Race- Privilege, Relations, Racism, etc.

"Final solution to the immigration problem"...

I'd probably be more horrified if he wasn't universally condemned by the rest of the parliament.

I thought the right wing uses dogwhistles because such rhetoric is a blatant shibboleth that betrays their actual motives. I must ask if his seat's going to be vacant after this?

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Aug 15th 2018 at 2:03:30 AM

His seat's gonna be up for grabs next year, IIRC. Bernardi, on the other hand, still gets to cling on to power all the way till 2022.

Certain events in recent years <cough>Trump<cough> have emboldened the bigots.

Does then Australian Senate not have a procedure for expelling members for gross misconduct?

Or does calling for a “final solution” not count as gross misconduct?

There are procedures in place to investigate senators who refuse to withdraw objectionable statements and suspend them from the Senate, but that would be entirely up to the discretion of sitting Senate President Scott Ryan.

Anning's boss Bob Katter is also the guy who came up with the infamous crocodile non-sequitur, just FYI.

Well let us hope that that Ryan isn't as spineless as a certain other one.

So a bit of a broad topic, but something we don't talk about much misogynoir, which is the interplay of both racism and sexism towards black women, a group among the most marginalised and disrespected. And since it is an interplay, they get a lot of crap from everyone, with people usually getting a pass even more frequency since people at large do not care. One particular way people engage in misogynoir is constantly gaslighting black women, making it seem like they don't know what they are talking about, or that what you did in fact do didn't happen.

Greetings, good people of this thread! I’ve never posted in this thread before, but I thought I’d stop by to ask a question about a recent event that I feel is relevant to this thread.

Under the “power + prejudice” definition of racism that seems to be generally accepted in academia (please correct me if any of that is incorrect), would someone like Bettie Cook Scott (a black woman who called an Asian woman a ching-chong) be considered racist? My understanding is that minorities can’t be racist against white people (at least not in the West) under the currently accepted definition, but I don’t know if a minority being prejudiced against another minority of a different ethnic background can truly be considered racism.

If someone of one ethnicity is discriminative against someone of another ethnicity, that's racism. Plain and simple.

Edited by kkhohoho on Aug 18th 2018 at 11:36:40 AM

That’s what I used to think, but pieces like this have lead me to reconsider. If anything in that article is debatable or just plain wrong, I’d like to know so that I can stay informed on currently accepted social science & better discuss the topic at hand.

Edited by Spinosegnosaurus77 on Aug 18th 2018 at 12:42:14 PM

What she said was a textbook racial slur. There is a difference between saying that people of color making mayonnaise jokes about white people is racist (no, it’s not; it’s dumb or maybe prejudiced, but it’s an oppressed group mocking the dominant group), versus a black woman (oppressed group) using a racial slur against an Asian person (different oppressed group).

Unfortunately, members of minority groups can be racist against members of their own group or other groups. Case in point, see that recent video of a black police officer brutally assaulting a black citizen. Black police officers are also more likely to shoot at black people than at white people. While the person exhibiting racist behavior may not be white, they are still enforcing/supporting white supremacy.

Edited by wisewillow on Aug 18th 2018 at 12:49:10 PM

I think it’s relevant because as minorities, black and Asian people in America and other western countries are on relatively level ground. They have the power to participate in/call down majority racist aggression against each other. Like, say, a black businessman in the forties could report a Japanese rival and get him sent off to an internment camp by scary, heavily-armed white people - majority racism becomes a weapon for minorities to use. It’s a very different dynamic from a member of an oppressed minority mouthing off about the majority oppressing them.

Edited by Iaculus on Aug 18th 2018 at 4:55:46 PM

Agreed, although it’s not exactly level ground. There’s some weird interplay because of the different stereotypes associated with each ethnic group. And the type of discrimination faced by different members of ethnic groups can vary too. Asian people can be anti-black. Latino people can be anti-black. Being minorities themselves isn’t an excuse. That being said, being black doesn’t mean you can’t also be racist against Latinos and Asian people.

Edited by wisewillow on Aug 18th 2018 at 12:56:35 PM

On level ground compared to each other, you mean? I was under the impression that Asians are less oppressed than black people in the West, but I don’t have any data to back that up.

Edited by Spinosegnosaurus77 on Aug 18th 2018 at 12:54:49 PM

It depends. An Asian person is far less likely to be stopped for a minor traffic violation, or to be shot and killed by police officer, or to be followed around a store by the owner, or to be denied a job because their name is “ghetto” and so on.

However, a lot of Asian people do live in deep poverty, once you look at the specific ethnic groups rather than overall averages which are distorted by a small number of very wealthy, predominately East Asian, people.

I highly recommend reading Ijeoma Oluo’s “So You Want to Talk About Race.” She examines a lot of these issues.

Edited by wisewillow on Aug 18th 2018 at 1:04:59 PM

@Spinosegnosaurus 77

To throw my two cents on what you asked, the idea that racism = prejudice + power is not something I adhere to, mostly because that implies that an oppressed group could be given a pass for being prejudiced against a majority group to strike a fake balance instead of trying to expect better from both sides.

And yet when talking about "both sides" it tends to imply some kind of equivalence, which is obviously fallacious when comparing minority and majority people.

Intellectually I see the strength of power+prejudice definition of racism but from a purely pragmatic perspective it just doesn't seem fair and thus isn't very useful in a common discourse outside of academia.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 18th 2018 at 1:08:29 PM

But as I said above, black people making jokes about how white people don’t season their food is very different than white people making jokes about how black people don’t have dads and are criminals.

One is an oppressed group making a harmless joke that does not hurt members of the dominant group in any substantive way.

The other is a dominant group reinforcing stereotypes that have been used to actively harm and degrade members of the oppressed group.

The same logic applies to cracker versus the n-word. Yeah, one of them is WAY worse and WAY more racist, and it’s because of historical context and societal power dynamics.

Edited by wisewillow on Aug 18th 2018 at 1:09:56 PM

The problem with this argument is that it just means that the former is less severe then the latter, not that it's not racist.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 18th 2018 at 1:11:55 PM

Yeah, but as you pointed out, “they’re both racist” isn’t really a useful thing to say because it implies they’re equally bad. Which they are not.

So racism = prejudice + power is something I adhere to as a rule of thumb, but it's not always simple.

For example, let's look at something wildly different, the concept of neighbors turning in their neighbors for going against the gov't. Or even children turning in their parents.

Now, it might be easy to say "oh, this is an example of no power. Children can't have power over adults." and this is true!

It's not like everyone is born with inherent power, it's the power that society creates through a narrative. They create a sort of hegemony, where certain things are Assumed.

Even those who are oppressed can partake in it. This is why you get a lot of white women who can do terrible things, despite being a women.

It's less about the individual, and more about the societal standards created. It's not "this individual said X" but "what weight has this word and this identity been given by society"

At least, that's how I look at it. We often look at things on an individual level, but I don't think that always work when talking theory. Individual levels is good for contextual analysis, theories are good for analyzing society as a whole.

Fair enough.

But they are still bad, which is something that cannot be ignored either, maybe not as top priority but still something that has to be addressed.

It's definitely important to see things beyond the individual level, lest we allow subjectiveness or circumstance overpower the objective angle.

While I completely agree that

I feel that this is sometimes abused to give people like Sarah Jeong a pass instead of expecting better from them, which I’m concerned will a) potentially drive away white people who want to be allies to the cause & b) fuel the alt-right narrative of “white genocide”.