Assholes in the news

[Rev. Rye]

To put the problems with that Coke racial sensitivity video into perspective, here’s a guy who sunk 20-30 grand on a sociology degree talking about the problems with it:





I think the fundamental problem here lies in the disconnect between academic language and everyday language. For instance, an everyday person will likely define racism as “race-based prejudice,” while in an academic context, the term tends to refer to what we lay-motherfuckers call systemic racism. It’s how people can say things like “black people cant be racist” with a straight face. If we’re talking about whether or not they’re the ones who benefit from the racist structures that pervade society, it’s a no-shit Sherlock statement. If you’re talking about whether or not an individual black person can be as racially bigoted as an individual white person, it just comes across as sophistry, especially if you’re not familiar with the second definition. 

In this case, while the layman might read “whiteness” and think “someone who looks like they were of recent European ancestry, (but not any other part of the world),” In academia, it tends to be given a far more abstract meaning, one that seems commensurate with “white privilege.” Not simply fair skin or a non negligible chance of growing up to have red or blonde hair, or even shit like enjoying the Blues Brothers and being indifferent to Robert Johnson. It includes shit like being able to look at the Presidents and seeing them look like you. Or, in a more visceral example, being able to encounter a police officer and being able to reasonably expect them to not A) stop you and accuse you of a crime you didn’t commit because “you matched a description” that doesn’t actually look like you except for your race, or B) find some pretext to kill you and get away with it. With this in mind, it’s not hard to see what they’re going for. 

I don’t know if Joyce DiAngelo explained that before she got to that part of the video, but if she didn’t or even if she did and the audience has yet to fully accept this new definition, it’s all but inevitable that this comes off as essentialist bullshit against white people. Shit that, if you said against, say, Black or Asian people, would get you fired and blacklisted by anyone outside wingnut circles. The optics make you (and by extension, the anti-racist movement as a whole) look like shit and in the end, nothing constructive happens, except hopefully you learn from your mistakes.

And maybe some randy on the internet sees it and sees it as evidence that opposing anti-racist activism is somehow different from propping up racism.

[The Grand Nudger]

Anything at all can come off as essentialist bullshit against white people. That's white fragility, after all.

[Rev. Rye]

Anything at all can come off as essentialist bullshit against white people. That's white fragility, after all.

And the woman who literally coined the term created this video that seems to have barely bothered to compensate for that. If you’re trying to reach the ordinary white person and you’re not even bothering to adjust your messaging to get past white people’s fragility, then what’s the fucking point? It just renders the whole thing Sisyphean.



You don’t even bother to massage your message in a way to get the people you’re trying to reach on your side, this is what it gets you:



And yes, it looks like all it took to turn Tim Gionet from a chill, pot-smoking libertarian who supported Black Lives Matter to a full-blown Neo-Nazi willing to storm the Capitol and overturn the results of a democratic election was a guy chiding him for calling Justin Bieber his “spirit animal” around the same time Donald Trump started to run for President on a campaign based mostly on open racism and færie dust. Seriously.

[The Grand Nudger]

And the woman who literally coined the term created this video that seems to have barely bothered to compensate for that. If you’re trying to reach the ordinary white person and you’re not even bothering to adjust your messaging to get past white people’s fragility, then what’s the fucking point? It just renders the whole thing Sisyphean.

It's her belief that living in a racially insular society has left Some People with little to no racial stamina.  Unused to hearing uncomfortable or inconvenient shit from other POVs, they act out like children when confronted with an ugly truth.  She believes that this sugarcoating of insularity has made it harder to hear these truths, not easier.  

You're wondering why she doesn't bake white privilege into her sensitivity course on white privilege in the hopes that white privilege will be less of a problem.

And yes, it looks like all it took to turn Tim Gionet from a chill, pot-smoking libertarian who supported Black Lives Matter to a full-blown Neo-Nazi willing to storm the Capitol and overturn the results of a democratic election was a guy chiding him for calling Justin Bieber his “spirit animal” around the same time Donald Trump started to run for President on a campaign based mostly on open racism and færie dust. Seriously.

That would be a hilarious story, but it's beyond unlikely that this was really the reason he went full 14 words.  He merely realized (correctly), that it was okay to be a neo-nazi...and, fwiw, profitable too. White supremacists smoke pot. White supremacists are down for Libertarianism™. Social libs swallow the white genocide haterade - it's explicitly constructed for them.

If we have to worry that people are going to snap and turn into nazis for reasons this silly, maybe we should save ourselves the trouble of trying to prevent it at all. Maybe they'll turn into nazis if the guy fucks up their schwarma, too. In mere reality, however, the guy looks to have turned into a nazi, if he turned into anything at all, the same way that anyone does. By listening to nazis, and hanging out with nazis. It's really that simple. He knew what he was getting into, so that adds another layer to the onion. Most people don't, and think that they wouldn't hang out with nazis and that they're ungettable. This asshole was looking to be wooed.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Yes, I produce semen. Yes, I experience lower back pain. But I swear, 'pon my word of honour, this WASN'T me.

Irishman Injects Own Semen To Cure His Back Pain

Once a month, a 33-year-old Irish man would fill a syringe with his own semen and squirt it into the veins and muscles of his right arm, hoping it would make his chronic lower back pain go away.

Boru

[zwanzig]

Yes, I produce semen. Yes, I experience lower back pain. But I swear, 'pon my word of honour, this WASN'T me.

Irishman Injects Own Semen To Cure His Back Pain

Once a month, a 33-year-old Irish man would fill a syringe with his own semen and squirt it into the veins and muscles of his right arm, hoping it would make his chronic lower back pain go away.

Boru

I don't understand. How would injecting it be any different than abstaining from ejaculating in the first place?

[Irreligious Atheist]

If anything, I need to try to be more "white", not less "white". I need to be more successful like other whites, more responsible, more confident, more innovative. Whites invented airplanes and took man to the moon. Whites were the first to end slavery and sacrificed their lives to free the slaves. Whites are a beautiful people.

You can make any race look like shit if all you focus on are the negatives. Yeah, whites have done some not nice things, and whites in power are still doing some not nice things, but anyone in power would do not nice things. Power corrupts. That's not a white people thing. It's a power thing.

'It's ok to be white' is seen as hate speech but we have people in this very thread arguing that Robin DiAngelo is just telling the hard truth like it needs to be told. Stop being white, because it's not ok to be white.

[The Grand Nudger]

Someone must have given you shit for calling beiber your spirit animal too, huh.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If anything, I need to try to be more "white", not less "white". I need to be more successful like other whites, more responsible, more confident, more innovative. Whites invented airplanes and took man to the moon. Whites were the first to end slavery and sacrificed their lives to free the slaves. Whites are a beautiful people.

You can make any race look like shit if all you focus on are the negatives. Yeah, whites have done some not nice things, and whites in power are still doing some not nice things, but anyone in power would do not nice things. Power corrupts. That's not a white people thing. It's a power thing.

'It's ok to be white' is seen as hate speech but we have people in this very thread arguing that Robin DiAngelo is just telling the hard truth like it needs to be told. Stop being white, because it's not ok to be white.

The clear implication is that you think white people are more responsible, confident and innovative than non-white people.

The notion that white people should somehow be lauded for ending slavery is like thanking a man for handing you a bandage after he stabs you.

Boru

[Rev. Rye]

Let’s face it, the right does a depressingly good job of making themselves look appealing to vulnerable people. Even if their views are monstrous, at least they look like they’re capable of having a bit of fun. All that fun may be at the expense of other people, but at least it looks like you’re not the receiving end. And at least when they trash people for having different opinions, they don’t look like humourless and perpetually triggered SJWs. And yes, sometimes, people can compare that slideshow’s approach and the (barely) glorified schoolyard bully approach many in the alt-right take and come around thinking that the latter is somehow preferable.



If someone like Contrapoints can manage to talk people down from going all 14/88, there has to be a better way of convincing the average person to check their privilege than telling them how to be less white, even if it’s just saying “yeah, I can see why you’d think that, but the thing is, here’s why it’s wrong and why you should act differently.”