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If we're censoring ideas based on culture then computers, and cars, and planes, should only be allowed to be used by white men.
by nickthemagicman 6y ago
If we're censoring ideas based on culture then computers, and cars, and planes, should only be allowed to be used by white men.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- whydoibother 6y agoWhite isn’t a culture. Also BIPOC have made contributions to all those things. Way to erase them.
- nickthemagicman 6y agoThen Black, Asian, or Latin aren't cultures either? The wright brothers, carl benz, charles babbage, invented flight, automobiles, and computers respectively. All very white dudes.
- jmkb 6y ago"Black" was a label applied to persons of many different cultures in the context of colonialism and slavery. In some places, such as the USA, Black became a cultural identity because it was a legal one; these people and their offspring were governed by a separate set of laws and only legally allowed to raise families with each other. "Asian" is too broad a term to be much use outside of geography. "Latin" is a little more coherent, based on both geography and language. It's still pretty broad though; there are common threads but I don't know anyone who identifies simply as Latin. "White" as a cultural identity is a relatively new invention. Personally I don't see much in the way of a shared culture here. It's problematic for many because in the USA it's been very prominently used by persons and groups who've been opposed to increasing civil rights for non-whites. It's distasteful to others because it represents a flattening of culture -- in my experience, white Americans will generally more readily identify with a particular subset of European heritage and/or with their own state or region. But this may be changing.
- leephillips 6y agoI’m not even sure there is a single “white” culture within the US. I mainly see the idea promoted by people who want to absorb some credit for the accomplishments of others. See some of the other comments here, about computers being invented by “my people”.
- nickthemagicman 6y agoSkin color is s an arbitrary physiological trait. There's no bald people culture. Or innie bellybutton culture.
- whydoibother 6y agoIt's not arbitrary when black folk were specifically enslaved and segregated due to the color of their skin, and therefore developed a culture around that shared experience. If we enslaved people based on their baldness for a few centuries and then kept discriminating against them for another century, I am sure they would have their own culture born from that shared experience.
- nickthemagicman 6y agoSee the hole in your argument is that not all Black people experienced slavery. Southern Black people were the only ones in America that did. Then if you expand that definition globally...the number of total black people experiencing slavery from white people during that time, was actually the very small. It's like saying all White People share a culture because the Irish had a hard time during British or American repression. Your using one definition to support your argument but then saying that definition also doesn't apply to other groups.
- nickthemagicman 6y agoI think using skin color as a cultural identity, instead of an actual culture, is a relatively new invention.
- canoebuilder 6y ago>white isn't a culture FJ Haydn spent the bulk of his working career in Hungary, toward the end of his career he went to France and England and received large adoring audiences, not as some kind of exoticism, but because he was/is a giant of European/white culture. Why would anyone say “white isn't a culture” except to express animosity towards white people? Arch, Debian, Suse, etc. are cultures, but gnu/Linux isn't?
- whydoibother 6y agoYou said it. European culture. PoC have lived in Europe for ages. So, no, you can't say 'European/white', as that erases huge groups of people and is factually wrong.
- DC1350 6y agoThis is like saying it’s factually wrong to call Indian people POC because it erases the existence of White British people in India.
- whydoibother 6y agoNo, it isn't. British in India were colonizers who sought to divide and subjugate the Indian population. The PoC who live in Europe aren't there to colonize it. They are part of the population and therefore the culture.
- DC1350 6y agoSteve Jobs and Justin Trudeau were part of the culture
- whydoibother 6y agoThis makes no sense.
- 6y ago
- red02 6y agoWhite is a more valid concept than POC is.
- DC1350 6y agoAs a WASP man myself, I think you need to put the computer down. Or do you want to pretend that computers weren’t invented by my people?
- whydoibother 6y agoWho cares who invented it? Do you think babbage designed the fabs TSMC uses now?
- nickthemagicman 6y agoSo by your definition, White people can write books about the Black experience because they contributed to it.
- whydoibother 6y agoThat doesn't follow from what I said at all. But you pretty clearly aren't trying to discuss in good faith, so there isn't much point in arguing.