Magdelin Laundry

[Versus]

Jonathan, racism has change since the Jim Crow era. What you recognize as racism is not how the race social structure is enforced anymore and the shit you say is almost a direct parallel to it's new ideology.

[Versus]

I understand what one of the differences between Despanan and Jonathan is, Alan. Despanan actually thinks about shit. Jonathan dismisses everything offhand.

[Jonathan]

I think you are the first person to ever accuse me of being politically correct.

I am not assigning characteristics or abilities in the positive or negative to members of any race nor am I projecting prejudice or discrimination directed against anyone on said basis.

Calling me personally a racist is out of fucking line. You're either mistaken or disingenuous. You want to say I'm wrong about something, that's one thing. Just because you saw a phrase in some other fucking place that resembles whatever I said doesn't mean I hold the same goddamn world view.

edit: Whelp there's page 8 for the fucking bingo card.

[Alan]

Why should I believe your perception of yourself more than your very words about people?
No one ever believes they're the bad person. One of the very defining characteristics of privilege is that the person in question doesn't perceive their privilege.

[Versus]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

I am not assigning characteristics or abilities in the positive or negative to members of any race nor am I projecting prejudice or discrimination directed against anyone on said basis.

That is not the totality of racism anymore.

[Jonathan]

Care to show a definition that goes beyond "someone I disagree with on gothic.net"?

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by Alan

Why should I believe your perception of yourself more than your very words about people?
No one ever believes they're the bad person. One of the very defining characteristics of privilege is that the person in question doesn't perceive their privilege.

Please quote what you consider to be a racist comment of mine. I am genuinely curious. You're assured that's the case so it shouldn't be too hard.

[Alan]

That will be fun, but it will take a couple of hours to list it all, so bear with me.

[Versus]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

Care to show a definition that goes beyond "someone I disagree with on gothic.net"?

Actually, I already have given you one and I know Saya has as well.

[Jonathan]

I'm having a hard time locating it, since this bullshit has metastasized through way too god damn many threads already.

What I can find easily enough is "the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life"

So Versus, what fundamental freedoms have I restricted you from enjoying today?

Or you know, you could admit that even if you don't like me because I posted things you disagree with, me being called a racist isn't fucking fair.

[Versus]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

I'm having a hard time locating it, since this bullshit has metastasized through way too god damn many threads already.

Try page 4 of the Mitt Romney thread for my post. It's the long one, and what you're looking for is towards the bottom of my post. Try page 5 of the same thread for Saya's. Hers is towards the bottom of the page.

Or you know, you could admit that even if you don't like me because I posted things you disagree with, me being called a racist isn't fucking fair.

You know what's really unfair? That you can't even remember the answers I give to your questions. That you dismiss them off hand and don't even remember asking them. That you walk away from a racial discussion in which I try to teach you, and then come back and ask the same questions.

[Jonathan]

You know, try as I might I just can't manage to keep a running tally of exactly which off-topic thread a given post was made in.

Alright so since there's no overt racism you can pin on me, for example oh I don't know hurling racial epithets, I'll hold out for Alan's forthcoming list.

[Versus]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

You know, try as I might I just can't manage to keep a running tally of exactly which off-topic thread a given post was made in.

That doesn't surprise me.

Alright so since there's no overt racism you can pin on me, for example oh I don't know hurling racial epithets, I'll hold out for Alan's forthcoming list.

Actually, I can. But I think it's important for you to realize that it's not necessary to say or do anything consciously or overtly in order to subscribe to, reproduce, and otherwise participate in racist ideology that reinforces the racial social structure examined and experienced currently.

[Jonathan]

A handful of forum posts, no matter how many threads get dragged into this Gordian knot, are not going to make the slightest bit of difference in the structure of our society.

How many times do I have to copy and paste "Insitutional Racism is actually a really big deal" before I can make the world a better place? Does a bigger font size help?

[Acharis]

Originally Posted by Saya

Do you want an ally cookie?

No, I don't want an ally cookie or for people to make me feel better about anything. Cookies are patronising for something I would just do anyway.

And if neighbours are giving me a particularly hard time, I am an asshole

Originally Posted by Saya

I'm from a similar background, I'm from a tiny town that only got highspeed internet a few years ago and I was 22 by the time I got my own computer. I was not born knowing this shit.

Nice to know you got out of that situation too, limiting minds wastes them. I left my town, now have wireless and have started studying online for work

Originally Posted by Saya

But the thing is, you don't have to know everything. That is far from the point. I sure as shit don't know everything about racism. I'm white, I never can. But when Versus calls me out on shit, I apologize and go figure out what I did wrong. Like a while ago I was talking about this white supremist group and I refered to them as white power groups, and he asked me not to. I really had to go think about that one, and now I do feel like a dumbass, but its not his job to educate me. That would be exhausting, to be responsible for his own education and mine and Desp's and your's and all of Gnet's. A person can't do it all, and its not fair to ask them to.

When I'm called out I do generally listen and give it some consideration.
All your points are valid, and nobody has the responsibility to educate me (I do go to blogs to find out the context of what people are saying).



But here... I still don't get you.
I don't think that discovering something belatedly and using a reasonably descriptive term warranted an X page shitstorm. I see how it would piss you off and highlight inequality if you already knew or had to know, but saying 'this isn't ok' doesn't mean Despanan dismissed or erased anything else. He wasn't being an asshole.


The Magdalene Laundries were recent and blatantly illegal events, the information was actually published and newly seen, so the reaction was "Holy Shit".

[Acharis]

Also it includes everything feminists and atheists hate in organised religion.

[Jonathan]

Acharis, there was no reason for the shitstorm. Useful conversation left the room a while ago. Politics is collapsing into a singularity of smugness and blame. Enjoy the ride.

[Versus]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

A handful of forum posts, no matter how many threads get dragged into this Gordian knot, are not going to make the slightest bit of difference in the structure of our society.

How many times do I have to copy and paste "Insitutional Racism is actually a really big deal" before I can make the world a better place? Does a bigger font size help?

I'm not sure why you say this. It doesn't seem like a direct response to my last post.

I said that you do not need to be aware of how you reinforce the social structure to still do it. Do you need an example?

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Saya

Its not one ethnic group against another, specifically its white people cannot understand the experience of PoC. PoC amongst themselves may deal with discrimination and debate and not being able to understand each other, but ultimately they understand what it means to be a PoC in a white supremist society. We white people however are raised to be ignorant and oblivious and segregated. While PoC intermingle very well, white people live in white neighbourhoods, want white schools, white marriages, and white jobs. But we don't call it that, its so subtly ingrained in our minds we don't see it. Its very obvious to many PoC, however. Its like having something stuck on your face in public, you don't realize its there until someone lets you know or holds up a mirror for you. An eye can't see itself as it is, it needs a reflection.

1) can we please get away from romanticized parables? Humans are much more complex than eyes, and there are ways of figuring out something is stuck on your face without a mirror or another person.

2) You're making a lot of hasty generalizations. Many cultures live in segregated neighborhoods. Not just white people. A good example of this would be Hassidic and Orthodox Jews, who sequester off into their own communities. Another would be the Amish, who granted are white, but still a heavily discriminated against minority group.

3) People of color, do not always intermingle well, there's really no hard and fast rule here based on skin color. Where you'd think you'd find solidarity, often times you find racism and hostility towards other people of color. You can claim that this is an effect of white hegemony, and I would agree with you at least partially, but this issue is much more complex than PoC vs. White People.

4) Many people live in integrated communities as well. For instance, Sugar Hill here in New York is largely Dominican, but there is a minority of white people who live there and participate in the community. Similar things are happening in Bushwick and Queens. I'm sure you'll dismiss this as gentrification, and in some cases it is, but in others you get a very diverse, very integrated community, in which intermarriage and integrated schools are frequent and desirable. Beyond this, it's impossible to walk out your door in New York without hearing a different language. Often times on the subway I can pick out at least six. I can see why living somewhere like Newfoundland would give you the impression of white hegemony as this monolithic thing, but the fact is, it's not. I will agree that what you have described can be considered a general rule, but to go as far as you have is simply incorrect.

However: the points I have just brought up are really only minor factual quibbles. There are much bigger problems with your argument, which I will explain below.

Intellectually, we can grasp the ideas, but we are raised from birth to be oblivious and we might not ever be able to fully deconstruct that, especially in a society that reinforces we should ignore it. This works for all kinds of privileges that are not easily shared, in the whole elevatorgate thing, Kontan and Versus got that hey, you should respect a person's wish not to be propositioned, but it wasn't until Solumina chimed in that anyone pointed out that elevators are scary places for women. Its an experience that lasts from the cradle to the grave and its hard to articulate, hard to express, and hard to wrap up in a neat package so those who never had to worry about sexual assault can understand. We had to pour our hearts out about our experiences of living in fear of rrape and it still wasn't good enough. In the end it was like we shouldn't have shared it at all, it didn't matter and we were left emotionally drained after trying to. And its not just in that thread, I'm tired of going to schools and dorms and groups and talking about sexual assault and have men roll their eyes at me, or make rrape jokes. Every year at Take Back The Night we mark an X on the Supreme Court building for every gendered violence victim we know, and every year I have more X's to add, and I'm tired and tired of being angry.

This is why I can't expect to know what its like to be a PoC. There's a lot I won't talk to men about because its personal information I can't trust them with. Its getting hard to talk about abstracts and hypotheticals. What if its the same for them? I can't count all the cismen who have ever dismissed me or talked over me or demanded I educate them only to abuse what I've told them, how do I know I'm not one white person in a long line of white people to ask a PoC to educate me?

I'm sorry that such things have happened to you, and I extend my sympathy. However, what you have described is not evidence towards the position that communication and understanding is impossible, simply that communication and understanding is DIFFICULT so difficult that you find it unpleasant (a point to which I will agree) and often fruitless between specific people.

The rest of this post is an emotional appeal, that, while compelling, does nothing for your argument on a rational level.

Intellectually, we can know how the mechanisms of how white supremacy works, but we can't know the totality of the experience of living under white supremacy. Did you watch the Color Of Fear, the movie Alan posted a while ago? Where the white guy was telling the men of colour that they were hysterical and wrong and silly for thinking white men with guns in their trucks might lynch them? Objectively, empirically, no, the white men probably won't lynch them, but does that mean they don't have the right to be suspicious or fearful?

Yes I watched it, and of course they have the right to be suspicious and fearful. However, the right to be suspicious and fearful is not equivalent in any way to the inability for White people to understand them. Nor does it give them the right to demand that their views be accepted uncritically and without evidence.

However, I want to get away from that, and point out the three big things which make this argument untrue, not the least of which is that you, Saya, have actually made an error, and contradicted yourself, in a manner which makes your whole argument fall apart.

Namely:

1) If white supremacy is a created thing (as you stated earlier, and I agree with) it is something which can be undone. If it is something which can be undone, than it's effects can be undone. If it's effects can be undone, then it is not impossible for white people to understand people of color.

The only way for communication between races to be forever stymied, in the manner in which you have described, is if White people are physically flawed in some way that people of color are not, and so your point is objectively, falsifiably untrue.

You can argue that the elimination of white supremacy's effects on a global scale is not conceivable or realistic at this time, and therefore white people are virtually unable to understand people of color (which is still a different argument than the one you made btw) but we're not talking about a global scale, we're talking about individuals, so already the argument is falling apart.

2) But even if this WASN'T falsifiably untrue, your argument still deals not with the material, observable things, like actions, it deals with internal, unobservable things, mainly thoughts and motivations. Therefore there is absolutely no way to objectively test for the inability of white people to understand people of color. Since there is no way to objectively test whether my misunderstanding of Versus was caused by my whiteness and not some other factor (poor communication skills on my part, or a lack of relevant context for instance) You are left with a hypothesis which cannot be proven and thus can go nowhere.

3) Beyond the fact that this is something you cannot prove, it is a completely useless conclusion, because it cannot be communicated effectively and therefore nothing can be done about it. White people would have no way of knowing WHAT they don't know (only that they do not know something) and PoC have no way of adequately expressing what this deficiency even IS to white people in a consistent means that they can understand. We have no way of knowing if presence of the deficiency is being communicated effectively.

What if a person of color misunderstands what this deficiency is? How can you say they're wrong? It's something that's in their head and no one else's and there's no way to test it.

Even if somehow this hypothesis weren't self-contradictory, and even if it was falsifiable, and even if it was then subsequently proven under laboratory conditions, the only conclusion one can draw from this is that white people must always cede to a person of color on these matters, no matter who that person of color is or what they claim. This can literally only lead to neo-segregation, and one form or another of supremacy. It literally means that white people are inherently mentally inferior to people of color.

Saya, I understand the urge to explain in very strong terms that white people should, as a general rule, check their privilege and grant ethos and deference to People of Color in a conversation about the experience of those people and the effects of white privilege upon them, and racism, etc. However, to take it a step further, and claim that this is not something which can be communicated to white people is both verifiably untrue, cultishly totalitarian, and socially dangerous for everyone involved.

This is not a conclusion that is subjective. This is not some opinion I have. This is math. On this point, barring myself missing some crucial piece of evidence or having made a major reasoning error, you are just wrong and that's all there is to it.

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Versus

Okay. I'm chill now. Despanan, really quick, which do you want to talk about first: My initial issue or the problems that we have with your approach? It's kind of easy to get thrown off course to try to tackle everything on a point by point basis and I think it slows us down from getting anywhere.

First, I want to thank you for reaching out.

Let's do the initial issue first, as we may as well get that out of the way.

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Acharis

Also it includes everything feminists and atheists hate in organised religion.

This really should have been a point of commonality for Saya and I, as this is one of those times that our interests intersect in a constructive way.

[Versus]

Originally Posted by Despanan

This really should have been a point of commonality for Saya and I, as this is one of those times that our interests intersect in a constructive way.

It's a trust thing, really. She doesn't trust that you are genuine, sometimes.

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Versus

It's a trust thing, really. She doesn't trust that you are genuine, sometimes.

Well, I have trolled her in the past, for both fun and profit, so I suppose I can't blame her.

My bad on that.

I'd like to state for the record that the cartoon I linked which likened domestic abuse to how corporations are treating America was not from Occupy, nor was it for occupy, nor was it something I liked or even agreed with.

It was linked by a conservative, who after months of argument between the two of us flipped his position and that was one of his first attempts to reach out to me and show me he had changed.

I found it problematic, but didn't quite know how to respond to it and wanted to get Saya's opinion on it, and I decided to initially framing it as trolling because Kontan said "Dude, you post that and she's gonna think you're trolling her". I even linked a huge trollface immediately afterwards, but Gothic.net decided not to show it for some reason. If you doubt me go back to that thread and quote it, you should find the URL.

In hindsight it was not the best way to frame the discussion. Once again, my bad.

[Solumina]

Originally Posted by Despanan

This is not a conclusion that is subjective. This is not some opinion I have. This is math. On this point, barring myself missing some crucial piece of evidence or having made a major reasoning error, you are just wrong and that's all there is to it.

You seem to be taking away "white people can't understand this thing that poc can understand" and that isn't it. People understand things based on their own experiences a poc will never understand what it is like to be white any more than a white person will understand what it is like to be a poc. You can talk about it and explain and share to come to understand it on and intellectual level but it isn't something that you will grasp.

It isn't just true of this, there are tons of things that you just cannot convey to another person. Let me use something simple but completely unrelated as an example: the color of the Pacific. I had seen pictures of it and everyone I knew who had seen it kept telling me just how blue it was but the only context I had was those pictures and the other bodies of water I had seen (admittedly I've seen a lot). I thought I got it, after all I had seen the pictures, for fucks sake there is a color officially called "pacific blue" but the first time I saw it I was still awestruck by just how god damn blue the water was. Then there are the little things that people don't really think about, the ocean here sounds different, it has a different rhythm than the Atlantic, if I didn't have the very specific experiences of being able to spend countless hours listening to the ocean both here and on the east coast then I wouldn't have known that.

If you want an example that it is a little more complex it's like trying to describe having depression to someone who has never had it. They can know that it doesn't just mean you are sad. They can know that it is physical, mental, and emotional. They can know that it hurts. They can know that some days are easier than others but that a couple of good days doesn't mean you are better. They can go to counseling with you. They can hold you while you cry. They can force you to eat when you can't make yourself do it. They can know that you want to get better but you just can't and that you hate yourself for being so weak that you can't just force yourself to be a normal fucking person because god damn it is isn't that hard but you just can't do it. But they will never really know what it is like.

[Versus]

Originally Posted by Solumina

You seem to be taking away "white people can't understand this thing that poc can understand" and that isn't it. People understand things based on their own experiences a poc will never understand what it is like to be white any more than a white person will understand what it is like to be a poc. You can talk about it and explain and share to come to understand it on and intellectual level but it isn't something that you will grasp.

It isn't just true of this, there are tons of things that you just cannot convey to another person. Let me use something simple but completely unrelated as an example: the color of the Pacific. I had seen pictures of it and everyone I knew who had seen it kept telling me just how blue it was but the only context I had was those pictures and the other bodies of water I had seen (admittedly I've seen a lot). I thought I got it, after all I had seen the pictures, for fucks sake there is a color officially called "pacific blue" but the first time I saw it I was still awestruck by just how god damn blue the water was. Then there are the little things that people don't really think about, the ocean here sounds different, it has a different rhythm than the Atlantic, if I didn't have the very specific experiences of being able to spend countless hours listening to the ocean both here and on the east coast then I wouldn't have known that.

If you want an example that it is a little more complex it's like trying to describe having depression to someone who has never had it. They can know that it doesn't just mean you are sad. They can know that it is physical, mental, and emotional. They can know that it hurts. They can know that some days are easier than others but that a couple of good days doesn't mean you are better. They can go to counseling with you. They can hold you while you cry. They can force you to eat when you can't make yourself do it. They can know that you want to get better but you just can't and that you hate yourself for being so weak that you can't just force yourself to be a normal fucking person because god damn it is isn't that hard but you just can't do it. But they will never really know what it is like.

I wanted to say the exact same thing. Saya doesn't mean understanding in an intellectual way, she means it on a personal level from actual experience. I had framed what I thought 130 degrees F would feel like based on my experience of 100 degrees, but it was starkly different.

Despanan, watch this ninety second video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsOo3jzkhYA