Look both ways before you cross

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

If you spend your time worrying about what minorities do and say with respect to white people as if that's where you need to spend your energy, while disregarding the mountain of shit white people continue to do to minorities, you're gonna have a bad time. It's like getting pissed off because some feminists "hate men", as if alleviating that sore spot is somehow going to bring balance to a system that's already heavily weighted against them. It's utterly ignorant.

At no point did I say to disregard the mountain of racist shit that racist whites do, I just said not to disregard the racist shit that racist non-white people do. I can summarize my position as two rules:

1.) When white people say/do stupid racist shit, call them out on it
2.) When non-white people say/do stupid racist shit, call them out on it

These rules are in no way mutually exclusive

And I'm not saying to waste your energy seeking out and correcting bad behavior by the people who aren't in power and aren't in a position to do much harm, but if it happens to be right there in front of you say something. (or at least don't waste your energy criticizing the person who does say something)

Also, just because the group currently in power doesn't deserve it and doesn't use it well that doesn't mean that the group not in power does and will. History is littered with revolutions and regime changes that did no good. The tsardom's out and the soviet union's in, the soviet union;s out and Putin's in; same shit different day. A roman emperor has a vision, the religious landscape of europe changes, no longer will the christians be persecuted by the the pagans, now the pagans will be persecuted by the christians.  And of course there's the endless parade of near interchangable dictators in many parts of the third world

Edit:
To quote Romeo & Juliet, "A plague on both your houses"

That sure is a long-winded way of saying "I'm not racist, but brown people should probably watch their step around me".

That's a strawman.

A less misleading version would go "...everyone should watch their step..." (though I must cede that "brown people" is a proper subset of "everyone" so the statement as written is technically true, albeit no more so that if it had said "...white people had better watch their step..."

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

I honestly don't get how this is so hard for people to understand.

I'm starting to believe that the left may be almost as stupid and thickheaded as the right. None of you seem to posess the capacity for any sort of rational thought or dialog, only unthinking knee-jerk responses based on stereotypes that don't even apply to the situation at hand.

What is so hard to understand about the idea that fighting against evil doesn't automatically make you good? Which side were the good guys in the battle of stalingrad? If your answer was "the soviet union" or "the nazis" you are incorrect. The correct answer was "nobody".

Here's another one for you
Q. Who were the bad guys in the Battle of Stalingrad?
A. The Soviet Union and the Nazis

[rong]

I honestly don't get how this is so hard for people to understand.

I'm starting to believe that the left may be almost as stupid and thickheaded as the right. None of you seem to posess the capacity for any sort of rational thought or dialog, only unthinking knee-jerk responses based on stereotypes that don't even apply to the situation at hand.

What is so hard to understand about the idea that fighting against evil doesn't automatically make you good? Which side were the good guys in the battle of stalingrad? If your answer was "the soviet union" or "the nazis" you are incorrect. The correct answer was "nobody".

Here's another one for you
Q. Who were the bad guys in the Battle of Stalingrad?
A. The Soviet Union and the Nazis

the premise on the left is that white people are the devil and deserve to punished.  since they are the "smart" side, if you refuse to accept their premise, then you are "dumb" and not worth talking to

[The Good Reverend Roger]

NOW WITH 20% MORE MRA!

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

I honestly don't get how this is so hard for people to understand.

I'm starting to believe that the left may be almost as stupid and thickheaded as the right. None of you seem to posess the capacity for any sort of rational thought or dialog, only unthinking knee-jerk responses based on stereotypes that don't even apply to the situation at hand.

What is so hard to understand about the idea that fighting against evil doesn't automatically make you good? Which side were the good guys in the battle of stalingrad? If your answer was "the soviet union" or "the nazis" you are incorrect. The correct answer was "nobody".

Here's another one for you
Q. Who were the bad guys in the Battle of Stalingrad?
A. The Soviet Union and the Nazis

the premise on the left is that white people are the devil and deserve to punished.  since they are the "smart" side, if you refuse to accept their premise, then you are "dumb" and not worth talking to

The thing is that I don;t even disagree with that. I believe that all races are equally the devil.

[rong]

Then why do you want to talk to them?

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Because they seem to be saying that only white people are the devil. Which needs to be corrected because it's racist.

[rong]

NOW WITH 20% MORE MRA!

[LMNO]

Just dropping in to say you're confusing prejudice and bias with racism.



But please do carry on providing amusement.  I especially like how you call out people making Strawmen against you while simultaneously presenting poorly understood generalizations about "the left".

[hooplala]

In a perfect world, sure... everyone should be nice to each other and nobody should be making assumptions about any race. But you know very well that isn't true, and that isn't the world we live in. Not even close. Utopian shit is utopian.

[hooplala]

Obviously didn't direct that at you, LMNO.

[Cramulus]

Another problem with the left is that in places, certainly not everywhere but it places, multiculturalism and diversity have been been deformed into an essentially reactionary caricature of themselves. You can't do or use anything associated with another culture because that's "cultural appropriation", and to a lesser extent ethnic people are discouraged from acting too white. It's as if isolation and segregation was the goal. Multiculturalism doesn't mean multiple distinct and isolated cultures happening to be in the same place, it means multiple cultures interacting and eventually fusing into a single huge superculture.

I would agree insofar that there are some people on the left that are getting a little carried away. I don't, however, think those cats are really driving the party van. Also, the sanctimony and protectionism of the left is really not in the same class of harm as its mate on the right... Nobody's getting harmed by "PC" language like people get harmed by racist/sexist/transphobic/etc language.

I'm unsure if I agree with your take on the end goal of Multiculturalism.

There's a Zizek talk where he gets into the problems of multiculturalism... he's not against multiculturalism itself, but thinks the current incarnation of it (which is anchored in tolerance) is insufficient to confront the systemic elements of injustices like racism and sexism.

He gives an example from MLK Jr- King didn't advocate tolerance. He didn't think that racism was really a problem of blacks not being tolerated by whites. He addressed racism in terms of economic exploitation, legal rights, etc.

MLK wanted blacks and whites to coexist. He didn't want them to fuse into one. He didn't call for blacks to embrace white culture or vice versa. My understanding is that he thought that in an ideal society, we could live next door and still retain our ethnicity and identity.

Also, (pro vided that the matter doesn't relate to women's rights or gay rights) other cultures are cut a lot of undue slack to do backwards and barbaric things in places where a white person would be rightly called out on it. They are also given more slack to have been backwards in the past. A lot of the peoples conquered during the age of european imperialism were indeed barbaric compared to the europeans; we just can't see it because the olden europeans are in turn barbaric compared to us, and the gulf between them and us is much larger than the gulf between them and those they conquered; but some of those people they conquered (the Aztecs for instance) still practiced human sacrifice and shit like that, that kind of thing needed to be stopped.

The word Barbaric has a lot of baggage. It implies that a cultures exist on a hierarchy of advancement, and that some cultures are more advanced than others and therefore have some kind of authority over the "barbarians". (and let's specify we're not talking about technology, but cultural practices and values)

I think "civilized" is an honorific you hang on your favorite values. In the US, we think cold beer is awesome. In other places, it's normal to drink it at room temperature. My friends think warm beer is barbaric. Really they are just putting their personal tastes on a pedestal.

I do think it's shitty how women are treated in a lot of middle eastern countries (for example). Our western concept of feminism has a lot of trouble coexisting with their traditional, patriarchal conception of femininity. But what are we supposed to do about that? Invade them and force them to accept all our sweet-ass western values (hard power)? Start building McDonalds and give everybody a Netflix subscription (soft power)?  Or do we accept that it's not our place to force them to the table of western values? it's their culture, maybe we should let them work it out on their own.

There are limits, of course -- bigass human rights violations do demand international intervention.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I'm having trouble with the idea that "everyone merges into the same culture, same ethnicity, homogeneous glob" is equivalent to "don't shit on people who date and/or have kids with people of other ethnicities/skin tones."

Don't get me wrong, a lot of the other shit is stupid, too, but this one is extra dumb.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm having trouble with the idea that "everyone merges into the same culture, same ethnicity, homogeneous glob" is equivalent to "don't shit on people who date and/or have kids with people of other ethnicities/skin tones."

Don't get me wrong, a lot of the other shit is stupid, too, but this one is extra dumb.

This thread is a festival.

[rong]

Just dropping in to say you're confusing prejudice and bias with racism.



But please do carry on providing amusement.  I especially like how you call out people making Strawmen against you while simultaneously presenting poorly understood generalizations about "the left".