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What do you think my conclusion was? I, a poor white kid, became the scapegoat for a group of poor black kids. I experienced the poor being set against the poor

by archhn 5y ago

What do you think my conclusion was? I, a poor white kid, became the scapegoat for a group of poor black kids. I experienced the poor being set against the poor with the racial rhetoric of my childhood. I feel like it has become much, much, worse today. If you think my conclusion is that there's no inequality, and that we just need to all hold hands and get along...well, maybe that's poor writing on my part, but this was not the conclusion I was trying to draw!

rendall 5y ago
These people will never validate your story. I speak from experience, here. I was a full-blown SJW for decades, decades ago. That fellow, my former self, may well have rioted in Portland this past summer. I have had a longer, more intimate association with this mindset and philosophy than most. First, it's not a principled outlook. It explicitly rejects principle and rationality. I see you debating these people as if somehow you can make them see reason. That's not going to happen, by design. Second, it is a motte and bailey doctrine. This is why "all white people are racist" has two meanings. One is perhaps defensible*, but it's the other that gets deployed in practice, as you have learned. Third, it relies on redefining the terms of discourse. One purpose is to coopt the associative power of certain words, eg "racism", "white supremacy", but to use them in unexpected ways that divert criticism. White supremacy is no longer, for example, merely the explicit belief that white people are superior, but is redefined as a pervasive global preference for European culture, particularly Enlightenment philosophy. If you sincerely advocate for free speech for example, you might be engaging in white supremacy according to this new definition. By design, substantive criticism of the ideology cannot be unpacked within the tenets of the ideology, which is to say, one cannot substantively criticize the ideology without using tools of discourse that it has itself proscribed as oppressive. Thus the rejection of statistics, data, logic, rationality. It is a dangerous ideology that perpetuates the exact imperialist cultural expansionism it purports to remedy. It was developed by actually privileged white** people - meaning, academics of hereditary wealth earned from colonialism - who had the prestige and platform to diffuse their personal guilt for their actual unearned privilege onto all white*** people everywhere, regardless of circumstance. Thus, ironically, the virulence of the doctrine itself is an example of privileged American cultural dominance. It is a doctrine that projects its proponents' own xenophobia and bigotry onto everyone, as in, "I cannot imagine not despising Black people, therefore everyone who looks like me, in their hearts, is racist" = Everyone is racist and to deny it is racism So, no, your genuine, authentic, lived experience will never be validated nor even believed by anyone who has been indoctrinated. I'm sorry to tell you this. To pile on the bad news, it will be poor white people who will bear the brunt of the coming reckoning, and not the privileged assholes who propagate these nutty ideas, unfortunately. The good news is you do get to shed your shitty neighborhood like dandruff. Find the good people. Also, you will have a comfort and ease with Black people that these people lecturing you here could only dream of. That's good news, too. * "all white people benefit from the system" is defensible only if you squint and accept privileged white people's personal, local, provincial reality as the universal, global truth. Ironic, doing that, yeah? ** white here means descendents of the Europeans who primarily immigrated to the US - English, Irish, German, Scandinavian - and more specifically, those who descended from wealthy families. *** white here means pale people of any nationality, heritage, class or circumstance whatsoever, across the globe, as determined solely by scarce melanin
- bilirubin 5y ago
  "lived experience" god you do sound like an SJW cuck Funny that you talk about statistics, data, logic, when there's heaps of empirical data about racist outcomes in American society. Also, a lot of modern articulations of this discourse were started not by "privileged white people" as you say, but Black people (#MeToo by Tarana Burke, intersectionality by Kimberle Crenshaw, Critical Race Theory by Derrick Albert Bell Jr, 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones), go off with your false narrative king
- archhn 5y ago
  Thanks for your insightful comment. Too bad HN keeps letting this post be flagged. It seems like we will never be able to have this conversation openly.
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by archhn 5y ago

rendall 5y ago

These people will never validate your story. I speak from experience, here. I was a full-blown SJW for decades, decades ago. That fellow, my former self, may well have rioted in Portland this past summer. I have had a longer, more intimate association with this mindset and philosophy than most. First, it's not a principled outlook. It explicitly rejects principle and rationality. I see you debating these people as if somehow you can make them see reason. That's not going to happen, by design. Second, it is a motte and bailey doctrine. This is why "all white people are racist" has two meanings. One is perhaps defensible*, but it's the other that gets deployed in practice, as you have learned. Third, it relies on redefining the terms of discourse. One purpose is to coopt the associative power of certain words, eg "racism", "white supremacy", but to use them in unexpected ways that divert criticism. White supremacy is no longer, for example, merely the explicit belief that white people are superior, but is redefined as a pervasive global preference for European culture, particularly Enlightenment philosophy. If you sincerely advocate for free speech for example, you might be engaging in white supremacy according to this new definition. By design, substantive criticism of the ideology cannot be unpacked within the tenets of the ideology, which is to say, one cannot substantively criticize the ideology without using tools of discourse that it has itself proscribed as oppressive. Thus the rejection of statistics, data, logic, rationality. It is a dangerous ideology that perpetuates the exact imperialist cultural expansionism it purports to remedy. It was developed by actually privileged white** people - meaning, academics of hereditary wealth earned from colonialism - who had the prestige and platform to diffuse their personal guilt for their actual unearned privilege onto all white*** people everywhere, regardless of circumstance. Thus, ironically, the virulence of the doctrine itself is an example of privileged American cultural dominance. It is a doctrine that projects its proponents' own xenophobia and bigotry onto everyone, as in, "I cannot imagine not despising Black people, therefore everyone who looks like me, in their hearts, is racist" = Everyone is racist and to deny it is racism So, no, your genuine, authentic, lived experience will never be validated nor even believed by anyone who has been indoctrinated. I'm sorry to tell you this. To pile on the bad news, it will be poor white people who will bear the brunt of the coming reckoning, and not the privileged assholes who propagate these nutty ideas, unfortunately. The good news is you do get to shed your shitty neighborhood like dandruff. Find the good people. Also, you will have a comfort and ease with Black people that these people lecturing you here could only dream of. That's good news, too. * "all white people benefit from the system" is defensible only if you squint and accept privileged white people's personal, local, provincial reality as the universal, global truth. Ironic, doing that, yeah? ** white here means descendents of the Europeans who primarily immigrated to the US - English, Irish, German, Scandinavian - and more specifically, those who descended from wealthy families. *** white here means pale people of any nationality, heritage, class or circumstance whatsoever, across the globe, as determined solely by scarce melanin

bilirubin 5y ago
"lived experience" god you do sound like an SJW cuck Funny that you talk about statistics, data, logic, when there's heaps of empirical data about racist outcomes in American society. Also, a lot of modern articulations of this discourse were started not by "privileged white people" as you say, but Black people (#MeToo by Tarana Burke, intersectionality by Kimberle Crenshaw, Critical Race Theory by Derrick Albert Bell Jr, 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones), go off with your false narrative king
archhn 5y ago
Thanks for your insightful comment. Too bad HN keeps letting this post be flagged. It seems like we will never be able to have this conversation openly.

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