Anytime I hear people say dumb shit like this I just start listing all the times anti-abortion activists either successfully murdered or attempted to murder their political opponents in the name of the pro life movement. A hit list of judges, physicians, nuns, retired old ladies that like to knit, they absolutely didn’t give a single fuck about any of this struggle session bullshit wreckers like to trot out to sabotage effective resistance
Then I end with the date Roe got overturned, but they still somehow cannot connect the dots and want to talk about registering new voters or some fucking bullshit
My take home message is it turns out that when white people actually want something they magically know what effective forms of protest actually look like (???!)
First things first: white people bad! If you have questions I’ll try to answer em, but the settlers in a settler colonial state are unequivocally bad.
With that out of the way, the person you’re replying to is assuming you are already aware and recognize the ways that protest and direct action are coded and racialised in media. Pictures of white people are used with captions about a peaceful protest, pictures of black and brown people are used with captions about them “turning violent” and looting.
The narrative that creates is one where white people are nonviolent and it’s the black and brown people who are associated with direct action.
The point the person you’re replying to is making by saying
turns out that when white people actually want something they magically know what effective forms of protest actually look like
Is that the media narrative about white forms of protest being nonviolent is a lie.
When I, or anyone else for that matter, talk about how white people are bad I’m talking about how the position they occupy in society is bad, not how an individual has committed some original sin of whiteness and must atone.
Whiteness is a social construct used to enforce racialized class society.
A person can no more atone for the classification society created and laid upon them than they can shake off that classification itself.
The thing that is bad about white people is their position in racialised class society in the settler colonial state. An individual white person can uphold all the rules and morals you could name but will still occupy the role of oppressor in the hierarchy everyone lives under.
The usual response people give to me is something along the lines of “well what if a white person fought against racial oppression, they wouldn’t be bad and you would be wrong!” Combined with usually either Lincoln or John brown as examples. Those are great examples of how the settler colonial state will protect itself and will find an outlet for its appetites. Lincoln fought against the Dakota uprising and brown was killed for his insurrection.
I don’t bring that up to make an easy dunk over the head of some guy I made up, but to preempt the response that seems to be on everyone’s lips.
If a person is raised as a certain type of person with every aspect of society behaving towards them with respect to that typification, included in which is the normalization and reification of the relationship that type is a part of, the person will “be” what that type is within that relationship.
Remember the funny dub king fu movie, “we trained him wrong as a joke”? Imagine “we trained him to ~be white~ as a ~way to ensure the propagation of class society~”
All of what you’re saying makes sense, and I believe you believe what you’re saying.
I don’t know if I buy that everyone that says white people are bad have this much thought going into it. My experience with people suggests that this simply can’t be true, as there are far too many individuals (especially with the access to information we have these days) that seek others to think for them and act according to their declarations.
What you’re saying, however, all adds up. I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said.
It may come as a surprise to you, but my views are not birthed fully formed out of my forehead.
It took years of reading, conversation and consideration to reach that place. A huge part of that wasn’t even reaching the conclusions but was instead figuring out how to put them into words and how to express them under the sort of violence and history averse liberal framework of polite discussion that people expect.
All that is to say: Very little of what I’ve written are my own original ideas and thoughts. Am I letting others think for me? I demonstrably have. Am I acting according to their decisions. I am at this very moment doing so.
So I’d say it’s less important that people have thought and read deeply than it is for them to recognize and accept the correct understanding.
To put it another way, if you holler “think fast!” and toss a ball to someone, does it matter if they trained extensively to recognize that it’s better for them to make that catch than the third baseman or just whipped around and caught whatever was coming reflexively?
It doesn’t matter in that case, but it would be best if a person figure out weather it’s a kitchen knife, water balloon or baseball before they move to make the catch. The analog to our trained catcher there maybe would be a vanguard party, whose members train and study to be able to lead movements and recognize and counter any reactive or reformist tendencies within those movements.
Maybe when a person who doesn’t express it like I have or in the context of the settler colonial state says “white people are bad” it doesn’t matter if they can do so or simply responds “I hate them” when pressed.
The onus is on all people of right mind and heart to hear the cry of the colonized, and not upon the colonized to fit their protest into the presuppositions of their oppressors.
I know this is a late response, I did just forget to respond, but looking through my past conversations lead me back here.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with utilizing information uncovered by others to guide your worldview. I think it’s elegant, why reinvent the wheel?
However, we live in a world filled with people that have been trained by social media to find the fastest route to justifying their personal views.
Think of it the same way as the “20% of the population, 50% of the crime” statistic. Big number better than small number. Small number responsible for bad big number, small number bad. No nuance, no context, they see the statistic and think “me me no number good, but I don’t like black people so this tracks”.
You can clarify all you want after the fact. When your message is “yt ppl bad” you cannot expect that every person reading will go through your detailed and nuanced explanation of why whiteness is bad. The average person will see the surface level and go no further.
Just food for thought. This isn’t just about “the colonized fitting their protests into the presuppositions of their oppressors”. Think about all these white people suddenly behaving like they’re being “oppressed”. I’m sure you’ve heard about it, despite it being fucking ridiculous considering it’s entirely online.
When Billy the inbred sees “yt people bad” do you think he’s going to give a shit when you give a detailed and nuanced explanation of why whiteness is bad ? No, he’s going to take 5 minutes learning what “yt” means, then be insulted. Then he’s going to experience more of that shit, and come to the conclusion that he’s oppressed. But he feels fine! He gets to fuck his sister everyday, if that’s being oppressed then sign him up!
Suddenly, there’s -1 person that thinks oppression is 1) still a problem and 2) really as bad as people say it is.
Seems like a recipe for two sides that hate each other. Don’t know how you see that ending in anything other than bloodshed.
Anytime I hear people say dumb shit like this I just start listing all the times anti-abortion activists either successfully murdered or attempted to murder their political opponents in the name of the pro life movement. A hit list of judges, physicians, nuns, retired old ladies that like to knit, they absolutely didn’t give a single fuck about any of this struggle session bullshit wreckers like to trot out to sabotage effective resistance
Then I end with the date Roe got overturned, but they still somehow cannot connect the dots and want to talk about registering new voters or some fucking bullshit
My take home message is it turns out that when white people actually want something they magically know what effective forms of protest actually look like (???!)
Great points here
Still going strong
Audible disgust
First things first: white people bad! If you have questions I’ll try to answer em, but the settlers in a settler colonial state are unequivocally bad.
With that out of the way, the person you’re replying to is assuming you are already aware and recognize the ways that protest and direct action are coded and racialised in media. Pictures of white people are used with captions about a peaceful protest, pictures of black and brown people are used with captions about them “turning violent” and looting.
The narrative that creates is one where white people are nonviolent and it’s the black and brown people who are associated with direct action.
The point the person you’re replying to is making by saying
Is that the media narrative about white forms of protest being nonviolent is a lie.
Ah, I see the point. I didn’t realize it was a commentary on how media portrays these issues.
I struggle with the idea that all white people in the U.S. are somehow bad.
When I, or anyone else for that matter, talk about how white people are bad I’m talking about how the position they occupy in society is bad, not how an individual has committed some original sin of whiteness and must atone.
Whiteness is a social construct used to enforce racialized class society.
A person can no more atone for the classification society created and laid upon them than they can shake off that classification itself.
The thing that is bad about white people is their position in racialised class society in the settler colonial state. An individual white person can uphold all the rules and morals you could name but will still occupy the role of oppressor in the hierarchy everyone lives under.
The usual response people give to me is something along the lines of “well what if a white person fought against racial oppression, they wouldn’t be bad and you would be wrong!” Combined with usually either Lincoln or John brown as examples. Those are great examples of how the settler colonial state will protect itself and will find an outlet for its appetites. Lincoln fought against the Dakota uprising and brown was killed for his insurrection.
I don’t bring that up to make an easy dunk over the head of some guy I made up, but to preempt the response that seems to be on everyone’s lips.
If a person is raised as a certain type of person with every aspect of society behaving towards them with respect to that typification, included in which is the normalization and reification of the relationship that type is a part of, the person will “be” what that type is within that relationship.
Remember the funny dub king fu movie, “we trained him wrong as a joke”? Imagine “we trained him to ~be white~ as a ~way to ensure the propagation of class society~”
All of what you’re saying makes sense, and I believe you believe what you’re saying.
I don’t know if I buy that everyone that says white people are bad have this much thought going into it. My experience with people suggests that this simply can’t be true, as there are far too many individuals (especially with the access to information we have these days) that seek others to think for them and act according to their declarations.
What you’re saying, however, all adds up. I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said.
It may come as a surprise to you, but my views are not birthed fully formed out of my forehead.
It took years of reading, conversation and consideration to reach that place. A huge part of that wasn’t even reaching the conclusions but was instead figuring out how to put them into words and how to express them under the sort of violence and history averse liberal framework of polite discussion that people expect.
All that is to say: Very little of what I’ve written are my own original ideas and thoughts. Am I letting others think for me? I demonstrably have. Am I acting according to their decisions. I am at this very moment doing so.
So I’d say it’s less important that people have thought and read deeply than it is for them to recognize and accept the correct understanding.
To put it another way, if you holler “think fast!” and toss a ball to someone, does it matter if they trained extensively to recognize that it’s better for them to make that catch than the third baseman or just whipped around and caught whatever was coming reflexively?
It doesn’t matter in that case, but it would be best if a person figure out weather it’s a kitchen knife, water balloon or baseball before they move to make the catch. The analog to our trained catcher there maybe would be a vanguard party, whose members train and study to be able to lead movements and recognize and counter any reactive or reformist tendencies within those movements.
Maybe when a person who doesn’t express it like I have or in the context of the settler colonial state says “white people are bad” it doesn’t matter if they can do so or simply responds “I hate them” when pressed.
The onus is on all people of right mind and heart to hear the cry of the colonized, and not upon the colonized to fit their protest into the presuppositions of their oppressors.
I know this is a late response, I did just forget to respond, but looking through my past conversations lead me back here.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with utilizing information uncovered by others to guide your worldview. I think it’s elegant, why reinvent the wheel?
However, we live in a world filled with people that have been trained by social media to find the fastest route to justifying their personal views.
Think of it the same way as the “20% of the population, 50% of the crime” statistic. Big number better than small number. Small number responsible for bad big number, small number bad. No nuance, no context, they see the statistic and think “me me no number good, but I don’t like black people so this tracks”.
You can clarify all you want after the fact. When your message is “yt ppl bad” you cannot expect that every person reading will go through your detailed and nuanced explanation of why whiteness is bad. The average person will see the surface level and go no further.
Just food for thought. This isn’t just about “the colonized fitting their protests into the presuppositions of their oppressors”. Think about all these white people suddenly behaving like they’re being “oppressed”. I’m sure you’ve heard about it, despite it being fucking ridiculous considering it’s entirely online.
When Billy the inbred sees “yt people bad” do you think he’s going to give a shit when you give a detailed and nuanced explanation of why whiteness is bad ? No, he’s going to take 5 minutes learning what “yt” means, then be insulted. Then he’s going to experience more of that shit, and come to the conclusion that he’s oppressed. But he feels fine! He gets to fuck his sister everyday, if that’s being oppressed then sign him up!
Suddenly, there’s -1 person that thinks oppression is 1) still a problem and 2) really as bad as people say it is.
Seems like a recipe for two sides that hate each other. Don’t know how you see that ending in anything other than bloodshed.
talk about making up for lost time!
i am genuinely confused by this comment. can you maybe make it a little clearer?