Tonight I was talking to a Puerto Rican girl online who is completely unaware that I'm not a bio-male. We got into an argument about race which began when she ranted about how evil and greedy "white people" are. I told her that that was racist and that she shouldn't generalize about a wide spectrum of people. She responded by saying that it was impossible to be racist against white people. I told her to look up the word "racism" in a dictionary. She then said, "how should you know? You're just another privileged white male who's never been discriminated against in his life."



I laughed so hard mentally that my "people on the Internet are WRONG!" rage dissipated completely, and I signed off. Ah, what secrets lie undisturbed beneath those who walk in old gardens.

Well, guy or girl, sometimes there's just no denying the truth, even on a computer board.

Things have a way of getting across. Or, I often think, for those who don't opt to be either. There's this "feel" for people you get after awhile however you communicate with them.

So the gendering may take longer than the normal 2 seconds that face-to-face takes, but some stuff just comes through and we do it anyhow.

Obviously, she has ya pegged. Or she thinks she does.

Nichole

I figured that gendering on the Internet usually meant assuming that the person you're talking to is a guy, though perhaps it's context dependent (say, knitting forum = girl; off-road vehicle forum = guy, to perpetuate a couple stereotypes). I've seen people assume women of a forum are men so many times. Ad hominem arguments are laughable regardless.

I gather you read xkcd? (xkcd.com/386)

~Alyssa

While I agree that generalizations can go both ways, I do have difficulty with the idea that 'racism' (with all its negative connotations) goes both ways. It feels a whole lot different when you're a minority to have someone make generalizations about you based on your minority status than it does when you're in the majority, which might have been what she was trying to get at.

When someone generalizes about white people, I feel irritated and "I'm not like that". When someone generalizes about transguys, like, say Thomas Beatty, saying he's really a woman because he has his inner bits and his lower bits intact, that hits to the bone.

So yeah, irony in that she doesn't know you actually are a member of a minority and one that is arguably more oppressed than her, but I see her point about racism. Her generalizing about white people is not the same as a white person generalizing about latinos.

Dennis

What about when your white... and are the minority at the same time?

I live in a predominantly Hispanic area... and I have been the victim of racism many a time.

As a white person who has spent their entire adult life among people of colour (three marriages) I've seen racism cut both ways.

I'm sorry but I can't equate the racism that white people suffer with that people of colour suffer.

There is a history, that has entered the collective subconscious, of colonialism, slavery, apartheid and innumerable injustices that takes things to a completely different level.

Quote from: imaz on March 19, 2009, 04:57:08 AM
As a white person who has spent their entire adult life among people of colour (three marriages) I've seen racism cut both ways.

I'm sorry but I can't equate the racism that white people suffer with that people of colour suffer.

There is a history, that has entered the collective subconscious, of colonialism, slavery, apartheid and innumerable injustices that takes things to a completely different level.

This is true, I've been a victim of racism when I am the majority race. It doesn't quite have as much impact. When you are a victim and the majority, it seems a bit laughable than offencive. Maybe it's the irony of the situation, but you definitely are not the underdog.

However, I have had a teacher who is white and when he was young he moved to a country in Africa where the majority were black people. He had to deal with malicious racism toward himself because he was in the minority. He didn't get off easy because he was white, it was strictly because of his location that the tables were turned.

So, I'd disagree that it's different. It's your location that matters.

QuoteShe responded by saying that it was impossible to be racist against white people.

That would be the point I would stop argueing and realise that I might as well bang my head against the wall than argue with less brain sells than a moth.

Jay

In that situation I would have replied with "actually.... "
Just for the whole "you're an idiot for making assumptions" factor.

'course, in my case, it would be backed up with a "and however pale my skin is, I still am as mixxed race as a boy can get.. "

Quote from: Monty on March 19, 2009, 05:07:41 AM
This is true, I've been a victim of racism when I am the majority race. It doesn't quite have as much impact. When you are a victim and the majority, it seems a bit laughable than offencive. Maybe it's the irony of the situation, but you definitely are not the underdog.

However, I have had a teacher who is white and when he was young he moved to a country in Africa where the majority were black people. He had to deal with malicious racism toward himself because he was in the minority. He didn't get off easy because he was white, it was strictly because of his location that the tables were turned.

So, I'd disagree that it's different. It's your location that matters.

That's true.

As I said throughout my adult life I've been the only white person in the family and have also lived in Africa and South East Asia. Of course some people are racist wherever one goes whether against white people or against their neighbouring countries. Examples that spring to mind are Senegal & Mauritania, Indonesia & Malaysia, and of course England & Ireland.

Being called Whitey/Toubab/Bule/Muzungo all the time can grate on one's nerves initially but one gets used to it and sees the funny side.

Indonesian TV has a programme called "Bule Gila!" (Crazy Whitey!) which initially might seem racist but the joke is actually on the Indonesians themselves. White people are put in positions they would never occupy in real life such as mini-van drivers and food-stall operators and instructed to get things wrong on purpose. Then they film the often perplexed and uptight reactions of the locals. It's hilarious and really worth watching if one is ever there. As I said the joke is in fact not on the white people but on Indonesian behaviour.

Generalizations usually indicate lack of coherent thoughts and arguments and anyone who is in a conversation and uses them usually is only trying to score points instead of actually discussing.They have my disrespect.

I think that the notion of racism that most white folk have is rather facile and even, in many ways, dissembling.

Being disliked or having stereotypes applied to you is never a pleasant thing. But, in point of fact, although I have had Latinos and other people of color "hate" me for skin color or assumptions they have made until they get to know me; I have never experienced a loss of work, a loss of home life or a concerted effort to remove me from a neighborhood due to my skin or ethnic origin. I have never had voting rights threatened or denied due to skin or hair or body traits either.

Thus, I'd have to imagine that whatever "racism" those people might display in thought or word has never impaired my life in any way at all. OTH, many of their lives have been impaired for just that very reason: They are visibly and socially "different" from the dominant class in USA.

I can moan about reverse racism all I wish when someone accuses me of "being just like other white folk." The fact of the matter is that I have not experienced anything of the sort. I have experienced individual resentments that occur because of what has always been an inherently racist system perpetuated by ancestors and non-ancestoral white folk. I may get backlash, but never "racism."

I think it's way past time that affronted white folk get that. Without the institutional and social negatives that have, and often still do, come from ethnic and racial prejudice perpetrated by "white" society, I am basically unable to experience racism in the USA or Canada or anywhere in Western Europe.

The transsexual aspects of discrimination I have experienced. They do not feel good or right in any fashion and yes, it feels really good and affirming that I am mostly unable to be told from any other white woman when I move through the world. Without the background checks there is no evidence that I am not "just another white woman." Alas, there are those background checks that get more and more universal.

So, yes, as a white citizen I can, have, and do experience discrimination based on nothing more than a medical condition. As a white woman I have not experienced racism of any kind, just hatred and disrespect. There are huge differences and it's way past time that white folk in America, Western Europe, Australia, Canada, etc get that down in our consciousnesses.

Indonesia? Perhaps in this time South Africa? Japan, Kenya or Saudi Arabia? That may well be different if I live in those societies. But, I don't live in any of those places, nor, at this time, have any plans to do so.

Get past the "racist" garbage that so many white folk are so willing to embrace in majority and dominant white societies. Look at what's really there. I'd opt that what we'll find is guilt.

Nichole

OVER 9000?!


From her point of view, it's kind of understandable why she may see it that way.

'Tis still wrong, of course.

Racism towards a white person

I couldn't qualify for special summer camps to help my future when in school... I was white and that was like -50 on there point system <My city is 80% Hispanic>  Even being poor didn't make up for being white.

Being called whedo<sp?> wheda<sp?>... cracker... being beat up, picked on, stabbed... shot at... while growing up...

As an adult being denied jobs due to EOE... even though 90%+ of the employees at the companies I was applying for were again Hispanic.  When I did manage to get a job I wouldn't receive promotions... they would go to women, the GLB, Hispanics, and blacks...  most of these companies had 1 token white guy in middle management but that was it. Being a "straight white male" was an extreme disadvantage...

I became homeless and virtually jobless.... No unemployment and no food stamps for me... they go to the Hispanic girl in line behind me who's wearing guci and driving a nice car... X(

People that don't believe that racism can be directed at white people should have to face a day in my life (wait... there ancestors were oppressed by white people)  Upper class is upper class no matter the race, and it seems that classicism is far more rampant in the world today... the well off want to make sure you don't have a foothold to ever make it to there position.

There was once a time in America when shops had signs "HELP WANTED, NO IRISH NEED APPLY" hey... sounds like racism, directed at whites... by whites... hey wait... that cant be right. but it is... so anyway... done with this rant for the moment.

But racism does cut both ways... and it really does hurt.

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Post Merge: March 19, 2009, 07:54:39 PM

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PS: I'm Irish.

Lynn, I appreciate your individual pain and your outlook. But, is there some institutional, socially and economically established system that makes certain you cannot get equal treatment under the the law with a Hispanic, African-American, Vietnamese American, etc individual?

Racism is not an individually inspired and directed dislike, prejudice or hatred it's one that's established and held in place by government, social and economic strictures, lack of decent schooling, forcing people to live isolated from the other citizens of the polity.

I don't believe for a second that Texas has become a bastion of white-hating and repressive laws and mores. Has it? I can feel your frustration and your sense that you've been wronged and am not trying to deny that you have. Yet, what you are suffering from is backlash and hatred perhaps, but there is nothing in the general constitution of the State of Texas, that forceably and finally put you at a disadvantage from day one of your life because of the entirely specious idea of "race." Is there?

Now can you honestly say the same thing about Chicano or other people of color in Texas? 

Nichole

Texas may have its laws, but El Paso has its way of doing things...  It all ends up on a city/county level... and were generally thoroughly ignored by the state itself *shrugs*

My point is a wrong is a wrong... and anyone who has felt the bite deserves to be mad about it. Justification is not an excuse, nor has it ever been.

I give you, the POWERFUL white person had/has power... and they abuse it... but so do the POWERFUL everyone else...

Again I point to the Irish... severely mistreated both by the English and the Americans for years and years and years... tell me that's not racism of a sort too.

Alright lets go with the Irish, you seem attuned to that. From about 1840, give or take a couple of years Irish folk moved to USA. They, originally, like most settlers before and after they arrived in numbers stayed in the ports they landed in: Boston, New York, Philly, Baltimore.

For a number of years they were hired only as laborers, whores, coal miners and the like. They were often reviled by settlers with English & Protestant backgrounds. They generally spoke with what was called a brogue, but they spoke English. And though they arrived with little in the way of education and wealth, they were hired. And mostly by the mid-1850s there were fewer Irish coming into USA than had earlier. The reasons for migration had ended.

Irish people were, indeed looked down on, and they already had a history with the English which carried on here.

In 1861 the Civil War broke out. A number, Cleburne being maybe the most prominent, of Confederate generals were Irish immigants who managed to own plantations and the slaves that came attached to those plantations as property. The Union also had a few Irish heritage generals: McClellan who was the lead general until more than two years into the war, for instance.

In 1863, about the time of the Gettysburg fight there were three days of draft riots in NYC. No Irish people were lynched although many were shot down by troops as they protested the draft and destroyed property. Many more Irish were slain by the ship artillery that pounded the city.

However, many black people were slain and lynched by Irish and English ancestry folk at the start of the draft riots. They were considered responsible for the war even being fought as they shouldn't have ever been free, let alone have other black folk in the south be freed.

There was a black regiment in the Union Army officered by white officers because the black man was considered inferior and unable to lead. The Irish Brigade in that same Union Army was officered by Irishmen.

Black folk were elected in southern states between 1866 & 1876 while southern states were under "reconstruction govts." Afterwards it was into the nineteen seventies before there were elected black officials in the south and no major US city anywhere had a black mayor elected before 1965.

Don't know for sure but I would imagine that Irish mayors, senators and other elected officials in the USA were in offices in the 1860s and have remained there ever since.

Now please give me some reasonable equivalence between Irish folk and African Americans. African Americans who had already, for the vast majority been enslaved, not just disenfranchised for over two hundred years prior to 1861.

Yes, hatred and prejudice are not good things to feel or to enact. I agree. But to attempt to equate 15-20 years of being "looked down on" with 400 years of state institutionalized and socially enforced slavery and demeaning and its following effects is not anywhere close to being the same. Is it?

Nichole   

   

When its directed at you its a lifetime. The past shouldn't be held against the future generations. What my point is, Racism can be directed at white people. In countries, territories, states, counties, and cites that are predominantly one group, and discriminate against another group due to the color of there skin are racist, regardless the there ethnic background, or skin color and who there directing it at.

Nichole, wasn't this about Hispanic people in the first place? Nothing in the history of American society (well, except sexism) can compare to the history of oppression of people of African ancestry. That's why Obama is such a big deal -- plenty of work to be done, but it's the first instance of anything like real reconcilliation in a very long time, if ever.

Hispanic people, I truly believe, will prove to be just the latest in a long line of immigrant groups (yes, including the Irish) that have been seen as "you filthy dirty foreigners polluting our pure racial -- oh never mind, it's cool, you're white too."

By the way, there are other instances of oppression directed against white people in America; I've met "gentiles" who grew up in small-town Utah, for example. When you grow up there, the success of "gentiles" elsewhere doesn't do you much good. But in general, yes, racism in America is a one-way street the overwhelming majority of the time.

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But the real issue is that bigotry has two sides. When you are the target of bigotry that can be something between an annoyance and outright oppression. But there's an effect on the bigot too. That bigotry doesn't particularly hurt the object doesn't make it okay: it hurts the bigot just the same. It's nasty and ugly and dehumanizing to be a bigot. I can only recall one outright racial minority (Asian) who was really racist (hated white people, pretty much dismissed black people). No, he didn't bother me the slightest; it would be utterly laughable for me to say I've experienced racial oppression. But it was rather sad to see how much false pride and ugliness it fostered in him.

So yes, racism can go "both ways," even if the oppression only (usually) goes one way.

~Alyssa

I'm with Lynn on one thing.  It has far more to do with money than race.  I'm not saying that race and economics aren't related, but economic factors are the general cause for things like racism and crime, not the other way around.

...is it just me or has this thread gone way off the original post?  I was once subjected to a horrid video that was OVER 9000!!! 

The conversation was ironic, petzjazz.