Racism Is Racism Is Racism Is Racism
The same goes for sexism. That doesn't change if the person you are being racist and sexist to is white and male.
A tweet thread from today. (The exchange I was tweeting about is screenshotted in below -- in reply to the woman whose remark is last pictured here.)
Disturbingly, racism & sexism so often seem to be OK -- as long as whipping boy is white & male. Here's "Postdoctoral Research & Clinical Neuropsychology Fellow at Harvard/Boston Univ/Boston" going ugly on a white male - making all sorts of assumptions re his supposed "privilege" pic.twitter.com/PlFBMAmCxm
— Amy Alkon (@amyalkon) October 5, 2018
And a later comment from me about her knee-jerk assumption:
Furthermore, your comment is racist and sexist -- and I have to laugh about the "privilege" you impute to Scott Barry Kaufman, who was in learning disabled classes thruout school (See "Ungifted") & clawed his way thru impossible odds to Yale Ph.D. in cog sci, Cambridge fellowship
— Amy Alkon (@amyalkon) October 5, 2018
More of one of the threads here.
And an earlier tweet from me (from August):
Calling Bullshit On The Notion That Racism Isn't Racism If It's Against Whites https://t.co/6PwSuOJDuF
— Amy Alkon (@amyalkon) August 16, 2018
Shaming people bc they are born white is ugly racism, same as treating them poorly bc they're "of color." What a person has control over is whether they live a meaningful life.
That's exactly the problem with privilege theory that takes the most shallow sexist, racist glance at Kaufman and decides he is the privileged oppressor and white, young, female Shaw (and literally all women) is the oppressed.
jerry at October 5, 2018 11:45 PM
Only the culture truly responsible for prosperity can be blamed for not giving it to everyone.
Radwaste at October 6, 2018 12:43 AM
This whole idea that isms are only isms if the are institutional and not individual is a relatively new one. I only started hearing it a couple years ago.
NicoleK at October 6, 2018 5:27 AM
It's been out there for quite a while NicoleK. I was getting slapped with it something like 20 years ago. Look up Critical Race Theory. According to Wikipedia it started in the 1980s and by 2002 there were 20 different US law schools offering classes on how to be a modern racist.
Ben at October 6, 2018 5:35 AM
"Dr. . . . MA, MS, PsyD."
Hmm, someone is a little insecure - listing the "Dr." in front and the degrees after is redundant.
charles at October 6, 2018 5:50 AM
The motivation of the left is the desecration of White glories.
Snoopy at October 6, 2018 5:51 AM
The white women on the left shrieking about "white male privilege" don't foresee the day when that becomes "white privilege" and they become the targets of hate. They don't see the Revolution turning on them. It will. It always does. Revolutions fueled almost solely by hatred, resentment, and anger always turn on their own.
That's what made the American revolution unique. Once it was over, the 13 colonies got together and peacefully formed a federal government. That government failed, so those same former colonies got together and formed another. That second one has lasted for over 230 years, so far - with some adjustments.
Revolutions like the Russian, Chinese, Laotian, and Cuban revolutions all ended with a blood bath on a gruesome scale and totalitarian governments imposed. The American Revolution's hands are not entirely clean, but the scale of reprisals was much smaller - the essential power structure of the colonies remained intact and did not have to tried and executed to secure the revolution.
Conan the Grammarian at October 6, 2018 6:11 AM
Unfortunately she's going to get away with it. Unlike Christine Fair, there's not enough media exposure to drive away this cockroach into the dark regions of the world.
Sixclaws at October 6, 2018 6:27 AM
It's not just the women. All the grievance philosophies are like that. It is inherent in their ideology that they are oppressed. And hence they cannot understand that once they are 'victorious' they will become the new target.
Ben at October 6, 2018 7:17 AM
Conan: That's what made the American revolution unique. Once it was over, the 13 colonies got together and peacefully formed a federal government.
Revolutions like the Russian, Chinese, Laotian, and Cuban revolutions all ended with a blood bath on a gruesome scale and totalitarian governments imposed.
* *
It's true (and good!) that the American Revolution didn't end with bloodbaths and totalitarianism, but the one huge stain on our revolution, our government and our society was allowing slavery. (And, of course, that led to the bloodbath known as the Civil War, a horrible violent spasm that our country had to through.)
JD at October 6, 2018 12:49 PM
Twitter is a swamp. Avoid it.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at October 6, 2018 1:49 PM
The presumption that underlies SJW behavior is that prejudice isn't evil if it's directed against the powerful rather than the oppressed. This is debatable (as is the question of whether white men are really "the powerful"), but it's not ridiculous on its face.
Rex Little at October 6, 2018 3:11 PM
The problem with a focus on race and "oppression" is that there lots of whites much worse off than many blacks. Who would you rather be, the unmarried middle aged white guy bagging your groceries, or a rich black rapper? Or a black doctor? And of course people, all people, have to struggle. Even famous people had to work their ass off and sacrifice to get where they are.
cc at October 6, 2018 6:13 PM
True enough. The Founding Fathers, Northern and Southern, actually foresaw slavery ending peacefully and agreed to a gradual ban on importing slaves to speed that process, putting that ban into the Constitution.
In 1789, slavery was a custom in the South but not an economic necessity. Long staple cotton was a nice crop, but expensive to harvest and get ready for market. Separating the seeds from the cotton fiber was expensive, labor- and time-intensive, even with slaves doing the work. Growing cotton outside of a few areas of coastal South Carolina and Georgia, where short staple cotton could be grown, was not economically practical.
Then, in 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin and long staple cotton became a cash crop almost overnight. Cheap labor from slavery became an economic edge for Southern planters.
It took 10 hours of seed-separation labor to produce one pound of cotton before the cotton gin. Afterward, two people could produce 50 pounds of cotton in the same amount of time.
Cotton plantations exploded across the South and the antebellum way of life was ingrained in Southern culture. By the 1850s, "...the southern states were responsible for seventy-five percent of the world's cotton, most of which was shipped to New England or England...."
Slavery was from then on defended with religious intensity. It's amazing what you can delude yourself into believing is just and right if the money's good.
Conan the Grammarian at October 7, 2018 10:04 AM
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