Where were those racial fears when we elected a black dude… twice?
No, Trump was elected because he was running against Hillary Clinton.
The criticism on the gender issue is mostly a matter of where the Democratic party’s apparent focus is.
Other Lives Matter.
I would still welcome an explanation of what is needed to break down the invalid classification of “white” and thus liberate my brethren and sistren.
“Pardon me, officer, but you pulled me over for a broken tail light. In order to forgo my white privilege (which doesn’t exist), I must insist you strike me at least twice with your nightstick and Taser me while screaming “stop resisting”. Only in this way can we transcend the boundaries that separate us, and achieve unity in a spirit of true brotherhood, sisterhood, cis-genderhood, trans-GLBThood, classless, stateless, income-equality, increased minimum-wage-mandated tolerance. With liberty and health care for all.”
Regards,
Shodan
Umm, Black lives matter, Ferguson etc happened under Obama’s watch.
But yes this need to happen sense at least 1681 which is the first known date that Native Americans and people of African decent were thrown into a class that was below the status of non-land owning “whites” in Maryland.
But if you want to have a debate on if Trump is racist there is a thread for that.
Because the body of law that was created after 1861 was created explicitly to separate non-monied “whites” from tribal natives and people of African decent in order to control decent of the non-Elites.
The entire concept of “white” is a method to break up and factionalize groups of people with those groups. To be clear there was no “white” people in the world before 1861, there were English, Dutch, freedmen etc… but there were not “whites”
The term “white” is a tool of political creation and that tool is the way that the inequality was created.
Do I have to recite that before, or after, I am Tasered?
Regards,
Shodan
No it is your privilege to ignore the inequitable treatment of your fellow Americans purely because the guy who nutted inside your mom had light skin.
But that was just hard work under your argument right?
Here’s a page from the 1850 Census. Note the 6th column and the “W” at the top. I don’t think that stands for “Welsh”.
It’s cute, the Dems are doubling down on stupid. Keep gunning for the 12% black and Trans vote. It worked great this last election.
I had hope Obama would unite the country, he had an awesome opportunity to do so. Instead he chose to divide this country further than we have been post civil rights days.
The Left has chose to become racist, they always were.
So now they alienated the white middle class blue collar people they once pretended to champion.
You know who elected Trump? Unions. Think about, those bitter clingers in the rust belt.
Best part is Trump is delivering. Read the EOs from today regarding the pipelines, oh and billions coming back into the country in job creation.
MAGA. Im not tired of winning yet.
Sorry slightly dysgraphic, I meant 1681 but anyone who knew about Bacons rebellion would have noticed that error.
You do realize that when the Elites created the whole concept of the “white race” that they didn’t immediately rise those people to a higher level. They threw people of African decent and from native tribes into a deeper pit, when they had been previously equal under the law.
As this was a method that was intentionally created in order to placate one segment of the lower classes by tossing other groups under the bus your post demonstrates that it is still working.
But if you are going to ask if I will abandon my core moral values to gain power at the expense of others, no I will not. The fact that you argue that it is foolish to stand up for all of our fellow Americans is quite disturbing to me and frankly I find it very unpatriotic.
So, what you’re saying is categorizing people by race is so deeply imbedded in our country that it predates the formation of the country itself. I agree.
Now, I’m happy to get rid of all racial classifications. Are you? Or is it just the white racial category you want to get rid of.
Partial strawman,
And if you intended to mix in an Appeal to Tradition I do not agree. While the creation of the political based concept I desire to destroy does pre-date our country it was us as Americans that pushed it into full force and lots of those issues happened within time of people who are currently living.
I am glad you are interested in equalizing the application of law but yes the “white race” does have special standing.
Humans will always need to consciously work to avoid converting implicit bias into explicit bias.
I will once again point you to James Madison’s Federalist paper 10 which directly deals with the topic of factions.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp
He goes into detail on why it is problematic to removing its causes of faction, and explains why controlling it’s effects are critical.
While I can empathize with people who view being “white” as a core identifier of who they are the reason it is a specific target is that it was explicitly created as a method of aggregating this core human trait of implicit bias to increase the power of that faction.
It was manufactured and leveraged to separate groups who do have a common interest, as to protect the interests of the elite. In the case of the first legal use of the term “white” it was intended to prevent an uprising of poor whites and poor people of African decent and native peoples.
Today it is leveraged to divide working and middle class Americans of all backgrounds.
As an example on why this was not a typical self-identification especially when the concept of “white” was codified into law.
As there were far more men than women in early colonial America one of the first of these laws that referenced race was an anti-miscegenation law.
While this may easy to brush of as being based on typical biases the initial law had a flaw that demonstrated that it was more about placating the middle, working and “owned” classes.
The punishment for the original law was purely directed at the woman who married a “non-white” person. Her punishment was to be enslaved for life and that her children were to also be enslaved until their 20th birthday.
This law was intended to placate the “whites” as to give them access to a limited resource. But the effect was exactly opposite as the elites who “owned” people actively encouraged the behavior because they gained financially when it happened.
They had to change the law to add penalties for the land owners and officials who performed the wedding to change this.
But lets look over some of the other laws that were enacted.
This is before life long indentured servitude and slavery were the rule and there was a common law requirement to provide a man with a musket and powder when they were freed. One of the laws they enacted was to outlaw the possession of musket and powder by those who were of African decent or native. As this was an era of substance this was punitive to “non-whites” while actually not providing advantage to them.
Another example of these laws was that “non-whites” were not allowed to testify against “whites” which also did not directly improve the situation for the new legal definition of “white”.
Now it took quite a while for these groups who were put in this new category of “white” to consider themselves as a member of that group but the reality is that they were not provided much advantage by this change it was purely to to create this political division.
This is still the fact today. Working class “whites” and working class Latinos or African Americans have far more in common based on class than they do based on race. But now that there is this artificial political division that can be “attacked” it is easy to leverage that mythical membership to drive political will that is against their interests.
While the term “privilege” is unfortunate because it infers an easy road it is what we have. While some elements of our identity privilege us, others disadvantage us. For example, I am privileged by my whiteness, my middle class background, and being male, but I am also disadvantaged by being discographic.
The reason for directing efforts to “Abolish the White Race” is because it was created to be divisive, not because there is an issue with having light colored skin.
The idea is to break down an obviously and documented politically manufactured reality to allow our fellow Americans to divest themselves from this divisive manufactured faction and to work towards common goals.
To be clear, the abandonment of this category is just as likely to empower individuals who share different political desires than I have but it is the right thing to do.
I am a non-secular, progressive, and well paid knowledge worker. As an example I just received a recruiting email that offered me a free Tesla if I was hired.
As there are more religious people in the African American and Latino political groups today my secular views would actually lose some power.
But I am willing to sacrifice those privileges in order to better lives of my fellow Americans. I do not want to silence the views, or diminish the political opportunities of others to further mine.
It is not that being “white” is a bad thing, it is not that I am ashamed of my culture or lineage. I am ashamed of the inequity caused by artificial divides that produce inequity for my fellow Citizens.
The whole concept here seems backwards to me. I’d go out on a limb and say that everyone who has responded in this thread is in favor of racial equality and all that. But equality hopefully means everyone is treated well. Not that those who are supposedly more privileged should be treated worse. What good does that do?
Sticking with the police encounter theme, let’s say for the purpose of this exercise that white people get the benefit of the doubt more often than minorities. White people are less likely to be pulled over, or ticketed, or shot, or what have you. How is it helping the cause for white people to give up that benefit of doubt? Pull me over for a stupid reason, ticket me, use unreasonable force. If police are going to treat anyone like crap, then they ought to treat everyone like crap. What purpose does that serve?
Explain to me how voluntarily refusing to identify with a category that only exists due to a political effort to fracture decent costs me anything or causes me to have less opportunity?
It is a strawman argument to claim that the intent of this is to swap advantage and to place “whites” in a less advantageous role outside of removing inequities.
As for the second part, the advantage of Americans with a common desire being unified is that their cause will be more likely to be heard. While the police brutality portion of the responses was a bit of an exaggeration I fail to see any side arguing that brutality is an acceptable side effect no matter who is targeted.
Wait just a cotton pickin’ minute here. You were the one making the argument that the concept of “whiteness” was a recent political invention. I was simply pointing out that 500 years is not what I would call “recent”. If you want to renounce your original claim, that’s fine with me.
TL;DR. It was a yes or no question.
Are you proposing a scheme to get rid of all racial classifications or just the white one? Yes or no. We can get into reasons later.
First of all your math is not correct.
Second of all I was arguing that conferring advantage “whiteness” was a recent political invention. That advantage is a far more recent development as the earlier efforts were to toss the victims of those policies into a hole to prevent unified decent.
Third I am not going to fall for a yes or no requirement in a debate, especially when you inflate your numbers to 150%
Fourth: Related to “all of time”, evolution of traits, or the evolution of forms of government this is a tiny time scale despite your own limited time on this earth.
Fifth: Even if I did concede your point it does not invalidate the premise and by failing to address my argument directly it will appear to other observers to be ducking the topic due to a lack of standing within the debate.
All your links said that being white is a club you enter at birth. How can you resign from a club you never voluntarily entered? You still have not explained what you want to do will mean for you or those like you. I suspect this is because you do not plan to do anything except engage in virtue signaling.
How does one leave the Catholic Church?
I have the “privilege” to renounce this membership, it is not an option for others that are debased due to mythological beliefs in false ideas that box them in.
But I will share what I intend to do at a later date as it will just provide ammo for people to resort to the folly of an attribution error and to dismiss my claims based on rash judgments that apply moral failings and ignore circumstances.
At this point in time I still have people postulating that 1681 was so far in the past as to have caused evolutionary changes that have embedded the concept of a “white race” into the very human fabric that makes us a person.
The race traitor wants to disavow his whiteness because it has afforded him some unfair advantage over his fellow, non-white, humans. Is that right?
Does this follow?
- Whites are more privileged than non-whites.
- I do not identify as white because I am a race traitor.
- Therefore, I lose my privilege so that we’re on a level playing field.
If not, then I’m missing the point.
Exactly. But denying that white people are a thing does not mean unification to me.
ETA: Does it just mean you don’t check the box marked “white” on the census?
“white people” are a thing, but not outside of a manufactured political concept that was devised to protect interests at the expense of the population as a whole.
That is the whole reason that the category needs to be destroyed.
The idea is not sophistry as you framed.
Does this follow?
- The whole concept of white was developed as a political tool to fracture decent.
- This political tool was increasingly leveraged to increase inequity over time.
- By continuing to self identify with this political tool helps further these abuses while also preventing forward movement with both racial inequality and common concerns.
- I will chose to refuse self identify with this political tool to be part of the solution.
- I will identify as a “race traitor” because it brings light to those who are explicit racists as it is their label.
- By “owning” the label as a “race traitor” it will also demonstrate the absurdity of the label to those who may suffer from implicit bias but who do not engage in explicate deliberate acts of racism (which I believe is the vast majority)
To be clear for most of history if you transported someone from England, modern day Italy, Germany and other “white” nations to a bar and said “you are all the same” you would be laughed at.
As I explained in the OP this is not some simple post racial myth, it is an active attempt to discredit a label that is meaningless outside of the social political tool that created it.
The invalid political label of “white” directly feeds into the normal implicit bias of individuals and creates a self fulfilling circle of bad results.
There is little to no “cost” for any person who was born into this club to shed it but the costs to perpetuate this myth for those who are placed into out groups is very very very real.