pretty sure most of that shooting is over psychotic views on race in the first place, and then on top of that youve got all the times a gun wasnt handy...
hot take: white is an inherently eurocentric racial construct.
I as an Indo-Guyanese person do not see people with swarthy skin and dark eyes as white. They just look Arabs or a lighter shade of Indian to me. Blue eyes blonde hair? Ok fine that's definitely white.
Also brown eyes literally came from the Middle East. Mr Bean is not a white guy.
Mr Bean is not a white guy.
Wtf, you can't just claim the only culture that Brits have left.
That'd be some libshit. watching the kkk burn a cross in front of a black family's home and instead of doing anything about it you just yell at them saying they are technically not white cuz brown eyes are from the middle east
no you dont understand, im not actually a subhuman commie jew because the colour of my eyes clearly indicates .. i stammer as they remove the calipers
That’s actually kind of true, with Whiteness being a social construct and definitely not including for example the Irish Catholics in the eyes of the British empire oppressing them
fun fact, Russia was originally considered to not be part of Europe.
The reason it was, is because Europe itself is not a continent. So the british geographer guys were searching desperately for ANY sort of justification to keep Europe separate from Asia.
Finally they found it in the Ural mountains (which are an extremely shallow set of hills, and unknown by the west until the late 1800s). So they had to compromise on Russia in order to find an excuse for European separateness.
But, at least according to Wikipedia, just saying outright that “The Urals aren’t real” actively erases both Middle-Eastern & Russian history/historiography which do make claims to their existence as early as the 10th Century.
I said the Urals were unknown to the west, not to everyone.
There were also geographers who literally and unironically wanted the island of Britain to be its own continent separate from Europe
By standards now -- no he was not.
By standards then -- yes he was.
Race discourse and the definition of a POC is completely inherent to the time period in which people are from. The Irish weren't considered white just a little while ago. It's all incredibly arbitrary and created by whatever societal currents are sweeping people up into racial identity factions.
This is kind of a bad comparison. What you mean to say is that there was (and still is in some countries) racism against slavs.
race is manufactured by those in power to split those they oppress into manageable groups; "are you, the poorest white man not content with your lot that you should be better than the richest black man ?" etc etc
this all being artificial horseshit doesnt mean we can disregard it out if hand though, as the fractioning of the working class by race has created real friction.
too often that poorest white man ™️ has answered the question asked with "yes, and ill put in the ground anyone that threatens that status"
so i think its important that we, who all agree in this race discourse being nonsense, not be drawn into semantic argument over whether or not someone was "white" or not, when the question is if they were prejudiced against or not
No no. Stalin was part Russian and part Georgian which was specifically regarded as a separate race by the Russians of the era. "Slav" as we refer to it now pretty much refers to the entire eastern-european ethnicity. You could say that generally speaking "Slavs" of the period of the soviet union regarded Georgians as "not-slav" and there was animosity with a clear belief they were somewhat lesser than Russians. Russian superiority towards other states in the union was a consistent problem being battled against by leaders of the ussr.
I mean, now you're getting into the whole bizarre history of weird vintage racism in European countries where everyone hated everyone else and they thought some group of people living like 50km away was a vastly different and inferior race. But that's another story. I'm pretty sure that some anglo or whatever would just consider Lenin or Stalin a filthy slav or "asiatic". It's kind of cheating to consider them a "person of color" because, like, almost everyone was a "person of color" by that standard, according to where they happened to be at that particular moment.
Perhaps yes. But the point, generally speaking, was that during that time period Stalin was in fact regarded as a POC within the context of their cultural attitudes. A half-Georgian leader was a big deal to them of the time period.
Now? Not so much. We all regard them as pretty much the same.
This is the point. Our perception of race itself is arbitrary and heavily affected by whatever the active social currents are that are sweeping through society.
I can imagine that. For instance, I legitimately can't imagine a prime minister of Albanian descent in Greece even today. Some people were pissed at a former prime minister because he was like part American and an eighth Polish.
Well if you think those Boston bombers were poc, then so was Stalin.
Edit: I actually kinda fucked up with this post, I thought the Boston bombers were from Caucasus, since a lot of terrorist activity happened there from Chechen wars etc. But apparently they were from Kyrgizstan, which is way in the central Asia. I conclude that Stalin was a whiteoid or something.
Edit2: No one is probably going to read this but they actually were Chechens relocated to Kyrgizstan so the original point stands.
God I want to go back to the beautiful post-racial paradise of checks notes Imperial France
Unfortunately, you can't abolish the bad parts of race without abolishing the good parts as well. Race (and, as an extension, nationalism) has served as an important frame for revolutionary and liberatory movements as much as it's served for oppressive ones. It may be socially constructed but it's still very real to people and that isn't going to change.
Like, nobody is “essentially” black or white,
I don't know if I'd agree with that. The essential nature of racial identity plays an important role in lots of indigenous movements. Just look at something like AIM or Négritude (at least as Senghor theorized it). They definitely weren't trying to abolish race as a concept. That veers awfully close to the lib idea that "colorblindness" is something desirable.
But I'm also white and really shouldn't be commenting on PoC movements one way or another. If any PoC comrades chime in on this, take their words over mine.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I appreciate it and will try to reread it a couple times. You raise a good point about how a lot of this categorizing has its roots in colonialism.
The essential nature of racial identity plays an important role in lots of indigenous movements.
what essential idendity? indigenous movements are not seperate from their material and cultural reality, nor are there essential racial differences in human phyisiology or psychology, race is always socially constructed
That veers awfully close to the lib idea that “colorblindness” is something desirable.
insane non-sequitur, and literally not an argument just saying you associate x with y
race is always socially constructed
You see how this is a Eurocentric viewpoint, right? A lot of very passionate and very revolutionary PoC, at least ones I've talked to, don't subscribe to this idea that race is all just a giant hoax that doesn't really mean anything. Some AIM people I've talked to very strongly hold that being indigenous, especially their unique tribal history, is part of who they are and what makes them who they are. If you told them they were being fooled by a "social construct" they'd be really offended.
And, even if it is a social construct, so what? Consent is a social construct. Gender is a social construct. Socialism is a social construct. Everything's a social construct! Being a construct doesn't make something not real or not important.
Like, I get how these concepts can be twisted by white supremacists. I do. It's obvious how easily they can take this sort of rhetoric and turn it into justifying white "purity" and other bullshit. But racial identity is fucking important to non-white people and saying that they just need to get over it because "we're all humans" is a hell of a white take.
A sense of one's race can provide a foundation of lived experience and motivation for resisting imperialism and colonialism. Look at historical movements like Indian independence or the Tagalog revolt in the Philippines, for example.
yeah and it can be good, but it doesnt stop you from being a human being dude
Oh you want to argue with me?
You raise a good point about how a lot of this categorizing has its roots in colonialism.
Go argue with yourself.
Liberal fascination with catchphrases, example #349872
While they're deciding what order black women, black men, white women, and white men get to politely march in, the fascists will already have decided what order to incinerate them
they apparently used to call lenin 'asiatic' and racist slurs back in the day
He does look pretty Asiatic tbh and quite a few Russians have some extra Tatar swimming around somewhere.
Lenin was something like 1/8th Kalmyk on his father's side. Kalmyks are Mongols who moved to Europe to escape the Qing massacres.
Lots of Russians have Tatar ancestry because Tatars are the biggest non-Slavic ethnic group, but Tatars are themselves more White (if we go with Western norms) than Asian. Turkic peoples span from totally White-looking to totally Asian-looking.
The racist right-wing is more enamored with highlighting Lenin's Jewish ancestry, which was only unearthed by researchers after his death (i.e. he himself didn't know about it).
Obvious bait into smug marxist taking bait into absolutely inane take that I half agree with. A classic left twitter combo.
Lenin was not white in the context of his contemporary society. Westerners were the ones who invented the racialist concepts of white and black, and at the time the white blob did not usually include slavs, poles, Greeks, Italians, etc.
But yeah not really a relevant point either way to their stupid argument
That is true but Lenin was Russian and in the context of Russian society, his ethinicity was privilaged over other groups that they colonised/oppressed.
Lenin was described to have some slight Mongolian features by some comrades back then so... fuck off stupidpol.
"Only ethnic minorities are capable of revolution" is inverted stupidpol anyway
Okay fine, I get it now, I picked the worst example. How about Spartacist leader Karl Liebknecht?
Not white either, he was a swarthy spoiled cabbage eating German.
Serious. Ben Franklin is on record calling the Germans swarthy and "not white as the pure anglo race" more or less.
