Rottimer t1_je1rets wrote
Reply to comment by Dont_mute_me_bro in NYC teachers union’s workshop on ‘harmful effects of whiteness’ canceled after influx of ‘hate’ by someone_whoisthat
If you’re white and I say you’re white - is that an attack on you?
Dont_mute_me_bro t1_je21ug2 wrote
I don't care what you call me. I don't identify as white. I'm an American first, Roman Catholic second, New Yorker third.
That being said...if I was or did identify as white , what exactly are harmful effects of whiteness? Can you explain that to me? Are there harmful effects of being Mexican? Asian? Jewish? Or is it just "whiteness" that has "harmful effects"?
AnacharsisIV t1_je58b2z wrote
So, here's my interpretation.
"White" as a concept and as a group didn't really exist until the 19th century. You would be Irish or German or Greek or Albanian or whatever. But as legal systems begin to deny rights to say, black or Chinese people, we needed a word to effectively refer to people who maintained their full enfanchisement.
As such, the "harm" of whiteness is because it was created relatively recently with the express purpose of denying others rights. You're not bad for being pale skinned, but if you self identify as "white" that's because you do so because of a history of racism.
You may have heard someone say "there's no such thing as white culture" which kind of ties into this. Because "white" as a group was basically invented as a catch all for "the pale skinned people we don't enslave", there really is no culture that binds these disparate groups; there may be French or Italian culture or even a pan European culture, but those are not "whiteness".
Dont_mute_me_bro t1_je5onst wrote
You didn't answer my question. What are the "harmful effects" of a culture whose ties are at best tenuous? Why does it have "harmful effects" and not other ethnicities' cultures? Why is something that came to being as you put it in the 19th century (in the means of enslavement, which was banned and eliminated by 1865) and improved upon through the Civil rights SCOTUS cases, Civil Rights movement and Civil rights laws over 60 yeas ago, still so harmful as to need seminars to overcome it? I'm not being obtuse. I simply can't get my head around this.
AnacharsisIV t1_je5txmk wrote
Because whiteness is not an ethnicity and it's not a culture, that's the point.
The only reason the concept of "whiteness" exists is to put it atop other groups, be they black or "yellow" or "red". If you don't believe that "white people" are inherently superior to any other group, there's literally no reason to identify as white and no reason to cling to a white "identity" as opposed to whatever ethnic groups you actually come from. This is contrasted with, say, black identity, which have a few shared narratives and experiences irrespective of where those ethnic groups called home (one of those narratives of course, being "we were taken from our urheimat against our will").
Let's pretend for a second we're not talking about ethnicity and talking about something like music. There are jazz fans, metal fans, rock fans, rap fans, country fans, pop fans, etc. It's absolutely fine to like heavy metal, it's no better or worse than jazz or pop! But let's say someone arbitrarily took pop, rap and rock music and grouped it together as "Super Music" and said those genres are inherently better than other kinds of music.
If you ran into someone who called themselves a "super music fan" instead of a "pop fan", would you not surmise that they identify as such because of a perceived superiority? That's basically "whiteness", the idea of "whiteness" emerged from racism and it has no meaning or no currency outside of the context of racism, and within the context of racism, whiteness is placed "at the top" for, again, arbitrary reasons.
Does that make any more sense?
EDIT: Also, whiteness did not begin with enslavement. It began with the ideas of scientific racism, which was used to justify slavery, but existed independently of it. For most of human history, we were fine enslaving others who looked like us, it was only in modernity that we needed justification for why it was ok to enslave people, and we came up with the psuedoscience of race and how some races were "better" than others.
Dont_mute_me_bro t1_je79ltz wrote
You haven't explained anything. The answer to your question is No. I'm really not understanding you. That was a confusing explanation.
Moreover, a casual study of the history of the North African Barbary Pirates and their enslavement of Europeans (which prompted a fledging US Naval response by Thomas Jefferson) shows that if religion is justification for enslavement, people will use it. If race is, they'll use it. People will make up justifications.
Moreover, even with a 99.8% similarity, there are subtle differences between races. That's a scientific fact. For example, there are hereditary conditions (e.g Tay-Sachs, Sickle Cell Anemia, Cystic Fibrosis) that exist in some races but not others.
AnacharsisIV t1_je7enmf wrote
> You haven't explained anything. The answer to your question is No. I'm really not understanding you. That was a confusing explanation.
Could you please tell me what you're having trouble understanding, then?
>Moreover, a casual study of the history of the North African Barbary Pirates and their enslavement of Europeans (which prompted a fledging US Naval response by Thomas Jefferson) shows that if religion is justification for enslavement, people will use it. If race is, they'll use it. People will make up justifications.
So, two points.
-
I never said white people weren't enslaved. I'm part Greek, trust me, you're not pulling some "gotcha" on me by pointing out a time when a dark-skinned people enslaved a fairer skinned population. However, the European slaves of the Barbary Pirates were pretty much all used in a naval capacity and never became a significant minority in North Africa, unlike the African slaves of the Americas. In fact, very few of the people captured by Barbary pirates were enslaved, most were ransomed back to their communities. The Barbary pirates didn't want slaves, they wanted ransom, slavery is just what they did with the few no one was willing to pay for.
-
The whole reason Africans were enslaved was also based on religion. At first they were not enslaved based on race or skin color, but because they were "pagans" or "Muslims" (they didn't enslave other Muslim populations like the Turks or Arabs because they had armies and guns and could defend themselves, and the Native Americans were dying too fast to diseases that came from first contact with Europeans). It was only later, after both captured slaves and natives in Africa were Christianized, did race become the justification for their continued slavery.
>Moreover, even with a 99.8% similarity, there are subtle differences between races. That's a scientific fact. For example, there are hereditary conditions (e.g Tay-Sachs, Sickle Cell Anemia, Cystic Fibrosis) that exist in some races but not others.
See, here's where you're wrong, again. "Race" is made up, it's merely a conflation of culture and phenotype. Things like Tay-Sachs, Sickle Cell Anemia or the "Asian Flush" are rampant in certain populations, but those say nothing about "races", which are a category that pretty much popped into existence in the 17th century, reached their apex in the 19th, and have returned to obscurity just like other bunk science theories like Phlogiston or Geocentrism because we have other, better attested theories to explain the extant phenomena.
Dont_mute_me_bro t1_je7i0ab wrote
You're really going out on a limb. Let's get back in our lanes. The UFT seminar was ill advised. It should not have been offered. If race is a social construct as you say, then having a seminar on a racial construct ("whiteness") is absurd; having a woman of hispanic heritage (which in itself defies racial categorization, as Mark Texiera,A/Rod and Big Papa Ortiz are all "Latin") is an even bigger absurdity. Suggesting that "whiteness" is somehow pernicious is an absurdity.
The whole thing is a black eye on the Union (which I happen to generally support btw).
AnacharsisIV t1_je7izcs wrote
>If race is a social construct as you say, then having a seminar on a racial construct ("whiteness") is absurd;
Economics is a social construct. Ethics are a social construct. Business is a social construct. If all of these justify seminars, then why shouldn't the construct of whiteness? How else shall it be deconstructed?
>having a woman of hispanic heritage (which in itself defies racial categorization, as Mark Texiera,A/Rod and Big Papa Ortiz are all "Latin")
In addition to being of Greek heritage I'm also of Hispanic heritage, so let me say it bluntly; "Hispanic" is not a race. It's an ethnolinguistic group. There are Hispanic people across the globe with ancestry from Europe, Africa, the Americas, East Asia, the Middle East, and countless others. And Hispanic and Latino are also different concepts; A Spaniard is Hispanic without being Latino, a Brazilian is Latino without being Hispanic. Someone is Hispanic if they have ancestry in a Spanish-speaking country, someone is Latino if they have ancestry that includes a Romance language speaking population of the Americas (yes, that includes the Quebecois and Haitians; it's not about race). Saying someone is "Hispanic" says about as much about their ancestry as saying someone is "Anglophone."
>Suggesting that "whiteness" is somehow pernicious is an absurdity.
Whiteness is, itself, an absurdity; it has no basis in reality, but exists solely as a meme. But you and I both know memes can be pernicious.
Dont_mute_me_bro t1_je9bjhj wrote
"Economics is a social construct. Ethics are a social construct. Business is a social construct. If all of these justify seminars, then why shouldn't the construct of whiteness? How else shall it be deconstructed? I'm going to leave it out that kissing your sister or mother- is almost universally prohibited, as is cannibalism. We can argue about small isolated communities in remote places practicing them, but in the overwhelming majority of the world, it's prohibited; taboo in fact. One could say that it's not a just social construct, but a universal truth.
Are there seminars on the evils of economics? The evils of ethics? The evils of Business? (maybe at the risible Young Socialists Club, but nowhere else).
Setting aside that I doubt that any French speaking Canadians (including Quebecois, who are different from Acadians or Metis) identify as "Latino"...If Quebecois are in fact "Latino", there are a lot of people in Upstate New York and New England of Quebecois ancestry who should be getting "diversity points" or at least changing their census designation.
And while we're at it...since I agree with you that "Hispanic" is an ethnolinguistic designation, why are there diversity points being added to a purely *Gallego (*pure European ancestry) person from Mexico, Argentina or Cuba? Turn on Univision and see- these people are not mestizo, Indio, or anything. They might be of a fairer complexion than a Greek/Latino such as yourself.
Why does language qualify? What has historically been done to the Brazilian community in the US? Why make a designation of "Latino" at all?
AnacharsisIV t1_jebhhx0 wrote
>Are there seminars on the evils of economics? The evils of ethics? The evils of Business? (maybe at the risible Young Socialists Club, but nowhere else).
I mean, yeah? You basically described three 100 level philosophy classes. Do you think that the concepts of ethics, business or economics are in and of themselves unassailable or above critique?
>Setting aside that I doubt that any French speaking Canadians (including Quebecois, who are different from Acadians or Metis) identify as "Latino"...If Quebecois are in fact "Latino", there are a lot of people in Upstate New York and New England of Quebecois ancestry who should be getting "diversity points" or at least changing their census designation.
>And while we're at it...since I agree with you that "Hispanic" is an ethnolinguistic designation, why are there diversity points being added to a purely Gallego (pure European ancestry) person from Mexico, Argentina or Cuba? Turn on Univision and see- these people are not mestizo, Indio, or anything. They might be of a fairer complexion than a Greek/Latino such as yourself.
I don't understand your point here. New Yorkers of Quebecois or Acadian ancestry absolutely should self-identify as Latino if they want. I don't know if you're aware of this, but most government forms and other information based on them like college applications these days ask you your "race" and then "ethnicity", so it's a two part question. So you can tick something like "White, black, Asian, Native american, Pacific Islander" and then the next question is "Are ethnically Hispanic yes/no"? So that way you can have a white guy like Charlie Sheen or Cameron Diaz count as Hispanic, there's no problem with that and we've been doing it that way for decades.
> Why make a designation of "Latino" at all?
The designation of "Latino" was not made in the Americas nor by Americans. During the French Empire's conquest of Mexico, they created the concept of "Latinoamerica" as an attempt to gain allies among the former colonies of Spain and Portugal, a piece of propaganda that the colonial descendants of France, Spain and Portugal had a shared cultural heritage stretching back to ancient Rome to contrast them against the Anglo-Americans of Canada and the United States. It's all political, and it's all arbitrary, as referenced above.
Dont_mute_me_bro t1_jebpqe1 wrote
It's one thing to argue that a particular economic system (e.g. Communism) or a particular ethical system (e.g.relativism/situationalism) is evil. It's quite another to suggest that economics itself, or that ethics itself, is evil.
And if it's "all political/arbitrary", then the seminar itself is bullshit. Thanks for making my point.
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