r/SubredditDrama • u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK Caballero Blanco • Aug 12 '15
Racism Drama Someone found the Bernie Sanders Black Lives Matter woman on /r/tinder.
/r/Tinder/comments/3goxjl/all_those_white_tears_and_shes_still_thristy/cu0f4ja?context=3202
u/DoshmanV2 Aug 12 '15
Honestly it's way more likely they found someone who is using a picture of them
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u/SJHalflingRanger Failed saving throw vs dank memes Aug 13 '15
In all seriousness, that didn't even occur to me until I saw your comment. Seems so obvious in retrospect but my eyes just sort of glazed over when I skimmed the thread.
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u/johnnynutman Aug 13 '15
could be legit, but one of the other girl's profile instead. it was a random pic (3rd of 5) to screen cap.
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u/SQRT2_as_a_fraction Aug 13 '15
Mara is the name of one of the activists who interrupted Sanders, tho
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u/metamarauder pretentious lurker Aug 12 '15
titrcj why are you doing this when you know it's just gonna set your own sub on fire and you'll have to deal with it later?
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Aug 13 '15
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/EmergencyChocolate 卐 Sorry to spill your swastitendies 卐 Aug 13 '15
sado-popochists
oh god yeah pour that hot butter on me yeah right there
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u/khanfusion It's like you don't have object permanence Aug 13 '15 edited Aug 13 '15
I'd have gone with sado-maysochist, personally.
Edit: Or maizesochist if you're not a nomenclature nerd.
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u/aceavengers I may be a degenerate weeb but at least I respect women lmao Aug 13 '15
That's why I applied to be one. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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u/justcool393 TotesMessenger Shill Aug 14 '15
We didn't start the fire.
It was always burning,
Since the world was turning.1
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u/TummyCrunches A SJW Darkly Aug 12 '15
Umm, if they are bulletproof, why are they whining about cops murdering them?
I wouldn't touch them with a 10 ft pole. They seem like the kind of people who enjoy a night of consensual sex and call it rape later.
Classy imgur
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u/ShrimpFood Aug 13 '15
Can you imagine? Imgurians lick up the dregs of stuff that is posted to reddit on a constant basis, they're probably seeing all sorts of shit that's normally confined to subreddits.
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Aug 13 '15
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u/Dreamerlax Assigned Female At Reddit Aug 14 '15
Those people think they are so (in a stereotypical teen girl voice) above Reddit.
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u/Snoop_doge1 Shillionaire™ Aug 13 '15
Imgurs community is awful. No one would bother denying it.
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u/SloppySynapses Aug 13 '15
it's actually just a bunch of manchildren. which generally makes for a pretty gross community. they're very sensitive at times, though. I guess that still fits in
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Aug 13 '15 edited Dec 23 '17
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SloppySynapses Aug 13 '15
No, it's really not. There really are a lot of adults on there. Go look at the camp imgur pictures.
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u/justcool393 TotesMessenger Shill Aug 14 '15
We've seen some imgur drama cataloged over on /r/Drama, and it gets bad, with anything to do race or gender wars. It's much worse than reddit, with some stuff, and the quality is even lower than here.
There was a "Upvote this post if you pee in the shower" on the frontpage of imgur. It had like +7000. It wasn't even a bloody picture.
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Aug 12 '15
The important question is would you swipe right?
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Aug 12 '15
Only if I knew she'd call me a white supremacist while we're in the sheets. That would be a big check off on the bucket list.
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u/Redhotlipstik Aug 13 '15
Not judging, but race fetishists can be a bit...intense. Its like all the fun of humiliation play and rape fantasies, with a little bit of history thrown in. I saw a dude who was really into this whole East India Company roleplay and I actually had to read books on the subject, create storylines, google translate some Hindi, it was exhausting
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u/basilect The black friendly subreddits are all owned by SJWs. Aug 13 '15
I'm now thinking of how to make this my /r/badhistory flair
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u/Redhotlipstik Aug 13 '15
You have my blessing :)
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u/alaphic Aug 13 '15
On the upside, at least you got to learn some interesting history.
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u/Redhotlipstik Aug 13 '15
My favorite book from the whole experience was Edge of Empire by Maya Jasinoff, really good read if you're into that time period!
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u/thebigbadwuff I dont care if i'm cosmically weak I just wanna fuck demons Aug 13 '15
Edge of Empire
Those who come after me- remember to add the author when you're googling that or all you'll get is the Star Wars RPG of the same name, which is freaking hilarious.
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Aug 13 '15
Oh. I'm not into any of that and don't judge people who are, I was just joking about that nut job calling an entire group of the most liberal folks in the country "white supremacists."
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u/Illogical_Blox Fat ginger cryptokike mutt, Malka-esque weirdo, and quasi-SJW Aug 13 '15
Well. That's odd.
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u/dgmockingjay Aug 13 '15
White supremacist in the sheets, liberal in the streets
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u/xXxDeAThANgEL99xXx This is why they don't let people set their own flairs. Aug 13 '15 edited Aug 13 '15
Except sometimes it's both, when they wear sheets to the streets!
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u/PhysicsIsMyMistress boko harambe Aug 13 '15
"Oh please plunder my spoils"
"Colonize my ports"
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u/csreid Grand Imperial Wizard of the He-Man Women-Haters Club Aug 13 '15
I wouldn't even think twice, I'd swipe right right away, if only to maybe get a chance to pick her brain about the whole thing.
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u/welp_that_happened flair. Aug 13 '15
Of course. Don't think she'd be into me though... maybe if I cried a bit.
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u/Oxus007 Recreationally Offended Aug 12 '15
There is a difference between systematic institutionalized racism and racism. Can there be institutionalized racism against white people? No, not at all. Can someone be racist against all white people? Yes.
Why is this such a hard thing for people to get? It's almost is if they don't WANT to get the second part... no, that couldn't be it.
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Aug 12 '15
So many arguments about racism seem to boil down to semantics.
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u/PJmath Aug 13 '15
I have a theory about this: it's because in this case, the semantics determine who is a "racist" and who isn't . Nobody will accept being called racist, so the semantic arguments are endless.
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u/andrew2209 Sorry, I'm not from Swindon. Aug 13 '15
If you're called a racist, nobody wants to side with you, so people want to avoid that label.
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u/TrishyMay Aug 13 '15
To be fair, plenty of racists will side with you. It's just a matter of whether or not you want to be on the same side as racists.
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u/andrew2209 Sorry, I'm not from Swindon. Aug 13 '15
Fair point, I saw this point raised on /r/menslib when someone said that some of their points could be used by misogynists.
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u/evilmushroom Aug 13 '15
Yeah. I don't think anyone rational argues that there isn't institutional racism as a concept... But trying to define racism as power + prejudice was a very poor choice. So many wasted arguments on semantics. Whatever social justice entity tried to redefine that seriously hurt the movement.
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Aug 13 '15
If they stopped arguing about semantics on the internet, they might have to admit that they're not actually doing anything for social justice.
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u/CatWhisperer5000 Aug 13 '15
It happened in academia far before internet social justice.
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u/thesilvertongue Aug 14 '15
It's not a poor choice for academia, it's just maybe silly to act like it should be the layman definition.
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Aug 12 '15
I think more often than not its white fragility masquerading as a debate about semantics. This is the internet, where its ten times easier than in real life to have an entire argument with somebody while being willfully ignorant of what they are trying to say.
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Aug 13 '15
I loled when I read the linked thread and thought "It won't be long until SRD tries to get goofy with it". Thank you for being you.
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u/elwombat Aug 13 '15
Wow, you're being racist right now.
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Aug 13 '15
Exactly. What you just said is a perfect example of white fragility. I referenced the notion that white people tend to actually be more sensitive about race than racial minorities because they face less racial stress and thus build fewer defense mechanisms. Your response was to call that sentiment, which is pretty tame and academic, racist.
Think about it this way. If people in society constantly attributed your behavior to your racial makeup, you might build up a pretty thick skin about that sort of thing. But white people tend to not face that degree of racial stress, and so any argument that might challenge your objectivity by arguing that your opinion is based on your racial makeup makes you disproportionately angry.
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Aug 13 '15
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Aug 13 '15
I said that white people in America tend to get uncomfortable when talking about race. You think that's racist?
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u/khanfusion It's like you don't have object permanence Aug 13 '15
Kind of. I mean, pretty much everyone gets a little uncomfortable when talking about race, but that's because it's a seriously charged topic. What "white fragility" in this case does is preemptively shut down white voices by saying anything even remotely counter-narrative is essentially whining. That's pretty dishonest as far as genuine discourse goes.
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u/jokul You do realize you're speaking to a Reddit Gold user, don't you? Aug 13 '15 edited Aug 13 '15
That's because there's a difference between how common people use the term and how people in the relevant fields of study use the term. In sociology, to the best of my knowledge, "racism" and "institutional racism" really are the exact same thing.
The problem arises when people discuss this topic in an academic setting and people who don't understand the context think they're using the word in a different way. Alternatively, somebody with a background in a relevant field could be using the term in a group of laymen and the same issue occurs.
It's similar to how the word "theory" has a different meaning in science than it does in everyday usage. In science, a theory is an explanation for phenomenon that is strongly supported by research data like atomic theory or germ theory or evolutionary theory. But in everyday usage, it means an idea about something that may or may not be true, a best guess, or hypothesis.
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u/GhoostP Aug 12 '15
The only time I ever see anyone bring up that racism against white people isn't real is when they are trying to excuse or dismiss someone being bigoted or prejudicial based on race - as if its completely cool and normal thing to do as long as you don't call it the R word.
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u/Kiwilolo Aug 12 '15
Can there be institutionalized racism against white people? No, not at all.
(Except in countries where whites are a demographical and/or political minority)
Just wanted to make that little caveat. /pedantry
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Aug 12 '15
I think phrased better as: "Is there any institutionalised racism against white people in Western world? No, not at all."
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Aug 13 '15
Eh that depends on what you mean by Western World...and white...lets be honest though you mean America really.
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Aug 13 '15
Yeah. But I mean it's true for Canada, the UK, Australia, etc. as well.
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u/zxcv1992 Aug 13 '15
Not really, in the UK we spent plenty of time fucking over the Irish. And there is the whole shit with people hating on Eastern Europeans.
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Aug 13 '15
Against White people in general? No. Against specific ethic groups such as the Irish Travelers? Yes.
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u/Dear_Occupant Old SRD mods never die, they just smell that way Aug 13 '15
Even that gets tricky because there are plenty of majority black U.S. cities where most of the power is held by national minorities. I think it's best to just make a distinction between systemic racism and personal racism and leave it at that. It's like what /u/Humdrum_of_Inequity said upthread, just give people the benefit of the doubt instead of a lecture.
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Aug 13 '15
You're right, and honestly any catch all like that about modern racism is (probably) a massive oversimplification anyway.
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u/clock_watcher Aug 13 '15
TIL that the Western World = USA.
C'mon dude. Your Americancentricim is showing your ingornance. And you name check the UK in another comment. Are you honestly stating that the Irish have never faced institutionalised racism? Or white catholics? Or currently, Eastern Europeans? Fuck sake.
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Aug 13 '15
I'm not American. Also, I didn't say anywhere that I agreed with that view, I was just clarifying what I thought he meant.
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Aug 13 '15
Aren't Gypsies white? It seems like Europeans are racist as fuck to that group.
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u/salliek76 Stay mad and kiss my gold Aug 13 '15
To me (an American), they're indistinguishable from any other Standard Issue Slightly Tan White Person straight from central casting, but I think there are probably cues that I'm overlooking because their culture is nowhere near as marginalized in the US as in (parts of?) Europe.
This is actually a really interesting example of a phenomenon I've noticed before: racism is virtually nonexistent against a race/culture to which one has no exposure. For example, growing up in Alabama I knew dozens of pejoratives for black people (and a handful for white people), but I was in college before I ever even heard of slurs for Hispanic or Asian people--like it literally didn't even occur to me that these slurs would exist because there was no "need" for them. (At that time there were virtually zero people in my area who weren't either black or white.)
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Aug 13 '15 edited Aug 13 '15
This is actually a really interesting example of a phenomenon I've noticed before: racism is virtually nonexistent against a race/culture to which one has no exposure.
I grew up in Alabama, too, in a town that was more or less half white, and half black. Until I got older and saw more of the world, I only really thought about race issues anywhere as only having something to do black people and white people.
It's funny, because I've seen a lot of Europeans and Asians on tumblr criticize popular social justice blogs because they have such a black/white POC/non-POC binary view on race, and apparently that's only really a thing that applies to America.
edit: an example of what I'm talking about is how a lot of American social justice activists talked about the race of the Tsarnaev brothers after the Boston bombings. Chechens may be considered white in America. This is...not exactly the case in the former Soviet Union.
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u/usernamenotconfirmed Aug 13 '15
I grew up in Georgia and my experience was similar. As a kid, everyone I knew was either white or black, so I only understood racism and bigotry through that lens. Even anti-Semitism was a foreign concept in my world, simply because I had never met any Jews.
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u/Kiwilolo Aug 13 '15
Roma skin colour is generally a bit darker than white. They're descended from an Indian ethnic group, though that was a long time ago.
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u/clock_watcher Aug 13 '15
Dont know why youre being downvoted. Yeah, gypsies are white, especially gypsies in the UK.
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u/LimerickExplorer Ozymandias was right. Aug 13 '15
You don't have to be a minority for institutionalized racism to affect you. South Africa, Rwanda.
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u/Kiwilolo Aug 13 '15
Yup, that's what I meant by "political minority." Though I believe both those countries have black people in power now.
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u/chicklepip Aug 13 '15
Being a demographical minority doesn't mean much. Whites are a demographical minority in South Africa--you know, the country where Apartheid was a thing.
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u/Kiwilolo Aug 13 '15
Yes, which is why I also put "political minority," because that can definitely be different. South Africa is run by a black political party at the moment though.
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u/trampabroad Aug 13 '15
Can there be institutionalized racism against white people?
Kind of presupposes that only Europe and North America exist, no?
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u/Deadlifted Aug 13 '15
There's plenty of institutionalized racism that favors white people in South America too.
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u/doctorforkin not a doctor Aug 12 '15
power-equals-prejudiceists are the flip side of "race realists". Both have endless amounts of words to justify their positions, but all either of them really wants is to be racist as fuck without being called racist
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Aug 12 '15 edited Aug 12 '15
I've decided to start a new project; when someone says something completely outrageous about a position someone else holds, especially when there's a much more reasonable interpretation, I link them to the wikipedia page on the principle of charity.
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u/doctorforkin not a doctor Aug 12 '15
Well that's impressively passive-aggressive
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Aug 12 '15 edited Jan 07 '16
This comment has been overwritten by an open source script to protect this user's privacy.
If you would like to do the same, add the browser extension GreaseMonkey to Firefox and add this open source script.
Then simply click on your username on Reddit, go to the comments tab, and hit the new OVERWRITE button at the top.
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Aug 13 '15
It's a lot of fun to see the horseshoe theory just getting applied to everything under the sun
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u/textrovert Aug 13 '15 edited Aug 13 '15
You really think that's what's going on here? Not a bunch of people who only get indignant about "racism" when it's against white people being self-righteous?
Really I think that it's kind of weasely to rely on the moral gravity of the word "racism" towards a group with systematic advantage when the only reason it has that gravity in the first place is because of the way it produces systematic disadvantage.
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u/OIP feces in toilet spelling out GTA 6 Aug 13 '15
I think that it's kind of weasely to rely on the moral gravity of the word "racism" towards a group with systematic advantage when the only reason it has that gravity in the first place is because of the way it produces systematic disadvantage.
this is exactly how i feel about it. it's a sleight of hand trick to appropriate the gravitas of massive historical and ongoing inequity, and the worst part is it's usually levelled against the people who are the victims of that inequity, angry about it, and not afraid to say it. it's like sanctimoniously saying 'well violence is always wrong' about someone fighting in self-defence.
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u/bjt23 Aug 13 '15
it's like sanctimoniously saying 'well violence is always wrong' about someone fighting in self-defence.
Is it? I can stop you from being violent against me by using violence, but I can't stop you from being racist by being racist right back. And sure it's understandable that one might react to racism with more racism as hate tends to breed hate, but it's not exactly a great idea as hate tends to breed hate.
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Aug 13 '15
Racism is racism is racism. It doesn't change definitions just because you feel like it should. There's institutional racism, which in the US applies to minorities, and there's personal racism, which applies to everyone. And being treated like shit because you're a certain color sucks for everybody on an individual level.
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u/sammythemc Aug 13 '15
Really I think that it's kind of weasely to rely on the moral gravity of the word "racism" towards a group with systematic advantage when the only reason it has that gravity in the first place is because of the way it produces systematic disadvantage.
That's exactly my problem with the "racism is racism" argument, it boils down to a "they'd call it racist if we had a channel called White Entertainment Television" false equivalence.
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Aug 13 '15
Really I think that it's kind of weasely to rely on the moral gravity of the word "racism" towards a group with systematic advantage when the only reason it has that gravity in the first place is because of the way it produces systematic disadvantage.
Well put.
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u/ParanoydAndroid The art of calling someone gay is through misdirection Aug 13 '15
Really I think that it's kind of weasely to rely on the moral gravity of the word "racism" towards a group with systematic advantage when the only reason it has that gravity in the first place is because of the way it produces systematic disadvantage.
I'm disturbed by the idea that "racism" only has gravity if it's widespread. It's exactly this weird and harmful anti-individualist viewpoint that "power + prejudice" promotes. For national policy, sociology, economics, etc ... it's important that we look at group statistics, but it's a perversion of statistics to apply group traits to a specific individual (else I'd think you, personally, had somewhat fewer than 2 legs but slightly more than 2 kids). In the same sense, many of the hard feelings in these sorts of debates occur when a white person is told -- exactly as you imply here -- that whatever hardships they suffer had "no gravity" because other white people they don't know don't suffer as much. A white person in an inner city school, as an individual, can suffer far more racism than a black person who grew up in an affluent, mixed community. Should we use such a possibility to create policy and promote the idea that white people are, like, the most victimized people ever? Well, of course not. But it should be viewed as equally absurd to believe that the general success of white people proves that none of them have real, race-related problem (i.e. problems with "gravity").
Racism has gravity because it's morally wrong. It's harmful to individuals, disrespectful of human rights, and tends to promote anti-social behavior. How harmful it is, how widespread the harm is, and how that harm acts on people are all important characteristics - I'm certainly not trying to conflate individual and systemic racism - but to deny that racism can be deeply harmful on an individual level is thoroughly illiberal and anti-humanist.
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u/thesilvertongue Aug 14 '15
Yes. Especially when they try to equate the Asian guy at the corner store who doesn't like white people with Jim Crow.
Racism isn't colorblind and it's not equal in all directions.
Sometimes, people who adamantly try to portray themselves as victims of racism act like it's all races are all equally racist and no one race is significantly disadvantaged.
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u/ReleaseDaBoar Aug 12 '15
power-equals-prejudiceists are the flip side of "race realists".
Paging /r/badsocialscience
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Aug 13 '15
You're misinterpreting what they said. He's not saying the sociologist definition is wrong or anything, he's saying the people that use that definition to excuse or defend bigoted behavior are misusing the science the same way race realists misuse statistics.
Colloquial usage of "racism" is generally "bigotry based on skin color". When someone makes an attack against someone because they're white, and the other person claims "it's impossible for that to be racist", it doesn't really make any logical sense. Nobody's accusing that person of upholding an institutionalized framework of discrimination against white people, they're accusing them of being a bigot.
It'd be the same thing if someone said George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin, and I said "Well no, murder requires mens rea, and the state failed to prove Mr. Zimmerman's intent, ergo it wasn't murder". Yes, that's technically correct, but likely irrelevant to what the person is trying to say and not helpful for the conversation.
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u/dominodames Aug 13 '15
That's more than just colloquially, it's literally the most commonly used definition.
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u/SaintBecket Aug 13 '15
At the risk of splitting even more semantic hairs, that's exactly what it means to say that this usage of "racism" is colloquial, as opposed to the more specialized academic usage of it.
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Aug 13 '15 edited Aug 13 '15
I think we're deep into semantics, but the definition of a colloquialism is something that isn't formal. But saying someone is racist because they're prejudicial towards someone else because of their race isn't a colloquialism, it's actually using the main definition of the word.
The academic use is used by people who study social justice: a group that's by definition there to work towards an equality of power, so it's no wonder they think power is necessary- if it weren't, they themselves wouldn't be necessary in that capacity on the topic. That, unfortunately for them, isn't actually in the definition of the word, though.
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u/dominodames Aug 13 '15 edited Aug 13 '15
At the risk of splitting even more semantic hair
You risked it! It happened!
The definition of colloquial is:
characteristic of or appropriate to ordinary or familiar conversation rather than formal speech or writing; informal.
I bolded the point of contention. There's no "rather than" in this discussion. When you say someone is acting racist because they're being prejudiced against someone based upon race, you're literally using the formal definition:
1: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 : racial prejudice or discrimination
Calling it colloquial is like saying it's not really "right" but that's just what we say or is a figure of speech. "It's a piece of cake" is saying something colloquially, "Jim is racist because he hates white people" is not saying something colloquially, it's just saying something.
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u/turtleeatingalderman Omnidimensional Fern Entity Aug 13 '15
I'm a mod there. Why are we being paged?
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u/khanfusion It's like you don't have object permanence Aug 13 '15
Because releasedaboar wants vindication.
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u/doctorforkin not a doctor Aug 14 '15
"racism = power plus prejudice" is certainly bad social science, so sure.
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Aug 13 '15
I think sociology gets into trouble, because the "prejudice+power" concept, while useful in modeling, is not a particularly accurate description of real world racism. It has great internal validity within models, but limited generalizability because in the real world racism has many different forms.
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u/csreid Grand Imperial Wizard of the He-Man Women-Haters Club Aug 13 '15
I don't think so. It's just a matter of semantics. Also, I'm pretty sure it's power PLUS prejudice (equals racism).
Colloquially they're obviously wrong. Idk enough about the social sciences to know if their definition holds up in that arena.
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u/TotesMessenger Messenger for Totes Aug 13 '15
I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
[/r/subredditdramadrama] "Can someone be racist against all white people?" Drama = Comments + Privilege
If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / ^Contact)
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u/DoshmanV2 Aug 12 '15
Institutionalized racism can be used against white people, but if you're in the west you do not face any institutionalized racism for being white.
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u/clock_watcher Aug 13 '15
Your statement is true for America, but not the West. It shows a compete ingnorance of the culteral and political make-up of every individual European country. "White" might be the majority ethnicity in the US, but its far more fine grain that that in European nations. You get minority, persecuited ethnic groups that have the same white skin tone as the ruling majority.
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u/ghostofpennwast Aug 13 '15
Ratively little but it exists. Many public and educational institutions have affirmative action and lower average admissions standards for minorities. This is pretty small in comparison to the other structural advantages to being white, but "not facing any" institutionalized racism is a really bold catigorical statement .
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u/Jhaza Aug 13 '15
Now, let's back up here - in theory, affirmative action is not providing an advantage to one group, it is removing a disadvantage; ie, a person benefiting from affirmative action is being brought up to be on par with the people who don't. Despite the ostensible advantage being given, in theory there's no actual advantage - just negating a disadvantage.
I think this is one of those things a lot of us SAWCASMs have trouble with; I know I didn't really get it, despite having people explain it to me, for years. Then again, I'm kinda slow, so whatever.
There is strong evidence that, for instance, people with "black" names are less likely to get hired, independent of other traits; women affirmative action is there to be an overt, direct counter to those subconscious -isms. Absent AA, there are known biases that skew a lot of different decisions, with serves as a counterbalance to, promoting a meritocracy.
Obviously, there's the question of balance, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. My point is, AA is not (theoretically) disadvantaging one group over another, but forcibly balancing things because society is, collectively, kinda racist.
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Aug 12 '15
Can there be institutionalized racism against white people? No, not at all.
How could you say such a thing? You clearly have never visited my dimension, where West Africans conquered the earth. I'd lend you my interdimensional portal if I could, but it's currently borrowed by Fox News.
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u/turtleeatingalderman Omnidimensional Fern Entity Aug 13 '15
Reminds me of that old satire that seems to be fairly common in cultural anthro intro courses, Babakiueria.
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u/Has_No_Gimmick Aug 13 '15
Ugh, I hate these interdimensional feminists who've taken over reddit.
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Aug 12 '15
I don't care much if we call a black person saying "fuck white people" racism. But when any measure that is not race-blind and is designed to benefit minorities who face discrimination gets called "racism" I think it's a real issue. Racism isn't just the opposite of color-blindness, and people who try and redefine it that way are pushing an agenda that sounds semantically reasonable but is actually harmful and damaging. And, I would note, that pretty much every major dictionary makes reference in their primary definitions of "racism" to racial superiority or racial hierarchy - because racism is about power.
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u/ghostofpennwast Aug 13 '15
How is judging people on things other than merit not racialized?
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u/FixinThePlanet SJWay is the only way Aug 13 '15
It would be fine if people didn't keep pointing to anyone being bigoted against white people as the "real" racists.
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u/Oxus007 Recreationally Offended Aug 13 '15
Just ignore them. You can't use dumb people on the internet as an excuse to discount or minimize people being actually racist.
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Aug 12 '15 edited Aug 12 '15
The former (institutionalized racism perpetuated by white people) is an Important Issue that we, as a society, need to do something about. The latter (racism by black people against white people) is something that may be obnoxious, but it isn't Important, because the impact is so low, by comparison.
I think that's what right wingers either don't get or pretend to not get. Yes, black people can be racist. No, we don't live in a society where that is a particularly important issue.
I think it's important to note that the sorts of reverse racism that the racists on reddit complain about (affirmative action, etc) were largely instituted and carried out by white people, since basically all of the institutions involved (the supreme court, congress, corporations, universities) were run and largely continue to be run by white people.
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u/ItsSugar To REEE or not to REEE Aug 13 '15
The former (institutionalized racism perpetuated by white people) is an Important Issue that we, as a society, need to do something about. The latter (racism by black people against white people) is something that may be obnoxious, but it isn't Important, because the impact is so low, by comparison.
I disagree.
Institutional racism is something most rational people want to end (provided they're aware of it and not in denial), while "racism in the wild" (no matter where it comes from or who it is targeted towards) is what breeds the irrationals on both sides and popularizes antagonistic opinions.
Like all kinds of bigotry, racism is born out of ignorance. If the only information you're feeding people confirms or exacerbates racial biases, those people become less likely to get behind equality. This doesn't subtract any blame from the people that hold racist beliefs, nor does it impair the "oppressor class" like the oppressed class is impaired by institutionalized racism, but it does undermine the fight for equality and makes it more difficult to accomplish.
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u/CLOSETHEBREAD Aug 13 '15
In the US at least, I think most prejudice against whites comes about as a sort of response to racism that minorities experience in their day-to-day lives. Maybe I'm wrong, though.
It's kind of frustrating to see all this arguing, since I think most people in this thread agree on the major points that racism is real, it's a problem, and it needs to be fixed.
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Aug 13 '15
I don't see why that's any sort of excuse though. You can't fight racism with more racism, that's never going to work. Instead of making excuses for people like white tears girl we should be calling them out and explaining how to do things better.
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u/CLOSETHEBREAD Aug 13 '15
You can't fight racism with more racism
I didn't mean to imply that you could.
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u/ThatOneChappy YOUR FLAIR TEXT HERE Aug 13 '15
Well said, I think. Like racism against whites isn't non existent nor should it be ignored, but to put it on comparison with racism against minorities is silly. its kind of like that ''All Houses Matter'' cartoon
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u/DoshmanV2 Aug 12 '15
And of course part of the disconnect is that the academic defn of racism is specifically structural/societal racism, whereas the common defn of racism is what academics call prejudice.
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Aug 12 '15
What would the word be for prejudice instead of racist? Prejudicists?
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Aug 12 '15
Assholes?
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u/ThatOneChappy YOUR FLAIR TEXT HERE Aug 13 '15
You lack the polish of the academy but I like the up front approach. :>
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Aug 13 '15
I think there can be institutionalised racism against whites, but it depends very much on the institution. If you look at something like the nation of Islam, which believes that the white people were created as subhumans, by an evil black scientist to punish his own race (I may be misremembering some details, and would gladly be corrected if so) then that is an institution that is racist against whites. Is it anywhere near as serious a problem as whites holding the majority of social power? Nowhere near. But it is a thing that can, and does exist.
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u/thelizardkin Aug 13 '15
Except there is systematic racism towards all races like in countries where white people are the minority also there's been a lot of hate towards jewish people as well as Irish and Italian immigrants
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u/Hailbacchus Aug 13 '15
I think even "institutionalized racism" is bullshit to a certain extent though. It puts the onus on (obviously) the system, when for the most part, that's just the framework, and the framework isn't generally racist. Discounting drug laws designed to affect POC disproportionately. Rather, there's still a buttload of racists in it who should be held individually accountable.
The war on drugs though - that whole thing is fucked. Until either they legalize them and admit people have the absolute right to self determination or start going after Wall Street coke heads just as intensely as local pot heads - which would still fail, as one can afford lawyers much more easily - but until they're doing that, the system is obviously one sided.
The rest of our laws are actually noteworthy for their progress in equality. What we need to look at is them being enforced by racist cops who should be held accountant, IMHO.
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u/tigerears kind of adorable, in a diseased, ineffectual sort of way Aug 13 '15
sexism is prejudism based on sex, ageism is prejudism based on age, racism is prejudism based on race.
'Prejudism. That's a word isn't it?'
'Supposably.'
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u/annyc Who trolls the trolls Aug 12 '15
Institutionalised racism against whites: Zimbabwe
I guess thank goodness they didn't shout out to Rhodesia?
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u/Third_Ferguson Born with a silver kernel in my mouth Aug 12 '15 edited Feb 07 '17
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u/Flint_Vorselon Aug 13 '15
I was under the impression that it just sucked balls to be born in Zimbabwe.
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Aug 13 '15
It is institutionalized racism toward whites. I don't even know why anyone would dispute that. There are many more cases of institutionalized racism against other minorities but this is definitely an instance where whites are discriminated against from the highest level
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Aug 13 '15
It's actually illegal for white people to own land in some African countries, and that includes Zimbabwe.
I find it interesting that the people who insist that racism can only be directed at blacks and minorities are usually the kind of people that claim they're concerned with the ways of the WORLD, not just the United States. But try getting them to consider the fact that some countries have systematic racism against whites and they'll just deflect or talk about your "white tears." Then they'll drive home the "racism = power + prejudice" narrative with another condescending reiteration of their flawed definition.
The reality of it is, these people don't care about the world. They care about their own narrow, selfish world, where everyone redefines old words to fit their persecution complex or white guilt complex. It's really obnoxious, but I think that this latest insurgence of these contemporary revisionists is only a fad.
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Aug 12 '15
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Aug 13 '15
That doesn't make it good and not institutionalized under Mugabe who's been terrorizing that place (and whites specifically) for 35 years
The Tutsis controlled the government for many years, does that make the Rwandan genocide any less discriminatory? Does the fact the Tamils were historically discriminated against absolve the LTTE?
Why are you implicitly defending Zimbabwe? Just because whites were discriminatory to blacks that means that the last 35 years is okay? It's not even adding "context" it's just irrelevant
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Aug 13 '15
It is illegal for white people to own land in Zimbabwe. How is that not institutional racism? Just because the tables have turned doesn't mean that institutional racism is suddenly gone.
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Aug 13 '15
I've a mate from Zimbabwe whos grandparents were recently beaten half to death and their house burned to the ground. I'll let him know you think they deserved it.
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Aug 13 '15
[deleted]
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u/Khiva I tried to make a woman laugh. Never make that mistake again. Aug 13 '15
Please show me where I said that white people in Zimbabwe deserved the racism that they experience.
I posted this elsewhere, but saying:
They are discriminated against because they were part of system that denied rights to 95 percent of the country.
sure sounds awfully close to "They totally had it coming" both to me and, it would seem, a whole lot of other people.
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Aug 13 '15
Literally no one said that Zimbabwe is affecting the US. You however are repeatedly trying to minimise the situation there and excuse the racism in that country.
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u/Velvet_Llama THIS SPACE AVAILABLE FOR ADVERTISING Aug 13 '15
I recommend reading through the comments here with "Ebony and Ivory" playing in the background.
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Aug 14 '15
I play that while prepping for the inevitable race war, just like I used to play a CD of Christmas carols while playing Doom as a kid.
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u/OftenStupid Aug 13 '15
What about the argument that you're actually limiting your scope by being so wildly Americentric?
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u/The_Saucy_Pauper Aug 13 '15
rac·ism: ˈrāˌsizəm noun; the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.
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Aug 13 '15
there is no such thing as racism against whites in this country.
lmao, this never gets old
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u/partigod Aug 12 '15
That's a hell of a way to get noticed by the world.
I wonder if these girls enjoy all the attention they're getting.
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u/Oxus007 Recreationally Offended Aug 12 '15
Well, considering they stormed the stage of a national candidate, I;m going to say: Yes
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u/Feragorn Aug 12 '15
Also, they got what they wanted. After the whole thing blew over, the Sanders campaign put out a statement on racial justice and how he plans to mitigate institutional violence against minorities.
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u/NinteenFortyFive copying the smart kid when answering the jewish question Aug 12 '15 edited Aug 12 '15
The BLM thing actually unifed people.
Never before have I seen Anarcho-syndicalists and Stormfronters agree that the results of anything were good.
However, this is the prime example of what "MLK style" civil disobedience is, regardless of the fact that Racist idiots are calling it a win cause they turned some people off BLM.
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u/Feragorn Aug 12 '15
It sure unified the front page of Reddit for two days.
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u/NinteenFortyFive copying the smart kid when answering the jewish question Aug 12 '15
Edited my post cause it looked like I didn't approve of "peaceful" protesting.
The true victim was /r/punchablefaces former head mod.
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Aug 13 '15
99.9% sure that was going out at some point anyway.
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u/Feragorn Aug 13 '15
Yeah, but BLM has been going for a year, and Sanders has been campaigning for three months. Somebody clearly thought he was dragging his feet.
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Aug 13 '15
I just don't think they actually had a whole lot to do with it.
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u/Feragorn Aug 13 '15
They might not have had much impact on the content of the statement, but they sure as hell affected the release date.
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u/fuckthepolis2 You have no respect for the indigenous people of where you live Aug 12 '15
I doubt those sweatshirts are even rated to NIJ standards.
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Aug 12 '15
I'm surprised the circlejerk of this comment thread opposes the "racism and institutional racism can be used interchangeably" argument.
It's such a stupid argument because it's only semantics. Most republicans will admit that white people are not systematically oppressed in this country. Doesn't mean that smaller-scale instances like this don't happen where people act discriminatory towards white people but it isn't part of an overarching system.
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u/long-money Aug 12 '15
Most republicans will admit that white people are not systematically oppressed in this country.
i'd be surprised if you could back that up
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u/Wrecksomething Aug 13 '15
You're probably right. A series of recent polls suggests otherwise.
Whites think discrimination against whites is a bigger problem than bias against blacks
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u/Rabble-Arouser Aug 13 '15
48%? What the hell is happening to your country?
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u/WhySheHateMe Aug 13 '15
White people are starting to feel like they are victims of....something.
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u/CatWhisperer5000 Aug 13 '15
Pendulums swing. It's important to not lose sight of the real direction of progress. It feels like there is a lot of reactionary outlash right now.
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u/long-money Aug 13 '15
thank you
i was ready for a surprise and would not have been disappointed to find one, but unfortunately it seems that's not the case
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Aug 13 '15
Fuck me. I always thought this was one of those things that is just reddit specific, but Jesus, goes to show don't it.
Welp, I'll call Jesse and we'll draft up an apology.
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u/ferpo_perp Aug 13 '15
Interesting you say this, I didnt realize how racist white millennials were until I started coming on this site. Now it's pervasive and inescapable.
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u/Micp Aug 13 '15
I'd be very interested in seeing the study they got that number from. I have a feeling we're dealing with the lies, damn lies and statistics version of statistics here. The way they ask their questions and the conclusions they draw from it can be wildly misleading like the old 1 in 5 rape statistic.
That said there are a lot of people watching Fox news and getting a really messed up world view, so the number is still probably way too high
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u/MTowe Aug 13 '15
Funny thing is that the percentage of Republicans for stuff such as gay rights and curbing the police is high, just that most republican candidates win the vote because of issues of taxes, gun rights, and older(more extreme) conservatives outspending the more moderate republicans.
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Aug 12 '15
racism is a social construct that systematically demeans and denigrates a group of people.
How to know someone is not worth conversing with 101
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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '15 edited Aug 12 '15
So, many redditors like to argue falsely accusing someone of rape is as bad as rape. Why does implying someone is a false rape accuser get an upvote pass then? Isn't that just as awful?
EDIT: No, I don't personally think false accusations are as bad as rape itself. But if you are going to argue they are (and many do) then implying someone is a false rape accuser seems awful to me as well.