You're viewing a single thread.
Also context for any shitlibs who are crying over this (not that it should matter) - that thread was showing how popular outright nazism and white supremacy are on Reddit. Literally whiteys calling for concentration camps.
Honestly, the context doesn't justify the racist framing. It sure justifies the anger against libs and fascoids and the /r/europe reddit asses, but re-enforcing the nonsense obsolete paradigm of race and race hatred is toxic and obstructs workers of the world uniting. These people need some Fred Hampton in their lives.
"every white person who isnt a comrade is my fucking enemy" comes off like "you're a socialist, you're one of the good ones". There was a post next-door talking about ideological red flags, this might as well be a cop siren.
Bro white people aren't real, stop getting offended on behalf of an identity only sociopaths and losers identify with
"every white person who isnt a comrade is my fucking enemy" comes off like "you're a socialist, you're one of the good ones"
Of course white people isn't real, but that doesn't stop racists pretending they are and that didn't stop many thousands of people being murdered over that unreal garbage.
I'm not personally offended or identifying as black or white, I'm disturbed that people here think an appropriate approach is to mirror such obviously unreal racist garbage instead of overcoming it, and in our own site too, not even as stooping down to give a dunking rebuttal to a racist. As I and others have said here, it doesn't matter that we don't identify with these terms, because society pushes them on us and people will try to kill you and me over labels they give to us. Encouraging and normalizing the bullshit fake paradigm is a bad thing.
but that doesn't stop racists pretending they are and that didn't stop many thousands of people being murdered over that unreal garbage.
Ok and they also pretend capitalism is the best system in the world and murder millions every year over that unreal garbage, and they do the same over their bullshit conceptions of gender, religion, and nationhood, what's your point?
I'm disturbed that people here think an appropriate approach is to mirror such obviously unreal racist garbage instead of overcoming it
Except nobody "mirrored" anything, because to successfully mirror something it would need to possess an equivalence of intent, scale, power, and social reach, if Othello whose post you have an issue with was actually going to mirror something, they'd first need to flip their intent in that post and instead of decrying those Nazis, they'd need to agree with them but stipulate that black people need to put whites in camps first simply for being "white", and that's just the first step, then they'd need to ally themself with an international network of black supremacists who are backed by powerful state actors and media platforms and who are comfortable putting white refugees in camps or drowning them in the ocean, THEN it would be "mirrored"
instead of overcoming it.......it doesn't matter that we don't identify with these terms, because society pushes them on us
Except it does actually matter, because people are fighting on the basis of those questions every day, and you don't overcome it by essentializing whiteness or labeling it an unbridgeable obstacle we can never change, because hey the racists imposed it, so what choice do we have but to identify with that imposition
and they do the same over their bullshit conceptions of gender, religion, and nationhood, what's your point? My point is that if someone says they want to kill women, it would not be helpful to say "Bro gender isn't real, stop getting offended on behalf of an identity only sociopaths and losers identify with". If someone says they want to kill Mexicans, it would not be helpful to say "Bro nations and race aren't real, stop getting offended on behalf of an identity only sociopaths and losers identify with". And if they want to kill socialists, ... etc. Those top two, and sometimes even the third, aren't things people choose to identify with, and in the case of trans people and immigrants, self-identity is often ignored.
because to successfully mirror something it would need to possess an equivalence of intent, scale, power, and social reach
I didn't mean 'mirror' as in a literal identical copy, I meant it more loosely, recycling is maybe a better word. I don't really understand this weird implication that racism has to be the entire institutionalized system. A white nationalist going into a church, shooting people and going to jail for life without parole is racism. They don't need an institutionalized system or abnormal power to do that. A person denying a job based on stereotypes of their race is racism. They don't need intent, scale nor reach for that. Racism is still divisive garbage that fucks up social movements no matter if it's instutionalized or not.
you don't overcome it by essentializing whiteness or labeling it an unbridgeable obstacle we can never change, because hey the racists imposed it, so what choice do we have but to identify with that imposition
I'm not doing either. I support obsoleting and ripping down the entire concepts of race and whiteness. I don't identify with it, we both agree it's garbage.
Now, how are we meant to overcome those obstacles (even just within a local setting like a socialist org) with people like Othello embracing it? I don't see that as a way forward. As far as I'm concerned, their redacted reply made it clear that they think continuing dividing the movement on whiteness is justified because of historical racial injustices in US socialist orgs. They appear to have just embraced the white/non-white dichotomy and doubled down on the hatred.
Shut up.
Those top two, and sometimes even the third, aren't things people choose to identify with, and in the case of trans people and immigrants, self-identity is often ignored.
Ok, and I'm saying whiteness IS something you can choose to self-identify with because unlike many minority groups, "white" people do have the social capacity and ability to affect change in that arena
Also you're conflating light-skinnedness with whiteness again, people can't help light-skinnedness, but they can help identifying their light skinnedness with an over arching political and social ideology like whiteness, and there's only one way to do that, which is what op in that thread was decrying, so your previous examples don't apply
A person denying a job based on stereotypes of their race is racism. They don't need intent, scale nor reach for that. Racism is still divisive garbage that fucks up social movements no matter if it's instutionalized or not.
Ok, but that's not happening to "white people", you know why? Because if the "person denying a job based on "light skin" stereotypes" is discovered, they're the ones who are gonna get fucked, as they should. Because you actually do need intent, scale and reach to enforce prejudice, otherwise society and most importantly the state is gonna push your shit in
But people who identify with whiteness don't suffer from that dynamic, instead they prevent others from enjoying that protection, which is why it's inappropriate to talk about "mirrors" or equivalences of any sort when it comes to this topic and why you shouldn't conflate skin color with the ideology itself
Now, how are we meant to overcome those obstacles (even just within a local setting like a socialist org) with people like Othello embracing it?
Except they weren't embracing it, they were literally decrying it, because they recognized that people who identify with whiteness don't have their best interest at heart, the worst you could call that post was cynical or doomer, but not racist
As far as I'm concerned, their redacted reply made it clear that they think continuing dividing the movement on whiteness is justified because of historical racial injustices in US socialist orgs.
Ok and you're dividing the movement because you want to preserve some kind of organic conception of whiteness, tied to people's phenotypical traits, devoid of its historical and social role in human affairs? Because otherwise we'll start being racist to light-skinned people? We don't live in a world of simply light skin supremacy, we live in a world of white supremacy and to combat it we have to deconstruct whiteness and the ideologies and assumptions that underlay it, and yeah average people who ignorantly identify with it are going to get pissed off, but that shouldn't prevent critique or making fun of people who turn it into their central personality trait
Except it does actually matter, because people are fighting on the basis of those questions every day, and you don't overcome it by essentializing whiteness or labeling it an unbridgeable obstacle we can never change, because hey the racists imposed it, so what choice do we have but to identify with that imposition
Is your argument here supposed to be that you can abolish the concept of "Whiteness", by getting "light-skinned people" to just stop calling/considering themselves "White"; and that this will work regardless of how anybody else considers, or interacts with them?
This seems like an extremely non-materialist take, and one that isn't/wouldn't even be supported by the majority of people of color.
Like, what is your position on what FDSignifier says in this video? Would your argument be that the most effective way to get people in "White America" to recognize that the American Carceral State also preys on them is to try to convince them that "they aren't White", or whatever? Or do you just write off that entire issue as a lost cause?
I don't remember the exact wording of it, or where exactly it was; because I am admittedly not as well read as I would like to be, but I distinctly recall that Mao cautioned against being more ideologically advanced in your positions than what was necessarily appropriate for the actual conditions of the society you were trying to organize in, and unlike anybody on here he actually did successfully organize a Communist revolution.
No, I suspect the concept will never be abolished socially until the capitalism that sustains it and simultaneously uses it as a functional tool is destroyed or negated, but as the contradictions of capitalism develop further in conjunction with climate change, so does whiteness as a concept; maybe it expands, maybe it contracts, maybe gen alpha resurrects the Young Patriots Organization and bisects whiteness and transforms it into some pseudo-radical identity, who knows, of course I highly doubt that will never happen, because at the end of the day whiteness has no content beyond exclusionary hatred
But what will definitely happen is whiteness will change over time along with the contradictions of capitalism, and as that happens the artificiality of it becomes more apparent, and as materialists it's always a sound strategy to point out the artificial, to de-essentialize racial rhetoric and stress when something is not set in nature, despite ideological claims to the contrary
And I take your point about being "ideologically advanced" well, but ironically my usual approach is simple and fully in line with American socio-economic history; desegregation, but instead of arising out of segments of the black community like in the past and mediated reluctantly by a hostile state, it's an "internal position" advanced by white radicals as a social movement, hardly an ideologically advanced position
Of course, don't ask me the likelihood of something like that happening, because I can get real doomer about the United States
I'm disturbed that people here think an appropriate approach is to mirror such obviously unreal racist garbage instead of overcoming it
What we're trying to do -- or at least should be trying to do -- is to get people to think about why "cracker" lacks the invective of the n-word, and how racism runs much deeper than merely an insult based on skin color. But as you describe, we're just mirroring racist insults, trying to offend people with them, then saying "how can you possibly be offended by this."
We'll talk all day about how you can't make a book or movie with subtext because no one will get it, then we'll do this convoluted stuff instead of just explaining our views on how racism works.
I don’t argue with people John brown would have shot
John Brown would have handed me a gun to fight alongside, comrade.
after you chastise the slaves for their offensive language.
Feel free to argue it’s counterproductive (lol this is the dunk tank) but calling crackers white devils continues to not be racism
What definition of 'racism' discounts race-based prejudice? Honestly question, it seems counterintuitive.
race as a concept was invented by white people to describe people who are declared outside whiteness
whiteness isn't a race, it's a morphing caste and who belongs to it can change. We're in a moment where speaking Spanish or being a Muslim automatically excludes a person from full whiteness, regardless of their ancestry or other features. The simple notion of who is or isn't white has white supremacy baked into the concept
I didn't say whiteness was race, but whiteness is strongly intertwined with race. Even if the races which are considered factors of 'whiteness' change, over time or between cultures. As you said, it was invented to describe people outside whiteness.
In many places where the dynamic is less complex than USA's, whiteness is effectively equal to (perceived) European racial heritage (and Spanish people, where I live, are considered white even if they speak Spanish). The typical citizen can see a picture of someone, nothing more, and decide if they consider them white based on perceived race. Maybe that's a factor in why I associate race and whiteness so closely in society.
Yeah it is different in places outside Anglo countries, I've noticed that. Dominican people I've known will associate whiteness specifically with skin color, regardless of the person's ancestry, language, etc.
Places outside the USA haven't had as strict of a racial divide and so yeah I can see how it would get muddled.
You mentioned showing people pictures. There's a test I do with Americans sometimes. I'll show them a picture of Bashar al-Assad, who they probably don't recognize. I'll ask what he is, and they'll always say he's a white guy. I tell them he's a Muslim and the president of Syria, then they instantly change their answer.
Places outside the USA haven't had as strict of a racial divide and so yeah I can see how it would get muddled.
Yes, although it's also all these secondary things, I'm guessing there was an implication in your comment that speaking Spanish was a sign someone had Central or South American heritage/etc. and was therefore non-white, whereas in other countries the main people speaking Spanish and Portuguese were from Europe so that isn't a signal in the culture.
You mentioned Dominican people, and I think this generalizes to many other countries with European colonialism history without much diverse post-WW European immigration (contrast: USA, Australia) and they retained a strict racial divide as a result. An interesting counter-case is a memetic documentary clip filmed during an uprising in Tanganyika (basically now Tanzania) where the filmmakers are dragged out of their car and approaching a wall to be shot, when a soldier sees their passports and says "these aren’t whites, they’re Italians". My (naïve!) guess is that their understanding of white stems from their British and Belgian oppression, and possibly even shaped by around a hundred thousand Tanganyikans fighting for the Allied forces in WWII.
Bashar al-Assad is an excellent test, because most people in the West envision Middle Eastern people as inherently having darker skin, certainly not light skin and blue eyes which are primary traits racist whites boast about. There's a strong dissonance there, the same kind that makes dumbass neo-nazis start obsessing about poorly guessing who is Jewish or not. The point being, people assume they can tell, and often get it wrong, as you've shown.
With Dominicans (and a lot of Latin America) my guess has always been that lighter skin signalled more recent colonizer ancestry, so it became a signal of wealth to have lighter skin regardless of one's actual heritage, class, or anything.
That's a really interesting clip and I'm really interested in watching the rest of the documentary, also I should read up on Tanzania in general. Thanks for sharing it.
you can't be racist against white people because white supremacy is hegemonic. there's no structural power behind anti-white sentiment.
But why is structural power or hegemony considered a prerequisite? Racism exists and has dangerous power regardless of structural factors like legality, see mass shootings. It doesn't need to be institutionalized or dominant to be relevant and dangerous, that just makes it more dangerous.
Just to be clear, I'm of course not trying to equivocate. White supremacy is hegemonic within 'the West', but that hegemony doesn't prevent other racial supremacy movements from local dominance, or even from members performing lone-wolf racially-targeted shootings as an extreme example.
because equivocating between structural oppression and mere prejudice sucks. and yes, you're equivocating.
Nothing I said equivocates them.
How do you define racism? And why does that definition seemingly exclude prejudice? (nothing 'mere' about it, people get murdered over it)
Prejudice + Power, which it is worth noting is the accepted definition in sociology circles.
you have a child's understanding of racism
It’s not racism but it’s using racist form and prose.
That tends to bother some antiracists.
This isn’t tone policing, I’m just trying to explain why it seems to cause arguments.
edit, never mind talking to people like you will never be worth it.
Damn straight. I don’t know why anyone is seriously engaging with this asshole. It’s not acceptable to invalidate your feelings and talk down to you because you were somehow uncivil or because of the abstract concept of racial abolition. If you’d talked about hating cis people who weren’t comrades and someone came in here talking about how you’re wrong because socialists aim to abolish gender roles and then started quoting Feinberg at you when you refused to engage, absolutely nobody would take that shit seriously and would rightfully tell them to fuck off. I understand race abolition and gender abolition are not 100% analogous in every way, but they sure are in the ways that count here. I’m sorry you’ve been deal with this shit.
thanks this comment made me feel better, some of these assholes are really getting to me. and thats a great point about the gender thing, like am i just supposed to pretend that i live in a fantasy land where most white people aren't racist and dont see and treat me like subhuman garbage, where i haven't been abused, belittled, and harassed my whole life. there are even horrible people implying im not black for saying something that ALL OF MY FRIENDS SAY, thats normal. not to mention the context plus I literally say that im crying while typing in the comment. like i organized with white people all the time, I feed my community, i do the fucking work i put up with bullshit that would break your average person, i get sexually harassed by white leftist, i can ignore so much to get the work done but the second i express any real human emotion suddenly im some bad evil backwards person for being NORMAL. i feel so disposable, like no one will take me as I am, i have to be a perfect little good pet for white leftist all the time. like this is the exact shit conservatives do when they quote mlk to tell black people to get over racism. and that fact that this shit gets upbeared so much is annoying. i know most people are being supportive but im struggling not to let the few jerks get to me. im gonna force myself to take a break. after the next fanon post i think i need a long break from hexbear. like this is getting to me so much i may be done with this place permanently after sunday idk.
"As revolutionaries, we don't have the right to say we are tired of explaining. We must never stop explaining. We know that when the people understand, they cannot help but follow us." ― Thomas Sankara
As for your original comment, no, I don't think it's fine to excuse people for being racist or sexist or chauvinistically nationalist or TERFs or whatever other kind of useless divisive garbage in a movement. With friends like those, the feds don't even need to arrive. Solidarity is working across and overcoming whatever divides idiots want to invent, not re-enforcing them and rationalizing internalized racism as justified and fair.
Sankara rolling in his grave at the misuse of this quote intensifies