“I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it.
If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket.
Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Lyndon Baines Johnson
Uh, 10% of Syrians are Christian, while 3% are some non-Muslim category mostly composed of Druze, Jews and atheists.
I know you were just kidding with the “infidels” crack, but I think it could be potentially misleading to suggest that Syrian Muslim culture in general is the hardcore “Islamist-fundamentalist” type that views all non-Muslims as “infidels”.
Quite the opposite in my experience. If you ever need to know what race someone is, ask a racist. It’s literally in their job description.
Thank Allah God they still make brown paper bags!
I think you’ve lost the plot - the one negating the fact that Muslims named Ahmad born in Syria tend to be victims of racism in the U.S. is you and the rest of the “Arabs? never heard of them, this guy is a white dudebro” crowd.
Anyone else unsurprised that Zoster has that guy on speed dial?
Can someone clarify what it is you’re accusing of being racist here?
A) Noticing that the person who committed a mass shooting wasn’t white
B) Stating the obvious fact that in America’s conception of race, “Arab” is part of the “nonwhite” category, as evidenced by citing well-known trends of white racism against Arabs
C) Disagreeing with the woke idiot brigade and their explicit insistence that we should use a nonwhite shooter who didn’t target the vaccination queue as the basis for drawing conclusions about white shooters who targeted vaccination queues
D) All of the above
?
That would be the plot of your poorly-written fantasy novel, because that’s certainly not what I or anyone else in this thread is saying.
But you’re extremely stupid, so I see how you’ve mistaken your convenient fantasy for the truth.
Until his name was known, everybody assumed based on his physical appearance that he was white. The cops did, as did the other people in the supermarket, the people watching him being led out of the store, the people watching on TV, etc. That means that most of the people he interacted with on a daily basis who did not know his name assumed he was and treated him as though he were white.
When a guy most people assume is white based on his physical appearance suddenly turns out to have a Arabic name, does that mean he magically transformed from White to Not White?
Not sure what you mean here. The issue seems to be that nobody did notice that this mass shooter “wasn’t white”, despite pictures of him being all over the news, until it was publicized what his name and geographical origin were.
Curious, just making sure I’m correct:
Is there anyone in this thread who thinks that this murderer’s racial identity in the US is an uncomplicated “White” identity?
Sure–but racial identity in the US is more complicated than first appearance, right? Given the social construction of race, a person may be treated as not-white by some people and as white by other people. This is a centuries-old quirk in our fucked up system.
In some circumstances (e.g., initial response to photos of his arrest), this murderer was treated as White. In other circumstances (e.g., sneering from bigots like Zoster and the kids at the killer’s high school), he’s treated as not White.
That’s what happens when you create an imaginary system of racial hierarchy and try to use it in the real world. Shit gets complicated.
This is Walter F. White, the president of the NAACP from 1929 to 1955. He is black:
Race in the U.S. is not about skin color. It is not based on taking a precise measurement of melanin percentage in a lab. It is not rational, objective, or based in facts of natural science. It is socially constructed, and it is constructed by white racists. Pointing out that the act of drawing racial distinctions necessarily involves drawing on racist thinking is proclaiming a tautology. Trying to counter observations about the nature and effects of racism by demanding that racism be more logical or quantifiable is fundamentally misunderstanding the entire nature and history of racism.
I don’t know how you got into the woke idiot brigade without encountering this Sociology 101 level stuff that should be totally uncontroversial outside of far-right circles. Read a book.
He got there because you invented some shit (“Woke Idiot Brigade” indeed–the antagonists of your poorly-written fantasy novel?) and then invented a character to put in there, and gave that character the same username as slash2k. Your slash fiction interests nobody but yourself.
Sure. But you don’t think he’s a white guy based on his name and ethnic family background. Right?
Actually it substantially is and increasingly so as time goes on and formerly “non-white” but outwardly pale minorities like the Irish, Portuguese, Italians and to only a slightly lesser extent Jews get assimilated into the American white gestalt. It is not just about skin color, but this is how Americans form first judgements as can be seen with both the initial reports on Alissa and in Broomstick’s experience. As noted blue-eyed, pale-skinned Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad would pass as any unremarkable white American if walking down the street. But opinions would become more complicated when he mentioned his name.
But I really think this whole rabbit-hole on race so many in this little mini-debate seem intent on diving down into is kinda neither here nor there. This doesn’t seem to be ideological murder of any real sort. Just a disturbed guy who may have manufactured grievances, but mostly seems to be responding to the bugs in his head.
It has nothing to do with what I think. Syrian-born Muslims named “Ahmad” are nonwhite Arabs in America. This is what our socially constructed system of race says. The fact that I’m acknowledging its existence does not imply that I approve of it, let alone that I invented it and am responsible for its propagation as the woke idiot brigade repeatedly insists.
Again, what are Syrian-born non-Muslims regardless of their name?
(What the fuck does the name have to do with it anyway?)
I once worked with a Muslim Jordanian-American gentleman. He said from time to time he was hassled by law enforcement for no particular reason but that they always let him go as soon as they found out he wasn’t Mexican.
So… if he changes his name to “John Quentin Smith” he would become White?