A representative US survey, conducted by PEW in 2019, found that around 12% of respondents believed “being white hurts people’s ability to get ahead in the country nowadays”.
Literally not even close to the issue I was addressing, but I've dealt with enough racists like you to know it's hopeless.
In contrast - and this is a very simple concept - the term “cracker” doesn’t hurt me in the slightest, and I’m the pastiest white person you ever did see.
"It doesn't hurt me, therefore, it doesn't hurt anyone like me."
The fact it hurts you so badly shows you that the anti-white sentiment that exists in the discrimination you face specifically hurts you because you are not actually white.
Thank you for explaining my own experiences to me.
Fucking ridiculous. How did you put it before? "Whitesplaining"?
. But also, “White” is not an identity, as I have already said. It is a fucked up political category that serves to say, “these people are not any of the racialised categories”. That’s what I said at the start - it is only an exclusionary category. It does not identify any particular set of cultural or ethnic groups. There is no such thing as “white culture”. There is Norwegian culture, British culture, Texan culture, etc, but no white culture. Black culture, on the other hand, very much does exist, because black people as a group have been forced to construct a culture in response to their racist oppression.
So as long as the category is artificial, you can denigrate ancestry all you want?
Blackness as a concept was invented by racists for racist purposes. Anti-black slurs wouldn’t exist without that, so you couldn’t use them.
You're dodging the question.
I'm done here. It's incredibly shitty, and left-spaces should really fucking know better. But hey. Mixed-race folk always get the short-end of the stick. Why should left-spaces be any different, right? Cracker signing off, I guess.
I just want to know that I'm at least fucking safe in left-spaces. I expect right-wing spaces to denigrate me. They're shitheads to begin with. But is it too much to ask that the issue of being part-white not lead into part of me being sneered at?
It's not especially harmful to white people to be denigrated for who they are...?
If society as a whole wasn't horrifically anti-Black in its racism, would it then be okay to use anti-Black slurs? Because it wouldn't be 'especially harmful'?
If a black person called me a cracker it wouldn’t scare me very much because I know that I have the privilege of being white, and I know that, whether I like it or not, the entire white-supremacist apparatus of the state is likely to prevent me from having to deal with any serious oppression. Those individual people could still hurt me, but so could anyone. They are still far less likely to attack me because they know how dangerous that would be for them, but a white person attacking a black person is more likely to be protected.
... do you think racists often engage in in-depth calculus of their odds, or are they impulsive shitheads? Because in my experience, racists are the latter.
When you get called “cracker”, you know that you don’t have that apparatus behind you. You know that cops, the legal system, and myriad other racist things that you probably know better than me, are still going to treat you as non-white.
Or they might treat me as white.
So the “cracker” attack hurts because you’re being excluded from the community that would otherwise protect you when the apparatus of the state won’t.
No, that's definitely not it. The "cracker" attack hurts because it's an invalidation of who I am, or who I'm perceived to be. I don't expect my community to protect me where the state wouldn't. That's... not even close to my experience of expectations of community.
If I get called a cracker by someone who doesn't share either of my racial backgrounds, do you think that hurts... less?
I’m not trying to whitesplain this to you, that’s very much what you described when you called it “rage and absolute isolation”.
What you are describing is rage and absolute isolation, but not the rage and absolute isolation I was talking about.
That’s why the attack hurts you as a mixed-race person, but not me as a white person. I do not experience that isolation. That’s the difference.
You don't experience the isolation. That doesn't mean that denigrating you for your ancestry suddenly becomes acceptable. It is racist, and, furthermore, the prevalence of anti-white racism, even when not directed at mixed-race people, is still harmful to mixed-race people.
Another way of putting it - a man's daughter hears him calling her mother a bitch. It doesn't matter that it's not directed at her.
“Denigrated”? Sure. We’re talking about the specific oppression you’re talking about, and I don’t see any examples of this kind of racism affecting white people.
You... don't see any examples... of white people being denigrated for their ancestry...?
Like, it's obviously not on the level of anti-Black racism. But are you being serious right now?
And starting with “When you’re mixed-race” doesn’t really create the impression that this is a form of oppression that affects other people.
... I don't really understand where you think anti-white denigration to a mixed-race individual springs from if not anti-white sentiment. Like, by definition, here, mixed-race individuals are attacked in many cases because they're seen either as completely white, or as 'too white'.
Is it... only not okay to engage in anti-white racism if you're sure the person is of Pure White Blood(tm)? If I get called a cracker, should my response be "No, no, I'm mixed-race, I'm one of the cool ones"?
It sucks and I’m sorry that happens to you, but it’s not anti-white. It’s another form of racism that only affects non-white people. Just because it comes from non-white people doesn’t make it anti-white.
So let me get this straight:
Denigrating someone explicitly because of their white ancestry is not anti-white.
Yeah, that's about the reaction I expected. You have fun being incredibly racist against mixed-race individuals.
Aww, you’re such a butthurt little liar! So adorable! 😂
The options given that context are:
You were calling me a liar for accusing you of being a racist after you spent an entire comment chain telling me that mixed-race people don't get to have a say in what is and is not offensive to them.
You were calling me a liar for claiming to be mixed-race.
Goodbye, White Savior. Thank you for teaching me the follies of my own experiences. I'll kowtow and beat my head on the ground in praise of how liberal you've been to me.
Nope. Sometimes words have different meanings and connotations than just the literal one. This is one of those times.
"Other than the literal one" is literally what I'm addressing.
See, THAT’S a racist as fuck dog whistle. Using “white” as a shorthand for “specific privileged people who are behaving badly” to criticise those specific people for their behavior isn’t.
Okay. Explain to me the difference without using "One is established and the other is something I recently made up."
Go.
Fuck off with that rice paper skin bullshit.
Oh, great. More casual racism.
Nope. What the fuck are you babbling about? Sounds like you have a specific situation in mind that does not at all apply here.
White is an exclusionary concept. If someone is half black, half asian or half hispanic, then they are typically treated by society as non-white unless they are white-passing, and even then their treatment will change as soon as their family is included in the picture. They are not considered non-black, non-asian or non-hispanic.
Are you fucking kidding me
This is not even close to true.
Any time anyone wants to fuck with you, they get to say you aren't white or non-white enough for whatever the fuck is going on at the moment.
It’s easy to say that you would consider them half/half, but that’s just not what they experience in the world outside this comment thread, so it’s meaningless.
Thank you for informing me about the experiences of my life and many other mixed-race individuals; what would I do without someone to tell me what I REALLY experience?
White people generally hear racism from other white people. But there's a whole fucking world of racism out there, and "Mixed race people only suffer because they're non-white!" is fucking ignorant of the facts on the ground.
Literally not even close to the issue I was addressing, but I've dealt with enough racists like you to know it's hopeless.