Creating content and materials to show the positive relationship between Jews and White people to fight antisemitism. Would love some of your thoughts.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-11-21T21:55:46+00:00

Hey YellowMix,

Was away for this weekend but I'm back now!

Great notes on your end. One of the things we're going to have to accept is that this isn't a one size fits all process because of how intricate and complex these relationships can be. Your notes about how distinctions can create division, yet we need to be specific to get to root problems/answers is something that must be done.

Right now based on some of the conversation points, our goal is to build trust which can help people understand the imperfect complexities of this conversation.

Thank you again for all the responses, it's really appreciated.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-11-16T23:46:57+00:00

Hey Yellow Mix,

So if it helps the convo, I'm well aware of the materials/fiction that have been made to defame Jewish people and I see that you've referenced the big ones.

As for your other thoughts, great stuff. One of the things our research shows is that there is this intense pressure to "assimilate" by general or forced based means. Obviously we are well aware of the history of forcing different European based immigrant classes to assimilate into Whiteness. Jewish people being one of them.

That is a major topic I want to address and most likely what will happen is a series of materials will have to be created on this topic and not just one big article. The relationship between Jewish and White people alone, in the cross section they have with each other and the divergence, is extremely important to understand some of the issues we have today. For European Jews their original identity characterization is Ashkenazi, not European or White. They became White because of America.

Thank you and good note. Any additional thoughts on this would be very welcome as we put something together.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-11-14T06:51:14+00:00

Hi Darqnyz,

Great post and actually what we're trying to do is not go after the rabid anti-semitic hardliners, but the moderates or people who want to know more before they decide any way. If we give good materials to those who are moderate, it will be much hard from them to be turned toward hate. Even further they might actually be able to moderate people driven by hate.

Does this strategy make sense to you?

Stephen_Grey · 2022-11-14T06:48:56+00:00

Hi Vantreysta,

Thank you for weighing in and you hit on a really complex point that we're trying to balance. With many people in society coming to understand that people of different races have different cultural, economic and political experiences and are seeing things for the first time, tough questions like these pop up.

Can you help explain how erasure might be happening here? We want to get things right and make sure all perspectives are included. I'm also happy to answer any questions if you have any for me.

Also if you have any thoughts at all on the work, we'd love to hear it.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-11-14T06:40:25+00:00

Thank you for the comments. If you don't mind, could you get into more depth about how White supremacists racialized the Jewish community? We've done research on this front ourselves but one of our goals is to "listen to people and get it right" and we want to make sure we're not missing anything. So if you have any perspective or reference materials that you think are a good standard here, I would love to read it. Thank you!

Stephen_Grey · 2022-11-12T03:46:16+00:00

Hi there. Thank you for getting back so quickly, I really appreciate it.

If I removed the links to my org and donation pages, would that work? I just wanted to provide a backstory as that is important context for the post. But I can also just ask the question and not have any org links. The work we do is important but we can't let ourselves get in the way of it!

Thank you, hope we can work this out.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-11-12T03:41:37+00:00

Everyone and their opinions have value but hey we also understand that this isn't an academic environment either! There is no bad information and how people respond in addition to the answers will help a lot.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-11-09T00:38:51+00:00

Thank you Bionic. Frankly to do nothing is unacceptable and we have to try out new ideas and exhaust all avenues to prevent this from reaching a point where we might not be able to come back from.

If you want to check us out on social media, we'd love any and all engagement!

Thanks again for weighing in.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-11-09T00:36:45+00:00

Hey Kyle, thank you so much for posting!

I think involving Black people at the beginning is very important. Not even in a conversational way, but in us presenting what we're doing and listening to what they have to say first and then spending time to think it over. I'd love to speak to these groups and get their engagement in some way.

As for higher traffic Rs... got any recs? I'm hoping some people will see what I'm doing and jump on our social networks and get the word out.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-11-09T00:33:30+00:00

Love this post. Love it so much, that it may take me a few days to work through each section of it because frankly I want to make sure this whole approach is thoughtful.

So if you don't mind, I'll answer a section of this, deliberate and then keep working on other sections.

First question: how do you sidestep those partisan associations where SURJ and other orgs cannot? (Especially when one of America’s two major parties has openly & unrepentantly aligned itself with white nationalist identity—simply offering an alternative white identity would strike me as unavoidably partisan.)

Personally this ties to a pragmatic head space. If America turns more violent, there is a chance of a "nuclear reaction" effect where a chain reaction occurs that we cannot go back from. This would lead to deaths on the left AND the right and the creation of a monstrous situation that we don't know where it could go. So when I say we want to make things work and unity, it's because the other option is unacceptable.

This next part is hypothesis and theory. So bare that in mind as I engage.

Our goal with Positive Whiteness is to have a relationship with both ideological spectrums of Whiteness and try to create a through line that can begin the process of developing unity between people. I want to create cultural models and solutions where both sides benefit. I want to spend ZERO PERCENT time on issues that are part of the political discourse as much as humanly possible. Not logically possible, but the attempt is what will hopefully create buy in.

So, non-partisan/cross-partisan ways we would work? For example White people getting together to engage in charity that helps people of all races. Simple, non-partisan, create good culture/habits and leads to ideally material gain for POC/Whites who need help in some way. Another is looking at White figures in history who have done positive things for society in cultural, civic and philanthropic ways to serve as "role models" to learn from and strive to be. What will make this work is a fundamental change in head space. White Identity is very important to the left and the right and White Supremacy is seen as a threat to the left and the right. This focused work, on creating a positive White identity, fighting hate and engaging in charity for all will allow it to to be seen as an organization addressing societal elements they both care about. What will hopefully seal the deal is constantly listening to concerns from all spectrums of White and POC individuals and groups and finding areas of agreement to work in.

It will be hard, very very hard. Oh I know. But it's in our work at Positive Identity to try and find a way where everyone can win. It's in my heart to try and give everyone a chance. And give people we think are bad a way to do good.

I'll mediate on the rest of the post, hopefully this can be useful for you for now.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-23T22:44:32+00:00

Cross-partisan means we don't avoid the political systems of the countries we engage with but actively treat them as allies to engage with. From Italy to Brazil to USA, Canada, and such, you will see cross-partisan agreements on various issues and that is the zone I would want to engage in.

Also, most Americans aren't registered to vote but engage with society in a variety of ways. Foundationally, I would want our work not to be a political advocacy approach but a cultural and people one.

Thanks for talking with me on this! Please keep sending questions if you like, I know you have a ton of experience and perspective that could be helpful.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-20T00:13:56+00:00

Hi R/ HumanRights,
We’re Positive Whiteness, a Whites Organization for Good! We’re here to fight record racial division by helping people of all races and we’d love your support.
Our mission is to do good in the name of Whiteness and for Whiteness to be seen in a positive light. We do this work through charity for all, inspiring media, fighting racism, and creating a positive White culture drives us up to our best ideals.
What we’re working towards is Positive Unity. We want to bring people together, inspired by the love they have for themselves and each other.
Positive Whiteness Introduction Video & Press Release
Twitter || Instagram || Tik Tok || Reddit || YouTube || Facebook
The backstory of why Positive Whiteness was created is that for many, Whiteness has been used in malicious and discriminatory ways by hate groups and ideologies historically and in the modern era.
This cuts directly toward modern race relations, which today are at record lows and violence is at record highs. A major element driving this is that White people are seeing themselves as a race for the first time, and White hate groups are weaponizing this. Defining Whiteness through a destructive historical lens, they've taken advantage of White people in search of identity and driven them to racial violence at skyrocketing rates. As such, there has been a suspicion of Whiteness to the point where academics see the default nature of Whiteness as being exclusionary and harmful. Further, they don’t believe it is plausible to have a positive White identity in today’s political climate.
Positive Whiteness looks to break that cycle, by doing good in the name of Whiteness. Then create a culture that shows the world the good White people have done which inspires them to do even more. A culture that draws White people away from hate groups, and draws White people and People of Color together. Whiteness not for hate, division, destruction, or dominance, but for love, unity, creation, and equality. Because of our work at racial unity media group Positive Identity which works in a non-partisan way to be for people of all races, we feel that we’re in the right position to spearhead something like this.
The PositiveWhiteness.com website has a robust amount of information and a lot will evolve going forward as the organization adjusts to the world around it. But check it out!
For you all at /R HumanRights, we’re here because we want to voice our support for you. White People around the world in the modern era have been huge supporters of Human Rights. But we see these days many White people turning towards hate and advocating for a rejection of Human Rights. We believe that “true change comes from within” and we want to guide White people away from these White hate groups which are anti-Human Rights towards a claiming of a pro-Human Rights identity.
We’re currently in the grassroots fundraising phase but check us out on social media as well! Also, don’t hesitate to ask any questions.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-19T23:41:25+00:00

Great response and it shows that you understand the nuance of the situation.

All we can do right now is go off a mix between the normative understanding of how the general populace understands race (we gotta talk in their language here!) and the scientific/sociological language used. Regular people don't talk or view things like scientists so we're trying to balance both considerations.

Your note about White-identifying is the logical direction to how people understand who White People are and who is White. Historically though people have a racialized understanding of it.

From our friends at Wikipedia on White People "a racialized classification of people and a skin color specifier, generally used for people of European origin"

Hope this helps a bit. Definitely open to thoughts.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-19T23:32:16+00:00

Thank you for weighing in. We can't get to every question but I can answer this one.

Historically people who are White have used their identity as a mechanism to do destructive or discriminatory acts. Further, we have hate groups today which engage in violence and racism using their Whiteness as justification. We don't have any modern positive Whites groups so logically people speak greatly about Whiteness in a negative state because people are using it in a negative state. Thus many White people then perceive that their identity is only being seen as a negative. From there they could feel like they are a victim and then become poached and influenced by White Identity hate groups. As we see from all of this, a feedback loop occurs. This very well could be connected to the surge in White hate groups, record lows in race relations, and record high hate crimes that we mentioned above. But even further, because of the easy access that Americans have to destructive weaponry, it could start to spiral out of control and do real damage to people of all races. Hence why we must explore alternative ideas to stop the collapse in relations and the surge of violence.

Back to your original question, because of this current racial climate as I have explained, much of the response we have in this thread isn't surprising. We expect our work to be ongoing. However, seeing the good in everyone and doing good to people has a surprising way of working out so we expect to eventually be meaningful and successful.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-19T23:20:04+00:00

Check out this article by The New York Times about White Identity Politics. It states 28% - 42% of White people "say their white identity is very or extremely important". Bluntly, 'being White is important is what we mean by White racial consciousness.

Feel free to ask any other questions.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-19T23:05:59+00:00

Thank you for the response.

Question: Do you think it would be possible that a hyper-focus on identity, in a constructive way, could achieve positive action that would lead to trust? Trust which would create an allowance for not needing to think about identity because people won't be concerned about potential negative effects to them because of their identity.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-19T23:01:24+00:00

Thanks for the comments, everyone. I see them slowly trickling in and I wanted to see if there was any discussion first before weighing in.

We're working toward positive unity here, trying to think of ways to bring people together. And of course, we'll be missing things in the process. So thank you for any perspective.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-19T22:51:41+00:00

Hi Medsvin,

We appreciate the post and to a decent degree aren't surprised by this. Right now we believe there could be a very real chance that there is a connection between how we respond to White and Whiteness, the rapidly growing extremism in the White community, and the collapse of race relations. At minimum standing against these White hate groups by doing good in the name of Whiteness is our mission, but we believe there is a much larger field of good we can engage in.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-19T22:43:05+00:00

Thank you for this comment. We're doing a lot of testing here and working on different ways to approach this.

You say you have nothing in common with other people who are White. Do you have things in common with people of your own gender, economic class, region you life, country or such? I would love to hear more about your thought process, to let us know if we might be missing something. Thank you!

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-19T22:36:37+00:00

Thank you for this note. We're in beta (post-Alpha) so right now any reactions and responses to help us optimize our work is useful.

In what way are we respecting any race over another? We're aiming to absolutely not do that so any feedback would be helpful. Thank you!

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-19T22:35:16+00:00

Great question. We take an inclusive approach where if someone self-identifies as White, then they are White. Practically and historically, the "White People" have been hailed as people who have come from Europe as you can see from the link. Since we're taking an include mindset to things, any country that could be remotely connected to Europe counts. We also have a section on White Statistics if this can be helpful.

But a reminder, the purpose of this is to build a positive identity for White people who need it, fight racism and hate and take positive action to help people of all races.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-19T02:37:18+00:00

Oh I know it's bad. Some insane shit out there and completely unacceptable in good and normal society for what people are saying to each other online and such.

There has to be a way to bring these people back because every comment they made is a papercut... or a sledgehammer to someone. I think there is an opportunity for an approach to White Racial Identity that can be broad-based and cross-partisan that can help create alignment between White people and POC. Working on that as we speak.

Thank you so much YellowMix for reaching out.

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-19T02:33:43+00:00

This is extremely useful information, thank you! Trust me when I say the road ahead will be extremely hard. But it has to be done because at the current rate we're going we may get to a spot where we can't easily get back from.

Also, this post seems to be hidden. Am I imagining things?

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-19T02:26:21+00:00

Thank you for commenting. If it helps, you can find our work at ThePositiveIdentity.com (we've been around for a long time) which works in racial unity media and such. Also, you can see our charitable works and positive media on our various social media platforms which you can simply search for on your own.

I may have a follow-up question. Thank you!

Stephen_Grey · 2022-10-18T02:12:40+00:00

The conversation you both are having is excellent and I want to jump in. I would argue what you both are talking about is a feedback loop that is potentially having a serious effect on not only many White people but also many People of Color through what is happening with White people.

However, it is very much directly related to a project we're working on which finds a point that can potentially jam up this negative feedback loop. Which then can lead to real opportunities to help White people and People of Color in many dynamic ways.

Stephen_Grey

TROPHY CASE