So the hate crimes after 9/11, the Trump travel ban, the arguments for the Iraq war, the very fact that racial slurs for Arabs exist in this thread for insane CRT cultists to accuse me of using - all the racism involved in that was imaginary and it was just a dispute between different kinds of white people that, magically, involved the constant use of racism, racial stereotypes, and racist language.
This is the hill you’re gonna die on instead of admitting that your initial assumption, based on nothing, that the shooter in this incident was white, and all of the hypothesizing spun out of that, was in error.
There’s nothing at all complicated about the fact that, in the way race is conceived of in American society, Arab Muslims born in Syria are “Arab” and “Arab” is not white. It’s extremely uncomplicated when looking at how Arabs have been treated in this country in the 20 years since 9/11. The only people making it complicated are the ones who cannot let go of their “white shooter” theory even when the actual information about the shooter’s background is made public.
Syrians are not Iranians. They very well might have a different opinion on their whiteness, like Lebanese do too. Or it might vary by individual - George Dow’s M certainly V’ed.
Me: The situation is complicated! Here are multiple competing facts!
You: But if I remove some of the facts and only mention one of them, it’s no longer complicated!
Can’t tell whether you’re really this dumb, or if it’s an act.
Thanks, I’ll be using this markedly apt term to refer to the ideology in question from now on.
I’m sure all the Arabs who had their heads bashed in by rednecks in 2001 are relived to hear that they are actually white and they have been upgraded from racial hate crime victims to “complicated.” Another problem solved by woke idiots!
You sure do make some dumb shit up. Which I understand: it’s probably a lot easier for a halfwit like you to argue against the pretend arguments you invent than against what people are actually saying.
I bet there are a whole lot of Syrian-Americans you never even considered as not White, or even knew were Syrian-American. What does where they were born matter?
I don’t know, I’ll call the CEO of American racism and set up an interview for you. Since you seem to think that these racial categories are based on some kind of meaningful decision made by a single person in a rational way and can be changed if you find that person and yell at them enough about it.
As I mentioned upthread, anyone who has ever known me labels me as “White”. If my skin was any paler I’d be transparent. I look like someone with 96% Northern European H. sapiens with 4% Neanderthal as the rest. One look and anyone is going to say “Yup, that gal’s ancestry is Northern Europe”.
Yet I am also Jewish. And Jews have often, and sometimes still are, lumped in with the “swarthy” people, the POC, the not-White. In truth, Jews come in all colors. The religion is not entirely congruent with skin color or ethnicity.
Likewise, Arab skin color (fun fact - originally Jews were from the same part of the world as Arabs) runs from dark to “swarthy” to European-pale. Muslims come in all skin colors as well. I could see a White Muslim being discriminated against for being Muslim. I could see a White-appearing Arab being discriminated against for being Arab, or Muslim, or not-White-enough.
These are not mutually exclusive groupings or forms of discrimination.
Fact is, this most recent shooter was identified as “White” by everyone who encountered him until his name was revealed. People who knew him and his ethnic/religious background might have abused him because of those, but those who did not know him most likely would have responded to him like any other White man. That does not make any past abuse he’s suffered less real, or less wrong, but it does show that there are plenty of people who don’t fit neatly into boxes.
The first person shot was outside the building not in the vaccination line. In fact he was sitting in a refrigeration truck. I’m not sure what info you’re seeing about him targeting the people getting vaccines first.
Weird. That’s been in all of the local reporting as well as accidentally showing a body on the news. The footage of the victim outside as well as the whole live shot is missing from their youtube channel. In the video on the story you linked though you can see the while van in the background that had a victim inside.
So… you would describe this Syrian-American as not-White?
I mean, the Arab-American Insitute has awarded him honors as an Arab-American of Syrian descent. Yet he’s pale-skinned and blue-eyed (granted, his background isn’t entirely Syrian). Syrians tend towards lighter complexions than other Arabs (there are, of course exceptions. Heck, one of the people I follow on the internet is a woman who lives in Iceland who is very much of African descent, which is not what one would expect in Iceland).
I don’t know, maybe Jerry Seinfeld, Steve Jobs, Teri Hatcher, and Wentworth Miller have all suffered from being non-White. More likely, I don’t think many people have assumed they’re Arab or Syrian because they don’t fit a caricature of what “Arabs” look like. Having lived in this country all my life, I’m guessing most people assume they’re White. They are also all of Syrian background.
Arabs - like Greeks, Italians, and a bunch of other people from around the Mediterranean have long occupied a spot in the racial hierarchy that, while White in many circumstances, in others are not-White-enough. This is amplified when they also are not Christian. They’re “swarthy”. In a mixed group they tend to get lumped in with the White, but when they’re in a group of White people they tend to be Othered into not-White, as do light-skinned Hispanics. Because lumping people by race and/or ethnicity is a messy business and getting more so with more and more people crossing the lines to marry/have kids.
Racists absolutely hate mixed marriages because it fucks up all their mythology about races being separate. They’re not. We are all H. sapiens. All just variations on a theme. Unfortunately, being descended from poo-flinging apes we are also tribal, prone to mistrusting people we don’t perceive as part of “our” group, and can be real shits to each other.
Apologies if I seemed to be implicating you specifically in that statement. I fully agree that it can be useful to discuss the political implications of the shooter’s motives – e.g., targeting the vaccination line.
And remember, just because he did no such thing as “target the vaccination line” doesn’t mean we can’t attribute all sorts of “motives and implications” to it, just like the fact that he isn’t white won’t stop us from talking about the political meaning of “another white male perpetrating a mass shooting.”
