Agreed, seems certain topics are selective with how/whom to disparage…
I hope it’s just “idiots behaving idiotically.”
But society does tend to instill biases in us, as much as some of us think we can resist them. Some sort of content analysis would likely reveal that BB writers and editors are also prey to this kind of inculcation.
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It’s often just a state of willful ignorance, yes?
If, however, we were to miraculously escape our bondage, we would find a world that we could not understand—the sun is incomprehensible for someone who has never seen it. In other words, we would encounter another “realm”, a place incomprehensible because, theoretically, it is the source of a higher reality than the one we have always known;
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Well, ignorance does imply one who “ignores” ( as does willful), as opposed to one who’s just obliviously unaware.
I dunno, depends on the person and situation, I suppose. I guess if I were interested in trying to wake up say, some racist Trumpkins or Fox viewers, I would care more about such distinctions. But such people have proven time and again beyond my persuasive capabilities. So, 
As for BB writers and editors, they generally seem like a pretty open bunch. Having spent years here, I’ve detected some progress, some movement toward escape from “our bondage.” 
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Fair point.
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Heh, ISWYDT
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I was all ready to write a post about the inability of white people to tell racism from prejudice being a feature of racism, but I found I kept stumbling over the concepts in my head.
Then it turns out the article @docosc linked above basically said everything I meant to say. In particular:
Individualism
Whites are taught to see themselves as individuals, rather than as part of a racial group. Individualism enables us to deny that racism is structured into the fabric of society. This erases our history and hides the way in which wealth has accumulated over generations and benefits us, as a group, today. It also allows us to distance ourselves from the history and actions of our group. Thus we get very irate when we are “accused” of racism, because as individuals, we are “different” from other white people and expect to be seen as such; we find intolerable any suggestion that our behavior or perspectives are typical of our group as a whole.
Individualism is itself a part of racism. So of course it’s hard for white people to understand the difference between racism and individual prejudice, because it violates our deepest values to think that an individual’s actions are part of something. It tells us we are not masters of our own little empires.
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Yes! Or even influenced at all by being a member of that group, “white people.” Indeed, if white people ever do bring up that phrase, it’s almost always in a way that distances themselves from other white people.
A lot of this illusory individualism occurs in terms of gender too, of course, though differently. So it’s exacerbated when one is both white and male (and for that matter, straight).
So well said. Except, I think, for the omission I corrected. The paradoxical phenomenon of white individualism also exacerbates the common white tendency to fail to label that which is white with the word “white.” 
(And just to be clear, I also say that because white people often have no trouble at all thinking that say, a black individual’s actions are a part of something, that is, related to or caused by their being black.)
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Yeah, I’m struggling to talk about white culture in an Indigenous cultural competency training course I’m taking. It just feels so wrong. As a person who has a live-and-let-live attitude towards even some of the most profound cultural taboos, it’s been very interesting to find myself coming face to face with that part of myself.
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I think your efforts to do so are admirable. I highly recommend the best book I’ve seen on that topic:
Thandeka, a black woman who’s also been a psychologist and Unitarian minister, does an accessible, excellent job in that book of explicating causes for the common white taboo of labeling white people, and other whitened things, with the word “white.” Why is it that such a seemingly innocuous form of labeling is so hard for most white people to do?
It is interesting, just for starters, that doing so is such a taboo for white people. As Thandeka in part explains, that taboo is one symptom of what amounts to an emotional and psychological disorder. Ignoring whiteness is a dysfunctional state that white people would do well, even on an individual level, to work on untangling.
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i’ve noticed this tendency but i generally go against type. i’ve frequently identified myself here as white, as well as identifying my age group, and also my region or state. sometimes this is because i’m going against type (far-left, liberal, democrat from texas) and sometimes to embrace type (i’m from texas, beans in chili is an abomination). i just don’t recognize that as a taboo for me.
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Yes, that doesn’t surprise me about you!
Still, Thandeka recommends an exercise for white people that might show you otherwise: try going through a day or two using “white” for every person you refer to.
My white student Sally said…
A white driver cut me off…
The white teacher down the hall brought in some…
White training makes that uncomfortable at best. White reactions make it nearly impossible for many to keep it up for long at all.
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I don’t think it’s so much about an individual saying they are white or ticking a box on a form (although I feel uncomfortable even doing that). I think it’s more about identifying things as elements of white culture. We have an idea that there is no such thing as white culture. White people don’t mind having culture. We can have Christian culture or Southern Ontario culture or whatnot. And people don’t have trouble talking about Indigenous culture or Hispanic culture. But white culture is this void. What is the shared cultural experience of being white? It’s something we aren’t supposed to talk about.
(Obviously different people have different experiences)
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there are two facets to that shared culture of whiteness which, while not covering the entire scope of culture, distort it in important ways. one is of sharing in the privilege created by being the race of dominance, no matter how slim the advantages might be on the margins of whiteness. the other facet of that shared culture involves denying and/or minimizing the effects of the first one which is probably where the discomfort originates.
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And that in itself is a problem. Haudenosaunee culture and Lenape culture, or Puertorriqueño culture and Chicano culture, as as different as peas and apples - the most significant aspect of their common heritage appears to be the way that USAians of Northern European extraction have treated them. (And feel free to take that last observation as the uninformed opinion of an old white guy.)
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If you’re bringing up Canada, French-speaking communities have their own distinct cultures. Is there a shared “white” culture in Canada when white people aren’t even united by a common language?
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I think “We’re superior to Indians” is still basically embedded in it somewhere, no?
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You mean that anglophone white Canadians and francophone white Canadians have a common culture because they are both racist towards First Nations?
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The fiction that is racial whiteness forms in contradistinction to perceived qualities in other, “inferior” races.
That is, yes.
And that’s just one element of white culture. Not giving much of a toss about the ethically challenging fact of living on stolen land – let alone not thinking that white people should do anything about that – is another.
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