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Originally Posted by knight_shadow
Umm...What?
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This is a shame but I am glad people in this thread finally stopped bullshitting. LOL. Kevin is an illustration of privilege, racism, and the importance of changing high school and college history classes.
Whiteness does not rule the world (aside from power and privilege), white people were not doing the world a favor, and the white diaspora was not the first and only culture and civilization around the world. The TransAtlantic Slave Trade greatly tore apart cultures (different cultures and religions) but it did not completely remove cultures. The white diaspora did not introduce culture, religion, and civilization to ANYONE, not to the various Native American cultures, not to people of the African diaspora, not to people of the Asian diaspora, etc. Black Americans as a collective were stripped of native languages and other things, and introduced to cultural artifacts of the white diaspora and slavery. However, Blacks were not stripped of everything and there are "Black American/African American cultures" (
Kevin needs to research the hundreds of books, articles, professional organizations, social organizations, and public service organizations that are illustrations) that both survived in spite of, and are a result of, people of the African diaspora assimilating (in various extents) into whiteness. And those of us who interact with nonwhites in the USA and around the world know that there are far more similarities across the nonwhite disapora than differences--and those similarities are not all remnants of slavery. They are remnants of rich cultures, many of which have existed for centuries.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DeltaBetaBaby
If you want to compare blacks to the Irish (as did the poster to whom I was responding), you are an order of magnitude off.
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I think she was moreso declaring "my family didn't own slaves." You know, the cliche' phrase that whites have used for generations.
You are fully aware of this so the following is for the folks who are unfamiliar with this stuff (there is some interesting literature on the formation and social psychology of whiteness including work done by Roediger, Ignatiev, and even The Boston Phoenix's 1997 publication entitled "White Like Me"):
In the 1800s-1900s many Irish hated the idea of slavery and newly immigrated Irish were first considered "white ni**ers" when they first migrated to the United States of America. More specifically, ghettos were still identified through their true meaning (racially homogenous neighborhoods) and newly immigrated populations, including the Irish, tended to live in these neighborhoods until they were able to assimilate into whiteness and make enough money to live elsewhere. Blacks were referred to as "smoked Irish" and the Irish were referred to as "ni**ers turned inside out."
As with other white racial and ethnic groups (ethnic Jews are a more complex story), the Irish used social institutions and racism to prove that they were just like the other whites, should be able to assimilate into whiteness, and should have the resulting political and social privileges. Being Irish and Catholic continued to be one difficulty (as evidenced by labor market struggles, President John F. Kennedy and family, etc.) but the assimilation into whiteness occurred and the privileges that come with it.
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