Whiteness = Racism

[GTAVictor]

Bad Empanada made an excellent analysis video on how the concept of blackness and whiteness was invented to justify slavery.

Also, on a different shorter video discussing this, I commented that as a Pole, I do not like having to classify myself as "white" on census reports due to it being an umbrella term that was invented to justify slavery, and Slavic people never partook in the slave trade and were considered not white but "other" for a long time by the rest of Europe and the Nazis in particular.
I much prefer the term "European" broadly and "Slavic" specifically, because "white" clumps all of Europe together.

And one of the responses I got was professing neo-Nazi ideology about how non-whites have degraded Western society.
Figures 🤷

[RationalMinded]

The disingenuous concept of race is very well explored and explained in various videos on YouTube for free. Well worth looking into for anyone who cares about critical thinking.

[AnthonyAvon]

But every culture has arbitrary standards that separate them from the "other". I'm saying this because I have recently discovered factions of the left that do accept the concept of race and equate imperialism to whiteness and I find that troubling.

[thisfugginguy]

I completely agree and I think this is a very valuable way of putting these things. just wanna say that the title and phrase feels clickbaity and deliberately inflammatory, not that I think it's necessarily wrong when actually understanding what it means, but to the average white person seeing "whiteness = racism" is not going to make them want to be receptive. I feel like this was more of an issue in the early 2010s when people started talking about this stuff more, a lot of youtubers would say inflammatory things on purpose to get attention, it's definitely less common now but it's still not a good practice in my opinion. in my experience, the more accusatory/aggressive/shaming sounding you are, the less likely it is for somebody to actually listen. again I totally agree with everything said I just think that we should all try to make our phrases more palatable to the general public if we want them to actually understand what we mean

[andthatsshannii]

This doesn’t mean white people are racist. It means humans started grouping ethnicities together that wouldn’t otherwise consider themselves in any way related just to exclude certain ethnicities.

I mean, remember that Irish and Italian people weren’t always considered part of that in group. Also, it’s interesting that white-passing people with other ethnicities can be called black but not white. It’s literally an in group designed to exclude people.

[laceras]

This is a great take, I never thought of race being an invented form of opression, but Ive done very little to educate myself on the matter. Thank you for talking about this subject. Even the definition is not defined by skin color.

[ice]

When talking about race and then bringing in someone of a specific ethnic origin is an odd argument to make. Within this short, you could have also mentioned nationalism of what it means to be a citizen or a member of a population as shown with anti-Italian and anti-Irish sentiments in early 20th century America or with the term of "Americans" being applicable toward everyone living in North, Central, and South America.

Race does go beyond the genealogy and ethnic histories of someone as it's not meant to reflect rather than generalize (like with stereotypes when they're not harmful) or erase through, as you mentioned, the pseduoscience that used actual evolutionary biology and biological anthropology to justify its existence and conclusions between the late 16th century to the 20th century with the Eugenics movement.

By the way, you also have to discern race as a sociological category agaisnt racism, just as you would with class as a lifestyle and class as a sociological category/system. Hope you do better in the future.

[camelopardalis]

I don't understand the - *paraphrased*, and possibly incorrectly so - statement Luna makes in this context: "We Vietnamese don't have the same race as Japanese or Koreans."

What am I misunderstanding here?

[MadRedAlchemist]

Honest question, do non-white people prefer white people to refer to themselves as 'european' instead of 'white'?

If the goal is to abolish whiteness it feels like I should refer to myself as something other than 'white' and I heard BRG refer to white folk as Europeans on a few occasions

[galacticgamer]

Mans broke down when he said “black people at the bottom” I know his heart skipped a beat.

[andredeketeleastutecomplex]

At least in this regard, communism is far superior.

[DimitryCheniche]

So, you are talking about self identification, not about objectively existing races. It is not marxist materialistic approach.

[callmecalamity]

No it does not place white people at the top. Yes the terminology we give in terms of colors to people is based on a system of discrimination back then. Now its used as if a white or black person is the default label

[janislukjanskis]

sorry but You are wrong, racism is a hate crime not acknowleging racial differences is an ignorance