5 ms·

> "It's okay to be white" campaign. Are you saying this is reasonable? EDIT: Here come the downvotes. You can't prove I meant X... oh the irony.

ebg13 6y ago
The problem with this retort is that of course it is okay to be white, and the details of such a campaign are what make all the difference. But the person who isn't already with you on this will just ask "how is it not ok to be white?"
- 0xff00ffee 6y ago
  Yeah. it takes like 20 minutes to communicate the context and how this isn't so innocuous as it looks. I've had to explain this to my aging boomer parents, and they still don't buy it. It is truly a subversive phrase because it takes control of the argument from a place that requires, IMO, a lot of basics to be explained and/or challenged... which most people don't want to sit through. It's like a self-generating mine field of arguments.
  - Kaiyou 6y ago
    I don't think you can construct "It's okay to be white" as something wrong, because it's just inherently correct. It worries me, that you even try to find something wrong the the slogan.
    - 0xff00ffee 6y ago
      You have a dozen comments in this thread asking "Why is it racist" questions about obviously racist things. You're close to being reported.
    - stale2002 6y ago
      > It worries me, that you even try to find something wrong the the slogan It depends on the context of the comment. This phasing in particular was literally created by 4chan people, for the purpose of demonstrating some sort of anti SJW agenda.
    - a1369209993 6y ago
      They're interpreting it as a motte [ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric... ] for the bailey "It's not okay to not be white." and enthusiaticly pursuing the usual argument. > This means people who know both terms are at constant risk of arguments of the form "You're weak-manning me!" "No, you're motte-and-baileying me!".
  - miscPerson 6y ago
    I’m curious, what is that context? ...why is it “problematic” for an underrepresented group (such as in Harvard admissions), to rally around a claim it’s okay to be them? Have you ever considered that if you need to do a lot of explaining, and not even your own parents follow your logic, but the other person can persuasively summarize their argument... you might just be wrong? A question for people downvoting: Do you think I’m wrong or do you just not like what I’m saying? It seems easy to correct me about the Harvard admissions point, if I’m just factually mistaken.
    - ebg13 6y ago
      > Do you think I’m wrong or do you just not like what I’m saying? Por qué no los dos?
Kaiyou 6y ago
I think it is very reasonable to think, that it is okay to be white. Don't you?
i_am_nomad 6y ago
I perceive the "It's okay to be white" slogan as a very moderate and constructive reaction to the propagation and even normalization of anti-white messages and memes. And I specifically mean anti-white as an ethnic hatred, not as part of an equality and justice argument. For example, see the "Karen" meme, which besides its horrible sexism, specifically focuses on white women. Middle-class white people have increasingly witnessed a media and a left-wing political coalition that can vilify them with impunity for gain, be that entertainment value or the easy political cohesion that hate can generate. So, I'd argue it's important to make room for and accept the very tepid and nonthreatening "It's okay to be white." Because if we don't, what follows that will be less palatable.
- ebg13 6y ago
  > For example, see the "Karen" meme, which besides its horrible sexism, specifically focuses on white women. "Angry black woman" was a trope looooooooooong before Karen hit your screen. If you only care about meanness when it's targeted at white people, then this is not a meme problem; this is a you problem.
  - i_am_nomad 6y ago
    So we agree that mean and racist tropes are bad and should be shunned. I’m glad to hear it.
cousin_it 6y ago
I still don't understand, why didn't the left simply reply "yes it is" and resist the urge to hedge/caveat/etc? It seems it would've been tactically and strategically best. Judging from the people I see online who were pushed right by the left's response to this.
- monocasa 6y ago
  It's sort of like the "All Lives Matter" thing. The "it's ok to be white" argument structure is designed so that either accepting it or denying it furthers the goals of white nationalists, because either has to be done in an extremely nuanced way that can't really happen in the context of a protest sign or a meme.
  - cousin_it 6y ago
    I think accepting would've worked. Implying that some demographic is bad makes the movement lose support, the only people who benefit from it are people trying to gain status within the movement. (Edit: that answers my question above.)
    - monocasa 6y ago
      The whole structure of the "it's ok to be white" thing is to (it it were accepted by the left) to start delegitimizing the attempts to build alternate power structures that aren't available to non white people. For instance, the NBER found that literally changing a name from Tyrone to Chad on a resume increased job callbacks 3x, and stuff like affirmative action is designed to address exactly those systemic inequities. Normalizing "it's ok to be white" was designed to attack those head on if it was accepted. You don't see that half, because the left didn't take that side. There was no winning either way.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - notahacker 6y ago
mos_basik 6y ago
Man, that blogpost [0] really did a number on me. Warning, navel-gazing ahead. I have a browser extension [1] that lets me set custom tags on HN users. I'm not unconflicted about using it, since I have some ideological hangups that tell me to let people's words speak for themselves and to not let someone's history muddy the waters of a discussion in the present. That being said, HN isn't anonymous and it's a comparatively small community and I decided I might as well try keeping track (to some extent) of who's saying what here because it's practicable and there are other places I can experience death-of-the-author just fine. Besides, it reminds me that jacquesm sorted two metric tons of lego using legos and machine learning that one time, so now that always makes me smile when I see him comment. So here I am, looking at your comment and trying to figure out what it tells me about you as a commenter - what I would want to remember about you if I saw you again. It needs to be fairly terse, to fit. The first idea that arrives is "It's not reasonable to be white." I dismiss this immediately, because it's the most cynical and least-founded take on your comment (though darkly funny to me). The second idea is "The 'It's ok to be white' campaign is not reasonable." I turn this over in my mind a few times and even start typing it out. But while I'm typing, I re-read your edit and pause. Then I realize - I'm doing exactly what that blogpost described. "What did 0xff00ffee mean here?" What if all you meant to do is ask is the literal question "Are you saying that the 'It's ok to be white' campaign is reasonable?" And it's hard for me to even come up with a way of phrasing this in such a way that it sufficiently emphasises the literal, un-euphemistic, un-implicating character that I'm trying describe. Then I pause again and realize that I've fallen down a semantic rabbithole and there's a snowball's chance in hell that you meant your comment in the third way. And by this time I've read your next comment [2] and am aware that you're aware of the ambiguous, scissor statement nature of your original comment and the amount of context that must be conveyed in order to disambiguate it. This humanises you. Instead of a snarky internet signaller, you become a real person, with parents whose views you care about and who's already expended effort trying to convey the that large context to people without setting off the self-generating minefield that you know exists. The snappy comment wasn't because you haven't stopped caring about changing people's minds; you're just tired of arguing with apparently superficial people who aren't prepared to take context into account (and you were responding to someone who may be a particularly strong example of such). So I guess you're "a real human bean". 0: https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication 1: https://github.com/etcet/HNES https://github.com/etcet/HNES 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924252

ebg13 6y ago

The problem with this retort is that of course it is okay to be white, and the details of such a campaign are what make all the difference. But the person who isn't already with you on this will just ask "how is it not ok to be white?"

0xff00ffee 6y ago
Yeah. it takes like 20 minutes to communicate the context and how this isn't so innocuous as it looks. I've had to explain this to my aging boomer parents, and they still don't buy it. It is truly a subversive phrase because it takes control of the argument from a place that requires, IMO, a lot of basics to be explained and/or challenged... which most people don't want to sit through. It's like a self-generating mine field of arguments.
- Kaiyou 6y ago
  I don't think you can construct "It's okay to be white" as something wrong, because it's just inherently correct. It worries me, that you even try to find something wrong the the slogan.
  - 0xff00ffee 6y ago
    You have a dozen comments in this thread asking "Why is it racist" questions about obviously racist things. You're close to being reported.
  - stale2002 6y ago
    > It worries me, that you even try to find something wrong the the slogan It depends on the context of the comment. This phasing in particular was literally created by 4chan people, for the purpose of demonstrating some sort of anti SJW agenda.
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    They're interpreting it as a motte [ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric... ] for the bailey "It's not okay to not be white." and enthusiaticly pursuing the usual argument. > This means people who know both terms are at constant risk of arguments of the form "You're weak-manning me!" "No, you're motte-and-baileying me!".
- miscPerson 6y ago
  I’m curious, what is that context? ...why is it “problematic” for an underrepresented group (such as in Harvard admissions), to rally around a claim it’s okay to be them? Have you ever considered that if you need to do a lot of explaining, and not even your own parents follow your logic, but the other person can persuasively summarize their argument... you might just be wrong? A question for people downvoting: Do you think I’m wrong or do you just not like what I’m saying? It seems easy to correct me about the Harvard admissions point, if I’m just factually mistaken.
  - ebg13 6y ago
    > Do you think I’m wrong or do you just not like what I’m saying? Por qué no los dos?

Kaiyou 6y ago

I think it is very reasonable to think, that it is okay to be white. Don't you?

i_am_nomad 6y ago

I perceive the "It's okay to be white" slogan as a very moderate and constructive reaction to the propagation and even normalization of anti-white messages and memes. And I specifically mean anti-white as an ethnic hatred, not as part of an equality and justice argument. For example, see the "Karen" meme, which besides its horrible sexism, specifically focuses on white women. Middle-class white people have increasingly witnessed a media and a left-wing political coalition that can vilify them with impunity for gain, be that entertainment value or the easy political cohesion that hate can generate. So, I'd argue it's important to make room for and accept the very tepid and nonthreatening "It's okay to be white." Because if we don't, what follows that will be less palatable.

ebg13 6y ago
> For example, see the "Karen" meme, which besides its horrible sexism, specifically focuses on white women. "Angry black woman" was a trope looooooooooong before Karen hit your screen. If you only care about meanness when it's targeted at white people, then this is not a meme problem; this is a you problem.
- i_am_nomad 6y ago
  So we agree that mean and racist tropes are bad and should be shunned. I’m glad to hear it.

cousin_it 6y ago

I still don't understand, why didn't the left simply reply "yes it is" and resist the urge to hedge/caveat/etc? It seems it would've been tactically and strategically best. Judging from the people I see online who were pushed right by the left's response to this.

monocasa 6y ago
It's sort of like the "All Lives Matter" thing. The "it's ok to be white" argument structure is designed so that either accepting it or denying it furthers the goals of white nationalists, because either has to be done in an extremely nuanced way that can't really happen in the context of a protest sign or a meme.
- cousin_it 6y ago
  I think accepting would've worked. Implying that some demographic is bad makes the movement lose support, the only people who benefit from it are people trying to gain status within the movement. (Edit: that answers my question above.)
  - monocasa 6y ago
    The whole structure of the "it's ok to be white" thing is to (it it were accepted by the left) to start delegitimizing the attempts to build alternate power structures that aren't available to non white people. For instance, the NBER found that literally changing a name from Tyrone to Chad on a resume increased job callbacks 3x, and stuff like affirmative action is designed to address exactly those systemic inequities. Normalizing "it's ok to be white" was designed to attack those head on if it was accepted. You don't see that half, because the left didn't take that side. There was no winning either way.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - notahacker 6y ago

mos_basik 6y ago

Man, that blogpost [0] really did a number on me. Warning, navel-gazing ahead. I have a browser extension [1] that lets me set custom tags on HN users. I'm not unconflicted about using it, since I have some ideological hangups that tell me to let people's words speak for themselves and to not let someone's history muddy the waters of a discussion in the present. That being said, HN isn't anonymous and it's a comparatively small community and I decided I might as well try keeping track (to some extent) of who's saying what here because it's practicable and there are other places I can experience death-of-the-author just fine. Besides, it reminds me that jacquesm sorted two metric tons of lego using legos and machine learning that one time, so now that always makes me smile when I see him comment. So here I am, looking at your comment and trying to figure out what it tells me about you as a commenter - what I would want to remember about you if I saw you again. It needs to be fairly terse, to fit. The first idea that arrives is "It's not reasonable to be white." I dismiss this immediately, because it's the most cynical and least-founded take on your comment (though darkly funny to me). The second idea is "The 'It's ok to be white' campaign is not reasonable." I turn this over in my mind a few times and even start typing it out. But while I'm typing, I re-read your edit and pause. Then I realize - I'm doing exactly what that blogpost described. "What did 0xff00ffee mean here?" What if all you meant to do is ask is the literal question "Are you saying that the 'It's ok to be white' campaign is reasonable?" And it's hard for me to even come up with a way of phrasing this in such a way that it sufficiently emphasises the literal, un-euphemistic, un-implicating character that I'm trying describe. Then I pause again and realize that I've fallen down a semantic rabbithole and there's a snowball's chance in hell that you meant your comment in the third way. And by this time I've read your next comment [2] and am aware that you're aware of the ambiguous, scissor statement nature of your original comment and the amount of context that must be conveyed in order to disambiguate it. This humanises you. Instead of a snarky internet signaller, you become a real person, with parents whose views you care about and who's already expended effort trying to convey the that large context to people without setting off the self-generating minefield that you know exists. The snappy comment wasn't because you haven't stopped caring about changing people's minds; you're just tired of arguing with apparently superficial people who aren't prepared to take context into account (and you were responding to someone who may be a particularly strong example of such). So I guess you're "a real human bean". 0: https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication 1: https://github.com/etcet/HNES https://github.com/etcet/HNES 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924252