5mo ago

“Black People Were Just Less Smart Back Then” -Grandma

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17967345

US Authoritarianism @lemmy.world

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False dichotomy is false. People are complicated.
If your moral certitude is so easily triggered that this purity test gets a "hell yeah." Then can you please pause to reflect?
My parents were on both sides of this. I am a very long distance from where they were. They taught me one thing, thought another.
Which does that make them?
- You can't use "certitude" and "triggered" in the same sentance, it makes you sound like you copy pasted random shit from a script online about how to counter argue anti racism.
  Homie, take a deep breath. This is a picture of civil rights protesters being attacked by explicit white supremacists. There's no false dichotomy here. The moderate whites didn't show up to attack civil rights protesters, or kill them, or set up bombs to kill anyone of color in KKK terrorist attacks. They stayed home, and clicked their tongues, possibly wagged a finger. There's no nuance here, you showed up to protest for civil rights, or you showed up to support white supremacy, or you stayed home.
  If you think that's ''moral certitude'' (seriously stop using words you don't understand, your embarrassing yourself) you're just a fucking idiot or a white supremacist.
  
  I'm not directly addressing the image. I'm addressing the text.
  The text says there are two choices and only one is possible for any individual as their legacy of thought.
  The picture is a defining moment in time. It catalyzed change. The legacy of thought that was passed to me was mixed...
  That said, can you help me understand how the text message embedded helps move the racial conversation forward? Or how its message is at least not harmful to engaging those who need help to see the flaws in their racial mindset?
  Because once I've demonized people, I don't communicate with them as well. I think that's fairly typical, really.
  Right now the post just looks like an empty virtue signal that helps people feel righteous while also erecting bigger walls.
  
  The text references the photo. How can you 'address it' without addressing the photo too?
  ... And then you address the photo anyways. It's almost like you're not even trying.
  
  I'm speaking to the text's message of a dichotomy. The image is context but it is not the entirely of the message.
  
  Well. If I take what your saying here out of all the context you included, then you're really not making sense are you?
- I'm growing increasingly skeptical of "people are complicated" being anything more than a method of shaming people for discussing certain subjects.
  We need to discuss groups of people and that inherently involves generalising their beliefs. Nobody is going to track down every single person in that photo and confirm the nuances of their racism just in case they thought it was the line for hot doughnuts, so the conversation people are having here becomes impossible.
  Your mother's specific views on black people don't matter to any conversation people are having in academic or social media circles. We're all perfectly aware that individuals have more complex opinions but we're not talking about individuals.
  But even more bizarrely, why do you think your mother's views are some kind of "gotcha"? She was racist when it came to you dating a black person, which she inherently attempted to hand down to you. For the purposes of this conversation, we absolutely know what group she belongs to. She's doesn't get a free pass just because she didn't have the whole set.
  
  Pointing out the fallacy in a post that weaponizes shaming is not shaming. I have not shamed.
  If you feel ashamed by my words, then my point is poorly made or this is another attempt to bring things away from understanding and dialogue and back to how to resume righteous feeling.
  We need effective persuasion. We need facts. We need discourse to change things.
  Saying 60ish years ago a person was on a side and ergo absolutely made only one line of thought their legacy is a false dichotomy. I was taught equality until, as an adult, my parents didn't like interracial dating.
  I used their holy book, reason, love. Not shame. Shame galvanizes and rarely leads its target to engage in open dialogue needed to move things.
  Some people deserve shame. But we, the left, are galvanizing wide swatches of the population against the very points we say we want to engage and spread. That means conversations we need to have, like CRB are getting rejected without even being heard in any meaningful way.
  Weaponized shame on a mass scale says more about feels than it does about maturity and getting our stated goals.
  And I suspect well over half the people driving these galvanizing mechanics are not the people CRB would most benefit. If you're a literal white crusader hell bent on dividing the world into the worthy and the enemy, I gotta wonder why.
  I want a world where the realities of the past are discussed frankly. I want it decades or centuries ago. If I can't have that, I want it now.
  How are we to have the conversation when our "enemies" galvanize enough to throw out the modest things that at least allowed toe holds? Does shame build dialogue?
  What is the goal of the original post really?
  Where were my parents in that picture? Silent. Absent. But not approving of the bullies. Not all the way aware of the shadows of their thoughts, but definitely sympathetic to those being bullied.
  Otherwise, let's divide the world into the blameless and allies. I'm 50, I'm not blameless. But I've been an ally. I read, I engage, I vote my awareness of history and obvious enduring issues.
  But I'm not blameless. Even the me that dated interracial, and married interracial had learning to do. Still do. Being righteous makes my own education less likely. How can I learn when I'm certain of my righteousness? I'm a fucking middle aged white dude. What do I know about living a black life? Even as a parent of biracial children I cannot attest to living a black life.
  I have no holy hill to stand upon. I have no conviction so superior I can feel justified in placing my feels in they way of progress. And feeling righteous will only get in the way of hearing the voices of the actually oppressed.
  I think that's happened enough. Virtue signaling whit folk (like me?) need to book up, read, educated ourselves beyond the facts. And we need to realize as we rightly become angered by history that that history still isn't about us - or if it is, it's more about other populations. And we need to leave enough space and humility for those to be heard.
  And to learn how to be effective allies.
  I'm not arguing against urgency. I'm questioning the efficacy of lumping people into a vast bucket scorned sinners. OP wasn't attempting to save or redeem those who were wrong.
  It sought righteous feeling as an endpoint.
  And fuck that noise. I want a more righteous reality. That's my goal. And I'd like it with urgency. And I don't care if I have to be humble and teachable along the way. Hell, that even sounds like a good idea.
  There are ways to have the conversations I'm sure you want. But a Pic that says a person much choose ONE and does so with the kind of conviction I usually see from a virtuous white person... I'm not sure that's how we do it.
  Ya follow?
  Race is nuanced. Why a variety of people in the black commimunity are uncomfortable with interracial dating... That's also nuanced. It's best not handled as a strict either/or because shit's complicated.
  And history matters. And the white disrespect of blacks throughout history may only run to the present in a new form. White folk aren't the story. The impact of white folk in history... That is.
  How we make inroads, that's a conversation worth having too.
  Can you tell me how Ops post helps?
  
  I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of shame in society, and yes there is a purpose. The goal is to ensure anyone still forming their opinion that these certain opinions are unacceptable in our society. It isn't to change people's minds who already have them made up.
  Shame is a useful tool, and saying it should never be employed is throwing away a tool that can shape the future to be better. Sure, we should also try to convince people to hold better opinions as well, but we aren't really don't that with this post, are we?
  
  I specifically said some people deserve shame. It's a lot of words and, tbf, if you didn't read them all (not an aspersion), I really wouldn't blame you (promise).
  Shame is useful as a way to divide a group. Sometimes that's justified. That doesn't mean that it's always done prudently.
  Not arguing against it. Arguing against its ubiquity.
  Overall, I'd prefer reasoned argument to innoculate against bad ideas but I dunno that's always viable.
  
  I think the white people in that image are not representatives of their race, they don’t represent all white people or white Americans. The person making the meme understands that, and many people who saw this image do so as well.
  The disgust people feel at the action of those people is not extended to any random white person. The disgust I feel when I look at that picture is only reserved for anyone who wants to maintain or promote regressive policies or actions. Humanitarian ideals extend to everyone, regardless of race.
  Edit: I think the “pick one” part of this meme you’re referring to is about picking humanity over tribalism, and not white vs black.
  And yes, people should be allowed a chance to self-actualize without the baggage of their grandparents past. I think that’s only fair. The thing about self actualization is that you don’t have the right to self actualize into someone who stomps over the self actualization of others.
- I am sorry, what’s your point? Can you elaborate?
  
  I was encouraged to read biographies of important black figures in US history. About Abraham Lincoln. Various different things that very naturally led me to see blacks as peers.
  Then i dated a black woman. Same person who was happy and strongly encouraged the books had strong negative reaction to dating.
  Which is the parent. The post says to pick **one. **
  It is not a nuanced or adult take on people. It is a reactionary purity test of an adolescent mind (regardless of OP's age).
  The same parent was both. OP does not allow that. But my mom was not purely one. Years of encouragement of specific reading wasn't an accident.
  Dichotomies. Brightnlines of either or... Are very often false choices that deceive the credulous or unskeptical.
  
  And the fallacy your employing in the false equivalence. Just because your parents had the benevolence to allow different colored people into their public places and history lessons doesn't mean they see them as equals.
  The definition of racism is the belief that one race is inherently better than another. Good enough to share spaces and history books but not to mix blood doesn't scream "we are all humans and equals".
  So it's not a far leap to assume that your parent only accepts other races as far as their society of context has gone.
  So it's not a huge leap to assume which side of the photo they would've been on if their society of context was the one from the photo.
  Obviously your parent would've been sitting at the table in defiance of that society's cultural norms, defending their personal beliefs
  ...right?
  
  These purity tests and shaming celebrations aren't helpful.
  They were never helpful when they were done to minorities. Effective for a time? Yes. But it galvanized.
  I don't need a galvanized enemy. I don't need one that believes nothing will ever be good enough because a past sin means forever being a sinner.
  We need discourse, persuasion and actual rhetoric.
  I'm not saying bad is good. I'm saying effective isn't the same as feeling righteous.
  My parents aren't who they were. But these tactics aren't what changed them.
  These tactics look like theyre far more about the feels than they are about changing things. And, no, I'm not defending gradualism. And my parents learned. But shame was never what did it.
  
  I'm not the right person to be arguing tactics with, that wasn't my point. I just pointed out a fallacy in your argument since you did so in theirs, in the spirit of equality.
  That being said I do think there's room for all kinds of relativism in our society, but I don't think you can apply relativism to racism. You either believe someone is a complete human just like yourself even if they happen to have more or less melanin - or you don't believe that. There is no halfway point.
  Now you can use your persuasion tactic of choice to walk people to that conclusion, but I believe that anything short of that is still racism and exclusion but with caveats.
  
  Either/Or thinking on race only gets so far. If a person thinks all acts can be objectively judged as racist, not racist, or not racially relevant... Then they'd be wrong.
  Because it's not just white folk that are complicated. It's everyone. And there are differences of opinion (and history) within communities.
  Some acts are overt. Some are obvious to the trained observer. And some... Will be met with varying reactions.
  Whether an act has racial implications at all, will also be in dispute.
  Believing in equality isn't the same as acting on it. Belief isn't the metric. Behavior is.
  My parents believed and taught equality. They "just" thought the races should be separate. That that was a racist attitude was lost on them until it was forced.
  I've had blind spots. I'll find more. We all have them.
  Listening, reading, searching our attitudes... Questioning why we did things how we did... This is how we keep momentum.
  White certanties of virtue isn't the progress people think it is.
  
  I think that when it comes to race there's only a binary possibility.
  Your parents held a belief that mixing races was wrong. What was at the root of that belief? Some races are inherently not good enough or clean enough for their family, children or grandchildren. That is the very definition of racism. Your parents were racists, just not on the level of a clan member. There can be varying degrees of racism, but you either hold racist beliefs or you don't.
  That's the crux of the argument here;
  I think that if you hold racist beliefs you are racist
  You think that a non-racist can hold racist beliefs.
  I would love to hear an argument that changes my mind but so far I haven't heard one.
  
  That's not my point. I am saying to a large degree science has shown that implicit bias is real. That unconscious biases show up among all groups, especially if given the right priming.
  And based on that, we all have times it shows up. Whether we know it or not. Whether we like it or not.
  This is not to drain the conversation of its relevance. It only enhances the urgency and importance of the conversations.
  But I'm not into this either/or because this is a gradient. Or if it's either/or then it's 99+% of the population failing the test. If that's the line, there's an honesty to it.
  And implicit bias, at its core, is based on belief. Even if transitory.
  
  if it's either/or then it's 99+% of the population failing the test. If that's the line, there's an honesty to it.
  I wouldn't go as far as 99+ but yes, many people have beliefs that put them in that boat. I wasn't even excluding you or I.
  
  Then I think we're fairly aligned and I respect your honesty.
  No dispute on whether I'll be ferreting out biases for the rest of my life. I just consider it mental hygiene.

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