And believe me, I am not trying to put myself in a #notallwhitepeople position. I am well aware that I have privilege… I just don’t think someone being given a toehold 30 ft below me on the ladder is stealing anything from me.
But people make the mistake of thinking Canada – especially BC – is some left-wing socialist paradise. Not hardly. We’re mostly just the US with more hockey and curling and better healthcare.
I imagine BC is much like WA. Once you get out of urban corridors it turns in to right wing reactionary land.
Yes, I do appreciate that correction. Many U.S. Americans think of Canada as a liberal paradise, what with the polite to all manners and the universal health care. I fall for that sometimes too.
This goes back to the idea of white nationalists being the only ones who are talking about what whiteness means… Because I’m sure that (much like the Christian countermass media) there is likely some white power reggae out there…
Yes… this exactly.
Also true.
It’s like the comic form of this:
White Culture: when you feel comfortable weaponizing (and infantilizing) white disabled people to cover for your racism.
Most of the people cheering on the government’s actions and screaming about the protests would do the exact opposite if it was a white rancher guy who refused to sell to the pipeline and the government invoked eminent domain on the grounds that all his neighbors sold, so he’s just being obstructed.
AFAIK, we do not have a treaty with the Wet’suwet’an. It’s their land. It doesn’t matter what the other First Nations agreed to – especially since there’s no actual mechanism to say no.
It’s completely absurd to say the problem is that we are undergeneralizing people based on the colour of their skin. Saying something like that, then proceeding to post a thread about the problems with people with a certain skin colour is bigoted at best. This is an international community, and should be welcoming to everyone. Posting stuff like this is not welcoming.
You do know that the West in general remains fundamentally white supremacist?
Excuse me, but I have to ask: have you actually read through this entire thread?
I have. And I’ve found it a thoughtful discussion on the concept of white culture, how it can be defined, how it’s expressed, and what effects it has on both people of color and the white people who inhabit this culture.
I think this is a conversation we need to have. If we never look at the harsher aspects of the world around us-- and let’s face it, there are many assumptions about race baked into not only our society, but our system of laws, business, and education-- we will never be able to improve ourselves, or our communties. We need to point out problems before they can be fixed. It’s not always an easy or comfortable thing to do, but if one wants real change and real equality, it’s necessary.
I can appreciate your concern for the community, but I don’t agree that this topic is cause for alarm. I think it’s good that we can have respectful conversations about difficult topics here. And let me assure you, if there was anything our Happy Mutants found to be offensive or bigoted, it wouldn’t last long. Our system of member flags and moderation tends to weed out inappropriate comments very quickly.
This topic is temporarily closed for at least 4 hours due to a large number of community flags.
This topic was automatically opened after 12 hours.
On top of all you said here, I think NOT getting to the bottom of this concept of “white culture”, which undoubtedly exists conceptually, leaves that to people with ill-intent. If someone identifies with the concept of white, and are looking for answers as to what that means, the people who have answers are going to look more attractive if those of us who care about building an actually egalitarian world don’t actively engage with this topic. We can talk about raising up those who have been historical oppressed based on the concept of race all we want, but if we don’t deal with the elephant in the room, we’re missing an important element. That means looking critically and honestly with what we mean by terms like “white”, “western”, and “European”. These terms are often used uncritically as a short hand to describe something that is largely considered good and positive for particular audiences. But we need to understand the violent work this has done to those who fall outside of that category, which includes at times people who are largely considered white/European now. Understanding that it’s a moving target, helps us to understand it’s constructed nature, but a construct that holds real political power.
This is sort of a rant, but if we allow uncritical definitions of these terms to go unchallenged, we’re moving farther away from being able to dismantle them and move onto something more egalitarian (similar with regards to gender).
Butting in knowing fully well that I won’t be able to adequately explain what I mean and I’ll possibly draw the ire/mockery of the community… While I overall completely agree with what you said above, I have to say I’m finding the discussion in this topic (and the discussion of race in general on the English speaking internet) tilting in a certain way that doesn’t entirely overlap with my own experiences. By which I mean, it’s just all very US- and to a lesser degree, western Europe-centric, and discusses issues in that context.
It’s kind of like something that I think I mentioned once in another thread about the latest (and IMO godawful) Dracula adaptation by the BBC, where a 19th century convent in Budapest had black and Asian (in the US sense of the word) nuns, and how, being Hungarian myself, I couldn’t help but find that really jarring and difficult to parse. I understand that the creators and the target audiences saw it as (a lip service to) diversity, but for me in that particular context diversity would have meant nuns who are Roma, Central Asian, Middle Eastern… even ethnicities that might seem obvious to me but that the creators/target audiences may not even parse as particularly “different” so to speak because they approach it from an entirely, and very specific, racial angle. My point is, from where I stand, I sometimes find the way these terms, and the way they’re used in generalizations or as modifiers of words like “culture” in this thread and other similar discussions like this, not entirely fitting contexts I’m the most familiar with.
(And sometimes I don’t, of course! I realize this is entirely on me and I’m not trying to say that anyone here is wrong, just that when we’re talking about “what we mean by terms like ‘white’, ‘western’ and ‘European’” I think it would be good to consider, or be aware of, some angles that are often ignored/dismissed. Like I’ve seen some people who defined “white” as basically “social group that has power over other social groups” without considering societies where that simply doesn’t apply, or doesn’t apply like that.)
This is exactly the way white supremacists (or any other group of racists) talk. “We need to have a conversation about what differentiates people by skin color.”
A culture is a group of people with similar social behaviors or beliefs. So, you could have punk rock culture, where they all listen to a similar kind of music, or “racist culture” where members falsely believe skin color some how determines other, more important qualities.
But there is no such thing as “white culture” because skin color is not a behavior.
These 2 comments are 100% correct, “white culture” is a concept fabricated by white supremacists. You can see how wrong it is for them to do it, but not when we do it.
If you need to make a thread about culture, go ahead and look at “white supremacist culture”, because that is an actual culture based on actions and beliefs. White culture doesn’t exist beyond the imagination of racists.
Not only that, but whites get the privilege of being non-racialized and default. Instead of being (correctly) called “white culture” things just get called “culture” like they’re universal. Everybody else gets “othered”. It’s good empathy practice to use the same labeling for ourselves. Maybe if we find it stings we should try recognizing that that pain is what we inflict on others, constantly.
FTFY.
Mutual dislike, previous unfounded aspersions and a general lack of basic respect aside, I’ll address your likely intentionally contentious statement with this response:
Conversations seeking to examine the manufactured construct of race and the negative ramifications and impact that racism has had on present day society does NOT equate to having “reverse racist” conversations which demonize and villainize all White people.
Personally, I don’t comment in this thread often despite my belief that it’s a very important discussion to have; because I don’t aim to hinder the self-reflection and awareness that many people commenting are striving to attain in regards to the roles they inevitably play in the inequitable hierarchy of the world we all inhabit.
I’d say that’s likely the case, so not an unwarranted intervention on your part at all.
Thinking about how we’ve conceptually divided up Europe over the modern era could be helpful here. People in Eastern Europe were often not considered part of the “West” or “Europe” or even “white” during much of the 20th century, which we saw with both the Nazis during the war (with Slavs particularly being racialized) and then during the Cold War by the US/UK. But now we have people who are keen to not only define Eastern Europeans (especially Russians and Serbs) as not only white, but as the key to “saving” western civilization.
But as you note, diversity and what it looks like has been indelibly shaped by our historical experiences, such as the case with Dracula and you not seeing the kind of diversity you’d expect in that location.
I think that understanding that divide within Europe (which at times also includes a north-south division, and divisions between the Irish and British) points to the constructedness of the whole thing that often does not speak to lived experiences. I think how you experience and relate to the concept of “European” and “white” provides valuable insights because these things have very much shifted in our collective conciousness in our life times.
We’re talking about the social construction of culture, how it changes over time, and why that is so. White supremacists would talk of this as a genetic fact of life, and as a kind of destiny. People here are arguing against that, and instead arguing that this is a social construct that has real world power, that needs to be addressed and understood in order to be dismantled. White people need to do that work, understand that because of how a white identity is constructed by those with power, it gives us advantages not enjoyed by others, and to dismantle that privilege.
We live in a culture that very much still promotes the idea of race as a immutable fact, so there is very much a white culture. The language has shifted away from eugenics (though it hums along in the background) to culture. The unstated assumption of terms like “Western civilization” is very much assumed to be white people. Just because it’s not explicitly stated as white doesn’t mean it’s not meant to be white.
The point is it still exists, is far more pervasive than you seem to imagine, and will not go away by pretending it’s all in the past, and it’s just a few bad apples that are promoting white supremacy. Go look in the White House and a few other executive positions around the world to see that.
And the end of their colonial empires did not mean that ideology just vanished, either.
