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goatAlmighty t1_jb67pdn wrote

Reply to comment by ScotchMalone in Explaining what's wrong with digital blackface by ADefiniteDescription

What you describe is the big elephant in the room nobody of these fools want to address. If we take their own rules and use them on everything then we could make an arguments like:

  • No non-european human being is allowed to play classical music from a few hundred years ago because it was invented there, not in Africa, not in Asia, not on the American continent.

  • Should people not originating from a certain continent be prohibited to wear clothes that were invented on another continent? What about the usage of computers, which weren't invented in Africa but in Europa and the USA, basically?

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Normal-Flower4437 t1_jb6cl1t wrote

In practice, I’ve found the rules usually end up becoming:

  1. There is a hierarchy of race, from most marginalized on top to least marginalized in bottom.

  2. Culture from most marginalized is best; culture from least marginalized is bad and ought to be replaced or allowed to die out.

  3. People from the top of the marginalization hierarchy have the right to participate in all genres and modes of expression. People from the bottom of the marginalization hierarchy must “stick to their own” while also acceding to all demands from point two.

  4. You can only borrow from below you in the marginalization hierarchy.

  5. Race trumps personal experience. A white person who grew up in poverty in a black neighborhood has no right to participate in hip hop or street slang; a black person who grew up in Brentwood has every right to adopt hip hop mannerisms and gangsta rap.

And so on.

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ScotchMalone t1_jb6jckq wrote

Interestingly I saw a video recently where a group of black men and one white guy were blindfolded and they were trying to ask questions to figure out who was the odd one out. Ironically they failed and it turned out the white guy had been adopted by a black woman and grew up in Compton (a predominantly black community) so he "identified" with a lot of the aspects of life even those on the panel viewed as "the black experience"

Of course that's not to dismiss the very real difficulties that many people face but it does show how malleable our sense of culture can be. I don't know what the answer is these questions should be but I find it difficult to believe that it's healthy for anyone's sense of self worth to focus on how marginalized they have been. Absolutely, recognize the difficulties you have experienced but seek to grow and overcome them through action and connecting with other people who can provide support.

Racism sucks but putting up barriers to meaningful conversation isn't going to make things better

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goatAlmighty t1_jb6gvpg wrote

That sounds about right. In any case, the very first point alone is basically racism. Any kind of opinion along the lines of "one race has more rights than another" is.

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Normal-Flower4437 t1_jb6htq9 wrote

I forgot to add “if we determine you look like or are associated with the least marginalized, you are the least marginalized. And Vice versa.”

Which is how my brown Morrocan Jewish friend became “white” in the eyes of his progressive coworkers for being Jewish. And how immigrant children of genocides got “white privilege.” And how a blonde-haired Palestinian became “brown”, but a Christian Arab from Syria became “white”.

It’s so fucking stupid. I even witnessed a movement to categorize black men as “white-adjacent” because so many black men were getting tired of the arbitrary rules and how often they’d get points for blackness but negative points for maleness. So a bunch of super-progressive WOC on TikTok, tired of men of their own race pushing back on the ideology, started on “men of color are white-adjacent due to their maleness.”

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goatAlmighty t1_jb6o8w4 wrote

That's wild.

The method they choose doesn't really matter though. As soon as somebodies' rights or their position in society are based on what race they are, that's racist by definition.

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