$5,000 anti-racist dinner parties

[KLAMarine]

sundin13 said:

Jaicee said:

[1] I think we agree here.

[2] Okay, this represents a different definition of the term "system" than what I would mean by it. I mean I don't disagree with the substance of what you're saying here, but when I think of a general social system, I'm thinking of something that persistently governs society overall, not just one party or or a particular subset of a subset of Americans.

[3] Don't you see what you're doing here though? You're taking something very simple and concrete and trying to make something very complicated and subjective out of it because it is the only way to blame white people for hate crimes that don't involve them. That sort of thinking is the crux of critical race theory: it begins with the goal of finding a way of blaming white people for literally all of the worlds problems and proceeds to explain based upon this predetermined, simplistic conclusion. The conclusion is simple. The explanation from whence it proceeds, on the other hand, becomes so subjective and complex that it's nigh impossible to even comprehend.

[4] That's just a very dualistic, Marxian way of viewing life, IMO. The origin of the issue here is yes the need the problem of white racism in much of our policing and criminal justice system in this country. But the issue is clearly more than just its origin at this point. A gunman opportunistically gunning down a child or someone who pushes someone in front of a subway car is not 'criticizing the cops', they're committing a violent crime. The certain vacuum that has come in the wake of George Floyd's murder last year has taken on a life of its own and it has to be addressed to if we're serious about valuing black lives, frankly.

[2] Again, I find it hard to comprehend the idea that the literal lawmaking bodies in this country aren't considered by you to be something that "governs society overall", when that is literally their job, but I digress...

[3] First of all, I am not blaming white people for hate crimes (and I am certainly not blaming white people for "literally all of the worlds problems"). I am tracing the lineage of the ideas that inspire these crimes. I've laid this out several times in a way which, to me, seems pretty simple and intuitive and as of yet, you (or anyone else) hasn't really demonstrated that I have been out of line in my line of logic. I don't see what is so hard to understand that if someone acts on a white supremacist idea, we can point to the white supremacist origins of this idea as an important contributor regardless of the race of the individual who acted upon the idea. 

I have to say, of all people on this forum, I am surprised to see you raising such an issue with what I am saying, when at its core, it is virtually indistinguishable from feminist theory... I would very much like to have a conversation about what Feminism means to you at some point, but this likely isn't the place.

[4] We are clearly not speaking on the same terms here, so I'll outline the logic of the point I was making real quick:

-Cops take inappropriate action
-Individuals/groups call out this inappropriate action, bringing attention which reduces trust in police
-Victim of crime does not report to the police due to a lack of trust
-Individual who committed crime is not caught and is able to commit additional crime

I am not stating that an individual committing crime is a "criticism of the cops", I am saying that criticism of the cops like the rallies we saw last summer have led to a decrease in trust in police which should be seen as the fault of the police taking inappropriate action, not the fault of the people complaining about it. 

KLAMarine said:

"The term white supremacy is used in some academic studies of racial power to denote a system of structural or societal racism which privileges white people over others, regardless of the presence or the absence of racial hatred."

>One could just go with something more neutral like "systematic bias" or "racial bias" rather than racializing the terms and 'other' whites in the process...

This whole conversation is inherently racial. It is a conversation about how white power has created a system of white supremacy which favors whiteness over non-whiteness. You can't subtract the "white" from the conversation, without subtracting the conversation.

"You can't subtract the "white" from the conversation, without subtracting the conversation."

>I disagree.

"white power has created a system of white supremacy which favors whiteness over non-whiteness."

->

"racial power has created a system of racial supremacy which favors some races over others."

A positive here is you no longer 'other' whites in the first sentence. I hope you agree!