If only 53% of white people thought it was ok to be black, or any other minority, that would be seen as a problem.
I don't see why the answer changes just because roles are reversed. If you want equality, these things go both ways. And if you don't want equality, you're racist, or some other ist.
This isnt a battle with a 'winner' the goal is everyone being equal, black or white. Black people need to be signed up to that too.
All this being said, I haven't listened to the podcast, so I'm not condoning or condemning what was said.
The goal posts have been moved again though. Now that we have equality its not enough, it's equity. It used to be same chances, but now they want same outcomes.
Racism is just a business at this point. The self proclaimed diversity experts have no desire to fix anything since this is how they sell their books and diversity trainings.
It goes both ways in that until recently whites even said a black was less than a person _in the law_, so certainly they deserve to feel slighted by white people insisting racism is over and racial issues need to be considered from a made up position, and we need to do what we can to allow healing to make it right.
slavery is still a talking point. Should black people get another century and a half after equality is achieved to hold it against white people? Do white people then get another century and a half to hold that against black people?
If the goal is equality, holding grudges and special treatment doesn't work.
Women got the vote, they didn't get 1.5 votes to make up for past injustices.
And I'm not suggesting we have perfect equality now. But if that's the goal, there's no room for revenge.
I would argue this "free pass" should last for until we no longer have living memory of racial discrimination. There are people still alive who couldn't vote because they are black. The Vice President of the united states had to be given armed guards in order to go to school because she was black and Indian. We're acting like black people are holding against white people something that no one currently alive can attest to. In actuality, racial discrimination and racist harm has occurred to people who are alive right now, and I highly doubt that white people get just proclaim "it's over, we solved racism" and therefore no one should retain any hurt feelings for the racist acts against them.
You know, I used to have a girlfriend that would do shitty things to me and then proclaim I was the one that needed to get over it because it happened so long ago, despite her never apologizing or making up for her behavior.
>You know, I used to have a girlfriend that would do shitty things to me and then proclaim I was the one that needed to get over it because it happened so long ago, despite her never apologizing or making up for her behavior.
You seem to be suggesting that you hold all women responsible for what your girlfriend did.
Do you see how other women might object to apologising for what your ex did, based purely of what they have in their underwear?
You seem to be suggesting that an entire race in the US should just get over it because it happened so long ago, which is the same gaslighting this woman is said to have done. Since you are doing this to an entire race, denying the importance of their experience and pain, you are in a class of their abusers regardless of your race.
So we'll keep the free pass until there is no living memory of any wrong doing against black people. Then we will only have living memory of the "free pass" and we will need to adjust back right? I mean, all we will "livingly" remember is the free pass after all, time to correct for that.
At some point people who are truly after equality need to look for justice in the future, not revenge for the past.
As for your ex-girlfriend, I have no clue how one individual being held responsible for "shitty things" compares to an entire race of people being held responsible for what their ancestors from many generations ago did. I will never apologize or feel guilty for what people who happened to have the same skin color as me did 100 years ago.
> I'm saying there's no one alive today that experienced it.
But that doesn't mean the effects aren't still experienced by their children and grand children, who are still living. In order to say it's ancient history, we have to actually grapple with that history. Another poster made a great point that the reason we don't closely associate Germany with Nazi Germany today is that they went thorough a lot of hard work to de-Nazify their country.
In America, we dismantled our apartheid state and called it a day. We went from slavery, straight into a segregated society, and then when the civil rights act was passed, racism was declared "over" by a segment of society who didn't want to fully deal with the issue. But the negative effects from 200+ years of stat-sanctioned oppression persist.
Imagine if Germany post WWII said "You know, the holocaust was too far, but Jews are still a problem, and they shouldn't be part of German society." We'd question how de-Nazified Germany actually was. Jews there would be correct to question whether the holocaust actually ended or if it just temporarily subsided. They would be right to be concerned when people started saying "It's OK to be Aryan", and they probably won't agree with that sentiment even if having blue eyes and blonde hair is literally just fine. Because we all know what people uttering such a phrase are really saying: "It's okay to be a Nazi".
Take the context back to America, and we haven't dealt with slavery or our history of racial segregation. Just as we start to deal with it in our modern area, we see at the local, state, and federal level, the same ideology that was for US apartheid is now very much against a societal level reconciliation at the scale Germany underwent. And those are the people like Scott Adams, who want us to retreat back to our segregated past. They are the same as the Nazis want to put the Jews back in the ghettos without going full holocaust, and call that social progress. It's the same thing with these American white supremacists.
>Imagine if Germany post WWII said "You know, the holocaust was too far, but Jews are still a problem, and they shouldn't be part of German society." We'd question how de-Nazified Germany
That isn't whats being discussed though. If Jews wanted preferential treatment because of the Holocaust I'd object to that too.
If you want to point to concrete things that prevent black people reaching equality then we can discuss it, I might even agree with you. I'm not claiming we have perfect equality today, just that that should be the goal.
But again you're just mentioning slavery as if that is itself an argument. It isn't it's a statement of what happened in the past. I can't change the past, and neither did I have any role in that past, so I'm neither morally culpable nor able to do anything about it. What I can do something about is today. And today I support equality.
> If Jews wanted preferential treatment because of the Holocaust I'd object to that too.
This is as strawman brought in from Scott Adams' rant. By and large black people are not asking for preferential treatment, and no one here is discussing that.
> If you want to point to concrete things that prevent black people reaching equality then we can discuss it
Absolutely. For example, my grandfather had a great head start at life. He came to America and immediately got a job. He owned land not long thereafter, which was left to my father. That land will be left to me. The entire time he lived in America he had the right to vote, and he shaped the country by electing representatives to lobby for his interests at the local, state, and federal level. Those representatives enacted laws that benefitted my family.
By contrast, a black man born into slavery would not be allowed to fully integrate into American society even when freed. He wouldn't have owned much of anything to leave to his children, and his grandchildren, my peers. His entire family tree wouldn't have been allowed to vote, or hold office, or own property.
If you want to claim that slavery has no impact today, you have to also believe it is so far in the past that the negative effects have been sufficiently attenuated. But really, we're actually talking about 1-2 generations. People have living memory of actual American slaves. You also have to believe political representation and generational wealth are meaningless. Seeing how hard people fight for political representation and to keep generational wealth, I think this is a deeply flawed position.
How do we fix this using the framework of equality?
> it's a statement of what happened in the past.
To go a step further, are you aware slavery isn't actually abolished in America? The 13th Amendment has a carveout that slavery may be a punishment for criminal activity. Now take a look at the drug war, who they targeted with that, who is currently incarcerated and doing unpaid labor, and tell me slavery is a thing of the past in America. Do you think it's a problem that black people are represented in America's prison population at 3x the rate they are represented in society at large? Don't you think the problem is further compounded by the fact that America has the largest prison population in the world?
>This is as strawman brought in from Scott Adams' rant
I haven't read his rant. If anyone was strawmaning, you went to Hitler, I was just trying to modify the example to better fit.
>He owned land not long thereafter, which was left to my father. That land will be left to me
Good for you. Doesn't apply to me though, so it's obviously not a black v white issue.
Further I would support a ~100% inheritance tax rate, solves the issue, means that every generation has a clean slate, making their own way in life. Plus id rather pay my taxes after I'm dead. How does that suit?
> had the right to vote, and he shaped the country by electing representatives to lobby for his interests
And those laws can be changed. Which do you suggest?
>To go a step further...
Yes that's an issue. But is it an issue of poverty? A problem of racist police and courts? What? I disagree that slavery actually exists. I don't think prisons should exist as money making concerns though.
The thread of black -> poor -> drugs -> prison I'm not convinced needs to include black in there. And a healthy amount of personal responsibility for the people involved is also required. It can't all just be blamed on others.
And none of this requires a discussion of slavery. Fix the problem as it is now.
well assuming poverty is the issue. solve the poverty. for all people. i dont see why it makes sense to focus on a just so happens to be related group.
or is black poverty acceptable because it was forced on them by the white man? whereas all poor white people deserve it?
I'm just pointing out that it's incredibly magnanimous for you to ponder the thought that maybe black people don't have to be poor. Like I said, incredibly magnanimous.
Where did I say they have to be poor, or should be poor?
If you read the thread, I'm the one who isn't implicitly conflating the 2, which I suspect is at least part of the disconnect.
This is why I don't get arguments mentioning slavery etc. Because poverty and blackness are separate. You don't need a racial component to go about fixing that. So the snark is wrong.
The fairest thing for everyone is equality. I'm signed up for that. I don't support equality and a little bit more. If you want special treatment for your group, black, white or anything else, I won't support that, except potentially to further the goal of equality.
I don't know what you are bitter over, but your word choice clearly reflects what I described.
>The fairest thing for everyone is equality. I'm signed up for that. I don't support equality and a little bit more.
I mean yeah, that's one way to characterize it. I don't think it's fair to characterize things as 'equality and more' and, to be honest, nothing you've said makes it seem like you are reasonably assessing any of this.
>If you want special treatment for your group, black, white or anything else, I won't support that, except potentially to further the goal of equality.
Not sure how you square this with the previous statement, but okay.
I can read past your efforts to try and structure this in a way to distinguish between the "equality" you approve of versus the "equity" you disapprove of, as if they aren't related. It's just a way for you to try and make socially tolerable the things you refuse to say.
The fact that I went to money? Black v white? What?
You make vague accusations that I'm being inconsistent and struggling to square things and I don't really know what you're referring to. So unless you're going to be more explicit I'm done trying to explain myself further.
I'm not accusing you of being inconsistent at all. I'm pointing out you are consistent. Consistent in coming up with characterizations that reflect foremost, your own personal grievances, in a way that contradicts reality.
It's only an issue if you ignore the context and origination of the phrase. If you read it literally then sure, it seems like an innocuous phrase. The alt-right folks are counting on people to naively interpret the phrase literally.
The additional context just makes it even more foolish to object to the statement. I'm baffled by people who know that the whole point of the question is to depict left-leaning people as racist by objecting to something so anodyne, but then do exactly that anyway. Taking the bait, when you know it's bait is just plain stupid. Of course it's okay to be white, and objecting to "it's okay to be white" does nothing but help the alt-right trolls.
Given the literal statement, you are arguing that the statement is an alt-right dogwhistle slogan, and therefore the phrase must be understood from that context, and we must ignore the literal, naive meaning of the phrase.
If "the alt-right folks are counting on people to naively interpret the phrase literally", doesn't that make Rasmussen an alt-right folk? Rasmussen asked the phrase, "ignoring the context and origination" of the phrase just like you said.
If you believe Rasmussen is not "alt-right" folk, I wonder how you distinguish the two?
>If "the alt-right folks are counting on people to naively interpret the phrase literally", doesn't that make Rasmussen an alt-right folk? Rasmussen asked the phrase, "ignoring the context and origination" of the phrase just like you said.
That kind of gives credence to his point, doesn't it. Saying "Ignoring that this is a racist dogwhistle, do you think this racist dogwhistle is true?" isn't exactly being neutral or negating the fact that the "statement" is a racist dogwhistle.
This is kind of the thing that I don't get about the attitudes expressed here w/r/t making points and arguments. Your argument is facially not good. You confuse the fact that its conceptually plausible, with the reality that on it's face, it doesn't serve that goal at all. It's like desperately clawing at rhetorical fallacy to make your point... when you could just make your point without it. Of course, then you couldn't structure it to make it look like you aren't defending racist dogwhistles... but that's what you are doing.
We were reminded of this concept recently in the Netherlands when a Canadian neo-Nazi used a laser projection to project “Anne Frank, inventor of the ballpoint pen” (in Dutch) on the walls of the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam.
An innocent (or silly) phrase if you take it literally, but the intended message is that Anne Frank never existed or didn't write her diary (or whatever), because it contains pages written with a ballpoint pen (which was only commercially available after World War Two). Never mind that the pages in question are just two slips of paper containing research notes left by a researcher in the 1950s…
The far right people pushing this are not counting on people to take the phrase literally though. The idea is that whoever spreads the message feels clever for trolling people with a phrase he (usually) can claim is 'just a literal clone of BLM for white people', while whoever orchestrated or propagated the phenomenon is acutely aware of the potential power of such a dog-whistle.
>The alt-right folks are counting on people to naively interpret the phrase literally.
Maybe. But by playing their game, you're giving them power. If you don't play the game, they don't win. I didn't know about the politics of the phrase until you and others pointed it out. Is it better that I don't now repeat the phrase?
That poster is not playing their game, you are. Here insisting on how your ignorance of their game makes the phrase innocuous, even after the fact. Do you think it would better if you repeated the phrase? Who would that be serving?
Just because you want to be contrarian against everything white supremacists do so you “don’t play their game” doesn’t mean that you aren’t acting as a white supremacist propagandist by doing so.
Their game is exploiting this lapse of common sense that many people seem to have who refuse to take the obviously winning strategy of just ignoring this and who instead must constantly fight for the sake of fighting even if the social consequences are terrible.
What did I do that makes you think I'm a "contrarian" against white supremacists?
>Their game is exploiting this lapse of common sense that many people seem to have who refuse to take the obviously winning strategy of just ignoring this and who instead must constantly fight for the sake of fighting even if the social consequences are terrible.
Who is fighting? I responded to a post in a thread, here, a place where we discuss things by posting. Everything you wrote appears to be a huge projection.
People who took the phrase at face value just ignored these posters and went on with their day. If you understand the context then it makes it even more baffling to not take the phrase at face value because any alternative is literally feeding white supremacist propaganda.
> Posters saying "It's okay to be white" have sparked a police investigation. ...
> Hampshire Constabulary was alerted to the posters by a resident on Thursday and said they were being treated as a "hate incident". ...
> Resident Priya Brown said: "These tactics are divisive and they have no place in today's world. They're tactics that are used to divide deliberately by neo-Nazi groups and white supremacy groups. It started in the US but we have seen it here in the UK."
As my link shows, the UK police interpreted posting fliers of that phrase to be a "hate incident", and not the "innocuous phrase" of the naive interpretation. The description from that link is in lign with acdha's interpretation.
Maybe stop reflexively hating ideas based on who said them and you will actually combat racism instead of feeding into it.
You could say “well that’s a good notion, it’s okay to be somebody of any race, yet we should be asking if people think if it’s okay to be trans or okay to be black as well” yada yada. Like something not racist like that instead of going “look at this a white supremacist said this it’s a dog whistle fuckin owned everybody who says this is a closet racist now”
I’m just so frustrated with people who are so obsessed with who is saying something and guilt by association that what is being said is secondary.
The problem is when people said they didn't like Black Lives Matter due to the organization they were told it doesn't matter because black lives matter. This is a double standard.
People were told something? by whom? You act as if there is some sort of authority on this... online, sooner or later, you will see just about any opinion expressed. so when you give the example you did, what value is it? the standard shouldn't be "what someone says online" but what a reasonable person would think.
I couldn't find the clip, but I think I saw it on CNN. It was one of the mainstream news outlets, might have been ABC or NBC or something like that.
>You act as if there is some sort of authority on this...
I think you are reading more into my comment than you should.
>online, sooner or later, you will see just about any opinion expressed.
Sure... Not sure why that matters. I'm not just talking about random posts.
> so when you give the example you did, what value is it? the standard shouldn't be "what someone says online" but what a reasonable person would think.
The problem is mainstream outlets are pushing this. That influences people and can cause people who were reasonable to become unreasonable. Unless you don't think people watched by millions can influence others?
Every snappy slogan eventually becomes a slogan “widely known” for being a dog whistle for extremist opinions. You can’t express any nuanced opinion without eventually being lumped together with crazy extremists.
When was this ever a nuanced position? It’s not like there’s any sizable group of people questioning whether it’s okay to be white — the focus for centuries has been on gaining access to the lifestyle and respect white people have, and dealing with the aftermath of discrimination. Statistically nobody is asking for new discrimination, just an end to the old system.
This is not an uncommon tactic, I’ve noticed. For example, fundamentalist Christians often like to pretend they’re oppressed because it’s an effective recruiting and retention strategy even though it makes no literal sense when you look around the country and see how much power they have. Any time I see someone in a dominant group painting themselves as a victim, I know to ask what bill of goods they’re trying to sell me.
It’s a loaded poll which can’t distinguish between people who are genuinely racist and people who are not racist but recognize the phrasing as one preferred by white supremacists. We can’t draw any meaningful conclusions without better data, which could most easily be obtained by not using a white supremacist prompt.
It’s also worth thinking about why the Republican Party’s favorite polling company is pulling material from 4chan and consider whether whoever is behind that might have had other questions in the poll which primed the cannier portion of the people being polled to be suspicious.
This entire discussion has justified the rejection of the poll results, imo. The question is so meaningless/biased/irrelevant that it's not possible to "explain" the results - they might as well be random and attempts to draw conclusions from them are quite likely only done with racist motivation.
Every proponent of an opinion with a snappy slogan will gladly explain how their opinion is very nuanced. Take, for instance, “defund the police”. It can be explained as a reasonable nuanced opinion, and not the literal interpretation. The same can be applied to most every slogan.
You really like using words such as "every" where they have no reason to be used. Why are you making these kind of in-equivocal statements when they are clearly baseless and are just an expression of your political feeling. Good, express your political feelings. Telling people how everyone in a group of people does xyz is the exact problem you are complaining about.
> Telling people how everyone in a group of people does xyz is the exact problem you are complaining about.
No, in this case it is actually the opposite. The problem I am complaining about is people ascribing negative aspects (extreme opinions) to people uttering snappy slogans. What I did was ascribe a positive aspects to these same people, namely that they can all describe their opinion as being nuanced. (Obviously the words “every” and “all” do not literally mean “every” and “all” in the mathematical sense, but that’s just how language works.)
No, that is not how language works and you are a poor communicator. This is the definition of the word "every":
eve·ry | ˈev(ə)rē |
determiner
(preceding a singular noun) used to refer to all the individual members of a set without exception: the hotel assures every guest of personal attention | [with possessive determiner] : the children hung on his every word.
>Otherwise, every sentence with the word “everybody” in it would be false.
No. "Everybody over there" is not false if it refers to everybody over there for example. If you use everybody to refer to some people, then that is your poor word choice.
There are plenty of nuanced opinions that aren't associated with crazy extremists - by definition, crazy extremists tend to lack nuance. However some statements, like "a man is not a woman" and "it's OK to be white" do not represent nuanced opinions, but are purposely vague restatements of extremist positions. It's a game right-wing trolls like to play, pretending that context doesn't exist and the "wokes" or whomever are disagreeing with the general statement rather than the extremist position it represents. Then they express faux shock and outrage at how "you can't even say it's OK to be white anymore."
Except the people who interpreted the slogan "Black Lives Matter" to mean "White lives must not matter" or somesuch were never doing so in good faith - that slogan was not the anti-white dog whistle it was claimed to be.
I'm still not sure of the wisdom of making the term verboten. The correct answer isn't "it's not ok to be white"
I suppose it's the same with black lives matter. I should be able to agree with the statement that black lives matter with out signing up to their politics.
Also, its vagueness conveniently (for the racists) lends itself to equivocating "it's okay [for you] to be white" with "it's okay [for your country] to be white".
If only 53% of white people thought it was ok to be black, or any other minority, that would be seen as a problem.
I don't see why the answer changes just because roles are reversed. If you want equality, these things go both ways. And if you don't want equality, you're racist, or some other ist.
This isnt a battle with a 'winner' the goal is everyone being equal, black or white. Black people need to be signed up to that too.
All this being said, I haven't listened to the podcast, so I'm not condoning or condemning what was said.