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Forgot to mention the “only white people know what democracy is, if your constitution wasn’t written by white people we don’t recognise you as democratic and will wage war and slander you in the media”
Ah yes, the bastion of democracy, a document written 200+ years ago by slaveholders
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I think there is more nuance to that. The US is a representative democracy with first past the post voting, which was never about the popular vote. It was adopted to deal with issues from a few centuries ago including technological limitations of voting and widespread illiteracy. It was also adopted to deliberately disenfranchise non-white male voters.
Nowadays there is no reason to keep voting this way other than to keep the unpopular party and unpopular politicians in power through gerrymandering.
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I mean, if you look at the Merriam Webster definition of democracy it specifically includes direct and indirect democracies.
Is the voting situation in the US fucked? Absolutely. But it’s still a representative democracy regardless. Having equal representation and voting rights is not a prerequisite for this system of government. What you see right now is representative democracy working as intended by this country’s founders. Voter disenfranchisement is rooted in the electoral foundations of this country.
We shouldn’t be putting democracy on a pedestal because this is a democracy and it’s working as intended by people in power. Being a democracy alone doesn’t automatically make a country great. We need much more than that. What we need to push for is voting access, literacy, and tear down lobbying and media conglomerates.
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I feel like that’s a no true Scotsman fallacy. We look at the word democracy and idealize it as a perfect system of government regardless of how it’s implemented. Democracy alone isn’t enough. It’s one facet in a complicated political machinery. For a democracy to be effective, you have to assume that people are capable of voting in their own interests, people have sufficient media literacy, people aren’t forced into voting for the lesser of two evils, and that people have equal access to voting polls. Right now, the US has none of these things done right. It’s an ineffective democracy, but a democracy nonetheless.
The thing that we need to recognize is that it is possible for a democracy to be bad. Now, please don’t take this as support for a non-democratic government, because that’s the last thing on my mind. I’m simply saying that it is possible for democracy to be poorly implemented and still fall within the definition of democracy.
As a reminder, Athenian democracy only allowed 1 in 4 people, who were free male citizens, to vote. That is one of the origins of democracy, and by definition, a type of democracy. People today would be appalled if we applied the same standards, but that doesn’t make it any less of a democracy.
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Oh! Oh! You forgot one: Denying the skin color/race/ethnicity of a person just because their behavior doesn’t align with how you think the aforementioned race/ethnicity is supposed to behave as.
Like, I literally have brown skin, was born and raised in the global south and still within it; and yet a few weeks back some jackass here (who’s since been banished thankfully) had the guts to call me a “White Western Anglo” just because I called them out on their reich-wing terminology and defended queer rights. Fucking hell.
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colorblindness
Can someone please explain this to me?
probably “i don’t see race, white - brown - black, they all mean the same to me” while casually ignoring the systemic issues that non-white people still go through but white people don’t
I reckon it’s “not being able to see color”, i.e. claiming that you don’t recognize the difference between people of different skin color. That can itself be a form of supremacy since it denies the lived reality of many people.
Not understanding the segregation and alienation that people of certain races experience, and assuming they have the same privileges that your class has. For example, not understanding why a black mother having to explain to her children that Starbucks coffee isn’t for them.
I kind of feel like this would almost work better as one of those iceberg charts YouTube seems to love.
It’s no wonder progressives can’t win unless there is somebody to hate on the other side. It’s like watching a snake eat its own tail every 8 years.
What is “spiritual bypassing”?
Also, go ahead and call me a snowflake, because I do take issue with the “I never owned slaves” bit in the racism section. Not only I’ve never owned slaves personally, my ancestors were third class citizens until 1917. But fuck me for being a whitey I guess!
it’s more that you’re shrugging your shoulders as if you don’t still benefit from being white just because you or your family didn’t own slavery
the blasé not my fault, not my problem attitude
I think applying this concept universally is wrong and you raise an important point. Many Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, and Iranians may well be considered as “white” in first world concept but this does not stop “israel” bombs or bullets and it does not stop US/NATO sanctions siege.
Obviously there are white Russians and non-white Russians. But has their skin color has protected people of Donetsk Mariupol or Kherson from nazi bombs?
Yet the head of US terrorist military and general of AFRICOM are black American men and the CIA hires “latina mothers”. Such organizations are responsible for mass murders of black Africans on weekly by NATO proxy death squads. I have even seen leftists truly express wrong beliefs that Palestinians are actually “oppressing” black “israelis”.
I find it interesting that this chart has so little to say about global international imperialist depopulation extermination campaigns.
This tells us that imperialism is not based on race but something else. And perhaps that the exporting of NGO-ized discourses out of their first world contexts is not helpful.
White Americans and Europeans are consistently some of the most insufferable humans I have ever encountered and that is how I understand the relevance of this meme. We know that the great satan and other arrogant powers France, UK, etc continues to exploit and enslave and kill nationally oppressed people for hundreds of years inside their own borders and this is the context of chart. One day soon they too will be free of satans clutches insha’allah.
i think the implication regarding “Don’t blame me, I never owned slaves!” comes moreso from the fact that descendants of white people not wanting to address that their ancestors had owned slaves and to make up for it.
Just because your ancestors had owned slaves but you don’t doesn’t automatically absolve you from the fact that your ancestors had caused damage to the ethnicity that white people took slaves from; and that you should address it, admit it was horrific of them to do so and to make up for it.
now, idk if your ancestors had owned slaves; but if they didn’t, good on them - this doesn’t apply to you specifically. but it would still be cool if you tried to make lives better for marginalized people.
Just because your ancestors had owned slaves but you don’t doesn’t automatically absolve you from the fact that your ancestors had caused damage to the ethnicity that white people took slaves from; and that you should address it, admit it was horrific of them to do so and to make up for it.
So I’m damned by the virtue of being born white? I’m not even Anglo. Pretty sure none of my ancestors ever had anything to do with anyone of African descent. Unless you count the ones that lived in USSR and through their labour helped African nations. But I’ve re-read your comment twice, and I guess it doesn’t matter?
I don’t see it as a “sin” per se. As a white person living in a society dominated by systemic white supremacy, it is your responsibility to undermine that white supremecy and do what you can to make things easier for POC.
Asking white people to feel guilty is liberal idealism. I think it is important to acknowlege the history, then act in what ways one can to fight white supremecy.
If one feels alienated that there is more representation by people that are not white in media, imagine how all media of non white people feel in that similar vein, but it is only straight white male protaganists.
If you look even deeper into whiteness you’ll see that there is litte there in terms of culture except white supremecy. If you want cultural ties perhaps one should culturally bond over something other than treating people like shit. The less you care about your whiteness the less people complaining about white people will bother you. There is no reason for any part of your ego to take pride in how white you are. If you find yourself clinging to that, find something else wonderful about you to take pride in, so you can let go of that toxic pride.
He’s not in the United States. How is his society built on “white supremacy”? How is anything you said relevant to anyone outside the US or anglosphere?
His family had nothing to do with owning slaves because their society never interacted with the slave trade in any way. In fact, there’s a strong chance that his white ancestors were literally slaves themselves in the Russian Empire. I know mine were.
Also where does he have “toxic pride”???
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He asked what a certain, little known thing on the picture was since it is an incredibly niche thing that is virtually unknown outside the US. After he received an answer, everyone, including you, dogpiled on him like he was some random chud who was defending his families history and their right to slavery. Yes, he did get defensive with pretty poor choices of words, but it was probably overwhelming to get blamed for a lot of things that are completely irrelevant to himself and his family history.
He was just confused, then stated the basic fact of “Oh, my family didn’t own slaves”. Which, granted, is a very common conservative talking point; but in this situation it is funnily enough correct and I believe that he meant that earnestly and innocently. You can’t expect a person outside of the US to know about every modicum of American culture and know how to work around it.
Hyper vigilance is necessary, but it might be best to confirm suspicions first before going on the attack. That’ll just weird people out and alienate those who agree with you. Especially if you know little about the person and that person has been here for years without issue.
If he’s Russian he can be proud of being Russian. They have a cool history and culture in their own right that can be celebrated without undermining other people. Why cling to being white when you can be Russian?
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The person you’re responding to is not a Usonian, and their people have historically been victims of euro-amerikkkan aggression. Please be respectful to others here (rule 3) or we won’t hesitate to issue temp bans.
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My understanding was that user Shrike is a Russian user living in the Russian Federation which is why I responded at all. If they are Russian-American or Russian-“israeli” then that’s a different story entirely.
Edit: I did not downvote you. See below.
I understand your pain on this and don’t wish to downplay it. It is vile what the eurocolonizers have done to you and continue to do.
Regardless of Shrike’s circumstances as an individual. The way I see it, with exception to the comprador and collaborator classes in their respective nations, Africans (in Africa, the Caribbean, and America), Chinese, Russians, Arabs, Asians, Latin Americans and the rest of whole global south have shared class interest. That interest is in seeing through the annihilation of the US empire.
And it is in imperialist interest to cause schisms and hide that which is why they spread propaganda about “Chinese imperialism” and “Russian imperialism” and “Iranian imperialism” etc. They say “look how this nation treats women, or gay people, or such and such ethnic minority we must denounce them” when it is in fact imperialism that has inflamed those contradictions to begin with. They do not want to see nations align. They want to keep everyone fractured. All this to say that conflating white Americans with colonized people outside of America/EU who are under attack by imperialism is probably not helpful for anyone except the imperialism.
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“Celebration of Columbus Day” lmao 100 years ago Italians (who are the only reason we celebrate that rapist) weren’t even considered white themselves.
TIL making jokes about white people makes you a white supremacist
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??????It says racist jokes makes you a white supremacist. So if you make jokes about white people, no matter your race, I guess you’re a white supremacist.
complains about “racist jokes” about white people
