying warfare between tribes? That describes the history and pre-history of both the British Isles and the Americas, for sure. Ireland was at war for at least 3000 years!

Chris Hedge’s book What Every Person Should Know About War says that mankind has known peace for 8% of recorded history, most of that extremely recently. This is despite his extremely generous definition of war; most ancient conflicts would not qualify, since ancient tribal wars seem to have usually ended when ritualized hero conflict ended in the defeat or death of one tribe’s small group of warriors. Once a tribe’s warriors were defeated, the rest of the tribe would typically either flee or be raped and enslaved, only rarely killed. People had value as spoils.

[churba]

Noah (the author of the linked essay) has noticed this article, and isn’t sure he entirely agrees with Corey’s interpretation:

Noah Berlatsky

For convenience(with slight formatting for more readability than twitter):

The article says that our age of neoliberal austerity has made people worry there’s not enough to go around, leading to higher intolerance towards marginalized ppl. So, it really all is economic anxiety, supposedly. A couple problems here.

1st, it’s entirely speculative. The study I was discussing doesn’t follow economic status. Furthermore, poorest people aren’t trump voters (not even poorest white people.) And the other problem is that this ignores the fact that white people have a long history of embracing authoritarianism to shut POC out of power. It’s not a new phenomenon which suddenly appeared in the last 10 years or whatever.

The clearer line of causality goes the other way. Racism inspires authoritarianism; eroding democracy makes it easier to fuck the poor (i.e., tax cuts, slashing health care.) Like, saying economic anxiety inspires authoritarianism assumes that poorer or more distressed peopel are less open to democracy. I am skeptical about that. My guess would be that support for democracy falls as you go up the income ladder.

Maybe I’m wrong! It’s an empirical question that you could research. But I certainly wouldn’t assume that it’s poor people embracing authoritarianism first and foremost.

Looking further at the linked study and essay, I’m of a similar opinion. It’s an interesting thought, but it’s not supported by the essay or the study linked, but I also think it’s an interesting enough thought that it warrants further investigation and research.

Edit - Also, further purely personal perspective: The working class - specifically the white working class - are just as greed-driven, selfish, and often bigoted as the rest of folk. They’re not going to be driven to something they wern’t already at least somewhat given to. I’ve been in the position to see “Economically Anxious” working class folk get elevated to the middle and upper class a few times, and every time, you didn’t suddenly end up with well-meaning, socially-conscious socialists, you just ended up with folk who were no longer economically anxious, but were still supportive of authoritarians, still bigoted, still just as shitty as they were when they were working class - now they just had money, too. As much as I think it’s an interesting idea worth studying, it doesn’t mean I’m saying that it will be proven true.

[tachin1]

@Hutz

Ahh, I see. So I can use any language I like to refer to people of other races. There are no social norms. It doesn’t matter if I offend you as long as I feel OK with it. Here I was thinking it was the other way around. That we were supposed to be sensitive to others and try to not be offensive. I don’t need to say “people of color,” “colored people” is just fine, and if they don’t like it that’s their problem.

Dude, you are getting personal and derailing. Take a break. If you still want to continue with your discussion then you should create a new topic and continue the conversation there.

[Brainspore]

@wait_really

Warriors were always a select class (Veblen believed this was the first class division) and generally nowhere near a majority of the population.

Society tends to collapse pretty quickly if you have more people fighting wars than you have growing food and such.

[wait_really]

@Medievalist

That describes the history and pre-history of both the British Isles and the Americas,

Eh, I’ve seen anthropological studies recently positing that warfare was practically non-existent pre-settlement, and still quite rare until metal tools showed up.

On our continent at least, the majority of the tribes were relatively peaceful, generally taking up arms in defense against the less numerous antagonistic tribes. Noted to was that the war-focused tribes were often not engaging due to population pressures, but cultural values- they didn’t need to commit war to survive.

[DukeTrout]

@Hutz

I can’t stand PC enforcement, and I will stand up for free speech

OK, folks, get your Bingo cards out!

[emo_pinata]

Please use and encyclopedia and look up the word, you might understand the context of the definition.

[Medievalist]

@wait_really

Eh, I’ve seen anthropological studies recently positing that warfare was practically non-existent pre-settlement, and still quite rare until metal tools showed up.

I think it mostly depends on how you define war - ancient warfare was often just ritualized hominid dominance display writ large. But I haven’t seen those studies so I’m hesitant to address the thesis.

The book on war I referenced earlier specifically disqualified any combat that didn’t kill at least 1000 people. I don’t know how many ancient American peoples would be willing to suffer 1000 casualties without surrendering or running away. The Plains tribes valued counting coup more highly than killing enemies, as I understand it, in their intertribal conflicts.

[anon50609448]

@NickyG

Anyway, I’m done with this discussion – you are welcome to hold dear your vision of the noble savage!

What the everloving fuck? Seriously, you read history one way and I read it another way and suddenly I am emotionally holding on to racist idiocy?

I thought this discussion was about what we thought facts were, not about us hating one another. I am an idiot.

@Medievalist

I can easily teach my poor Southern relatives everything they need to know about authoritarianism and how their own behavior can help or hinder its spread, as long as nobody else gets there first and tells them they are all part of a category of evil determined by the color of their skin .

While saying that “white people abandoned democracy” may escalate conflict, you coming into the thread to tell people they are escalating conflict by saying that also escalates the conflict because it’s telling people that somehow they, as people who aren’t racist authoritarians, should take responsibility for the rise of racist authoritarianism. How is a target of racist authoritarianism supposed to react to being told that if only They did something better they wouldn’t be targetted?

If you need the entire world to cooperate to allow you to convince someone of something, then you actually have no power to convince anyone of anything. We can’t say, "I could have convinced these people if only it weren’t for millions of other people and their opinions. Those people exist, if we can’t convince people of things in the real world that we really live in, that means we can’t convince them.

I don’t think there is a way forward for America, and convincing more people to get out while the getting is good might be the best thing to be doing.

[Wanderfound]

@anon50609448

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.

Whiteness is a very flexible category. Once they’re in the sweatshops, they usually stop being White.

On capitalism and racism, the argument generally goes something like:

(a) Chattel slavery and genocide was required to create the wealth imbalance that birthed European imperial capitalism, and racism was required to render chattel slavery and genocide cognitively acceptable;

(b) Racism divided the working classes against themselves, destroying solidarity and permitting the capitalist minority to maintain dominance;

(c) Those psychological/sociological factors are still in effect, and still serve to divide and conquer the people of the world. Both in the local scale when you look at white vs black workers within the USA, and on the global scale when you look at Western vs Global South nations in terms of trade and war.

We might get to colour-blind capitalism eventually, but I suspect that it’d be only because the ruling class have all of the peasants so thoroughly oppressed that they no longer need to divide them.

@anon50609448

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.

Yup, no disagreement with that.

Elon Musk (Parody)

[NickyG]

@anon50609448

What the everloving fuck? Seriously, you read history one way and I read it another way and suddenly I am emotionally holding on to racist idiocy?

I thought this discussion was about what we thought facts were, not about us hating one another. I am an idiot.

Your perspective, at least as described here, is the literal definition of “the noble savage.” Sorry to break that to you?

[anon50609448]

@NickyG

Your perspective, at least as described here, is the literal definition of “the noble savage.” Sorry to break that to you?

Yeah, I really bet you are sorry, and not trying to hurt my feelings by saying something you know i won’t like because I disagree with you.

[NickyG]

@anon50609448

Yeah, I really bet you are sorry, and not trying to hurt my feelings by saying something you know i won’t like because I disagree with you.

Sorry to have offended you tremendously, it really wasn’t my intent. I’d be interested to hear why your perspective isn’t a version of the noble savage idea, to your mind? I really am curious.

I’ll come right out and say what my perspective is: For at least the history we have access to, my take is that humans simply haven’t changed that much throughout the ages, in terms of “goodness,” violence, various isms, etc. In fact it seems fairly consistent, although the window dressings are obviously different throughout the ages.

From what I understand of the perspective you shared, and I may have misunderstood it, but you seemed to be arguing that there was some point in the past, when, to paraphrase, “the tribes got along better with one another than they do today.” As I’ve pointed out, with examples (which you dismissed as outliers), it seems the tribes have variously gotten along, and not gotten along, throughout history.

Again, I do genuinely apologize you took the “sorry to break it to you” as a direct attack, it really was a turn of phrase, and I didn’t intend for it to have that level of sting. I’m sorry, and you’re right, it came out sharper than I intended. Take that for what it’s worth – which is nothing, because we’re really just anonymous strangers on the internet.

One of the things I’ve noticed about the bb boards is just how anonymized it is, compared to, say, FaceBook. And I’m no fan of Facebook, and I am a fan of bb! Read the paper 'zine, back in the day. Think it used to be a better website, for sure. But I digress – my point is, as a very anonymous forum, I don’t think it brings out the best in us, at all – and that includes myself.

As an aside, I posted a message a few months ago seeing if anybody in the NYC area was interested in a meetup at some point. I was actually surprised that it received NO attention – not even anyone saying “NickyG, you’re an ass, nobody wants to hang with you.” My sense was, people really like their anonymity here. Frankly, I’m getting over anonymity on the internet – I think it’s leading to more problems than it solves.

[Medievalist]

I just wanted to tell you how I feel about it, because I appreciate you sharing your thoughts with me. I don’t expect you to do anything and don’t presume to direct anyone; my powers are not so vast.

[Wanderfound]

@Medievalist

I can easily teach my poor Southern relatives everything they need to know about authoritarianism and how their own behavior can help or hinder its spread, as long as nobody else gets there first and tells them they are all part of a category of evil determined by the color of their skin .

So you need to get in first and tell them that they are part of a world filled with injustice, in which they have been involuntarily exploited as weapons because of the land of their birth and the colour of their skin.

The core message of the political work of the modern left is intersectionality: race, class and gender. You can’t do just part of it; you have to deal with all of it. If you leave one part unaddressed, you just end up recreating the systems of injustice you began with.

[Medievalist]

Agreed. I did some probably unfair but effective emotional manipulation on my extremely Christian relatives when we adopted my daughter. . Totally don’t regret it though I do love 'em. Or maybe because I love 'em.

[Wanderfound]

@Wanderfound

We might get to colour-blind capitalism eventually, but I suspect that it’d be only because the ruling class have all of the peasants so thoroughly oppressed that they no longer need to divide them.

Running a little further with this…

Another way to describe that situation would be to say that, at that stage of social evolution, only the ruling class are still White.

That’s the key here: the radical analysis of Whiteness sees it not as a biological or even social category, but as a means of oppression. It was created for the purpose of European imperialism; before Atlantic slavery, “white” was a colour, not a race.

Whiteness is all about dominance by a privileged minority, and the boundaries of Whiteness expand or contract as needed in order to maintain that dominance. Irish, Jews, Poles, Arabs; Whiteness depends very much upon context.

As Kiran talks about in the bit I quoted upthread, ethnicity/heritage and Whiteness are different things.

[NickyG]

@Wanderfound

That’s the key here: the radical analysis of Whiteness sees it not as a biological or even social category, but as a means of oppression. It was created for the purpose of European imperialism; before Atlantic slavery, “white” was a colour, not a race.

Whiteness is all about dominance by a privileged minority, and the boundaries of Whiteness expand or contract as needed in order to maintain that dominance. Irish, Jews, Poles, Arabs; Whiteness depends very much upon context.

This is SO well put. Freaking Italians weren’t considered “white” at one point, neither were the Irish! It’s all so very convenient to the power elite…

[anon50609448]

@NickyG

Sorry to have offended you tremendously, it really wasn’t my intent. I’d be interested to hear why your perspective isn’t a version of the noble savage idea, to your mind? I really am curious.

@NickyG

[paraphrasing me] “the tribes got along better with one another than they do today.”

That certainly isn’t what I meant at all (which is not the same as saying that I think you should have known what I meant from what I said). I don’t think that people in the past were less violent than we are now.

My original point was that I don’t think that “tribalism” is a sufficient explanation of current levels of animosity between political parties. Sometimes tribes fight, sometimes they don’t. So I find that analysis hollow and kind of a cop out. Like we can cover up the question “Why are these two tribes fighting at this moment?” by just saying “isn’t that what tribes do?” Obviously not always.

Once we got into a discussion of just how violent history was, my perspective is that the fact that we are alive now puts some kind of cap on how brutal we have been to one another in history. I don’t have romantic ideas of the moral superiority of people living in a more “natural” or “primitive” state. When I look back over the conversation I’d hardly be surprised if we actually have very similar ideas of how nasty humanity has been to itself over it’s history, and yet found ourselves arguing about it because it’s not like we can measure it in kilograms (I did make a casual toss in the direction of thinking of an objective way to describe it, but it’s not like it was well defined enough to mean anything).

Fortunately we don’t live 200 years ago or we may have settled this with pistols at dawn.

@Wanderfound

Chattel slavery and genocide was required to create the wealth imbalance that birthed European imperial capitalism, and racism was required to render chattel slavery and genocide cognitively acceptable;

So the only thing I’m disagreeing with here “was required to” where I would instead say, “was the mechanism by which”. And that might matter for mental alternate universe science fiction stories, but it probably doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to reality.