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Hmm... I'm a white man who doesn't consider himself half as "woke" as the (I'm certain a bit exaggerated) descriptions of what happens on Twitter and none of th
by codyb 5y ago
Hmm... I'm a white man who doesn't consider himself half as "woke" as the (I'm certain a bit exaggerated) descriptions of what happens on Twitter and none of that feels particularly offensive to me?
"I dropped my black star into a sea of white and it hurt" -> "I see so many beautiful black stars, why don't more of them get this wonderful opportunity?"
"A natural instinct to want the very best for people that look like them" -> Isn't the author displaying this own natural instinct in the very previous excerpt you chose about the sea of white? I'm hard pressed to say I'd find it inconceivable that humans empathize more strongly with people who are closer in appearance to them.
"a much longer and darker legacy where whites have abused black girls and women with impunity" -> I mean, yea... that's definitely back there for sure.
"Perhaps it's time to focus our inquiry on white people who may have complex emotions regarding their changing position in society" - race is a complex issue and maybe we should examine it from a few more angles? Sure, that seems fine?
"White people kill Black people with impunity" -> Chauvin's conviction was almost certainly the exception in cases of police homicide is my understanding, especially when the victim is Black and the police officer is white (or in many other instances of white on Black violence).
I don't get the sense this person's painting all white people with broad strokes really? Maybe just thinking critically about a system which traditionally has undermined certain segments of our population and may finally be in some position to come to grips with that.
In some sense he appears to be saying "Hey lets take a look at why people may be feeling in some manner" and not "Wow, I can't believe people would feel that way, those <insert name calling here>".
It's also possible that it's hard to offend me and I give people the benefit of the doubt a lot.
- tobesure 5y ago>White people kill Black people with impunity >Hey lets take a look at why people may be feeling in some manner >Perhaps it's time to focus our inquiry on white people who may have complex emotions regarding their changing position in society All of these are painting white people with broad strokes. More importantly if you replaced "white" with any other minority it would be socially unacceptable. There's also a problem with the framing of the argument here - any criticism is premptively dismissed with accusations of "complex emotions" which is conflated with "white fragility" and eventually racism. The CRT inspired framing is basically whites as a demographic are wrong, must step back and allow us to force them to collectively atone for the sins of past whites, and anyone who criticisms this forced transfer of power is a racist. The grand irony here is that the entire premise is fundamentally racist and falsely justifies increasingly socially acceptable anti-white sentiment. Either racism is socially acceptable, or it isn't. Normalizing this talk about problematic whiteness is only opening a can of worms, regressing progress toward race blindness, and the backlash will be severe. It's exactly the sort of perceived disenfranchisement that CRT accuses whites of doing, except it's being done intentionally and subversively here - hidden via intellectually dishonest rhetorical technique.