Are the descendents of cultures who have been treated poorly playing victim?

[Still Life]

Australia is multicultural, is it not?

It was even before any whitefellas showed up and said they owned the place.

This is true. Sadly, some of it has been lost.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I think that's whats known as "agency"

Spot on.

'Choice' has too many liberal-positive associations to be academically useful, so 'agency' is the less loaded word which can be used to describe limited choices without denying that they are still choices.

I know plenty of Bengalis (in Britain, admittedly) who don't hate Pakistanis at all. Hating Pakistanis is not an intrinsic part of being Bengali, but for many people it's not really a 'choice' either because choice implies some kind of fairness, or that there is somehow a comparable alternative position which you could take.

Agency is a very useful way of looking at things sometimes, but it's meant to be an incredibly elusive concept. Noone has agency by default simply because they exist as a human being, people display agency in particular tiny ways, but they're never making decisions in a social vacuum.

 

[Scout Tactical]

It would be a good thing if it happened to everyone, but it kind of doesn't. That's the problem.

Do you know who Muḥammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was? What's the first thing that leaps out when I say that name, because I'm willing to bet it isn't 'brilliant mathematician' or 'father of modern algebra' or even 'man' (way to be androcentric, by the way).

Actually, I did know who al-Khwarizmi was. In fact, I think most people who are familiar with mathematics history DO. Let's assume I didn't, just for the sake of argument, then.

...So what? What does your argument even imply? That people can recognize patterns in naming? You could make compelling arguments that Einstein is recognized as a Jew (he was nonobservant) every time his name is given, or that Sir Isaac Newton is recognized as very much English whenever HIS name is given. I don't see the point that you're trying to make, because white people are just as easily identified by cultural naming patterns. Moreover, names like "John Smith" will stand out as distinctly European in origin when compared to other names.

Incidentally, you're a little foolish for accusing me of androcentricism, since we know the genders of the people we're talking about. Unless, of course, you think that there is a chance Isaac Newton or Winston Churchill were female, but that would be a surprisingly dull belief.

The fact is that whites are the only people who get to pretend they don't have a specific race or culture because their race or culture is the yardstick by which everyone else is judged.

As I mentioned above, this just simply isn't true. Are you sure you haven't seen rampant complaints about "ugly Americans" who are fat, lazy, and uneducated? While this stereotype certainly isn't true, do they ever use pictures of Asians, Latinos, or African Americans? No. They use white people, even though there are a smattering of other races in America. Moreover, "Whites" are viewed as very different anywhere outside of the US. That is, assuming your worldview isn't confined to this single nation.

Incidentally, white people come from many, many different cultures. They don't share one blob of culture for easy comparison to other races. Whites come from Russia, the Balkans, Scandinavia, Spain, central Europe, the British Isles, and southern Europe. Each of these zones has very different cultures.

Noone even mentioned affirmative action, I don't know what you're talking about or what form such action would take.

This is purely as an example to illustrate my point. I think if you're allowed to use examples, that means I am too, right?

I'm asking you to acknowledge that you already treat people differently based on race and/or culture.

Yes. Affirmative action is one example of this. It highlights the differences between people, which in turn perpetuates divides based on race or culture. A bad thing. I use affirmative action as an example, because it is an example of state-sponsored discrimination that is documented.

This is in contrast to your accusations that I'm a racist, for instance. I presume you are out of grade school, so let's try to keep the mud-slinging to a minimum.

Hiding the fact that you do that by claiming its a 'good thing' that you don't see it is not helpful. It would be a good thing if you didn't do it. The fact that you don't see it is actually not that great..

I advocate a color-blind policy, where people are not recognized at all on the basis of race or culture. You advocate a color-based policy, where people are discriminated against based on their race and culture.

I assert that it is a "good thing" to not discriminate on race or culture.

You assert that everyone is a racist, and there is nothing to do about this but wallow in racism.

Moreover, you assert that people perpetuate racism without recognizing race, which is a silly argument. To act on the basis of race, one must first identify race (on a conscious or subconscious level). If people are led to stop identifying race on both a conscious and subconscious level when making judgments about people, they won't act on judgments affected by race. This is simple logic.

 

[Kortney]

So the racial and cultural bitterness that's spreading like wildfire through the U.S. Is a good thing?

I just said it wasn't.

You're not living here, so you don't understand what's going on.

No I understand just fine. I've spent a fair amount of time in the USA and my brother lives there.

But if whites do something like this, it is instantly decried as racism, regardless of intent.

99% of the time this is not the case.

Whites who peacefully protested the out of control govt spending by the Obama administration were likened to the Ku Klux Klan and actually called "teabaggers" on live TV. (I don't think I need to explain to any here what that means.)

That had nothing to do with being white. That had to do with most of society disagreeing with the Tea Party and the perceived strange believes the Tea Party hold. Many black people campaigned with the Tea Party and were called "teabaggers" too. Secondly, the main culprit in labeling the Tea Party to the KKK was a Reverend whose main point was that literally the same people who demonstrated against the Civil Rights movement in the 60s were involved with the Tea Party movement.

You really call this equality? I call it racist bullshit, pure and simple. Political Correctness hasn't made anything better, it's made things worse.

Haha the only piece of evidence you have listed of racism is your tea party friends being labelled as "teabaggers" - which has zero to do with race. That's the best you got?

How about the word "******" being openly used with derogatory implications to black people being used on live TV for thirty years? How about it being perfectly expectable to deny work to someone because of their skin colour?

What fixed that? Political correctness. Oh wait, it hasn't done anything has it.

This is ridiculous. Political correctness has made massive benefits in the quality of life for thousands and thousands of people and you don't like it, why?

And by the way, disadvantaged and impoverished white children are able to access the same amount of funds and benefit schemes as any other disadvantaged child. The reason why minorities are given so many benefit schemes is because they are statistically less likely to prosper - so the Government feels there should be encouragement in their education.

 

[Terminal Blue]

...So what? What does your argument even imply? That people can recognize patterns in naming? You could make compelling arguments that Einstein is recognized as a Jew (he was nonobservant) every time his name is given, or that Sir Isaac Newton is recognized as very much English whenever HIS name is given.

I'd almost accept the former in some cases, it depends on precisely who is doing the identification. The latter.. no.. you've missed the point.

I was talking specifically about identification. That's the psychoanalytic process by which you ground your own identity by in some way equating yourself with other people. It is almost impossible to encounter another person, real or imaginary, without defining yourself in relation to that person. You don't read about Issac Newton as some particular cultural point separate from all other points, you read about him in relation to your own racialized and cultural position.

Sometimes that works on national grounds, or religious grounds, or political grounds, and sometimes those might even be more contextually important than the racial grounds or appear to supercede them, but the racial processes of identification don't stop existing just because you also recognize something else. People aren't simplistic like that.

Incidentally, you're a little foolish for accusing me of androcentricism, since we know the genders of the people we're talking about. Unless, of course, you think that there is a chance Isaac Newton or Winston Churchill were female, but that would be a surprisingly dull belief.

That assumes you're genuinely literal enough to assume I was only referring to those two examples. Since you've managed to introduce a third one yourself, I think we can consistently agree that's not the case.

I see what you're getting at, and maybe it was a little pre-emptive of me to jump down your throat about it, but consider your own motives very carefully, because if you did simply use man as a general signifier for any white subject who could be placed in that position, then you've pretty much demonstrated the way in which specific qualities can be normalized.

As I mentioned above, this just simply isn't true. Are you sure you haven't seen rampant complaints about "ugly Americans" who are fat, lazy, and uneducated? While this stereotype certainly isn't true, do they ever use pictures of Asians, Latinos, or African Americans? No. They use white people, even though there are a smattering of other races in America. Moreover, "Whites" are viewed as very different anywhere outside of the US. That is, assuming your worldview isn't confined to this single nation.

You're not helping your own argument here.

So, sometimes images of particular non-racial characteristics exclude particular racial subjects? Wow.. that's such a shock to me, I could never have seen it coming.

And yes, this only applies to cultures in which whites form a social majority (if not necessarily a literal majority). Since modern racial understanding derives mostly from post-enlightenment scientific racial theory, many other cultures have no equivalent understanding of 'white' as a racial group, or more likely have a particular history of white subjectivity based on global inequalities and the colonial legacy.

However, firstly I'm not from a culture where being white is not a social majority, and I'm willing to bet that the OPs definition of 'cultures who have been treated poorly' comes from an European or American context, so attempting to extend the discussion to those cultures would mean making some pretty grandiose generalizations while contributing nothing to the discussion.

Incidentally, white people come from many, many different cultures. They don't share one blob of culture for easy comparison to other races. Whites come from Russia, the Balkans, Scandinavia, Spain, central Europe, the British Isles, and southern Europe. Each of these zones has very different cultures.

And?

Black people come from many, many different cultures. Arabs come from many, many different cultures. People are still marked or unmarked based on racial traits they are seen to possess or not possess.

This is in contrast to your accusations that I'm a racist, for instance. I presume you are out of grade school, so let's try to keep the mud-slinging to a minimum.

You're being a little defensive. Given my argument, do you really think I'm implying that you are in any way exceptional for selectively noticing and not noticing race? We all do it, I do it, it doesn't mean either of us doesn't have the best of intentions and it doesn't mean any of us is a racist, it merely means that we can't choose to be colourblind.

Maybe I'm mischaracterizing you, maybe you are genuinely colourblind. I just doubt it. You and I know what a black person is. You look at a black person and you see their blackness, wheras we can ignore a white person's whiteness because it's 'normal', it's what we default to in the absence of information to the contrary.

We all know what race means, that knowledge is socially 'out there' already. Maybe one day it will be forgotten and I agree that would be a good thing, but pretending we can't see it ignores the fact that we do it every day. As a white person, I live with the expectations of a white person, and the privilege of my whiteness is that it enables me to ignore race and to just be a person, to be judged completely on my own merits and without reference to race at all. I have other things which might pidgeonhole or exclude me, but my race in and of itself never will. I will always be able to 'pass' in this society.

Part of that is that I will always be able to look at the 'normal' history of my country and find figures in it who reflect me and whom I can identify with. I don't need to find a 'white' history or a 'white' culture.. all history is white history and all culture is white culture unless it's marked otherwise.

Moreover, you assert that people perpetuate racism without recognizing race, which is a silly argument. To act on the basis of race, one must first identify race (on a conscious or subconscious level). If people are led to stop identifying race on both a conscious and subconscious level when making judgments about people, they won't act on judgments affected by race. This is simple logic.

You're confusing privilege and racism. Above and beyond the fact that despite the slightly loaded language I'm not specifically talking about racism (heck, my 'ancestors' if you want to call them that were institutionalized, castrated and lobotomized, and I do identify with them and use that identification to demand rights or recognition from straight people) those things are not the same.

Privilege can persist without being recognized. In fact, it's most dangerous when it goes unrecognised because it leaves people no grounds on which to dispute it. Asserting the right of white people not to be recognized as particularly white, or for that matter the right of straight people not to be recognized as particularly straight or the right of men not to be recognized as particularly male would be fine if you didn't practically continue to assert the specificity of other racial, sexual or cultural groups, and while you might not feel you do specifically, you're posting on this thread. You know what I'm talking about when I say 'black' or 'gay' or 'Muslim'.

You're not some innocent child from some liberated colourblind future.. you know what these terms mean, both in the literal sense and in terms of the hundreds of years of associations which have built up around that kind of language. If you won't recognize that you live in a culture which has produced these distinctions, how do you expect to try and stop yourself from actually acting on them?

Sometimes forgetting has to be an active process. That's true in individual psychoanalysis, and I believe it's also true when dealing with the kind of cultural trauma we're talking about. Just refusing to look at the problem isn't going to change anything, your children (assuming you have them) will still be able to read your silence in relation to the culture around them. We'll stop thinking about race when it actually stops mattering, not because we try to pretend it doesn't exist.

 

[boholikeu]

I would say lack of cultural sensitivity amongst whites would be due to whites being stripped of any kind of culture of their own and being expected to supplicate to other cultures by the PC totalitarianist set.

Political correctness came into play in around the 1970s. White people had no racial culture before this. Once again, this is not a bad thing. It can be a very good thing as it allows rationality to be spread instead of emotion and bitterness. Look at young Palestinians and Israelis. There is an example of having a racial identity biting you on the backside.

And as an aside, political correctness has done far more good than bad.

So the racial and cultural bitterness that's spreading like wildfire through the U.S. Is a good thing?

The thing we "don't get", is why we're getting shat on for crimes that occurred hundreds or thousands of years prior and were never exactly exclusively caucasian behavior.

Hundreds and thousands of years?

Try a few decades.

And how exactly are you being "shat" on? I'm curious.

You're not living here, so you don't understand what's going on. White people are basically being assigned constant blame for things they never had anything to do with. We're expected to hold the financial burden for illegal mexican immigrants. to kindly accept that jobs are being awarded to blacks who are less qualified for the position than we might be. To sit back idly as every minority group has student unions, racial pride rallies and other such culturally exclusive activities. But if whites do something like this, it is instantly decried as racism, regardless of intent. Whites who peacefully protested the out of control govt spending by the Obama administration were likened to the Ku Klux Klan and actually called "teabaggers" on live TV. (I don't think I need to explain to any here what that means.)

You really call this equality? I call it racist bullshit, pure and simple. Political Correctness hasn't made anything better, it's made things worse.

Where the heck do you live? I'm from America and it's nothing like that.

 

[Kortney]

You addressed precisely zero of my arguments and only presented "the n-word" as you rebuttal.

I see no further reason to continue this discussion, as your are simply a white apologist and not interested in creating an actual argument as much as supplicating to political correctness and expecting other whites to do the same.

Good day to you, madame.

First of all, I'm not "white". My mother is Japanese and my Father was Algerian. I grew up and live in North Africa. I have nothing to apologise for.

It's called empathy.

But anyway, I agree, there is no point continuing with this. I truly hope you don't get further discriminated against. I understand that being called a teabagger is an incredibly racist slur and I hope with all my heart you can rise above this extremely bad hand you have been dealt.

By the way, lol at other Americans not knowing what the hell you are talking about.