Yes, more or less white people makes no difference. The privileged group will just change.
Yes. Since racism is everywhere there's no reason to believe that less white people would lead to it disappearing.
To get some where regarding inequality the discussion needs to be more about class and less about ethnicity. Making it about race and religion is just a way for the wealthy to keep the others down.
And this is important. People are not the problem, their ideas are.
I was legit hoping you wouldn't come back with the ol "you can never know what is on a person's mind" philosophical claptrap.
So if ending slavery was just a way to win an ongoing war, why did the south secede?
Yeah I didn't do anything you just claimed, but okay. I find the statement "white people ended slavery" as some kind of 'proof' that whites are capable of "real progress" to be completely ignorant at best and pointedly dismissive at worst. That's what my post was about. I didn't compare current struggles with past struggles whatsoever.
Abolition had been going as a movement long before Lincoln came into the mix. The South did not secede because Lincoln threatened to make them be good and not slavers anymore. They didn't want *anyone* to turn that lever, or even to have the power to do so. Lincoln turned the lever, during the war, because it would hurt the South.
It also ignores the fact that blacks fought for their freedom every step of the way, and weren't simply given it to them by the good graces of white people.
can you give a better picture of the the attributes of this "white self loathing" you describe?
Well the whites gave the blacks the right to vote, and the blacks voted for Obama because he was a black, so no I think you just missed it.
as much as I wanted to once believe in America having some kind of progressive foundation, despite itself, through the benevolence of its representative democracy. I've instead come to believe that America is mostly about practicality, and high minded ideals are not flying out of windows, they are thrown at high velocity. They didn't give many shits about abolishing slavery and truly didn't give a shit what happened to those former slaves.
I don't really get your point. Maybe Lincoln wouldn't have been the president to abolish slavery if the south hadn't seceded but they did so since the writing was on the wall. It seems unlikely that slavery in the US wouldn't have been abolished during the 19th century either way and it would have been done by a white congress and president. Which was the original point that progress can be made while white people are the majority.
This
Exactly this. Look at the thread about LBGTQ people in Palestine, people with power and status hold down people who can threaten that power and status
abolition didn't happen at the proclamation. people said a lot of things they didn't do and didn't get done for another 100 years at that point. So where one person can see a great revolution, someone else can see the sun rising and the sun setting.
Well the good news is, you're free. The bad news is, if you move one inch off of my land I'm shooting you in the back with my shotgun.
The bolded. It's less about white Americans being bad, which was never my point or implied in what I posted, and more that enough of them are resistant to any systemic changes that might erode their privileges that becoming the minority and being forced to adjust might be the only way those systemic issues can actually be addressed
This is my initial take. Progress has undoubtedly been made within America, but it always comes with a million different asterisks and addendums that people like to forget or handwave.
lol and we did that after every other country and under extreme duress.
These are all fair points and I'm glad you brought them up. Conservatism isn't limited to white Americans and other groups have their own issues that they're being, in terms of progress, on. I think the key difference is what different groups view as their key issue or litmus tests. Essentially the driving force behind single issue voters.
And it feels like a majority of white people think this was all that need to be done and we live in a post-racial utopia that is being upset by race baiting minorities that just want to divide us.
That's an interesting point.
