I genuinely have no idea where the joke came from but it seems pretty big since I've heard it IRL a few times now. Where did this come from?

  • happybadger [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    "White" is a variable in-group. Today it's anyone with pale skin, a century ago you weren't Irish and white or Russian and white or Italian and white. They were pale out-groups that served the extractive labour role of other races. Their whiteness was bought by becoming the guard dogs of the system that excluded them. The material comfort of the Italian-American cop was bought by persecuting the working class neighbourhoods that were radicalising against the system. I see Antitaly as calling out the bullshit of whiteness to the groups it includes but doesn't represent. It's still punching up because it's attacking that power structure and the people protecting it, the pigs and the mafia stereotypes which may as well be an actual deep state, to undermine its legitimacy. The same goes for English Abolitionism. It's all attacking imperialism, the decadence it brought the ruling class, and the the crassness of the right-wing defenders of that system. If we generically hated Iceland because its people are white, there wouldn't be a joke that appeals to communists.

    • Civility [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      That’s just racism.

      Attacking cops and criminal gangs who prey on the working class: cool and good

      Mocking Italians immigrants accents, food culture and being preyed in by gangs because … there’s a racist stereotypes of Italians as cops and gangsters???: reactionary and racist.

      This isn’t fucking rocket science.

      • happybadger [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        It'sa nota rocket spaghetti :AyyyyyOC:

        If that group is part of the in-group, and they've made themselves part of the in-group, they're fair game. What does insulting a white person mean and what does your white fragility say about you if you want to throw a word like reactionary around?

        • Civility [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Dividing the working class by along ethnic lines by mocking class enemies for ethnic characteristics that working class people share and have been discriminated against for.

          not reactionary

          :curious-marx:

          I don't really have the time to engage with this properly so I'm just going to link the thread from last time.

          TLDR: Where I’m from, there are a whole lot of 60-80 year olds who came here not speaking any real English, were preyed on by gangs and worked shitty jobs where they were payed less and treated worse than their coworkers because they didn’t have the language, connections or cultural understanding to fight back. And a whole lot more 40-60 year olds who were those peoples kids, and came home from school the first day thinking everyone was talking gibberish because no-one at home spoke any English.

          “It’s okay to mock them because they’re white” is only relevant if we’re talking about “whiteness” as the privelege of being in the economically/ culturally dominant/ accepted/ not discriminated against ethnicity in their societies.

          Mocking people based on national or ethnic characteristics in the first place isn’t great, it’s straight up reactionary thought, but it is a little different when you’re talking about England and the US because they are culturally dominant in most of the English speaking world. That’s very much not the case for Italians and xth generation Italian immigrants.

          Those people have had a much harder time in life, and are often in worse material conditions now because of the discrimination and marginalisation they experienced on the basis of their language and culture. Dismissing that on the basis of ??? and mocking them and their children for those same things that have made their lives harder is an incredibly shitty and harmful thing to do.

          • happybadger [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Neat. So if we're attacking whiteness as the system that oppresses those people by attacking the stereotypes that protect that system, would you say that's a net win for the historically oppressed Italian? If your issue is with generic observational humour, stop being a funny white culture. Do you think I give a fuck when people make fun of the English or am I right there making those same jokes because I'm not a fragile cracker and understand what's being attacked?

            • Civility [none/use name]
              ·
              3 years ago

              I really wish people would stop doing this bit.

              Anti-italian discrimination has been and is a real thing in a lot of the english speaking world, as immigrants who aren’t native English speakers, and the forms the mockery takes, targeting accents, food culture and stereotypes of criminality are the same forms real anti-Italian, and most anti-immigrant bigotry in general takes.

              I get that the bit started as a way of mocking a few extremely priveleged chuds in positions of power who have Italian heritage that some people were saying were facing discrimination, but the bit’s gone well beyond that now. It’s become just “ironically” being racist against Italians or xth generation Italian immigrants in general, and that’s harmful and extremely alienating to a lot of really cool people.

              What part of “these people are and have historically been marginalised and discriminated against because of their ethnicity, but its still okay to mock them for their ethnicity and dismiss and invalidate the discrimination they’ve experienced because their skins the wrong colour” sounds okay to you?

              “It’s okay to mock them because they’re white” is only relevant if we’re talking about “whiteness” as the privelege of being in the economically/ culturally dominant/ accepted/ not discriminated against ethnicity in their societies. If you’re talking about literal skin colour it’s just fash shit in the other direction.

              Mocking people based on national or ethnic characteristics in the first place isn’t great, it’s straight up reactionary thought, but it is a little different when you’re talking about England and the US because they are culturally dominant in most of the English speaking world. That’s very much not the case for Italians and xth generation Italian immigrants.

              When I was in school there were kids who were bashed and called slurs for being Italian. Your experience is not universal.

              That’s an ignorant and harmful thing to say.

              That Mussolini and the fascists defeated the (millions) of Italian communists and entered the second world war on the wrong side has pretty much fucking nothing to do with you being shitty to the Napoli family who lives down the street for talking funny and eating different food.

              Whatever horrible fucking thing the bourgeois in control of a nation did 60 years ago should have absolutely no bearing on how you treat, first, second and nth generation immigrants from that country unless they specifically voice support for those things. Where I’m from, there are a whole lot of 60-80 year olds who came here not speaking any real English, were preyed on by gangs and worked shitty jobs where they were payed less and treated worse than their coworkers because they didn’t have the language, connections or cultural understanding to fight back. And a whole lot more 40-60 year olds who were those peoples kids, and came home from school the first day thinking everyone was talking gibberish because no-one at home spoke any English .

              Those people have had a much harder time in life, and are often in worse material conditions now because of the discrimination and marginalisation they experienced on the basis of their language and culture. Dismissing that on the basis of ??? and mocking them and their children for those same things that have made their lives harder is an incredibly shitty and harmful thing to do.

          • CyborgMarx [any, any]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Dismissing that on the basis of ???

            The conscious shifting of sympathy from black victims of lynchings to supporting or becoming the perpetrators, especially during the 1919 race riots which was instrumental to white Italian American identity formation in the North, to the point that poet Rosette Capotorto recalls "I was raised to be a racist"

            But if you were talking about the Italian Americans along the Mississippi Delta, then you'd have a point, there their white identity wasn't as set in stone as in the north

            Also this quote always gets me

            Fascist-induced nationalism made inroads even into working-class strongholds that should have been the most immune to jingoistic sentiments. Luigi Antonini, the general secretary of the Italian-language Local 89 of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, was one of the most vocal Italian-American opponents of Mussolini’s colonial venture. But his anti-Fascist appeals often fell on deaf ears. Remarkably, a member of Local 89, John Milazzo, maintained:

            "I collected money for the Italian Red Cross twice in the factory where I work and shall initiate additional fund-raisings until our beloved Duce orders our brothers who are bravely fighting in Africa to lay their arms. […]. I am not and shall never be a Fascist, but I am Italian, an unrepentant Italian. "

    • SandGland [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      "Their whiteness was bought by becoming the guard dogs of the system that excluded them. The material comfort of the Italian-American cop was bought by persecuting the working class neighbourhoods that were radicalising against the system."

      When you definitely know what you're talking about. :what-the-hell:

      You sound like you're writing an essay on a book that you sparknotes'd an hour before class