“So you’re fine repudiating it, since you don’t care?”
“NEVER! THOSE MURDERERS WERE HEROES!”
It’s so frustrating to deal with people who reverse their position on racial justice as soon as it’s convenient for them to do so. Frustrating, too, to have fucking family who will look me in the eyes and say shit like that about other atrocities.
Counterpoint: Clarence Thomas. I think you’ll find that the problem is related to having power to abuse, not melanin concentration in the basal layer of the epidermis.
I mean yeah assessing people on an individual level is different from collective. Look at the collective history of white people over the past few centuries and it’s pretty logical why PoC are going to have their guard up. When white folk came to your country as a group, historical precendent is such that killing and/or stealing are high on the list of potential outcomes.
The Democratic party supported the civil rights act of 1964 in the US, which ended race based segregation. Since then not a single democratic presidential nominee has won the majority of the white vote. That’s some pretty dark shit.
This doesn’t mean that any single individual white person is presumed bad.
I think you’re still missing the point of power imbalance. Sure, you don’t see these atrocities committed in America by colored people because they haven’t had enough power there. But look to other places where colored people had power (for just about any value of colored) and you see the same kind of atrocities. The biggest limiting factor seems to be the scope of their power, not the limits of their brutality.
The scale of colonial exploitation and the Atlantic slave trade trump many if not most atrocities by other groups through history.
Slavery in Africa was very different from the chattel slavery practiced in the US where slaveowners had the right to punish slaves to the point of manslaughter without reprecussion. See the Casual Killing Act of 1669.
Slaves in Africa at the time were integrated as household members or low-status laborers rather than treated as perpetual chattel. Legal frameworks allowed some slaves to marry, inherit, and sometimes ascend to military or administrative roles.
European colonists created such a demand for slaves from Africa that it destabilized local economies, promoted war through using weapons for purchase and even led locals to believe Europeans were cannibals just based on the sheer number of people they were purchasing and transporting.
I wouldn’t blame Africans for being skeptical if a large group of white folk showed up at their coast and thats not even getting into the legacy of South African apartheid or the perpetuation of exploitation that persists to this day through neocolonialism.
While I believe what you express above comes from a good place of empathy, care, and respect, if you’re open to suggestions, I would offer the following.
This hat-in-hand attitude often comes across as a tedious neoliberal brand of white guilt and “I acknowledge my privilege” performative social justice that primarily seeks personal absolution from allies rather than a hand in fighting systemic injustice.
Instead, it is a more useful exercise to consider your privileged identities, such as apparent gender or the color of your skin, as a disavowable inheritance like a family name, rendering them mere tools you bring to the cause of liberation, rather than a scarlet WM you must apologize to your comrades for at every turn.
Edit: concretely, I mean that it is no better to “other” yourself than someone else. Instead, acknowledge that our perceptions of race and gender are manufactured (and historically none more-so than whiteness and masculinity, easy proxies for explicit political and socioeconomic power). Whiteness and masculinity telegraph it the way a gun telegraphs strength. So instead of apologizing for how the weapons you were born with have been used by oppressors in the past, reject and subvert what they represent by committing them to the cause of those who are oppressed today.
Exactly this. Your job as an ally is to be angry when the oppressed need to keep the peace. Oftentimes, oppressors will blatantly oppress, then claim to be the victim when then oppressed gets angry and starts talking back. They hide behind decorum, and use it as a shield. Additionally, they’ll use the angry actions as justification for oppression.
When the oppressed needs to maintain decorum, it’s the ally’s job to get angry. The ally doesn’t fit into any of the boxes that the oppressor would otherwise use to villainize the oppressed.
As an example, here is what happened when Representative Keith Self intentionally misgendered Rep Sarah McBride. We see this exact scenario play out in real time. Self misgenders McBride, an openly transgender representative. McBride returns a simple “thank you madam” as a joke, but otherwise doesn’t react to it. Because she recognizes that anything she does will be used to further villainize trans people and justify their oppression. Self will use it to paint McBride as an unreasonable snowflake liberal. Instead, Rep. Bill Keating is the one to call out Self. Keating, a straight white middle-aged man, can’t have his identity weaponized against him. So he’s the one to go to bat in McBride’s place. He demands that Self explain his actions, and refuses to back down until Self does so. When Self realizes his “bait the anger” tactic worked against him by baiting the wrong person, he retreats by immediately ending the meeting.
And white people wonder why we don’t trust them with anything.
“It’s so long ago! Who cares!”
“So you’re fine repudiating it, since you don’t care?”
“NEVER! THOSE MURDERERS WERE HEROES!”
It’s so frustrating to deal with people who reverse their position on racial justice as soon as it’s convenient for them to do so. Frustrating, too, to have fucking family who will look me in the eyes and say shit like that about other atrocities.
As a humble gringo, I aspire to be the biggest fucking race traitor on God’s green earth
That’s the spirit!
Counterpoint: Clarence Thomas. I think you’ll find that the problem is related to having power to abuse, not melanin concentration in the basal layer of the epidermis.
Counter-counterpoint: Jasmine Crockett. She’s fucking awesome.
I mean yeah assessing people on an individual level is different from collective. Look at the collective history of white people over the past few centuries and it’s pretty logical why PoC are going to have their guard up. When white folk came to your country as a group, historical precendent is such that killing and/or stealing are high on the list of potential outcomes.
The Democratic party supported the civil rights act of 1964 in the US, which ended race based segregation. Since then not a single democratic presidential nominee has won the majority of the white vote. That’s some pretty dark shit.
This doesn’t mean that any single individual white person is presumed bad.
I think you’re still missing the point of power imbalance. Sure, you don’t see these atrocities committed in America by colored people because they haven’t had enough power there. But look to other places where colored people had power (for just about any value of colored) and you see the same kind of atrocities. The biggest limiting factor seems to be the scope of their power, not the limits of their brutality.
The scale of colonial exploitation and the Atlantic slave trade trump many if not most atrocities by other groups through history.
Slavery in Africa was very different from the chattel slavery practiced in the US where slaveowners had the right to punish slaves to the point of manslaughter without reprecussion. See the Casual Killing Act of 1669.
Slaves in Africa at the time were integrated as household members or low-status laborers rather than treated as perpetual chattel. Legal frameworks allowed some slaves to marry, inherit, and sometimes ascend to military or administrative roles.
European colonists created such a demand for slaves from Africa that it destabilized local economies, promoted war through using weapons for purchase and even led locals to believe Europeans were cannibals just based on the sheer number of people they were purchasing and transporting.
I wouldn’t blame Africans for being skeptical if a large group of white folk showed up at their coast and thats not even getting into the legacy of South African apartheid or the perpetuation of exploitation that persists to this day through neocolonialism.
White man here: I don’t wonder shit. I know why people don’t trust us.
I apologize for what my race and gender have done to the world.
While I believe what you express above comes from a good place of empathy, care, and respect, if you’re open to suggestions, I would offer the following.
This hat-in-hand attitude often comes across as a tedious neoliberal brand of white guilt and “I acknowledge my privilege” performative social justice that primarily seeks personal absolution from allies rather than a hand in fighting systemic injustice.
Instead, it is a more useful exercise to consider your privileged identities, such as apparent gender or the color of your skin, as a disavowable inheritance like a family name, rendering them mere tools you bring to the cause of liberation, rather than a scarlet WM you must apologize to your comrades for at every turn.
Edit: concretely, I mean that it is no better to “other” yourself than someone else. Instead, acknowledge that our perceptions of race and gender are manufactured (and historically none more-so than whiteness and masculinity, easy proxies for explicit political and socioeconomic power). Whiteness and masculinity telegraph it the way a gun telegraphs strength. So instead of apologizing for how the weapons you were born with have been used by oppressors in the past, reject and subvert what they represent by committing them to the cause of those who are oppressed today.
Exactly this. Your job as an ally is to be angry when the oppressed need to keep the peace. Oftentimes, oppressors will blatantly oppress, then claim to be the victim when then oppressed gets angry and starts talking back. They hide behind decorum, and use it as a shield. Additionally, they’ll use the angry actions as justification for oppression.
When the oppressed needs to maintain decorum, it’s the ally’s job to get angry. The ally doesn’t fit into any of the boxes that the oppressor would otherwise use to villainize the oppressed.
As an example, here is what happened when Representative Keith Self intentionally misgendered Rep Sarah McBride. We see this exact scenario play out in real time. Self misgenders McBride, an openly transgender representative. McBride returns a simple “thank you madam” as a joke, but otherwise doesn’t react to it. Because she recognizes that anything she does will be used to further villainize trans people and justify their oppression. Self will use it to paint McBride as an unreasonable snowflake liberal. Instead, Rep. Bill Keating is the one to call out Self. Keating, a straight white middle-aged man, can’t have his identity weaponized against him. So he’s the one to go to bat in McBride’s place. He demands that Self explain his actions, and refuses to back down until Self does so. When Self realizes his “bait the anger” tactic worked against him by baiting the wrong person, he retreats by immediately ending the meeting.