US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1674

On July 17 2019 18:59 GreenHorizons wrote:


The answer is of course, I'm certainly more versed in this topic than you.

EDIT: Beyond the social construction (based in fiction) designed to exploit groups of people as "non-white" (and it's fallout) there's no such thing as "whiteness" or being "white". Except as it exists as defined by "white" people, which is an amorphous group in perpetuity.

On July 17 2019 18:45 GreenHorizons wrote:


Are you familiar with the one-drop rule?

On July 17 2019 19:16 Jockmcplop wrote:


This seems obvious to you GH but its genuinely something I have trouble getting my head around.
Its a bit of a nebulous way to define the concept (although I get that you aren't really defining it as much as you are interpreting how other people define it).

If the concept of whiteness was invented by white people is the concept of non-whiteness in all its forms the same in its construction?
It seems to me that following this logic various people of other races self identify as non-white (or something more specific) as a way of 'reclaiming' the concept of their racial heritage as a means of fighting exploitation. Is this how you would define non-whiteness from your persective?

I'm finding it hard to put into words what I mean.

I guess what I'm asking is do you feel that racial pride and racial identity movements like black lives matter are purely a means to an end (of removing harmful racial social constructs) or that they can be useful regardless of the context of exploitation?

On July 17 2019 19:17 Dan HH wrote:

Now I don't particularly care about this topic but I am disappointed in you using such shitty tactics. Some Pardos have African ancestry, some don't. Calling people with no African ancestry (since colonialism) African-Brazlilian is stupid. You googled Wegandi's information and ignored all the non-stupid results to provide the one stupid result instead of moving on from your wrong claim that Brazil has a majority black population, which it never had.

On July 17 2019 19:31 GreenHorizons wrote:


Race (insert the same thing I said for white/whiteness). People outside of whiteness identify in a wide variety of ways but it's generally a reference to shared culture and (labeling) experience, but as I said, always at the mercy of whiteness.

This is lost on lots of people who subscribe to various "race science theories"

"Pardo" is a European label placed onto colonized peoples by "white people" to differentiate "white" brownish Europeans
from the "white" brownish Europeans that had "mixed" with various "non-white" browinsh colonized populations.

On July 17 2019 20:11 Acrofales wrote:


I'm not sure why it matters where the label comes from. Having lived in Brazil, nobody really gives a shit. There's probably more "rivalry" between "whites" of German decent and "whites" of Italian decent than there is between whites and pardos and blacks and whatever other nonsensical names you feel like sticking on skin color. At least in Brazil. Skin color is not a factor that plays into peoples' self-identity there much at all.

Which is also why you labelling "pardos" as "African-Brazilians" is a bit nonsensical. I'm sure some of them self-identify as descendents of slaves (and thus African-Brazilians). Others "feel" more Portuguese (or Italian, or Japanese), and unlike the USA (or Europe for that matter), I never had the impression any of them felt like second-rate citizens.

If there was any example in Brazil of overt racism, it was towards indigenos. Which is obviously just as bad, but it doesn't support your overarching point at all.

That said, if you divide the country by skin color, the darker segments will be poorer. However, that is mostly a historical problem. If you look at just São Paulo or Rio, I doubt that holds up. But the north-east has a far larger (and longer) slave history than the south, and the north-east is the poorest part of the country. So I'd argue it's a geographical problem and not due to racism. And the government is trying to deal with it by pumping a lot of money into the north and north-east of Brazil. Things were improving *slowly* when I was there. I think Temer stopped most of those programs, though, and I have no idea what Bolsonaro is doing. I doubt he's up to any good.

When Marielle Franco, a Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman, was shot to death in downtown Rio on March 14, her killing moved the world.

Protesters took to the streets in New York, Paris, Buenos Aires and elsewhere, pledging to continue Franco’s fight against racism, poverty, inequality and violence.

Elected in 2016 after serving 10 years on Rio’s human rights commission, Franco was proud to be a black lesbian born in one of the city’s poor neighborhoods, or favelas. She used her power as an elected official – her “collective mandate,” she called it – to hold Rio’s conservative government accountable to its most marginalized residents.

Franco was particularly critical of the city’s ineffective response to a surge of murders and police shootings in Rio’s mostly black favelas. Local activists have deemed these killings “black genocide.”

On July 17 2019 14:30 Wegandi wrote:


Is it your supposition that Spanish and Portuguese descendants are not white? I might add that race does not equal country of origin. My original point being, talking about AOC's skin color is fucking hilarious considering she's "white AF". Of course, he's being facetious poking fun at the doofus Donald, but, regardless, this idea that Mexicans, or Puerto Ricans of European (read: Spanish/Portuguese), or Brazilians, et. al. are not white, but "brown" is pretty idiotic if you have two eyeballs and an idea of where Spain and Portugal reside geographically.

As for this topic, I think much more people are nativist, than racist. You don't hear people telling Ted Cruz/Allen West to go "back home" because they share a lot of the supposed values of the people who tend to levy such sophistry.

On July 17 2019 18:27 Velr wrote:
W T F has race "science" or anything like that to do with the fact AOC is just friggin white. As white as all Spaniards/Portugese of european decent are.

On July 17 2019 20:41 KwarK wrote:

So Mediterranean white, not Anglo Saxon white. That’s tier 2 white at best, with a whiff of Popery to it.

On July 17 2019 20:15 GreenHorizons wrote:


Well...That's not my experience speaking with black Brazilians or in my research.

Are you familiar with the term Blanqueamiento?

EDIT: Or the relatively recent assassination of Marielle Franco in which Bolsonaro's family, (US/Trump backed president of Brasil and open fascist) is implicated?



https://theconversation.com/assassination-in-brazil-unmasks-the-deadly-racism-of-a-country-that-would-rather-ignore-it-94389

On July 17 2019 21:01 Acrofales wrote:


Don't get me wrong. There are definitely Brazilians who feel like second-rate citizens. It's just that insofar as I could see there was no division by skin color. It's a bit how xDaunt and Danglars bring up how white trash in rural Tennessee are no better off than impoverished blacks living in rural Louisiana. Except that in Brazil that is, by everything I have seen, actually true. There is no history of not admitting blacks into universities or having explicitly black or white neighbourhoods. Brazil is very mixed. Now, I am sure there are people in Brazil who feel racism is a systemic problem and perhaps it is. But not at a scale that has any comparison with what people tell me about the US. And the history of slavery is obviously problematic, and the colonization is obviously one of the causes of why certain regions (e.g north east) are poor (although Minas has an equally horrific past as the north east and is reasonably well off, and Amazonia has no real history of colonization and is very very poor, so geography plays a huge role).

However, the development of the country since the abolishment of slavery has been one of a melting pot and mixing, as opposed to segregation in the USA.

Now I am nowhere near as well versed in the history of the USA as (all of) you are, so I won't try to make claims of how the history of segregation plays into racism today. But I can at least compare Brazil to South Africa, a country with an even more obvious history of segretation than the USA that I *am* very familiar with, and the differences are immediately obvious to anybody who has visited both countries.

E: oh, and yes. I had heard of Marielle Franco, but you'll have to tell me what she has to do with your claims, and blanqueamiento is (1) a spanish word, not portuguese and (2) something you do to your teeth.

E2: okay, I was being facetious. I would argue that even though branqueamento was a policy inspired by racism, it had pretty awesome results. A hell of a lot better than segregation.

On July 17 2019 20:42 Gahlo wrote:

The problem with discussing mixed race people is that nobody walks around with a "Hi, I'm ___ and this is my 23 and Me result" tag. We are viewed as whatever our skin presents us as in public. Obama is Black, but he's also White, but nobody cares about that because he looks Black. Tiger Woods is Black, but he's also Asian, but nobody cares about that because he looks Black. A friend I had in highschool was white, but she was also Black, but nobody cared because she looked white.

There becomes a disconnect between what you may identify as racially and what society identifies you as based on how you appear. This gets taken a bit further when discussing things like "whiteness". For some it's shade, for some it's geographical, etc.

On July 17 2019 21:39 Dangermousecatdog wrote:

I was actually refering to that GH doesn't seem to recognise that people who are not or do not identify as "black" or "white" or "black/white" mixed exists. It's mindboggling. Forget indigenous people, there's an entire fucking planet out there.

On July 17 2019 21:05 KwarK wrote:
Basically the further you get from either Anglo Saxon (although Celtic and Nordic are also something we’ll probably not hold against you because some people are born Welsh and they can’t help that) or Protestant the less white you are.

Tier 1 would be Protestant Northern Europe
Tier 2 is Catholic Northern Europe
3 would be Slavic Europe, assuming not too Slavic, anywhere the Germans crusaded to basically
4 would be Mediterranean, these guys generally worship something they call Dios
5 would be white Middle Eastern due to the multiple diasporas there, these guys generally worship something they call Allah

When Wegandi says that Spain is in Europe he is referring to geography, it was a Moorish colony until 500 years ago. They may be European but if I stood next to a Spaniard and asked you to point out the white guy then I’m winning that 11 times out of 10. And ultimately that’s what counts. White isn’t about light skin, it’s about differentiation. You may have light skin but if mine is lighter then I can claim that mine is real white and yours is brown. None of us have skin that is the same colour as paper but that’s not what it’s about, it’s about hierarchy. You can tell that Saxons and Iberians are two different peoples and therefore there is a ranking because it’s not in the interests of the dominant group to not make that distinction.

If Celts, and not Anglo Saxons, had set up the system then I might not have been on the top because you can distinguish between the two. But Celts got grandfathered in to the Anglo Saxon white system. It’s not about light skin, it’s about power. Anglo Saxons don’t have the whitest skin but they do have the most power.

On July 17 2019 21:43 Velr wrote:
The Russian collusion stuff DID NOT lead to nowhere… FFS.

On July 17 2019 22:06 KwarK wrote:

It led to the sentencing of Trump’s Campaign Manager and Deputy Campaign Manager, both of whom were actively coordinating with Russian Intelligence, and revealed a widespread campaign of Russian psyops behind Wikileaks, the Killary nonsense, the Podesta nonsense, the Twitter echo chambers, and the fiction of a BLM race war coming.

It revealed Russia’s active support of a candidate and that candidates knowing acceptance of the support. But without impeachment people accept Trump’s narrative of exoneration, even though Mueller’s text literally says “does not exonerate”.