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What definition of 'racism' discounts race-based prejudice? Honestly question, it seems counterintuitive.
race as a concept was invented by white people to describe people who are declared outside whiteness
whiteness isn't a race, it's a morphing caste and who belongs to it can change. We're in a moment where speaking Spanish or being a Muslim automatically excludes a person from full whiteness, regardless of their ancestry or other features. The simple notion of who is or isn't white has white supremacy baked into the concept
I didn't say whiteness was race, but whiteness is strongly intertwined with race. Even if the races which are considered factors of 'whiteness' change, over time or between cultures. As you said, it was invented to describe people outside whiteness.
In many places where the dynamic is less complex than USA's, whiteness is effectively equal to (perceived) European racial heritage (and Spanish people, where I live, are considered white even if they speak Spanish). The typical citizen can see a picture of someone, nothing more, and decide if they consider them white based on perceived race. Maybe that's a factor in why I associate race and whiteness so closely in society.
Yeah it is different in places outside Anglo countries, I've noticed that. Dominican people I've known will associate whiteness specifically with skin color, regardless of the person's ancestry, language, etc.
Places outside the USA haven't had as strict of a racial divide and so yeah I can see how it would get muddled.
You mentioned showing people pictures. There's a test I do with Americans sometimes. I'll show them a picture of Bashar al-Assad, who they probably don't recognize. I'll ask what he is, and they'll always say he's a white guy. I tell them he's a Muslim and the president of Syria, then they instantly change their answer.
Places outside the USA haven't had as strict of a racial divide and so yeah I can see how it would get muddled.
Yes, although it's also all these secondary things, I'm guessing there was an implication in your comment that speaking Spanish was a sign someone had Central or South American heritage/etc. and was therefore non-white, whereas in other countries the main people speaking Spanish and Portuguese were from Europe so that isn't a signal in the culture.
You mentioned Dominican people, and I think this generalizes to many other countries with European colonialism history without much diverse post-WW European immigration (contrast: USA, Australia) and they retained a strict racial divide as a result. An interesting counter-case is a memetic documentary clip filmed during an uprising in Tanganyika (basically now Tanzania) where the filmmakers are dragged out of their car and approaching a wall to be shot, when a soldier sees their passports and says "these aren’t whites, they’re Italians". My (naïve!) guess is that their understanding of white stems from their British and Belgian oppression, and possibly even shaped by around a hundred thousand Tanganyikans fighting for the Allied forces in WWII.
Bashar al-Assad is an excellent test, because most people in the West envision Middle Eastern people as inherently having darker skin, certainly not light skin and blue eyes which are primary traits racist whites boast about. There's a strong dissonance there, the same kind that makes dumbass neo-nazis start obsessing about poorly guessing who is Jewish or not. The point being, people assume they can tell, and often get it wrong, as you've shown.
With Dominicans (and a lot of Latin America) my guess has always been that lighter skin signalled more recent colonizer ancestry, so it became a signal of wealth to have lighter skin regardless of one's actual heritage, class, or anything.
That's a really interesting clip and I'm really interested in watching the rest of the documentary, also I should read up on Tanzania in general. Thanks for sharing it.
you can't be racist against white people because white supremacy is hegemonic. there's no structural power behind anti-white sentiment.
But why is structural power or hegemony considered a prerequisite? Racism exists and has dangerous power regardless of structural factors like legality, see mass shootings. It doesn't need to be institutionalized or dominant to be relevant and dangerous, that just makes it more dangerous.
Just to be clear, I'm of course not trying to equivocate. White supremacy is hegemonic within 'the West', but that hegemony doesn't prevent other racial supremacy movements from local dominance, or even from members performing lone-wolf racially-targeted shootings as an extreme example.
because equivocating between structural oppression and mere prejudice sucks. and yes, you're equivocating.
Nothing I said equivocates them.
How do you define racism? And why does that definition seemingly exclude prejudice? (nothing 'mere' about it, people get murdered over it)
show me someone getting murdered over anti-white prejudice
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ok now were the perpetrators protected by the state? did the media spin up defense after defense of them? or did they use it to stoke racial fervor about the need to protect white children?
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It really isn't, as the broader point she was making over prejudice and bigotry was that white supremacist attacks, violence, and oppression are far more dangerous and ubiquitous in American/Euro society than are incidents like the Fresno shootings. The difference and point that silent_water was making, as I interpret it, is that the state and culture both embrace, protect, and enable white supremacist violence through its law enforcement system, judiciary, legislature, through the media, through the broader culture, and through its ability to determine who is worthy of dignity and who is worthy of annihilation.
"We should be more conciliatory to left-liberals "baby socialists" about white fragility and identity" is not something I'd care to cater to either.
Othello's comment was against people who identify as white as a cultural identity, not the pigmentation of their skin.
That's all irrelevant, because someone killed those people over bullshit race crap. That is racism, and it was lethal. We need to counter racism in all its forms if we want to unite the proletariat, because even person-to-person racism in private with no structural protection is harmful and sectarian.
ok now were the perpetrators protected by the state?
Just the same as the Buffalo shooting, same as the Christchurch mosque shootings. Life in prison, no parole. Again, not that it's relevant; it's still racism even if you're not protected.
I asked how you define racism, because I can't understand why you keep suggesting that structural support is required for racial supremacy bullshit to become racism. It's not a prerequisite. Racism is racism, it's just more powerful when a state or society institutionalizes it.
Prejudice + Power, which it is worth noting is the accepted definition in sociology circles.
you have a child's understanding of racism