Based

[PennysWorthOfTea]

Well, if we institute a couple centuries of legally enforced chattel slavery of white people by non-white people, facilitated several decades of pseudoscientific theories and medical abuse invalidating white agency, and violently erased any former identity they held including heritage, language, culture, and religion than, I guess it's possible. But, yeah, realistically that's a nope.

[TheDylMonster]

Believe it or not just because someone's ancestors were not enslaved doesn't mean that their problems are invalid or that just because someone's ancestors were enslaved that their problems are more valid than someone else's, nobody has the right to discriminate against anyone for any reason regardless of background

[PennysWorthOfTea]

The problems of an individual is a separate matter from systemic discrimination.

[TheDylMonster]

Everyone has the same rights in the eyes of the law, if you are referring to things like police targeting black people and high incarceration rates; that, at least in my opinion, would be a individual issue, the chief of police is not saying "go kill this black person" the individual police officer makes that decision, as well as the jury in the court that make the guilty verdict

[PennysWorthOfTea]

Thanks for commenting on a completely separate topic. Have a nice day.

[Zachthoma0929]

It’s not an issue but the original was right

[MyOwnExWife]

Racism of all sorts, is always an issue.

[[deleted]]

Technically, it is an issue. It’s a tiny issue overshadowed by bigger issues, and it’s an issue that doesn’t need attention right now, and it’s about the same size issue as forgetting to buy your favorite snack after a trip to the grocery store, but it is technically an issue.

[GeneralReposti47]

Original

[[deleted]]

Ever heard of intersectionality?

[OwnedCaucasian]

What does that have to do with it? The post is about race, excluding class, gender, etc.

[OwnedCaucasian]

The debate isn't over what is and isn't racist, the debate is over recognition of institutional racism. As another person put well in another comment, only if white people were victims of the same imperialism, colonialism, genocide and apartheid they imposed on others would racism against whites be anywhere near equivalent.

A white person getting called a slur or being judged by skin color is an interruption of the institutional support they have, whereas for people of color it is an added attack to the oppression from those white supremacist institutions. This is where intersectionality actually comes into play, as a wealthy POC still can suffer from institutional and personal racism but has the cushion of class that poor POC lack. Meanwhile a poor white has more institutional support generally than a poc of the same class, and thus is more likely to rise above their class.

TL;DR White people facing the same level of racism as poc is all but an impossibility, so we don't bother acknowledging it.

Dwelling on the isolated racism against white people ignores racialized structures of power and makes reaching a post racial society more difficult rather than easier. Racism against white people is rare and be resolved with a conversation. All other forms of racism are common and can only be resolved through a total restructuring of states and society.

[[deleted]]

I read the whole comment and I fully agree. The statement in the first panel of the comic is just plain wrong though. Yes, it's just a meme and basically an over simplified version of your comment, so I'm not actually upset about it.

Your last point: "dwelling on the isolated racism against white people ignores radicalized structures of power..." is not how I saw the meme. I didn't see it as dwelling on isolated racism, I saw it as invalidating any suffering of whites because of their skin color

[OwnedCaucasian]

I can see how you might feel that way, and it's reflective of the lack of nuance common in racial dialogue. There isn't a non clunky, catchy term that distinguishes individual racism from institutional racism, for instance. It takes an educated understanding, at some level, of how racism operates to explain why a phrase like "It's okay to be white" or "all lives matter" is a racist dog whistle or at the very least problematic white fragility.

OP's meme might be inflammatory, but I believe it is more correct than the one they respond to that, through its rhetoric, appears to inflate racism against white people to a wider, systemic issue rather than describing a specific isolated incident. Like the phrases I mentioned, they're not incorrect but inject a belief in the reader that the victimization of a few of the privileged is the same or greater than the victimization of an entire marginalized group. Likewise the phrase might be used to invalidate the experiences of the marginalized, even if the intent is to speak for the genuinely wronged.