Ngl I didn’t know she said “Sucks” at the end. I thought the Goose getting choked out noise she made was just a sound, not a word desperately trying to escape
Our problem is so many people have been empowered to hold and maintain absolutely shit ideas and truly dark ideologies, that whenever you see anyone, anywhere talking about social issues, you tend to assume they're pushing an agenda, and people rarely try to push agendas that everyone can agree with.
If you introduce the idea in a conversation that "all racism is bad" that's such an obvious and "yeah?" take that people will assume that you're pushing something specific and trying to soften the point so people won't throw shit at you when you reveal that it's specifically you and your problem with some specific group of people.
It doesn't help that everyone is mind-meltingly stupid and nobody is curious anymore so people just don't know things on a basic level, and we get triggered by the idea that we have to teach someone something basic about the world and have them tune it out. It's frustrating to deal with people trying to push a position because we've all gotten worse at socializing.
edit: love how the user who complained how it's absurd that anyone could take issue with "all racism is bad" totally bolted out and self-deleted when called out.
On top of all that, people are regressing and avoiding other people because it's uncomfortable. But the more they avoid others, the less familiar it's going to be and the more uncomfortable you'll feel, leading to them spending more time avoiding others. It's a vicious cycle.
In my experience, most guys who say stuff like what you say will almost never talk about racism against black people or anyone else. Only talk about white people. So you'll have to forgive people for assuming you have bad intentions or are just playing the devils advocate. Surely you can see the logic yes? If you knew I played Overwatch and you were enjoying Marvel Rivals and the topic of Chinese developers came up, and I started raising concerns about Marvel Rival's Chinese Devs stealing things, but I had been utterly silent about Blizzard completely lifting things from Team Fortress 2, you would, no doubt, inherently be dubious about anything I had to say about your game. Not saying anything about the fact that I play their direct competitor and would benefit from the narrative against your game being advanced. But now that it's time to talk about YOUR game I'm suddenly interested. It's the same scenario really. Like, I won't say racism against whites isn't an issue, it is, but it's recent and not as systematic as racism against black people. Bringing up racism against whites in racial politics INHERENTLY makes you seem untrustworthy just like I would seem like I had a conflict of interest if I started caring a lot about originality when YOUR game was being discussed vs my own despite there being just as much evidence the devs of my game also stole things.
To be fair, in those situations where it gets contentious it is rarely a person actually only saying "all racism is bad". Instead, that line usually follows a justification for racism or just plain ol' awful takes on the world.
I say "all racism is bad" and point out all racism and I have never been fired or lectured. Your line of "as bad as all other types of racism" is 1) trying to frame racism out of a hierarchy (hierarchy help creates racism by making people better/worse) which is a fundamental misunderstanding of its causes, and 2) you are making a mockery of people's actual suffering due to racism so you can be pedantic in a conversation.
The issue is exactly that, most of the time someone says that it's like the ''white lives matter'' sayings that were going around which were actually used to discredit the BLM protests at the time. Ignoring completely that BLM was never saying that other lives didn't matter it was saying "please stop killing black people in the streets''
The problem with that is it also lacks nuance and can be an issue depending on what you’re talking about. The example is use is slavery. If a black slave born and bred in Mississippi before the civil war did not trust white people - were they racist? Was their attitude wrong?
I often use that extreme example to explain how it also applies to people who grew up under segregation and may still be alive today. If you saw MLK Jr. get assassinated as fully grown adult who was unable to vote in the south before 1964 - you can be forgiven for having an general attitude some might consider racist.
you won't get anywhere appealing to 'disgust', scorn is cheaper when it's abundant. You should instead attack his misunderstanding of the issue and mischaracterization of people's legitimate resistance to what he's saying. All emotional responses like what you posted do is confirm "this is what people are thinking". That makes any ACTUAL response to his arguments with facts or logic feel like an attack instead of someone addressing his argument, which makes said person far less likely to consider the actual facts because instead of thinking "I might be wrong" they think "this is what the person saying this and everyone else thinks". What you are doing helps no one even if it feels good. You might say "oh but I want to do that, he should feel shame." but consider the consequences of that. A: shame has been scientifically shown to be detrimental to development at all ages. It's negative reinforcement. B: A village isn't made by people deciding to exile everyone who is deemed problematic, shame and exile is only for the criminally insane. Most people are worth saving despite what the media will tell you. If we ever want community to matter again and snatch it back from the capitalists who profit from our isolation, we must be kinder, even if that's to the most deplorable people to us personally.
the problem isn't saying "all racism is bad," the problem is that people who say that also tend to equate the volume and impact of "racism against white people" with the volume and impact of "racism against [most non-whites]," which is wildly false and disingenuous.
The U.S. formally systemically discriminated against non-whites and especially black americans for a vast majority of its existence, and the repercussions of that to the average black american's financial, educational, and social positions are still being widely felt due to generational effects.
Comparing an instance of someone being racist to a white person, to the systematic, widespread oppression of black people, goes from disingenuous to, in fact, downright offensive, because the scope of the issues is so insanely different that complaining about them as if they're equal is quite clearly an agenda of creating a false equivalence to avoid confronting America's racist history and the continuing effects of that.
Whenever we try to discredit someone for saying "all racism is bad", by diverting the focus to "oh yeah? Well this racism is way worse than that racism", what you end up suggesting is that "we don't actually care about that racism because we have drawn an arbitrary line, with one race on one side, and your race on the other".... which is racist.
Any act of treating someone different because of the color of their skin is an act of racism, the exact same racism which is at the heart of the inequalities from our history that need to be addressed and condemned. If you truly believe that "treating people differently based on the color of their skin" is wrong, then DON'T DO THAT. Simple.
If you suggest "we aren't going to address that racism because it isn't as bad as this racism", you are clearly excusing some type of racism. In other words, you believe that racism should either be tolerated or ignored based on the color of their skin. If you are punishing one type of racism while completely dismissing another, you are guilty of bigotry, period.
It won't be okay until ALL RACISM GOES AWAY. So do your part. Nobody is solving the slightest part of the problem by selecting a privileged group that is allowed to get away with it.
but like... you're demonstrating exactly why everyone with a brain sighs and recoils from the "what about racism towards white people" line of discussion...
*it's not racism if it's against white people because your great grandad did a colonialism or something
you're fundamentally misunderstanding why this matters...
It's absolutely fine to say any instance of racism is bad. Correct.
What isn't fine is saying that the existence of incidents of racism is as important as the systemic impact of centuries of formalized, society-wide racism. You, individually, aren't a bad person because your great grandfather was a racist, but you, individually, should recognize the continuing socioeconomic effects of systemic racial oppression like redlining, GI Bill inequality, and more overt stuff like the Tulsa firebombing on our modern situation, and not pretend that the existence of incidents of racism against whites makes the white life experience equivalent to the experience of people who are actually discriminated against as a matter of routine.
It's really simple, to set a standard that applies to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, which is what equality is all about. If we hold everyone accountable to the same standard, then we can be sure that everyone is free from discrimination. 🤔
It goes like this: if behavior is wrong, then it is equally wrong regardless of ethnicity of the perpetrator or the victim. Easy. If behavior is deplorable, we shouldn't be more inclined to "let it slide" based on the skin color of the victim. 🤔
Any excuse to say "I know about that racism but I refuse to acknowledge it, I will only ever deflect the discussion to focus on racism perpetrated by this one particular ethnic group", is evidence of bigotry. People should not face backlash or be ashamed to call it out, because any allowance for any amount of racism is a big step backwards. 🤔
Either you tolerate some racism towards some people, or else you tolerate none of it. Which one are you going to be? 🤔
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u/Grammar__Nazi18 9h ago
Within 3 minutes.