saying something this edgy does not absolve you of bigotry
edit: for anyone stumbling into the drama, i probably should have elaborated on this post. I am not saying you can't make fun of white people not being able to eat spicy food or anything, but at some point it becomes self-flagellating. to quote comrade RedQuestionAsker:
It's good to challenge white supremacy in all of its incarnations at all time. It's certainly good to refuse to be proud to be white considering what the concept of whiteness is.
It's another thing to performatively hate yourself in a cocktail of millennial self-deprecation and liberal white guilt. It's not revolutionary, and it's probably not good for you.
that is all. comrades just know i dont hate any of you. i'm not trying to start a slapfight. i just saw this as weird performative behavior and wanted to call it out.
white people can't help but fantasize about genocide even when it's to themselves
but on a serious note I think for some users it crosses into suicidal ideation and that makes me very uncomfortable
Dang the alienating bit was rough, you hit a friendly on the way
let's kill the structures of white supremacy so that "white" isn't really a thing
Personally, I would like to see some of that energy being used for more productive anti-racist actions
But then again, this a website for little goofy people sometimes and that means that people will be little and goofy sometimes
dont really want to hear it from "you're half cracker," they were bringing up a comment they posted that they found relavant.
On a non edgy note, being white but having class consciousness and being anti racist in cracker town USA sucks. The shit white people say to you that they think is acceptable is insane. It's like the power and privilege just poisons their souls. Whiteness as an institution/class, whatever it is, legit needs to be destroyed.
As a poc I hate seeing these jokes because I worry that the poster thinks this is what poc actually want and are “aligning” in some misguided way with us, which just feeds into the “hur hur what if whites were a minority they would be treated just as badly as today’s minorities” nonsense from the chuds
Did that paragraph make any sense I just woke up
I agree, it's incredibly self serving and you're not fooling anybody
I bet many other POC feel the same as me but I rarely even complain about white people here because I know it's like 90% white so it's just an audience that could never empathize with what I'm saying
most people HERE specifically are probably doing it to signify either that it's funny, or that they aren't silently brooding, or to make fun of the lemmy people taking it seriously. It's more like a "har har" than going doe-eyed and slowly nodding like "yeah no, I know, I know, actually my partner and I decided against having children because white supremacy is..."
ymmv for other groups of people
If we keep up the joke it will no longer be a joke. Total support for the message going from ironic to serious!
This is exactly what happened to r/pcmasterrace and probably a hundred other examples I'm forgetting.
I bet many other POC feel the same
I don't, I enjoy making white jokes
I don't straight up advocate violence though (but I will always upvote a white comrade doing it to themselves, because it's funny)
If telling people to stop posting worked, we wouldn't be here
They're not particularly valuable posts
If hexbears wanna express their frustrations with racism or white supremacy I think it's fair to give them a platform to vent, but self-flagellation doesn't really do anything
I agree, bits aren’t worth possibly turning our non-white comrades away if it comes acrosa as performative
It's a shibboleth for this community. Something you use to alienate people who don't know that, under all those layers of irony, you don't actually want to kill white people. Also preserves the identity of the community as an edgy/crass leftist space.
You need to understand white people need of making everything about them. Is like basically their only culture.
It doesn't need to be racist to be cringe or unhelpful
Honestly I thought these jokes were funny 3 or 4 years ago but have we not beat the dead horse enough at this point? It's just overplayed now
We can reassess it’s necessity when the underlying critiques of white supremacy stop being relevant
In the last 24 hours one of the biggest of these threads can be distilled down to saying "Skiing is white supremacist for only being in places with cold climates", "snow is racist", and "sports that do not specifically cater to me and the place I live are inherently bourgeois." People just blew up a thread about skiing bitching about the gear being expensive in California, imagining that people would make fun of them for using old gear (most people think retro gear is dope), and saying that it's problematic because it doesn't exist in [places where snow does not fall]
Half of the threads that are ostensibly about hating white people are posted by a couple of users who mostly post these types of threads very clearly as a form of self harm.
These arguments are not as productive or relevant as you think.
The same OP of that thread called a biracial person in this thread a "half cracker" to dismiss their discomfort with posts they feel are hateful or self-hateful.
I think we should be able to recognize that there is a line crossed by some of these posts where they aren't really jokes anymore, and actually reflect essentialist ideology. that's a lack of theoretical understanding, and worse, a lack of kindness and empathy for different perspectives.
The same OP of that thread called a biracial person in this thread a "half cracker"
wtf
Essentiallist ideology and a lack of theoretical understanding
There is one thing, exactly one thing I agree with right wingers about, and that's that white guilt is liberalism"cracker is not a real slur and cannot be used in a genuinely hateful way"
Hexbear: you wanna bet?
I don’t think they’re self harming. I read them and all I can see is “please please please please please please like me” with a little “lol jk” to make it go down an easier.
There very definitely are some users who clearly post when spiralling and will post a handful of very clearly self-harming posts each month most of which get removed by mods for being buckwild, and maybe one of which from the beginning of the spiral gets left up and then becomes one of these struggle session posts you're talking about.
I don't want any comrades to self-harm, yes, even if they are white
I don't think they educate anyone in that. If one finds them funny, one is already well convinced of critiques of white supremacy. They're jokes, not education.
I just want more creative jokes tbh
Yeah I don’t think their utility is educating, I just imagine they’ll stop being made once there’s not a white supremacy background to joke about.
I agree. I would never expect my post, or any post, to make that not happen at all
Where's the critique in these recent posts? Where's the jokes really?
i'm not saying we cant clown on mayos but come on. there's a certain point where it stops being making fun of white people and crosses into weird self-hatred and white guilt and stops being funny.
3 threads greater than 100 comments. Truly, this is one of the weeks where decades happens. I haven't read any of them.
My fave struggle sessions are outdoor cats and rockstacking. Absolute evergreens
I don't remember the rock stacking struggle session. What was the Hexbear consensus on that? Personally I knock those rock stacks down when I hike by them.
Expert on rehabilitation of water streams made an effort post (and then several very patient replies) about how stacking rocks is harmful.
Bunch of users freaked out, as if their life depended on rock-stacking. They tried to rules lawyer how close to a water stream you had to be, for it to be bad. They pulled the old "indigenous people do it!!!" defense. They tried to argue that the user was making an individualist argument and thus a capitalist and wrong. They tried to argue that "they just couldn't see how it was bad, so the expert on water stream rehabilitation is wrong and/or overreacting". They tried to play it off as "well it's not bad that i do it" despite having had explained how in this very specific situation, it was actually an individual problem and something they also should not do as individuals.
People brought up "take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but treadmarks" (basic how-to-not-be-a-dickhead-in-nature-etiquette) which these users also then freaked out about.
A lot of these users were power users on the site and their reaction and subsequent attempts to rules lawyer and then attempts at playing it off as a bit/something silly was very disappointing to see and it therefore still frustrates me, because they behave as if it was totally just everybody overreacting, and not them being beliggerent assholes, for which they should apologise.Consensus was that stacking rocks disrupts water streams and does a lot of weird shit for microorganisms, soil, erosion, bugs, that sort of stuff, so touching rocks is bad and stacking them is worse. Can't recall more than that, but basically: Things in streams are used to rocks not moving about a lot, and they are so used to it, that even just a widdle bit of rock-moving-about done by an individual, is very harmful.
I have no idea wether they should be knocked over or not, but I would assume so, since the wind probably does it otherwise. I dunno about that, not the expert.attempts at playing it off as a bit/something silly
Ironically, a really bad bit
The two big ones in the early days were over transphobic users and veganism. We've had a no tolerance policy for transphobia this whole time and that was kind of whiplash for early users. Lots of people with unexamined reactionary views who weren't used to strict guidelines on how to talk about trans stuff. A lot of them were against pronouns in user profiles.
But the absolute legends will always be outdoor cats and rock stacking next to rivers
Oh I meant like this week, I've been here the whole time
But thanks!
Oh, this week the big thing has been about whether or not it's ok to disparage against white people, like say that you hate white people. And then a struggle over if white people saying cracker is trying to be like one of the good whites. And then a struggle about whites making everything about themselves. It's been wild
Death to the concept of whiteness and those who would uphold it
I usually try not to engage in discussions about this stuff (except for once before like years ago), but maybe I'll indulge a little bit and just say that not only does it make me uncomfortable when I see it, but I also know that it actively turns many people away from ideas of actual leftism when they see it, especially whenever they don't know how "serious" people are around here when they throw around the cracker-word.
I'm bi-racial and I don't have much of a "racial identity" (whatever that's even supposed to be or look like), so admittedly I always get at least a little uncomfortable when anybody starts talking about their or someone else's "race", much the same way I get a little uncomfortable when people start generalizing each other because of their age, their gender, whatever.
I fully recognize that white privilege is a real thing in western cultures, and that anyone who can be construed as "non-white" is put at a very real disadvantage in many real-world situations (sometimes fatally so), and so because of that I also recognize the urge to undermine the general concept that "white = good / normal" by lashing out against it. But when you call someone who's open to leftism but doesn't have a complete understanding of things a "cracker", for example, you put them down in a way that they usually perceive as intensely bigoted, to the degree that they will stop listening to every single thing you say after that. They'll leave here, and never take you or anyone associated with whatever they perceive as your ideology seriously again. And I think that's a big shame, because instead you could be trying to guide them to a more enlightened view of the world.
Ultimately - regardless of how justified it is by societal conditions - it's a hateful act, born of hate (often times self-hate), and I don't feel like that's in the spirit of communism.
And, at the end of the day, I am conserving all my hatred for the moment when I personally blow away
during the revolution.And, at the end of the day, I am conserving all my hatred for the moment when I personally blow away
during the revolution.I missed this storyline in your game but welcome it with open arms
But when you call someone who's open to leftism but doesn't have a complete understanding of things a "cracker", for example, you put them down in a way that they usually perceive as intensely bigoted, to the degree that they will stop listening to every single thing you say after that.
White people who are that sensitive are never going to take someone who’s black, mixed, etc. seriously in the first place. Calling them a cracker is the funnier option ´cos at least you get to see them fume.
Sadly, this really just isn't true. You're thinking of white people as matured adults who've already been spoon-fed whatever liberal or conservative propaganda that first spoke to them, and been led down that path for some time. But, there are enormous sums of people out there who either aren't really that invested in political thinking, or haven't really been guided to a more radicalized point of view. And, just like the former group, the latter group often views the word "cracker" as a slur equal to any other, not having the historical context to weigh the use of that word against another. So, when you use that word, they're going to take it very seriously, regardless of how sarcastic you're being, and regardless of how much a word like that means in comparison to a slur used against a marginalized group.
I know this because many people start out from this position - all slurs are equal, everyone deserves equal treatment, etc. It may not be how the US behaves, but it is what people are taught in grade school (usually).
Well, I said "sadly", but to be honest I don't view this reality as something sad. I think it's actually quite a good thing not to simply write off anyone who will react in such a way, because like literally everyone here on Hexbear or anyone else, context is not naturally inherited - it needs to be taught, and with patience (and the interest to do so) you can often open people up to a greater, truer understanding of things. If you just call them a cracker and tell them to fuck off, then you're effectively further barricading the door to leftism against them. That doesn't mean tolerating any kind of hateful words or misinformation they might be spouting, it just means not giving up on everyone who doesn't super love it when you compare them to mayo or whatever.
well, at least this comment reminded me there's a block user function
you should reflect on how saying something like this to a marginalized person expressing their discomfort is harmful and antisocial. Do you talk to people like this in real life too?
Also, are you white? Fully, that is
If the answer is yes, I suspect you have a lot more actual self-crit, not self-flaggelation, to do.
(I myself am white, so if any nonwhite users here want to chime in on this or push back on what I said, I would appreciate it.)
Week old account
spewing shit so anti-man and anti-white that even most hexbears take issue with it
🤔
I'm not sure how else to phrase it, but they definitely crossed some lines.
