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I'm really not qualified to say much on the subject of race in any other countries, but I think coming at that professor from an external perspective misses con

I'm really not qualified to say much on the subject of race in any other countries, but I think coming at that professor from an external perspective misses context. Pushing the audience to recognize that the system is classifying them as "white" is true for a US audience. The fact that it seems like he's pushing whiteness isn't because he's wrong, it's because he's not talking to you. Unfortunately, I don't think it's especially surprising that the US's cultural export also includes our deeply unhealthy relationship to race.

skissane 4y ago
> Unfortunately, I don't think it's especially surprising that the US's cultural export also includes our deeply unhealthy relationship to race. I still think that professor LeVine is busy pushing that "deeply unhealthy relationship to race". An example of how he does it, is by promoting Noel Ignatiev's very dubious "How the Irish Became White" theory. Both Ignatiev, and LeVine, ignore that most anti-Irish sentiment was actually anti-Catholic – so long as the majority of Irish immigrants to the US were Protestants, anti-Irish sentiments were almost unheard of, and they only began when Catholics came to outnumber Protestants among immigrants from Ireland to the US. At which point Protestant Irish Americans rebranded themselves as "Scots-Irish" to make clear that they weren't Catholics, hence escaping that prejudice and discrimination. Ignatiev is taking something which was fundamentally about religion, and misrepresenting it as something about race – which is one of the ways in which people like Ignatiev and LeVine keep on pushing that "deeply unhealthy relationship to race". In fact, I'd even say that their refusal to acknowledge the reality of anti-Catholicism, and their denial of it in an attempt to transform it into a form of "racism", is a sign of their own anti-Catholic prejudice. For a scholarly criticism of Ignatiev's whole "Irish Became White" theory, see Arnesen, E. (2001). Whiteness and the Historians' Imagination. International Labor and Working-Class History, 60, 3-32. doi:10.1017/S0147547901004380 https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/6817279/mod_resource/content/1/1.%20Arneson%20original%20on%20whiteness.pdf https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/6817279/mod_resou...
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  White ethnic groups that are predominantly Catholic being distinguished from "real" whites and being targets of White supremacists is a real historical thing (and not just with the Irish, also true of Italians, and its no small factor historically in why predominantly-white-in-traditional-racial-terms Hispanics have been largely constructed as non-White for quite some time in the US, which has turned out to be more durable than the others.) Race is a mutable social construct that largely exists to rationalize other prejudices, and ethnic and religious prejudices are high on that list; treating race as if it were a real and fundamental thing orthogonal to other concerns is buying into race essentialism. Which is not to say Ignatiev is right, but rather to pretend that the anti-Catholicism he ignores contradicts a connection to racism and the construction of race rather than explains it is...also wrong.
  - skissane 4y ago
    > White ethnic groups that are predominantly Catholic being distinguished from "real" whites and being targets of White supremacists is a real historical thing Anti-Catholicism is a huge part of the history of the UK, Ireland and the British Empire. As such, it has no particular connection with white supremacy – were the Penal Laws "white supremacist"? Was the Ulster Protestant League "white supremacist"? Is the Orange Order "white supremacist"? Outside of the US, anti-Catholicism had no significant association with ideas of "race" or skin colour. Indeed, the whole "Irish weren't white" claim sounds so bizarre from a British or Irish or Australian perspective. All three countries have unpleasant histories of discrimination against Catholics, but nobody ever tried to justify it because "they weren't white". They were discriminated against because of their "popery", because they were viewed as disloyal to the state, bearers of foreign allegiance, practitioners of outdated superstition, etc. And, much of US anti-Catholicism was directly imported from the UK. Which is why trying to view it all through a racial lens – which is a peculiarly American approach – seems so confused. It seems to come from just looking at things from a narrow US-centric perspective which ignores everything that happens in the rest of the world, and even ignores the British historical origins of much that happened in the US as well.
    - 4y ago

skissane 4y ago

> Unfortunately, I don't think it's especially surprising that the US's cultural export also includes our deeply unhealthy relationship to race. I still think that professor LeVine is busy pushing that "deeply unhealthy relationship to race". An example of how he does it, is by promoting Noel Ignatiev's very dubious "How the Irish Became White" theory. Both Ignatiev, and LeVine, ignore that most anti-Irish sentiment was actually anti-Catholic – so long as the majority of Irish immigrants to the US were Protestants, anti-Irish sentiments were almost unheard of, and they only began when Catholics came to outnumber Protestants among immigrants from Ireland to the US. At which point Protestant Irish Americans rebranded themselves as "Scots-Irish" to make clear that they weren't Catholics, hence escaping that prejudice and discrimination. Ignatiev is taking something which was fundamentally about religion, and misrepresenting it as something about race – which is one of the ways in which people like Ignatiev and LeVine keep on pushing that "deeply unhealthy relationship to race". In fact, I'd even say that their refusal to acknowledge the reality of anti-Catholicism, and their denial of it in an attempt to transform it into a form of "racism", is a sign of their own anti-Catholic prejudice. For a scholarly criticism of Ignatiev's whole "Irish Became White" theory, see Arnesen, E. (2001). Whiteness and the Historians' Imagination. International Labor and Working-Class History, 60, 3-32. doi:10.1017/S0147547901004380 https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/6817279/mod_resource/content/1/1.%20Arneson%20original%20on%20whiteness.pdf https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/6817279/mod_resou...

dragonwriter 4y ago
White ethnic groups that are predominantly Catholic being distinguished from "real" whites and being targets of White supremacists is a real historical thing (and not just with the Irish, also true of Italians, and its no small factor historically in why predominantly-white-in-traditional-racial-terms Hispanics have been largely constructed as non-White for quite some time in the US, which has turned out to be more durable than the others.) Race is a mutable social construct that largely exists to rationalize other prejudices, and ethnic and religious prejudices are high on that list; treating race as if it were a real and fundamental thing orthogonal to other concerns is buying into race essentialism. Which is not to say Ignatiev is right, but rather to pretend that the anti-Catholicism he ignores contradicts a connection to racism and the construction of race rather than explains it is...also wrong.
- skissane 4y ago
  > White ethnic groups that are predominantly Catholic being distinguished from "real" whites and being targets of White supremacists is a real historical thing Anti-Catholicism is a huge part of the history of the UK, Ireland and the British Empire. As such, it has no particular connection with white supremacy – were the Penal Laws "white supremacist"? Was the Ulster Protestant League "white supremacist"? Is the Orange Order "white supremacist"? Outside of the US, anti-Catholicism had no significant association with ideas of "race" or skin colour. Indeed, the whole "Irish weren't white" claim sounds so bizarre from a British or Irish or Australian perspective. All three countries have unpleasant histories of discrimination against Catholics, but nobody ever tried to justify it because "they weren't white". They were discriminated against because of their "popery", because they were viewed as disloyal to the state, bearers of foreign allegiance, practitioners of outdated superstition, etc. And, much of US anti-Catholicism was directly imported from the UK. Which is why trying to view it all through a racial lens – which is a peculiarly American approach – seems so confused. It seems to come from just looking at things from a narrow US-centric perspective which ignores everything that happens in the rest of the world, and even ignores the British historical origins of much that happened in the US as well.
  - 4y ago