• Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Status
Not open for further replies.

Deleted member 8861

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
10,564
I too would also like an explanation as to how anyone can strip away the historical precedence of oppression against native Africans via white supremacy, resulting in the modern sociopolitical climates within those countries, just to push some false equivocation that their justifiable apprehension BACKED by said historical precedence is at all the same as proactive racism.

In more simpler terms: Do you honestly think the plight of white Liberians would even be a thing NOW if native Liberians weren't subjugated and pillaged for CENTURIES by white supremacy prior?
To your question: No, it was caused by colonialism. We agree on this.

I'm not sure, however, that that justifies literally denying white people citizenship.

Reflecting on it, though, I really don't have the qualifications to question or debate what an appropriate method to heal from colonialism is, so I'll drop the point.

For what it's worth, I didn't intend to equate the situation in Liberia to the level and scale of oppression and racism PoC face in Western countries (especially US), though I realize I came across as such regardless. My apologies. (My intent was simply to attempt to work with the racism = prejudice + power definition.)
 

Delphine

Fen'Harel Enansal
Administrator
Mar 30, 2018
3,658
France
I'm not trying to conflate anything, white Americans might not experience systemic racism, but if you're denying systemic oppression of Bosniaks during Yugoslav Wars or prejudice against white Eastern European immigrants in Western Europe (not comparable to systemic racism, but racism nonetheless) then you're indulging in pedantry and arguing semantics.

I can't talk about Bosniaks, but I can talk about my experience as a North Caucasian in Russia, *drum roll* Nigerian immigrant in Moscow will find job, apartments to rent faster and will have an easier time with cops than me. Period. Don't believe me? Ask Africans who live in Russia. Now, I recognize that Caucasus and Russia have a history that makes our relationships "unique" so to speak and it doesn't reflect the societal structure of entire Europe, but that doesn't have any bearings on the OP's question.

What's next, are you going to tell me that Islamophobia and anti-semitism aren't part of racism?


So you DO acknowledge the difference here, and that's what I wanted you to get at. And yes, the way you're treated in Russia is mostly local, and definitely disgusting, but still not anywhere on the same scale as what POC can experience in most parts of the world in an overwhelmingly oppressive way. There are seldom people in this world who don't suffer from prejudice and discrimination, if you wanna go down that road.

And I don't get how that last question is related to what I said whatsoever, however, I will point out that we created specific words to describe them precisely, because just using "racism" was nowhere near enough to describe it properly, while race/skin color had in fact little to do with why they were being discriminated in the first place (Jewish people encompass a lot of ethnicities and can look very differently from one another, same for Muslims). There are many ways in which hate can be expressed, and it can totally overlap with one another, and intersect, but that it also can mean you can still benefit from white privilege, even though you belong to an oppressed ethnic minority or an oppressed religion. At the end of the day, whether you like it or not, our societies are overwhelmingly influenced by white supremacy, which makes racism based on skin color the most prevalent, spread-out and violent one. And that's why I can't sit by watching you trying to imply that "white people can suffer from racism" quoting the Srebrenica massacre, because that's co-opting and derailing the fact that it is, first and foremost, an islamophobic massacre, not an anti-white one like your sarcastic post was trying to imply. And that act of erasure wasn't one I was gonna let slide.
 
Last edited:

Deleted member 2426

user requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,988
No you can't.

Whiteness is "desirable" due to being the standard of "power". It's like asking if you can be ableist against a person who does not have a disability (not like any other racial ot ethnical denomination is a comparable to a disability in any way of form, of course).

You can absolutely be prejudical though. That's discrimination, but not racism.
 
Last edited:

-COOLIO-

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,125
This is the dictionary definition for Gender:

either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female.

This definition falls apart completely when discussing transpeople, intersex, and genderqueer people. It starts you out with an understanding but it doesn't go into the detail necessary. A dictionary shouldn't be the end all be all understanding of complex and nuances concepts.
it seems to me like the definition does hold up though. gender as defined there is effective in describing some of those other terms.

genderqueer: does not conform to gender
trans: gender does not match birth sex

and intersex appears to only describe physical sexual characteristics and doesn't have much to do with gender.

you might be making the argument that gender as a concept is pointless and outdated, and i might agree, but the definition for the word appears to still be useful and valid in the present.
 

Artdayne

Banned
Nov 7, 2017
5,015
And yet people don't argue "well not all northern Germanic descent people!". And when filling out a form The options are only Caucasian or white. Not Irish, not Italian, not German. White.

A lot of people in here playing the disingenuous semantics game.

When you fill out a form, you're identifying your race, not your culture. Though sometimes culture and race overlap. The United States in particular is also a very diverse place and white people often have a whole host of different European cultures in their family history. I myself am a combination of Norwegian, Swedish, Ashkenazi Jew, and Swiss. My culture is some combination of the family history I mentioned and the region of the United States I grew up and live in.

It's not a disingenuous semantics game at all.
 

RedMercury

Blue Venus
Member
Dec 24, 2017
17,677

Stinkles

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
20,459
Not institutionally. And institutional racism is the most destructive kind.

Three black kids beating up a white kid for being white is racist.

Private Prisons being filled with black young men guilty of misdemeanors or less -- is institutional racism that literally creates a poverty and recidivism cycle from whole cloth. They are taxpayer funded crime and poverty colleges.

If you're afraid of black people then you should understand that your votes and tax dollars are used to create the very black people you're (still irrationally) afraid of and that the same dollars and votes could instead be spent to make your fear vanished within a couple of generations or 100% paranoia.
 

Kreed

The Negro Historian
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,112
Yes by definition. However 1 to 1 comparisons with other non White ethnic groups that a topic with a extremely simple OP like this "invites" posters to want to discuss are more "difficult" to make as examples of racism in the real world depending on the group and location being discussed. The label "White" was created to give the groups under the label superiority over other non White ethnic groups, in addition to the overall "power" these groups under the "White label" have socially around the world. The question is just too simple for any decent discussion.
 

Huey

Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,227
Yeah - I've seen parents of various ethnic groups say they don't want their kids to marry white people (or anyone outside their own ethnic group) and there's really nothing else to call that.

The bigger question is whether racism against white people is a significant issue which creates barriers to their success through systemic discrimination, to which the answer in North America is, fuck no.
 

Artdayne

Banned
Nov 7, 2017
5,015
Ashkenazi Jews were the ones from Poland, Germany, Austria that were mostly wiped out by Hitler. There are Jewish groups all over the world. There are Ethiopian Jews, Sephardim or Hispanic Jews, Mizrahim which are Jews native to the Middle East and North Africa and then there are smaller groups including even places like China and India.

You do realize that jews were/are persecuted for their religion and not their whiteness, right?

It's more complicated than that, Hitler absolutely believed the Ashkenazi Jews were a distinct and different race, and at the bottom end of the totem pole compared to Aryans. Not to mention that the Jewish religion and the Ashkenazi as an ethnic group and a culture were completely intertwined.
 
Last edited:

Kaah

Banned
Jun 3, 2019
1,823
Paris
No you can't.

Whiteness is "desirable" due to being the standard of "power". It's like asking if you can be ableist against a person who does not have a disability.

You can absolutely be prejudical though. That's discrimination, but not racism.
Say that to Roma people all over europe please.
 

Rosenkrantz

Member
Jan 17, 2018
4,941
And yes, the way you're treated in Russia is mostly local, and definitely disgusting, but still not anywhere on the same scale as what POC can experience in most parts of the world in an overwhelming oppressive way.
Google Grozny 1994. If you think that this has stopped after the Chechen War then, no offence, but you have to educate yourself on Russian-Caucasian relationships throughout history.
And that's why I can't sit by watching you trying to imply that "white people can suffer from racism" quoting the Srebrenica massacre, because that's co-opting and derailing the fact that, first and foremost, is an islamophobic massacre, not an anti-white one like your sarcastic post was trying to imply.
Islamophobic = Racist. I need to hear a good argument for why Islamophobia can't be described as a racist attitude towards people of the Muslim faith. So, in my opinion, Srebrenica is a horrible racist crime done to one group of white people by the other group of white people. Same can be applied to the Holocaust. Same could be applied to Cromwell's conquer of Ireland. Those are all crimes done against people for their perceived "otherness".
 

Deleted member 8861

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
10,564
I think the argument being made about racism Irish people et al. face is that they're persecuted for being Irish and not for being white, so "people who are (considered) white can suffer from racism but white people as a demographic, for being white (and not of a particular nationality or culture), don't face racism"
 

legacyzero

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
4,252
I think commonly a lot of the varying degrees are mixed together sort of inappropriately. You can absolutely be directly racist to white folks. By DEFINITION. Anybody saying "no you cant", doesnt seem to care about the definition.

However, there is the privilege + power section of the argument too. Systemically, right now, it's nearly impossible to be systematically racist towards whites. We white folks hold all the cards. I've never been accosted for being white. I've never been racially profiled. I've never been microaggression'd for my whiteness. I can absolutely tell you I've been given preference over minorities in things like jobs.
 

Delphine

Fen'Harel Enansal
Administrator
Mar 30, 2018
3,658
France
Islamophobic = Racist. I need to hear a good argument for why Islamophobia can't be described as a racist attitude towards people of the Muslim faith. So, in my opinion, Srebrenica is a horrible racist crime done to one group of white people by the other group of white people. Same can be applied to the Holocaust. Same could be applied to Cromwell's conquer of Ireland. Those are all crimes done against people for their perceived "otherness".


Maybe because the word "racism" contains the word "race" (basic etymology here) and that discrimination based on religion isn't discrimination based on race/skin color? You can create a new word for it, "religionism" (well no it actually exists and mean something else entirely, but you catch my drift), or whatever, if you really need an umbrella term for it. Holocaust is an anti-Semitic hate-crime, there's an actual word for it. Because again, belonging to a religion isn't necessarily linked to belonging to a race/ethnicity, thus being discriminated based on a religion isn't linked to being discriminated based on race.

At the end of the day, if you really want to use an umbrella word to encompass all of those, "hate-crime" fit the bill. But I don't agree with the argument you're making, probably because we don't agree on the definition of racism to begin with. In which case, this discussion might be moot anyway, and it will not change neither one of us nor our opinions.
 
Last edited:
Oct 25, 2017
12,031
Anybody can be racist? What are you trying to say?
Sure, anyone can be racist, the thing is though that white people do not have to deal with systemic racism that is built directly into the American system. Nothing will ever change that. As a white male I recognize that my experiences in this country are vastly different than a black/brown person. I think this thread is a quite a bit disingenuous if I'm being honest. Basically individual racism is a thing, but it isn't remotely the same thing as what other races deal with. I don't fear for my life when I get pulled over, I don't have to deal with people following me around stores, I don't have to talk to my kids about how they should act around police, the list goes on.
 

Nepenthe

When the music hits, you feel no pain.
Administrator
Oct 25, 2017
20,733
Uh what? I'm not sure how you can look at the Nazi ideology, and their form of persecuting Jews, and arrive at that conclusion.
You think the reason the Nazis persecuted the Jewish people was because they're white??? (This question also extends to people invoking the Roma, Slavic peoples, and Italian Americans).
 

CarpeDeezNutz

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
2,732
Sure, anyone can be racist, the thing is though that white people do not have to deal with systemic racism that is built directly into the American system. Nothing will ever change that. As a white male I recognize that my experiences in this country are vastly different than a black/brown person. I think this thread is a quite a bit disingenuous if I'm being honest. Basically individual racism is a thing, but it isn't remotely the same thing as what other races deal with. I don't fear for my life when I get pulled over, I don't have to deal with people following me around stores, I don't have to talk to my kids about how they should act around police, the list goes on.
And I am Mexican and to deal with some shit. But whats the point though? My wife is White and she had to deal with some racist shit.
 

Deleted member 19218

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,323
Yes. It's less likely though depending where you live. In the UK for example I only encountered discrimination once as a white male while I saw my black friend experience it weekly. I remember he walked up to a man to ask for the time and the guy screamed and ran away, like what?

Maybe if I lived in a country where I was a minority I would experience it more but in Europe? Barely.
 
Oct 25, 2017
12,031
And I am Mexican and to deal with some shit. But whats the point though? My wife is White and she had to deal with some racist shit.
The point is pretty straightforward man, white people as a whole do not have to deal with systemic racism. Do they have to deal with individual racism? Yah sure, just like everyone else. Those two things are vastly different though.

I cannot recall a moment in the past couple years where I have had to deal with individual racism directed at me.
 

Pet

More helpful than the IRS
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
7,070
SoCal
Is this a serious question OP? Of course white people experience racism.

However, in the US, white people cannot experience institutional/structural racism.

These are different kinds of racism and have a different impact on people.
 

Rosenkrantz

Member
Jan 17, 2018
4,941
Maybe because the word "racism" contains the word "race" and that discrimination based on religion isn't discrimination based on race/skin color?
Definitions have a tendency to change, otherwise, any alt-righter would've been able to make a case why systemic racism is not actually a thing while citing early definitions of the word. So, yeah, in my opinion, the definition which only includes race/colour is horribly outdated by now.
But I don't agree with the argument you're making, probably because we don't agree on the definition of racism to begin with. In which case, this discussion might be moot anyway, and it will not change neither one of us nor our opinions.
Seems that way, have a good evening.
 

Kinthey

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
22,343
You think the reason the Nazis persecuted the Jewish people was because they're white??? (This question also extends to people invoking the Roma, Slavic peoples, and Italian Americans).
I don't think it was because they're white but saying it was because of their religion is so false it hurts. It didn't matter what religion someone practiced to be declared Jewish. It was all based on ancestry. The Nazis applied a multitude of racial markers to what makes a Jew a Jew, that's simply undeniable
 

Foxhound

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Jun 7, 2019
112
People who try to dismiss any type of racism existing, in any format directed at any individual, are contributing to the problem and not in fact solving it.
 
Oct 25, 2017
3,231
So this "academic understanding" only includes systemic oppression? Why? Doesn't seem consistent with any actual definition of the word.

there's a lot more to the subject than what you may have read in a dictionary
take your whining up with experts on the subject if this is proving too difficult for you
 

Delphine

Fen'Harel Enansal
Administrator
Mar 30, 2018
3,658
France
Definitions have a tendency to change, otherwise, any alt-righter would've been able to make a case why systemic racism is not actually a thing while citing early definitions of the word. So, yeah, in my opinion, the definition which only includes race/colour is horribly outdated by now.


The sole fact people felt the need to create words to define specific hate-crimes related to Muslims & Jews should give you an incredibly huge hint about the reason why the word "racism" might absolutely not be the right word to use there. And maybe you should use those in the first place, instead of trying to conveniently conflate one thing for another, thus erasing the truth, in order to fit your agency like you did in your original post. Next you're gonna tell me that homophobia, a discrimination based on sexual orientation, should be classified under the "racism umbrella" because "definitions have a tendency to change"? Please. But keep making false equivalences, once again, in order to derail my initial point. Have a good day.
 

Nepenthe

When the music hits, you feel no pain.
Administrator
Oct 25, 2017
20,733
I don't think it was because they're white but saying it was because of their religion is so false it hurts. It didn't matter what religion someone practiced to be declared Jewish. It was all based on ancestry. The Nazis applied a multitude of racial markers to what makes a Jew a Jew, that's simply undeniable
That's fair, but it also lends credence to the argument against white racism being a thing. The Jews, the Roma, the Slavs have undeniably experienced persecution, but no one in this thread has made the argument that that persecution was based on the fact that these peoples were white, which only solidifies my argument that "whiteness" and "white culture" in and of themselves are moreso sociopolitical identities than understandably-defined ethnic ones. The Jewish people had a "multitude of racial markers" applied to them to make them distinct from the "white" race in order to justify the horrors of Nazism. I'll even admit poor white southeners face prejudiced ribbing from rich metropolitan whites in the modern era still, but it's not because they're white, but because they're considered unintelligent and low-class. Until of course the election comes around and you need these people to remember that even if they're unintelligent and low-class, well, they aren't niggers, and white people regardless of class are absolutely united in their quest to make sure the niggers understand their place.
 

neon_dream

Member
Dec 18, 2017
3,644
Not quiet sure what you are telling me in response, but we agree then.

I'm saying the correct term is indeed "racism", if it contains all the hallmarks of prejudice against race.

Why the fuck are people using prejudice + power to mean racism when the vast majority of people still think of it as racial prejudice? It's like that's intentionally confusing people, and it'll just cause problems because telling people that you can't be racist against white people is just going to make people not understand what you mean and just tune you out. Like, it seems like a way to try to feel superior to those "inferior, uneducated masses" by using acting like they don't truly understand what racism is. Surely, there's got to be a word that describes systematic racism or power + prejudice without intentionally confusing the masses?

"Oppression" is a good word. The tactics Trump is using against immigrants and trying to popularize in the culture are examples of oppression. Oppression, alienation, racism, etc. They go together.
 

Lunar Wolf

Banned
Nov 6, 2017
16,237
Los Angeles
Why the fuck are people using prejudice + power to mean racism when the vast majority of people still think of it as racial prejudice? It's like that's intentionally confusing people, and it'll just cause problems because telling people that you can't be racist against white people is just going to make people not understand what you mean and just tune you out. Like, it seems like a way to try to feel superior to those "inferior, uneducated masses" by using acting like they don't truly understand what racism is. Surely, there's got to be a word that describes systematic racism or power + prejudice without intentionally confusing the masses?

Yeah, it's actually quite obtuse.
 

Rosenkrantz

Member
Jan 17, 2018
4,941
Next you're gonna tell me that homophobia, a discrimination based on sexual orientation, should be classified under the "racism umbrella" because reasons?
I didn't know that sexual orientation has as much to do with race as culture. But please, keep being pedantic in order to minimize suffering of the people you don't care about.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.