Whiteness: WTF? White Privilege and the Invisible Race
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 พ.ค. 2024
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An introduction to Whiteness, Race, and White Privilege.
Timestamps:
0:00 Whiteness
02:45 The Invention of Race
07:34 Whiteness is (in)visible
12:27 White Privilege
19:00 White $uprem@cy
25:00 Conclusions
In this month's episode of What the Theory?, we're taking a look at whiteness. We'll be looking at how Anglo-American culture generally frames whiteness as invisible and white people as "the norm" or "the default". This often allows white people to view ourselves as race-less in a manner unafforded to Black people, Indigenous people and people of colour. It also allows us to ignore the ways in which whiteness structures our lives and our complicity in racist structures.
We'll be taking a look at numerous different approaches to foregrounding and critically discussing whiteness, some of it drawing on the academic field of Critical Whiteness Studies, and some of it drawing on the broader field of Critical Race Theory. We'll look at some commonly discussed concepts surrounding whiteness including white privilege, white guilt and white fragility as outlined in the work of Peggy McIntosh and Robin Diangelo as well as taking a brief look at the "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" workshop devised by Jane Elliot. Then, we'll proceed to consider some more critical takes on whiteness as developed by scholars including Sara Ahmed and Charles W. Mills.
As mentioned in the video, I'm going to donate any ad revenue that this video generates to The Free Black University Fund which is working to support decolonisation efforts in UK Universities and to more generally support Black scholars. If you'd like to join me in supporting their work then you can do so here: uk.gofundme.com/f/the-free-bl...
Select References
Ahmed, Sara. "Declarations of Whiteness: The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism." borderlands 3, no. 4 (2004). www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no2....
Diangelo, Robin. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Boston: Beacon Press, 2018.
Du Bois, W.E.B. Black Reconstruction in America. New York: The Free Press, 1998. 1935.
Dyer, Richard. White. London: Routledge, 1997.
Hartigan Jr., John. Odd Tribes: Toward a Cultural Analysis of White People. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
Ignatin, Noel. "Letter to Progressive Labor." In Revolutionary Youth & the New Working Class: The Praxis Papers, the Port Authority Statement, the Rym Documents and Other Lost Writings of SDS, edited by Carl Davidson, 148-63. Pittsburgh: Changemaker Publications, 2011.
McIntosh, Peggy. "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." Peace and Freedom, July/August 1989 1989, 10-12.
Mills, Charles W. "Racial Exploitation and the Wages of Whiteness." In What White Looks Like: African American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question, edited by George Yancy, 25-54. London: Routledge, 2004.
---. "White Supremacy as Sociopolitical System: A Philosophical Perspective." In White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism, edited by Ashley “Woody” Doane and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, 35-48. London: Routledge, 2003.
Saini, Angela. Superior: The Return of Race Science. London: 4th Estate, 2019.
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I spent a while thinking about how I might use my platform to engage with some of these issues in a way that didn't feel exploitative, extractive or like I was taking up space in a conversation where my voice isn't all that useful. It felt like a dereliction of the responsibility that comes with having such a platform to not engage at all though. I hope this is a productive contribution to some of the ongoing discussions that have been raised by the amazing work of Black Lives Matter and others. Happy to chat in the comments with anyone that feels otherwise though!
Ah cool, I popped in whilst I was on holiday in the summer, a really cool shop and city!
Very well done.
Tom Nicholas stunning piece of work on maybe today’s most challenging subject.
Hi there Tom, and thank you for your video.
Could you be interested in having some kind of honest, down-to-earth discussion / debate with people from the other side of the social / political spectrum on the topics of 'whiteness', 'white privilege' and the like?
I think it could be very fruitful for all sides involved.
Thank you - I'll look forward to your reply! :)
Hi Tom, an Indigenous Australian ( Gunditjmara Nation) here and I thoroughly enjoy your videos. Have shared this one on my FB page. I have a long history of social justice activism including working nationally towards Constitutional reform to recognise sovereignty and protect the treaties process we are undertaking in Australia for the first time since colonisation. I have subscribed and become a patreon supporter as well. Keep up the great work. Warm wishes and keep safe.
Before you leave a comment, please remember that the greatest race is Nascar
I mean, I can certainly imagine that this comment section is going to be an absolute *car crash*.
@@Tom_Nicholas Perhaps just droning on and on in an endless loop.
Tour de France disagrees
What, a 180mph traffic jam?
Formula 1 btw
Instructions unclear: Am Slavic, was considered an 'Oriental Race' by the Anglos.
As a an immigrant to UK from Eastern Europe I'm treated as just white dude nowadays. With disregard to who I actually am, how I look on the outside is what matters most seemingly. Odd.
im a kid living in ireland and everyone there is f e c k i n g thick in the head (atleast in schools) like how can you be that fucking dumb to get 6% in maths...
but for irish i do understand i was shit in irish cause the teacher explained fuck all in primary school then in secondary school i kinda became the teachers pet in irish then got gud in irish but still... короче, все люди тупые (if my russian is bad forgive me i never really learned to write it cause “энглыщ из мор юсфал”)
I don't see slavic people as orientals.
In the US these days, Slavics would be treated as white without question. That wasn't always true. Early 20th century involved plenty of anti-Slavic bigotry. And the Cold War created a negative view of Eastern Europe. But the Soviet Union hasn't existed for more than several decades. Slavic-Americans have at this point been fully assimilated into general whiteness.
@@MarmaladeINFP Early 20th century? WWII was more like mid century... I'm talking about Hitlers views on Slavic people, but of course, being German/of German descend that's a thing which is very likely to pop up in my head.
The systemic nature of it is truly baked into every element. The currently acceptable term "people of color" implies that there exist people who have no color. Color, of course, being a thinly veiled euphemism for race and the only reason it's persisted as acceptable is because of literal differences skin tone. And even that isn't fully adhered to because "people of color" completely ignores Asians who often have the same skin tone as light skinned Europeans, but they're not "white", they're not "people of color" even if they're darker skinned Asians. It's all just sugar coated racialized language that satisfies a continued insistence on putting people into the same old buckets.
I love your videos and find them really really useful distillations of complex and nebulous concepts and fields. In the context of this discussion, I would really like to hear you discuss the work of Adolph Reed, Barbara Fields, and other scholars who are critical of some of these concepts (privilege theory etc) from a leftwing perspective, and discuss further the distinction between liberal racial politics that can be co-opted by the establishment, and socialist politics that the establishment must oppose.
Fools simply require a smack & minor concussion to learn
It seems you are implying that having no color is somehow a bad thing? Even though “white” is still a thing..and white is a color..honestly it’s just semantics at that point. As a white person I do not care and neither should any others 😂
My girlfriend is half Japanese, half white. She’s still technically a poc, really doesn’t care either way. I guarantee you neither does any other sane East Asian out there. This kind of language is reactionary nonsense that doesn’t make sense when you view it through a worldview where color is acknowledged and celebrated rather than ignored and vindicated.
Well there's another aspect to it you can't really ignore that is the cultures that use terms like people of color are historically and predominantly white. White Its considered the norm because it is norm for most native residents. Just as if you go to Korea, being Korean is the norm, or in Nigeria , being Nigerian is the norm. If you are any other race you are visibly an outsider even when you may have lived there your entire life and inside you feel like native. More people emigrate to dominant white countries, European and north America from all around the world than any other culture group. When you go anywhere in the world and you look visibly different to the native residents its hard to fit in because you can't, at least never entirely.
As being an African American I have to say it’s not about ethnicity, but about skin tone. It is something about being a lighter shade that gets you by. It’s not as major as people make it, but colorism is still a thing unfortunately. Also it’s about class, privilege is about wealth, a black actor living in Hollywood is more privileged than a white person living in a trailer park.
it really shocked me when I read that many rich black actresses, musicians etc are lightening their skin. the straight hair status symbol for sure doesn't just stem from it being expensive, but also because straight hair is more "normal" in a white society
As a white dude, the most striking feature about blacks to me always seemed to be facial structure, rather than skin tone. Hence why I never understood why certain "anti-racists" or whatever the fck implied that it's all about skin tone.. a light skinned african/african-american to me is still "black", whereas an extremely tan white dude is definitely still white. Though I can assure you that pretty much no European even considered jews and/or arabs to be white at all
Of course. This is painfully apparent to me as part of the Indian-American community as well. Colorism is rampant.
@@kaufmanat1 my point exactly. Only "brown" and "black" people assume it's about the skin tone, when it literally isn't. It's more about facial structure and whatnot
@@anonymousbloke1 No, only YOU assume it's more a bout facial structure "and whatnot" lol. It most definitely is about skin tone. Facial features come secondary to skin colour. A racist doesn't need to look at a persons nose or lips to decide they don't like that person lol, they can be behind them and see their dark hands or arms or whatever. This isn't even debatable.
I remember the hassle of being one of a color (a South Asian Skin Tone😊) in a country like Japan where politeness is deeply rooted in its core. After my arrival at Osaka, being cleared by the immigration and bags being scanned without issues, and I was about a few meters away to the final exit, two officers approached me, had my luggage opened and checked items one by one, even though it was a relatively small luggage, (about 15-16 kg) than many others who also travelled with me from the same flight origin (South Korea) on the same flight. As a norm, they don't check any Korean flight's passengers, because anyone boarded from the Korean airport is kinda highly trusted. I explained that I'm also from Korea and showed my "respectable" resident status in Korea and visiting my Japanese friend on his invitation. But all my efforts were in vein. All I found in their faces was huge suspitions for a person with color and another true face of racism in such a country, like JAPAN, where a subway train driver resigns simply because unconciously he started the train 18-20 seconds earlier than scheduled, and later he felt guilty that someones might have missed the train because of that incident. Btw, my Japanese friends are still the coolest of all my friends. Love 'em all.
:(
Japan has always had a love affair with white supremacy. I noticed that when I was stationed over there when I was in the military and they do love themselves some rap and hip-hop.
Yeah what do you expect feom a country with worse crimes than nazi germany, who deny them, have yet to apologize to many of its victims, has taken back apologies, and dont teach them in their schools while having public shrines for warcriminals
@@grapeshot I'm sure they do love western pop music. I'm not quite sure about the "white" thing but they do have the idea of being one race, the (genetic) homogeneity thing. Of course, you've seen more than me during your service over there. Hope you had your best memories too. Peace!
In the US some people feel insanely guilty about thinking homoerotic thoughts or smoking a cigarette but wouldn't think twice about calling the police on a black person simply for being nearby and doing nothing else at all when doing so could potentially get the person killed. Cognitive dissonance is humanity's specialty.
Edit: that's not even the worst example because there is/was/still kind of is this phenomenon in the US called "sundown towns" where the entire population of one town is entirely white and minorities of any kind just aren't welcome at all; some of those places have really really tiny minority populations now but even in the places that kind of improved like that it's still understood that that's not a place you really want to visit or even stop for a bathroom break in if you're part of a minority group and esp. if you're black. I'd bet a lot of the people living in those places somehow think they're good people, too.
I think that a big reason white people often dislike the term ‘white privilege’ is ironically because they feel their character and achievements are being judged in a negative light by people who know nothing about them. I had a friend who was orphaned at a young age and raised in a poor single carer household, he was white and yet as far as I know vastly less privileged than every non-white person I’ve ever met. In the eyes of someone who gauges privilege by the colour of skin, he would be considered lucky.
I know that example is merely one anecdote, but I think it goes some way to explaining how a lot of white disenfranchised blue collar Americans feel like when they are accused of possessing a privilege they have never (knowingly) felt. Nobody likes it when someone claims to have it worse.
Let me paint another perspective here: it's quite easy to see that most of the white privilege talk originates from nations like US or UK, which have built a formidable chunk of their current wealth on colonization and/or slavery. To hear that as a, say, white central/eastern European it's clearly an absurd statement, shouted at others from a convenient high horse. Sure, you can pick up the weird standardization and say "Slavs are technically POC", but then almost every argument stated in this video breaks apart. They identify themselves racially with the while people in the movies, and are very likely to be perceived as such in all the social interactions. So, it's a nope there.
Even in topics like that, the conversation is so painfully US/UK centric it's barely considering humans outside of these countries. The idea of white privilege originates almost exclusively from the economically top-tier western people, yet it's formulated as if it either was to include all other white people, regardless of their actual privilege, or not considering them people at all in that rhetoric. It can be easily viewed as a kind of cultural colonialism propelled by former empires, not having to worry about actually losing any privilege or wealth, if that was even at all likely to happen.
This idea has many problems - it's arguably racist (easy exercise - reverse any statement to work against other race; if it's racist then, it was already racist before), it propels group identity (which is what you touch on a bit), but it's also ridiculously imperialist and radiates with a false, or at least clumsy, performative guilt.
There's no doubt a ton of harm was done to POC communities in places like the US, systemically or otherwise, over the years and still being done today, but this weird kind of thinking, this "positive discrimination" branded ideas are just absolutely not a way to fix that. True equality is the point to be at, and trying to performatively overshoot it (how many people repeating this stuff has willingly given up any privilege or wealth allegedly build on it?) is not doing anyone any good.
It's just insane to me that I can battle for everyone to be treated equal, EXCEPT FOR MYSELF. Because everyone im trying to treat equal, insist that MY skin makes me privileged. I know plenty of white people who are far from privileged. It's not fair to clear everyone's skin but 1. MLK would roll in his grave if he saw this 180
@@wap300 you make some good points here, thanks for commenting. I would add that the ‘true equality’ you speak of should be equality of opportunity, at least in my view. Everyone should have an equal shot at achieving their goals in often competitive environments, yet positive discrimination disrupts that equality by lowering the bar for certain disadvantaged groups in order to provide them more opportunities, which necessarily denies those same opportunities to potentially more qualified and deserving people, and in some cases people who are equally or more disadvantaged than those the positive discrimination seeks to help. Therefore , I’d argue that seeking equality of outcome means the death of equality of opportunity - the two are mutually exclusive.
Of course true equality of opportunity isn’t an easy feat and even though it is enshrined in law, there are many obstacles to it which we ought to work towards solving. People propose positive discrimination as the remedy to this problem but it is an unworthy substitute at best and entirely detrimental at worst. It’s like slapping a bandaid on a bullet wound, it merely hides the problem.
@@swifthippo1 you speak of equality of outcome vs equality of opportunity, but it is just another facet of "equality vs freedom" conflict. Freedom to do as one pleases will always result in different and uneven outcomes, thus whoever seeks equality of outcome must first get rid of freedoms.
@@zbigniewp1810 Equality of outcome is a fallacy. it can never exist. Why? because life is never fair and that's just the way it is. There will always be those who are luckier than others. The best we can ever hope for is equal opportunity and that comes from Freedom.
I'm Puerto Rican of Mestizo heritage. I come from a mixed nation. To say whiteness to a Latino is very subjective. How does one identify whiteness? Is it in their color of skin or the texture of hair or eye color or what? In Brazil and also I've noticed on my home island as well as in the Dominican Republic where hostility to Haitians who are primarily black are often seen as a negative. Whiteness is expressed by being less dark. So it becomes colorism. Whiteness is the ideal and in that economic progress. A lighter skin Hispanic maybe given a job where another would not even though the two would share the same credentials examples: modeling and acting. In telenovelas the actors are often lighter skin. They are usually more European looking or beautiful by white standards. Those who are African descended or strongly resemble our indigenous ancestors are left out or play the villain or foil in the series. They become a nonfactor or subservient one within the media. This is huge! As it also can be seen in modeling. White looking models get more jobs and as such are in advertisement from magazines to commercials etc. People sadly buy bleaching treatments to whiten themselves.... Saying that we don't have racism or aren't affected by it is an illusion in Latin America. I'll provide a further example my grandparents are dark skinned and they had 3 children. The first and eldest was Blanca, my aunt, she was named Blanca because when she was born the doctor was shocked on how white she came out. She was a beautiful baby, but didn't look at all like her parents or grandparents except for her great grandfather on my grandmother's side. This baby was raised as the pride of our family. Soon my mother was born she too shocked the doctor and my home village as again a white looking baby was born. They tried again and my uncle was born he looked brown and dark brown at that. My grandparents often joked on how it was rolling the dice with mixed people. My grandmother often took her two white looking children as an indicator that in her mind she must also be white. An odd notion to be sure, but one she insisted. Regardless my grandmother's siblings and her parents were noticeably darker and she herself could not pass.
Now when it comes to us, Mestizos or mixed Latinos. Are we white, native or are we black or are we something else? Well we are the descendants of colonialists and slaves. Natives and nonnatives intermixing. We still live with the legacy of racism because our cultures value lighter skin as beautiful. We often act subservient to European countries. In Bolivia where the indigenous president was removed and a European descended Mestizo inherited the presidency and began to purge her homeland of her political opponents and in that Evo Morales was left an exile from his own country. What does it mean to be Latino? Depends on the country. What does it mean to be white? Well to some it's tied to wealth and dark skinned Latinos insist their whiteness comes from their position in society i.e. they are white because they are rich in spite their skin color. Look at how Brazilians identify themselves. Do you not see any similarities in their identities? In Puerto Rico we often have words - Moreno (Black), Trigueño (darkish), Prieto (Very dark, but not necessarily black), Blanquito (Whiteish, little white), Blanco (White), Mezclado (Mixed, but not discernible), Mulatto (black and white), Mestizo ( Indigenous and white). In your country do you have similar identification standards?
Latino and Hispanics were stuck “in the middle” of the Shaping of Whiteness and Blackness. There is a “white privilege” acknowledged and more obvious ironically enough in Non-white countries that had African slaves. Thus solidifies Racism as a system of White Supremacy and Anti-Blackness. Lighter Latinos are seen as “white adjacent” and even more tan Latinos depending on phenotype is seen as “desirable” because its slightly “spicy” and palpable to white people.
I am Brazilian and here I am perceive as white. But I think when he talks about whiteness, he's taking about western Europe? Because I think he uses P.O.C to describe Latin, Arabic or Asian people. Well, I know that when Americans talk about whiteness, they're talking about W.A.S.P : white (as skin colour), Anglo Saxon (as in German or British heritage), Protestant (as opposed to Catholicism, because Iberian countries like Portugal an Spain are mainly Catholic)... Idk, "what is white?" is a big question.
I grew up in Peru as a white foreigner, I suppose is the best way to put it. I arrived around age 11 from Germany, incapable of speaking spanish. My skin was/is, even compared to those considered white in the country, pale, and I had unmistakably blond hair, so I stood out, especially in my late teens when i shot up in height and stood out even more.
On one hand you hand my mom's Peruvian then-boyfriend's mother, who seemed overly friendly to us, to the point that she made me a bit uncomfortable. As it turned out she was rather racist, being of greek heritage and lighter skinned Mediterranean in appearance and rather proud of that. As she grew older she would more openly rant over those of certain mixed heritage, for those who know the term "cholos". Further, I heard from her granddaughter years later how she was treated by her grandmother when she still living in the country as a child. Since she compared to her sister, who inherited her us-american mother's germanic complexion, looked/looks decidedly more Mediterranean in skin tone, she was treated like she didn't belong, in several passive aggressive ways.
On the other hand I was clearly not just white, I was a white foreigner, and while I didn't understand it at the time, language misunderstanding, i got labeled as such, mostly with "lechoso", though later I got some "gringo" as well, the former was a thing kids called me at school, I just wasn't aware the former term was referring to my skin tone, the latter I did know what it referred to, but by then I was older. Also I got some far to genuine sounding heil hitlers from taxi drivers, when they learned I was german, which was always uncomfortable when it happened. On the upside taxi drivers are more chatty then in germany, the few times i've had to take a taxi here all but once it was a more quiet affair.
In general we had to be more careful as we looked like we could be tourists and on 2 occasions got careless or unlucky. Once held at knife point on a narrow flight of stairs to the coast, near Larcomar for those who know it. The other time kinda held hostage at a beach, the guard hardly knew how to do so and spent the entire time getting a talking to by my mom, while letting a bunch of teenagers roam freely, the brains took my mom's boyfriend together with the other member of the trio to get money from a bank. I am still fairly certain two off them were poor fishermen and the brains was some sort of ex military, he had the only firearm and they kept their things in nets, reminiscent of parts of large fishing nets.
Generally people referred to one another by racial terms, as nicknames at school or as broad derogative ways to those considered lower in the hierarchy, broadly following european > native > black, with those of mixed heritage or within groups on a skin color basis. How asians figured into the spectrum is a bit confusing, but it'd venture between european and native. The first indigenous Peruvian president was in office while I was living there and a substantial amount of racism was directed at him. So while I was there I was became aware how openly racist the culture, at least as far as Lima is an indication, was. Even though in the US most of them would be lumped together as latinos.
Some of the designations you list sound familiar, but weren't in use as much, sound more like the terms we learned in history class, like "lobo" or "salta atras". For darker skinned people the term "negro" was used and "indio" for those classified as indigenous, while the term used for mixed race, especially of lower socio economic class i heard most used was "cholo" and in a decidedly negative way for the most part, though used as a nickname of sorts amongst acquaintances a times. While east asians where generally referred to as "chinos" at least in a colloquial sense. I would guess without any religious attire those from south west asia, would be hard to distinguish from those of Spanish, italian and greek heritage, I know my Iranian former boss, reminds me of my 12th grade spanish teacher, otherwise probably "arabe".
I'm in Romania and people don't use the word "white". We see ourselves as romanians not as a part of some overarching category defined by light skin tone like Americans seem to. Sure we call black people black and we call gypsies gypsies. But if we know the country they are from for a black person that becomes the descriptor. If the country is majority light skinned we also add black after the nationality. If the country is majority dark skinned we don't. For gypsies they don't really have a country so I'd say it's fair to call them by their "race". I honestly like the way things are. while I might benefit from not being a gypsy and have some "whiteness" the issue really is cultural. Gypsies often stick to their own community and are very rarely interested in schooling. Sure discrimination might have had a role in that in the beginning but it's very hard to meet thousands of people who are uneducated loud and steal who are all gypsies and then never for a second think "Ok I'll try not to associate with gypsies on purpose cause it can be pretty risky.". I know they are prob a product of their environment like we all are. But they are a product that is dangerous to me so I have to avoid it if possible
It's a different legacy from British colonialism, I think. Not entirely distinct, the French borrowed a good deal of the concepts, altered them and put them to work in Haiti and Dominica, and then the British took those and fiddled with them. The categories of melanin content and blood relation distance from an African or Native person became measures of prosperity and acceptability in rapid succession, and beauty became defined by the pale Castilian colonizer in the global south, just as the Scandinavian and Anglo became idealized in the global north.
In terms of whiteness as a concept, it may be best defined as a caste, rather than an ethnicity. Almost a product of faith rather than any descent. If one is pale enough, and speaks in the 'right' way, and can 'pass', it is not difficult to take on the benefits of whiteness... To a degree. As Jewish folks can and rightly will point out, being pale and seen as white on a surface level only gets you so far when the category is as much an anointment as a culture, attitude or economic background. Though I can't speak for how that goes down on the islands or in the southern continent's varied cultures.
I agree with the video overall, though some of the points seemed a little iffy. Like the "78 percent of fashion adverts in the United States featured white models" when, in all fairness 72 percent of the United States is white, so that's not too far off percentage wise
And you're right, the majority group would be displayed at a higher rate than most other groups. The main complaint that I have seen from people on this is, 'why isn't there one person from every race since there's one white guy in the show?'
I know that's a bit of a straw-man, but it gets my point across
@@reapersmercy7283 yes and it’s very hard to point out racism to people due to the fact that whites are a majority, but so then you must not examine the numbers in comparison to each other, but the numbers in relation to a percentage of the population of said ethnic group.
For instance, overall police kill more white people than black people, but on average kill a far greater number of the percentage of the black population than that of the percentage of the white population, and thus it is proven that they are more likely to kill a black person than a white person.
@@Nightmare-pj4fg The only part of your point that counters your argument and makes things even more complicated than it already was, is that black people make up over 27% of arrests meaning that the amount of adverse interactions between blacks and police is higher than their population percentage of 13. Whites make up a minimum 50% of arrests (number not exact cause the fbi don't explain how they latinos and hispanics are with other races) and are killed more than twice as often as blacks, so the numbers do kinda add up. I agree you can't just look at one statistic and say you found the answer, but even combing through an archive of information could rarely show someone the full picture.
Fucking hell, life's a mess
@@reapersmercy7283 I think there might have been some confusion with me incorrectly articulating my ideas through typed word, because it seems we have the same or similar views, and I just presented something incorrectly.
@@Nightmare-pj4fg No need for sass, just putting my 2 cents in next too yours. Really, you just helped me remember a better point, that's all.
I've spent a lot of time in India over the years, where my whiteness obviously gives me privilege because a sort of reverse racism is inbuilt into the culture where the lighter you are, the higher your "class". I have had bank managers pull me from the back of a long queue and invite me to their office. The hotel staff take me to another area to check-in away from locals. Restaurants give me a special seat, etc. On T.V they spruik whitening creams and those billboards are (or were) everywhere. The worst part is you do start to take advantage of the pass you are given and begin to expect preferential treatment, even if intellectually you know you shouldn't and it's counter to your stated values. Humans...
The Philippines was exactly the same way. That was 20 years ago, now, for me; I can't say if that holds true today, but it didn't seem like it faced too much resistance.
Some of the attorneys I worked with used to question me about beauty (e.g., did I think I was more attractive than Philippino men, did I think White girls were more attractive than Philippino women).
I found that to be an odd rumbling beneath the surface because we were a human rights NGO at a major Manila University, and their pushback was on asthetics and attraction vs institutionalization of race politics. I was there as a law student intern sharing American ideas of human rights with them and working on international law as a tool for addressing the needs of the disenfranchised. Maybe it seemed odd to attack the institutionalization of the white man, while being a bit upside down on the juxtaposition of a legal intern in an activist NGO (NOTE: I'd interned for the Attorney General in the state of my law school as well; the role was 180 degrees from that in the Manila NGO).
Same in other countries of Asia - Thailand, Burma...
But the other side of the coin is that you get charged with extra fees all the way for that...
as an indian i support your statement
Having any kind of power or privilege at all actually changes the way people's brains work to make them more selfish and entitled while also putting more pressure and consequences on other people to make them follow the rules that the people in power aren't always following. Imagine that: giving people authority because they seem to merit it flips a switch in their brains that just straight up makes them dumber, less self-aware, and more likely to do harm than good compared to how they were before. Power specifically corrupts the mind to sabotage it against its own species.
I do wish I could offer a citation but I'm writing from memory and don't currently recall all of my sources; sorry about that.
@@ellielynx3071 observably true too
It reminds me of that SNL skit by Eddie Murphy where he paints his face white and goes around town discovering all the free benefits he gets just by being white.
The part at 15:36 is an important takeaway. It really highlights that white people are seen as an "invisible" or default race, since the idea that you could choose a single white person to speak for all white people seems inherently ridiculous. Yet black people as a whole have designated "community leaders" thrust upon them, who's opinions are often treated as the opinions of the entire group.
yea this guys super racist
They are the "default" race in their countries because they are a majority. If you had to imagine a Chinese man, you would picture a han chinese since they most look will be han chinese and not some white/black tourist. Same goes for other countries, the majority will be the "default" because... They are the majority. That doesn't mean minorities should be discriminated, but it shouldn't be a surprise that minorities are not as well-represented as majorities. There's less of them after all.
@@finntomlin5374 we aren't talking about China
@@giusepperana6354 i mean, thats pretty much the exact opposite of what op said lol
Eventhough it does not happen on a public level like "community leaders" i have spoken for white people before in private while beeing the only white person in an group of minorities
I have a feeling that a lot of my friends have issues talking about or accepting white privilege because they assume it judges them and their personal life and achievements. They're not priviliged in any sort of socio economic way, their lives were hard, their families poor, yet they were told they were priviliged. It's a theme i also see with a lot of strangers. "I wasn't priviliged" - it's not about whiteness making your life easy. It's a structural issue. It's, fairly, a constructed one too. There were times when Irish people weren't considered white. A lot of slavic people weren't/aren't considered white. As you said, it's a "Us and them" thing. It makes the "us" the invisible default majority.
So what then? genocide of whites? and start again, what are you talking about structural? The structure has created the most diverse country in the world!!! POCs are doing just fine!! Look out your window and not your fucking phone!!!
there´s no universal white privilege. if anything, there might be a majority "privelege". if the majority in your country is white, then yes, you could call that white privelege. but only if you imply that everybody on any level of power is racist, which is a ridiculous thing to imply. but of course some inevitably will be, so in those cases you might be discriminated against, which of course is not ok and should be made illegal where possible and frowned upon by society if it´s not a matter of law. BUT on top of majority privilege, theres also minority privilege. if a sizable part of that majority is open and welcoming to minorities, you might just as well enjoy those benefits. both things usually exist at the same time.
but i think that whole ridiculous discussion (in it´s extremes) is nonsense. and just comparatively tedious, and a deflection from the real deeply seeded structural privilege, and that´s class privilige. or if that sounds a bit too commie or socialist to you, money privilege.
as the saying goes it doesn´t matter wether you´re rich or poor as long as you have money. that´s after all the real deciding factor for almost everything, almost everywhere.
that´s why your friends, call you out on that, they´re not privileged. while kanye west, oprah winfrey, sean combs, barrack obama, tiger woods, neil de grasse tyson, bob johnson, lebron james, robert f. smith........ are.
so if you really feel the need to reduce people to their ethnicity, when talking about privilige, you should call it asian privilege. (if we´re talking about the us at least)
they have the highest median income measured against their proportion of the whole population.
I think this is pretty important to address though, the emphasis on white privilege tends to invalidate (even subconsiously) for example the struggles of women and those of lower socio-economic status. I get what the term is aiming at though, but we need to be careful with language to not invalidate the experience of others.
It’s not that it’s so much easier; it’s more about how it’s not that much harder.
"they assume it judges them and their personal life and achievements"
they "assume" correctly and don't go far enough because it does more than negatively judge them - it actively prevents them from reaching their full potential when white privilege theory is used to justify affirmative action which reduces opportunities for them
the biggest reason I think the white privilege argument as a waste of time, is that the vast majority of white people do not, and will never, see themselves as privileged. A more compelling argument is to highlight the disenfranchisement of non-whites, rather than to suggest that the privilege enjoyed by whites is somehow exceptional, rather than what should be the rights of all people.
I had it explained to me that it's white privilege to able to get a job easier. This has evidence to prove it.
So for example if a white guy can't get a job for 6 months it's going to take a POC longer. However, telling that white guy at 5 months without a job that he "has white privilege making it easier for him to get a job" will do one thing and one thing only, piss him off.
That's not helpful for anyone involved and all too often this is how being told you have white privilege feels. Psychologically it's all kinds of screwed up
@@mrtalos the world is fked for every human white men are demonized black men are stigmatized being man is now misogynist women can no longer feel power in their femininity a feminine man if doesn't goes through gender transplant is considered trans phobic small boys are given medicine to limit the testosterone small girl take cardi b Meghan stallion as role model over ang san suki madam curie identity politics has promoted diversity over necessity
@@mrtalos "So for example if a white guy can't get a job for 6 months it's going to take a POC longer."
-> And nowadays, institutions practice affirmative action to give the jobs to POC instead of the best candidate. This means the narrative of white privilege is countered in realty by discrimination against white a.k.a racism. Screwed up, stupid, and harmful to everyone.
@@Ballkist1 i aint never been called transphobic for being gender nonconforming, moreoften people mistake me for being trans myself, but go off IG
Most "white" people dont even see themselves as white. Thats why in the usa people are much more likely to say they are of some european ancestry.
My issue has always been this. For almost all my life a white person has always been seen as an individual, and thus when that white person does something negative, then the blowback is on that white person alone. A non-white person is not an individual but rather part of a whole. When that non-white person does something negative, they somehow become an ambassador for all their people. I'm an Arab who grew up in Canada, I was always told to behave myself so as not to make Arabs look bad. I grew up with that pressure and the constant dread of seeing some Arab commit a crime and end up on the news.
What was really interesting though is after I left Canada and moved to Beijing. I lived there for 8 years. There were two racial groups there. Chinese and Foreigner. All us foreigners often had to endure the blowback whenever a foreigner of ANY race did something bad and it was absolutely institutionalized because the Chinese government would release a new policy targeting foreigners whenever one of us does something serious. It's here where I met the only white people in my life I've been able to identify with because they finally understood was it was like to be a minority.
You have discovered that what people think is white privilege, is actually native privilege. And is simply a part of life in every aspect. In your house, family members have perceived privileges because they live there and own stuff. In your town locals have perceived privileges because they are familiar with their surroundings. In your country native members have perceived privileges because they are a part of the culture and can relate to each other. Being an outsider in hard. And it always will be.
@@sirnedwood8987 With the major difference being that
A) white people aren't the natives of North America.
B) Nations like USA / Canada / UK etc. present themselves as beacons of diversity where anyone can become a citizen of that country. Whereas are largely homogeneous nations (ie. Japan) make no such promises or pretenses.
So when I'm living in Canada as a tax paying Canadian citizen, I'd very much like it if I was recognized as an individual human being rather than Arab #96834 of The Arab Collective.
@@mtr3754 Yes this is true. As for point A, who is the "REAL" natives. I think that is an irrelevant point that becomes very murky when we start applying the theory to different locations with different history. As for point B, I think this is mostly performative. No matter how "diverse" these countries claim to be, the reality is there is a dominant culture. There is a theoretical distinction here between race/nationality/ethnicity. Even if there is confusion between these sometimes, there is no doubt that class and culture is the dominant force here. People can recognize a bourgeois rich North American and treat them accordingly, even if their skin is a little darker. You could provide counter examples, but my key point here is culture. a rapper driving a low rider through bel air is not conforming to culture.
No matter what we profess to believe about the rights afforded to legitimate upstanding tax paying immigrants. There is always the innate desire to preference people of the same culture and behave differently around those that appear as 'outsiders'. It is the unfortunate fate of moving to a new country.
@@sirnedwood8987 You're admitting to what minorities in the west have been saying for generations. Now if only the western nations, that pretend to be beacons of human rights and bastions of humanity, would also admit the same.
@@mtr3754 Replace 'native' with 'dominant' or 'ruling', and you're both closer to the truth. For a simple pecking order, belonging to the ruling 'class', always has been the main factor, albeit one of many. Human relationships is as complicated, as the nature itself, so the closer you look, the infinitely more complicated it becomes.
The less factors you take into account, the more you can generalize traits of groups of people. Making the description of certain human condition less accurate in the process.
Tom is actually spot on, if you take into account, that it is his viewpoint. That can be generalized as one of the most objective and honest condition analysis of a 'WHITE', BRITISH MALE, LIVING IN HIS OWN COUNTRY IN MODERN TIMES.
Note, that the criteria in this analysis are derived solely from scientifically consensual general 5 human races, nothing else. General traits, stemming from genetical ancestry and their correlation to historical, cultural, socio-economical, psychological etc. factors, since europeans decided to widen their territories.
Basically, Western European and their descendant relationships with all who have not descended from them in all the countries they've founded or have taken a power trip to.
With minor deviations from his narrative, it would be relatable to all '1st world developed' countries.
This is solely a general psychological viewpoint of european descendants of all the rest of the population, for that population.
Deviations from these viewpoints and the system they bring about will increase, correlated to nation's historic imperial and current power decreasing, if you want a statistical expression across the World. The more power hungry and economically successful the nation has been up till now, the more their average psyche favours their own creed, ethnicity, appearance, culture and other traits. Power corrupts and demands exclusivity. Even if that is assumed power. Everyone with an immediately notable difference is subconsciously excluded.
These are really the negative traits of human nature, developed in our primal fight for survival.
Those proposing inclusiveness, are appealing to our civilized, conscious nature.
Those opposing are succumbing to our primal, subconscious nature. Fueled by fear of unknown, new developments and changes, loss of identity and all the factors causing it. I'm not saying it is universally wrong, it's just natural. If it wasn't for internet connectivity, things would be simpler and human minds clearer, much less corrupt. Still ignorant, just not willfully.
Unfortunately, there is no objective criteria for nature. To have an universal view is to have no view at all. Everyone sees the world with their own eyes, from their own corner. However, you can take a step aside and take in a bigger picture, if your eyes can stay somewhat clear in today's barrage of conflicting 'information'. Internet connection won't be a help, if you have a rigid eyesight.
How you react to inevitable injustices and infinite complexity of this World, other humans and your own psyche is your own choice, even if subconscious.
Some find it easier to imagine their view is from above, while apparently looking backwards trough their legs, when it comes to commenting on social media, because they've learned it there and from those who they've looked up to.
Brain is a tricky thing, but you can love fellow humans - whatever it's capability.
Haven't watched the whole thing yet, but just wanted to say whiteness in media is played both ways. It is either generic, or the special outsider that does all of the important or meaningful things. Sort of like how black people tends to either be tokens or... Magical sources of wisdom (in positive depictions...).
Which is also a negative thing.
Here is the thing: think of a typical fantasy party, like there is the leader, the thief, the wizard, the elf...
Note how in this, the last character is fully characterized as "the elf".
Now, this is not connected to negative traits. If anything, the elf is better, wiser, has magic powers et cetera.
Yet from a narrative perspective, the trait of being an elf dominates this character. Chances are, this character will be given less psychological character traits than the other characters. Or at least, there is a temptation for the author to do so.
I'd say this reflects quite well on how token blacks are often written.
Did this fantasy example on purpose, as this removes bias we have from the real world. Although a somewhat weak spot of this is that an elf is in fact quite different from a human in a lot of ways. But it then helps to also add "the desert guy" to the party or something like that, who also often happens to be dominantly characterized by that, while being a human. We already know that he wields a scimitar, right?
@@Ksorkrax Or perhaps a Shamshir! Lol, but to your point, I do understand your emphasizing that in whatever form, it is "othering". That is true enough. It does comes from a... well, ignorance of the people being represented in that instance (thus the tokenism). I am not sure how to combat that in "all" instances without ensuring that every writing team has an exactly diverse assortment of people who are all both equally qualified, motivated, and given exactly equal say in all decisions in a work though. I think the issue simply comes from the fact that they are seen as different from the offset.
As noted, an elf is literally different, and leaning in to that can be an opportunity for world building (Lord of the Rings...), but when it comes to humanity, my personal opinion is our differences are largely artificial due to simply being so small in a huge world and that large amount of time being separated simply made us cultivate cultures separately that we now hold as definitive and dear to our identities. But... If you are of a minority in a country and you are say, 5th generation... Aren't you just the general culture of that country likely? The presumption of difference is a hurdle we have yet to overcome I guess, even in narrative.
@@Kilmoran Yeah, agreed, especially with your part about differences. A lot of differences are merely perceived, practically illusions.
And also to emphasize, fully agreeing with the generation stuff.
Living in a very ethnically diverse area, this video raised eyebrows and made me wince. While your points are very valid in the broad scale, they absolutely do not apply in this area, where white supremacists may live two doors down from melanin theorists, and racism flies with extreme vitriol in all directions.
Anecdote: when I undertook teacher training, I worked at a school with only 3 white students throughout its population. Once, I came across one of these white students (who, for the record, had special educational needs) being targeted with racist and religion-based harassment by a group of non-white, older kids. When I moved in to handle it, another teacher told me not to get involved. This is indicative of my experience of "whiteness".
The sources you cited here have clearly never been in the position where the social minority, forming a numeric majority, is given free reign to target white people on the assumption that they are, according to the nature of white privilege, punching up the social hierarchy.
I would challenge the authors you cite here to go onto a factory floor and tell the construction line workers that the white guys have a higher social credit based on the melanin concentration of their skin.
(Side note: I know that this video is being brigaded and mass downvoted by people who will probably see and like this comment for all the wrong reasons. I invite you to take your like and shove it where the sun doesn't shine :) )
I don't know who the fuck you are but I like you.
@Just Some Loser You won't have any trouble explaining your thought process, then. I would genuinely love to be proven wrong on this.
My point is that clumsy, broad stroke terms like "white privilege" have limited utility and can lead to the opposite of what we aim to achieve.
You understand the fact that there are so few white students means white people have separated themselves from the Black kids right? But that's not racist right?
@@vvendetta721 In some cases it could be the result of anti-black sentiment in the white people involved but it could just as well be the result of white parents becoming alarmed over the growing violence aimed at white people in general and the systemic corruption of our institutes of learning by radicals supporting veiled anti-white policies like critical race theory and the watering down of historical values by the injection of fictitious, slanted and often damaging political viewpoints.
@@vvendetta721 Would you send a family member into an environment where they will be targeted with racial harassment, as I have described above? Integration can only occur if everyone is following the same rulesheet and the same expectations. This is muddied by deleterious concepts like "white privilege".
I absolutely agree with your point, however. The issue does result on a systemic level from a failure to integrate minority groups. An ideal world would see a large number of white parents send their kids to these schools, leaving them more diverse.
The problem is not that simple, though.
In the area, there are 4 schools. One is very racially diverse (and has a good track record of having a hard line against racism), whereas the other three are as I describe above (though different minority groups prefer different schools). There is an inclusive school available, and people choose segregated ones.
To further your point, there are also some racist white people who will send their kids out of town, or home school. These people are reprehensible and indefensible.
(On another note, I am talking about a large variety of minority groups, not just black people).
I am perfectly sure that in Nigeria, people also consider their race invisible. Makes you think.
I wonder how they react to white people there.
...I could just forget about blending in...😂
Sure, and in China, most Han Chinese people living in the north-east don’t walk around thinking “wow, so many Asians.” Of course, China and Nigeria didn’t uproot their countries’ natives, import foreign slaves by the millions, and create Spanish-colonial style racial caste systems.
@@EmileA266 True, but they did expel black people out of their apartments when their government needed someone to blame for Corona Virus. I think having china as an example is a bad example, its the one of the only countries that has reeducation camps for "non good" religions, like Spain and Portugal had for Jews in the 1500's. Where literally their minority races are the ones with the worst conditions of living, such as the autonomous regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. It's literally one of, if not the most racist country in the world.
Afro Samurinha right but I’m talking specifically about racial normalcy. That’s why I was careful to say Han Chinese in the north-east. You know what I mean? Like the concept of race feeling invisible has a lot to do with majority population reference points, as well as power structures. That’s why I didn’t use a place like modern England as an example since whites are the natives there, so “normal” has been “white” for like 7,500 years. In the UK, they have a more complex responsibility to recognize other people’s normalcy because of their history of empire.
But fine, for the sake of a clean argument about racial “normalcy” in different contexts, let’s just say South Korea instead. China’s not exactly a global hub for migration yet but they did expand imperially to the west and are ethnically colonizing those territories.
You need to read some real history.. there’s still slaves all across Africa.. the African slave trade has been going on long before the white man stepped foot in Africa. They used slaves in Egypt when building the pyramids.
Kinda curious why, in an almost 30 minutes video, you never explained that "whiteness" is just the result of being the majority in a country.
That might be true in some instances, but it is not true in all cases. What you might see is that in countries where the majority of people are not white there will be a positive discrimination. The treatment you receive will be better than the treatment normally reserved for other, non-white, foreigners. Happy to change my mind when given actual data.
Not really
Cause its bullshit :)
It's not nearly a majority as in China. The US, like all other American countries, is a melting pot of different ethnicities and backgrounds. And even in countries where white people are not the majority, you can see the same effect. Also, "white people" did not originate in the continent, so there's also that aspect that differs from your China example...
And also, saying it's just the result of being the majority in a country is being ridiculously oblivious to history...
Not saying racism in Asian countries is not a problem, and they do tackle that problem (at least I know a few countries that are working on it), but there are several reasons why the issue is discussed more in the US and Latin American countries...
Because it's obviously targeting Western, English-speaking viewers? I agree that it'd be cool to have a more global and universal understanding of the issue, but 30 minutes actually isn't that much time when it comes to spoken words (maybe 3000-4000 words?), and similar discrimination in other countries have their unique characteristics (colonialism, primarily) so I'm kinda glad he decided to focus on one singular occurance of it, especially the one that would be more relevant to his viewerbase.
If you're curious for more, try looking around for a few books on the subject maybe?
You seem to have skipped the bit where the concept of "Whiteness" is in fact a artefact of American culture and explicitly does not apply outside of it. As a brit you are indigenous to the country you live in by ancestry and as a part of Europe whiteness breaks down into a multitude of ethnicity. Referring to your own "whiteness" is like referring to you being Sudanese. You can not inherit a characteristic of something in which your are not in.
Yes exactly I like to second What Surma said there it is an American problem don't try try and push your inside out upside down American messed up ness on the rest of humanity please I come from New Zealand and the rest of the world is starting to get sick of all this nonsense coming out of Americas universities polutting the rest of the world with concepts like 'white privilege' there are more than 2 sexes, and it is a spectrum and a whole host of other retarded concepts.
Yes, applying this idea to the slavic people for example immediately shows how american it is.
How about just trying to be good fucking human beings!
@@s3.14dervision I agree that people should do their best to care for others and be generally good people. I am not sure what a comment about the USA academic concept of "whiteness" has to do with that.
I find the ideas of "whiteness" be so reductionist as to be useless in application. It is academic navel gazing at its peak.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture once said that *being on time* is whiteness🙄
Loool. XD I guess that described me since I am white.
It also mentioned alot of other things which are the basics of any cultures day to day activity.
I'm half white, I guess that's why I'm late half the time.
Me, a white person that's constantly late: 🤐
Having a strong belief in the scientific method is whiteness apparently. I'm not entirely sure of what people are saying.
So what about white people living in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria or Japan. Doesn't the concept flip? Is there something as dark privilege (by lack of better words) just based on the statistically larger group the racial minority finds itself in?
Just curious if the scope of this talk is limited to white majority countries. And then does white privilege kick in the moment a population would reach 51% whites?
My chinese friends describe a racial dislike of whites amongst many chinese based on historical humiliation and dislike of over the top individualism. Would that mean that whites face face 'White prejudice' in the two most populous countries in the world (India, China) The white privilege argument is framed as if all whites in all countries benefit from the same privilege.
That is an entirely different subject, one which this video does not tackle, because this video is not about those countries.
@@e.w1444 funny how these videos only ever target White people though isn’t it? 🤔
@@e.w1444 yes, we know. Because this mind virus only afflicts Western countries. The majority of the world doesn’t put up with this idiotic garbage.
This is a very interesting perspective but I think a few points needed to be pointed out. Tom, as a European, should not be blamed when his videos primarily feature European historical figures. In addition, and this is especially true in the European context, is that people don't talk about "majority privileges". Europeans are indigenous in Europe, so it should not be surprising when Europeans are seen as the "default" in Europe, just like Han people in China think they are the "default" group in China. For example, there are stories about white people experiencing racism in countries like China and Japan-- this is precisely because "white" is NOT seen as the "default" group.
Exactly. Tom doesn’t seem to realize that the places where white people are considered the default are the places where the population is mostly white. In most countries, the default race is just the majority race in the country.
Exactly. Tom doesn’t seem to realize that the places where white people are considered the default are the places where the population is mostly white. In most countries, the default race is just the majority race in the country.
Exactly. Tom doesn’t seem to realize that the places where white people are considered the default are the places where the population is mostly white. In most countries, the default race is just the majority race in the country.
Exactly. Tom doesn’t seem to realize that the places where white people are considered the default are the places where the population is mostly white. In most countries, the default race is just the majority race in the country.
Exactly. Tom doesn’t seem to realize that the places where white people are considered the default are the places where the population is mostly white. In most countries, the default race is just the majority race in the country.
love the POWELL'S BOOK STORE T-SHIRT!! have you been there?
im from ex Yugoslavia. Im a progressive socialist, and I want to share my POV.
My country never engaged in the colonisation of the territories of other "races". We didnt do colonialism beyond our immediate neighbours, who are very similar to us.
So i just feel really weird when some anglophone person points their finger at me and labels me "white" and wants to cram me into this construct with them and separate from e.g. a "black" person. This just feels alien to me, and like cultural imperialism by colonial cultures. It feels like western hegemony being forced into my face.
I dont use the term white for myself. i dont use it for the various peoples of europe and nearby. I only use the biological term "west eurasian", and then just label people by their place of origin. I can distinguish an italian from a swede, or russian, easily, they arent one big "white" blob in my head.
Our area is extremely racist to Roma people. This is where constructs akin to whiteness (us the light skinned civilised natives vs "them" the dark skinned savages) emerges, but it another system of oppression, its not the same as the colonial sphere "whiteness", and i think importing these western racial terms is and was a horrible bad idea.
Just Brainstorming
edit; to make it more obvious, imagine some westerner encountering the Kalash people in south asia, and pointing a finger w "white!". It feels like cultural imperialism and attempts at assimilationism. I dont think all peoples of the world need to deal w the full baggage of the sh (the ancestors of) white post colonial westerners did. Like, it has nothing to do w them, and afting like it does just because of their skin color, is honestly pretty racist and kinda culturally imperialist
Dawg, Its the balkan. Ive seen a two of em argue which is more whiter
As a Greek in my view it really is about "whiteness". In the way my ancestors viewed everyone but themselves as barbaric. However, what is now considered as western civilization is what once was Roman empire ideals which was pretty much a copy of ancient greek ideals. And those ideals were power, beauty and wealth. And to be powerful, considered beautiful and become wealthy, you had to be "white". We did have black people from Ethiopia as slaves. We did have also other white people as slaves, we didn't mind white slaves at all. Just because not all white people are powerful, it doesn't mean whiteness didn't equate to power. It did and it still does.
Also, our patriarchs had small dick complex against our neighbors in Africa. All of our statues made from athenians, korinthians etc are of typical white dudes with micro dicks. However, in ancient Crete, when there was matriarchal society there, they would make statues of black men with huge dicks to showcase how beautiful they are. Maybe because the women liked that dick, I don't know for sure, I know for sure that the Athenian patriarchs didn't allow for penises to be big in sculptures, and it could be a type of inferiority complex that ended up becoming fuel for white Supremacy. Ancient greek culture is full of slavery loving, racist small dicked white guys but what is more known in history are the few that critiqued this ideal and talked about democracy. That doesn't mean we truly had it or we truly wanted it, look at us now, we are a literal mafia country with literal nazis in the government. Because we invented the morality that nazis loved.
"There is no biological rationel to group people solely on the base of their skin color."
Well said.
*Proceeds to categorize people on account of their light skin*
@@ikejohnson5494 Maybe not on biological basis?
But I'm lost there as well... seems contradictory and
maybe influenced by the "modern" ideology that echoes at so many places. You know... people trying to contradict biological differences and other things.
@@ikejohnson5494 If I'm correct the reason he is Grouping White people together is because that's how Society as a whole views white people, as a group, so he must put them in that group to talk about how Society treats White people.
@David Lightman The OC was talking about average people who don't have things that would affect their skin tone, they were talking about Racism and Colorism (which are two different things being racist is hating someone because they are African American, Being Racist is hating someone because their skin is Black) not Sickle Cell anemia.
Youre anti-anthropology, straight up
A little known absolute fact about the word white as a catchall for Europeans: in the early 1600s colonial America ( Virginia ) the first slavery practice was bond servitude, it was limited in time , no one owned anyone, and African descended people who had put in there time actually had European bond servants as this form of slavery was ubiquitous ethnically, and this lasted for 40 years, euro descended and African/ Caribbean descended people lived well together, essentially half free, it wasn't until Bacons rebellion that everything changed. 200 people of various descent took up arms against the upper class or the owners that were running the colony show. At this time there was no such thing as white, no such word creating an US and THEM, what happened was the rich people were very threatened by this rebellion, understand that European royalty had been driving home the idea that nobels we're essentially a different breed than poor people, so it wasn't difficult for an English person to consider his African buddy more " his people_" than some rich asshole that was trying to exploit him ( sound familiar in reverse " trump) so after this rebellion legislation was created essentially institutionalizing the first real form of racial oppression and racial privilege. Up until this point Black people could vote, own property etc. After this law ( which is the first place the word white shows up in print to describe European descended people) the bond system was abandoned for outright chattel slavery, and " white" people had privileges ( making participation in local governing and property ownership a privilege) where black people no longer did. It was this legislation that changed everything. If you were to search primary docs and newspapers for the word Negro, you'd also find prior to this "white" legislation that the word Negro is always capitalized, after that law Negro always appears lowercase and that subtle indignity wouldn't be rectified until the early to mid 1900s. If you look at the Caribbean things were alot different, - I'm not saying things were peachy cuz nothing was back then, but the kind of racism that became the practice on the American mainland was not going on in the Caribbean. In the Caribbean Irish and African slaves often married, in fact it was so common the slave owners often encouraged it after the chattel system came into practice, rather than buy more slaves they'd just marry their Irish and African slaves and keep any children that came from the union. This practice was so common laws had to be made against it to stop the practice. Moreover, it wasn't long until plantations were owned by African descended people, who themselves held slaves- often educating and freeing them after a period of service. It's important for people to understand that racism is not normal, the chattel system was resisted since day one, and so too the type of racial oppression encouraged by the rich classes running the show. It was encouraged to divide us, to make the lives of people like Trump more secure . This word " white" is itself a part of the creation of racial oppression. Nevermind the fact that the term " race" is a complete biological fiction, there are no "races" and the more you know about inherited genetics the easier this is to understand. I personally reject this word, I don't identify as " white" just as I don't consider European descended people as " my people" - either all people are my people, or none are my in people.
Sheesh guy I wish I could read all that
Thanks for taking the time to share with us great pieces about history !(No s/)
I did not know any of that, thanks foe sharing!
Wow you really just did educate me. Thank you very much 🙏
th-cam.com/video/VcWc7WqcS5M/w-d-xo.html
Ok, but how about we just talk about privileged people, of which a factor is skin tone? I feel like calling someone 'Black' or 'White' is really part of the problem
agree!
YES!!!!!!!!
The acknowledgement of race is not in and of itself racist. To acknowledge whiteness is not racist.
No. It's not. This is a naive take, like the "i don't see color"-thing - it's well intentioned but misses the point. Just because you stop calling people that, the issues that arise from decades to centuries of structural differences won't just be undone. It would also erase these peoples, sometimes clear and very important history.
Moreover, the concept of "whiteness" isn't just restricted to skin tone. It's a construct, the whole race thing. People most today would consider peak "white" (Slavic people, russians, irish) weren't considered white in the past. It's a construct that needs to be dismantled and broken down instead of just "not calling people black"
@@alucard303
Yeah but its not your whole Identity, it factors into who you are yes, but its not solely that. Treating people differently because of skin tone is hilariously stupid and superficial. We should therefore strive to consider this factor, but not judge people solely on it ot treat them different, including treatment by a system.
All I was saying was, maybe dont emphasize ''this is white'' or ''that is black'' just consider the skin tone as a factor. Which basically is removing the social construct around it.
There are very interesting ideas in this video. So many questions raised!
Hey Peers,
i have difficulties wrapping my mind around one issue that tackles me quiet some time by now.
As I think some of Tom Nicholas fellow viewers are able to help me out&give me some input I post it here.
I view "white privilege" not as a distinct privilege of "white" people that is valid all over the world, but rather as a privilege inherent to the culture they created in their society.
Outside of these "white" societys in europe and america, white privilege in the form Nicholas describes it is no longer attached to a "white" person.
E.g in chinese society a white person is unlikely to see another white person in a position of political power and will highly likely be tackled more often to speak on the behalf of all "white" people as this is the fate of most minority groups - the majority tends to generalize their members.
In chinese society there is no "white privilege" but "chinese privilege" as the criteria for "white privilege" now matches the reality of the chinese majority population.
This is a mechanism we can observe in most societys around the globe, therefore i tend to think of it as a normal way people organise their societys.
The goal is to comfort the majority of the people by giving them social privilege attached to their ethnicity.
Now my issue:
Why does the existence of "white privilege" is such a big talking point as of recently. As from where i can see it is still doing what its designed for - giving out social privilege to the majority of the population. Thats a system that is applied to societys all around the globe.
If one wants to deconstruct this method of organising society, i can understand and - to a certain extend - appreciate this.
What i do not understand is why this issue is explicitly tackled only in the USA, Europe and only a few other country around the globe.
Its a system the whopping majority of people on earth lives under but yet only a few societys are getting hit by the resistance against it.
I hope for some help by my fellow TH-cam philosophers :-)
Yours truly
Palmedes
P.S: Sorry for my englando i am not a native speaker.
The problem with your statement is that it fails to recognize the massive influence that white countries have had and continue to have on the rest of the world. To put it simply, if you're Chinese in China you have privilege in China, if you're white you have privilege about anywhere.
Also the point that this type of privilege aims to benefit the majority of the population is also flawed, a community should aim to benefit every single member of the population, including minorities.
@@knight-of-rain You are right to a certain extend, but i feel like you missed my problem a bit.
The privileges as they are described in the video are not attached to a white person outside a white society. You are right, around the globe being white is mostly associated with being wealthy and influencal.
But that is not white privilege as it is discussed. If we stick to the china example - white people in china do not experience the society they live in as being created by whites, guided by "white" ideals, or having people of their ethnicity in position of political power etc. So white privilege, in the way Nicholas describes it, certainly is not attached to white people living abroad.
To stay in my example - why isnt chinese privilege in china in the same way tackled like white privilege in white countries?
@@palmedes778 Well, partially it is, there's been a lot of backlash against the Hong Kong laws and the muslim concentration camps in the Xinjiang province, but ultimately China, while growing in influence, never had the same impact on the world that Europe and America had and have, so much that the privilege white people experience is felt outside of white countries. If a white person looked for a job in China they would probably be able to get it way more easily than a black person.
It's also worth noting that the impact that colonialism has had on african and latin countries set those countries way back compared to them, the whole world we live in was shaped by white people, so it makes sense to me that white privilege and supremacy around the world are a way larger problem than chinese privilege in China.
@@palmedes778 You raise really good point. I think the reason is that within the "majority group", there is what one could call the "establishment group" - the bankers, the oligarchs, the deep state. In order to hide themselves from their abuse, they create diversions with different iterations. So they hype up different types of abusive behaviour so their own abusive behaviour stays behind the veil. So they promote ideas of division - gender, race, sexual orientation. There can be other diversions too such as age, IQ etc. But these 3 are sufficient to keep the people dumbed down enough to keep the financial abuse going for themselves.
@@safardebon9720 To add to the other person's point regarding your example with China: white people are more likely to be worshipped in China than be viewed as lesser or impure, while for black people it is the other way around. I am saying this from experience as a Chinese person. Some Chinese people who do not personally discriminate against people of other races would still say that being white has its advantages and nothing can be done about it, as if this is a necessary fact instead of a result of social conditioning and political order. It would seem that even China has learned racism from a white supremacist perspective, which shows how deeply entrenched the problem is.
The part at the beginning about whiteness being seen as default for humanity, and all the others as modifiers. My English teacher once said that the world would be a much better if we gave up culture altogether. I believe he was referring to cultural differences between POC that have caused strife along religious and ethnic lines. However. Culture is everything. Its all around us, to say that culture should be gotten rid of altogether is under the assumption that American culture is the default and all the others simply modifiers. Not to mention that a good part of American culture also consists on imposing our concepts of economics/society on others, so yeah, it causes conflict too, even if it's not necessarily religious. Don't get me wrong, he was a great teacher and for the most part I enjoyed his company but that one statement always felt wrong and I didn't have the words to articulate why before.
I find it interesting that the instructor would posit that culture be erased, when that is inherently what colonization does. By appropriation, marginalization, & erasure.
Culture is built on groups of people coming together in community & creating or upholding common values.
@Angelina Ramponi you say not by force, but I disagree. Lots of force, violence, economic or political manipulation, or through more deceitful means. A dominant culture taking over is never what comes from the genuine blending of people.
Colonization is the imposition of western civilization upon other cultures. And it is interesting how many who are all about the "greatness of western civilization" tend to co-opt, appropriate, & copy other cultures while trying to make it more western at the same time.
@Angelina Ramponi Girl, no. Just no. You seem to be close minded and very clearly don't understand the psychological impacts of colonization. People are taught to hate themselves, their skin, their beliefs, their clothes, their gods, their nature, through subtle and non subtle cultural messages. When British Christians interpreted the Bible to Yoruba they literally substituted Yoruba deities for the names of demonic entities they were entirely divorced from. Literally demonizing their understanding of the world, even though African spirituality already worshipped a central all powerful God not unlike the Christian one, while simultaneously honoring lesser deities. Native boarding schools were indigenous North American folks were stripped of their identity, their cultures, and taught their kids that they'd better strip themselves of their own in order to survive. It's a combination of generational trauma, survival, and brainwashing. Homophobia and Transphobia are largely western and Judeo-Christian ideas that were completely foreign to many groups prior to colonization. You cannot tell me or anyone that ostracization of people based on a natural occurrence and pattern of life is the default. White culture is not a default, but simply one of the many ways humans can form societies. It is by no means better or worse than any other, and to insinuate that it's supreme to all other cultures without knowing anything about them is literally white supremacy. I know many western countries don't bother educating about the wonders of other places prior to colonization, but people are cunning, and adaptive, and smart wherever they are in the world. There are so many glorious things you'll find that supposedly primitive societies created, you just need to look beyond the surface of whiteness as the default. The British looked at people in the global South who wore fewer clothes and had foreign architecture and decided they had nothing of intellectual value, and to this day many of us make that same judgement without truly understanding other ways of life. This is not a personal attack on you, I just would like to see you and people like yourself grow and reevaluate the way that they interact with foreignness.
@JEM do you realize that that is how harmful marginalization & unconscious bias is perpetuated? By not being mindful of how other peoples lived experiences may differ from your own, because you are part of the dominant culture is what keeps marginalized groups feeling & actually unseen & undervalued.
@JEM I'm glad that you don't see anyone as lesser.
Pointing out that there is racism in the country doesn't make me racist, that not the definition of the word. And to be clear, I don't believe you are either.
I do believe that anyone who is unwilling to look at racial issues (not specifying you) has the potential to be harmful unintentionally. That was my point.
Institutional racism: Constitution of Liberia Article 27 b. In order to preserve, foster and maintain the positive Liberian culture, values and character, only persons who are Negroes or of Negro descent shall qualify by birth or by naturalization to be citizens of Liberia.
I never think about my race even tho I’m black. Definitely lucky to live in a place where people are chill 🇺🇸
I'm between both of y'all -- race doesn't affect my friendships (I have friends of different races) but I've certainly experienced racism (even false arrest). I think a LOT depends where people live. Some places are chill, some are very racist.
What does you stating your genetics have to do with your point? Are people supposed to change how they view your point based on your skin color?
"I never think about my race. Definitely lucky to live in a place where people are chill."
See, the point doesn't change, only the identitarian baggage you injected into it.
@Adrian Williams Maybe it’s you?
I didn't when I was a child till I was confronted with it and have been ever since. When people say shit to me like "you should be grateful that my ancestors came to this country, we saved your people". When they follow me around a store and not my white partner, when they single me out in a party to vent their crap on me about my people. Stuff of that nature, it's kind of difficult to ignore. I'm genuinely glad there are people who don't go through any of that though, it can take a long time to undo if you end up taking all of that mess and internalise it like I did. For a long time I hated my people, my culture and myself of course. I'm in a much better place now but I consider myself lucky to have even the modicum of support I did have, it means a lot.
you literally just referenced your race
As someone who grew up in e region where there a no other races I struggle to understand how my race makes me more privileged... Here the poor and miserable are white, and the rich are white... so what role does exactly race play?
Yeah, it might be a problem in some societies, as in America, but I would argue that this is not because of whiteness. The trend is the same as in all the countries, there are people that a doing great and ones that are doing much worse, and the privileged ones will generally seek to keep their power.
And considering all I've said above, videos like this, where someone lectures me how I am the bad guy just because of my skin color (especially when I've never evens seen other races in person, and when I am part of the unprivileged group) makes me hate this narrative, and instead of staying neutral as I was, I become more protective of my identity and thus more aggressive towards whom I am supposed to show compassion.
I have not watched the video nor do I intend to however I felt like I needed to speak to you on this, so by what information you have provided I will firstly tell you that you are right to feel angry at first, though you should know that the shoe does not fit, as in: the white privilege of which is spoken does only refer to societies in which there isn't racial homogeneity, the US being one of the most used examples is often referred to as a melting pot of cultures, being a colonized nation where the majority of the population is white, the methods used to justify colonialism like eugenics were then adopted into wider society through the centuries (this is a pretty water down explanation), so as to say, white privilege, supremacy, and other term used today see the most use in the USA because of this, again judging by your profile picture I hope assuming that you aren't a citizen of any former colonial power is correct, so just know that when people express anger towards these structures they are not referring to you as a person at all, I'm sure you're a great fella and you are right that this trend is seen across many cultures around the world however it isn't expressed the same in all of them (see colorism, often referred to as the preference of lighter skin inside a 'race' due the high class staying inside and maintaining their fair skin while the lower/working class had to work outside in the sun therefore becoming darker, which was exacerbated by colonialism) I may have gotten lost on my own words by now so if you need any other half-baked explanations let me know hahaha
No one is calling you a bad guy because of your race. Now, I understand how the vocabulary that is used is uncomfortable to hear (especially terms like white privilege and fragility) but they are not meant to offend. They are simply used to identify societal behaviors that can be observed in countries deeply affected by colonialism and imperialism.
And yes, societal issues in America are caused by race, and as an extension whiteness. Remember that "whiteness" does not necessarily refer to ALL white people. It refers to the Americans with European ancestry that have been slowly assimilated into a broader "culture" of whiteness.
Most importantly, the discussion of whiteness does not seek to blame PEOPLE, it seeks to discuss the social and political systems that provide a white majority privileges that POC do not have. Whiteness negatively impacts ALL people, not just POC. The erasure of culture and assimilation into whiteness is destructive to white Americans.
@@jonahbalagtas6709 I'd agree with you if all the video about "whiteness" said so. This one is moderate, and I think the creator is aware of different aspects. But there are a bunch of others that full on blame any white people, not even caring of their background. And I'll also say that the discussions about race seem to in wrong direction, mainly because nobody cares to make the difference you've mentioned. There are lots of videos that show how POC a behaving agresively towards white ones just beca8of this retoric.
I myself believe that the problem is not race, even in America. There are another underlying reasons that cause racism and other kinds of discrimination (based on sex, religion, ethnicity (in my country there are people that hate Romanians, being themselves of Romanian heritage)). And I also think that focusing just on one aspect will only shift the reasons of discrimination, it won't solve it.
@@gamerdinbasarabia2093 One should not blame people for these errors, instead look at the systems that have been propped up that continue to push people against one another in the first place. Racial discussion is not our strong suit as a society, so of course people of all sides of the political spectrum will bump heads with one another. The only way we can solve this issue, at least in the United States, is to reform our education system to allow students to practice discussing race in a safe, factual way.
Also, racism IS part of a variety of systems that subjugate and oppress the working class and downtrodden. That fact is not lost on people that discuss race and whiteness. It all comes down to class warfare and the desire for the rich to become even more wealthy. They will use whatever means to ensure that. Racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, xenophobia, etc. The thing that sets race apart is that our (USA) relationship with it is so deep and complicated. Race is still something that affects our daily lives as Americans.
@@jonahbalagtas6709 I agree that we should reform the education system. And the first lesson that kids get at school should be: "We are all brethren, made in image of God, to bring his name, and our names to glory. As we treat ourselves with dignity and respect, such shall we treat each other, since we are a family."
And not even mention that they are somehow different, and someone has some intrinsic qualities because of skin tone. Kids don't have the concept of race, and they'll eventually learn it. but it'll be better if thay learn that the family of their buddy is in a dare situation because of how society is unfair. And than they might want to change the things, because of compassion.
I know this might sound unreasonable, but the alternative is shaming and threatening the kids differently because of their race? Isn't that racism? And haven't you heard of jealousy? I myself was very jealous as a kid, and I still hold a grudge on people that, as I believe, treated me unfairly.
And I'm saying that growing in a society were race isn't even talked about, so I don't care what shade is your skin. But we've still got oppression, we still have hate.
1:11 TH-cams *great* auto captions think "heinous" is "penis"... Can YT please let us have real captions?
Judge people by the content of there character not the color of there skin...
The problem with this is that people don't have labels affixed to them that let you know what that content is made up of so you are still forced to rely upon external differences or, and this is important: EXPERIENCE. We live and we learn or at least, we should. A cursory examination of my own experience has taught me that, generally, people suck.
Hey Tom, what affect does the existence of the hoax papers by James Lindsey, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose have on the validity of the sources you cite, especially considering that they were published in the same realm of academia and guided by the same notions that guide your ideas?
Why would it? The hoax papers were basically a publicity stunt that didn't really expose flaws in the academic realms they were published in as much as exposed the hoaxer's lack of desire to really search for those flaws. They didn't actually do anything to compare it to other fields, most of the hoax papers were rejected, they intentionally selectively quoted from some of the feedback they recieved from some of the rejected papers in order to further their point rather than represent the reality of the situation, and all around seem to have done it as more of a gotcha affair for media coverage than to act as any real catalyst for change, or to challenge perceived issues in the fields
It has no effect on his credibility, or the validity of the sources he cited, to have hoax papers in the same branch of academia, because he did not cite those sources.
@@Aliencommander1245 the 3 writers of the hoax papers have spoken extensively of the specifics of the flaws in these fields, no one listens. Also, most of the hoax papers were not rejected; one won an award, 4 were published, 3 were in the last stages of peer review, then they got exposed. The flaws are easy to spot for real scientists who follow the scientific method, but the people in these fields don't care because now they have a vast canon to which they can point whenever someone challenges their ideas, which their "science" supports. We could even have a discussion if you can even do real science in the fields of social science, but I guess I'm typical hard scientist in that regard.
@@duncanmullis8570 He did not cite those sources, correct. I was more wondering about the validity of anything within that entire field, a flaw that the hoax papers exposed. The research in those fields is riddled with confirmation bias accepted as science.
@Occam's Shave Cream James Lindsey, et al. wrote the papers. They made up data and made ridiculous assumptions based off that data, but since the conclusions supported the ideology of the publishers of the journals to which the papers were submitted, they never questioned the methodology. These fields aren't using the scientific method. They are formulating conclusions then doing research in order to prove themselves right. This is not how science is done. You form a hypothesis and set up an experiment to prove it wrong. If you put forth your best effort to prove your hypothesis wrong a number of times and you can't do it, and your colleagues can't do it, and your research has been reviewed to be sound, then you have a good theory. You want it to be right in all instances, not just one. I can set up an experiment to support any conclusion for just one instance. If I start with the conclusion I want, then confirmation bias has already ruined the experiment. That's what these political activist fields are doing, which was exposed by the hoax papers.
"At the level of representation, [...] whites are not of a certain race, they are just the human race."
That's quite a Eurocentric view...
The fact that this video has way less views than your others says a lot.
4:55 - according to Wikipedia: "Africans played a direct role in the slave trade, kidnapping adults and stealing children for the purpose of selling them, through intermediaries, to Europeans or their agents. Those sold into slavery were usually from a different ethnic group than those who captured them, whether enemies or just neighbors."
Back then slavery was a cheap source of low skilled labor.
All human groups did it, some more some less, it's not a "white" or a "Christian" trait.
Also if you look at the populations from that age, most people would not qualify as slave owners. I'm guessing it was limited to a few rich land owners.
What's worse, instead looking back in time to see what the ancestors did or did not do wrong, is that slavery still exists, it never went away completely.
Instructions unclear: I'm Portuguese and I don't know if I'm what they consider white in the Anglo world. I'll wtach the video on the fence.
anglo world, a white brazilian: i have no idea whats a white person
i mean, definetively HERE in brazil i experience whiteness, but as soon as i land outside of latin america, im latino, tho ppl are not always certain if im latino, arab, east european or whatever
Let me tell you both now, if you moved to Dublin where I live, you would not be considered white, you would be classed as less than, or greedy job stealers. You would be discriminated against and denied of opportunities given to “real” white people.
It is the harsh truth. Also, speaking with an accent, being unable to fully speak or understand English including strong Irish accents and slang, you would also be deemed “stupit” even though you may be multilingual, degree educated, successful etc. I don’t want to scare people but I have to clear it up, as I see this every single day. 🥺
@Anglo Scott Race and ethnicity might have been big in the Stone age, but nothing beats Culture.
@@user-ym2ne1zg1b At least we cling to something palpable, observable and proved, built over centuries of Western philosophy, not just ethnic self aggrandizing fantasies from the XIX century.
@@wurlycurlygirly your delusional
"This platform has been undoubtedly been easier because of my whiteness." That is what you are seeking to prove, not assert.
@@ENXJ He's a pathetic self hater. This CRT shit is rascist and keeps adding to the division. He's not even American FFS he's British.
He is just plain lying
0:13 In Bollywood Movies Indian people are the norm, in Korean movies Korean people are the norm… but when white people are the norm in Western European countries it’s suddenly a huge problem and extremely racist.
He was brainwashed by far left critical race ideologies
@@Josh23761 have you tried not making yourself a victim and actually listening to what people like him say?
has your life gotten harder because you're white? no? then why are you crying about it so much?
Great video, the only point I thought genuinely seemed odd was that 78% of models in 2016 were white. Doesn't that represent the demographics of the US pretty well (being 76% white).
The White, non-Hispanic or Latino population make up 61% of the us demographics
@@relzizo Hispanics are white, though. Do not see why are you pointing this out?
@@relzizo many of Latinos are white (by identity and phenotype), around half of them actually
@@nikolavideomaker Hispanic doesn't denote any particular makeup of physical features or skin color. It's a motley of different ethnic groups in the Americas (European colonists, indigenous groups, and African slaves) that lived under Spanish colonialism and consequently are culturally linked by the Spanish language and elements of Spanish culture.
@@nikolavideomaker not exactly a lot of us (i wouldn't be surprised if most of us) are mixed between spanish, african, and native. So we don't exactly fit under black or white. And for a lot of us we care less about skin color more about where we are from and our heritage. So a mexican would probably identify himself as mexican wether he has mostly white or mostly dark or mostly native features and skin color
Hey! where did you get that Powell's City of Books shirt? I live just across the river and my little sisters ashes are in a Hello Kitty figure above the Young Adult section.
the reference linkto Sara Ahmed no longer works. could you update that info in the description? :)
It's amazing how in Asia, its mainly Asians on TV, the minority population don't call it racist.
It's amazing how in South America, It's mainly South Americans on TV, the minority populations don't call it racist.
It's amazing how In Africa, its mainly Africans on the TV, the minority populations don't complain.
It's amazing, how In Western media, it is mainly Westerners with A LOT of minority parts equally representative of the races according to the demographics.
Yet the same liberal white people telling other white people that they're too white.
What an absolute cry for moral superiority.
Imagine telling a herd of cattle that they're too cowish.
To be fair Asians didn't drag slaves from another continent and bring them to Asia. South Americans are all mixed. Majority of Africa is just either Arabs or blacks, country where they are other races like South Africa you will see white representation all the time along with Asians and other groups.
@@DirtyEdon
Not only that, but in most of these cultures looking white gets you privileges as well. There are skin bleaching problems in all of these societies. With straighter hair and noses you are deemed attractive. I don't believe that it is modern day white people's faults. It is the culture's faults for continuing these practices. BUT white people must be able to acknowledge the fact that they can be individualistic if they want to. POC cannot. Only now is being "white" being acknowledged. When you are black, Asian, or any other race you are tagged with stereotypes and assumptions of who you are as an individual; assumptions that white people from the past have placed on you and have been passed on for years. People do not automatically assume that you are racist when you are white, but many, both liberal and conservative, make a assumptions of who a POC is based on their skin color; their politics, their cultural background, their legal status, their education level etc. White liberals expect POC to educate them even though they claim to understand that many of us are just like them - limited in our knowledge of our cultures. And conservatives expect us to move on from history and "not see color" as if we are privileged enough to do so.
Not every white person is trying to be self righteous by acknowledging their racial biases and not every white person who wants to go about their day without hearing about race is a racist. But there are degrees to ignorance.
@@MENACE-km6bd > There are skin bleaching problems in all of these societies. With straighter hair and noses you are deemed attractive.
What skin bleaching in East Asia, for example, where most tend to have pale skin, and most also tend to have straight hair? And if they find white people attractive, why is that a problem?
@@DirtyEdon Yeah they did. Ever hear of Genghis Kahn? Fact: the Mongols held the largest bloodiest empire in history that even the modern US or the former British empire can't even top. Guess what Mongols were? Asian! GASP! You know what else? The early Muslim caliphates also practiced slavery AS WELL AS the Egyptians. What a shock; race isn't a determinate of imperialism.
@@OBrasilo those is a directly result of colonisation. The first African who encountered white people literally thought they were dead people who came back to life, because when you die your skin becomes pale so we saw them as ghost but after 400 years of brain washing a lot of people in black countries want to be "lighter".
Minor critique regarding the discussion of the framing of films by black creators as "black films" instead of simply "films" that happens around 20:50 or so. I think choosing to show Peele with that dialogue is pretty regrettable, considering his films are rather explicitly about the black experience as it exists racism and a white-centered society. It's a "black film" because it is about blackness, not because it is by a black creator or features black talent, and I think (deliberately or not) slighting that label in that specific usage (Peele's work) is regrettable.
The point I was trying to make (and apologies if this didn't come across clearly) was that films which do engage with Blackness or the Black experience are marketed in a way that positions them as "other" to the norm and, by extension, as _only_ relevant to Black audiences. Of course, there might be an oppositional way of doing so which celebrates such films for breaking from the dominant tendency to centralise White characters and experiences. Peele's work is interesting, in fact, in the way that it has managed to be seen as more "mainstream" than, for example, Lee's.
@@Tom_Nicholas I think the contrast between the reception of Lee's and Peele's work is actually very relevant here. Peele's specifically hasn't been (to my mind) othered in the way you mention, largely due to the adoption of a classic horror framework. This lets it be marketed naively while still ultimately being "black film" in the sense of walking the audience through elements of the black experience in a white-centered society, whereas Lee's films are often more direct not just in underlying message but also in the surface-level premise.
It does not seem, at least to me, that Peele's films have been marketed in the way you describe, but I've certainly not tried to do any rigorous drilling into the base truth of this beyond my own personal experience.
in the case of america, it has been instilled into blacks that they are indeed "non-default" which is seen in them constantly referring to themselves and other blacks as "n***a" (i didn't say the hard-R N-word, don't kill me), and in phrases like "get your black ass over here". white people don't have to otherize themselves because they are never "the other" in the eyes of "society as a whole".
The only problem with that is that a film isn't necessarily always perceived as a black film based on subject matter, but rather who is considered the creator of it. Django and The Color Purple aren't necessarily seen as black films because the directors are not black; however if a black director had made either of them they would most definitely be considered black films.
This is why so many new black filmmakers won't even touch a film with a black protagonist or black subject matter because they don't want the work as being categorized and thus narrow the market.
@@asuka_the_void_witch it's so odd seeing white peopleS as actual groups that have properties of its own. It's new.
thank you. I have studied global education at uni and this was covered in multiple ways...you did it as well as many of my professors.
I would guess (although I don't know this for certain) that people who live in Nigeria take being black for granted and people who live in China take being east Asian for granted while a white person visiting those countries might attract quite a bit of attention because of his bizarre, exotic appearance.
Yes, that's true. As a person who lives in country with asian majority and with nationality of title nation I can confirm. We have 20% slavic population here, but seeing a western European or American here is quite exotic and rare. Tho we have our own problems and issues here that are completely different from ones covered in this video
That is, in and of itself, correct - speaking from my southeast asian experience. This does, by the way, not mean that there is no white privilege in these countries either though. It depends on the countries history, mainly, but both colonialism, academia and dominant western pop culture helped a lot to skew it that way. It's much less, obviously, sometimes nonexistent.
Then again - this topic is only that mainly talked about in the west, with white majorities.
Exactly. This is why this issue is so complex. What does it mean to be "default"? What does it mean to be "indigenous"? Are the Serbs "indigenous" in Kosovo? Are the Germans "indigenous" in Gdansk and Kaliningrad? Koreans in Korea? Zulus in South Africa? Should the Manchus (my ethnic group) be given privileges for being a minority group, or should the "indigenous" Han majority be given privileges because we ruled as their overlords for centuries? A deeper question is, since we the Manchus adopted Han cultures after conquering China, do we still exist as an ethnic group? Or are we Han now?
@@SomeoneFromBeijing Maybe humans are indigenous to planet earth. It will be interesting what will happen when more space aliens begin visiting us.
@@JacobStein1960 I like this idea. I always thought that nationalism and ethnic/racial discriminations are stupid.
Hello from Balkan Greece, where we are considered "White-Other"
Meh, I think Greeks may easily pass as Whites, mainly because every racist wants a piece of the "We are the cradle of civilisation"-cake. Ironically, the Slavs in between didn't/don't have it that easy.
@@Iron_Dennis
Greeks "may easily pass as Whites"? May pass...?
Ridiculous. Nobody ever questioned that Greeks are white.
@@gulanhem9495 It was a hyperbole. For me, it's obvious. But don't forget that Americans didn't recognize Irish and Italians as white and, when you'd have a look at e.q. Quora, many still struggle with Italians being white.
Some Greeks and Italians have a darker tone and darker hair. Many racists wouldn't consider it white.
@@dylanthesea2976 it will take Hitler kind of racist lol.
”Why are you attacking me fellow leftist! I’m an ally!!”
“Hehe”
Seems like you liked Portland, got the Powell's shirt and a bit of protest footage from in front of City Hall, also just good work at bringing up an important topic, and starting some folk's education on said topic
I mean, a good example of how race is a social construct is to look to the past.
Go back a century or 2, and "White" no longer just means people with pale skin. Irish? They're not white. Slavs? They're not white. Italians? Clearly not white. Jews? They're not white (For a good number of people, this one hasn't changed).
It was never based on skin color, not really, that was just the way to visual it, it was just a way of classifying yourself (In this case, from the American Perspective, Germanic = White, everyone else isn't.) as separate and above everyone else.
However, this is not to confuse it as strictly a European phenomenon, of course. While the specific European definitions would overtake the world as the European Empires did, other continents did pretty much the same thing. The long standing hatred between the Japanese and Chinese, for example, or the ethnic conflicts still raging in Africa between different tribal ancestries all of which we in the west would call "Black".
As someone who falls into the "not white until the early-to-mid 20th century" category, I've noticed something interesting:
Racial groupings are an attempt at cultural erasure. "Whites" started out as "the good Europeans" (British, French, Germans and Nordic nations) and "Brown" was "the bad Europeans" (Spanish, Italians, Greeks, Jews, Romany, etc). As the imperialist powers spread, more people fell into the "Brown" and "Black" categories and more categories got added ("Yellow" and "Red").
None of these groupings are a homogenous peoples, they're all very diverse - but it's an interesting social narrative to get people who historically fought each other regularly to suddenly stop doing that and fight "the lesser people" instead. "Whiteness" has always been about staking claim to "the good parts" of European history - which is why now that democracy is popular among "White" majority nations (a proposition which was questionable even a century and a half ago), Greeks and ancient Greek philosophers are suddenly part of "White" history even though Greek people didn't count as "White" until very recently and the ancient Greeks would not have ever considered themselves part of that grouping and didn't share anything like the modern viewpoint on race.
And the cultural erasure part is still pretty strong - once you're "White", nobody expects you to have a cultural identity and other "White" people are surprised by the idea that you might be part of your own culture that is separate from theirs. It's almost viewed as a personal quirk. But the "non-Whites" are somehow vastly different, potential enemies.
It's reductive and lazy thinking essentially... used solely to make the culturally dominant group feel comfortable and not have to learn about other people.
@@Zahaqiel it's about money
data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=CL-AR-PL-SK&start=2017
in the 1990s Argentina & Chile were wealthier than Poland & Slovak Republic, therefore Argentina & Chile were the West & the Whites. Now Poland & Slovak Republic are wealthier, therefore they are the West & the Whites, while Argentines & Chileans are mixed-race Latinos
It's a revisionist myth that Irish, Italians, Slavs, etc weren't considered White in the United States until recently. There are no recorded examples in US or pre-colonial history of these groups having miscegenation laws evoked against them or being barred from Whites only businesses, unions, towns, etc.
@@Ruairitrick maybe the miscegenation laws weren't used against Slavs, but to this day, every now & again, I meet Western fascists on TH-cam telling me that I'm not White; BTW, my skin is pale, my eyes are gray, my nose is narrow & straight
@@Ruairitrick That's a very _convenient_ way of using miscegenation laws as an arguing point though because the way those were legislated doesn't map to what's being discussed. Typically they specified country of origin or nationality of descent - like Oklahoma's law banning marriage "between a person of African descent" and "any person not of African descent". Or Louisiana which specified Native Americans and African Americans. Or Maryland which specified "blacks" and Filipinos. As such they were never comprehensive in any state where they existed and they generally didn't directly path to notions of "brownness" or "whiteness".
Similarly you may want to dig deeper on the other issues you've brought up, Irish _were_ explicitly excluded from employment possibilities on the basis of their race (longislandwins.com/columns/immigrants-civil-war/high-school-student-proves-professor-wrong-when-he-denied-no-irish-need-apply-signs-existed/ ) for example. You're welcome also to look into the fact that the governor of Louisiana himself said that Italians were "just a little worse than the N----, being if anything filthier in their habits, lawless, and treacherous" following a lynching of untried and unconvicted Italians (web.archive.org/web/20160308140459/edition.cnn.com/2012/07/10/opinion/falco-italian-immigrants/ ) or the fact that the KKK targeted Italians and other southern Europeans as non-white. And so on, and so on.
Your take is very... convenient. It dances just technically close enough to the reality of history to sound convincing, while avoiding looking directly at the real history of what happened. It's certainly a good way to make the history of whiteness seem nicer than it actually was. In fact, it's so convenient to that end goal that it almost seems like an intentionally crafted talking point. I'd be curious to know where you got that argument from...
...and, because I suspect this may be related, how you classify your own ethnicity.
If you grew up and went to school in a mixed race environment, you'd have to be pretty insular to not see you own ethnicity. Just saying.
He's talking about whiteness on a global scale. Of course there will be times where there's only one white person in a room lol, that doesn't debunk anything once you put it in perspective.
@@domachondri his regressive ideology has been "debunked" many times in its forms.
My teacher told me to be less white and more black so I dropped out of school and started stabbing people.
@@thehusketeers4319 based.
@@domachondri He is just wrong. He has bias
This is something I've noticed as a white guy in the US; I can always find pickled herring. My dad is in the fourth generation of a Swedish family in the US, and he and his brothers grew up on it as a tradition in North Dakota, and myself and some of my cousins inherited it from our fathers.
Other than the people in my family, I've almost never met another person who has even seen pickled herring outside of the tub it comes in. Still, I can always find pickled herring at the supermarket.
The supermarket may have an Asian section, but I have to go to an Asian market for anything other than noodles, rice, some instant stuff, and a few sauces in addition to Soy.
The supermarket may have an Hispanic section, but I have to go to a regional supermercado to get anything other than some tortillas, taco shells, seasoning packs, or salsa.
I live in southern California, and I can undoubtedly find a family who speaks Spanish or an Asian language in the home within a mile of my house right now. The nearest Swedish speaker to me is probably a guy I know who is so much the exception that proves the rule that his name is Swede, and he lives one town over.
Still, the, probably, hundreds of Hispanics between he and I right now would have to go to that regional Supermercado chain that exists solely because it's so difficult for the millions of Hispanic people in the local community to find traditional food in regular supermarkets, and the, probably, dozens of Asian immigrants who live between Swede and I have to hope they can find what they're looking for in a tiny Asian market on Main Street that is meant to represent an entire continent of diverse cultures.
Me, though, the only person I know who willingly eats pickled herring in the entire county, I just need to head to the neighborhood supermarket and look on the refrigerated shelves, most likely just to the left of the butcher. You can check for yourself, it's probably the same in your supermarket; it's been that way everywhere I've been in the US.
@Mitch Moore um.... wait, what? California used to literally BE Mexico, none of that came from another continent, nonesense. They should sell Mexican food at the supermarket. Cuz, the indigenous people are literally from Mexico. No one is trying to take away the white food.
@Mitch Moore lol buddy. You said the exact opposite of what I was arguing and acted like you proved a point 😂 I'm saying that the food of a person's outside country should be supplied, but so should food for the native population. Cuz, they have been there. For CENTURIES. We bought California, when, exactly? That's my point.
@Mitch Moore lol I'll complain all I want, tyvm. In all seriousness, tho, as a business model, it makes sense to provide food for the locals of an area. And if the culture of the area is Hispanic, why does providing Hispanic food sound so dumb to you? No one said they HAVE to, just that they should. Both from a business perspective and from a "hey, this is these guys' land so let's give them options to make food that makes them happy" perspective. But go off, I guess.
@Mitch Moore maybe make the supermarket bigger? No one is trying to take your effing space, geez. And you have no idea what my community looks like lol but we're not talking about MY neighborhood anyway.
@Mitch Moore what are you even talking about? Going to the grocery store is where you look when you want to get food. They're a business. Selling what consumers want just makes sense. You're a strange guy, I tell you that lol
Soooo... when are we introducing concept wealthy fragility ? Cuz wealthy privilege is a substantial one....
and market fundamentalism, technocracy, the myth of meritocracy, IQ in general, the sense most americans have that they're "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," fukuyama's "end of history"... lotta reasons the rich keep pretending they're the only ones deserving a voice
The problems definitely have some overlap.
it's about the only thing Karl Marx was truly right about
those who call themselves marxists today, are rich kunts
The oposite of prejudice is the valuing of differences combined with healthy pride in one's own heritage. I identify as many things, from my cultural and religious heritage, to my genetic predispsitions (ADHD), to the skills and talents I've chosen to develop amd pursue. But most of all, I view myself as a unique member of the human race. I love that we as a species have explored such diversity in so many areas. We should celebrate our differences, that and our socialtendencies are what has made humans powerful.
prejudice helps Israelis keep their airlines safe and their streets clean
Yep
I prefer to restrict my pride on things I have achieved.
That's about the whitest comment I've ever read. You deserve an award of some kind!
@@numbersix8919 this indeed is the comment I wish everyone could make.As a white male I do not need any support by some group achievement because privilege.
Grew up below the poverty line, worked in the fields as a migrant farm worker sun-up to sun-down as a little kid. Didn't know who my father was until I was 15, mother prostituted herself to put food on the table and went to prison for murder.
Put into foster care. Graduated high school with honors, served 21 yrs in a military Special Operations community and retired, served 15 yrs as a police officer then a high school teacher. Blessed life. Oh, and I'm white, so I guess that's how I made it because I was so privileged.
"I'm white and I had it bad!!! See! SEE!? Racism doesn't exist man, you FOOL!"
Absolutely brain dead take lmao.
Your awful experiences are valid and a clear demonstration of the lower class' struggles in our capitalist society. But what in the heaven's fuck does that have to do with the existence of white privilege? Yes, there are exceptions to the norm, but that's what they are: exceptions.
The vast majority of white people in america has had way better chances than the majority of black people. 0.5% of white people being fucked over too and 0.5% of black people being rich as fuck does not negate the rest of the population's statistical discrepancy between race, financial security and quality of life.
It's a really easy concept to grasp, I don't understand how you people don't get it.
Your whiteness has afforded you this ladder to climb classes while many non-whites will only be stuck as migrant farmworkers.
And you don't think being black would have made it any more difficult?
Not even in the police force?
@@DeoMachina Perhaps you missed the point. I had substantially more challenges because I was white. Was attacked and beaten because I was white, but made my own way regardless. On the police force per capita black officers and female officers promoted more often in higher numbers than white male officers. The same thing in the military they got extra points for being black Hispanic or female.
@@navvetcoperator973 ". I had substantially more challenges because I was white"
But you've never been anything else, so how can you possibly claim to know that?
It's like you went into one door and not the other three, then came back to tell me it was the most challenging room.
(You were a teacher and I had to explain that? Damn lol)
"Was attacked and beaten because I was white, but made my own way regardless"
Are you claiming this wouldn't have happened if you were black? That black people don't get beaten up for being black?
"On the police force per capita black officers and female officers promoted more often in higher numbers"
And yet the leadership of the police force remains overwhelmingly white and male, lol
Cops, always the eternal victim. Nothing is ever good enough for a cop. They always cry the hardest when they get what they want.
Could you give me a few concrete examples of how exactly a seemingly generic, probably stereotypical, run of the mill white person such as me would be benefiting from their white privilege? In every video I watch on the topic there are always these theoretical descriptions of white privilege, but there are never actually any concrete examples given of the phenomenon.
Hi
Sorry to say but nobody is making videos about you, specifically. We don't know anything about your life, therefore we can't narrow down what exactly happens in it.
Job Market.
Housing.
Treatment.
@DeoMachina I rephrased my question because I have to admit that it was improperly worded and wasn't representative of my actual question.
@@TheBauwssss Well in that case I will answer again since you put the effort into it:
The average recipient of white privilege probably benefits most when applying for jobs. I have personally met people who have explicitly said they'll never hire black men, for example. People with names associated with ethnic minorities are much less likely to get invited to interviews, etc.
Another example is scrutiny applied by people in general, white people are challenged on their authority much less frequently.
One of the worst examples is in healthcare, where assumptions about pain tolerance and accusations of faking illness have led to nurses and doctors literally killing non-white patients.
You could write a book on the things you don't have to worry about because of your skin tone (and some people have), the general rule is that no matter how hard your life may be, it would be harder in the same circumstances if you were of another race.
@@DeoMachina In other words it's complete bs to make whites feel bad about being white.
It’s a quite terrifying perspective. According to this narrative, white identity, if there should be any, should be enforced by others as a constant creeping feeling of guilt for how non white feel about a narrative they did not produce in the first place. So every single behavior should be motivated by an acceptance that my identity is for the most part defined by my acceptance or not of my scapegoat role in postmodern society among every other people for the sake of social cohesion, because of promiscuity. The difference with past iterations of this memeplex ( black segregation, westwide antisemitism) is that white people actively participate in this through hypnotic insentives, in a sort of encrypted memetic colonization. No swords, no guns, no obvious holocaust, no slavery. Just the insidious removal of sovereignty over oneself under the radar of one´s awareness, with tools made to harvest blood without killing, through cognitive weaponry. No bad guys, no blood, just memes doing their thing before our primitive field of consciousness. And everybody is looking for a scapegoat for the scapegoat as they forgot there’s no goat but the ones we draw.
Both terrifying and exciting !
What's surprising to me, is that even though I'm white, "the invisible race"s are hispanics and middle-eastern to me. If someone asks me what race someone was, or to describe what someone looked like and I don't know, I say hispanic, but I can remember when I met a white person
I'm not saying there isn't white privilege but one thing I will point out is no one is going to point out that other areas of the world has privileges based on the dominant race in that area. The one thing I don't like about the "white privilege conversation" is the fact it's treated like a conversation and not what it actually is, it's blaming white people as a whole for things that like slavery only a small portion of us had anything to do with. There's privilege all over the world but because everyone wants to live in predominately white countries we get all the blame. Besides it's not really white privilege it's rich privilege as it always has been, and rich of any race is going to have an easy time. I don't think of myself as white, but by the same token I don't view anyone as a race, we're all human beings and I treat you based upon your personality and how you treat others and yourself. That's how you stop racism, not blaming a race for all the problems in an area.
Yes, I agree. If we think of people currently living, only the tiniest fraction of them ever had a direct influence over institutionalized racism. And I think more focus should be put on developing poor countries, because being born in a developed nation is much more of a privilege than being born of a specific race. Colonialism and Post-Colonialism are the direct causes of the modern poverty and hunger in these countries. Ans part of the problem is also that things like ethnicity, class, education, personal experiences and all that are all so interconnected that differentiating one from the other completely is impossible. For example, I would argue that at least in Europe, disability is deserving at least the same attention as racism, especially since many people seem to have forgotten how the disabled have also been direct victims of the nazi atrocities.
Western culture is the default in Western nations...oh my fkn gawd!!!
Physiognomy checks out
Imagine my surprise /s😒
@@sr.cosmos4543 Definitely not a "Tom Nicholas". Probably a berg or a baum using a poorly made alias.
So you're saying white culture is the western culture? You don't see the problem with that?
@@jamilhneini1002 Oh right, all of these nations were created in a vacuum. I've been told to go back to Europe plenty of times by racist progressives...why would they tell me to go back to Europe?
Not to sound class reductionist, but it seems that DiAngelo's approach to all of this is very problematic. Her book treats racism as a kind of internalised psychological problem found within individuals, divorced from class, gender, and other hierarchies. There is little attention paid towards the structures that perpetuate racism, be they economic or cultural, and the end result is something that treats the problem as an issue that can be solved by middle class whites through changes to what they consume. That kind of perspective leaves a lot to be desired in terms of intersectionality, if you ask me.
Robin DiAngelo runs corporate ‘white fragility’ workshops off the success of her (epistemologically questionable) book, so it’s not really in her interest to offer any meaningful critique of the material conditions which perpetuate racism
this video mentions the individualistic nature of "white fragility" and "white privelege" in contrast with the more systemic "white supremacy"
I just typed my response for an hour but you summarized it well haha
Well said! I generally agree on the implications, but I don't think she's as ignorant or ill-intentioned as that. She seems quite aware of the structures that perpetuate racism beyond the individual to me having done some more research on her public appearances and speeches, but she does tend to focus on this part more than the others (Which I also think is a general Liberal problem on the left, and bringing it up to them tends to gets us often classified 'class reductionists' as you tried to deflect in your post)
Democrats and Liberals will obsess over a book called White Fragility and hot button issues and surface level activism and will make things about themselves before they are willing to take the political action necessary to actually fight systemic issues. DiAngelo seems pretty aware of this dynamic as she often calls white liberals/moderates more problematic for it, but she could definitely be more upfront in her diagnosis of the problem so she doesn't seem like a grifter or something.
I disagree. She talks about intersectionality as well. Yet the first step must start within the agency of oneself. After all a system of oppression is sustained if individuals are invested in it as well. Case in point, the increasingly documented incidences of white people of various classes and genders using the police to exact their authority over black Americans and other brown races, This perpetuated against people of colour doing some of the most ordinary things as well.!
Im 100% Slav. i identify this way since i left Easter Europe and people in the west remind me that im eastern European... is that mean im white? is this comment also an example of "white fragility".
Slavs are still "black people of white people". The etymology of the word "slave" comes from the name of my race.
my ancestors didn't participate in colonialism neither imperialism of the west (especially Anglo-Saxons, especially English imperialism). i know im white and i know i have better access to opportunities then non-white people (Asians might be excluded a bit). therefore should people treat my privilege different than western white privilege?
is that fair that im being thrown to all "white" basket?
It isn’t fair, but that is the nature of pointing out the unreality of race in the first place. The important thing here that Tom has supplied in the video is this: examining how race has actually influenced your life, in a manner that you have and haven’t decided on, is how one can identify their real benefits from a social construction. You identify as Slavic and the recognition of this identity has been in fluctuation with whiteness, mainly due to race operating as an institution without a clear basis beyond its already present social effects. These unclear boundaries are actually excellent points to be able to look at how unreal and yet affecting whiteness can be. So, if there is something that seemingly all white identified people receive but you don’t as a slavic person, it gives insight to what this construct is, how it operates, and what these blurry boundaries do. Ironically, in my opinion, whiteness is not always so black and white. But there are some who completely identify you as white and some that absolutely don’t. Whether either one is true is irrelevant. However, the fact that many do identify you as white means that you have that privilege with them and not those that don’t consider you as such. I myself am considered white, i also have Slavic ancestry, it is tricky nailing down something so abstract. Best of luck finding the truth
Russians did participate in imperialism and still do. They colonized the whole area of modern Russia and committed genocide against many indigenous groups in the area. That said in western Europe Slavs are definitely discriminated against and have been for a long time. I don't think it's entirely fair that Slavs are lumped in with Anglo-Saxons, but saying that none of the Slavs have benefited from imperialism and whiteness is not true either. Also if you ask the fascist party in for example Poland they are happy to lump themselves with white people.
If you're white you're white. When you are talking about Europe you can surely see differences in culture and stuff but you are all still white. When compared to anywhere else in the world you are going to be more privileged because white is the norm. Not to disvalue the struggles of Slavs throughout history or anything, but people from all over the world who are still subjected to white supremacy won't see you as different from another type of white subcategory
I think Eric's provided a really good response to this which I can't really top. I think there's definitely a huge problem in the UK with racism against Polish people. And part of that lies in a view by some of Polish people as "not white" (or, at the very least, not "properly white"). Which, again, highlights race as socially constructed and constantly in flux.
hard to argue with so many smart words and elaborations. i was never an expert in race or racism. learn a lot past weeks. but i have to be honest. before all this mess happens, when i approach people i felt like im approaching a person. but after blm explode i noticed that when i come close to particularly Afro-American (i lived in nyc, just move to berlin) person im being super, extra nice. and thats i think is form of racism. not negative, but i automatically change my behavior based on the skin color of the person i faced.
i was 11 yo when communism collapsed in poland. i left warsaw right after transformation was about to end. i land in nyc - with my post soviet, ultra catholic mentality. as much as im critical of late capitalism i have to admit that, in my opinion, is was the best system so far. the especially USA is the most open for people who comes from different cultures, continents and backgrounds. i like how new Americans change the scenario of society and economy. thats why is so hard for me to understand the nature of current "accusations" and pointing systematical dysfunctions.
we all making sense of surrounded world based on our personal path.
im just shocked about what is happening and how this new construct brutally intercept people's collective conscious.
on the way i feel forced to cut my personal understanding of the reality and copy/paste this new vision of reality.
maybe is my white fragility/supremacy. i dont know that yet.
im doing a lot of homework but i have to admit that deep inside, being very in tune with my intuition and experience, i feel there is something wrong with the nature of this change.
im fresh neomarkist really believe that system got many answers for upcoming post covid issues. highly believe that "class need to be woke". im very sad that suddenly someone is telling me im a white person. till now i was sure "im a person"... and i thought we all trying to be "a person".
maybe im racist... last thing i would think of myself... since racism was always very abstract for me.
I know you couldn't possibly have said "penis acts" like I thought I heard in the first two minutes of the video, so I went back and listened to it five times and I turned closed captioning on, and that's all I can hear and that's what closed captioning says you said. Tom, what did you say in that sentence? I'm so confused. Besides that confusion, wonderfully put together video! Began with your spot a fascist video which I absolutely loved and shared all over Facebook! As well as your Free Press video! Well done, well researched, and very well presented!
It sounds kinda like “heinous acts” except with a hard P at the beginning. I heard “penis acts” over and over again too
Thanks for the video Tom. Looks like you got some different kind of "engagement" for this one
Isn't it interesting, referring to the video on Michel Foucault, that with new framing of thinking, new discovery might be found, but it also limits further development of knowledge to be explore. So with new ways of thinking about race that conform identity base in category, then isn't it limiting one from the availability to discover self beyond that conformity?
Yes. My worry is that this focus on groups could eventually lead to society eliminating any notion of individuality leaving people to identify more with the perspective/attitudes of their group than with pursuing their potential as a singular human. Group think could be our future if this continues.
@@davidmunn4409 It is already the status of our current situation.
@@sobertowelie3267 It really is a shame, and it's even a further shame that academia has almost wholly bought into this culture of groupthink. Academia--the place for smart people--SMART PEOPLE.
Ok, but let's make sure that when, for example, there is a film that might be considered a "black film", we go ahead and think of it as just a film, and work towards a world where that is the norm. I fear that by being so hyper-sensitive to race, we are pushing a raceless utopia even further into the future. I also worry that the left's particular focus on race has helped give rise to increases in, for example, white nationalism. Instead of us saying what we would have said 30 years ago-that race is a silly construct and that we should all be treating one another as individuals, rather than members of hereditary groups-we continually reinforce the idea that race is a huge part of society, thereby giving breathing room to such repugnant ideologies. Don't get me wrong. I support activism in this arena, but I think it should be framed a little differently. A little less, "I'm _______ and proud of it." A little more, "I'm ________, and why is something that should be so irrelevant to political discourse made to disenfranchise me so thoroughly?"
Lol. You support activism but want to dictate how those who are activists are active. Only someone that has the luxury to spout such bs could make that up and still feel good about theirselves. I bet you also have black friends!
the problem is race is a class, a class that is actively treated and shaped different by race. we cant be colorblind when color is still a prevalent tool to opress people. pretending race isnt there is also pretending that all the racist societal structures are also not there. and well never fix the issue if we dont get to the root of the problem, wich is still race
@@aleclorian7329 Thank you. My patience is gone I’m afraid.
@@aleclorian7329 I disagree, we should work to demolish ANY ideology that sees people primarily as a part of a group (race, gender, nationality etc) and should see people primarily as individuals. By doing so we won't be blind to racism, I would argue we would be even more aware of racism (among other things). For example, I detest any ideology/idea etc that sees people primarily as part of a group and hence I realize how racist woke terms like "POC" are, something many so called "anti racist" activists are completely blind to.
@@Bishop_Heahmund exactly. There's also the "racism of lowered expectations", where some people believe that black and latino groups are simply incapable of handling tasks that other people are able to do: like Joe Biden saying that Voter ID is racist because black people don't know how to acquire them.
Hi. Thank you for your videos and please consider reducing the music behind every section. I find the background music very difficult to listen over when people are speaking. A little bit of music is okay. But your content is so rich it speaks for itself and doesn't need the propagandistic background noise. Please consider reducing or eliminating most of it. Also I watch most of my TH-cam videos speeded up a little and any background music makes it harder to hear the points. Thanks for considering changing your format.
Thank you very much for making this video. It lays out the problem in such an inoffensive way.
obviously not, just look at the dislikes. just replace whiteness with jewishness and see how inoffensice it really is.
You think this doesn't offend ? It should offend anyone with an IQ above 80.
Good points keep up the good work
According to the scholars you cite, privileges should be “dismantled” or removed, as you also report in that video. Afterwards, you cite McIntosh’s list as examples which contain statements like p...
*“16. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color, who constitute the world’s majority, without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.”*
There is no such majority (implying one) with customs and a language you could learn. If we are charitable and say she means the collective of cultures, customs and languages then it’s still wrong or nonsense. Most people don’t even learn languages of other “whites”, because learning a language is hard, takes a lot of time and follows practical reasons. Her use of “oblivious” is trivially false. There is no version where this isn’t hogwash. If we want to repair the complete joke of “paper” we come out at near truisms or entitlement. It’s a real privilege to travel the world and have time to engage with foreign cultures, learn languages etc, which blue collar people often don’t have.
But the correct removal of that privilege would say: “you ought to learn the language and customs of the (mythical) people of colour majority, or else, get penalised”, yeah, great.
The utter, sheer mindnumbing nonsense does not end there.
*”17. can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.”*
So, what’s the privilege here? Verbatim it’s about being seen a “cultural outsider” when critisizing the government. Or is the emphasis on being able to critisize the government?
Then, what exactly are we supposed to get rid of? We can try to repair this to mean something like “everyone should be able to critisize the government and not be stigmatized as a cultural outsider”. Yeah, I guess. But as woke people remind us every day, speech has consequences. Being seen as a “cultural outsider” when critisizing the government is also a very minor concern. A lot of people cannot critisize the government, or religion at all, especially in the cultures McIntosh and culturalists like her glorify.
*“22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.”*
The part of affirmative action is interesting, “so, how can we dismantle this “privilege”? Well, the easy solution is to get rid of affirmative action, then, as the video says, the person would ostensibly be hired based on so-called “meritocracy” (I think it’s a myth, but the video argues with it). Is that the idea? The whole thing is truly poor and what is vaguely plausible is trite.
I’ve come across McIntosh many times, and heard claims to “dismantle” and “de-colonialize” so often, saw the same slogans a million times, and found out there is truly nothing more behind it. Reading the clergy of critical race theory, e.g. Delgado, makes it sound just bleak and pushes it even farther away from a charitable reading (e.g. Delgado is an advocate of censorship, and writes in Introduction to Critical Race Theory how it opposes liberal enlightenment values).
It remains a deeply racist, authoritarian, creed, which via cultural imperialism, is pushed on everyone else.
In common parlance, "privilege" has the connotation of some special advantage that not everyone should or even can have -- like a king having the 'privilege' to take first pick from the plate of venison cutlets.
However, as a term of art in race relations, its meaning is, perhaps deliberately, a little different. There it generally refers to things *all* people should be able to enjoy, yet some don't, because of racism or other forms of discrimination.
I think that might shed light on some of your confusion. Armed with this knowledge, we can see that eliminating the privilege in point #16, for example, doesn't mean that everyone needs to be a polyglot. On the contrary, it means that *everyone* should have the right to be monolingual, if they like, oblivious to cultures and languages they are not interested in. (A privilege many in minority cultures do not enjoy. Viz: the constant demands by American racists for latinos or black people to "learn English", and exactly zero demands that American whites need to learn Spanish or have any fluency in black culture.)
Like the proverbial blind squirrel, you did manage to stumble on the nut of #17. It does indeed mean that all people *should* be able to criticize their governments without being dismissed as outsiders. It's interesting that, having apparently realized this would be a pretty sensible and legitimate demand, you immediately shied off into dismissing it with some kind of whataboutery fallacy. Apparently nobody's allowed to complain because it's worse in Saudi Arabia or North Korea or wherever.
(Always an amazing argument. If I asked you how they treated you at your work, and your reply was, in earnest, something along the lines of how it's not as bad as a North Korean labor camp...Well, you'd forgive me if I concluded that this was a roundabout way of saying that they actually treated you pretty shittily. Just because it's not as bad as the worst thing is literally no argument at all for shutting up and not demanding better.)
In #22, your problem seems to be a misunderstanding of what affirmative action means.
At least in the US and UK contexts, affirmative action just means taking some institutional measures to avoid discarding minority applications out of hand -- as all too often happens in various subtle ways, even under affirmative action policies. In other words, the idea is to actually concretely attempt to judge based on merit. Only in cases where applicants are otherwise completely equally qualified is minority status per se ever to be actually considered -- only as a sort of last ditch tie breaker.
There's thus no rational reason for one's co-workers to think that someone hired under an affirmative action policy is any less than *at least* as qualified as the next best non-minority applicant. It's just ignorance and racism. It seems pretty reasonable to ask them to cut that shit out.
On the other hand, your 'solution' of abolishing affirmative action policies amounts to doing nothing. This would, for many people, mean trading the racist exclamations of one's coworkers for, in all likelihood, being (even more) likely to be racially discriminated against, and not getting the job in the first place. Not much of a solution if you ask me.
RE: affirmative action, it's actually interesting to note that the opposite observation is a lot more rational.
Suppose a company with no affirmative action policy, and few or no minority employees, hires yet another white person. It would be quite reasonable at that point to wonder whether he or she was truly the best applicant, or merely skated in based on their race. (Or, as was certainly the case for many years, and arguably still is, whether they only got the job because a more able member of another race was systematically held back: discouraged or outright prohibited from applying, or from receiving the education or other qualifications they would need.)
This is an uncomfortable question many white people never even think to ask. Which is itself another form of privilege.
@@keeswiddunk8053 thanks for explanation. Let’s discuss just point 16.
_“Armed with this knowledge, we can see that eliminating the privilege in point #16, for example, doesn't mean that everyone needs to be a polyglot. On the contrary, it means that everyone should have the right to be monolingual”_
I know what is meant by privilege, defined here as an “unearned advantage”. This implies that the advantage can be removed either by taking it away from one side or by giving it to the other side, too.
Take the first example I picked, number 16. It means so-called “whites” can only speak english and be oblivious to others without penality, while e.g. hispanics must know their own language and customs, but must also know english and “white” customs or face disadvantages.
Alright, let’s go with this version: In the other examples she uses ostensibly plausible scenarios, like you work somewhere and your coworkers belong to the same group as you do, and that’s not the case when you are a minority (I didn’t list this one, but yes, if you pour water over your shirt, it’s wet).
However she uses a rhetorical inversion, to cast it into the “privilege of whites” format. She invokes a hypothetical situation where a minority culture is, for the sake of illustration, the majority culture, and it’s a privilege of a majority that they don’t (and can’t, practically) know minority cultures and languages. This leads to the tortured expression of “persons of color, who constitute the world’s majority”. She says it’s not the case that “whites” must familiarize themselves with this hypothetical majority, hence, a privilege not available for minorities (who, in reverse, must learn english and “white” culture).
First, this is trivially true when rendered this way. A majority is less likely to learn minority languages and customs than vice versa. If we alleviated that by learning from each other, it would create something very “problematic” as McIntosh’s disciples of Wokeness would put it: that’s the high crime of “cultural appropriation”. It turns out, when the majority engages actively in a minority culture, it’s taken as a form of theft. It can never be symmetric, because “power plus privilege” acts down on minorities, but not vice versa.
But you proposed another way out: “everyone can be monolingual”. In a charitable way, we’ll just create the new privilege that majority people have greater opportunities (trivially true, as when there are more people, places, services in your language, you can do more).
There are of course other problems with this: somebody must be bilingual, especially at bureaucratic levels, which leads to a bilingual managerial elite (see french in Canada for an example).
Lastly, number 16 is such a hot garbage not only because it’s inconsistent but also a poor way to make a point when - in a second meaning - it‘s literally true, because worldwide, “whites” actually are a minority.
It amazes me how such a poorly worded list, written quickly on a napkin with random examples can have any traction. Obviously, there is nothing better. Nobody in some “studies” subject sat down and produced something better, because you can’t in much the same way that you can’t write a new chapter of holy writ. It’s really treated like gospel there, and McIntosh is a sort of saint. Even the numbering gives it a kind of biblical vibe. At least that’s the best explanation why it’s still cited.
@@Anerisian
>>> "She invokes a hypothetical situation where a minority culture is, for the sake of illustration, the majority culture, and it’s a privilege of a majority that they don’t (and can’t, practically) know minority cultures and languages."
No, I think this might be where you're going wrong. In at least a couple of ways.
It's admittedly a little clunky, but I think the part about "persons of color, who constitute the world’s majority" is an aside to point out the fact that whatever 'majority' is being discussed (e.g., 'US white people') is NOT actually any kind of majority at all. On a global scale, they are, in fact, a minority. Not hypothetically. Literally.
And yet, somehow, we don't take it as a given that _this_ minority is supposed to learn the language of the majority. In fact -- the opposite is true. Huge parts of the world learn English as a second language. Far more than speak it natively. (Granted, the pedantic could correctly object that there is not actually a 'world language' -- but US whites aren't even supposed to learn languages like Chinese or Spanish, both of which are spoken natively by hundreds of millions more people than English.)
She's employing a perspective shift to try to snap away the idea that the minority being forced to speak the language of the majority is "only natural" -- a fallacy you appear to engage in yourself.
>>> "If we alleviated that by learning from each other, it would create something very “problematic” as McIntosh’s disciples of Wokeness would put it: that’s the high crime of “cultural appropriation”. It turns out, when the majority engages actively in a minority culture, it’s taken as a form of theft. "
This is a rather silly interpretation of 'cultural appropriation'. If learning languages and participating in other cultures was verboten, all those militant woke leftists would presumably be out nonstop picketing high school Spanish classes.
Something else is clearly going on. Your clue should be in the word 'appropriation' -- that actually connotes something specific. If you have a good relationship with your neighbor, and ask to borrow his lawnmower, you haven't "appropriated" it. You've just borrowed it. If he asks you over for dinner, you haven't "appropriated" his food, you've shared it.
Appropriation is about taking something without consent, or respect, simply because you have the power. Wearing someone's religious or traditional garb -- maybe the 'sexy' version -- as a halloween costume, because you don't care and they can't stop you? Appropriation. Wearing it at their invitation, after having learned something of the language and being welcomed into their community? Probably not so much. (Admittedly, the borders can get fuzzy -- and definitional differences of opinion are invariably the most heated about those edge cases -- but there is nevertheless a distinction to be made.)
>>> "But you proposed another way out: “everyone can be monolingual”. In a charitable way, we’ll just create the new privilege that majority people have greater opportunities (trivially true, as when there are more people, places, services in your language, you can do more)."
Saying everyone _can_ be monolingual -- i.e., not be actually bullied for it -- is different from everyone actually *being* monolingual. People would still have a choice to expand their horizons on their own terms, and in a world where e.g., one's hispanic neighbors are considered part of the nation whether they speak English or not, I imagine a lot more people would avail themselves.
>>> "we’ll just create the new privilege that majority people have greater opportunities (trivially true, as when there are more people, places, services in your language, you can do more)."
Possibly this was clear/irrelevant from my other answer, but it's worth noting that your scenario here does *not* actually describe privilege. At least not in the 'white privilege' sense of the word. At least to my mind, there's got to be some kind of power exercise or cultural coercion involved.
If, e.g., it's easy for you to run your errands because all the dry cleaners and flower shops in your neighborhood speak your language, is that 'privilege'? It depends.
If this is the case because a bunch of nativist bullies have forced out all the ones who DON'T learn your language or something -- sure, that's privilege. OTOH, if there's no such force in effect, if you just move to a neighborhood where there's a lot of other people who speak your language -- or are born in one -- then no, not privilege.
While we're at it:
>> "In the other examples she uses ostensibly plausible scenarios, like you work somewhere and your coworkers belong to the same group as you do, and that’s not the case when you are a minority (I didn’t list this one, but yes, if you pour water over your shirt, it’s wet)."
I'm taking the parenthetical to mean that you think this is silly. As stated, sure. But I suspect you're not accurately paraphrasing.
The usual problem presented with this kind of scenario isn't that you simply *are* a minority, but that you're also forced in some way to be negatively aware of it.
After all, you and I have probably been in ALL KINDS of situations where we were in a minority. Maybe we were the only one in the room who owned a Hyundai. Or had a beard. Or blue eyes, or matching socks, or a late library book, or wore contact lenses, or was left handed, or tone deaf. Who knows. I certainly don't -- I probably didn't even notice. Or care. And I'm pretty confident nobody else did either. That's the point.
On the other hand, when a black guy sits down for his first meeting at a new job, and sees that everyone else is real pale, it's quite likely he'll have a moment of noticing how _not pale_ he is. And he'll also be able to see perfectly well that other people are noticing it too. Along with all the background context of racism, violence and meanness that brings with it.
Meanwhile, none of the others are being particularly forced to notice that they're white, or remember atrocities visited upon their ancestors because of it.
The point is, this one's at least partly about the bigger context. It's our fucked up society as a whole that's the problem there -- making things like skin color or mosque membership somehow more important than contact lenses and car ownership -- or, indeed, important at all. The individuals involved can hurt things further -- it won't help if your coworkers are insular or overtly hostile -- but they could be pretty welcoming, and there'd still be a bit of friction. It helps to be aware, but truly getting rid of this kind of privilege probably means making a lot of progress on getting rid of racism overall, and just generally building up a pattern of trust by not being dicks to each other so much.
@tom Nicholas thanks for this amazing analysis, comrade
And then one day, for no reason at all...
right wing snowflakes got triggered because a video made them feel bad
@@Diiieman Happy Hannukah
@@Carl_ATHF
Right wingers: thinks they can tell a that a comment was made by a jew because it disagrees with them
Also right wingers: why do these fascists assume we're racist??
Lmao okay my dudes
@@Diiiemanwell you are assuming that we give a shit if we are being called as racist lmao
Also happy hannukah bro. Keep it up. We need more rage
@@Diiieman pithiness will be no shield against what comes next.
Whiteness is pretty hard to approach when mixed-racial, I find. I'm a quarter-Asian who can pass as white, but it's a very strange to think about how or why I've even tried to "pass" as white. It's confusing because ultimately, I feel both outside and inside the in-group. As my awareness of whiteness has grown, I've found myself on the opposite trajectory at times, where I tried to emphasize my non-white part rather than the white one, as a way to feel more comfortable, or separated from the supremacy. But I feel that in truth as much as being mixed-racial gives me a distinct experience, and more affinity with other people of Asian descent, I can't deny or ignore that in many ways, I'm white and part of the system in that way.
See, I don't live in America so I find it very hard to understand someone discriminating based on your skin colour alone. "Racism" in Ireland is dominated by cultural discrimination. People use your race to spot that youre an immigrant and then bully you for being an immigrant. I've noticed that black ppl that are third gen Irish immigrants, are far less discriminated than a first gen black Immigrant. To me, racism is secondary to cultural discrimination and race is used as a way to spot people who are culturally different.
It doesn't rly matter if you're "white-passing" in Ireland. It matters a lot more if you're "Irish-passing" both culturally and physically.
Americans would call Polish ppl white, but they look rly different to Irish ppl. They would be picked out of a crowd to be discriminated against for being Eastern European in Ireland. The most discriminated group in Ireland are called travellers and are ethnically Irish so they look like us. But Irish people hate their culture and Travellers are often banned from restaurants, hotels, festivals etc for being travellers.
I wonder if cultural discrimination is at all tied to racism in America? Or do people purely care about skin colour when discriminating? In America, do kids who are white but culturally non-white get bullied more than kids who are culturally white but are non-white?
@@putinsgaytwin4272Hey, I have grown up in Ireland too as an Irish-Mexican & that's slander, They haven't bullied me at all. It's correct that they don't consider me Irish and only as Mexican or "Americano" (Since I was born in the States) but under no circumstances did they ever bully me for being foreign! But yes 100% Nobody likes the Travellers due to them trashing, stealing and generally leaving places worse than when they found them, we shouldn't be racist to them but they do need to be policed for when they screw things up.
@@putinsgaytwin4272 Thats because there are essentially no black people in ireland.
It is interesting that I can relate in a different way. I pass as Han in the city of my birth, but people can immediately know my ethnicity once they learn what my family name is. Moving from the US to the UK, the Brits didn’t treat me as "Chinese" since I speak American English. It is so interesting how and what I'm seen as depending on where I am and who I interact with.
How many other people type out a comment only to delete it instead of posting it, recognising that whatever you say- no matter how well-intended- will only add to division, rather than heal it?
Another very informative video (thanks!); but I am confused, especially about race as a social construct. How do we talk meaningfully about people groups who share visible, physical attributes due to a shared ancestry? For example, when I go to Japan, or Sudan, or Ireland, I see people with similar physical characteristics (hair color, pigmentation, facial features) because of a shared descent. What do we call that? Certainly, these features, however inconsequential, are biologically determined in some sense, correct? This differentiation among people groups is not socially constructed; it seems more objectively verifiable. How do we refer to that without using terminology of “race”? I tend to think of these external attributes when I think of “race,” not genetics. This is a sincere question from someone who is trying to understand myself better and make sense of the new world I have suddenly found myself in. Any thoughts/help?
Good question. I guess nationality or ethnicity might be appropriate terms. I think this is an issue that critical race theorists tend to ignore because at the end of the day it contradicts the idea that “race” is a social construct.
Ah yes, nations, those natural phenomena.
You notice that the boundaries of race may never be limited. Some "scientists" recognized 5 races, with a white race encompassing all the races. Nazis, however, divided that white race into 3 distinct races: Aryan Germanic race, Slavic race and Mediterranean race. When you observe, you may group Germans and English in different groups. Now you look deeper, and notice that Sheffielders look a bit different from people from Croydon.
That's it, it has no end. You cannot define any "race" by appearence or characteristics. Race is more of a descriptive term, often with a linguistic and/or socioeconomic correlation. Scholarly discussion will possibly not regard genetics or appearences. It is mostly identity, language, socioeconomics that define "race" or any other group of people as meaningful observable units of people.
@@Tom_Nicholas why are you getting so salty in the comments? That was a good question. I thought these videos were meant to explain quite complicated topics in a relatable way and maybe start a useful discussion, but whenever someone asks for clarification you turn into a smartass.
@@Tom_Nicholas Thanks for the response, @Tom Nicholas. I didn't sense anything "smartass' about it, myself. Nations, hmm ... I'm not sure that is quite what I am trying to grapple with. A nation can be comprised of many people groups, each with their own distinct physical characteristics based on a common ancestry, Russia for example. Also, are nations "natural phenomena"? Perhaps I'm not clear on how you are defining "nation," but the term brings to my mind the geopolitical reality of nation-states, which are constantly shifting, moving boundaries, etc. Which keeps cartographers employed, I guess. To reword my question: Since we recognize that there are people-groups that share certain physical characteristics due to a common ancestry, is there terminology available/agreed upon that acknowledges this obvious reality yet doesn't imply outdated and inaccurate assumptions about alleged differences at the genetic level?
Please don't bring your USA CRT to Europe. I hate the fact people look at the color of someones skin other than perhaps personnal sexual preference. Just treat everyone as equal, never less or more; because the color of your skin does not define you.
I indentify as a human being or better yet as Dutch, not as a white person. Also I don't feel responsible for what my ancestors have done regarding slavery. Otherwise I would still be complaining about what the people of Turkey did enslaving Europeans or the Germans in WWII to our land.
People who want to migrate here are welcome. However, you have to respect our rules and culture.
This video might be very usefull for the USA where racism is still a thing. But please keep your racism there and don't bother us with terms as white privilege.....
"This video might be very useful for the USA where racism is still a thing" -- If you don't live in the USA, please shut up with your accusations like calling us "racist".
@@johnnastrom9400 While I see the hypocrisy in my previous post. Compared to Europe the USA just has a problem with racism. To put it better in better words, somehow you guys want to amplify racism to create division. Certainly not everyone in the USA, but, when I see most democrats talking wel....
My white privilege is dwarfed by my class privilege and my nationality privilege.
When I was a 21 I was in memphis to learn how to drive a semi-truck. I stayed in a hotel, down the hall a missionary was also staying there. While I was walking to the elevator I saw him having a conversation with two other students about race, being a 21 year old white kid I immediately butted in. I cant even remember how I butted in. But we ended up talking so much the other kids walked away, we practically shared our life stories with eachother in the hallway. He taught me quite a bit in that short time. He actually invited me back to his room to continue the conversation but my ptsd wasn't going to let me. I was too afraid to trust like that at the time. I believe this will be one of my biggest regrets in life. I do hope I meet him again someday.
Ok
Have you given any thought to partnering or collaborating with BIPOC youtubers who are interested in doing what you do, or already have similar content? That way you could uplift voices as well as broaden your content.
I would very much like to be able to do some stuff like this in the future. Obviously, if I were to work with a BIPOC TH-camr/scholar who researches around race, however, I'd like to be able to pay them for their time and expertise. At the moment, I simply don't have the budget to do so but it's definitely something that I'm really keen to do if the channel gets to a point where that's a viable option!
Wow thank you for the consideration! I'm honored.
Maybe it's just me but i wouldn't dismiss a trade option, if anyone would be willing to do so, like guest appearances or editing time/work.
Have a lovely weekend!
I would watch that. I like the well grounded historical facts here.
@@Tom_Nicholas I'd buy that for a dollar
@@Tom_Nicholas That would be awesome! I subbed and I hope your channel grows.
--BIPOC woman (but no, I'm not suggesting myself, I'm not healthy enough atm)
@12:50 that bro is tripping balls.
look at his pupils xD
15.44 these are so illuminating, sadly I never thought about it, always felt like "I did it" (emancipated at 15, worked/studied, young mother, young widow n single mother, fighting for every step) now I'm thinking maybe my hurdles weren't that big....just as a comment, in the 70:ies visiting relatives I remember playing with (now very clearly racist imagery) black dolls (probably from approx 50-60ies as they were old...and their daughter later....maybe 1979-80 adopting two (twins) from Sri Lanka. Their family oddly called them the chocolate twins 🤯
very nice historical breakdown of the phenomena!
Also, nice shirt! In the "before times" the office I work at overlooks Powell's Books. In the current crisis I'm out in Hillsboro and missing a downtown that I'm not sure is coming back.
Inflation, malnourished children, and no public schooling. Thanks chris
I have a question: if "none" was a race, would that undermine the default to be "white" but instead identify that "race" as the exclusionary victim complex that it is? Or would that further perpetuate a claim that the default human is one that doesn't have a historical plight that continues to plague them which outside groups cannot understand?
It's weird, you really don't have to go back too far to find "white" against "white" struggle and discrimination (e.g. Irish and Italian immigrants, what the Nazis did in eastern Europe in WW2, Northern Ireland, what happened to German minorities in Easter Europe after WW2). So, many "white" people have some ethnic struggle in their recent family history.
@@KP3droflxp
But that isn't specific to all "white" people. The "white" race has no common plight they can ALL relate too.
@@Noah-fn5jq Ask some dude in Africa if they can relate to working on American plantations
@@KP3droflxp
Which is why I would argue the US black community shouldn't be conflated with the African community. This is why the calls of "go back to where you came from" are invalid
@@SlyNine while "better off" is a subjective metric and we tend to look at systemic successes as culturally "better" than other countries (so to promote our own nationalism as the best), it doesn't mean much if we don't apply that metric INTERNALLY (since that's where it matters most). And there are a lot of communities that are hindered from sharing in those "successes". The discrepancy here makes your narrative a bit less clean-cut.
I'm terrified of the effectiveness of the common liberal response to whiteness which only ends up reifying it. Žižek described it as the elevation of whiteness to universality by omission. Those who are considered "white" by descent (english, german, swedish etc.) are not allowed to assert their identities, while anyone who's not considered white is sometimes even pressured into being fascinated with their "roots". In a screwed up way, whiteness becomes the racial identity to "contain" all particular others. The white guy can step back and remain silent as the other races speak, only to have ultimate control over who gets the microphone. Systemic racism is extremely insidious because it can remain hidden in this way, within false humility.
"Elevation by omission" is a really succinct way of putting it. I haven't heard/read Žižek's thoughts on whiteness but will have a look for them!
That’s an interesting way of looking at it. What would the alternative for white people be in order to overcome the “false humility” though? - to assert their identities also? Or would it be considered a privilege to be fascinated with ones “roots”.
The thing is that white culture and identity is so nirmalized, you practice it all the time and don't realize it.
A simple way to put it is that everyone has a race except white people.
Wonderful video
I listen to your vids while doing something else. There for I appreachiate your audial quotation mark. thx for that.
The more direct and serious tone fits the topic rly well.
AND IT'S SO WELL ARTICULATED AHHH
Good job!!
Thank you. Definitely felt like a big tonal shift after the last video!
And if you lived in China, being Chinese would be the norm. If you lived in India, being Indian would be the norm. If you lived in Kenya, being black would be the norm. It's almost as if that's true of all societies. Being woke has simply taught you that racism against whites is okay.
Except in the case of United States, the society has never been ethnically or racially homogenous, ever. Musical styles (Blues, Jazz, R&B, Rock'n'Roll, Ragtime) that are viewed as quintessentially American artforms developed from the contributions of black Americans. The histories of different ethnic groups are so intertwined in America that it could never be seen as ever being a culturally or racially homogenous society like China.
@@Ghost-eo6jb But there is a majority and it shouldn't surprise us that cultural reference points reflect that majority.
You could also say the same thing about other 'New World' countries. Imagine going to Haiti or Jamaica and complaining about 'blackness'.
@@Raptor302 The black population of Haiti and Jamaica are 95% and 92% respectively. Meanwhile 4 out of every 10 Americans is non-white. In the coming decades it will be 5 out of 10, then maybe even 6 out of 10.
The conversation about challenging whiteness as a default in America reflects the changing demographics of the country. There will come a time when white won't be the majority, and that time is coming relatively soon. The assumption that 'white is the majority, therefore it should be the default' will no longer make sense in an America where the demographics have and will continue to shift significantly away from a time where European immigration was constant and normal pre 1960.
@@Ghost-eo6jb Correct. Looking forward to a future where I can bitch about "Latino-privilege" instead of doing something constructive with my life.
@@Raptor302 Well. Just remember people can walk and chew gum at the same time lol.
Using just two words, "black" and "white", to categorize all the different people on the planet is just a bad way to never end the "race" debate; I prefer talking about ethnicities, countries and cultures, they are hundreds or thousands on Earth, defined by too factors (both individuals and collectives) so it's fundamental to not generalize, while all skin colors are just different, ranged shades of brown, and someone more or less dark/pale only means latitudinal origin
Funny how some comments seem to think he could cover every single fucking subject in one video. This is only about whiteness, not about white minorities in other countries or how whites can be oppressed too. This is a thorough analysis of a specific topic, not an overview on the world.
And keep in mind how hard it is to speak about this problem as a white person. Kudos man, you made the best out of it!
You've pretty much summed it up. Not sure why people seem to be expecting an analysis on anti-white racism in China on a video clearly targeting a Western audience. Maybe because that would make for more comfortable viewing?
Amazing, the anglophone's preoccupation with 'race'...
listen to Julius Malema (the black South African politician) - he's racist through & through
I am a person of colour and we casually hate ourselves 😂
Dr. Shela Mary Varghese , sorry to hear that, self hate unfortunately seems common among all people. Just know that you have undoubtedly enriched the lives of those around you, please know you've got a small measure of my affection for that.
If I may ask; why describe yourself as a person of colour? How do you consider that your skin tone intrinsically differentiates you from people outside that category in the region where you live? (I'm not trying to be rude, it is just something hard for me to imagine because I live in a rather homogenous place)
its not just the anglosphere its also starting to become more relevant in the german speaking nations in scandinavia and the benelux nations too unfortunately
@@seavpal The love Asia, or other non white spheres have for white skin would be as deep rooted as the beginning of Colonialism. The present culture adds 'halo effect' to the whiteness, whereby one can have better quality of life in everyday discourses, to being better loved and appreciated, filtered out from being worthy, using the same criteria of colour in many other instances. I too live in a homogeneous sphere, which practices colorism where the darker you stand on the spectrum, the different you experience the world around you. Thus, this becomes the habit of self hate.
From india to Africa, colorism is major problem, caused by past racism casteism and nowadays elite
I'm very interested to hear this
I'm white in a population of person that are other colors, i'm not reppresented in the local media, some members of my family were attacked because they were white, because they were different than the majority of the others. Members of my family have been accused of been racist because and only because they were white.
My point is not that white person can't be racist, they can. My point is that everybody can be racist and have privileges depending on a lot of factors in a lot of situations.
For my family, been white is not a privilege. So when somebody tells me i'm privileged because of the color of my skin i'm just confused, what do that person mean by that, what kind of privilege do i have in this situation because of my skin color
as i said, context matter. Being white in europe may be quite good, being white in Quatar i'm not so sure.
The better explanation is ingroup preference (aka "i prefer somebody that is alike more than someone that is not"). It is a far better explanation in my opinion. And it is not "race" bound (race in quote because i really dislike this term, i prefer ethnic group).
Been with your pairs is nearly always more confortable than with other persons. It explain why communities tend to form with people from the same background (origine, ethnicity, class, education, nationality etc). Studies shows that the simple fact to present to opposing views to two group then leting them talk about it and then say who they prefer right after that, the majority of people respond that they prefer people that were presented with the same fact 5 minutes ago more than the other group.
It is then not hard to understand that if a simple situation like that can create such a disparity then all kind of things can happen because two groups are not the same for whatever reason.
But it is deeply worrying to me that "races" are more and more categorised and recognized as something extremely important to someone's identity. Today people are increasingly judging people not by their character and actions but by their sexuality, gender, race etc. Putting them into more and more refined boxes, more and more divided from each others. This is not a good thing. Acknoledging differences is important, but defining people only by the things they can't change like skin color or sexuality is disturbing because i fear nothing good happen when you start putting people into little boxes.
Furthermore i think it is important to not repeat the errors of the past, "whiteness" is a negative word and isn't a synonym for white skin. People with a brown skin have been accused of being white. I do recall of some famous person fighting against racism and inegalities (Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela) they fought to be equal, not more than the person who persecuted them.
Back then being black/brown was a negative. When people start telling a race is bad is when the alarms should ring, and they should ring very loudly. Now being white is starting to be a negative, it is used negatively by activists and media at in increasing rate contrasting with the rise of positivity around being black (to make matter clear, i have no problem people being proud of who they are). To simplify, while in the past being white was good, and being black wasn't, now it is more and more the inverse. White bad, black good to caricature. While heroes of the past fought for the two being equally good, the trend is now to inverse the positions.
I urge people to rethink about what all that framing is about and how society is changing on those subjects. Gone are the days of universalism in the west, back to group identities defining more and more social relations.
I think some people are not fighting for equality, but for superiority of their own group. In a way it might be overcompensation for the inegalities that have existed. (some may still exist don't get me wrong, but fighting for revenge isn't how you acheive peace).
I would also like to point out that lot of things in this day and age are not or ill-defined, and depending on the person you ask a word can mean wildly different things. This video for exemple does not define whiteness at all even if it is the main subject of the piece. It might mean white skin for some, or totally something else which is a way to speedrun someone's way into problems when discussing a subject with another person. Precision matters a lot, clarity too.
Some people have a vested interest to convince others they are right, some of those will create ideological weapons to further their ideology. On the topic of whiteness there is Diangelo who wrote "White fragility", a book filled with anecdotes for proofs that conclude that all white people are racist, and if they say otherwise they demonstrate their white fragility showing that they are in fact racist. She is a sociologist and she claims that she can say that all white persons are racist because she is a sociologist (quite literally in fact). This is not an argument, because it is unfalsifiable, this is not science either for the same reason. Yet this person is now famous in certain circle and this argument is used. This is not to say that all sociologist do that, or that the concept of whiteness is meaningless (if defined), but some do. If an expert talk sometime it can be bullshit so be always on your gard.
If you want to discuss no problem of course, but i really ask you to not be aggressive toward anybody even if you disagree. It doesn't help anybody and can really hurt somebody.
Please do not take what i say personally, it is not the point. My goal is to warn of a problem that i see, if you disagree talk to me, don't insult me because i can be wrong like anybody. Also be charitable toward me if i made a mistake, if i worded something wrong or anything, my goal again wasn't to hurt somebody in the process of writting this comment.
English isn't my native tongue, i'm not bad with it but i can still say something really stupid without knowing it from time to time :)
This is probably one of the most nuanced discussions of these topics I've ever seen, great video.
No, its all regurgitated bullshit from bullshit artists like Robin Diangelo.
There are no white privileges in the modern world. Disproportionate outcomes are not proof of white privilege because for instance asians on average make more money that white people which shouldn't be possible if the white privilege hypothesis were correct.
Excellent content Tom and this is from an African descendant, who has put a lot of study and thought into this topic.
Kudos.
'African descendant' defo means white south african
@@unholylemonpledge9730 I have nothing against a South African simply because they happen to be white but I am "defo" not one of them. LOL
First part of the video was interesting for me as it provided a little bit of new perspective for me, but in the however u lost me completely. I appreciate that you are being considerate and respectful, and it would be great if people that look to argue in the comment section would be so too