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IBM pulls X ads as Elon Musk endorses white pride
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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So, Elon dislikes that white people can't be proud of being white.
Why would a person of any race be proud of their race? Shouldn't people be proud of their own accomplishments, and those of the people they've helped?
I never really understood the rationale here. I support Pride Month for example, but I think the language is kind of wrong.
Shouldn't people be proud, despite traits which have historically been denigrated?
This is a serious question BTW.
When your ancestors have been targetted, racialized, abused and enslaved for centuries and the effects of that are still felt to this day, and when you are still being racialized and abused because of the colour of your skin and your heritage, you feel like you have nothing to be proud of. The world is telling you you don't matter, that 'your kind' deserves it.
THAT'S why POC are so adament about being proud. Because when a racist tells them they're worth nothing, and when the world tells them they're nothing, they need to rely on themselves and their community.
Being proud is resistance. Against all the shit that has been done to POC, and the shit that is still being done today.
White pride is not resistance, other than resistance to the idea of black pride taking over from a centuries old status quo where white people were the only ones who 'mattered'. You're not resisting anything with 'white pride'. You're taking away voices and dignity of POC.
It's no wonder the only people who unironically say 'white pride' are fucking nazis. That should inform anyone about the whole concept of it. Don't weaponize your whiteness.
I was sitting here thinking it's pretty silly to be proud of things you have no control over, even if you appreciate it over other possible variations of a given attribute. Using it as a means of personal or societal deprogramming is valuable, though, so long as it doesn't extend to denigrating people who are 'other', otherwise you end up with the same problem but different people suffering.
That's a great writeup
In my mind, LGBTQ Pride is generally called that because Shame was, at least in contemporary history, a huge driver in suppressing LGBTQ existence and freedoms. If it was called LGBTQ No-More-Shame, it would remain antithetical but might not be as catchy. I'm sure other groups will employ the same argument, but it is difficult to overstate how powerful shame and social stigma specifically suppressed LGBTQ expression, and still attempts to in some ways.
There are other better choices than No-More-Shame.
LGBTQ Honor / Dignity / Glory (on second thought, this one may conjure images of bathroom stalls, so maybe not this one)
Dignity is pretty solid.
To be fair, the right would immediatly counter with "white dignity" or "straight dignity" and accuse everyone holding up LGBTQ+-dignity or black dignity of denigrating white dignity and complain about an atmosphere where "whites aren't allowed to feel the dignity of their race anymore".
Because that's just how they work.
I think there are a few major problems here:
There legitimately are powerful people who are systemically oppressing non-whites/non-straights.
There is a significant amount of people that lack empathy and have never experienced personally this type of systemic oppression, and thus don't believe it's real. This is particularly evident on the right where empathy is in short supply. See also: my abortion is the only moral abortion, the government shouldn't be supporting these freeloaders (but make sure my HUD/food stamps/social security show up on time!), Obamacare needs to be abolished (but don't drop me from my insurance I need my meds!), etc.
Back to point number one, even the blue team has been unfortunately ignorant about the level of systemic oppression and often serves as a validating factor. It's one of the small things that I think have been positive about the social media era, these stories are getting to far more people than they used to. When I was in school in the 2000's, if you asked basically anyone in my predominantly white school (including me, tbh) they probably would have said racism is basically a solved problem and is only a tiny little fraction of the actual experience for POC/LGBTQ++, etc. People with empathy pick up on this faster, but if you say ACAB in a room full of blue team, you're probably still going to get a lot of pushback...
Speaking of ACAB, a big part of the problem is that people just do not fucking get nuance. Most of even the staunchest ACAB supporters don't believe that everyone who is a cop or will become a cop is a bastard/bad person, the point is that the institution of policing in this country is systemically racist, systemically corrupt, and systemically insulated from consequences in a way that is unjust and bad for society. Or, shorter, we have heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and know that when you give people this type of power you can expect bad things. Thus, there isn't a way to be a moral cop because the system removes the ability to stay moral, which is also why a lot of those that we would call "good" cops are forced out of the field. Anyway, pretty fucking hard to fit that on a bumper sticker, so we end up with things like ACAB/BLM/Pride, etc.
Extremely well said!
Idk the stereotype that gays are indignant polyamorous debaucherists still persists to this day. Even though the straights are still equally as debaucherous. Put differently, people have a different perception of guys who have a lot of Tinder hookups as opposed to guys that have a lot of Grindr hookups. Gay men are much more likely to be slut-shamed than straight men.
He's completely wrong too. Celebrating American, European, or general Western heritage is very commonplace, to the point that the US even has a holiday for itself. If that isn't enough for someone, then odds are they're just a fucking racist.
Most of the time, there's a country or region you can celebrate the heritage of. The only exceptions are Jewish people and black people, but that's because they had forced diasporas, persecution, and/or slavery. Their ethnic identity to a region was stripped from them.
I mean I'm mostly German but don't really celebrate it. A: I don't feel at all German. B: there's a bit of history surrounding Germans even though none of my ancestors were in the country for any of that. C: I'm already the dominant culture/race where I was born. What would I be celebrating? That I'm the same as everyone else? We could have a big cookout where we celebrate our culture by eating the same food we eat every day, wearing the same clothes we wear every day, etc. Oh wait this is already every get together...
I am proud of my German heritage, but mainly because,
But would I ever celebrate being of German heritage? Nope. Why should I? The only reason why I love my German heritage boils down to an accident of conception. Heck, I don’t even celebrate being Canadian.
If I was to celebrate anything, it would be for being a member of humanity, and to a wider degree, being alive in a universe that is almost completely hostile to life (we are living on the only known life-compatible planet).
Yeah exactly. I just need to go outside to get the culture of where I'm living.
I think everyone should be proud of their race, which is the human race... No matter ones ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. we are all the same race. Yes, I know in this context race means something else. But, my point still stands. If everyone would stop worrying about our little meaningless differences and realize that we are all the same race. We would be much better off. Yes, I know that will never happen.
This has always bugged me. It's strange how labeling someone as "racist" actually works in the racists favour; you're partially validating their point by implying there's a greater biological gap than actually exists.
Bigot works well as a replacement if this bugs you, and it's probably more accurate, people with "racist" views are more likely to be homophobic too.
I mean, idk about other cultures/langages but it does feel weird as fuck to french speakers that English even has a concept of "race" for humans in the first place. In french we only use the word "race" for animals. If you want to refer to someone's ethnicity, well, that's the word you use ("ethnie"). Although iirc the distinction is quite recent (from the enlightenment period or something).
And we also have the word "raciste" which refers to one's belief that there are human races, it doesn't validate that belief.
I'm considering this from the perspective of taxonomy. Race is basically a synonym for "subspecies" which is pretty fucked up.
Yeah iirc that's also why human races aren't really a thing in french.
Although we do use that word for animals' breeds (which are just subspecies iirc) but I guess that's just because it wouldn't really be french if there were no weird exceptions
At least the French got that going for them.
Hurry up and overthrow your government already, everyone is waiting for one of your classic revolutions.
yea yea yea we're waiting till the very last moment so it can look all theatrical and fabulous
Yeah unfortunately our government has been pretty much continuously giving absurd levels of power to the police and they're paving the way for the fascists to win the next elections so it's not looking too good
Nah, racist is a descriptor of a viewpoint, not something that's inherently built into people because of their ethnicity. So it makes about as much sense to say that calling someone a racist is "validating their point" as saying calling someone a flat earhter somehow validates their ideas about flat earth theory. It's just a silly line of reasoning.
Biologically we're the same species, not the same race. There's no concept of race in humans
Race was actually invented to justify invading and enslaving people who were different colours
In the cases of actively oppressed people, particularly people that were assigned a race regardless of actual national origin, and then were denigrated for being that race, it's a point of pride to say that "our people" (who you basically forced "us" to become not on the basis of our shared heritage or nationality but purely on the basis of lumping together everyone with the same color skin) survived and thrived, and eventually developed our own culture despite the shitty circumstances.
White people don't fit into this category because nobody forced people to be white and then said they weren't citizens in the country or that they could only live in certain towns, forcing them to band together as one and develop their own white people culture with basically strangers, and nobody robbed them of their history and forced them into brutal chattel slavery for hundreds of years.
Edit: Most white people who care to do so still have an understanding of their lineage, national origin, religion, and/or festivals, and many of those are or were celebrated in their own ways: St Patty's Day, Octoberfest, Christopher Columbus Day (which was basically an Italian pride day originally), Catholic holidays, Jewish holidays, etc.
This opens a whole new can of worms for me.
Can a gay person who has never experienced homophobia rightfully celebrate Pride Month?
Can a black person who was adopted by white parents and has no black cultural influence be proud of being black?
In any case, I understand the sentiment, I'm not saying "I don't understand why black people want to be recognised and celebrate the victories afforded to them by their ancestors".
What I don't understand is the specific vernacular of the word "pride" in these cases. Rosa Parks was a BAMF, but why would I be proud of her? I didn't put the idea in her head, I didn't give her the courage to sit at the back of the bus.
Whether I'm black or white has no bearing on whether I should be proud of anything outside of my own influence; I'm convinced identity politics gets us nowhere.
Those gay people wouldn't have a need to celebrate Pride Month.
Sadly, no gay person on this planet has never experienced homophobia, even in the most LGBTQ+ friendly countries in the world.
When you're born, you aren't just dropped out of the clear blue sky onto a level playing field fully defined by the merits of your own actions. Life isn't a lone survivor video game.
You're born in context: historically, financially, genetically, and otherwise. Some people take pride in their heritage, their lineage, their culture, their traditions, etc etc etc. Just because it isn't your cup of tea and you'd rather only celebrate what you consider to be your own accomplishments (and I say it this way on purpose because without your born context there's no guarantee that your life would've turned out as it did) does not mean everyone views the world the same way.
I think more generically you should ask yourself why it bothers you so much when people celebrate aspects of their identity.
I'd largely have no problem with "white pride" festivals if the concept even made any sense at all (which it doesn't, and which is why it's basically "white power" with a tiny PR tune up), but these "events" are basically just Klan rallies. Versus look at most pride festivals. They're full of people dancing and singing and genuinely celebrating things they have in common with one another (or in some cases, like with gay pride and ally ship, things they simply have an affinity for).
I think you may be viewing my thoughts through an uncharitable lens. I am not bothered at all when anyone celebrates any aspect of their identity.
I'm a white Australian; my ancestors committed atrocities, yet, I do not feel shame for their actions, because I wasn't involved. I can only take shame in how I have acted.
To reiterate, the definition of pride is localised to the individual. It doesn't make sense to be proud of someone else's accomplishments if you haven't helped them.
A parent may feel proud if their child has done well, they have contributed to their success. However, if my college in a different department gets a promotion, I shouldn't.
Now extend this to people you don't know, and it makes no sense at all.
I get the sentiment, and it's not a black and white (sorry for the pun) answer I think. And yes, celebrating your culture should be good for everyone.
Unfortunately, some people saying "pride" mean "There are great things in the culture and people where I emigrated from" and some people mean "the culture and people where you emigrated from are trash". And "white pride" has historically been used by people meaning the latter.
Pointing out that "white pride" COULD also mean the former doesn't remove the implication it comes with for the latter. If I wanted to express the former, I would pick different words. A person doing otherwise usually either expresses ignorance, callousness to the second implication, or them just trying to get away with saying it meaning the second thing by hiding behind the first.
Just to clarify, I'm not asking about the implication of "white pride", just the semantics of pride in general.
It reminds me of "Black Lives Matter" - of course they do, but too many people heard "only black lives matter", when what they're trying to say is "black lives matter too".
These twits responded with "All Lives Matter", which, of course, is also true, but the implication is the discreditation of the suffering of black people.
I think a lot of these issues, unfortunately, are a failure of the Left. There are so many slogans which are either poorly thought out, or intentionally inflammatory. For example, "defund the police", "all cops are bastards", "math is racist".
We can't expect the Right to read between the lines, it's up to the Left to use better language so we don't give them more ammo.
The right will often purposefully misrepresent whatever the left uses as a slogan. So only so much can be done there. As for the use of racial pride, I find that often those who can claim no accomplishments in themselves will often claim pride by association. They could claim pride in race, but really any group. This could be considered a defense mechanism for their own ego as they are not okay accepting their own short comings.
Deliberate misrepresentation can only be employed if one understands the original intent.
If a malicious person wants to try to convince others "Black Lives Matter" means "only black lives matter", they may have a pretty clear shot (assuming they're trying to convince someone Right of Centre).
If it was rebranded to "Black Lives Matter Too", then they would have a harder time trying to be deceitful.
I'm convinced there are more people in the camp of failing to read between the lines.
In either case, language games are important; playing poorly will lead to catastrophic outcomes. The worst part is this is so easy to correct for - a little bit of imagination will illustrate predictable backlash, or lack thereof.
Fair enough. My conservative family is on the side of purposefully misunderstanding, but I can understand that some may just misunderstand and we should mitigate that when we can.
God damn, I don't envy you.
Having a family which is consciously malicious must make for some very frustrating conversations.
I, on the other hand, have a right-of-centre family who are mostly just too dull to extrapolate, and spend too much time on FB.
At least in my case I can sometimes dispel misconceptions.
Besides my severe trust issues I am fine, life is better now that I have mostly cut them all off.
This is human nature at end of day. If it's not being white/black, it's your football team, what country you're from, or on lemmy crap like whether you use Linux or not.
I never understood it myself but people are morons.
Absolutely. Tribalism is toxic.
At least Linux is a choice.
I use Arch BTW.
Because in this case it's talking more about KKK type of "white pride".