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Hmm, has anyone here met someone who espoused the argument "White people are inherently morally guilty due to racism"? I'm getting the sense that it might be mo

Hmm, has anyone here met someone who espoused the argument "White people are inherently morally guilty due to racism"? I'm getting the sense that it might be mostly a strawman argument. Those I've actually talked to about anti-racism seem to fall into two camps; either white people (a very hard to define group of people, but mostly you know what I mean) aren't all racist, but they have benefited from past racism, so they hold extra power unjustly (though not due to a fault of their own); or they are "racist", but where "racist" is defined as prejudice + power, and we understand that many people are prejudiced due to societal and cultural messaging, so being "racist" doesn't mean you're individually guilty.

nukemaster 4y ago
My employer brought in a Harvard University professor to preach at us for ~45 minutes about how the US is awful and White people should feel guilty just for living their lives. I have absolutely met these people and have to deal with them at work.
- philosopher1234 4y ago
  What specifically did they say? Your description sounds heavily interpreted.
zmgsabst 4y ago
I have — eg, people who accuse me of having “White Privilege”, even though I grew up in Rainier Beach, Seattle and was one of ten White kids in a school of 600, where not only did I suffer from the same issues of gang culture and poverty, I had the “privilege” of being robbed and beaten for my race by the dominant ethnicity in the neighborhood. The problem with “anti-racism” is that it’s racism: engaging in institutional discrimination against me, based on that statistical truth about a race I happen to belong to. The whole concept of “anti-racism” is (in practice) rich Whites excusing their privilege by engaging in “cleansing” racism against poor Whites.
- aSanchezStern 4y ago
  Hmm, but saying that you have privilege is not the same thing as saying you've done something wrong or are guilty, right? Even if you were born into an overall advantage, it wouldn't mean you had done anything wrong.
  - macinjosh 4y ago
    It is about liability not guilt. The end goal for a large part of the anti-racist movement are reparations.
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    Saying that due to my skin, regardless of my actual life and heritage, I have some “privilege” for which it’s okay to discriminate against me as an institution is the definition of institutional racism: Racial bias + power. I’m uninterested in your semantic game to justify that racism.
    - aSanchezStern 4y ago
      I think if you could be a little more specific about what institutions think it's okay to discriminate against you in particular, it would really help.
      - emerged 4y ago
        I think we are starting to get sick of even playing these gaslighting games. There isn’t a person alive who doesn’t know this whole game is bullshit and you’re trying to reinvent language to justify racism against whites, sexism against men, and so on for every category of persons who made it on the fair game hit list. You’re not communicating with authenticity or decency, it’s just rhetoric all the way down. It’s at the breaking point where we all know you aren’t a good faith actor.
      - LanceH 4y ago
        Let's say you had a company which only hires 9 people. You decide that your next hire will be of a specific race and gender and not other candidates need apply. Would that be discrimination?
ThatGeoGuy 4y ago
One note to readers who may end up seeing discourse like this online: a (very simplified) critical race theoretic version of this goes as follows: 1. All race is a social (and to some degree, legal) construct. There is more variation in genes / ability / class within a single racial class than there are between racial classes. 2. The "white" race is even a social construct by this definition. 3. Society attributes certain attributes to "whiteness" or "blackness" or "coloured" as a result of its construct. From there you may hear someone say "we should fight against whiteness" or some such, like a game of telephone. Typically the actual intent is to fight against the construct that certain values are "white" vs. other traits being ascribed to "person of colour." In short: the social construct of "whiteness" as an act of supremacy is the problem, not the colour of one's skin. I'm not sure I have ever seriously heard the argument "white people are inherently morally guilty due to racism" but I can see how this starts to blend over time. People taking the above argument and misrepresenting or misunderstanding it could quickly devolve into a game of telephone. It's a sensitive topic so it's important to handle it with precision in our language. But yeah, I'm not sure I've seen any serious "anti-racist" folks actually claim being white is a sin, so much as perpetuating the construct of "whiteness" as some kind of intrinsic value is the real sin. Of course, CRT is a graduate-level field that requires some degree of legal expertise, so you would have to go digging for the steelman version of the argument.

nukemaster 4y ago

My employer brought in a Harvard University professor to preach at us for ~45 minutes about how the US is awful and White people should feel guilty just for living their lives. I have absolutely met these people and have to deal with them at work.

philosopher1234 4y ago
What specifically did they say? Your description sounds heavily interpreted.

zmgsabst 4y ago

I have — eg, people who accuse me of having “White Privilege”, even though I grew up in Rainier Beach, Seattle and was one of ten White kids in a school of 600, where not only did I suffer from the same issues of gang culture and poverty, I had the “privilege” of being robbed and beaten for my race by the dominant ethnicity in the neighborhood. The problem with “anti-racism” is that it’s racism: engaging in institutional discrimination against me, based on that statistical truth about a race I happen to belong to. The whole concept of “anti-racism” is (in practice) rich Whites excusing their privilege by engaging in “cleansing” racism against poor Whites.

aSanchezStern 4y ago
Hmm, but saying that you have privilege is not the same thing as saying you've done something wrong or are guilty, right? Even if you were born into an overall advantage, it wouldn't mean you had done anything wrong.
- macinjosh 4y ago
  It is about liability not guilt. The end goal for a large part of the anti-racist movement are reparations.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  Saying that due to my skin, regardless of my actual life and heritage, I have some “privilege” for which it’s okay to discriminate against me as an institution is the definition of institutional racism: Racial bias + power. I’m uninterested in your semantic game to justify that racism.
  - aSanchezStern 4y ago
    I think if you could be a little more specific about what institutions think it's okay to discriminate against you in particular, it would really help.
    - emerged 4y ago
      I think we are starting to get sick of even playing these gaslighting games. There isn’t a person alive who doesn’t know this whole game is bullshit and you’re trying to reinvent language to justify racism against whites, sexism against men, and so on for every category of persons who made it on the fair game hit list. You’re not communicating with authenticity or decency, it’s just rhetoric all the way down. It’s at the breaking point where we all know you aren’t a good faith actor.
    - LanceH 4y ago
      Let's say you had a company which only hires 9 people. You decide that your next hire will be of a specific race and gender and not other candidates need apply. Would that be discrimination?

ThatGeoGuy 4y ago

One note to readers who may end up seeing discourse like this online: a (very simplified) critical race theoretic version of this goes as follows: 1. All race is a social (and to some degree, legal) construct. There is more variation in genes / ability / class within a single racial class than there are between racial classes. 2. The "white" race is even a social construct by this definition. 3. Society attributes certain attributes to "whiteness" or "blackness" or "coloured" as a result of its construct. From there you may hear someone say "we should fight against whiteness" or some such, like a game of telephone. Typically the actual intent is to fight against the construct that certain values are "white" vs. other traits being ascribed to "person of colour." In short: the social construct of "whiteness" as an act of supremacy is the problem, not the colour of one's skin. I'm not sure I have ever seriously heard the argument "white people are inherently morally guilty due to racism" but I can see how this starts to blend over time. People taking the above argument and misrepresenting or misunderstanding it could quickly devolve into a game of telephone. It's a sensitive topic so it's important to handle it with precision in our language. But yeah, I'm not sure I've seen any serious "anti-racist" folks actually claim being white is a sin, so much as perpetuating the construct of "whiteness" as some kind of intrinsic value is the real sin. Of course, CRT is a graduate-level field that requires some degree of legal expertise, so you would have to go digging for the steelman version of the argument.