And through their responses, they are advancing said white-supremacists' goals of making them look like anti-white racists. They know this, yet do it anyway. Like I said, it's incredibly stupid and counter-productive. They know it's bait, but they're eating it up anyway.
I'm not sure how that's comparable. Work doesn't make you free: there are people that work that are not free. There are people that don't work, but are free. Objecting to the statement "work makes you free" isn't indicating any hatred towards a particular group.
By comparison, objecting to "it's okay to be white" would imply that it's not okay to be white. Hence why objecting to such an anodyne statement is recognized by many to be racism. Imagine someone objecting to "it's okay to be Asian", or "It's okay to be African".
If people recognize that it's said to try and bait people into making a statement perceived to be anti-white racism, but object to it anyway then doubly wrong on them: they know that it's bait but they're scarfing it down anyway.
You missed my point. Arbeit Macht Frei was a nazi slogan, you aren't supposed to parse it. Similarly "It's OK to be white" is a white supremacist slogan. In both cases, if you're familiar with the slogan, then you respond to the signal, not the meaning of the words. It's a sort of inverse dog-whistle.
It's not a dog-whistle, there's no meaning behind the statement besides eliciting a certain reaction. They predicted that progressives would object to such an anodyne statement, and make themselves look like racists - after all, is it not okay to be white? But apparently they were right, people really did object to the statement "it's okay to be white. I doubt that random people being polled by Rasmussen are intimately familiar with 4chan trolling topics.
Don't take the bait - even if you know the trolling campaign behind the phrase. Especially if you know, taking the bait when you know it's bait is even more stupid.
When a white supremacist says “it’s okay to be white” what they mean is “it’s only okay to be white”. It’s not an anodyne statement if you know this, so why would you agree with it in any context? This isn’t a “we can all be who we are and that’s okay” self empowerment kind of sentiment.
Do you know or interact with any white supremacists? They are not very accepting people.
They're telling you this to troll you into sounding racist: you're falling for their trick and making yourself look like a racist by objecting to such an anodyne statement. You're falling for the bait hook line and sinker.
So I live in some backwards world where white supremacists are not racists but in fact trolls, and I’m the one whose racist for taking them at their word. Okay.
This is an objective fact. The entire premise of the phrase is to bait people, the threads where this campaign was devised are archived and it's well known that the intended goal of the trolls was to get people to object to the phrase:
> The phrase “It’s Okay To Be White” is a slogan popularized in late 2017 as a trolling campaign by members of the controversial discussion forum 4chan. The original idea behind the campaign was to choose an ostensibly innocuous and inoffensive slogan, put that slogan on fliers bereft of any other words or imagery, then place the fliers in public locations. Originators assumed that “liberals” would react negatively to such fliers and condemn them or take them down, thus “proving” that liberals did not even think it was “okay" to be white.
What you’ve posted here and what I’ve said are mutually exclusive. It’s entirely coherent for white supremacists to believe that it’s only okay to be white, and for them to troll people with the phrase “it’s okay to be white”. That’s what makes it a troll. They get people who aren’t savvy to spread their message, while making people who are savvy sound unreasonable. Then they sit back and watch how many people defend them (you) and how many people get angry (me) and feel like they’ve won either way.
But to be clear, the only way to win against a white supremacist is to push back. Scott Adams isn’t winning today. Watching the general response in news and media, it seems most people see right through this little troll stunt, because most people know it’s okay to be white, so the nature of the question is just a huge red flag. Except Scott Adams and the credulous posters here.
In the end though, you’re the one downplaying white supremacists as mere trolls, while casting me as looking like a racist for calling them out on their shit. So really I’m wondering why you’re trying very hard to convince hard that white supremacists are just trolls and don’t actually believe the white race is supreme over all others.
It's amusing that so many folks here are putting forth these "plausible" "explanations" but never make the favor going the other way, i.e. that "blacks" responded the way they did because they think it's actually "great" to be white, or "fantastic", or "much better than ok" but you are making these obviously credulous assumptions for Adams!
I think you’re struggling with the difference between connotation and denotation. It doesn’t matter if the denotation of a white supremacist rallying cry is anodyne. It’s still a white supremacist rallying cry. Actually, they tend to be anodyne exactly for this reason; it’s not often they are as explicit as “Jews won’t replace us.”
>By comparison, objecting to "it's okay to be white" would imply that it's not okay to be white.
They are not wrong to answer that question however they choose since you cannot infer how the statement is percieved by the person answering it. That's partially the point of the troll.
Black Americans not immediately suspicious of similar statements and the people posting them are probably outliers since dehumanization of others was never a tactic or objective of black empowerment groups. The same cannot be generally stated about white groups and the societies that overwhelmingly supported them.
Btw, Rasmussen should ask more victims of atrocities ambiguous, "It's okay to be a German prison camp guard. (Agree/Disagree/NotSure)" style poll questions to assist those acting in bad faith. /s
Both questions are in the same vein. It doesn't have to be stated for many from the population to intuit that the "supremacist" is likely implied.
Black Americans havent escaped the heavily supported global system of white supremacy that they've been fighting against for centuries, and most aren't under a false illusion that they have.
As long as whites don't dismantle the system and complete the reparative justice process, "white" and "white supremacy" will remain synonymous. The same way "German" and "Nazi" would be more synonymous, if Germans didn't dismantle the ideology and carry out reparative actions for the victims of their local holocaust.
I doubt that. I think they answered a plain English question. I suspect that few, if any, of Rasmussen's pollees know anything about what you call a "white-supremacist campaign".
Many of the white respondents probably answered a plain English question. I suspect many of the black respondents responded to the slogan not the words. It's very provocative to suggest that a large proportion of Black Americans disapprove of people having white skin.
The question itself appears to have been deliberately provocative. Rasmussen Reports has been criticized before for asking dodgy questions.
I would be shocked if both weren’t happening at the same time, I can’t imagine all the poll respondents knew the context and I imagine many were taking what was said at face value.
Impossible to really know peoples reasons for disagreeing with that phrase which makes it maybe not the best polling question to ask.
