The Official Racism Thread Social • Page 22

The comparison doesn't make sense. I speak about white people because they do, in fact, materially benefit from racism. This modern world, in itself, is predicated on racism, Black Death, stolen land, rape and imperialism, with white supremacy as a main component of its organizing principles. This isn't an American problem, it is a problem that goes back to European colonialism. The idea that it is not culpable, that it did not benefit or that it has moved beyond these sorts of things is laughable and demonstrably false, as evidenced by the hate crimes in Britain, the treatment of northern African immigrants, and the legitimacy of far right parties in their political discourse. Leaving that aside for the moment, you and your family may not have personally done anything, but the relations that constitute your life, which has made your life possible, that has made it possible to live a middle class life in the "first world", are innately racist and patriarchal. The difference between America and Europe relates to the differentiation of their social formations. The former welded the slave-object to its political economy and what was wrought is a population that lives in the afterlife of the formal structure of enslavement. The latter's imperial project began hundreds of years earlier, and whilst it developed white supremacy to create markers that denoted exploitable populations, the later shifts in its mode of production allowed it exploit from a distance, that is, removed a few steps from the direct extraction of life and surplus value.

 

On the Dallas shootings, based on the information I've seen:

"Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they always made me glad.”

 

And I don't disagree with everything you have said.

Maybe I misunderstood you just as I feel many has misunderstood me here.

I'm trying to say statements like:

[insert race] did [insert action] against [insert race]

Are fundamentally the basis of a lot or racism psychologically. No matter what race or action you insert it implies an assumption that all of that group of people are like that.

Of course history has led us here and no man can rewrite history but how can racism be addressed if we can't move away from the grouping of people to thinking and treating people on an individual basis that transcends (or wholly omits) race.

Racism is born from psychological schemas being applied to a group of people based on one consistent feature (race). Again I am not talking about or denying the odds being massively in favour of white people. I'm talking about how at a root level we shouldn't be talking about people as races (outside of a discussion on racism) and what "they" collectively do.

Again I really hope people try to understand me. And if you think I'm being racist or ignorant. Then I have to say I don't think they have.

 

Where I disagree emphatically is this notion that racism is borne from a psychological phenomenon. If that were the case, it'd be easier to get rid of. Racism has power because it is real at the ideological level, which traverses our subjectivities and the structure of the word as we know it. In fact, it both traverses and constitutes that world by means of practices and rituals that confirm its reality, eg, black people dying, slavery, migrants left to die. Those practices go unquestioned by white society. White people do not have to kill a black person to be culpable or complicit. What they do, who they are, the privileges they take for granted, the safety they enjoy, is built upon it and runs through it; when you make it home safely at night, chances are a black person did not. Given that, the idea that my reference to white people assists that is ridiculous precisely because that ideology reigns supreme and is without parallel in terms of power in the black community.

 

This guy is 31 years old and posts long, pseudo intellectual babble about racism. He just posted a disgusting quote in reference to 5 police officers being shot. I've seen people be banned from here simply for disagreeing or asking someone a question, why can't this delusional sack of shit that spends all his time posting racist garbage on a music forum be banned?

 

Did you seriously create an account just to post that? Good lord. Lighten up, Francis.

 

K.

 

I missed you moonpies!!!

BFFS4EVA!!!

 

Ok.

I accept. I am guilty of being born white into a world I had no prior influence on.

No matter what I do to speak out against racism and ensure that I treat people equally. I will always be a racist white person to you because I simply exist in a world.

Boils that down to ignorance if you want. I know who I am and what I do as a person.

(And I never said psychological phenomenon, I mean ruined psychology. I never said it was a phenomenon and I certainly don't believe it is- you read what you want to hear mate.)

 

For all your ignorant friends and family, just in case:

 

Oh Jesus. Honestly, this martyr complex is tiresome. I will put it another way. You and your family may not have done anything, but you reap the rewards. That is what my indictment was. If you're white, you're not always a racist, but your existence as a white person is buttressed by the racism that pervades our society. You said the basis of a lot of racism is psychological, and I disagree. To the extent that it is psychological, it is not an aberration, but standard socialization in the west that forms people with these biases. Me saying something about white people isn't racist, insofar as racism denotes complex power structures I cannot use. I am merely conveying a perspective of whiteness as it exists on a social and structural level.

 

1. These things are false.
2. Dom has historically provided more insight and discussion than posters that I've known for years, and certainly yourself, are likely capable of.

 

Now I can accept your point if you phrase it that way.

Psychology is what forms the attitudes and reinforces the structures you refer to. So for me. To tackle racism you have to get into the psychology of it.

The standard socialisation you refer to was what I was alluding to before when I said schemas. This affects people's behaviour. And conversely is most likely why it's not too far fetched to hypothesise that one of these cops had a skewed view that a black man carrying a gun is a threat which fuels his assumed motives. Note I am being careful with my use of language here. I am not defending national the cop at all. I'm just trying to point out that I believe it all Stems from psychology. (Now some may claim I am trivialising the matter, but again if they think that I don't think they have understood my point, they may think they have, but they haven't and I'm sorry for not being better at making my point understood)

Is that bad yes. Is stating that as a possible reason behind it? No.

I could get into at length the interesting observations, however subtle, that you see in England purely based on the regions people grew up in (relevant given your reference to the treatment of North Africans in recent years especially in this country) and how that ties into the environment affecting attitudes and beliefs and therefore behaviour but that is for another time my friend.

I'm not trying to be a matyr. I'm just defending by myself against what I deem false accusations and the way I'm being attacked gives me the impression that led to my last post.

I'm not disagreeing with your point. Just the way that point is being argued in some cases on here today.

 

Earlier in this thread I think I said I would be ok with retaliation against police. Now that it has actually happened, I realise I do not. I do not want a single person to die from this point forward. I know there will be deaths, and of those deaths, significantly more will be black rather than police. But the reality is, 5 families have lost someone as a result of what happened in Dallas, 5 lives have been ended without chance of reform/redemption, and those 5 lives have not brought back nor avenged the 1000's of POC that have lost their lives to the actions of police. From my position, I cannot back it (and fail to see how any white person could); I make no comments on POC's view on this matter, however.

Edit: I feel like the above my read like I am brushing past the fact that significantly more (deaths) will be black rather than police - I am NOT trying to play that down and would never intend to!!! Just thought I'd nip that in the bud incase it's taken out of context.

 

Between unchecked guns and unchecked racism I feel that this sort of event was inevitable.

 

Guilty of being white. I love it.

 

Dae castigate themselves nightly for being white

OK no but seriously. A lot of folks in this thread are white and we do not feel guilt for that. We just recognize how it unfairly benefits us. That's all.

 

The sort of psychology that is being produced by a racist system is intentional and reinforces these practices/institutions. One has to dismantle that which is producing these subjectivities, not the subjectivities themselves. As it pertains to attacking you, in a sense, the point is to attack whiteness and dismantle it. That isn't to say attacking each and every white person, but to convey that, while you may not be racist, though most are in various ways, you and your privilege represent a racist system. One can take that personally, however, this would be instructive of the subtle ways in which which one has an investment in whiteness. It may not be conscious, yet it is still there.

 

Just heartbreaking, but it was only a matter of time. Dismantle the police and regulate guns. Plus that fucking Joe Walsh guy threatening Obama and saying we need a race war on Twitter didn't help things at all.

I've seen this and said this before: equality feels like oppression when you're privileged.

 

The movement isn't lying when they chant "No Justice, No Peace."

 

You have to oppress the privileged and empower the oppressed to achieve equality. Everyone likes the latter but resists the former.

 

I'm sure we have our own problems here in Canada but I feel for you guys down there. That's fucked.

 

Ok Dom you seem like a fairly switched on person. How do we all go about fixing this then?

 

Apparently the one suspect that died was BLOWN UP by the cops. "We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension and for it to detonate where the suspect was." No idea they used that method, but guess it makes sense.

 

In a round about way. That's what I'm trying to say.