https://twitter.com/AllIDoIsCallBS/status/1348250260062265346
I say this is as half Italian who's proud of my heritage but it's so infuriating when Italians use our treatment at the beginning of the 1900s to as late as the 50s from WASPs to dismiss and downplay the racism of the past and present day. First off, we're not discriminated against anymore. I've heard some comments against Italians firsthand and there are some stereotypes that we're stupid or connected to the mob but this is inertia from previous discrimination. Second, if working class immigrants from Europe were discriminated against doesn't that prove just how deeply racist this nation is? Instead they circle back to "get over it like we got over it."
I now just use my heritage to point out how racist and classist this country is. Gabagool.
That's the biggest thing whenever someone tries to bring up the past persecution of ethnic groups that are now considered white: yes, indentured servitude was very bad, yes European catholics were subject to violence and persecution in the US before the concept of "white" was extended to include European catholics instead of just European protestants, yes some "white" ethnic groups in Europe have been the focus of all sorts of hairbrained phrenological and racial bullshit and suffered violence and persecution as a result (and hell, the oldest recorded example of a racist argument was some British noble arguing for the brutal subjugation of the Irish based on what would now be called racial grounds, some 500 years before "scientific racism" became a thing to justify continuing colonial violence against indigenous peoples that had converted to Christianity), but barring a few exceptions (like British colonial violence still being a matter of living memory for Ireland, Europeans in general often still being very racist against each other, etc) these are all things in the distant past whereas systemic violence against PoC is still the status quo.
Current and recent conditions mean a whole hell of a lot more than conditions a century ago, and that's where the distinction is: where previously persecuted white ethnic groups (particularly in the US) have been accepted and integrated into the system on more or less even footing, PoC have been systematically excluded and subject to terroristic violence for generations and largely still are.
On a related note, is anyone else frustrated when some lib responds to the topic of indentured servitude by downplaying it and trying to cast doubt as to whether or not forced labor is slavery at all, instead of focusing on how radically different the material conditions following the end of indentured servitude were from the ending of chattel slavery, namely that indentured servitude became racialized and turned into chattel slavery while white former indentured servants were able to integrate into society without being subject to terroristic violence, while chattel slavery was replaced with prison and debt/rent slavery and former slaves were kept subjugated, disenfranchised, and hyper-exploited through prison slavery and sharecropping and then subject to over 150 years of exclusion and terroristic violence from both the state and private militias. It both serves to whitewash the idea of any forced labor that isn't explicitly chattel slavery while also shifting the entire topic onto wrongs committed in the distant past, thus hiding the fact that the violence and hyper-exploitation of chattel slavery never really went away at all, it just changed its form and systems a little.
MY PEOPLE WERE INDENTURED SERVANTS THATS LIKE WORSE THAN SLAVERY — every dumb Irish bastard after saying some racist garbage about black people
'leftist'
This tweet is indistinguishable from Cuomo's n-word drop a few weeks ago :che-laugh:
Yeah, I'm sayin- this tweet is practically indistinguishable from what cuomo said
“They used an expression, that Southern Italians were called, I believe they were saying Southern Italian Sicilians, were called quote on quote, and pardon my language, but I’m just quoting the Times, ‘n***** wops,’ ‘n-word wops,’ as a derogatory comment,” he said.
“When I said that ‘wop’ was a derogatory comment, that’s when the Times Union told me, ‘No, you should look in Wikipedia. Wop really meant a dandy,’” he said chuckling. “I’m sure that’s what they were saying to me back in Queens. You’re a dandy when they looked at me with scorn and gave me a hand gesture and called me wop. So that’s The New York Times.”
:this-is-fine: reminder that libs fucking love this guy
Not to mention killing black people disproportionately through his narcissistic mismanagement of a public health crisis.
Libs: :side-eye-1: :side-eye-2:
Aaaaaaaanyway, Isn't Cuomo so hot tho? omggg :panting:
I have never seen Cuomo thirst before and I am very upset.
"White people should never say the n word"
That it*lian: "That's a racist policy. Italians were slurred with the same word. Nobody's using it on you. It's a quote from an article. Quit being a shitlib."
You can quote it and still censor it. Frankly, the only time I don't censor it is if I'm quoting it in a much more official capacity than a fucking tweet. If I'm writing an essay condemning historical racism, I'm not going to censor what I quote, but I'm also never going to read it the hell outloud.
All that aside: They called my ancestors "Red N*rs" but I'm not gonna put all the fucking letters there on an internet board. The people who know the word and the meaning will be able to fill in the blanks. My personal connection to racism, or historical racism perpetrated upon my family members, doesn't excuse my use of a slur deemed offensive by black people just because white people modified it with the word "sand" or "red" or whatever bullshit they came up with.
Also while we're on the subject of slurs, one of the classic examples to remember is "G**k" which was a slur for Korean people invented by American soldiers based on the sounds they thought they heard commonly among the Korean people they could not understand. John McCain later on defended his use of that slur because he said he was only using it to refer to the Vietnamese people that tortured them. The gulf between the way Korean sounds and Vietnamese sounds to a dumbshit American GI is fucking vast. Turns out the slur morphed into a catch-all hateword for Asians. So yeah despite his half-assed late-in-life effort at not being a racist piece of shit, John McCain was still an absolute racist piece of shit. That's just the way the cookie crumbles.
olive skinned people
lmao i'm a light skinned arab and i don't act this oppressed. imagine the gall.
Semi related but in South Africa there are a small group of Afrikaans people so racist that they don't see Portuguese people as white. They call them slurs and refuse to do business with them as well as make fun of their appearance etc. Make no mistake Portuguese people are definitely part of white culture 99% of the time but holy shit my ignorant ass thought it wasn't real until I saw it. Like I thought it was just a joke or something because it sounds so absurd.
Spend 10 min with someone from East Anglia talking about their Portuguese electrician and you'll hear the same sentiments.
American POC:
- Irish
- Swedish
- Germans
- Italians
- Anglo Saxon catholics
When you call any of the above "white" without context you are LITERALLY participating in POC erasure which is racist.