OK, but having European heritage is just having ancestors that lived in Europe. So what you're saying makes no sense.

If it weren't for the slave trade, there would still be black people, obviously. Why would you say something so clearly false?

Not in terms of our understanding of others. Who belongs to a group depends on whether we categorise them as a part of it. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Not at all. Who belongs to a group depends on the qualities of the person and the qualities composing the group. We can change labels for groups, and categorize more or less broadly, and change which words we use to refer to which groups, or decide to focus on some groups to the exclusion of others as more salient or important for categorization, but that affects nothing about whether someone belongs to a particular group or not.

So being white is being of European descent. But being white was invented to justify colonization and slavery. It therefore follows that being of European descent was invented to justify colonization and slavery.

Granted this seems to be what some people actually believe – but I'm just pointing out it's incoherent.

Except I wasn't talking about colors, obviously, but categories of people metonymically named on the basis of those colors, so this is irrelevant.

No, it meant being European. Being European meant you got to dominate, yes. But you're committing a fallacy. Notice that no one not from Europe becomes white in virtue of being a colonizer – and there have even been many colonizers over the years that were not white, if you can believe it.

Yes, it does. Ethnic identity is only our thoughts and words. If people, for example, thought of black people as white people, then within our categories they would be "white." — TheWillowOfDarkness

They would be "white?" Well, they would be black ex hypothesi, as you just said. We could use the word "white" to mean what we now mean by "black," sure. But that wouldn't make black people white. This is a use-mention confusion.

To say someone belongs within a category because of their skin (e.g. a white person has the identity of "white" and a black person has the identity of "black") is entirely a social construction — TheWillowOfDarkness

Not at all – there are different groups of people, and one of the outward signs of this is a different superficial experience, e.g. in skin tone.

Race and ethnicity are both categories or discourse — TheWillowOfDarkness

What does this even mean? Does it mean that we talk about them? Okay, yes we do. But that is a weird way of saying that.

Does it mean that ethnicity is literally somehow made out of words or constituted by discourse? Okay, it's obviously not. So why would you say it?

OK, but 'white' means roughly 'of European descent.' To be of European descent is not a social construct, nor is it somehow equivalent to evil ethical positions. To suggest that until a couple hundred years ago people were unaware of the fact that people from Europe were more closely related to each other than those on other continents (or that Scandinavians might be more closely related to Koreans than the French...?) is obviously crazy, as is the suggestion that skin color didn't form part of that understanding. FFS, the Edomites were singled out for their 'red' skin explicitly, and they were next door neighbors to the Judeans.

...Yes, the Portguguese and Ukranians are genetically related, not as closely as the Spanish and Portuguese, and more closely to each other than the Portuguese and Zulu. I don't get what is so hard about this.

And no I wouldn't say that about all Asians, because I never said there was a 'one ethnic group' or 'one race' per continent rule. It just so happens that a certain group of people were by and large established on a certain continent. That you would think that because there are other continents (the definition of 'continent' being arbitrary anyway) that have a larger ethnic diversity in them, whether because of size or whatever, this is somehow negated, this baffles me.

3). Does the science back this up? Are you sure that any given Scandinavia is more similar genetically to any Frenchman than a Korean? — Marchesk

OK, I legitimately can't tell. Are you serious?

Yes, there were many groups, which were more closely related to their neighbors than those farther away. This correlates with physical traits, the most obvious of which is skin tone.

If Europeans don't form a genetic group, how is it possible that genetic testing can trace your ancestry to its place of origin, including Europe?

Are you denying that people who originated from places closer on the globe have a greater genetic similarity to each other? If so, that's clearly absurd; but if not, I don't understand what you take yourself to be denying in distinguishing 'race' from 'ethnicity.'

Yes, by and large, European people have a common genetic ancestry in virtue of originating from the same continent. This does not mean that they are all the same, or that all Africans are the same, or anything like that.

So you're denying that people who descended from European ancestors are part of a group? What do you mean by 'racial group,' and how does that differ from 'ethnic group?'

Marchesk, please tell me where you begin to disagree:

1) There are different groups of people who originated in different parts of the world.
2) These groups of people, due to breeding with those close to them, have differing physical features that are easily recognizable.
3) These groups are all different from each other, but they are more different from those who originated yet farther away from them.
4) One's belonging to one of these groups has serious implications for the sort of identity politics one can engage in, in the Western World.

But there wouldn't be white, black , etc racial categories. Those were invented during the colonial era. There is no scientific evidence for a "white" race, anymore than there is for a "red" or "yellow" one. In fact, it's absurd on the face of it. Were Eskimos, Cherokee and tribes from the Amazon all part of one "redskin" race? Are Hindus "yellow"? Are Native Siberians? — Marchesk

What exactly do you think is absurd? That there are ethnic groups? I seriously don't know what you're trying to say here, nor how protesting that classifications of things can be made along different lines changes anything.

Anyway, science has disavowed the notion of race. There is one species of homo sapien consisting of many ethnic groups, none of which are white, black or brown, or any other color, although the amount of skin pigmentation, eye color, kinds of hair follicles, nose size, average height, etc all vary amongst them. — Marchesk

What are you even saying here? There is one race, but they vary along a ton of physical dimensions that has to do with where they come from. Okay, so how is that different from race? If you don't want to use the word 'race' for political reasons, whatever. But you're being incoherent right now. Would it make you feel more comfortable to say there are different ethnic groups? And that these vary in greater or lesser details roughly in correlation to their native homelands? But if you agree with that (and you would have to be delusional on an unbelievable scale not to), what exactly are you even arguing about?

A mystery regarding white people: if there's no such thing as them, how do they keep causing all the world's problems? How can everything be the fault of people who don't exist?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=453&v=s1SaD-gSZO4

Or another riddle: if there are no white people, how is it possible for white people to hate themselves so much?

Not at all. Identity politics is a driving force in modern Western politics, and is being exported to the rest of the world.

You are right that (white)Western liberal culture views people without identity. The "free" everyman who's distinctions don't matter is the defining idea of the classical liberalism our culture has grown out of. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Not quite. It views white people as without identity. Although the moderate right does evoke the 'colorblind' position.

The idea of being white, brown, black, red, or yellow stem from a belief of racial superiority and inferiority, — Marchesk

No, it stems from the fact that people come from different places and look different ways based on where they come from. There would still be white, black, etc. people whether or not this were used to attribute superiority or inferiority.

Nah. The idea of being white is the idea of roughly being from Europe ancestrally. It's true that that ancestry has been used to justify slavery and colonialism. But it makes no sense to conflate ethnic origins with an evil moral position. It's not that it's morally wrong to do so, it's just a category error.

This is just wrong. People were aware of ethnic differences since there have been ethnic differences, and had labels for them. Ancient literature mentions them in some detail. And they were aware that there were wider ethnic conglomerates that were more similar to each other than other ethnic conglomerates (and so in the Bible you have Samaritans versus Judeans, which are juxtaposed against the far more distant Kushites).

As for the 'no one is really white' thing, give me a break, that has to be disingenuous.

Slavery is a part of the history of black and white people. This does not mean that being white in itself was created as a result of, or is inherently tied to, that slavery. People were white before and after slavery, and being white isn't defined in terms of being evil.

Alright, I don't know why the topic went this direction, but I have to go to bed. Night.

Nah, you'd have different bodies even if no one talked about it.

You mean like how Northern Europeans look different than Southern Europeans? What about red head, freckled Irish people with their light skin? Are they more white than someone from Romania? — Marchesk

Yes, Europeans are different from each other, but they are more different from Africans.

This is seriously not hard to understand.

Because there are obvious differences, the most obvious of which is a clear difference in skin color? Isn't this a stupid question?

Your arguments seemed to suggest that people are mistaken for arguing racism only applies to white people. You have sympathy for the alt-right because, on some level, you think they are unjustly treated. Supposedly, we don't let them claim their homeland like any other ethnic group. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't think it's just or unjust. Again, I think it's reality.

A lot of the time (hopefully), it is. My point is that it's quite sometimes not. People laugh to assert hierarchy, to bask in a victory over an opponent. I'm saying that you seem to fall into this a lot-- where comedy is reduced to nothing more than upsetting the powerful. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Ultimately I think that comedy is not for upsetting the powerful because it gives the powerful too much center – the humor is for the one laughing as much as the object of laughter. If that object is 'the powerful,' then the powerful are the powers that be in a deeper cosmic sense, the archons or metaphorical rulers of the universe, given that humor is fundamentally disruptive of rule. But this disruption is far deeper than politics.

But it's obviously not a social construction. I mean, you understand that people who originate from different parts of the world look different, right? Do you really think that the fact Africans are darker than East Asians is socially constructed? I guess your eyeballs must be too?

It's a continuum obviously, but to deny the existence of groups because a continuum between them exists is the fallacy of Loki's Wager. Yes Europeans are made up of many ethnic groups, but each of these are more closely related than sub-Saharan African ethnic subgroups, and so on. There is obviously a large ethnic group of human beings with a certain skin tone living on a certain continent, not by coincidence.

See... that's political, not comedy. Supposedly, there is this grave double standard in how racism is treated. How unjust you cry. What could be funnier than seeing those people ignorant of racism against white people ground into the dust? — TheWillowOfDarkness

It's not unjust. It's reality, and I'm commenting on it.

No doubt, but that's to be expected here. "Comedy" is heavily tied into expressing political power. One laughs at the failure, stupidity, pain or inferiority of their opponents as rhetoric. You are (sometimes) laughing not because what you've seen is really funny, but because it hurts those who you disagree with. What could be better than taking down those ignorant students of Western hegemony? — TheWillowOfDarkness

I think that comedy is deeper than that, but okay.

This doesn't make much sense, considering white people were always white, and even now people are still German, Polish, etc. I mean, Europeans are an ethnic population. There's some serious metaphysical juju going on in trying to transmogrify your very genes into pure evil. But that seems to be the gist.

Couldn't you flip this and say the taboo on racial slurs is an expression of white racial security? — csalisbury

Yes, and I would agree with that. I think that white people exert a feeling of superiority in thinking that they have transcended culture and have a duty to bring the other mud people, still tied down to base tribalist sentiment, to their level. Hence the self-deprecating white insistence that they 'have no culture,' which simultaneously harms and exalts white people, hence why they make a sport out of how much they hate other white people, etc.

Imagine a subtly abusive husband who fucks with his wife in subtle ways but acts calm and in control while she launches insult after insult, and he remains respectful (especially when he's talking about her in public) — csalisbury

Agreed. There is a tendency for white people, mostly liberal white people, to treat minorities as animals and pets of various sorts, and to show 'solidarity' with them in condescending ways, by showing how they can take an insult like an adult while a minority can't and must be protected (and 'can't help but violently protest' and so on). This is all common knowledge.

I don't think it's as simple as the image, but it's also not as simple as whites under the heavy thumb of pc speech-policing. — csalisbury

It isn't – but poor white people, for example, are actually under the thumb in significant ways, whereas wealthy and educated white people use the thumb to throw poorer white people under the bus for various ingratiation strategies. Yes, it's all very complicated.

To think that there is only one unique race (white people) whose racial identity is defined entirely negatively in terms of oppression, requires a deep racialist ideology.

You can be an underdog in certain respects and not in others. The inability to understand this, except in terms of intersection of multiple demographics, is characteristic of modern social criticism. Anyway, the point was just that you said the video was funny because of its being flippant and cute with something unspeakable, but the unspeakability is what is important here.

Is not being allowed to attack someone symptomatic of being in a position of power over them?

I'm going to suggest that the reason you don't find it funny is that you are the overdog and hence feel threatened by it. *shrug*

This is not true: non-white people are allowed to say racist things in public. If you believe racism against whites isn't possible (note the racially charged ideology required to think this -- very deep), then it still holds for minorities saying racist things toward each other. The ban on racism applies only to white people. This is what I mean when I say your position is naive.

What's the non-naive understanding of white people and power? — csalisbury

I think a non-naive understanding would be that white people have a unique relation with racial guilt and masochism that makes them self-hating and resentful of the idea of working toward their own interests, and that there are a host of words and ideologies that can be employed against them at any time not only by other white people but anyone non-white to enforce this. This is something that non-white people of any stripe simply do not have to deal with.

On the world stage, things get even more complicated -- white people there have a unique status, implicitly or explicitly, that they are the only large ethnic group not entitled to a homeland, IMO. This is one of the talking points of the alt-right, and I don't think it's crazy, I think it's quite plain. It's another fact what one is to make of it.

If you like, csal, you are the underdog if you discover anything unspeakable, because if you weren't, your opinion would determine, implicitly or explicitly, what is unspeakable and what is not.

I think you are naive to suggest that white people are the ones in power, at least in the US. Yes there are correlations, but it's far more complicated than that, and they have certain things unique to being white that make them unable to say a vast host of things.

Wealth I can agree on. Wealth works anywhere. But if you're really rich, there is a sense in which you can say whatever you want.

If you are not the underdog, there is nothing unspeakable for you. Your thoughts go out of the radio, into your ears, and out your mouth again.

What this response ignores in my opinion is that being funny and being the underdog are deeply, deeply linked.

So is this funny?



I feel that this is an example of something on the verge of being too serious. But it's far more inventive than Pepe – although, to be fair, there was some amazingly creative Pepe stuff, especially around the time that Kek was first getting popular, and earlier in the poo-poo pee-pee and good boy points eras (look that stuff up if you want examples of the 'good' Pepe stuff).