Those top two, and sometimes even the third, aren’t things people choose to identify with, and in the case of trans people and immigrants, self-identity is often ignored.
Ok, and I’m saying whiteness IS something you can choose to self-identify with because unlike many minority groups, “white” people do have the social capacity and ability to affect change in that arena
Also you’re conflating light-skinnedness with whiteness again, people can’t help light-skinnedness, but they can help identifying their light skinnedness with an over arching political and social ideology like whiteness, and there’s only one way to do that, which is what op in that thread was decrying, so your previous examples don’t apply
A person denying a job based on stereotypes of their race is racism. They don’t need intent, scale nor reach for that. Racism is still divisive garbage that fucks up social movements no matter if it’s instutionalized or not.
Ok, but that’s not happening to “white people”, you know why? Because if the “person denying a job based on “light skin” stereotypes” is discovered, they’re the ones who are gonna get fucked, as they should. Because you actually do need intent, scale and reach to enforce prejudice, otherwise society and most importantly the state is gonna push your shit in
But people who identify with whiteness don’t suffer from that dynamic, instead they prevent others from enjoying that protection, which is why it’s inappropriate to talk about “mirrors” or equivalences of any sort when it comes to this topic and why you shouldn’t conflate skin color with the ideology itself
Now, how are we meant to overcome those obstacles (even just within a local setting like a socialist org) with people like Othello embracing it?
Except they weren’t embracing it, they were literally decrying it, because they recognized that people who identify with whiteness don’t have their best interest at heart, the worst you could call that post was cynical or doomer, but not racist
As far as I’m concerned, their redacted reply made it clear that they think continuing dividing the movement on whiteness is justified because of historical racial injustices in US socialist orgs.
Ok and you’re dividing the movement because you want to preserve some kind of organic conception of whiteness, tied to people’s phenotypical
traits, devoid of its historical and social role in human affairs? Because otherwise we’ll start being racist to light-skinned people? We don’t live in a world of simply light skin supremacy, we live in a world of white supremacy and to combat it we have to deconstruct whiteness and the ideologies and assumptions that underlay it, and yeah average people who ignorantly identify with it are going to get pissed off, but that shouldn’t prevent critique or making fun of people who turn it into their central personality trait
Ok, and I’m saying whiteness IS something you can choose to self-identify with because unlike many minority groups, “white” people do have the social capacity and ability to affect change in that arena
Also you’re conflating light-skinnedness with whiteness again, people can’t help light-skinnedness, but they can help identifying their light skinnedness with an over arching political and social ideology like whiteness, and there’s only one way to do that, which is what op in that thread was decrying, so your previous examples don’t apply
Ok, but that’s not happening to “white people”, you know why? Because if the “person denying a job based on “light skin” stereotypes” is discovered, they’re the ones who are gonna get fucked, as they should. Because you actually do need intent, scale and reach to enforce prejudice, otherwise society and most importantly the state is gonna push your shit in
But people who identify with whiteness don’t suffer from that dynamic, instead they prevent others from enjoying that protection, which is why it’s inappropriate to talk about “mirrors” or equivalences of any sort when it comes to this topic and why you shouldn’t conflate skin color with the ideology itself
Except they weren’t embracing it, they were literally decrying it, because they recognized that people who identify with whiteness don’t have their best interest at heart, the worst you could call that post was cynical or doomer, but not racist
Ok and you’re dividing the movement because you want to preserve some kind of organic conception of whiteness, tied to people’s phenotypical traits, devoid of its historical and social role in human affairs? Because otherwise we’ll start being racist to light-skinned people? We don’t live in a world of simply light skin supremacy, we live in a world of white supremacy and to combat it we have to deconstruct whiteness and the ideologies and assumptions that underlay it, and yeah average people who ignorantly identify with it are going to get pissed off, but that shouldn’t prevent critique or making fun of people who turn it into their central personality trait