3 ms·

Why are you equating a human being with a "history" because of their skin color? And see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26364968 https://news.ycombinator

Why are you equating a human being with a "history" because of their skin color? And see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26364968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26364968.

onethought 6y ago
Am I? Answer my above questions. That history explains the present quite well. How did the current set of elites get their elite status? Sheer luck and determination? Your other reply... Needs some citations, cause it’s really quite false.
- alentist 6y ago
  > Am I? Yes, you are. > Your other reply... Needs some citations Done.
  - onethought 6y ago
    Still no citations.
    - alentist 6y ago
      I'll help you out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26370780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26370780
- elefanten 6y ago
  Some responses to the logic you followed in this thread. 1. There's no good reason to assign the sweeping and inherently-fuzzy category "white" to mean "prejudice + institutional power". Even given your (oversimplified) observation about colonialism, that's neither a necessary nor sufficient reason to apply a label that will be inherently over-generalized. It is simple historic fact that many "white" (per current definition) peoples had no role in colonialism and enjoyed no (local or global) institutional power. If this claim is mystifying to you, you may need to learn about white people outside of America or western Europe. So, the proposed semantic shortcut is inherently unjust to a portion of humanity. To the degree that this (arbitrary aesthetic) choice does harm... it is, in itself, racist. 2. To make the argument above, does not require "pretending colonialism wasn't a thing." Those are separate debates. 3. But even setting aside #1 & #2, it is, of course, far more debatable how current elites got their status. What frame are you using? The US? "The west"? The world? I would say that even the presumption that "current elites" can reasonably be described as "white" would be quite wrong in all three cases (escalatingly so, in order). But the notion that dominance was wholly established by extractive colonialism is something that could only pass for true in a deeply incestuous echo chamber. By the time colonialism even started there were already wide gaps in technological and economic development of various societies, and given how development has unfolded, it's likely the gaps we see today would exist even without colonial interference. Differential development since colonialism ended also attests to the fact that colonialism and hard force are only factors in development, not determinants. Finally, all this ignores the broad strokes of human history: across all geographies and times, human societies have discriminated against and dominated each other. Maybe occasionally, maybe perpetually, but it's basically always there. At a certain point, it became possible to do so at longer distances, at larger scale and across larger cultural experience gaps -- but human awfulness didn't start 15th century. So again, making motivated aesthetic choices about naming descriptions of social systems and types of interpersonal behavior after an identity group that does not actually map to them is aptly described as racist. Not under the new, stipulative definition, which runs afoul of all these issues, but under the older and more useful definition that could be summarized as "harming or hating people on the basis of their race/skin color".
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > There's no good reason to assign the sweeping and inherently-fuzzy category "white" to mean "prejudice + institutional power". “White” is the name established by those with institutional power for the group their prejudice favored, other racial identifiers were ascribed to (and, through shared experience of racism from the White group, became identities for) various groups that their prejudice operated against, whereas White became an identity for those whose shared experience was being the beneficiaries of that institutionalized prejudice.
    - elefanten 6y ago
      Yes for various periods of time there were various efforts to construct such an identity, to serve various ends of the people doing so. This kind of process has taken place all over the world, throughout history, in various societies as well. In the case of "white", "black", "brown" and so on, those definitions also changed considerably over time. Then, at some point, the efforts to intentionally draw hard lines around petered off and lost support. Those labels are still used because they do have some kind of descriptive capacity, even if solely because of momentum from old habits. Crucially: none of this is responsive to my point. There's no good reason, today, to assign "white" to mean "prejudice + institutional power" in a general sense. It's not necessary to do so. Doing so is not sufficient to address and unpack all the dimensions of prejudice and institutional inequality as they take place today. But doing so does incur all the imprecision-based racist harms that I described in my post.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Yes for various periods of time there were various efforts to construct such an identity, to serve various ends of the people doing so. No, I'm not talking about some vague various-periods-of-time generality. Every concrete identity current in American society, including “White”, is a product of White supremacy, and currently reflects identification with shared experience under White supremacy, which, for those the White, is being on the side of prejudiced institutional power. Whiteness as a racial identity (not as an ancestry, not as description of skin color, but as a racial identity) is, entirely, about prej5 plus institutional power.

Why are you equating a human being with a "history" because of their skin color? And see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26364968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26364968.

onethought 6y ago

Am I? Answer my above questions. That history explains the present quite well. How did the current set of elites get their elite status? Sheer luck and determination? Your other reply... Needs some citations, cause it’s really quite false.

alentist 6y ago
> Am I? Yes, you are. > Your other reply... Needs some citations Done.
- onethought 6y ago
  Still no citations.
  - alentist 6y ago
    I'll help you out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26370780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26370780
elefanten 6y ago
Some responses to the logic you followed in this thread. 1. There's no good reason to assign the sweeping and inherently-fuzzy category "white" to mean "prejudice + institutional power". Even given your (oversimplified) observation about colonialism, that's neither a necessary nor sufficient reason to apply a label that will be inherently over-generalized. It is simple historic fact that many "white" (per current definition) peoples had no role in colonialism and enjoyed no (local or global) institutional power. If this claim is mystifying to you, you may need to learn about white people outside of America or western Europe. So, the proposed semantic shortcut is inherently unjust to a portion of humanity. To the degree that this (arbitrary aesthetic) choice does harm... it is, in itself, racist. 2. To make the argument above, does not require "pretending colonialism wasn't a thing." Those are separate debates. 3. But even setting aside #1 & #2, it is, of course, far more debatable how current elites got their status. What frame are you using? The US? "The west"? The world? I would say that even the presumption that "current elites" can reasonably be described as "white" would be quite wrong in all three cases (escalatingly so, in order). But the notion that dominance was wholly established by extractive colonialism is something that could only pass for true in a deeply incestuous echo chamber. By the time colonialism even started there were already wide gaps in technological and economic development of various societies, and given how development has unfolded, it's likely the gaps we see today would exist even without colonial interference. Differential development since colonialism ended also attests to the fact that colonialism and hard force are only factors in development, not determinants. Finally, all this ignores the broad strokes of human history: across all geographies and times, human societies have discriminated against and dominated each other. Maybe occasionally, maybe perpetually, but it's basically always there. At a certain point, it became possible to do so at longer distances, at larger scale and across larger cultural experience gaps -- but human awfulness didn't start 15th century. So again, making motivated aesthetic choices about naming descriptions of social systems and types of interpersonal behavior after an identity group that does not actually map to them is aptly described as racist. Not under the new, stipulative definition, which runs afoul of all these issues, but under the older and more useful definition that could be summarized as "harming or hating people on the basis of their race/skin color".
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > There's no good reason to assign the sweeping and inherently-fuzzy category "white" to mean "prejudice + institutional power". “White” is the name established by those with institutional power for the group their prejudice favored, other racial identifiers were ascribed to (and, through shared experience of racism from the White group, became identities for) various groups that their prejudice operated against, whereas White became an identity for those whose shared experience was being the beneficiaries of that institutionalized prejudice.
  - elefanten 6y ago
    Yes for various periods of time there were various efforts to construct such an identity, to serve various ends of the people doing so. This kind of process has taken place all over the world, throughout history, in various societies as well. In the case of "white", "black", "brown" and so on, those definitions also changed considerably over time. Then, at some point, the efforts to intentionally draw hard lines around petered off and lost support. Those labels are still used because they do have some kind of descriptive capacity, even if solely because of momentum from old habits. Crucially: none of this is responsive to my point. There's no good reason, today, to assign "white" to mean "prejudice + institutional power" in a general sense. It's not necessary to do so. Doing so is not sufficient to address and unpack all the dimensions of prejudice and institutional inequality as they take place today. But doing so does incur all the imprecision-based racist harms that I described in my post.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Yes for various periods of time there were various efforts to construct such an identity, to serve various ends of the people doing so. No, I'm not talking about some vague various-periods-of-time generality. Every concrete identity current in American society, including “White”, is a product of White supremacy, and currently reflects identification with shared experience under White supremacy, which, for those the White, is being on the side of prejudiced institutional power. Whiteness as a racial identity (not as an ancestry, not as description of skin color, but as a racial identity) is, entirely, about prej5 plus institutional power.