I’ve never heard someone say the N word in person until today I think. One minority (aboriginal) telling me how something about blacks but using the N word instead of blacks/African-american.
There are a lot of other smaller instances I’ve seen in my personal life too.
I’ve never seen Indian versus Pakistan racism, but I would at least get why that might happen, since history.
In public policy, the majority (caucasians) are prob the most racist here, but in casual conversation I might hear more minority vs minority racism. I think this partially might be because caucasians have it drilled into them (my city) that they have to not be racist in convo?
I’ve never understood why some minority groups didn’t come out to support black lives matter (here), but it seems to look like bc they don’t care to help out blm bc its not explicitly minority-name-here lives matter
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I’d say whiteness but Commiewolf makes a good point that this might be too narrow a lens I’m viewing this through.
From my understanding speaking to bame/bipoc individuals and listening etc, whiteness is the idea that one facet of racism exists based on this societal perception of whiteness.
Preface: I am no expert but this is what I currently understand.
Like racism goes down a power hierarchy. You can’t be racist to a white Anglo saxon because regardless of what you say, they exist and have always existed at the top of a hierarchy of races/ethnicities.
You can call us angloids whitey or snow roach or cracker etc but it can’t be racist because it’s just an insult based on skin colour. It’s not a fundamental perception and dehumanisation of someone’s ethnicity or race based on racial supremacy.
When someone calls a white person a cracker there isn’t this racial perception that white people are biologically and sociological inferior. It’s said as a provocative insult to rile them up.
However when a white person uses a racial slur against a black person for example it comes with years/centuries of racial chauvinism and a perception that they are somehow inferior due to their race/ethnicity etc.
So with that in mind whiteness is the idea that certain races hold positions on this power hierarchy.
The way I’d articulate in the UK is that Polish people are seen by white Anglo saxons as lazy Eastern Europe semi whites. That’s an abhorrent racist stereotype but that is the sort of vile rhetoric in the UK. However Polish people themselves can be quite racist to say African immigrants because they are black and see them in the same way as anglo saxons see them.
That’s the whiteness at play. This idea that certain races/ethnicities have some sort of better standing on the bs race scale that the white hegemony (of Anglo saxon people) has decided.
You see the same with how western countries view Asian countries.
Japan = wholesome good Asian people conforming to western values therefore higher on the whiteness scale.
China = filthy communists who do not do what the whitest of whites want therefore lower on the whiteness scale.
It’s just racism tbh, but how different races/ethnicities view that dynamic gives rise to whiteness as a concept.
A final example, Irish people have always being viewed as “lesser” than English in the UK and called white ni**ers in America. That is literally whiteness. Irish were perceived lesser to the English and America majority and seen as cheap and exploitable labour.
Fast forward a few years and we see how America have hidden their bigotry towards Irish because they’ve now got some creepy reverence to heritage despite the systemic oppression of the people they now love showing that to at least the America people, Irish peoples “whiteness” increased as they were required to be turned against other immigrant/working class groups by the white hegemony.
So to answer your question, minorities are racist to other minorities because of whiteness.
This perceived superiority to others that’s taught and encouraged by the whitest ruling group.
It benefits those higher on the whiteness scale to discriminste against those below because it shields them somewhat from the racism of the highest class of white people just like how I described the relationship between Polish people above.
White Anglo saxons are racist to polish people but the polish people find reprieve in being racist to black people because it curs the favour of the white ruling class and makes integration into society and acceptance easier.
Race has always being the biggest weapon of the ruling class to turn various groups of the proletariat against each other.
What you’ve described… it that in action.
Good write up, but I think its slightly reductive to say that the sole motivator is a racial hierarchy.
Race as a concept of strict hierarchy hasn’t existed in its current form at all until just the last few hundred years or so, where Anglo-German supremacy managed to place itself at the top and rank the rest of the world beneath themselves (convenient for them since they now had a bullshit excuse to colonize the world for the cause of “civilizing” everyone). There was a time when the very people who sit at the top of our current racial hierarchy were considered to be inferior savages. Aristotle and his contemporaries have written extensively on the “barbarity” of the Germanic and northern European tribes, using the exact same language that would later be reused hundreds of years later by the descendants of those very peoples to discriminate and conquer the “inferiors”. As someone with ethnic minority background, when discussions of race with friends or family come up, there is often less consideration taken when choosing the correct words and terminology simply from the idea that “we’ve suffered too, so why can’t we call them what we want?”.
Obviously this isn’t a good thing, but its also not uncommon. The notion that all non-white people are all part of the same oppressed monolith who can’t be racist towards each other due to a shared history of discrimination.
It of course varies from person to person and their views on this kind of discourse, and as you rightly pointed out a lot of it is indeed this kind of race ladder where you envy those above you and hate those below, but in other cases it could very well be just ignorance to the importance of respecting those of other races and seeing that simply agreeing that the oppressors are bad isn’t enough, you have to lift each other up as well.
Yeah that’s fair, there’s definitely more to it agreed than the one lens I’ve written about. I think I got so focused on that concept I ran with it 😭
Nonwhite people aren’t a monolith because they think they are, they’re a monolith because the concept of whiteness and the way white people relate to them has made them one, regardless of their own relations to one another.
The difference between historic ethnic discrimination and modern racism is the arbitrary drawing up of racial lines around groups of people who form heterogenous clines of different genetic groups and cultures. Racism against “middle eastern west asians” functionally includes Arabs, Indo-Iranians, Sikhs, Tuareg, Kurds, Palestinians, Algerians, Moroccans, Turks, and Kazakhs and a bunch of other cultures who don’t exactly identify with one another but are lumped together in this mixed bag of convenient colonial categorization based on their relation to colonial production. Like a Moroccan person and a Pakistani person would more than likely be offended if you counted them as “the same”. And for good reason, their histories, base forms, and superstructural forms are distinct and erasing that distinction is meant to open them to commodification and exploitation. For another example, in the western mind, latin america is “that place where fruit and coffee comes from,” which erases local cultures to conform them to the global role capital has assigned to them. It’s in-part the sort of thing the Zapatistas are fighting against in their cultural war against Mexican liberalism.
These modern lines began to form during the colonial period of western history. During the medieval period, discrimination was based on religion. Laws and cultural norms targeted muslims, lutherans, calvinists, catholics, etc. Slavery laws were formed on the basis of religion, where adoption of christianity could buy the freedom of a black or indigenous person (or their children) after they’ve fulfilled their contract. Then in the 17th and 18th centuries, something shifted in the Caribbean. Creoles were beginning to form communities where locally born whites, blacks, and indigenous people started to have more in common with one another than with the “metropole” of the European power exploiting their labor. They began to form coalitions to overthrow the colonial government, and often freed slaves (who could form up to 80% of a colony) to gain the proper mass line.
This spooked the Europeans immensely so their response was vicious. They rewrote slavery laws to no longer be religious, but instead be based on skin color, making the caste of slave immutable and heritable. The mixed-race creole bourgeoisie were destroyed and scattered, some even enslaved, and lost all their status to white immigrants.
Whiteness was invented at this point, a camraderie between europeans based on shared heritage in order to separate themselves from the slave class. It became illegal to enslave or indenture whites. It became illegal to intermarry with whites. It became illegal to show aggression toward whites. And this change in status consolidated the previously differentiated creole whites, lower class colonist whites, upper class colonists, and the gentry under one unified group. This white supremacist group still exists today, and has come to allow or deny various cultures into its ranks based on its political goals.
With the theory of white supremecist racism (as an important tool of capitalist imperialism), it becomes easy to see why the distinction of Ukrainians as white and Russian/Baltic slavs as nonwhite has a chilling effect on the entirety of white culture. It justifies the acceptance of Ukranian refugees into the “cilvilized” imperial class and demotes slavs to the enslaved/colonized class (as all GZD users have pointed out with news articles). When we say “you can’t be racist to white people”, what we mean is that you can’t reverse this relation just with words or behaviors, especially as an individual. Racial discrimination toward white people doesn’t carry the same class distinctions. Say, for example, a Palestinian landlord denies housing to an Israeli. This is discriminitory, but it doesn’t have the same class character as an Israeli landlord denying housing to a palestinian. The former is technically anti-colonial and the latter is distinctly colonial.
TL;DR: In order to be racist to white people you have to change global class relations and dismantle Eurocentric neocolonial imperialism.
Thank you for wording this better than I ever could 🥰
Nah, you did fine. You used all the academic stuff. I just tried to make it sound more “marxist” as there’s a huge overlap in concepts. If hegemony/white supremacy and capitalist imperialism were on a Venn Diagram, it’d just be a circle. They’re different co-moving facets of the same thing.
Ngl I panicked the fuck out when I was accused of a “disturbingly racist rant” so it was validating that you and commiewolf recognised the point I was making. I’m no expert after all so I wouldn’t be able to ace the point if ya get me.
This is exactly the same situation as when I left the anarchist sub on reddit many moons ago. BAME Comrade essentially explained what I’ve put above and the white majority of the sub freaked out and dogpiled them for “being a racist to whites” for bringing up the concept of whiteness.
“If hegemony/white supremacy and capitalist imperialism were on a Venn Diagram, it’d just be a circle.”
Lol this is too accurate.
“Excuse me, but I’ll have you know that white lives also matter.”
Lmao my sides, they hurt 🤣
Belatedly just realized I used idpol to illustrate that Russia is anti-imperialist.
You elaborated on one aspect of it very clearly, nothing racist about that at all. It is important to recognize that these sort of things are done by different people for different material reasons. Discriminated people come in different forms, and their history of oppressions will shape how their outlook towards other discriminated groups is. Its not racist to recognize the inherent racial hierarchy and how it shapes these views. It is one of many factors that can lead to discrimination among minorities. I think you explained it well.
Thank you, I’ll make sure not to get too focused in on one facet in the future 😊
Any suggestions on how to tell them not to say the n word? It’s so egregious i don’t know where to begin. Like no way do they think it’s actually an appropriate word to use.
I was once speaking to a ESL chinese lady and she used a racist term instead of jewish, but it was clear imo she didnt know that the term was racist.
I guess this would be a good place to start, explain the gravity of the slur they used and how its not just an insult but a slur that dehumanises people. Conversations are always best.
Let them say it to the wrong one. Like you said; there is no way thee dont know it’s inappropriate.
crossposted to https://lemmy.ml/c/bestoflemmy
oh… thats the first time someone articulated why people believe it’s not racism when there is predjudiced slurs against white people. now it makes much more sense
No. In fact, this whole rant is disturbingly racist in itself.
This foundational assumption isn’t even true. History doesn’t start at European colonization or the British Empire, and even during colonization they were still in competition with other empires for most of it (Russian empire, Spanish empire). Historically the Roman empire was by far dominant over them. But maybe that’s nitpicking…
Why do you assume other races/ethnicities/etc.'s beliefs in superiority are invalid? (invalid meaning ‘not counting as superiority’, not meaning ‘unjustified’) European’s aren’t some untouchable group. What the hell would make them so? Because they successfully colonized some other continents? That’s not unique at all.
Consider this horrible paragraph (I really hope I don’t have to point out that this is merely impersonation):
Are you honestly going to tell us that isn’t racist at all? Are you going to tell us that someone who already didn’t like europeans can’t look at that and nod? Are you going to tell us that this isn’t rightfully offensive on a racial level to a random ‘white’ (whatever that term means this day of the week) person?
How is it “disturbingly racist”? Because I’ve said you can’t be racist to white people?
We aren’t talking about ancient history or pre colonial times though. We talking about a racial hegemony that exists and was purportrared by white colonialism and the affects its created and had on society now.
It’s not about past hierarchies, it’s about the dominant narrative of racism that white colonialism has instilled in people.
Nobodies arguing that you can’t be racially bigoted/discriminatory to white people but that wasn’t my point and you’ve conflated that with racism.
Racism being the taught behaviour of arbitrary race discrimination and the subsequent behaviours, assumptions and slurs that comes along with it that play into this pointless hierarchy white colonialism infected everyone with.
If the person in original post is using racist slurs that was described above then yeah jts racism and its taught racism OR they might just not know the gravity of the word they’ve used sure. Then that’s a conversation OP can have but if they do understand and are using that word with the weight it carries then that’s playing into racism.
People can be discriminatory for a load of reasons and I’m not saying that’s good or fine but I’m highlighting that when other minorities repeat slurs and rhetoric used by white colonialists that’s playing straight into the hierarchy created by white colonialists and the false perceptions it purportrated.
Also what’s with the wildly bigoted strawman? Of course it’s unacceptable. It’s racially discriminatory, wildly bigoted and false but it’s not racism in the way I understand it because that’s not what racism is defined as. You’ve described racial discrimination sure but it’s not coming from a literal place of percieved societal superiority. If a Jewish person or a Chinese person said this then it would be vile sure but they aren’t in control of the dominant perception on race that white people invented. It’s not like if they say that it’s something that everyone agrees to like it’s fact and runs with it. Where as once a white Anglo drops any sinophobia or antisemitism that is immediately internalised and reacted to by people because of the internalised racial hierarchy people are subjected to in society.
Just Google whiteness. Maybe then you can see what I’m trying to say.
Whiteness is a concept and while I’m happy to admit my take on the whole situation might be a bit narrow just talking about whiteness when other factors obviously play a role to as highlighted by Commiewolf, you coming in here crying “this is disturbingly racist” because I tried to describe the concept of whiteness tells me you’ve immediately decided I’m attacking whites and have went into reaction mode to that end instead of actually reading what I put. I’ve not pulled this out my ass if that’s what your thinking.
I don’t know how else to interpret “you can’t be racist to white people”. Being racially discriminatory is a textbook definition of racism. Is there some different definition you are using in this context?
There are clear indications of the wildly bigoted strawman that indicate a belief in genetic superiority, cultural superiority and moral superiority, and a perception of China’s socio-economic superiority. Why should perceived societal superiority be necessary for this to be racism? What makes the racism example in OP different? Can Japanese be racist to Chinese due to perceived whiteness but not the other way around??
Not that alone, moreso the implication that anglo-saxons are untouchable or superior just because they’re the ‘default race’ in places such as the USA, and the trivialization of the power other races/etc. have, implying they can’t look down at white people as an inferior society or race. They absolutely have the power to see themselves as superior. Millions do. In fact, I think this stems from the implicit USA-centric view of Whiteness theory which limits its applicability. Are anglo-saxons socially superior in China?
I agree with this in the case of the specific slur used in OP’s post; that is a slur with implicit hierarchical implications of ‘white over black’ (or even potentially a general ‘white over non-white’ in many circles). I’m not sure if I agree with it in a generalized sense. A case study would be slurs that developed independently of any white group, that was never used by whites. Furthermore, you could find slurs that aren’t majority against minority, to argue against the hypothesis of a socially superior group being necessary.
I guess my argument can be summed up as Whiteness not being a necessary part of racism. They are of course highly interrelated, white and non-white being a racial concept, but I don’t think the racism in OP is them insulting a person in relation to their whiteness. That would be self-defeating, unless the aboriginal person implicitly considers themself white! Instead, I believe they are merely recycling an insult that independently happened to be about whiteness.
I agree with your comments about the ruling class benefiting from sowing racial divisions to discourage class solidarity.
Because racial discrimination and “racism” ARE different things.
White academia has absolutely clouded the narrative around what racism as a concept means and that’s why your misunderstanding my comment. E.g. when universities and white talking heads cry racism when no they’ve never suffered racism and can’t. They can suffer racial discrimination.
You see racism as racial discrimination. But racism is racial discrimination down a hierarchy. It needs that position of superiority to propagate and it includes the conditions that create or empower racial discrimination.
https://rubinthomlinson.com/understanding-racism-and-racial-discrimination-recognizing-responding-to-the-problem-in-canada/
“To put it simply, racism refers to a deep-rooted belief system that one group is superior to another. Though morally reprehensible, it is not illegal, unless it manifests as discrimination. Racial discrimination is the act of isolating persons based on their race and subjecting them to differential or unequal treatment because of their race. Racial discrimination is therefore a by-product of racism and is illegal under the laws of Canada.”
They 👏 are 👏 not 👏 the 👏 same 👏 thing
They are inextricably linked agreed but they are different concepts and what’s important is understanding that, how that relates to any racism or racial discrimination that takes place and what place that is coming from.
If the world was different then yeah I guess racism could exist against white people if it became deep seated and systemic but it hasn’t and that’s my point. The current system absolutely removes Anglo saxons from racism because we propagate it at least in Australia where OPs post I assume is taking place.
Yes minority groups in the UK can look down on whites but it’s kinds impossible to discriminate against them without the white majority coming down on them like a hammer. I never said non whites couldn’t look down on whites but you’ve conflated racism and racial chauvinism there.
Also if we were in China then whites wouldn’t be the majority would they? That’s an entirely different situation to a white Anglo-Saxon country like the UK where I’m coming from with my argument and Australia where OPs post is situated.
I can’t honestly speak for what the person in OPs post said, if it’s just a word they’ve picked up then maybe there isn’t racist intent behind it but it still propagates the racism in Australia. If the person did know what the word meant then that’s quite sad they chose to use it given the connotations. It’s not really my place to theory craft their intention.
What I can attest to is the racism and perceived levels of whiteness I see in the UK and how racist perceptions can come from people who themselves are also victims of racism. Going back to the original example, polish chefs in an old work were insanely racist to black people, but they themselves suffer racism from Anglo saxon brits.
The explanation I’ve gotten from friends is that within Anglo saxon countries if we are being specific (because frankly I don’t want to assume or talk about non Anglo-Saxon countries race dynamics) the racism and perceived whiteness of varying immigrants plays a huge part in how those groups can be racist against each other. Im sure there’s plenty of other contextual parts but perceived levels of whiteness are a thing.
So in the UK you can’t be racist to any white person. You can racially discriminate against them but the narrative and societal perceptions around race in the UK and other Anglo-Saxon countries is that white sit at the top of this hierarchy and therefore are untouchable by systemic and overt racism. That doesn’t mean they are free of being racially discriminated against but thats different. One is the action caused by the actual concept and attitudes that come with it.
This is massively unhelpful. Textbook definitions are not supposed to be be all end all explanations for how the world works. And when it comes to racism, what it means to a white person and what it means to a person of color is massively different, but you will not find that in Miriam Webster or whatever. The point of Marxist analysis is to recognize what are the conditions surrounding racism today and how we got here. Sure you could argue that if you ignore all context and focus solely on the literal meaning of the word “Racism” then it is technically possible to be racist towards white people. But that is not how racism has worked for the past 300-400 years, and claiming that recognizing the inherent privilege of white people in the modern day is racist in itself is self defeating. We cannot have any meaningful change without acknowledging that the modern racism has been perpetrated by white people. That’s not to say that its impossible to be racist towards white people, it is possible, but there is no INSTITUTIONAL racism that disadvantages white people, and internalizes vast populations with negative stereotypes that end up causing discrimination. To claim so is to be ignorant to the material reality of the Anglo dominated world we live in.
That’s an excellent clarification, and I agree.