that thing white ppl do when they disparage 'white ppl'

I thought it was interesting how people reacted to Beto O’Rourke’s admission that his ancestors owned slaves. I think a lot of white folks in the US probably have slaveowning ancestors and don’t realize it.

... not just in the US btw!

Tom, would you say it's fair to speak of an anti-Eastern European racism in the UK? Or is the term 'racism' not precise enough in your book? Because it's used quite often regardless, including by sociologists, which goes to show how porous the notion of 'race' (by contrast with ethnicity in particular) is in general.

I'm going to have to think about that!

let's rehash that old thread with D-40 while we're at it

I think that old thread with D-40 was... this thread!

I've spent my entire life in Wisconsin and I think about it a whole lot.

weird, I've never seen you around

I think that old thread with D-40 was... this thread!

haha oops time has looped back in on itself

I'm going to have to think about that!

Me too tbh.

I would never make the case that the kind of racism (if this term is to be maintained) Eastern Europeans experience in the UK or elsewhere in Western Europe is on the level of what (highly) visible minorities have suffered, but I do think 'race' is a less clear-cut and hence static notion that we tend to think.

And yeah, this is totally the beef with D-40 redux.

Well, my Huguenot ancestors who were early colonisers of Staten Island not only owned slaves, but left them to younger family members in their wills (I’ve seen copies of the records). Yes, it makes me feel awful to know that there are black Americans carrying the name Mercereau for this reason. It’s super-important to point out that for 100+ years, slavery was not just a ‘southern’ thing. These are the same ancestors that turned over their horses, carriages and wagons to the Revolutionary War effort and devised the strategy that flummoxed the British at Trenton.

I was very disappointed to learn that there were Jewish slave-owners in South Carolina

Yeah New Paltz, NY has this historic Huguenot street that they've preserved, and their potted history points out that fleeing Huguenot refugees brought slaves WITH them, so that community had Black enslaved members for exactly as long as it has had white ones: since the very beginning. The framing of their historic society & museum direction is publicly recognizing that now, which is heartening to see.

I’m unsure whether my ancestors in Staten Island arrived with slaves in tow - they only went there because their ship couldn’t carry on to Philadelphia because of storm conditions.

Being a white american, as an ethnic identity, has very few points of pride that go with it after you get rid of everything built on the backs of slaves or appropriated from black culture. It’s mostly stunt cooking, country music and plastic cups. And being the ruling ethnic majority in the country. So it’s no wonder a lot of people are frothing at the mouth about the transition to becoming a minority-majority nation.

you can scratch country music from that list fwiw

also for the millionth time white is not an ethnic identity

Of course it is

+ modern country made in Nashville is white af, nobody else listens to that shit

I don't think I've ever spent more than 10 seconds thinking about myself as a white guy and what that means to my own personal identity. I guess that's white privelege in a nutshell.

This is OTM and IMO why there is so much "but what does it MEAN to be white?" angst; you live in a world where white people almost never have to think about or reflect on this, certainly not in order to succeed/survive, whereas the rest of us need to figure out how to translate ourselves into an extension of your default setting to get anywhere, whether that translation turns out to be assimilation ("acting white"), rejection("insert-ethnicity-here power"), domination ("I excel at my chosen vocation so hard you cannot deny me"), or some combination of the three.

(And, to be clear, race is not the only axis this operates on, hence intersectionality and why people who haven't lived their entire lives navigating these conflicting facets of identity want to throw up their hands and proclaim the entire thing invalid)

My bf (black) and his social circle (mostly black) use the term "spicy white" to describe white folks who aren't white-white-whitey-white-white-- Albanians, Portuguese, Persians, etc. Fun!

I don't think I've ever spent more than 10 seconds thinking about myself as a white guy and what that means to my own personal identity. I guess that's white privelege in a nutshell.

I think about whiteness pretty often, mostly when I'm in social situations where white people are being disparaged by POC friends, or race is being discussed. It was a notable transition tbh to move from a predominantly white/East Asian social circle to a predominantly black/South Asian social circle; race was not a factor in most discussions in the first social group, and race was always a factor in the second. These days I'm very-often conscious of how I move and behave at parties, and even which parties I should go to.

A few years ago, I was dating a dark-skinned biracial man in L.A. when I was living there, and we had been talking about going to this party for a couple weeks. I was on my way there, and he called me and told me that he had second thoughts about me coming. He said that it was going to be a largely black crowd and it might not be "my scene". I got off the phone with him and cried about it for a minute: "my black boyfriend is ashamed of my white ass". I texted a couple of friends about it, and they were both "wow, what a jerk!"

Then I texted another friend about it-- in fact, my current boyfriend, as we were close friends before we began our relationship. I told him what had happened. He said to me, "you need to understand that if you're going to be dating a black person, there are going to be spaces that he is allowed to enter, things he is allowed to say, activities he is allowed to do, that you and your white body are not going to be allowed to enter, say, or do. You have to accept this if you're going to be in a relationship with him." I'm still conscious of that in my current relationship, about once a month there is just something I won't go to. (And at least four times in the past two years, I've been singled out at mostly black parties and mocked, physically attacked, or made fun of. Big fucking deal. It's nothing compared to what some of my friends experience.)

when uh.... discussing .....the wite american guilt/pride dilemma (that tombot sketches out well up above) with d40 prev i typed an effort at a post that still sits in my evernote ffs but at some point between copying and pasting i actually thought (or maybe you had posted in interim dan): "i agree with this and i think its worth making the point but do i need djp to read another effort at an irish (proper irish) person explaining to a wite american on ilx that what they mean by witeness doesnt apply to entire nations of colonised white ppl" and for about the second time ever on ilx i think i made a good decision to not post.

maybe thats how prods feel all the time idk

He said to me, "you need to understand that if you're going to be dating a black person, there are going to be spaces that he is allowed to enter, things he is allowed to say, activities he is allowed to do, that you and your white body are not going to be allowed to enter, say, or do. You have to accept this if you're going to be in a relationship with him." I'm still conscious of that in my current relationship, about once a month there is just something I won't go to. (And at least four times in the past two years, I've been singled out at mostly black parties and mocked, physically attacked, or made fun of. Big fucking deal. It's nothing compared to what some of my friends experience.)

I don't think this is "nothing" to me or would feel like nothing if it had happened to me and I'm generally not too keen on excusing interpersonal violations by recourse to racial or political in/outgroup distinctions in general - my feeling is that this isn't the kind of world I'd want to inhabit or at least aspire towards, but you're the one in the relationship navigating these waters and there is some obvious nobility in yr approach as well (ultimately compassion/kindness instead of resentment even if it took some venting first). i'm just registering that despite how progressive it may sound to you, to my ears it sounds regressive + hostile and makes me sad.

If I come to a party with my boyfriend and, an hour in, a drunk black woman aggressively asks me to leave, then I will do so; I resent your statement that this is the kind of world I'd "want to inhabit or at least aspire toward". I am behaving according to what I feel is correct, given the circumstances.

Fwiw, I do think that being physically attacked for any reason is a big deal, fgti.

for my sins i read back some of the ludicrous last bump and its worth making a full and frank admission of being overly dickish to oûtiç (cant do the accent) during moments of high dudgeon with other unnamed affiliates of his during that spat

apologies for same etc

but at same time there was a lot of good 2011 energy in the room for a few days there

to soref: "the world" is not the world.

― Mordy

i think you'll find that the world became the world in 1974

I was very disappointed to learn that there were Jewish slave-owners in South Carolina

― change display name (Jordan)

there's also the whole weird thing about Judah P. Benjamin having a reputation for being "the brains of the Confederacy".

i'm not sure how closely this needs to be addressed but jewish slave-owners made up a minuscule percentage of slave-owners in the south and a lot of the rhetoric about jewish slave-owners and jewish participation in the slave trade has been purposefully inflated for antisemitic purposes.

^^^^ yup.

I was just at the museum of american jewish history in philadelphia -- great museum -- and they make it perfectly plain that some jews owned slaves -- not in the service of anti-semitism but in the service of its overall message that there's not a single part of american history that isn't in part american jewish history. i see the idea that we're somehow "a people apart" as more helpful to anti-semitism overall.

a relative just sent me a campaign guide from a group called "White Awake" and my main reaction was amusement that that name could work just as well for a neo-nazi/white nationalist group as it does for a "woke white liberals" group

How about 'White Awoke'?

White Awake - the neo-nazi Katy Perry fanclub

after years of reading and pondering I'm going to have to disparage a complex hierarchy of embedded cultural hegemonies

Middle class Lockdown Bingo: play here!

Banana bread
Growing tomatoes
Sourdough starter
Drinks on zoom
The Mirror & the Light
5pm gin
Videoing your street clapping
Doing Joe Wicks PE
Fancying Rishi Sunak
Ordering from independent shops
Crafts
Educational walks
Meditation
Tea

— Flic Everett (@fliceverett) April 3, 2020

Fancying Rishi Sunak

Excuse me?

Tea is a middle class thing now?

all walks are educational if you are doing it right

I did order a copy of The Mirror & The Light today.

What about that thing white ppl do -- I just was in a long conversation with a fellow white person who was doing this, that's why it's on my mind -- when they complain about the town/state/school of their childhood being "so white"?

I can imagine a perfectly reputable version of this practice where said white person would be making the point "all-white or almost all-white spaces are almost always the result of deliberate exclusionary practices, and as an adult, I see that enjoyed access to those spaces that was denied to others and that's not fair" but it usually doesn't come off like this, and it didn't in this case, the tone was much more "life was so bland and tiresome among all those whites," as if the reason you don't want to be in an all-white space is because it lacks the spicy SNAP people of color provide.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/15HiKjAnUuAymWdqejOTcP

i love to make fun of wite people

we fucking suck and deserve so much worse

Weird, I saw that playlist somewhere else recently too. They got the wrong Bon Jovi song at the end though. Shot Through the Heart was an album track on the self-titled debut. Whoever made this list probably meant to put on You Give Love a Bad Name off of Slippery When Wet, which starts off with the lyric "Shot through the heart and you're to blame".

Ok, wait. They did get You Give Love a Bad Name on there too. Who the fuck likes Shot Through the Heart?

Was it in a video game or something?

TIL that Bon Jovi already had a song called “Shot Through The Heart” before they made YGLABN.

true story: I spent my entire life until my mid 20s having never heard Sweet Caroline with a crowd. not really sure I’d even heard the entire song before

i’m standing around at a music festival and the house music starts playing it as the tent gets crowded, and it becomes a singalong. i’m mystified!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPkNBo4_rpM

ruuuuuuuuun

So good!