how is literally every sentence in this more amazing than the last
“i never spoke to her but i tipped her a lot and then gave her a note saying i want to marry her out of nowhere” how are these guys surprised that no-one wants to fuck them
White Evangelical Christians opposed desegregation tooth and nail. Where pressed, they made cheap, cosmetic compromises, like Billy Graham’s concession to allow black worshipers at his crusades. Graham never made any difficult statements on race, never appeared on stage with his “black friend” Martin Luther King after 1957, and he never marched with King. When King delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech,” Graham responded with this passive-aggressive gem of Southern theology, “Only when Christ comes again will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.” For white Southern evangelicals, justice and compassion belong only to the dead.
“What today we call “evangelical Christianity,” is the product of centuries of conditioning, in which religious practices were adapted to nurture a slave economy. The calloused insensitivity of modern white evangelicals was shaped by the economic and cultural priorities that forged their theology over centuries.“
Anonymous submitted: This is a clip from Tim & Sid on Sportsnet and they are the only mainstream sports media guys I’ve seen be like ‘yep, it’s racism.’
idk anything about them but theyre the only hockey media men i trust now
Most white people, especially rural white people (I grew up in a town of 2000 in Ohio) don’t have any concrete culture, they don’t have a unique form of pottery, special wedding dresses, a musical style going back 500 years, special rituals and dances to celebrate things. They are completely reliant on corporate culture to provide them with a sense of identity and purpose, they don’t have Hanbok dresses or special flutes native to their peoples, they have Taco Bell, the Steelers, Applebees, deals on make-up at the dollar store, deal on shirts at TJ Maxx. They have thrown away culture for corporate capitalism, they are empty inside, a vacuity of soul, an emptiness that leads to narcissism and extreme justification in the face of all facts. They don’t want to admit, they are ‘hollow’ inside.
I don’t necessarily think this is untrue but I don’t know why the target has to be poor people in rural towns. At the very least it is definitely not “especially rural white people”
something really bothers me about this reduction of the notion of ‘culture’ to, like, specific artifacts that supposedly express the essence of some monolithic ethnos. ‘this pottery and these dances give me identity and purpose’ sounds more like the words of people clinging to a dying culture as it’s subsumed into the capitalist world-system than the way that culture works outside of that
like, it’s primarily in the retrospective view that these things take on the sort of meaning that i think is being attributed to them here. when you’re an archaeologist digging through successive layers of dirt, you say ‘each one of the cultures that lived here had its own distinct style of pottery’. but for all you know a person actually alive making one of those pots would have just said ‘this is a pot i made and it looks like all the other pots everyone else makes’. nothing distinct about it
there is a point to be made that white americans are primarily passive consumers of their own ‘culture’ rather than active participants in its reproduction, and that that’s probably a problem, but that would require acknowledging that (1) this is true of people in every capitalist country, even in those dark and mystical corners of the world where people still supposedly ‘have culture’, and (2) what’s represented as ‘real culture’ here, bitingly juxtaposed with a list of consumer goods, is in fact nothing more than a different list of consumer goods. hanbok dresses and special flutes can be mediated by capitalist commodity relations in the exact same way the steelers or dollar-store make-up are
Yeah this shit is a perfect example of an incredibly orientalist framework being masked as resistance to it. Non-white cultures spring from some primordial a historic “spirit” while white culture is grounded in a material history and power relations. If the person that wrote this were to attempt some sort of consistency they would be saying that no culture exists because all culture articles is embedded in history and societal relations (which make something “not-culture” because….?)
In some ways it was easier for my generation. Racism was blatant and obvious. The “Whites Only” signs let us know clearly, what we were up against. Not much has changed, but the system of lies and trickology is much more sophisticated. Today young people have to be highly informed and acutely analytical, or they will be swept up into a whirlpool of lies and deception.
Assata Shakur, Honey Magazine debut issue (1998)
My friend shared this quote with me today and I instantly remembered another great quote from Assata Shakur that I feel is crucial to be absorbed when reading the quote above “No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free”.
See this goes out to people who constantly think those of us in this generation are too sensitive or are always looking for racism when it’s just that we realize how tactics have changed…racism has never gone away they’ve just tried to change the face of the game…
Okay, friends, let’s talk about going to protests and weaponizing our whiteness, if in fact we are white.
You know what the protesters who marched with Dr. King wore? Their best. Their clergy stoles, their suits. If you’re a doctor or a nurse? Wear your scrubs. If you’re a parent? Wear your PTA shirt if it’s too hot for a suit. If you’re a student? Dress like you’re going to go volunteer somewhere nice, or wear a t-shirt that proclaims you a member of your high school band, your drama group, your church youth group. Whatever it is, make sure it’s right there with your white face.
This is literally the tactic of the people who marched with King in the 60s, and we need to bring it back, and bring it back HARD.
I do this all the time when I go to marches. I wear my cutest, least-offensive geeky t-shirt, crocs and black pants, or I wear my t-shirt that mentions my kid’s school district, or now I’ll wear the pink t-shirt that says I’m part of the Sisterhood at my shul. If it’s cold enough, I wear a cardigan and jeans and sit my ass in my wheelchair. (I need to anyway.) I put signs on my wheelchair that say things like ‘I love my trans daughter’ and ‘love for all trans children’ or something else that applies to the event. Dress like you are going to an interview if you can, or make yourself look like a parent going to pick up a gallon of milk at the corner store. Make yourself “respectable.” Use respectability politics and whiteness AS A WEAPON.
Fuck yes I will weaponize the fact that I look like a white soccer mom. And you should do this too if you can. Weaponize the fuck out of your whiteness. If you are disabled and comfortable with doing so, turn ableism on its head and weaponize it. Make it so that the cameras that WILL be pointed at you see your whiteness, see your status as a parent, see your status as a community member. See you in your wheelchair or with your cane. If you have privilege or a status that allows you to use it as a weapon or a shield, use it as a shield to defend others or a weapon to break through the bullshit.
This has a fair number of notes, so maybe it’s already been mentioned but …
The “Sunday Best” thing from the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s & 60s, or wearing markers of an assigned profession (e.g. scrubs) is an established tactic of social movements. They’re part of what Charles Tilly (one of the academic god father’s of social movement theory) called “WUNC” displays. WUNC can be broken down to:
worthiness: sober demeanor (!!!); neat clothing (!!!); presence of clergy, dignitaries, and mothers with children;
unity: matching badges, headbands, banners, or costumes (!!!); arching in ranks; singing and chanting;
numbers: headcounts, signatures on petitions, messages from constituents, filling streets;
commitment: braving bad weather; visible participation by the old and handicapped (!!!); resistance to repression; ostentatious sacrifice (!!!), subscription, and/or benefaction. (Tilly, 2004, pg. 4 – tumblr-style emphasis my own)
While I’m very much in support of anti-fascist protesting in whatever form it takes, especially when engaged in a counter-protest, one of the great tragedies of the American political climate right now is that we’ve really forgotten some of the biggest lessons of the Civil Rights Era. King didn’t trot out fresh-faced students, church women in big fancy hats, or the elderly and disabled without knowing what he was doing. He (and the other members of his affiliated organizations) knew that if the police were photographed using violent repression against a mother holding her child, or a student in slacks, a cardigan, and Buddy Holly glasses, it would go over very differently than if they were photographed beating up “unruly thugs”. Their presence alone would be notable to people locally, especially in the heat of the south. But so would photographs of repressive violence against “nice people” that would then get picked up by the national media, and maybe in markets that were more sensitive to racial oppression.
[And like, there are other factors as well. People also sometimes think the Civil Rights Era erupted spontaneously from Jim Crowe and segregation in the South, and those are giant factors (”depravation” and “grievance”, in jargon), but there were also legislative things and court rulings brewing since the 1920s (the NAACP had been trying Civil Rights cases, and looking for test cases over the years), and the Cold War meant that America needed to appear to be the perfect image of opportunity and equality (together these things manifest as an “opportunity structure”. again, jargon). Not to get to down on protest as its own thing, but the structuralists do have a bit of a point.]
… There are other types of anti-fascist counter-protesting that have developed in various ways through the years. And like, a big thing in social movement theory overall is that while there are common tactics (”protest repertoires” in jargon), historical contexts matter a lot and some groups will have to do more dramatic performances of the WUNC to get attention. There’s also the move revolutionary antifa-type riot mentality. I’m not gonna call that one wrong either, mind, but since the Civil Rights Movement was brought up, it should be noted that those two forms of protest differed intentionally.
Anyway, as someone turning in a dissertation on this in a couple of days, here’s some drive-by political-sociology. If you want to learn more about the research behind processes of social movements, where they succeeded, and where they failed, I totally recommend checking out:
Charles Tilly (2004) Social Movements 1768-2008,
Sidney Tarrow (2011) Strangers at the Gates: Movements and States in Contentious Politics,
Sidney Tarrow (1998) Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics,
Frances Fox Piven & Richard A. Cloward (1988) Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed and How They Fail, (this is on the Civil Rights Era protests and the somewhat fraught legislative follow-up exactly)
McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly (2001) The Dynamics of Contention
(McAdam has a quite well-regarded book on the Civil Rights Era specifically. I haven’t read it personally as it relates less to my regional context. However like, that’s worth noting and looking into. Also all of these are stodgey academic texts, but they’re not uncommon in university libraries, or even in some bookstores. They’re also all a bit old now and shouldn’t cost you a ton online.)
As a note – My point here isn’t to descend from the Ivory Tower of Academia and say “you people on the streets are doing this wrong!!1!”. Theory doesn’t always match up with Practice, and as noted by pretty much every notable theorist anyway… Context matters a TON. Not all movements will be able to use the same practices or performances. Sometimes their inaccessible, sometimes they just don’t have the cross-context appeal. It’s about experimentation and finding opportunity. To be clear, this isn’t about me telling folks how it should be done. Still, I think it’s worth sharing information when it’s available, especially if people who might not know are trying to draw specific links to historical cases. Social movement theorists have pretty much all agreed that WUNC displays (along with other factors like media diffusion) are super duper important and can be recognized in movements across historical contexts. I think it’s worth it for younger activists who might be looking for protest repertoires that work for their movement as it’s developing to take heed of the successes and failures of the past. Especially since a lot of it is either a) so much a part of history and culture that it doesn’t really get examined for its constituent bits, or b) has been mythologized to the point that it’s hard to look for really good popular historical information on its technical processes.
(If people have questions, feel free to DM me. I might be a little slow the next couple of days as I finish up proof-reading and checking all my citations but yeah. Let’s share knowledge and smash the fash.)
The Nazis of 2017 gained the ground they have with articles about how they were “dapper.” That was a political choice, and it worked. It snowed a lot of gullible goyim. People refused for almost a year to call “the alt-right” Nazis because they looked “like average white people.”
Nazis see their whiteness as a weapon already. Get yours out there and show them – they will never sway everyone. “If you have privilege or a status that allows you to use it as a weapon or a shield, use it as a shield to defend others or a weapon to break through the bullshit.”
Not someone who typically adds to an already long post, but I have done the whole dressing dapper af thing and it WORKS. A few years ago there was this big city council vote about an anti-discrimination ordinance that was going to be passed in my relatively progressive, but still very southern hometown. There were huge protests on both sides, both for and against the ordinance, with each side wearing a specific color (red was for, purple against) to show which side they supported. Most of the people against the ordinance were bussed in by hyper conservative churches and many didn’t even live in the town. It was a lot of old people and many of them wore nice clothing. I knew this would probably be the case, so I, being a southern girl at heart and knowing how these people work, broke out my crinoline and nicest red dress and perfect white gloves. I curled my hair and put on makeup and I showed my ass up to the protest. Made a point to be the picture of a perfect southern belle. And it threw the bigoted assholes for a serious loop. It was like they were short circuiting or something. They kept telling me how I reminded them of someone from their church or how pretty I looked and “how would a nice girl like you like a big cross dressing man in the ladies room???” which of course allowed me to explain, ever so nicely, that they were being bigoted assholes. And they Did Not Like that, because I was forcing them to look in the mirror, at someone who looks like them/someone they claim to be “protecting” and question their motives and beliefs. Seriously guys, it fucking works. Weaponize the fact that you look like the oppressor and throw it in their faces.
To be quite honest, I do not think WUNC would work in current climate. In Poland, only violent protestors are ever listened to, and nonviolent ones are being accused of the most horrible crimes, even when they are nurses on hunger strike. And please bear in mind that in America government has much more social consent to use violence (in democratic Europe, it has zero). Plus nowadays the government is explicitly on the side of the nazi, and the nazi do not care how you look or behave, as for them you are a rat in a tuxedo.
Yeah, I would imagine it definitely depends a lot on those types of things.
In the US, there’s still a lot of lingering influence from the Puritans, so the general public tends to be really focused on how you look, on whether you “look” like a worthy and good person to them or not.
The Puritans had this idea that if you were privileged/rich, or if you had a good life in general, it meant you were a good person. Because it meant that God was rewarding you for being a good person. And therefore, if you’re oppressed, it’s because you’re secretly bad/unworthy.
So there’s this centuries-long culture of basically retconning people who have bad experiences, trying to find a reason to blame them. Basically so that you can pretend whatever happened to them would never happen to you. Victim-blaming.
Plus, the US is ridiculously large, thanks to our bullshit colonialism and genocide. Which makes it really difficult to govern. And the focus on states being able to mostly govern themselves also takes some power away from the federal government.
So even though we have a system of government, in a lot of ways public opinion is just as powerful as the government is. If the media sees a large force of “good” people speaking out against Nazis, (who are by definition “bad” people, except they tricked the media into treating them well for a while by dressing “good”), then the media jumps on board and starts telling everybody that there are bad terrible Nazis around. And that Good Americans are fighting them.
And then politicians either lose political power by ignoring that, or gain it by going along with public opinion.
I mean, that’s a simplistic explanation. The current administration doesn’t care what people think, because the current “President” is not a politician. But when public opinion is against everything he does, the politicians in his party stop supporting him enough to pass the kinds of legislation he wants.
TL;DR: around here, violent protesters are immediately seen as Bad, and therefore their positions must be Wrong. (Which is a big part of why the police does use violence against protesters. Because the public will immediately assume that they would only have used violence against Bad and Wrong Violent People.)
If you can make it look like it would be really, really dishonorable to use violence against you, because you are so clearly Good, because you have a suit and tie on or some shit, then the government/police can’t use violence without looking like THEY’RE Bad and therefore Wrong.
I know resources like this are often not directed towards poor white people (especially significantly disabled people, who are excluded from most of the advice here by default), but things like this are what we need more discussions of, not hearing the five millionth excuse for poor white people denying their white privilege and being racists.
And I know I often have complicated feelings about my own identity and racial ancestry but I could use resources like that too, because socially I am benefiting from systemic racism against others, including those of my own family who didn’t move towards white assimilation as much (this shit can be complicated for people with mixed ancestry).
But there’s so little of that discussion, particularly if you’re like me and you’re too disabled to do most standard “activist” stuff. I know articles like this one exist, but they are few and far between.
We do need to be discussing what we can do to work towards real and substantial racial justice, reparations, reconciliation, decolonizing, etc. instead of trying to excuse ourselves and others for our roles in this system. And I know I’m not perfect on this front myself and that we have a long way to go in trying to build this, and I often don’t know what my role could be based on where I am now, but if we never even start trying we’ll never get anywhere better.
boosting this because it’s important
this is wonderful.
it’s something i’ve wanted for the longest time. i’ve been afraid to even ask, “is there anything a white person can do to help, though” because just phrasing the question sounds entitled. but the fact is, there’s a huge resource of people who want to help in the fight against racism, not out of ‘white guilt’ but because human beings are basically cooperative by nature. i’ve wanted to say, “use us! give us a to-do list!” because all i ever saw was don’ts, and some of them conflicting – like whether or not to go to BLM protests, for instance. i saw people being scathing about the women’s march on washington because “oh yeah white people will turn out in pink hats but where are they when cops shoot kids” and i’ve seen people being scathing about whites showing up to BLM marches “like they expect a cookie.” that doesn’t exactly give a person confidence as to what action would be helpful, you know?
i’m not assuming this site is definitive or that everyone agrees about the actions listed. but it’s early days yet. what makes it a !!! moment for me is just that actions are being listed at all.
yes, i will do as many of these things as i can do. thank you. i’m in.
just moving along like everyone else 