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United States43758 Posts
On January 24 2023 23:47 Sermokala wrote:
You're repeated insistence to exhaust and divide the only part of the country that wants things to get better, is in effecting any possibility for things to get better.
MLK complained about the white moderate but do you really think that the best way to get them on your side is to insist that they're exceptionally the only ones that are capable of being racist? That no other possible hate between non-white people matters beacuse white people are just that exceptionally hateful? You are the one that is supporting the "loyalist" part of the country with this.
I’ve never much cared for this argument, it amounts to “pander to the lesser evil because you need them for the fight with the greater evil”. If GH was the Democratic candidate for the presidency and the Republicans were running mecha-Hitler then sure, I would absolutely encourage him to lie about his message. Winning is more important than being truthful, if he needs to pander to MLK’s white moderates then so be it, mecha-Hitler must be stopped.
But he’s not running for presidency, he’s talking with peers about social politics in the abstract. In that context you can condemn any group for their sins freely without worrying about whether electoral politics may force you to share a bed with them.
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United States43758 Posts
On January 25 2023 00:41 Ryzel wrote:
Raycism =\= racism. GH came up with the former word to delineate between his take on the word “racism” in contrast to the more general definition of the word “racism”, by request from TL mods. It’s pointless to argue with GH on how “raycism” should be defined; it’s his term to express his ideas.
That being said, I believe GH is arguing that “raycism” should replace “racism”, so that’s where any arguments should be centered.
Personally, my main issue is that the word “racism” seems too general to suddenly hijack to become the race-exclusive “raycism” GH is referring to. It seems easier for everyone involved to leave “racism” as is and use a different term for “raycism”; exactly what’s been happening here.
I’m fine with “cultural and historical factors have created an environment in which only white people, the favoured group in that environment, can be raycist in America”. It’s evident. If we’re talking about structural racism in America and which group was the in group then nobody is going to think that it’s the Navaho. We’re all on the same page there. In America the racial group that had the power was whites and therefore the intersection of racial prejudice and power has a necessary white component. Though in reality it’s a lot more intersectional than that obviously, rich white straight Christian men is more accurate. Disabled poor unmarried Jewish women may have a thing or two to say about the historical power their whiteness gave them in America. But we’re being reductionist for the purpose of expressing the point so whatever, imagine just two lines, race and prejudice, and where race = white and prejudice = yes we see raycism in America.
What frustrates me is the inability to conceive any alternative to modern America. White people are the favoured group because they designed the society and put that in the design. It’s specific to America. It’s not structural power intrinsic to their melanin levels, it’s white people just because in this instance white people did the design. There aren’t uncontacted tribes out there enacting pro-white laws, there aren’t nonwhite social and economic elites in other societies designing ladders where they’re on the second rung.
All humans love hierarchies that put them at the top because humans aren’t great at justice or at empathy for people who aren’t members of their tribe. Anyone of any race can aspire to create a hierarchy that empowers them, we can all create the raycist society of our dreams. Placing a limit on the aspirations of nonwhites, insisting that they could never build anything as structurally broken as America, is absurd. They absolutely can, they have before, their societies, histories, and cultures can’t only be understood and defined through an American lens.
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As long as Pence also doesn't complain that he should get to keep them like Trump did, then I file it in the same box as Biden. It just seems like a thing that happens. Maybe the government should be better about this stuff, or maybe I'm not privy to how many documents circulate between government officials, and maybe this is just always going to happen. It's whatever.
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On January 25 2023 03:28 JimmiC wrote:Assuming this comes out similar to Biden I would agree with you last statement. As it appears the lawyers and people involved followed the rules about reporting and returning once they were located. Trump is in a different zip code, since he and his team were actively hiding and attempting to keep the documents the reasons why he did might not be fully known, but that he actively was the problem on purpose is simple fact. Intent clearly matters.
Exactly. Based on everything we know so far, the Biden and Pence situations are completely different from Trump's.
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On January 24 2023 17:27 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2023 16:28 Acrofales wrote:On January 24 2023 16:25 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 24 2023 15:28 Liquid`Drone wrote:+ Show Spoiler +The thing about words is they don't have an intrinsic meaning attributed to them, they mean what we collectively decide that they mean. For most words this in unproblematic because we generally agree, but racism/racist is a bit contentious. However the meanings of 'thinks one ethnic group is superior to another' or 'hates people of a particular ethnic group' are fairly straight forward and has pretty strong support. It's not a word you'll get unanimous consent of the meaning of, because it is an insult that also happens to, depending on which definition you choose and how you interpret said definition, describe literally everyone to some degree. (Add 'thinks ethnic groups should be treated differently' and every quota scheme or targeted policy to reverse historic injustices qualifies, go with the aforementioned two and 'black people are better dancers than white people' might.)
So the best we can do is probably to have several definitions that all happen to be contextual and accept that certain forms of racism are more harmful than others. Honky and nigger can both be racist while one is more racist and more hurtful. 'I don't want my daughter dating a white boy' and 'I'm not employing a black guy' are both racist but one is arguably more damaging than the other. 'White people can't dance' is probably mildly racist but not in a way that offends me at all (also I'm a great dancer), while 'black people can't do math' is obviously racist in a more harmful way (in particular because of a historical context where we've decided that humanity is defined and separated from 'animals' through our capacity for thinking and where we recognize that much of the dehumanizing that has targeted black people has taken the form of describing them as 'more animal-like', and then for example through highlighting physical attributes while diminishing mental ones. All of this essentially backs up the notion that white people being racist is generally more harmful than black people being racist, but obviously the capacity is there for everyone. To be clear, raycism as prejudice + power is not about being "more harmful", it's about it being a fundamentally different thing happening, including on the interpersonal level. It's a substantive difference not just in magnitude of harm but in form and function. Essentially anyone can be "racist" but only white people are being raycist when they do it. That's not to be confused with the mistaken notion that only white people can advocate or engage in white supremacy. Are Chinese not being Raycist in China? The short answer is: no. There's a lot of potential longer answers, but the simplest one is: No, they can't be, because they aren't white. A slightly more complicated longer answer is: White supremacy, US hegemony, and European colonialism are inextricable from raycism in a way that can't be equated in China. That isn't to say racial prejudices don't exist in China, but there's no Chinese analog for stuff like Blanqueamiento in North Korea or whatever.
So institutionalized suppression and extermination of non-Han people over the course of decades, if not centuries, in China is qualitatively different from institutionalized suppression and extermination of non-white people, over the course of centuries, in the Americas in such a way that raycism can only be applied to the latter? Should we call the former raecism then to distinguish it from ornery racism which is what occurs at an individual level? And while I think the scale of Mugabe's institutionalized suppression and eviction of white people in Zimbabwe is probably not worthy of being called raicism, it does follow a worrying trend in post-colonial Africa, that if it were to continue for a few decades may be considered as a similar form of institutionalized oppression of people with a different skin color.
And doesn't it strike you as a bit absurd and untenable that this requires a new word whenever a new group gets enough power to suppress the "other"? Shouldn't we just accept that non-whites can also be racist at both an individual and at an enduring societal and institutional level? And that there isn't anything that makes white people inherently *better* at racism? Although in the context of the US politics thread I understand it is more important to be discussing the institutional oppression by the US government and society, which perpetuates white supremacism.
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On January 25 2023 01:07 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2023 00:41 Ryzel wrote:
Raycism =\= racism. GH came up with the former word to delineate between his take on the word “racism” in contrast to the more general definition of the word “racism”, by request from TL mods. It’s pointless to argue with GH on how “raycism” should be defined; it’s his term to express his ideas.
That being said, I believe GH is arguing that “raycism” should replace “racism”, so that’s where any arguments should be centered.
Personally, my main issue is that the word “racism” seems too general to suddenly hijack to become the race-exclusive “raycism” GH is referring to. It seems easier for everyone involved to leave “racism” as is and use a different term for “raycism”; exactly what’s been happening here. + Show Spoiler +I’m fine with “cultural and historical factors have created an environment in which only white people, the favoured group in that environment, can be raycist in America”. It’s evident. If we’re talking about structural racism in America and which group was the in group then nobody is going to think that it’s the Navaho. We’re all on the same page there. In America the racial group that had the power was whites and therefore the intersection of racial prejudice and power has a necessary white component. Though in reality it’s a lot more intersectional than that obviously, rich white straight Christian men is more accurate. Disabled poor unmarried Jewish women may have a thing or two to say about the historical power their whiteness gave them in America. But we’re being reductionist for the purpose of expressing the point so whatever, imagine just two lines, race and prejudice, and where race = white and prejudice = yes we see raycism in America.
What frustrates me is the inability to conceive any alternative to modern America. White people are the favoured group because they designed the society and put that in the design. It’s specific to America. It’s not structural power intrinsic to their melanin levels, it’s white people just because in this instance white people did the design. There aren’t uncontacted tribes out there enacting pro-white laws, there aren’t nonwhite social and economic elites in other societies designing ladders where they’re on the second rung. All humans love hierarchies that put them at the top because humans aren’t great at justice or at empathy for people who aren’t members of their tribe. Anyone of any race can aspire to create a hierarchy that empowers them, we can all create the raycist society of our dreams. Placing a limit on the aspirations of nonwhites, insisting that they could never build anything as structurally broken as America, is absurd. They absolutely can, they have before, their societies, histories, and cultures can’t only be understood and defined through an American lens.
That's simply a misunderstanding. "White" isn't a nationality, so it's nonsensical to try to make "Chinese" an analogue on its face.
"only white people are raycist" isn't a comment about the potential on an unlimited timeline for any other group to develop a global racial capitalist hegemony with some other racial category at the top. It's a comment about how the current global racial capitalist hegemony operates.
This is the US politics thread so my focus is on the US but white people's raycism affects pretty much the whole world, this isn't limited to a US lens. Indians in India can't be raycist to white people either for example.
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If you think the "Chinese" are a homogenous people, I've got some bad news for you.
I agree that the current global racial capitalist hegemony is a very exploitative system that set up its successors up for success... to a degree. I'd like to point out the fact that, yes, while white people living in poverty probably have some advantage over other ethnicities due to their skin color being a property of the current global racial capitalist hegemony, the advantage they have will only be barely over the other groups. I'd say marginally so.
The current global racial capitalist hegemony is basically set up to make the one's in power where they are right now. That's like 0.00001% of the global white population. Somehow I fail to see how me, who is barely a degree above the poverty threshold, will benefit from the current global racial capitalist hegemony over another citizen living in my country (predominantly white), who is not white.
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On January 25 2023 05:06 Uldridge wrote:
If you think the "Chinese" are a homogenous people, I've got some bad news for you.
I think that was probably my fault, because I short-handed it in my flippant question, assuming it was clear from the context that I meant Han Chinese, and not any of the other ethnic groups in China, many of which are being societally and institutionally oppressed by the Han Chinese.
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Even so, Han Chinese is so hilariously short sighted when you literally have 1 billion of them. That's more than double the amount of people living in Europe. There are evolutionary and cultural differences between these billion. Geographical differences tend to translate themselves into cultural differences. They are not a fucking beehive, even if they're ruled like one.
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On January 25 2023 05:17 Uldridge wrote:
Even so, Han Chinese is so hilariously short sighted when you literally have 1 billion of them. That's more than double the amount of people living in Europe. There are evolutionary and cultural differences between these billion. Geographical differences tend to translate themselves into cultural differences. They are not a fucking beehive, even if they're ruled like one.
Hey I'm not the one equating Spanish genocide in South America in the 16th century to slavery in the US and Caribbean by the (predominantly) British (but also French and Spanish) in the 18th century to oppression through cultural and economical hegemony by the US in the 20th and 21st century... despite that all being done by white people there are "evolutionary and cultural differences" between them, yet it's okay to lump them together as "white" and therefore "raycism". So for the sake of argument it seems entirely reasonable to lump all Han Chinese together as well...
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Your context is fine. I'm commenting on GH's use of a misclassification (Chinese != a hetergenous group of people, it's a nationality), which you pointed out very nicely just now.
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On January 25 2023 05:06 Uldridge wrote:
If you think the "Chinese" are a homogenous people, I've got some bad news for you.
I agree that the current global racial capitalist hegemony is a very exploitative system that set up its successors up for success... to a degree. I'd like to point out the fact that, yes, while white people living in poverty probably have some advantage over other ethnicities due to their skin color being a property of the current global racial capitalist hegemony, the advantage they have will only be barely over the other groups. I'd say marginally so.
The current global racial capitalist hegemony is basically set up to make the one's in power where they are right now. That's like 0.00001% of the global white population. Somehow I fail to see how me, who is barely a degree above the poverty threshold, will benefit from the current global racial capitalist hegemony over another citizen living in my country (predominantly white), who is not white.
How white people in or near poverty benefit from raycism is well worn territory I don't intend to retread, but that's not really the point. The point is that when white people are racist they are uniquely raycist because of the global racial capitalist hegemony they have collectively forced through lies, coercion, extortion, fraud, torture, murder, war, genocide, etc (and insist on continuing to force through the same) the world to live under.
No group outside of white people can lay claim to such a prolific and globally dominant structure as the existing racial capitalist hegemony and therefor can't be raycist.
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I know things tend to turn 'statistics' when groups are large enough, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth when you look at those groups through a microscope.
You tend to see that lives are complex and that Mr Jones literally had no choice in being a a white man he doesn't want anything to do with fighting the good fight and change the global racial capitalist hegemony. He just wants to live without too much hassle and have a family and grow old and be content. And there's probably hundreds of millions of people trying to live life llike that. They didn't set up the global racial capitalist hegemony, they may maintain it by not actively stopping it, but can you blame them?
If you want to lump me with this group, fine, but you need to lump in the rest of the world as well, because I've had as much to do with setting it up and maintaining the system as the person in any random place in world.
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On January 25 2023 06:11 Uldridge wrote:
I know things tend to turn 'statistics' when groups are large enough, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth when you look at those groups through a microscope.
You tend to see that lives are complex and that Mr Jones literally had no choice in being a a white man he doesn't want anything to do with fighting the good fight and change the global racial capitalist hegemony. He just wants to live without too much hassle and have a family and grow old and be content. And there's probably hundreds of millions of people trying to live life llike that. They didn't set up the global racial capitalist hegemony, they may maintain it by not actively stopping it, but can you blame them?
If you want to lump me with this group, fine, but you need to lump in the rest of the world as well, because I've had as much to do with setting it up and maintaining the system as the person in any random place in world.
I didn't create whiteness and have no power over who is or isn't white, that's white peoples domain, so the "lumping" isn't my doing. I am speaking about whiteness globally, not specific to the US or Belgium.
As I've said, a key reason for this framework is to distinguish raycism as uniquely practiced by white people, from interpersonal (even when local/regional power discrepancies exist) racial discrimination/prejudice practiced by people outside of whiteness, because it is a substantively different thing happening in form and function.
That's not to say people like Clarence Thomas can't be devastating implements in support of white supremacy though.
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On January 25 2023 06:47 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2023 06:11 Uldridge wrote:
I know things tend to turn 'statistics' when groups are large enough, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth when you look at those groups through a microscope.
You tend to see that lives are complex and that Mr Jones literally had no choice in being a a white man he doesn't want anything to do with fighting the good fight and change the global racial capitalist hegemony. He just wants to live without too much hassle and have a family and grow old and be content. And there's probably hundreds of millions of people trying to live life llike that. They didn't set up the global racial capitalist hegemony, they may maintain it by not actively stopping it, but can you blame them?
If you want to lump me with this group, fine, but you need to lump in the rest of the world as well, because I've had as much to do with setting it up and maintaining the system as the person in any random place in world. I didn't create whiteness and have no power over who is or isn't white, that's white peoples domain, so the "lumping" isn't my doing. I am speaking about whiteness globally, not specific to the US or Belgium. As I've said, a key reason for this framework is to distinguish raycism as uniquely practiced by white people, from interpersonal (even when local/regional power discrepancies exist) racial discrimination/prejudice practiced by people outside of whiteness, because it is a substantively different thing happening in form and function. That's not to say people like Clarence Thomas can't be devastating implements in support of white supremacy though.
I think I can agree with you. Western racism is unparalleled in human history due to it’s global “supremacy” over a very long period of time. Even nowadays, although China is leaving no doubt about their place as a superpower, the amount of influence (economically/culturally/etc.) the West as a whole has onto China feels much bigger than China’s influence anywhere outside of China. One might argue that the West is not a single entity, however their relations are sufficiently cohesive and enduring that you could count it as one.
Basically, in a way, this form of racism is the prototypical racism, which western civilization at some point started to observe and to analyze. We abstracted the features and qualities of this phenomenon, and learned what racism is. And this learning is (at least on a societal level) still ongoing. Therefore, it really does deserve its term(s) by which it can be easily identified. (Language influences how we think, and a term for it would certainly help to grasp this concept or seeing the whole picture when it matters.)
However, I don’t know when it matters and especially how it mattered in this situation. How it matters in daily discourse. This forum has some very intelligent and open-minded people and even they don’t agree on it. In my day-to-day live, I interact with way too many people who don’t even understand that institutional/systemic/structural racism exists or what it is or why they should care.
Likewise, as Uldridge pointed out, most people have their own issues and are oppressed themselves in a way. This whole issue should not be about understanding ra(y)cism, but understanding structural suppression because that is finally the cause that affects all of them. Or realizing where one’s own privileges are, even though you might feel like you are down at the bottom would be of value. Only then, the poor would unite and for once do what they need to do.
Until that hasn’t happened, I feel like having the abstract understanding of racism must suffice. (And someone should come up with a better term. There is really nothing wrong about using compounds of adjectives and nouns...)
the global racial capitalist hegemony they have collectively forced through lies, coercion, extortion, fraud, torture, murder, war, genocide, etc (and insist on continuing to force through the same) the world to live under.
Especially this line is very problematic. None of the people you ever talk to even got a choice to affect any of this. The best we can do is to acknowledge that it has happened and, to a considerable magnitude, still goes on. Any kind of activism that goes beyond this is nothing many people would undertake, even on topics that would affect them in a more direct way.
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On January 25 2023 05:52 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2023 05:06 Uldridge wrote:
If you think the "Chinese" are a homogenous people, I've got some bad news for you.
I agree that the current global racial capitalist hegemony is a very exploitative system that set up its successors up for success... to a degree. I'd like to point out the fact that, yes, while white people living in poverty probably have some advantage over other ethnicities due to their skin color being a property of the current global racial capitalist hegemony, the advantage they have will only be barely over the other groups. I'd say marginally so.
The current global racial capitalist hegemony is basically set up to make the one's in power where they are right now. That's like 0.00001% of the global white population. Somehow I fail to see how me, who is barely a degree above the poverty threshold, will benefit from the current global racial capitalist hegemony over another citizen living in my country (predominantly white), who is not white. How white people in or near poverty benefit from raycism is well worn territory I don't intend to retread, but that's not really the point. The point is that when white people are racist they are uniquely raycist because of the global racial capitalist hegemony they have collectively forced through lies, coercion, extortion, fraud, torture, murder, war, genocide, etc (and insist on continuing to force through the same) the world to live under. No group outside of white people can lay claim to such a prolific and globally dominant structure as the existing racial capitalist hegemony and therefor can't be raycist.
It's not just white people in or near poverty that are less part of the in-group than you are as a US citizen right now, it's likely most white people. Us having this conversation in your native language is a benefit you derive from that structure. If a Uruguayan football star gets arrested in Russia they're not gonna have a handy bucket of Russian war criminals to pick and trade for them.
Sure, there exists an extra layer of privilege that you don't have access to, but you are heavily downplaying the American part and overplaying the white part when speaking globally. My perspective on time is very much the opposite of Smille's, I view that hegemony as a short blip in the history of our species, a glorified fruit fly. The Chinese economy is on track to eclipse the US, your media is increasingly catering to CCP sensibilities, most English Premier League clubs have giant logos of Chinese companies that don't even operate in Europe on the center of their shirts. No amount of kicking and screaming and hypocritical bans of Tik Tok and Huawei is gonna keep the fruit fly alive.
As for Kanye, I can't even tell if he's genuinely anti-semitic or just another halfwit contrarian that didn't know when to stop getting himself into defending increasingly absurd positions he doesn't care about.
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On January 25 2023 06:47 GreenHorizons wrote:
I didn't create whiteness and have no power over who is or isn't white, that's white peoples domain, so the "lumping" isn't my doing. I am speaking about whiteness globally, not specific to the US or Belgium.
I'm not sure there's some entity or even a collective idea of who is white or whiteness, or 'white people' for that matter.
And even if this fuzzy idea does exist, how do unsubscribe from it without throwing my entire life I've built up in the trash? I understand that there's a complex system put in place by the West (you mean our economical framework I'm sure), which is perpetuated (for some reason, because I can't say why or how come), by almost the entire world. That part in brackets had a slight sarcastic undertone by the way.
Can you tell me exactly, how I, as a White, am benefiting from Whiteness in my own country? Or, if that is too difficult, how is an average, low to middle income White man, named Mr Jones, benefiting from his Whiteness.
I'll try first, please correct me where my logic breaks down.
Everything can be seen in a relativistic framework. How does the Average White Cis Able Bodied Man benefit from his Whiteness other than there being social perks that he has access to while others don't? Well, if access to social perks is the definition of White privilege or Whiteness, how does the average man compare to Jeffrey Bezos? Or his boss, if we don't want a hyperbole. It seems more apparent when you have 1/4 (rough estimate) of your population being Non-White, when for me, it's 90-95% Whites. The social perks in different social strata between Whites seems much more relevant and I couldn't directly point you toward a specific instance in our Belgian society where Whiteness outperks Non-Whiteness, despite racism still being a thing. We have big political parties that very obviously want to cement Whiteness in our society, but they are actively repelled out of our government (Cordon Sanitaire, Vlaams Belang). I like to believe we have a legislation that at least tries to treat every citizen as just that, even if different social perks are available for people belonging to different social strata.
I believe you're arguing from a uniquely USA perspective, and from the influence the USA has over the entire Globe. You can then not make blanket statements about White and Whiteness.
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Norway28780 Posts
This isn't that far fetched, tbh. Compare living standards in Europe with living standards in Africa. Even a poor European (unless actually homeless) comes out pretty damn well of that comparison, and it's fair to attribute a reasonable chunk of this difference to colonialism. It's not necessarily about comparing white Belgians with black Belgians, but about recognizing the damage Belgium inflicted upon the Democratic Republic of Kongo and the wealth Belgium extracted. (I'm not going to pretend to be able to calculate how much 'Europe' gained and 'Africa' lost and how costly colonization was for Europe and how much African countries benefited from the infrastructure built (this varies greatly from country to country, between different colonial powers, it's basically the subject of life-long study). Even recognizing that Europe started at an advantageous position before, utilizing this advantage to create a trade network of 'get unrefined resources cheaply, manufacture said resources into something more costly, profit' adds a permanence or 'significant longevity' to that advantage. This is entirely simplified but I don't really have any problems with picturing an expansion of this argument into 'white people (not just americans but europeans too) continue to reap the harvests of an exploitative economic model and consequentially enjoy much higher living standards than people who used to inhabit colonized countries', even if we should at some point probably add China to the group of colonizers rather than colonized.
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EPT
