• GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    This is radlib quibbling through and through, but I want to add a refutation anyway:

    There was discussion before on this site about how nominally white people shouldn’t identify with whiteness. Isn’t this an example of that, however trivial? Unless I’m a racist, why would I ever want to go out of my way to further identify myself with whiteness? I won’t deny that my experience is one of being white and in fact want to be transparent about it, but that’s not the same as wanting to append “as a honky” to every statement I make. That’s White Pride shit (i.e. shit)

    • HamManBad [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I feel like it will always be a catch 22 with no right answers on an individual level until racism has been dealt with structurally. As a white person, you cannot be ethically pure in the world as it is, even though obviously something like this is really trivial

      • boboblaw [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        As a white person

        In all seriousness, how do I tell if I’m white? I keep thinking about another user’s example of Assad. He appears white-passing, but his name, religion and nationality would each be enough for him to be considered non-white in the US.

        And is a case like that one where it actually matters to what extent the person identifies with whiteness?

        • HamManBad [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          It’s funny. Most of my great grandparents wouldn’t have been considered “white” in their early years in America, yet here I am, undisputably white. White Hispanics are another one that feels kind of nebulous. I also saw a clip of an Irish comedian saying he visited America and he doesn’t have white guilt because in Ireland “we planted the potatoes, and then dug them up ourselves

          In conclusion, whiteness is bullshit and needs to be destroyed.

          • synae[he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            Then there’s the Irish who left for America because there weren’t any potatoes to pull up (not edible ones, anyway), were discriminated against but eventually their descendants were accepted into the white hegemony, and nowadays benefit from American white privilege.

            That’d be me, and I definitely have white guilt and will not by using the white power emoji.

            Plus I’m a huge Simpsons fan 👍

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I’m not saying it’s a perfect retort but I think in this case it’s pretty clear that snow roaches using the yellow emojis is better.

      • Grimble [he/him,they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Frr seriously, that take feels like a surefire way to create dozens of separate interpretations and a thousand confused, circular arguments between them. Instead of just having people admit the obvious, they’d rather we go the long way and alienate each other unintentionally. Not good for much else.

    • Mokey [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I think its one of those liminal things, sorry for using that word. You shouldnt identify as white because its not a thing but theres no going around the fact that your skin is white and the rest of the world perceives you as white.

      I feel like I mostly buy into this but I also don’t believe in the radlib sense of endless guilt, wokescolding and apologizing for it.

      You should use the white skin emoji is written by someone who works from home and never leaves the house. All their interactions are through social media.

      Like, there should be spheres of communication and they dont all overlap with eachother. The shit you say to your IRL friends doesnt make it out to your public Instagram page because you cant make the same type of qualitative and quantitative social agreements on the broad internet space that you can with your IRL friends.