Honestly, you are on fire in this thread. I havent seen a single post of yours i can say anything in objection to. Bravo.
Well after i replied to a few posts that need replying, i think its time i say my piece on what ive learned (at least in part) after all this discussion and personal time to think. I ended up writing an addendum and posting it on the FB thread about the white supremacist patriarchy (it hadn’t been deleted after all). I copied it and took out any personal info and it reads as thus:
[Quote/]
I just want to revisit this thread after I’ve had a few long illuminating discussions and time to self-reflect. I feel as tho i need to apologize to Mark for trying repeatedly to have him answer what I had the luxury of viewing as nothing more than than a question of intellectual inquiry that was for him, in fact, a question of real life trauma and pain.
My luxury laid in being able to view the entire concept of this white patriarchy as something that could entertain my thoughts for a while, like during a FB conversation, then be forgotten until i so choose to take up the issue again. Those that have no choice but to live under the oppressive thumb of this white patriarchy, black and other racial minorities, dont have any such luxury.
My inability to understand this difference is what made me blind to why he would respond to my question the way he did. It wouldn’t have been an intellectual answer for him, it would have been a discussion of suffering and injustice very real to his life and he wasnt going to be the one to make me feel better about myself as a white man by dredging up difficult issues experienced in his own life
[Quote/]
Now i wont say a word about whether or not i was trying to have Mark assuage my white guilt, other than to say i know now that i communicated this to him and expected an answer that was quick, easy and not difficult to come to terms with as a white man.
He sent me a PM a day later and he sounded like the old hs friend i knew so well. We sent a couple messages back and forth and we seem to be our old selves again. As far as im concerned, this thread has served its usefulness.
This was his first PM to me:
One of my favorite stories to tell is how i scored in the top 92nd percentile of graduating seniors as a junior, drunk and hungover…and the only person who scored higher than me was my homie jamie, who was one of the smartest people i knew with the shittiest gpa, lol. Made me put little stock in those numbers. We knew who was smart and who just tried hard.
And this was my first response PM to him:
Hey ive been telling all the many people who’ve been a part of the very long 6 plus page thread discussion of our white patriarchy issue that you are someone that ive always held in the highest respect for not just your intelligence but your willingness to be an asshole when the situation calls for it. Thats about the highest compliment coming from a fellow asshole like me. 
The arguments about how the trauma of living with racism kills Blacks, especially Black youth, have already been made countless times. PTSD kills, this is not a disputable fact. It kills vets, it kills LGBT people, it kills POC.
Any particular reason you did something that performative instead of just DMing Mark?
I have a response to this.
No. I just went there automatically i guess but i didnt put a lot of thought into it. Definitely didnt consider performative. I posted it and never went back. I could have easily done the same in PM, i just didnt think of it.
I have nothing constructive to add to this conversation, other than to say that “Facebook balls” is a lovely expression that I very much look forward to pretending I came up with 
That’s not the same thing. You claimed that responding to people like Ambivalid could kill you. Is Ambivalid traumatizing you?
Or can you admit that you were injecting hyperbole into the situation to make it sound like Ambivalid was doing something horrible by asking questions, or is it something else?
Because right now it really looks like you are playing the race card to make yourself seem less foolish for making that foolish claim.
No, I didn’t.
This is not something I said at all.
Quote where I said this, or retract it and apologize.
I said the hurt of exposing trauma (which you pooh-poohed as “metaphorical”) kills people.
I expect I will get your reply in a week’s time, by your current posting habits. I look forward to that apology.
Hi Ambivalid,
White guy here, and I love to talk things to death. I think in your final post to FB that you quoted above, you were lucky enought to both find words that adequately communicated where you’re at and did acknowledge a lot that needed to be acknowledged–AND happen to hit your (I’m assuming largely black) audience at the right time they were willing to be tolerant.
Why do I say the latter? What I’ve learned (as a fellow white guy who loves to talk things to death) is that it is frustrating, and sometimes even demeaning, labor for black people to read and process even sincerely acknowledging and (at least sort of) apologetic posts like yours–because fundamentally, just as was told to you, though in the big picture white supremacy causes them problems, your experience of all this is not their problem. They don’t need your acknowledgment or apology, and dealing with it puts an onus on them.
Again, as a fellow white guy who loves to talk things to death, I’ve learned that it’s important for me to not look for acknowledgement here, but just to reflect and do things differently in the future. I may even need to leave with everyone being angry at me. I may even need to leave with everyone being unfairly angry at me!
As long as you’re looking for the right words to make everyone be friendly to you again, you don’t really get it. I say that, I also want to acknowledge that to my judgment, real steps have been taken by you here, and that is to the good. But there’s a temptation to rest on the laurels, to feel like all is well because everyone’s being nice to you. And you gotta be careful about that, because, as I learned about myself, that is really a defense mechanism that lets you basically continue on as you always have.
I hope this makes some sense.
Tangentially related–several decades ago I used to bank at a branch with a very friendly teller and over the years I’d always go to her window and we’d exchange pleasantries and jokes and goof around. I came in one time right after there’d been an armed holdup and instead of being sympathetic, I tried to crack a joke–y’know, like the millions of jokes I’d cracked with her in the past–and she lost her shit and went OFF on me. It felt awfully unfair, I mean, cracking jokes was our THING, right? Yeah, I learned a valuable lesson about reading the room and being appropriate for the time and place right there and then. What I did NOT do was hang around arguing about how she shouldn’t be so MEAN TO ME I WAS JUST JOKING AROUND GAH. I’ll wager a fiver there’s a parallel here to the OP’s situation. Sometimes you hit the wrong note at the wrong time and no matter how unfair you think the response is, that’s a good time to just shut up, swallow your feels and deal.
You and your friend have been led to believe there’s a large gulf between you that can’t be bridged. When people believe that, it becomes almost impossible for them to work together to solve problems. We live in a society built by the 1% for the 1%. It’s in their interests to keep the bottom 99% apart.
As an example, you believe as a white man that you never have to worry about the police abusing or killing you. Why do you believe that when all the evidence shows you should be very worried about those things. White people suffer injustices at the hands of the police and justice system every day. Why do you believe you’re immune when half the people killed by police every year are white and an indepth Harvard study found that whites are just as likely to be killed by police as blacks? Probably because you don’t see the stories of white victims becoming major news stories.
If you think you’re safe, look up the story of Troy Goode, a middle class white man who was hogtied by police to a stretcher. He was asthmatic and complained he couldn’t breathe but the police refused to release him. They said he was acting aggressively. Onlookers said Goode was disoriented but never aggressive. Look up Daniel Shaver, an unarmed white man who hadn’t committed any crime, who cried and begged for his life before he was killed. Also look up Andrew Casciano, Gil Collar, Christopher Roupe, and Cindy Hahn, just to name a few.
Why doesn’t the media highlight these stories? The media outlets are run by the 1% who have an interest in keeping people divided. Convincing white people that the system protects them keeps white people supporting that system. Showing stories of black victims makes blacks feel angry and resentful that they’re being singled out. That drives a wedge between people who don’t realize they face many of the same problems. A few years back a white man was killed by the police in very questionable circumstances. His father said in an interview that until his son was killed, he always sided with police when stories of police shootings made the news. What if whites en masse figured out that the police can be a threat to them and their loved ones? That could lead to change. The 1% don’t want that change.
What if instead of thinking of whites as privileged, we instead think of whites as disadvantaged and POC as more disadvantaged? Men as disadvantaged and women as more disadvantaged? That’s a very realistic way to look at things. The way things are now most people including the middle class don’t have it all the good. But whites are being convinced to protect a system that doesn’t work for them. White men are the group most likely to vote against their economic interests because they have been brainwashed into believing that things getting better for women and POC somehow means things getting worse for them. When it would actually make things better for the bottom 99%.
If whites and POC could look at each other and say “yes, our struggles are unique in some ways but this system in place harms both of us” then whites and POC could be an unstoppable force working together to make things better. It’s in the interests of the 1% to make sure that doesn’t happen.
You know, you’re right - it’s *never * NOT a good time to point out how White men are the REAL victims. I mean, NOBODY ever points out their victimhood. Ever. Nope, complete silence on how the Whites are being held down by a …*conspiracy *… of silence. *No *segment of society ever concerns itself with the plight of the White men and their unjust oppression.
By the “1%” wink . I hear that tune you’re whistling, sure enough.
:rolleyes:
Yeah, I’m not seeing why our solidarity against the tyranny of the 1% can’t start with honestly and fairly acknowledging that black people in the US on average experience more discrimination and other negative effects of racism than white people do. Why does honestly and fairly acknowledging that fact have to “keep us apart”?
Great, but why do we have to choose between saying that and acknowledging that yes, the struggles faced by non-white people, especially black people, are worse? Once again, we’re being discouraged from honestly acknowledging racism by rose-colored prophecies of being able to attain some kind of breakthrough if only we’ll stop talking about racism.