I learned a new word from a wonderful tongue-in-cheek post by Ankhesen Mie:
A drapto, short for draptoresponsic, is someone who suffers from draptoresponsia, a mental illness common in North America. Signs of the disease: delusional thinking, petulant anger, aggression and avoidance. Draptos are incapable of seeing the moral disorders in society; they suffer from delusions – sometimes even phobias – about dark-skinned people.
The condition was first noted by Ankhesen Mie in 2010, although the medical literature shows that it goes back to at least 1851 in the undiagnosed case of Samuel Cartwright, an American doctor, Patient Zero.
Dr Cartwright, one of the country’s leading authorities on diseases affecting blacks, said that black slaves who ran away suffered from drapetomania, from the Greek words drapetes (runaway) and mania (madness). Yes. Later research showed that it was Dr Cartwright, not the slaves, who was not right in the head: he was suffering from draptoresponsia.
Another documented case is that of French psychiatrist Octave Mannoni, as recorded by Frantz Fanon in 1952. Dr Mannoni said that natives in Madagascar suffered from a dependency complex, which gave them a deep desire to be ruled by white people – overlooking the fact that 80,000 said natives gave their lives in a failed attempt to overthrow the French in 1947, presumably suffering from a deadly case of independency complex.
Draptoresponsia is still widespread in North America. Draptos notice that blacks are angry but think their anger is unreasonable. Instead of seeing the injustice built into American society draptos instead see the side effects and read them as pathologies of the black community. Their delusion is so deep that they think a society that practised race-based slavery for hundreds of years could become that perfect, that colour-blind, just that quickly.
Symptoms:
- Delusional thinking: Draptos think they are always right and think they are better than everyone else. They look down on those who do not agree. Draptos think so highly of themselves that they are not above rewriting history to suit their own racist fantasies. Sometimes these fantasies become the history that the rest of us in America are forced to learn at school. Like that George Washington was a noble man.
- Petulant anger: Draptos get upset when you point out white privilege – but also get upset when they fear losing it, crying reverse racism. They do not like sharing America with “other” people, not even the people they took it from (Native Americans), not even the people they forced to come here at gunpoint (blacks).
- Aggression: Despite their violent history, draptos tend to see people of colour as the violent ones – even if that means they have to twist crime statistics or make up stories about yellowcake (see Delusional Thinking). They see little wrong in hurting people of colour (see Virginia Dotson, Sean Bell, slave narratives, etc, etc).
- Avoidance: of the ugly truths of their own history (see Aggression). That is why draptos love Mighty Whitey or “white guilt fantasy” films like “Avatar” (2009) and “Blood Diamonds” (2006) – but not “Amistad” (1997).
Treatment: Unknown.
See also:
- Ankhesen Mie: Drapetomania, Meet Draptoresponsia
- drapetomania
- draptos:
- Dr Mannoni – according to Dr Fanon
- John McWhorter – not all draptos are white
- Steve Sailer – but most are
- Guy White
- delusional thinking
- petulant anger
- avoidance
- aggression
Abagond how could you? he he he
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J – Did you know that I suffer from Draptoresponsia according to the diagnosis of Dr. Ankhesen? lol, Yes – it is true.
Odd though seeing as I have been referred to as “half-breed/light skinned/bi-racial” quite frequently as a younger man.
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You can be black and still be drapto. I listed John McWhorter in the See Also section as an example. For a while I was thinking of putting Bill Cosby eating a pudding pop as the lead picture for this post, but he does not display all the classic symptoms.
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Bill Burr – Racist movies
LOL
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thanks for responding Abagond! I actually did not “know” that. I realize that I am in my own “minority” as my personal story sounds fantastical, but I would rather be truthful than hide behind a lie or “pose” as some people do in blogs. I have suffered racism from Whites (& Blacks) so I thought that made me “immune”. (Get your immunizations lately, you don’t want to catch a bad case of Drapto! LOL)
Joking aside, I wonder how many more bi-racial people may fall into this? -but I digress before derailing a topic again. (maybe I’ll revisit the Colourism post)
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Oh, Abagond….
You will be the death of me.
Now we have to go through history with a fine tooth comb and sort out all the draptos from decent folks.
We’ll need a whole library for that….
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Ankhesen – sounds like a business opportunity to me. I am somewhat laughing but I bet you could sell tons of “Drapto” T-shirts!!!
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ColorOfLuv….
I’m trying to keep it more in the academic sphere of things.
I’m still open to treatment suggestions, by the way.
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Proposed treatment: Make them feel like “other” for a change.
This might help to some. Not the majority though.
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Castoroil?
I don’t think there could be a treatment. (shock therapy?) Seriously though, even if there was an intense workshop or better yet, “boot camp” where rules/roles/standard of the ‘norm’ / – were controlled. It could be a possibility, but once again, much of this is based on personal experience too, right? There are people who grow up outside of the racially poloarized U.S. that understand Racism as a concept, but may never have actually experienced it personally to the degree many Black Americans do.
Yeah, I’m going back to shock therapy. lol…
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There is some truth to this post. I think many problems that non-whites experience today can be linked somehow to racism in society. However, this idea can be taken too far. Racism can be used as an excuse not to not examine and address internal weaknesses.
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~…even if that means they have to twist crime statistics or make up stories about yellowcake (see Delusional Thinking).~
Ok, what is yellowcake?
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Yellowcake is a yellow powder form of uranium. The bit about “make up stories about yellowcake” in the post is a reference to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowcake_forgery
In 2002 President Bush used forged documents to “prove” that Iraq was buying yellowcake from Niger, presumably to build a nuclear bomb. Even though both the CIA and the State Department doubted the document was true, Bush used it anyway to build the case for war.
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FG:
“Racism can be used as an excuse not to not examine and address internal weaknesses.”
No one is saying that the black community is perfect – that would be just as delusional as what draptos think about mainstream American society.
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“Castoroil?”
Castor oil works wonders for the bowels! Maybe it clears people’s minds as well since many who suffer from drapto are also full of sh$t! Oh, it’s also good for skin and hair! A panacea!
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“J – Did you know that I suffer from Draptoresponsia according to the diagnosis of Dr. Ankhesen? lol, Yes – it is true.
Odd though seeing as I have been referred to as “half-breed/light skinned/bi-racial” quite frequently as a younger man”.
Only since being on this board ColorofLuv to be honest with you… ha ha ha ha
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Avatar managed to be offensive to both all African and Native American cultures (merging all of them into one), evoking the noble savage myth/stereotype and insulting people’s intelligence along the way. Horrible film.
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@ Bay Area Guy
Sorry, but I still got the “Arab Slave Trader argument” feel from your post. I say this because I find it interesting your very first post on this subject skipped straight to “what other countries do”.
I blog about American issues. I specifically had Americans in mind when I coined “draptoresponsia” (maybe it’s in our water, who knows). My post–if you read it–focuses on America.
If non-Americans choose to apply it to people in their societies…that’s their choice. But for Americans to reach out and apply the draptoresponsic label beyond their own borders is drapto behavior in itself–it’s deflection.
Each country has the obligation to diagnose and treat its own draptos, and we’ve got draptos a-plenty ’round here, so much that looking beyond our borders would be impractical–and arrogant–at this juncture.
However, since America is home to Patient Zero, we get to be models for the rest of the world (yippee!!). If we don’t like that, then we better hurry up & find a cure. It’ll be very embarrassing if another nation does before we do.
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Ankhesen,
I think there is hope for a cure! “We’ve” had to deal with a lot of issues in America that other countries have not had to deal with. While we’ve got our share of problems, I believe we are getting there.
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Wow and here I thought Avatar was just an awsome movie along the same lines as Star Wars.
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@ Bay Area Guy:
Ankhesen said:
“I blog about American issues. I specifically had Americans in mind when I coined “draptoresponsia” (maybe it’s in our water, who knows). My post–if you read it–focuses on America.”
Likewise my post is limited to North America though I am mainly thinking of Americans too. There may be draptos elsewhere – who knows? Why bring it up unless there is some interesting comparison to be made or unless a successful treatment has been found? It came off to me as an Arab trader argument too.
Also:
This post was tongue-in-check. It satirizes the Black Pathology trope by applying it to white people.
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There are plenty of draptos, especially online…
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^ Definitely Will.
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i haven’t seen avatar yet, but i believe the close similarities are intentional, ie. meant to be obvious. the movie is metaphorical, it’s supposed to represent how whites took advantage of other civilizations.
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That’s what I got from the movie, too.
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Abagond referencing wikipedia … WOW!!!
How reliable is wikipedia? Almost every professor will tell you that Wikipedia is garbage.
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The ironic thing about this is that accusing people you disagree with of mental illness is aggressive and petulant, not to mention generally delusional and a great example of avoidance behavior.
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bay area guy, you wrote:
“I slaughtered Native Americans and took their land,”‘
As a resident of NY City, I am happy about the exchange. However, the Indians did manage to kill one of my ancestors in 1675.
You wrote:
“…enslaved blacks, stole a large portion of Mexico’s land and then used Mexicans for cheap bracero labor, forced the Chinese to build railroads and then excluded them…”
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s been a great ride. Obviously for several centuries sovereign borders were established through military power — everywhere on the planet.
Like it or not — that settled land issues for a long time. However, when Castro’s Cuba falls, much of the land will revert to its pre-Castro owners, a group that includes the Bacardi Rum family, who fled to Puerto Rico after Fidel seized their facilities.
Then there is the rest of your laundry list of white transgressions. All amusing.
When will we hear about contrition from the people who brought us Rwanda and the Tutsi slaughter? Or how about those fine folks who gave Mozambique 20 years of crushing civil war? Or the thugs who seized power and then ravaged virtually every nation in Africa?
As I have mentioned, in Africa every year the number of people who die from drinking contaminated water is about FIVE MILLION.
In the white world, the death toll from drinking dirty water is roughly ZERO. Thus, incompetent black leadership in Africa produces an ANNUAL death toll that is almost as large as the Nazi Holocaust.
Africa is the continent of genocide by indifference.
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@ Ankhesen: *knowing glance*
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Bay Area Guy said:
“I’m not one of those self-flagellating whites who believes that we are the spawn of satan responsible for ALL evil. ….
Whites are far from perfect, but acting as if whites have a monopoly on negative behavior is an equally foolish belief.”
1. I am not particularly interested in white self-flagellation. What good does it do me?
2. No where have I ever said that whites are uniquely evil or that they are the source of all evil. Never. Not once. I do not even think it. Or dream it. Yet white commenters keep bringing this up and keep acting as if I said it. From my point of view they are creating a straw man argument so that they do not have to take what I say seriously.
If whites merely LISTENED to what people of colour were telling them without feeling the need to constantly defend themselves and their race, and took what they heard seriously, that would be a huge step forward.
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What if James Camron made the majority of the cast of Avatar black, would it still be considered racist?
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@ Bay Area Guy
Good points.
Whites are not the spawn of all evil…and yet again…So. Not. The topic.
Many social activists focus heavily on exposing white dysfunction & white privilege because they are largely absent from discussion in America. It is this precise “absence from discussion” which helps racism flourish. And the more people resist, deny, or deflect, the harder and longer activists will focus on these issues.
What draptoresponsic blog trolls can’t seem to grasp (surprise, surprise), is that POC are not “going” anywhere–biology alone assured that from the moment the very first human walked the earth. And whites who are sick to death of other whites–past and present–dishonoring all members of their skintone–they too, are not going anywhere.
Less than 150 years ago, Ms. Sallie Crane was being tied up and whipped just for shits and giggles, and that was seen as “okay” by the law. But alas…the law didn’t see it as “okay” for forever.
And approx. 110 years ago, the pro-lynching 84th Governor of South Carolina uttered the infamous words: “We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be the equal of the white man…”.
And yet….
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When will we hear about contrition from the people who brought us Rwanda and the Tutsi slaughter?
That would be the French, who originally set up the power imbalance between those two groups that directly led to the slaughter? Or the international community, who diddled around while it was going on (unlike in ex-Yougslavia)?
…Or how about those fine folks who gave Mozambique 20 years of crushing civil war?
That would be the CIA and the South Afrikans, correct?
Or the thugs who seized power and then ravaged virtually every nation in Africa?
Ahn, the French, English, Belgians, Portugese and Germans?
Hell, NS, I didn’t realize that you were that interested in the history of African colonialism!
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Many social activists focus heavily on exposing white dysfunction & white privilege because they are largely absent from discussion in America.
Google for “white privilege”: 218,000 hits.
Google for “racism”: 16,100,000 hits.
Google for “black genocide”: 42.600 hits.
Google for genocide AND Indians: 884,000 hits.
Google for genocide AND blacks: 4.660.000 hits.
Google for genocide AND “African Americans”: 284.000 hits.
Now…
Google for “Hannah Montana”: 23.800.000
Google for Beyoncé: 58.700.000
Google for “Michael Jackson”: 103.000.000
This brief and unscientific scan should tell us two things:
1) Discussion of white privilege and racism is hardly ” largely absent from discussion in America” as Ank would have it.
2) Nor are they predominant themes of discussion.
So here’s my question, Ank: what, to you, would be a good level of discussion of these subjects?
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@voice of reason
i haven’t seen avatar yet, but i believe the close similarities are intentional, ie. meant to be obvious. the movie is metaphorical, it’s supposed to represent how whites took advantage of other civilizations.
A good metaphor is never “obvious”. But it’s not the main problem with the film.
True, the movie says destroying other civilizations was not a great thing to do. Good. However, it shows disrespect to other cultures by seeing them as the exotic others that still need help of a mighty whitey to save them.
Noble savage myth is not respectful to the non-white (non- anglo-saxon) cultures. It doesn’t even care about those cultures. It’s cimply meant to be a critic of western culture. While criticizing your own culture is a good thing, it has nothing to do with those you consider “others”. You can still be disrespectful. Noble savage myth is disrespectful because it sees non-whites as the others, different and, while “pure and close to nature” (magical Negro style), they are not really seen as normal, everyday humans. Plus, those poor close-to-nature creatures still need “us” to save them.
They might be cute and pure, but just put one of our guys in their culture and, fear not, he’ll learn everything there is to know about given exotic culture in a very short time. Not only that, but they will do all those things much better than the natives, because he is, after all, superior to them.
So the message is: we don’t care about other cultures (nothing wrong with this message), but if there are some of us that do care, we will be better than those cultures because we are superior (this is problematic). While I do care all the people should care more about the groups they don’t belong to, I don’t think encouraging superiority complex is a good thing.
@Ó Dochartaigh
What if James Camron made the majority of the cast of Avatar black, would it still be considered racist?
This is interesting, but the way it is, I don’t think it would change anything. If nothing else, it would make things worse, imo, because blacks would be portrayed as colonists who destroy alien cultures and have superiority complex.
But a story with blacks as colonists and whites as slaves sound interesting. Some sort of movie version of Abagond’s posts such as “if blacks ran Hollywood like whites do” or “if black women were white women”.
Unfortunately, I don’t think (American) people would get such a movie. Blacks would be angry because movie made them seem like slave masters and destroyers, and whites would become even more paranoid when it comes to blacks because they’d think movie portrayed blacks the way they really are (just my guess).
My take on Avatar: http://jefflion.net/archives/311
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Google for “black cultural pathologies”: 1800 results
Google for “white cultural pathologies”: 8 results
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Is one of those 8 this post? 😀
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BTW, creating this kind of posts (more of them) would be a great thing to do, imo.
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What kind is this kind of post?
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What kind is this kind of post?
Tongue in cheek analysis of social phenomena.
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Google for “black cultural pathologies”: 1800 results
Google for “white cultural pathologies”: 8 results
In the face of one hundred and three MILLION results for “Michael Jackson”, Abagond, I think we can safely say that “cultural pathologies” in general are not much interest to Americans – especially as the margin for error for this sort of “off the cuff Google research” has got to be around +/- 25,000.
And let’s not forget 175,000 results for “white racism” – which I’m sure we can agree is a pathology – as opposed to 60,200 results for “black racism”…
Actually, to me this would be a much better argument in your favor than the “cultural pathologies” thing. 1/3rd as many complaints about “black racism” indicates to me a severe misunderstanding of what racism actually is.
But again, one cannot say “this is almost completely not discussed in America”. That’s simply ridiculous.
Mira sez:
Tongue in cheek analysis of social phenomena.
See todays Xkcd:
http://xkcd.com/715/
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Of course there is no single voice for all people of colour. But so what? If I was concerned about, say, battered women would it matter that there is no “unified battered women discourse”?
If you listen to enough battered women you will notice enough common themes to make the experience worthwhile. You will have a much better picture than anything you could have got from television or your friends. Or even from any single battered woman. Why are people of colour any different?
There speaks a man who has never actually done any ethnographic field work. 😀
Actually, Abagond, the more you listen to people of a given category, the more complex and nuanced things become – quite the opposite of what you presume.
People who say things like “Most battered women are…” or “Most prostitutes are…” are generally people who haven’t listened to many people in said category.
And the same is true with black people.
(By the way, “People of Color” is a stupid and extremely racist category in the first place which has historically been used to situate Indian, Latino and Asian interests and issues as essentially identical to those of black people. Anyone who can read Vine Deloria Junior’s “Custer Died for Your Sins” and who can still use “people of color” with a straight face is someone who should be watched very carefully, especially around loose change or small children. But I digress.)
The problem though isn’t “listening”, Abagond. The problem is dialogue.
So here’s part of the issue: you believe that white people cannot ever truly “understand the black experience” and yet you seem to feel that based on observation alone, you’ve got a pretty good handle on white people’s experience which allows you to critique them.
So let’s think about that for a moment: you think you more-or-less intuitively understand the white experience and feel free to qualify it as such. In fact, in several of your posts, you’ve effectively said that antebellum slave holders and 20th century children of Eastern European immigrants have essentially the same values and issues.
Any white person will tell you different, but you feel we can decisively ignore those people because they are each and every one of them suffering under the delusion of white supremacy and thus cannot see their essential unity.
Now, if a white person – using your same methodology – obserevation and keeping careful track of what black people say – were to make one single observation which you disagree with about black people, why he’s a racist idiot who cannot know anything at all about blacks because he himself is not black.
Worse: far as anti-racist activists go, you’re calm, tolerant and open-minded.
On another post here today, a white guy said, essentially, “why the hell should I involve myself in discussions of racism? My viewpoint isn’t wanted, anything I have to say is going to be waved away as privilege – even though it’s obvious that I have less power and privilege than many of the people who are accusing me of being racist.”
Given the dynamic that anything white people have to say about race should be ignored, it’s amazing to me that so many white people still engage in these sorts of discussions.
So that’s my question to Ank: what would he see as a healthy level of discussion about these issues and how does he intend to go about that, seeing as how he himself apparently classifies as “insane” a good portion of the people who diagree with him?
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No Slappz:
Or the thugs who seized power and then ravaged virtually every nation in Africa?
Thad:
Ahn, the French, English, Belgians, Portugese and Germans?
Thank you, Thad. That was a good answer but I doubt it will do any good.
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Bay Area Guy, you wrote:
“No_ slappz, just to clarify, I’m not a self-hating white person. ”
I know.
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This whole concept of drapto is a direct descendant of the modern gnostic cult that is the “equality cult”. Just like any gnostics their adherents claim to have a special mystical knowledge that confers them superior moral status: the mysteries of “white privilege” and “institutional racism” whose true form is revealed only to the true believers (the saintly POC and a few select whites steeped in anti-racist mysticism). While these concepts are presented as revealed truth without any evidence, anyone who doubts their existence is presented as proof of their existence .
As any good gnostics, they seek to create Heaven on Earth where all will be equal and all will be provided by the state. This explains why they believe that anyone that doesn’t subscribe to their ideology is either evil or deluded. The USSR had a form of sham psychiatry where dissidents were diagnosed with a form of schizophrenia that apparently affected only their political beliefs. Since communism was good incarnate anyone who opposed it had to be crazy and be locked up.
The “equality cult” had the upper hand at a certain moment but with more and more evidence pilling up as to the falsity of many of its ideological pillars they are forced to resort to more and more extreme measures of covering up the truth. Since it’s pretty light on the evidence side (which very annoyingly tend to side with the “haters”) the crusaders of equality have to resort to screaming at the top of their lungs and making wild accusations of how evil their opponents are crazy merely for noticing what is for all to see: that the saintly POC are anything but (and I’m talking of blacks in special which are paraded by the liberals as snow white(pun intended) sacrificial lambs on the altal of white wickedness)
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thad, I wrote:
“When will we hear about contrition from the people who brought us Rwanda and the Tutsi slaughter?”
You responded:
“That would be the French, who originally set up the power imbalance between those two groups that directly led to the slaughter?”
Let me know which Frenchmen were swinging the machetes that killed the Tutsis.
Actually, your argument is a supremely racist and condescending one. It implies that the black Hutus and Tutsis are so simple-minded they cannot comprehend the manipulative forces that have been applied to them and they are then fooled into committing mass murder. A genocidal purge.
It’s amusing that you do not understand the magnitude of your own contempt for blacks and black intelligence.
You wrote:
“Or the international community, who diddled around while it was going on (unlike in ex-Yougslavia)?”
Again, your comment expresses the subtext that blacks are too violent and dumb to know what they are doing, therefore saner people — whites — from more civilized nations must step in and stop the madness.
I wrote:
“…Or how about those fine folks who gave Mozambique 20 years of crushing civil war?”
You responded:
“That would be the CIA and the South Afrikans, correct?”
I was thinking RENAMO. But, of course, it appears you believe when blacks slaughter each other it happens because they have been tricked into it by whites from other nations. Your contempt for blacks is obviously bottomless.
With respect to Mozambique, I was also thinking about the sudden departure of Portugal, which left Mozambique in a nearly lawless condition. Senator John Kerry’s wife is Portugese and was living in Mozambique at the time because her father was a doctor there.
I wrote:
“Or the thugs who seized power and then ravaged virtually every nation in Africa?”
You responded:
“Ahn, the French, English, Belgians, Portugese and Germans?”
Most of the preceding crew of nations developed colonies in other parts of the world. Remarkably, when people are desperate to get their unlucky selves out of the world’s most miserable states, they do all they can to get into places like France, England, Germany and , surprise, surprise, the worst offender of all — the US.
Do Cubans swim to Haiti?
You wrote:
“Hell, NS, I didn’t realize that you were that interested in the history of African colonialism!”
As if sub-Sahara Africa would be a better place if whites had never ventured there.
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davi, you wrote:
“This whole concept of drapto is a direct descendant of the modern gnostic cult that is the “equality cult”. ”
The original ankhesen post was supposed to be a joke, a satire, I suppose. But, as usual, it was another feeble attempt to blame contemporary black social problems on some factor from the distant past to which no living person is connected.
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no_slappz said:
“thad, I wrote:
“When will we hear about contrition from the people who brought us Rwanda and the Tutsi slaughter?”
You responded:
“That would be the French, who originally set up the power imbalance between those two groups that directly led to the slaughter?”
Let me know which Frenchmen were swinging the machetes that killed the Tutsis.
Actually, your argument is a supremely racist and condescending one. It implies that the black Hutus and Tutsis are so simple-minded they cannot comprehend the manipulative forces that have been applied to them and they are then fooled into committing mass murder. A genocidal purge.
It’s amusing that you do not understand the magnitude of your own contempt for blacks and black intelligence.
You wrote:
“Or the international community, who diddled around while it was going on (unlike in ex-Yougslavia)?”
Again, your comment expresses the subtext that blacks are too violent and dumb to know what they are doing, therefore saner people — whites — from more civilized nations must step in and stop the madness.
I wrote:
“…Or how about those fine folks who gave Mozambique 20 years of crushing civil war?”
You responded:
“That would be the CIA and the South Afrikans, correct?”
I was thinking RENAMO. But, of course, it appears you believe when blacks slaughter each other it happens because they have been tricked into it by whites from other nations. Your contempt for blacks is obviously bottomless.
With respect to Mozambique, I was also thinking about the sudden departure of Portugal, which left Mozambique in a nearly lawless condition. Senator John Kerry’s wife is Portugese and was living in Mozambique at the time because her father was a doctor there.
I wrote:
“Or the thugs who seized power and then ravaged virtually every nation in Africa?”
You responded:
“Ahn, the French, English, Belgians, Portugese and Germans?”
Most of the preceding crew of nations developed colonies in other parts of the world. Remarkably, when people are desperate to get their unlucky selves out of the world’s most miserable states, they do all they can to get into places like France, England, Germany and , surprise, surprise, the worst offender of all — the US.
Do Cubans swim to Haiti?
You wrote:
“Hell, NS, I didn’t realize that you were that interested in the history of African colonialism!”
As if sub-Sahara Africa would be a better place if whites had never ventured there.”
Wow, talk about bad arguments. This takes the cake! Wait a minute this is no_slappz after all!
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Mira (& Ankhesen):
This post was fun, but no, I doubt I will be doing many more like it. Judging from the comments this post went WAY over too many heads.
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LOL – it really did!
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Mira –
most metaphors have to be somewhat obvious otherwise people won’t pick up on them, or won’t interpret them properly. especially now days.
but anyway, i haven’t seen avatar so i can’t say much about it. i don’t plan on it either, i always thought james cameron got more credit than he deserved.
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Quite hilarious that Black slaves who ran away were “diagnosed” as suffering from a disease as if wanting to be free from brutal oppression is something strange.
Wow. Great post – never heard of such nonsense.
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This post was fun, but no, I doubt I will be doing many more like it.
Why not? Some of the responses were just as hilarious as the post itself! The fact that it went over some heads makes it doubly so!
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@voice of reason
most metaphors have to be somewhat obvious otherwise people won’t pick up on them, or won’t interpret them properly.
Perhaps that’s true, but obviousness should never insult people’s intelligence, like Cameron did in Avatar.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ViewersAreMorons
(Or, as people call it my part of the world, “it’s a movie for stupid Americans”. Note- no, I don’t think Americans are stupid. But yes, they are often seen as such, and stupid movies don’t help. But that’s another story).
Plus, I am one of those people who believe each person has his or her own interpretation, ant there’s nothing wrong with that. It can be the same as the author’s, or different than it- it doesn’t matter. Your reading is not better or worse than anyone else’s, including author’s.
@Patricia Kayden
Whites thought there was something wrong with blacks because they refused their “help” in making them “civilized”. Obviously there must be something wrong with you and your mental condition, if you refuse such a great offer and help.
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Funny how people are reacting way more re: Avatar’s supposed racism than Dance With Wolves REAL racism.
Has our ability as a culture to suss out worn memes really evolved that much in 15 years? Or is it just a reflection of a heart-felt desire to whupp on James Cameron’s “I’m King of the World” ass?
Recall how many oscars Costner won for DwW.
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I haven’t seen that movie so I can’t talk bad about it.
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@ Mira
White American privilege gives many in Hollywood the luxury of thinking that how non-American audiences perceive their work is irrelevant. Their feelings of superiority convince them the opinions of non-American critics don’t matter, and they are comfortable in the belief that they can peddle absolutely garbage and the rest of the world will always be ready and willing to line up and & pay for it.
Well, you know what they say. All good things….
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They are comfortable in the belief that they can peddle absolutely garbage and the rest of the world will always be ready and willing to line up and & pay for it.
The sad truth is, they are often right. Rest of the world is- if not always, then in majority of the cases- ready and willing to line up and & pay for it.
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Not to mention some will line up (like it) but not paying for it. But that’s another story, yet pretty popular in my part of the world. 😀
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@thad
I think we are making a bigger case of avatar because
1. it can be applied to blacks, and i think most people care about their race before other races.
2. avatar is the most recent movie while dances with wolves and pocahontas are both a decade old.
and thats not including people hating avatar simply because of titanic (whether one is a fan of titanic or hates titanic).
of course i am just generalizing.
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Well, none of those points apply to me. But like I said, I haven’t watched DwW so I can’t talk bad about that movie.
The silly thing is, some people hate “Avatar” because it’s “DwW in space”. “Pocahontas” is a more questionable example, because it is a source of the myth. I’d really love to see that myth deconstructed but it looks like people like to play it straight the way it was shaped a long time ago.
(I must admit I liked the animated movie when I was 14. I wanted to have Pocahontas’ hair. I hated the fact she chose ugly John Smith. I know, I know… I’m not proud of myself either.)
As for “Titanic”, it sucked (no pun intended). It was offensive and disrespectful too. It was a great tragedy and many people died, but Cameron made this tragedy into a romantic date movie (accompanied with Celine Dion’s hit). Cheesy. Disrespectful.
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mira, you wrote:
“As for “Titanic”, it sucked (no pun intended). It was offensive and disrespectful too. It was a great tragedy and many people died, but Cameron made this tragedy into a romantic date movie. Cheesy. Disrespectful.”
More than one movie has been made about the sinking of the Titanic. Why does it bother you?
Tales of doomed ships and doomed love affairs have been an entertainment staple since Homer wrote the Iliad, so your feelings about the exploitation of this event are naive.
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ankhesen wrote:
“White American privilege gives many in Hollywood the luxury of thinking that how non-American audiences perceive their work is irrelevant.”
Ahh, the opinion of someone who has no idea what goes on in Hollywood.
You wrote:
“Their feelings of superiority convince them the opinions of non-American critics don’t matter, and they are comfortable in the belief that they can peddle absolutely garbage and the rest of the world will always be ready and willing to line up and & pay for it.”
Really? So why does virtually every movie production company go bankrupt? Why is it so hard to get financing to make a movie if people all around the world will buy tickets to watch American actors doing nothing entertaining?
The only accurate wisdom about movie-making came from William Goldman, the screenwriter who wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
He said: In Hollywood, nobody knows anything.
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lol Mira, i am on the opposite spectrum when it comes to Titanic. I LOVE the movie.
But at least you gave a good reason for hating it, most people i know seem to have very little substance in why they hate the movie.
I remember reading about how Milvinia Dean walked out of the movie cause she couldn’t watch it. I know some survivors hated it and felt it was disrespectful when Ballard found the Titanic.
I guess its my love for history that makes me like the movie so much…not to mention i find Leonardo to be good looking in that movie. (not as crazy about him anymore though)
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I loved the “Titanic”, it was amazing, but it did not give you a sense of how terrible it was. Not till I saw some of the graves in Halifax did it hit me.
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I’m confused: who was singing and trying to get some booty while freezing and drowning to death in “Titanic”?
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I find a lot of afro-latinos to be draptos.
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Thaddeus,
So that’s my question to Ank: what would he see as a healthy level of discussion about these issues and how does he intend to go about that, seeing as how he himself apparently classifies as “insane” a good portion of the people who diagree with him?
I can’t believe I missed this!!!
For starters, as you may know by now, I’m a she. Now, about healthily discussing these issues.
1) “Disagreement” is not the problem. Denial is the problem. Delusion is the problem.
(a) WP who argue about race skirt around the fact that America isn’t actually theirs – which is a crucial, historical fact. In fact, it’s so crucial that when this fact is denied and not factored in, all racial dialogue immediately begins to deteriorate from that point on.
(b) WP run this country. They own pretty much everything. All but one of the presidents has been white. All the VPs have been white. Schools are taught a Eurocentric curriculum. Hollywood consistently flirts and dances with the notion of white perfection. Law enforcement favors whites. The legal system favors whites. These are all facts, not opinions. These are all backbones of white privilege. So when WP enter a racial discussion crying “reverse racism” and how they’re losing “their” country, and how they are the “ultimate victims”, they tend to be ignored – and rightly so.
So for people to even start a healthy discussion, Thad, a & b have to be clarified and firmly established and accepted from the get-go – no exceptions.
2) Whites have limited insight on POC (which is not a racist category if you understand why POC use it in the first place). This too is a fact (see “whitopia”). POC, however, insight is not so limited about whites, not because of our “saintliness” or our moral or cultural “superiority”. We know so much about WP…because we have to know. The “white world” is what we’re taught from day one. In addition to our myriad cultures, we have to learn what whites like, think, believe, and how they see the world. If we don’t read white authors, memorize their works, and recite it on cue, we can forget about getting an education (which we’ll need, by the way, in order to work for white-owned & run institutions).
So when WP wonder why their opinions on race are met with silence or derision, it’s because they often don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. And this is what ruins so many discussions: the inability of WP to simply accept their own ignorance about other people. Which leads me to:
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3) White cowardice (and vanity) prevents WP from accepting their own ignorance, admitting their own conscious and unconscious racist leanings, confronting and analyzing their own dysfunction, fully and unequivocally accepting the existence of white privilege…all for fear of “looking bad” and “losing the argument”. The main point of discussing racism, by the way, is to learn how it affects its primary targets, and in so doing, whom it benefits and how – not “win” an argument and look good while doing it. This is another reason POC have trouble taking WP seriously in racial discussion.
4) White arrogance also hinders healthy discussion. WP often try to “control” racial discussion. They derail POC very often, they employ hipster racism when the mood and topic are serious, and they tend to brand POC liars when POC relate their experiences. They do not consider the needs, thoughts, or feelings of POC because whether they admit it or not (or even realize it or not), they’ve been raised from birth not to see POC as fully human in the first place, and so treat them thusly. In other words, they invoke white privilege consistently.
5) Draptoresponsia, or “running away from responsibility”, flat-out kills healthy discussions about race. This is where “white guilt” and derailing (or hiding from) POC anger often come in. Classic example #1: a black woman is minding her own business and a white stranger asks to touch her hair. As politely as possible, she says no. The white stranger gets mad instead of seeing the error in their behavior and apologizing accordingly (which if they simply did, would actually lead to a healthier dialogue).
The black woman goes home and blogs about the experience. Other black women co-sign and provide similar experiences. A white female fanfic writer researching the texture of black women’s hair for her story comes across the blog and runs back to write in her author’s note about how “angry and scary” black women are with their hair.
Classic example #2: hipster racism. Enough said.
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Classic example #3: I use quizzes and “case studies” to examine these behaviors in whites. In both instances, I always use racist statements from whites themselves, and when they catch themselves agreeing with these statements (or recognizing them as ones they themselves made), it makes angry at me.
Some then accuse me of trying make them feel “guilty”, or as one drapto on here said, “you seem to be another complainer who beileves [sic] if it were not for the presence of whites, the world would be a swell place.”
Forget for a moment, that these statements were made by whites confidently and comfortably, without any coercion at all. They expressed their thoughts and opinions – as is their right. Forget that they read racist commentary by other whites and again – of free will – co-signed in a public forum for all the world to see.
Forget all that…after all they do, as is their privilege.
When called out on it, however, they often play the guilt card (while making it seem as though I’m the one playing the card) in order to change the subject and not have to actually deal with what they said and why they said it.
Now…how are POC supposed to conduct discussions dissecting and dismantling systemic racism when most WP – who insist on joining these discussions – bring their core benefit from the system with them?
Denying basic facts, throwing temper tantrums the moment one hears something they don’t agree with, crying at the first sound of criticism, and trying to control all participants in an event are negative behaviors commonly practiced by most WP in racial discussions and – not-so-coincidentally – are also commonly practiced by children.
Is it really such a surprise, then, that POC resort to the most often prescribed therapeutic remedy of simply ignoring the person indulging the behaviors?
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Ankhesen:
Excellent comments! Thank you! Yes, they act like mean, self-centred little children who expect their feelings and their wishful thinking to be the centre of the known universe.
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Well, this wil be long, but you asked for it.
For starters, as you may know by now, I’m a she.
I stand corrected.
“Disagreement” is not the problem. Denial is the problem. Delusion is the problem.
Perhaps. But there’s a lot of disagreement over what is denial and delusion.
WP who argue about race skirt around the fact that America isn’t actually theirs – which is a crucial, historical fact.
Agreed. Though by “argue about race”, I presume you mean “believe race is no big deal and argue that”. Because white people who are anti-racist will still argue about race and most of those folks are pretty hip to the fact that what’s now the U.S. was stolen from the native peoples and was worked by African slaves whose descendents are now their fellow citizens.
WP run this country. They own pretty much everything.
SOME white people run the country, own everything and are presidents. To quote John Fogerty: “It ain’t me. I ain’t no senator’s son.” While white is the face of power, that does not logically mean that all – or even most – whites are powerful. While white privilege may mean that I, as a white bum, get marginally better treatment than a black bum, it certainly isn’t going to put me in the presidential suite.
So class also figures in there somewhere, or should. One drapto thing I’ve noticed about Americans, black and white, is a general inability to recognize that class exists.
So when WP enter a racial discussion crying “reverse racism” and how they’re losing “their” country, and how they are the “ultimate victims”, they tend to be ignored – and rightly so.
Yeah, I agree. Reverse racism doesn’t exist and the people who cry on about it should be ignored. However, I don’t see many of those folks entering into racial discussions, unless it’s with the obvious intention to troll, like RR.
So for people to even start a healthy discussion, Thad, a & b have to be clarified and firmly established and accepted from the get-go – no exceptions.
So you’re saying that an unemployed white guy who’s a$$ is about to go into the street needs must believe he has the exact degree of white privilege as, say, Bill Gates or he shouldn’t be involved in any discussions about race?
Nice sentiment, but do you know where that will lead to? What we have now: the only white people who even give a tiny amount of attention to discussions of race are basically middle-class, college-educated and self-satisfied liberals. If you’re going to say ‘shut up!” to any white man or woman who says “I got issues too”, then you’re not going to have many white people discussing with you.
Now, maybe we can get them to see that CLASS and not RACE is at the bottom of their problems, but in order for that to occur, there also has to be a need to recognize other issues than race as impacting on human life chances.
And it seems to me that your “no exceptions” rule might end up trampling on that.
Or am I wrong?
Whites have limited insight on POC (which is not a racist category if you understand why POC use it in the first place).
I understand the category and while it may not be racist, per se, it’s deeply racialist and ethnocentric, for it presumes that there’s an essential “people of color” experience vis-a-vis white supremacy – an essential experience which just always seems to happen to be that of American – or English-speaking – blacks, by the way. Taking “non-white” and flipping it over from negative to positive does not change its essential value. It presumes an essential homogeny on both sides of the divide which just isn’t there.
Great rhetoric, bad real world observation set up by racialist dogma.
I’ll go with Native American scholar Vine Deloria Jr. on this one: Indian experience facing white supremacy is not the same thing as black experience and blacks do not have some magical “in” to Native experience simply because they, too, have been the victims of white supremacy. Vine wrote extensively on this topic and has me convinced. You simply claiming things ain’t that way won’t convince me, though I’ll happily debate this point with you using Vine, if you like. Better still, read him and refute his position and maybe I’ll start thinking POC is a decent and useful term again. Once upon a time, I used to.
Otherwise we’re going to have to agree to disagree on that one.
So when WP wonder why their opinions on race are met with silence or derision, it’s because they often don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.
This is a pretty good-sized and diverse racial discussion blog, isn’t it, Ank? Agreed?
I’ve been hanging out around here for a few months now and I can’t recall any white poster here wondering why their opinions are met with silence or derision.
Now: I may not have noticed at the time. Could be that they’re out there and maybe you could point them out to me.
But I’d categorize the whites posting here as the following types:
1) Outright trolls. The sort who come on, make an outrageous statement and leave.
2) Organized racists like RR and No_Slappz, who seem to think that they’re fighting the good fight here by dumping loads of garbage data “proving” black inferiority.
3) A small handful of non-U.S.-based white folks like Mira, B.R., O’D, CoL and myself who are sincerely interested in racism and qualify themselves as anti-racists.
…and that’s about it, really. None of those folks wonder why their opinions get trashed. Of them all, I’m probably unique in that I’m willing to state some things which I know are probably going to upset people because they go against dogma, but I’m certainly not arguing for white supremacy. To wit, my long on-going debate regarding sexual relations during slavery, which has been widely misread as an apology for rape. It is nothing of the sort, but I fully understand why peoples’ knees jerk that way. I certainly don’t wonder about it. Or about my discussion of Native genocide with Abagond. Again, I have a different view about how said genocide occurred, and I’m quite aware that, for a person who hasn’t really looked into native history but who generally uses it as a rhetorical tool to castigate white racism, any statement other than “Whites killed tens of millions of Indians in a premeditated fashion” is going to cause knees to jerk.
I suppose I should be a good boy and not even talk about these things because they are “sensitive”, but I certainly don’t wonder why people get angry when I don’t confirm their beliefs regarding them.
Aside from that and the obvious trolls by obvious racists, I don’t see much white “baaaawing” going on here. Maybe you could point it out?
White cowardice (and vanity) prevents WP from accepting their own ignorance, admitting their own conscious and unconscious racist leanings, confronting and analyzing their own dysfunction, fully and unequivocally accepting the existence of white privilege…all for fear of “looking bad” and “losing the argument”. The main point of discussing racism, by the way, is to learn how it affects its primary targets, and in so doing, whom it benefits and how – not “win” an argument and look good while doing it. This is another reason POC have trouble taking WP seriously in racial discussion.
Well, here’s a conundrum. You presume that all or most whites are ignorant regarding racism. Fair enough. You presume that vanity won’t let them speak, because they fear to be ridiculed. And yet, above, you seem to say that these whites are bursting into discussions all the time, saying stupid crap and being ignored or ridiculed. Furthemore, you call for discussion, but what you really seem to be saying is that whites shouldn’t discuss because they are ignorant. What you seem to be saying is that unless a white person agrees with you 100% about race and racism, they shouldn’t be in a discussion at all.
Am I misreading that? Because it seems to me that any disagreement a white person has with you or your opinion will be written off to “white racism” and sumarily ignored. End of discussion.
Here’s a question, seriously: is there any conceivable way that a white person can disagree with you, Ank, about any racial issue or item at all WITHOUT being racist?
Seriously. Because I don’t see it happening much in real life. And I’m not talking big and obvious issues, like RR claiming blacks are intellectually inferior: I’m talking simple stuff, like disagreeing, for example, that all POC experience vis-a-vis white supremacy is essentially the same.
Now, if a white person cannot disagree with you, what we have isn’t a discussion, it’s indoctrination. And that may well be what many or even most white people need. But you’re not going to get them to do it willingly and to the degree that you insist, they’re probably just going to ignore you – a problem when, as you say, they control everything. I mean, how are you gonna tie those white people down and gag them to get them to listen to you without them articulating anything you yourself don’t want to hear?
Let’s face it, Ank: white people aren’t exactly begging you to “dialogue” with them. Hell, they aren’t even begging white anti-racists to “discuss” things.
White arrogance also hinders healthy discussion.
This is human behavior, Ank. Sh1t, I’ve been called a liar here more times than I can count when I relate personal experiences. People are arrogant. Or are you seriously wanting to reinforce the “humble, happy” little POC myth, which has been a staple of white supremacist thought the world over? People are as arrogant as hell and thank God for it!
Draptoresponsia, or “running away from responsibility”, flat-out kills healthy discussions about race.
Sorry, Ank: whites aren’t running away from discussions of race. They are simply ignoring them. And they are doing that for one of two reasons:
1) They really are white supremacists and feel that the rest of us can go to hell, thank you very much.
2) They are occasionally interested in discussing race, but aren’t going to stick around to get harangued. These folks drift away, more than run away. Most of them don’t see racism as their personal responsability and abstract discussions of how they benefit from “white privilege” aren’t going to reach them.
As for “healthy discussions of race”, again, if you can show me how a white person could actually disagree with a black person about anything racial and not be seen as a racist, then I’ll believe in the possibility of “draptoresponsia”. Otherwise, what you’re calling for is for people to sit down, shut up, and believe what you say unquestioningly. And while I might agree that that would even be a good thing, at least for most whites most of the time, I think we can both agree that human nature says it just isn’t going to happen.
Now…how are POC supposed to conduct discussions dissecting and dismantling systemic racism when most WP – who insist on joining these discussions – bring their core benefit from the system with them?
Don’t let white people into the discussions. Simple as that.
But then don’t wonder why few white people discuss racism.
A discussion goes both ways: that’s the nature of the beast. If whites are ignorant about racism, then they’re necessarily going to say a lot of ignorant things in a discussion about racism. This is annoying, agreed. What you need to do, then, is say “Do I have the patience for this? After all, it’s not my responsability.” And I, for one, certainyl wouldn’t blame you if you decided that you didn’t have the patience for it.
But no matter how many terms or buzzwords you come up with to describe the situation, the fact remains: normal people won’t participate in a discussion to which they can’t contribute. If you want whites in the discussion, you’re going to have to let them talks, as distasteful as that might be to you personally.
Denying basic facts, throwing temper tantrums the moment one hears something they don’t agree with, crying at the first sound of criticism, and trying to control all participants in an event are negative behaviors commonly practiced by most WP in racial discussions and – not-so-coincidentally – are also commonly practiced by children.
All people deny basic facts, Ank. People DISAGREE on what are basic facts. POC disagree on what are basic facts. So, again, any time a white person does this, they’re going to be accused of doing it because they are white, correct? Well, what if they have a sincere disagreement with you as to what is a “basic fact”? Are they allowed to say it?
And again, I’m not talking about obvious crap, like the guy who says “Hey, wait a minute! But there’s no racism in the U.S!” I’m reminded, once again, of my recent discussion with Abagond on native american genocide, somethign I’ve studied quite a lot about. Abagond thinks the U.S. is responsible for killing off millions of American Indians. I, very respectfully, having looked long and hard at the facts of the case, don’t think that’s true. The U.S. crime of genocide comes not from the pre-meditiated murder of millions of Native Americans, which is something that just didn’t happen: it comes from the conscious attempt to eliminate native americans as discrete, coherent peoples mostly through other means than flat-out murder.
Now, am I “denying a basic fact” when I say that to you? Because if I am, it’s a basic fact that I learned from listening to other “POCs” as you would have it: some of the best Native American scholars and philosophers out there.
So what’s a white boy to do in a case like this? Listen to Indians and learn one story. Learn, in fact, that this very provable story about gneocide doesn’t get bandied about much because America is much more comfortable with the “other” story – the “century of dishonor” myth. Go off and mention this story on a site frequented by blacks on a discussion about this very topic – genocide of Native Americans – and then get called to account for “denying genocide”, as J recently did to me.
But wait. That’s not supposed to happen, right? Because POC ALL have the same essential experience facing whites and white supremacy, they should all have the same stories… right?
And yet they don’t.
As for “temper tantrums”… I always think it funny how one person’s “sincere emotional reaction which must be validated” becomes another’s “temper tantrum”. Perhaps if you could give me a good guideline as to what the one is and the other is? Because what it looks like right now is that the guideline is basically if you get upset in a discussion, it’s real and needs to be validated, bit if I get upset, it’s a temper tantrum.
“Control”? Frankly, most control freaks I’ve met are American. Race takes a long back seat to nationality on this one, although your mileage obviously varies. But it takes a good healthy respect for “control” to dream of discussions where only you and your friends get to talk, Ank.
Is it really such a surprise, then, that POC resort to the most often prescribed therapeutic remedy of simply ignoring the person indulging the behaviors?
And you’re doing a very good job of it, Ank.
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BtW, Ank, just looking over your site and noticed the book by Dr. Andea Smith. Good example of what I’m talking about re: genocide.
Dr. Smith isn’t concerned with the millions killed off in colonial wars and by biological shock during the 250 years prior to the founding of the U.S.: she’s got a really specific argument which revolves around the forced assimilation of the 1880s on.
She’s right to put her finger on that spot: we have names, dates, numbers… Indians could indeed ask for payment for those particular evils. It’s probably due to the fact that THIS genocide is provable and attributable that so many non-Indians are encouraged to think of genocide as something that mostly occurred during the conquest period.
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Thad
“A small handful of non-U.S.-based white folks like Mira, B.R., O’D, CoL.”
If the “O’D” in that list is me, then I have to tell you I am from the United States. Just for future reference.
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This took you two hours? Seriously?
*chuckles* I either struck a nerve or you got really turned on at the thought of “winning” an argument with a troublesome POC.
Thad, *sigh*, I know you like to read, and I know you love to lecture, but hon…you don’t know shit, and what’s worse, you really don’t know…that you don’t know shit. You are the ultimate poster child for Clueless White Guy and it’s no wonder Jensen freaked the hell out of you.
Go home, Thad, and tonight, fall asleep to Dances with Wolves. Make sure to have sweet dreams of POC brimming with gratitude over your, ahem, “insight” and who can’t wait to welcome you as “one of their own”.
Fashion tip from Moi: Lose the ventriloquism.
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Dear Ank,
Sorry it took me awhile to get back to you on this discussion. Last week was hectic as I had to catch up all the work put aside during convalescence. But it was also good to take a break because it allowed me to think a bit deeper on this whole topic than I perhaps normally would. So I hope you’ll take these comments in the spirit that they are proffered: as a fairly deep meditation (for an internet conversation, at any rate) on your observations.
In the first place, I have to admit that I’m at a loss as to where your philosophy places so-called white people. If whites participate in discussions on racism, they are liable to be charged by you as “trying to dominate the discussion and ‘educate’ people of color”. However, if they do not participate in said discussions, you will charge that they are neurotically avoiding taking responsibility for their white privilege. As far as I can see, the only safe position for a so-called white person in a discussion on race with you is to keep one’s mouth shut and nod enthusiastically at everything you say. Of course, this could also leave one open to a charge of treating you as a magical negro. In short, it seems that no matter what a “white” person may do around you, you have a snappy tagline to attach to their acts which highlight these as essentially motivated by white privilege.
This shows up another thing key element in your arguments about whiteness, which is that they seem to be simply tautological. By definition, whatever a white person does in relation to a “person of color” is to you racist and, on the flip side, racism is defined as what white people do to “people of color”. It doesn’t seem as if your analysis of race goes beyond this, though I’ll admit to not having read your blog in its entirety.
But what has really intrigued me over the past few days is this “people of color” concept you seem to take on faith and its supposed relationship to racism.
Many moons ago, I too used the term “people of color” and I am well aware of its ideological charge. You can correct me if I am wrong here, but this is how I understand it:
Supposedly, “people of color” are defined by their relationship to whiteness and said relationship is understood to be essentially the same everywhere in the world because white supremacy is essentially the same everywhere in the world. Thus, a black American can supposedly “instinctively” understand what, say, the racism Yanomami in the Amazon faces even though the black American doesn’t share a word of common language with the Yanomami. This is supposedly because both face a monolithic white-supremacist racism which they have to “intimately understand” in order to survive.
Furthermore, this intimate understanding is exclusive to “people of color” – so-called white people, because the supposedly never face racism, simply can’t share in it.
To my mind there are several extremely obvious problems with this ideology. In fact, these problems are so obvious and so basic that it is hard to call your views on race and people of color an “ideology”. Rather, they form a dogma: a position which is to be reiterated without critical thought and strictly adhered to no matter what contrary evidence might be presented.
Maybe I’m wrong, however, so here are a few of the basic problems with your position which I’d be interested in seeing you try to clear up in some sort of logical and reasonable fashion.
1) “Whiteness” is not now and never has been a stable and coherent category. There’s a great degree of debate as to who fits into the category and who doesn’t. It is not a self-explanatory thing. Since whiteness itself is not homogenous or stable, any reactions to it will not be identical or even necessarily mutually intelligible. However, even if we presume that whiteness is stable and homogenous, that still doesn’t mean that reactions to it are all essentially the same. Human culture is infinitely flexible and, as anthropologist Franz Boas demonstrated more than a century ago, like causes do not necessarily create like effects. Even presuming a stable whiteness, cultural reactions to it are as liable to be as varied as cultural reactions to any other phenomenon: they will not be immediately intelligible in a cross-cultural fashion.
2) People who are considered white in some contexts may not be so considered in others. This simple and observable fact disposes of the view that “whites” can’t understand racism on an intimate and experiential level. I’ll give one glaring example of which I’m very familiar and which raises its head all the time: Latin Americans. In Brazil, some 50% of the population considers itself to be “white” and is so considered by its fellow citizens. As soon as these people put a foot into Europe and the States, however, they learn that they are not “really” white but “Latins” – another racial category entirely. Even Abagond makes this basic error: although he does occasionally provide disclaimers to the effect that “latin” isn’t a race, he consistently sets “latinos” off against “blacks”, “whites” and “Asians” exactly as if they were a race. So where does this leave “white” latinos, exactly? Are they “people of color”? If so, what color? And if not, then how do you explain things such as, for example, my “white” Brazilian anthropology mentor being forced to ride in the back of the bus in Texas in the 1950s? Apparently, some “whites” can indeed benefit from white privilege AND ALSO know experientially what it is to be a target for white supremacist racism.
3) Historically, not all “whites” have been considered “supremely white”. Any brief history of racism that goes beyond the black/white divide in the U.S. will quickly turn up multiple instances of scientific racism being used to discriminate against people whom you probably consider to be “white”. Eastern Europeans, Jews, the Irish, Gypsies and a whole raftload of other so-called “white” peoples have been the target of eugenics campaigns, discrimination and even racially-based genocide. “Whiteness” itself was never a very cohesive scientifically racist category: many, many sub-categories within “whiteness” were created by racists and many of these categories were held to be inferior to so-called “people of color”. Even a quick overview of, say, racist anthropological views at the Smithsonian Institute in the late 1900s and early 20th century will reveal a series of commentaries to the effect that “degenerate white trash” was “less eugenic” than the “superior sort of Indian or negro”. So in the world of racism, white supremacy does not mean that all whites get a clear bill of “whiteness” which allows them to elevate themselves over “people of color”. (I think one of the most ironic things on this site, by the way, is the classification of Mira – a Serb – as “white” and therefore unable to “deeply and intuitively understand” how racism works. Anyone with even a passing acquaintance of 20th Balkan history should quickly be able to see how such a position is the fruit of very parochial rhetoric and dogma).
4) White supremacism itself is not a homogenous category. With regards to blacks and whites in the U.S., white supremacism has worked to segregate and separate. With regards to American Indians, it has worked to force assimilation. The political, practical and emotional effects of these two iterations of white supremacy are not immediately apprehensible to all people of color. Vine Deloria Junior, for example, has repeatedly pointed out the rift which occurred between black and native activisms during the 1960s and ‘70s – a rift, according to him, which was based on neither natives nor blacks fully understanding how different forms of white supremacism had shaped their own goals and struggles. Deloria mentions that blacks would constantly lecture Indians on the need to fight for equality when Indians, of course, were more interested in fighting for the right of NON-equality. For blacks, achieving full citizenship in the U.S. has always been a major goal; for Indians, full citizenship has historically been thrust upon them, unwanted, as a means of stealing their land. There are thus real and abiding differences between so called “peoples of color” which are CREATED by different forms of white supremacy. Any “unity” in the face of this must be struggled for and will be reached – MAYBE – only after long debate: it certainly isn’t “intuitively created by our mutual struggles with white supremacy”. Moving away from the Indian/black divide, both my wife and I have seen immense misunderstandings of black resistance in Brazil, articulated by black Americans who know nothing of the history of this country, let alone its many black movements. The typical African American view of black Brazil is that it’s “backwards” because black Brazilians do not seem to engage with race and racism in the way that black Americans do. On Ana’s posts on this blog, our own blog and on Brazzil.com, you can see several black Americans making comments about black Brazil which are frankly social evolutionary in content and intent –n ot to say social darwinistic! As France Windance Twine – one of the U.S. foremost black Brazilianists – has pointed out in her own ethnographic work, one cannot presume that being a black American gives one an “automatic in” with black Brazilian experiences. Blackness simply does not trump the many other differences out there – in fact, blackness itself is multiple and not immediately apprehensible simply based on skin color.
5) Finally, and very ironically, your white/PoC divide flies in the face of the historical center of the anti-racist position of the last five centuries: to wit, a belief in the psychic unity of the human species. From the monogenist/polygenist debates of the 18th century on down to today, the antiracist position has been that, in spite of all our many and manifold human differences, there is an essential unity in the human race. While things may be difficult for certain people – or even entire peoples – to understand, there is nothing in the sphere of human experience which is absolutely incomprehensible to another human being, given enough time, experience and education. The racist position has been precisely the opposite: that there are indeed unseen and ineffable “essences” at work among human beings which separate us into separate, discrete, absolutely unique and incommensurable peoples. One of the most notorious of these divisions has been the belief that the right sort of Europeans (for it has never been ALL Europeans) stands in superior opposition to the rest of the human race and will, in fact, dominate it. Your view of the “white”/”PoC” divide simply affirms this position, while shifting around a few of the valences. In your view, the “whites” become evil, not good; oppressors, not liberators; reactionary, not progressive. But the affirmation of the essential split remains the same. In other words, Ank, like the flat-out white supremacists over on Stormfront, you seem to believe that the human race is not of a piece, is not psychically unified: you believe that it is divided into two essential groups – white and non- – and that never these twain shall meet on anything like level ground.
Given all the above, I really can’t believe that there’s a mystical unity between “people of color” which lets them apprehend the world in a mutually intelligible fashion and which simultaneously excludes all “white” understanding. I think that you’d minimally have to resolve the problems I pose to “PoCness theory” above in order to rationally and logically postulate such a phenomenon.
Do I think you can resolve these problems? No. Do I think that you’ll even try? Probably not. It’s much more comfortable, after all, to believe that your current dogma covers all bases.
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It just wouldnt be the same here without you,Thad….
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Hey, someone’s got to insist on a scientific position regarding race on this blog. Otherwise, we’d just have black dogmatics screaming at the white ones and vice versa.
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Wrote about drapetomania at length in graduate school..Cartwright’s “remedy” or “cure” was to “whip the devil out of them.”, or cut off their big toes to discourage running away. This diagnosis was totally manufactured by Cartwright..
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