I shared Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s post How to Talk to Minorities, Part 2 on Facebook two days ago. I was not prepared for how out of control the comments got from some individuals. Usually, I post articles as an interesting read, and something to make you think and please discuss in class or with friends in private at another time. In real life, and not in front of a computer screen on my Facebook Timeline…
I had picked this point out as the quote for sharing:
This one is for white Europeans: fucking get it together and stop telling us that racism isn’t a problem in your country. Every single Black person who has traveled in Europe knows you are full of shit. Whenever someone tells me it’s not an issue where they live and I’ve been there, what they’ve really said to me is, “I’m not very observant about other people’s experiences!” (Okay, let’s be real, this one goes for white Canadians too.)
Obviously, because I wanted to highlight the European situation. I had one white German friend #1 and one white American friend #2 (both male) argue with me that these views shared in the article were not accurate. Fortunately Friend #3 (white, male, American), stepped in at some point to break it down better than I could, but I don’t think it’s gotten through at all, and Friend #4 (white, female, German) tried it again.
Friend #1: This reads more like a guide to self-hatred than offering any useful or mind opening advice. It’s also fundamentally problematic on a philosophical and political level. The assumption that people are somehow the absolute and only authority of their oppression is epistemologically flawed; or put more directly, it’s simply wrong. And by addressing all white Europeans/people at once, it makes the same mistake of presumption and generalisation the author claims to resent when directed at minorities. Ultimately, this can only lead to resentment. I took the liberty of having a look at the first part too and at the very beginning of the text an interesting phrase is used; underrepresented group. While we could have a philosophical discussion about the (im)possibility of representation, the more immediate question is what it means to be underrepresented. Isn’t the whole point of the “we’re the 99%” critique that quality is more important than quantity? Relatively small populations dominating over much larger ones. In other words, instead of engaging in the divided struggle of identity politics, shouldn’t we aim to combine our struggles?
Me: HAVE YOU LIVED THE EXPERIENCE OF A NON-WHITE GERMAN WOMAN IN GERMANY?? No, okay?
Friend #1: Appealing to your (phenomenological) authority is not really an argument. It’s a logical fallacy.
My mistake for assuming critical commentary would be welcome. I will try to suppress such presumptuous tendencies in the future.
Me: In my interpretation your critical commentary was discounting my experience by stating that you disagree with it as an opinion. The worst thing you can do with your white male privilege is to deny someone (not white, not male) else’s experience of racism. In this case Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s and my experiences differ from yours, but you’re saying these experiences don’t matter or are false. Your comment was denying a black woman’s view on racism from your position as a white man. Don’t you think that’s pretty messed-up?
Friend #1: In fact, I was claiming precisely the opposite. Rather than close the spectrum of valid truth claims (i.e. access to reality) to first hand personal experiences (phenomenology), I want to open this enquiry up to include the question of complicity in ones own oppression and false resistance. To go back to the sentence you were referring to, people are in fact not the ABSOLUTE and ONLY authority of their oppression. Unfortunately, the text reduces reality to the subjective experience of insiders and rejects any critical engagement from the allegedly suppessing majority (white males). In other words, the only way for me to legitimately participate know this debate is to agree with you unquestionably.
Me: I’m not asking you to agree, I’m asking you to sometimes just listen than speak, if it’s coming from a place of privilege. “complicity in one’s own oppression and false resistance” and “reduces reality (as you see it) to the subjective experience (not yours)” has you reinforcing your privilege, since you’re clearly judging us in our experience-based opinion on racism in Europe. You can claim to dismantle the analysis of oppression in whatever way you want, but since you haven’t experienced it in ways others do, you probably shouldn’t engage in a discussion like this, if you don’t understand it and use vocabulary like that, which absolutely reinforces my point and is discounting that yes, my experience makes me a greater authority on racism than you, because I experience it more than you do.
Friend #1: You may not be. But the text was, which is why I challenged it. Again, I’m not claim an authority over yours or anyone else’s. Nor am I discounting your experience. I’m merely pointing out that the simple experience of oppression does not make one’s understanding flawless or automatically resistant. There is a long history of individuals participating and reinforcing their own oppression involuntarily, which cannot be dismissed. It’s also quite problematic to reduce mine and other white male’s experience to the status of privilege. To varying degrees there may be structures of advantage and privilege in our society, but that does not negate the possibility of oppression even for those in an advantageous position. Perhaps it’s time to stop competing over the severity of disadvantage and engage in a collective struggle against oppression; including gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and class alike.
Whether your experience as a non – white woman makes you a greater authority on racism is a deeper philosophical question, which has to do with Kant’s philosophy of the noumenal real and we won’t be able to resolve that through a Facebook discussion. Suffice to say, authority on the basis of first hand experience does not discount a flawed analysis.
Me: Still, acknowledge that saying “stop competing over the severity of disadvantage” is always going to be easier for you to say in your position, than it is for others, and I can’t agree that has nothing to do with status privilege. Pointing that out is in no way problematic.
Friend #1: It’s a distraction from the overall fact of exploitation that runs through society. It may be easier not to begrudge others their advantage in a relatively advantaged position. But that doesn’t make identity politics or a politics of envy any more effective. If you want change, it’s got to happen collectively and not in opposition to other forms of disadvantage.
Friend #2: Can you stop posting these racist pieces? [I mistakenly thought this was a provocative joke the way he likes making them]
Me: You’re dumb. [tongue emoticon]
Me: Can you white guys stop crying racism? I have a lot of Facebook friends who are academics and people of colour, just so you know who reads what you comment on here. #NotAllWhiteMen is how you want me to preclude posts like this?
“No, you’re not a minority among minorities when you’re white and everyone is a person of color.”
“Don’t whitesplain. Don’t mansplain.”
“Don’t tell people who are marginalized in a way that you are not what their agenda should be.”
“Respect lived knowledge. Someone who has spent their entire lives being racialized has a PhD, postdoc and faculty position in racism whereas someone who has not spent their entire lives being racialized just doesn’t. Recognize when you are a neophyte and an outsider.” JUST SAYING
Friend #2: This isn’t academic, this is pseudo intellectual tumblr stuff. I don’t need a PhD to understand race, or a PhD to infer racism from “micro aggressions”. you’re not american, after all, you haven’t been socialized at a young age in this culture any more than you did in Hawaiian culture. Though this is America and you have a right to speak about anything you want.
Truth is you’re not rectifying anything by attacking and criticizing “white people”, you’re just inverting the racist dynamic.
Friend #3: ‘Reverse racism’ (or ‘inverting the racist dynamic’) is not a thing. Let’s make this simple, in two points. 1) No one is suggesting that we start treating white guys the way we treat women and ethnic minorities in Europe/European Settler Societies (so US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa). 2) Even if you personally feel like you don’t go around oppressing people, the reason white males still hold most of the power and wealth in those societies comes from the history of patriarchy (in most cases, women didn’t vote or hold property until quite recently) and colonialism (put simply, no one kidnapped millions of Europeans to build cities and work on plantations in Africa).
Friend #3: I get that pieces like this are written in an aggressive or confronting manner, but you shouldn’t need your hand held over this. Maybe rather than saying ‘I’m not racist and therefore it’s not a (my) problem’, consider listening to people first, trying to empathise, and then figuring out ways to work together.
Me: I picked the quote that speaks on the European situation. I won’t comment to the rest except that “reverse racism” isn’t a thing. I honestly thought you were kidding in the comment above, but seems to me you can’t recognize how fortunate you were to be raised a white and not black boy in Michigan.
Me: Ha, thanks [redacted], was formulating that while you posted! [smile emoticon]
Friend #3: Dude, history. Turns out it still matters.
Friend #2: [redacted]: I didn’t say reverse racism, so forgive me if my reply isn’t as long as yours, because that means I’m disregarding a lot of what you said. But to clarify, when you say white, it conflates different ethnicities of Europeans. My Dutch ancestors have been here for about only a a hundred years, and we’ve done nothing and always treated other people fine. Same goes for people of color, since any ethnic group in America has a different history and place in Americas ethnic dynamic. True, African Americans were forced to work on plantations, but in other places the country was built on the labor of immigrants, the poor and unemployed of Europe. Though I don’t play victim or say I or other “white peoples” should; that’s not productive for anybody, really.
Are there problems though? Certainly, and using history illustrates it, but when you accept a racist opposition between all white people and all people of color, then you’re just pointlessly agitating. It’s not bringing anyone together. See what Karin just posted? How worthwhile do you think her and other people’s attitudes towards these issues are when they can simply cloak a “you’re white and can never understand” argument in academic language?
See what Karin just posted? How worthwhile do you think her and other people’s attitudes towards these issues are when they can simply cloak a “you’re white and can never understand” argument in academic language?
i get me and the rest of your Facebook friends may not be as educated as you, so maybe you’d be less annoyed keeping it for only you and like minded people.
Friend #2: Oh look at that, the reply came out bigger anyway lol
Me: You just tellingly erased Native Americans from your ethnic dynamic. Settler colonialism built the USA and pretty sure all citizens whose genealogy isn’t pre-Columbian are implicated in it. And saying “my ancestors didn’t” and “what about poor white Europeans” (paraphrased) still ignores [redacted]’s second point, and that they still assimilated to the American = white standard ethnicity. And yeah, “you’re white and can never understand” the hurt and embarrassment and feeling of being dehumanized or of lesser value when encountering racism directed at me. That’s my last comment.
Friend #3: “you’re just inverting the racist dynamic”…this is just using more words to say “reverse racism.” Apparently you also disregard what you yourself write.
Friend #3: But really, I don’t care whether you have a phd or not, you are literate and have an internet connection, so you can probably do better than just repeating whatever myths you learned in secondary school. Yes, whiteness is just as complex of an ethnicity as blackness. But historically, every new group of European immigrants to the US aligned itself to the ruling elite, which expanded the category of ‘white’ while also excluding other groups of immigrants (and this was also iterative, so Germans, then Italians, then Jews and Slavs all had to wait to get included as white). The point is white people had an opportunity, especially in America, to make this right, but they didn’t. The difference, then, plays out in the ways race is performed and experienced today. To take a European example, no one throws croissants at white French footballers in playing in Germany. But they do make monkey noises at black French footballers. Players and fans did make comments about Zidane’s Algerian ancestry.
Friend #3: People aren’t saying, “you’re white and you’ll never understand.” They’re saying, “stop telling us how we feel or experience life, and stop telling us that we shouldn’t talk about it.” But you might have to acknowledge then that you gain little advantages every day because you’re white and male, and that it would be a just thing to dismantle the invisible social mechanisms that give you those advantages. Why is that so threatening?
Friend #2: Alright, let’s try this again…
Karin: The comment I made to your post about native americans was a joke. There’s no good reason for you to believe it was real, so that’s really that. But the fact is, DNA shows a lot of people do have native american blood. Right, it’s microscopic (it was so long ago, you’ve already branched off into something you don’t resemble at all), but then again who are you to say that they have less of a right to see it as their connection to a land they were born on and as humans developed an existential affinity towards?
As for reverse racism, yeah, just because people have used a racist binary logic (we are white/they are black), doesn’t mean it’s okay for others to use a different brand of it, that all whites, literally millions and millions of individuals, are all knowingly or unknowingly complicit in historical crimes. And on the contrary, within practically every lived life in america, race relations have improved always because the majority of white people do as good as they can historically be
And if that’s still not what you think reverse racism is, then let’s drop it, because its semantics.
[redacted]: I think I may have indirectly answered your last points by replying to Karin, but your analogy doesn’t really apply to America. Except for the internet, baseball stadiums are really very strict now-a-days, and I cannot really imagine it getting on. Though, if it did happen, I think it would be for the same reason it happens at your football games; alcohol. Everyone loses their inhibitions and find ways to break taboos, one of the big ones is racist talk. You might disagree, but I don’t call that racist, just uneducated young drunk loudmouths. Certainly doesn’t matter as a structural systemic problem.
And to your second reply, I don’t feel threatened, I feel annoyed and on the defensive, and I think a lot of people who reads posts like this feel the same way, so unfortunately it just reifies division that will make matters worse.
Friend #4: Well i call the attitude “thats not racism, just uneducated drunk loudmouths” enabeling racism…
Friend #2: Racist acts aren’t all morally equal. You have to look at the effect, the intent, etc., and understand worse issues have to take priority, and deserve different responses.
Friend #4: I agree that there are different “degrees” of racism, and there are a lot of people that repeat things they read on the internet without reflecting or looking for further information. But that doesn’t change that it is unacceptable to be racist. I actually belive that trivializing racism, no matter the intentions of the person that is beeing racist, is very dangerous because it enables the people with the worst intentions to speak their mind without beeing corrected.
I think that conversation is closed, since I posted a new post saying:
I would like to apologize for the discussion that got out of control under the previous article shared. Thank you to those who chimed in to support my views publicly or privately. Usually I practice censorship on ignorant, insensitive, or offensive comments, but that would have led to more accusations of not letting white men speak.
Metaphors & Metaphysics 
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