Not me, I don't identify as white and society at large doesn't see me as white unless I happen to pass on any given day, but the US census considers me white and a certain delusional minority of my ehtnic in-group consider me and themselves white, and I'm not an anomaly, this is the reality for so many ethnic groups who don't fall cleanly into this thing you present as being so cleanly divided
Good point, it was silly of me to say that so absolutely. Thanks for explaining.
That said, many people aren't able to pass between groups, and like you said dark skinned black people are a major example. And I think the appearance side is a bigger part than economic and social power for dark skinned black people: they're the original definition of 'black', labeled after their skin tone, just like certain Europeans were the original definition of 'white', likewise, before all the coping mechanisms were added later as different demographics came into play. Does social and economic power allow either of those two groups to shift? I have read a niche theory that tomboyism in the US was considered a whiteness transgression, but apart from that strange example I can't think of a case where a light-skinned native European is broadly considered non-white passing.
Then again, as I said in a different reply chain, I'm not US and my area's definition of whiteness seems more focused on race than social factors (like language and culture) or economic class. So this could be why I'm not noticing things that are the case in the US.
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.
so we all have to get offended on behalf of people who strongly identify with codified European Phrenology?
But my point is that people who don't give a fuck about that identity are still subject to it. Whiteness is an ingrained social phenomenon. It's in the US census!
A person who doesn't consider themselves white is still considered white by a society, regardless of mass groups like entire nationalities/races to move between classification or determine new classes. Yes, there is (for lack of a better work) mobility of races between classes, but that doesn't change that typical people will look at another person and decide if they are white or not, and that other person's opinion or lack of one doesn't matter. If a light-skinned European-American puts 'Black' on their census form, this has approximately 0 effect on anything.
should we all start identifying as capitalists because our lives are defined by capitalist social relations outside our control
No, the analogue would be that even if we decide to identity as socialists, we still live within capitalist social relations imposed on us, until we overcome that system. Until we overcome whiteness, we are subject to our society's (dynamic) interpretation of it. An individual does not have the transformative power necessary to change their own imposed whiteness class, even if large groups do over time.
"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.
That's all irrelevant, because someone killed those people over bullshit race crap. That is racism, and it was lethal. We need to counter racism in all its forms if we want to unite the proletariat, because even person-to-person racism in private with no structural protection is harmful and sectarian.
ok now were the perpetrators protected by the state?
Just the same as the Buffalo shooting, same as the Christchurch mosque shootings. Life in prison, no parole. Again, not that it's relevant; it's still racism even if you're not protected.
I asked how you define racism, because I can't understand why you keep suggesting that structural support is required for racial supremacy bullshit to become racism. It's not a prerequisite. Racism is racism, it's just more powerful when a state or society institutionalizes it.
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.
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.
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)
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.
John Brown would have handed me a gun to fight alongside, comrade.
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.
What definition of 'racism' discounts race-based prejudice? Honestly question, it seems counterintuitive.
I don't know, I was just making a joke
'Whiteness' is a label assigned by society, not self-identity. I think race is absolute nonsense and also don't identify as black nor white, that doesn't stop people assigning it to me when they see me outside. And if someone says they want to kill people based off of their own interpretation of white or black, our self-identity or lack of one means nothing.
Like you, the comment itself doesn't insult me because it's not about a group I identify as, but the normalization of conditional racism here absolutely does concerm me.
Yes, 'white' (and of course 'black') is absolutely a nonsense concept that expands and contracts arbitrarily, but race and whiteness isn't (in practice) a self-identity. It is imposed upon people by racists, and has been institutionalized and normalized so much that it's unavoidable. One can't just say 'I'm not white' or 'I'm not black' in a way effectively recognized by society at large. The point being, people are visually identified as being 'white' or 'black' through things including skin tone. 99+% can look at a license photo and will decide 'white' or 'black'. It is a term with racial implications. A light-skinned Frank who is anti-racist, anti-capitalist and anti-state will be considered 'white' by almost everyone, just as someone with darker skin will be labelled 'black' even if they are a US Republican, pro-capitalist, pro-police racist. So when someone says 'kill white people', why shouldn't a person considered 'white' by society see that as a sign of distrust?
I've had English people call me a terrorist and a savage for being Irish, not because I have pale skin.
May I assume "English people" is here referring to people generally considered white? This may factor into why they don't use whiteness as an insult against native Irish.
The Troubles and British colonization of Ireland are probably going to be far more present in assholes's minds than race in this situation, since my impression is most British people consider Irish people white these days (as you said, the definition expands), even if there are still specific anti-Irish racist tendencies.
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.
Because there are shops out there.
These damn commies have no respect for hard work.
Banksy believing in intellectual property 🏴☠️
I am an Egoist [me/my/mine] and I am informing you that I have not merely won the argument but I own this argument and it was always my argument.
