I received the following question by email:
I want to go over some of the thoughts that I am having regarding some of the racist material on our websites. In an article titled, “Being a True White Ally Against Racism,” the first line after the introduction is, “Let’s be honest: many white people don’t understand how long racism has been around or how pervasive it continues to be.” While there are a lot of different racist remarks, this one has been rattling around in my head for the past few weeks. To people like you and me who are not indoctrinated into the Woke ideology, this is obviously racist because white people experience racism all the time under our definition (prejudice based on race). But, speaking to someone who believes racism is “prejudice plus power,” the explanation I just gave does not debunk the statement about white people not knowing about racism.
My first inclination was to use a historical argument. I think it can be assumed that racism brought to its most extreme will end with either slavery or genocide. “The term slave has its origins in the word Slav. The Slavs, who inhabited a large part of Eastern Europe, were taken as slaves by the Muslims of Spain during the ninth century AD.” This may do the trick since 900 AD is far before European colonization, but, it is likely a respondent would claim majority of white people do not know this or slavery existed before 900 AD, so it does not disprove the statement.
My second idea was to use their own ideology. All stereotypes, positive or negative are racist. By their logic, assuming white people do not understand racism opens the door to negative stereotypes. It also implies white people cannot or are not victims of racism, making any white person who has been attacked because of their race “lesser.”
I believe an argument can be made that white people can be victims of racism even using the Woke definition, because power is purely based upon framing, and situations like the BLM kidnapping show that, if we frame power around a given interaction, black people can be racist towards white people.
The last idea I had was to use the company structure. There are offices all around the world, and the most prominent one outside of the US being in India. The people in the India offices are not contractors, they are full time employees, just like everyone hired state-side. Obviously, India is majority non-white, so if they want to claim white privilege exists there as well, they would have to tie it to colonialism or people of color inherently believe white people are superior, but either way, that would be dangerously close to overt white-supremacist rhetoric. Anyways, India has a racism problem as well (I think most places do, but I also think it is blown out of proportion here in the US), so why is there nothing about race relations in India? By their definition (“prejudice plus power”), the non-white majority of India can be racist, so either they neglected to do so, which by their definitions is also racist, or their ideology is internally inconsistent, and having any examples of non-white people being racist would cause an inward collapse.
My reply:
You might find some success with the approaches you’re thinking of, depending on whose ears they land upon, but I don’t think you’ll win much ground with them. They certainly won’t convince anyone well-steeped in the Woke ideology. That’s now how these people think about the issue, and they’ll just point to your arguments as another example of you not really understanding how racism works. You’ll be hoisted by your own petard. The only way for you to get around this is to demonstrate that you do know how racism works, on their terms, and that you reject it for good reasons, which is almost impossible when you’re going up against a large group of people who think the opposite way.
Still, you have to understand “racism” like they do to try to do anything. The Woke use a very particular, very narrow definition of “racism” that has a very expansive application because it is believed to be “systemic” and thus applicable to and a part of everything. This extremely broad and expansive application of the term “racism” belies just how peculiar and restrictive the actual definition is.
The way they see “racism” is that it was something that was invented by early (pre)-scientific discussions of race and (genetic) heritability in the European context in the 15th–17th centuries, which were then amplified in the 18th and 19th centuries to justify the enslavement of black Africans and colonial conquests that Europeans were doing all over the world at the time. They believe, not wholly wrongly, that white Europeans invented the modern idea of “race” as an inheritable status and tied it to social standing so they could use it to conquer and enslave while providing themselves with access to society that they intentionally excluded all others from having. The trouble is, historically, this is mostly true. Some of the details are a bit messed up, like believing that “science” in the 16th century is roughly the same thing as science now and that most people think of race the same way in terms of the social-standing arguments as they did centuries ago, but the origin story they give is largely correct if you neglect the relevance of the evolution of human thought over the last several hundred years. They believe this system to be utterly pervasive throughout every possible aspect of every contemporary society that has been in any way influenced by any Western thought, and this is a huge problem (called “white supremacy” or “colonialism,” depending on the activist making a ruckus about it).
This brings us to a first important point. Because they only think in terms of this particular way of thinking about race, what happened in other contexts in the past, like the Muslim enslavement of the Slavs, or what happens outside of the West, as in India, cannot be understood as “racism” (or even racially-motivated behavior). This is because “race” and “racism” specifically refer to a system of domination tied to white people granting themselves superiority and all others having inferiority as described above. It doesn’t mean anything else, and that’s the heart of “prejudice plus power” definition they make so much noise about. The “power” part is the power white people gave themselves a few centuries ago and, in many—but not all—cases, fought tooth and nail to maintain until relatively recently in our history. Thus, Indians can be prejudiced toward each other and might even have their own systems of power, but they fall outside of the system of power in which “racism” is defined. Same goes for the Muslims enslaving the Slavs. The system of power isn’t the white, Western one and thus is inscrutable from their perspective. (It would be a culturally chauvinistic act to try to analyze other cultures because of the cultural relativism at the heart of the Woke worldview.) It could be theorized somehow, one must suppose, but not as “racism,” which was a white, Western invention (in their eyes). (This seems like a weird semantic game because it is one.)
Now we can make a little headway toward charting a useful reply, though. The confusion itself tells us something: that we don’t think about racism this way anymore. It took centuries of work in liberalism—seeing universal humanity, treating people as individuals, gathering better information through science and ethics, and persuading people to understand these improvements on their own terms through education and public appeal—to break that meaning down and replace it with the one we’re more familiar with today: holding some races up as superior or others down as inferior, or taking intentional actions that are in accordance with such beliefs. The “prejudice + power” reformulation by the Woke is an attempt to try to resurrect the old view, probably because things in society got too equal to continue using the more sensible liberal view and keep making radical gains.
But let’s back up and let something sink in. Their definition of “racism” is only that which white people set up in the 15th century going forward to justify slavery and colonialism by defining a white race that got the privileges of society and all the other races as inferior. That, and its legacy that remains today. Anything else, in the Woke worldview, is not “racism.” It might be bad; it might be prejudice; it might be discrimination; but it’s not “racism.” Yet again, in the Woke way of thinking, then, it’s considered a form of (white, Western) cultural chauvinism to call the racism that Indian people believe and do to each other by the term “racism,” or to believe that “racism” can be reversed and put back against white people, either by other racial groups gaining the effective power or by taking white people out of the white-majority or Western context and rendering them the minority.
So black people in a particular context—like a group of them kidnapping a lone white person—might be using race as a reason to act badly against a white person but, because that one relevant “system of power” is not in play, it wouldn’t be viewed by the Woke as “racism.” It just doesn’t meet their very peculiar and narrow definition of “racism” because that’s not the relevant “power” in the “system of power” that they demand be in operation. (This is the kind of argument that can only be maintained in the deepest confusion or by lying outright, by the way.) Even in India, the relevant power dynamic is held to be the one that white Europeans set up for themselves in the 15th century and since, and its influences by colonialism, and the way it applies to the Indian region now. No other power is the relevant system of power under consideration. (If you notice this is a form of white, Western chauvinism, that’s because it is one.)
Practically speaking, that means anything you do to try to argue against the Woke understanding of “racism” in terms that normal people today actually understand to characterize racism falls into their trap. They’ve set you up to be able to say you don’t understand racism—and then insinuate or state that it’s because you’re white. This last extra accusation follows, for them, because part of the definition of that system of racism is the internalization by white people that white dominance is normal and natural, and thus white people are unable to understand that “the system” even exists at all. More than that, they “don’t know and don’t want to know.” Again, this was probably (mostly) true 100 years ago, but it hasn’t been legally true in at least 50 years and hasn’t had almost any cultural influence in at least 30 years.
This is also why the Woke would tell you that you thinking “it’s racist to say white people can’t understand racism” shows that you don’t understand “racism,” as they mean it. In the Woke worldview, it’s the default state of affairs that white people can’t understand “racism” and that white people are in a dominant social position they created for themselves with regard to race. That means that, for them, thinking there can be “racism” against white people proves you don’t understand “racism” (probably because you’re white). The only understanding they can comprehend is that “racism” is a social and political fiction created by white people specifically for oppressing other races.
The Woke definition of “white” explicitly says this: “white,” in the Woke definition, is a racial category created by Europeans with white skin specifically to grant themselves social privilege and a position of social dominance over people with other skin tones. They named as a privilege of “whiteness” the ability to decide who is and who is not “white,” and thus who is and is not invited to share in the privileges of full membership in society. Then they naturalized this for themselves through many arguments appealing to early and incorrect “scientific” explanations that are now seen as pseudoscience and ethical arguments that have been rejected as unethical for decades, or in some cases, over a century. This, though, is also why they say that “whiteness” intrinsically contains “anti-blackness,” because whereas lighter “brown” skin-tones could be included as “white” (as with Italians and other Mediterraneans), black, by definition, can’t be made “white.” This is a duplicitous way for them to think about the issue because they also say that “whiteness” most relevantly not a feature of one’s birth but a kind of social property that could, in effect, be extended to anyone regardless of their race—and they know they’re playing both sides of the ball on this one.
To wrap up, any strategy you might take up for combating these ideas has to come from a position that shows you understand that “racism,” as they define it, is, and only is, a political creation by white people to advance their own interests and oppress other races in the advancement of their own interests. That’s what they mean by “racism,” and that’s what they believe white people can’t understand.
(You’ll notice I’ve proved them wrong in this right here and now, so the counterargument would be that it’s only truly comprehensible by lived experience—what racism is like to live with—which is, as you indicated, something white people often do experience in discrimination and prejudice, not least now under Woke terms, but also especially when leaving majority-white contexts, just like everyone else would in parallel situations. This then forces them to say that’s not “racism” being experienced, because they mean “racism” on their own definition, which white people can’t experience by their definition. This stance is what it seems as well, a demand that we all just have to take their word for it, which we all recognize as a terrible basis for making any kind of real-world decision with consequences that other people have to live with. And that’s the thing: people can believe whatever they want about racism, but if we’re going to set policy by it that effects everyone, we all have to understand the terms and have access to the basis for understanding them so that we can agree to them. Anything else is a form of gnostic totalitarianism.)
The way you challenge that, once you show you’ve understood it, is to point out that all of the meaningful progress on fighting racism has rejected, not embraced, this antiquated view and moved racism away from being considered a systemic property and toward being a matter of individual conscience, belief, and action. That is, racism was moved away from something that is (as a system) or that people are (as people) to something that people believe or do (and thus could reject or refrain from doing), and this specific change in understanding the concept is what allowed us to reduce its influence and what can allow us to minimize it going further, if not eradicate it entirely. Thus, you can demonstrate you understand and reject their understanding of racism and assert your own because it has more reason and better ethics behind it. You won’t convince the fully Woke, who will just retreat into their own appeals to “lived experience,” but pretty much everyone else will be impressed and see that it’s not you who doesn’t understand what’s going on.
36 comments
I think racism has existed ever since one human being looked at another human being from a different part of the world and decided they could treat them badly because they didn’t like the way they looked.
THOUGHTS ON THIS ?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-neither-globalization-nor-nationalism-work-more-johnston-md-1c/
This was a very brilliant explication that I’m going to reread many times. Thank you James, or, I feel like saying, Dr. Lindsay, for your passionate efforts in clarifying all of of this. For those of us who don’t have the time or intellect (me) to do the research, the torrent of wokeist thought is more something we FEEL is wrong than can explain is wrong. It’s so damn gnarled and dense. We can’t find the words to extricate ourselves from all the traps we know are there. You’re providing serious machete power!
Racists are people who judge themselves and others by skin color or race. They often project their racism upon people who dont give two shits what color they or others are.
The woke definition of racism doesn’t work for me. Coming from the point of view of someone working in a helping profession, usually in a healthcare setting, the patient in a Dr.-patient or healthcare provider-patient relationship is always the one without power no matter what race he or she is. We are trained to be cognizant of the fact that the people we care for are vulnerable and special care must be taken to respect their Patient’s Rights. There are also many other examples of situations with inherent power imbalances that exist irrespective of race. (Military Officer/Enlisted Soldier, Parent/Child, Teacher/Pupil, etc.)
India doesn’t have racism. It has ‘inter-communal’ conflict.
Fixed that for you.
“For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” – Galatians 3:27-8
“there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all,…” – Colossians 3:11
Christians had this figured out a long time ago.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” – John 3:16
Like I told a girl who was picking on another girl at Bible club, “Don’t be mean to someone the Lord loves enough to die on the cross for.”
If you think White People have trouble understanding something, you just might be the racist. I know exactly what racism is, and your attempts to redefine racism into something else are obvious attempts to change the meaning of a word for fun and profit.
This entire ‘woke’ episode is a pure power play. Is it okay to say that I won’t buy into it and that I don’t really care, ie ‘leave me alone’. I bet if you polled folks, a majority would express the same.
It’s a Nike marketing campaign
I am totally confounded by the woke idea that racism is an oppressive tool that all white people, and only white people, employ to maintain their power, and yet it’s also something that NO white people can understand. How does that work?
“I am totally confounded by the woke idea that racism is an oppressive tool that all white people, and only white people, employ to maintain their power, and yet it’s also something that NO white people can understand. How does that work?”
Well, it works a variety of ways.
1) White people don’t understand the racism that they use because it is being deployed and used by unconscious and/or implicit bias.
2) Because whites can’t EXPERIENCE the NEGATIVE effects of racism (see above Woke Definition), they can’t understand it. Consider the analogous argument that men can’t understand the pain of childbirth.
Now, the above arguments are craptastic sophistry, but they will still be used. Even in the face of a blatantly racist white person who knows EXACTLY what she is doing, and who is ENJOYING the POSITIVE results (for her) of her racism, the argument will still be made that “white can’t understand racism.”
The “can’t understand” is a sophisticated version of “shut up.” (See Andrew Klavan’s video on the “shut up” for the finest explanation of the dynamic you’re likely to find.) This becomes obvious when the following occurs: 1) An appeal to compassion is made in order to motivate a person to action. That potential motivee responds with “but, perhaps the poor, unfortunate soul may be partly responsible for their plight, shall we consider that in our response?” The individual making the appeal then says “oh, you can’t understand what they went through.” That’s “shut up and get on board.” The rational response would be “well, if I CAN’T understand, then why the hell did you attempt to appeal to my compassion?”
In a social situation, if you have a especially obnoxious Wokester that attempts the above, whether through playing the compassion gambit or it’s flip side, shame, you may want to consider having fun at his expense. After he declares that as a white person, you can’t understand racism, either constantly have him explain, repeatedly, what this “racist event” was, what was racist about it, how did it work, etc. You CONTINUALLY “don’t get it.” Whether you want to play it like he’s talking in a foreign language, or the concepts are quantum theory to your poor little monkey brain, doesn’t matter, just DON’T GET IT. Because, after all, he’s declared that you CAN’T understand it. The mechanism of “not getting it” can be as simple as the small child’s constant “why?” And because it is apparently so very important to the Wokester that you understand, you’re trying desperately, earnestly to do so.. (There can be some real comedy gold in this in the hands of the right writer.)
A second approach would be to simply and totally ignore ANYTHING he says that “establishes racism”, proves it, illustrates it, etc. It’s like a REAL dog whistle, only you aren’t a dog, so you don’t even hear it. Because you don’t understand it, and it obviously is no threat to you, so your brain simply filters it out.
Than why have I been at an objectively quantifiable disadvantage all of my life? The first 12 years of my life getting beat up every day for being the only white kid for 100 miles in North Philly, to now at 45 trying to retrain for a career change had to check minority boxes to qualify for this scholarship for a coding class online even tho I spent the past 5 years homeless and am currently living in a 10x 10 room in sober housing… For a quick example out of many in my life. 100% true. Right now if your black you can get a high paying coding job at a tech company and not even know how to code they are so desperate to hire anyone close to being the part. I’ve honestly thought about wearing a dress from now on so that no one could ever hurt me again, or say no, or say or do anything that could be construed as negative (and I can construe trust me, I grew up in the hood) as that would be easier than faking a race card to escape the perpetual injustice I feel yet am not allowed to express, or feel really.
You have brilliantly highlighted the sheer idiotic juvenility of Woke Discourse. “Their definition of….Racism, Structural White Privilege etc etc. is theirs and only theirs”, so that……. THEY are (always) RIGHT! Only they say (the word) Right is Racist, so perhaps I AM (always)”LEFT” would be the more appropriate response …in the circumstances.
My mind always reverts to analogies to try to understand something better. In this case, I take the very specific definition of racism in Woke ideology to be similar to someone saying “Cars are Bad”. But when you dive deeper, they are really saying “American-made cars are Bad”. So you wonder if this includes Toyota cars made in America? Nope. Just “Cars made by American Companies, Ford, GMC, and Chrysler are Bad”. So no one else’s cars are inherently bad, just these. But we all say “Cars are Bad” anyway.
hmmm, not my finest analogy…oh well.
Also, I feel frustrated by so many of the current discussions about beliefs and theories, when meanwhile poor people are growing up and living in horrible conditions. I know painting murals and toppling statues express emotions, but we should also do things like reform police, improve schools, increase job opportunities, etc. I don’t see how lowering college admission standards, preaching about how to be an antiracist according to the right definition of that word, and denigrating evidence-based research beneficial to all accomplish the practical things that need doing.
To piggyback on the previous comment – I once dreamt about a feature of a former residence of mine. I was sure that my dream was based on a memory and thus had to be correct. When I later went to look at it, the feature on the building was totally different – I’d conflated it with something else and then convinced myself this new “memory” was accurate. If I had any lingering doubts about the research on the corruptibility of memories, my own experience convinced me otherwise.
Same thing happened to me but it was perspective that was in error. I was sure what I would find at this site revisited in my 20s would be a mountain. It was not much more than a mound, but as a child it was remembered as very, very big. Memory is a questionable tool. I wouldn’t want it used against me in a court of law. Makes me wonder if all negative memories of many black people, especially in regards to law enforcement, are as awful as they remember. Makes me think how kids often say someone yelled at them which means something different to me than to them. Usually someone just called them on their behavior or held them accountable. This is not to say that some law enforcement encounters haven’t been heinous, even deadly.
Agree. Memories are closely tied up with emotion. If someone is traumatized enough, it can be literally impossible to communicate with them on that subject, as I have discovered to my sorrow. Literally no matter what you may say or do, it goes into the blender along with a generous scoop of their trauma, and all that comes out is a grievance shake.
Children usually remember things being bigger than they are. They were smaller for one thing, and memory changes. Just the way it is.
“Lived experiences” is an interesting term with a fatal flaw to it. The criminal justice system has been dealing with this concept since the system’s inception, although it’s been called by another name. “Lived experiences” are just a more flowery way of describing eye witness testimony. Though I suspect that the current trend of sanctifying “lived experiences” as the ultimate arbiter of truth on racism turn that t into a capital T Testimony now.
The criminal justice system and involved academics have had quite an opportunity to study eye witness testimony over the last several decades. Specifically how accurate it is in describing events perceived. The results should give the Woke pause. Based upon these studies we know that eye witness testimony, i.e. “lived experiences” of those witnesses, is the least reliable form of evidence to prove someone guilty of a crime that we have. The human brain is simply just not good at accurately perceiving and recording events for later recall. Our memory degrades over time, we have physical differences in our abilities to see, hear, and perceive, our senses are naturally dulled in low light settings, and our brains alter our memories and perceptions based upon things like stress, trauma, and pre-existing bias. We misinterpret and fail to accurately perceive things all the time. And that’s not including when we are simply lying to achieve the desired result.
The wrongful convictions from the 70s and 80s that were overturned by DNA testing in the 90’s and 00’s as well as the pernicious history of black men being accused of rape by white women grinding a social ax (i.e. Scottsboro boys) were all based on those witnesses “lived experiences.” And in those cases, those “lived experiences” failed to accurately describe reality, created injustice, and were only rectified (where possible) upon the application of the dreaded “white supremacist” tools of objective reality, the scientific method, and rationality to better and more accurately describe what happened or didn’t happen in those specific criminal episodes.
I say all this not to completely discredit or discard eye witness testimony as a truth finding mechanism. In some contexts, like child sexual abuse where there is a delayed outcry (and thus no physical evidence is present) or adult sexual assault where both parties agree that sex occurred but the dispute is over consent (and thus where the physical evidence is irrelevant) eye witness testimony is all the evidence you have (these are the typical fact patterns and thus the vast majority of these types of cases, so simply dismissing them as “well you shouldn’t prosecute those case” amounts to nothing less than legalizing both behaviors). But in those cases, hard questions need to be asked of the “lived experiences” of those victims in weighing whether a criminal complaint should go forward. “Lived experiences” absolutely should be questioned, interrogated, and put to the test in most contexts. So when someone shrills decries “are you questioning my lived experiences?” the answer should almost always be a firm and resounding yes. If they can’t stand up to scrutiny, they’re probably false in some fashion.
Michael: “Lived Experience” is even more shaky than what you’ve described. Far from eye-witness or actual involvement, it can be as hollow as a vague perception. Consider a youth who hears about a tragic school shooting, nowhere in relation to their own school, but becomes concerned about their own safety at school. Statistically, the child has an imperceptibly small chance of being caught in a shooting while at school but their fear of it can loom large in their minds. Thus, their “Lived Experience” of attending middle school would be of fear and concern of a perceived threat, while the reality was far from it.
I am very disappointed that the term “woke” which is a colloquialism taken from soul singer Erykah Badu has been hijacked by this movement. It really makes me mad because it’s weaponized at this point.
Please listen to Badu’s 2008 New Amerykah album.
That’s all I have to say. Signed an African American.
Back in 1960 the phrase ‘politically correct’ was used by the left against itself. As a warning of going too far. Then the Right hi-jacked it.
And the Woke definition of racism is “a political creation by black people [and paradoxically, many whites too] to advance their own interests and oppress other races in the advancement of their own interests.”
This must be expert level woke theology.
I have a hobby that brings me in contact with about 15 woke adherents but I don’t think they have this level of understanding. They get the offshoot of this which is “white people extra bad” and they certainly define racism as prejudice plus power – but I’d shocked if they would define racism as *exclusively* tied to 16th century western thought. For this group of woke adjacent :p, I think pointing out that there are frames or levels of power would resonant.
Dr. Lindsay,
Many thanks for the time, effort and courage devoted to educating others about the insidious Woke philosophy.
Perhaps the Woke concept of racism can be undermined further by a trait shared by Europeans before, during the 15-17th centuries and since. European ethnic groups regarded as inferior other European ethnic groups. Indeed, some were deemed inferior to people indigenous to other continents. The Irish, for example, were long considered the world’s most primitive people (see: Thomas Sowell’s “Ethnic America”). Thus, Europeans could not have used pale skin as the foundation for a system of privilege.
Greetings, CriticalThinker and Dr. Lindsay,
I was about to comment something along these lines as well. Let’s indeed examine the Woke conception of “whiteness” as “a racial category created by Europeans with white skin specifically to grant themselves social privilege and a position of social dominance over people with other skin tones.”
For example, in the 18th century, the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach classified the Finns and “Lapps” (properly known as the Sámi people) into the racial category of “Mongoloids”. This classification was based on his studies on human crania. Other “Mongoloids” in his classification were, for example, (many) Asians, Inuits, Pacific Islanders, and Maori. However, he underlined that mankind as a whole forms one single species, and that transition from one race to another is so gradual that the distinctions between the races presented by him are “very arbitrary”. Furthermore, he argued that physical characteristics like skin color, cranial profile, etc., depended on geography, diet, and mannerism. (see more info and sources on the Wikipedia article on “Mongoloid”.)
Later, in the 19th century, the French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau defined there to be three races: those of “black”, “white”, and “yellow”. The “yellow” people roughly corresponded with others’ conceptions of “Mongoloids” (including, for example the Finns). Unlike Blumenbach, Gobineau did not see the distinction between races arbitrary. He saw the “white race” as superior, and the “yellow race” as physically and intellectually mediocre but still able to achieve something worthwhile by their strong materialism. (ibid.; also noteworthy: there were also some other less prominent classifications of “Mongoloids” that excluded Finns and Sámi.)
To add, the Swedish physician and anatomist Gustaf Retzius wrote in 1873 that Finns are “incapably slowly, heavily built, clumsy in their bodily movements and in all ways very conservative”. The Swedish racial doctrines advised not to marry Finns, Sámi, or Slavs.
Relevant for the US, in the 19th century, California State Legislature prohibited attendance of “Negroes, Mongolians and Indians” from public schools. I cannot say for certain whether it defined Finns to be included in “Mongolians”, but it is plausible.
Similar racial thoughts towards the Finnish people were thus more or less prevalent in both France and Sweden, and probably more widely than that. Ironically, and unfortunately, racial thinking then landed to Finland, with, for example 7530 people being sterilized between 1935–1970 due to “racial hygiene”. This was very likely encouraged by the dismissive racial categories described above, thus calling for “racial hygiene” to enhance the “racial status”.
Luckily, nowadays in Finland and other places in Europe, the whole category of race is by many people, if not most, recognized as the pseudoscience it is. However, by way things are going, with the Woke ideology spreading around the English-speaking world, I’m not sure how long that’ll last.
In the end, the point is that both Finns and Sámi are quite white in skin color and, moreover, rarely have any clearly distinguishable epicanthic fold.** Still, that didn’t prevent them from being racialized for a couple of centuries (rooted in the original German, French, and Swedish racial categorizations). Furthermore, in Finland, Scandinavia, and Russia, the Sámi people have for long been discriminated against, arguably based on their race (or heritage or culture). Thus, overall, claiming that all of Europe enjoyed some kind of privilege based on the category of race rooted in whiteness is simply inaccurate. Imagine being a Sámi on the Internet and being accused of “racism” simply because they are “white”. The Woke conception of “race” thus appears to be wildly ahistorical and US-centric. Yet, that doesn’t seem to stop the ideology from spreading to contexts where it makes absolutely no sense.
** Interestingly enough, however, modern mtDNA-studies appear to have revealed that Finns do have a unique ancestry compared to other Europeans, with relatively recent genetic material also coming from East Asia via their fatherline, distinguished from their motherline that comes from more central Europe. Percentage vice, and in terms of phenotype, the difference to other Europeans is minuscule, however (not that it should matter at all, in any normative sense).
This information is just one instance of a phenom that is nearly universal: Many members of empires or nation-states, have looked down on essentially EVERYONE else. See: Egypt, Babylon, China, Japan, the Aztecs, and almost anyone else with a national identity. One of the first things I learned when I started studying modern languages was that all the Western Europeans look down on each other. It was puzzling to then be told that Americans arrogant and provincial. The English, Germans, and French say things about each other that I would never dare say about a member of another nation.
Also, for example, the Finns and Sámi people are pale in skin color and, moreover, rarely have any distinguishable epicanthic folds. Still, that didn’t prevent them from being racialized and discriminated against for a couple of centuries (rooted in the 18th and 19th century German, French, and Swedish racial categories that classified them as part of the “Mongoloids”, or the inferior “yellow race”).
Fortunately, nowadays the whole category of “race” is widely considered pseudoscientific and is rarely used in any context in Finland (though there is some discrimination based on skin color, unfortunately, i.e. modern ‘racism’). Sadly, however, considering how the Woke ideology is spreading via the English-speaking social media, I’m not sure how long “race” and “racial” thinking will remain as dormant, nor what form it might take in different contexts if it were to re-emerge.
“The master’s tools” may also refer to their rhetoric.
I would contend that a much simpler answer is that the Woke ideology is specifically anti-American, and therefore any Woke formulation is American-centric. The Woke definition of racism is only designed to make sense in its American-centric context, relating specifically to black Americans and their interactions with white Americans.
The power + privilege definition would theoretically work where any majority oppresses a minority, but it simply isn’t applied there because everything except the United States (and to a lesser extent, the West) is irrelevant to the Woke ideologue. If other places were relevant, one would think the Woke ideologues would be calling for a liberating war for the Uighurs in China being literally enslaved and thrown in camps, calling for the end to the many ethnic wars in Africa, etc.
Um, they do call for those things. They also call for an end to the Apartheid in Israel. Are you, yourself, working towards ending Cancel Culture and other forms of woke-ness in Iceland? Korea? Australia? The Maori have taken up the Woke cause for themselves in NZ. Are the good folks here talking about New Zealand at all? Are you calling “Liberating Wars” in Afghanistan?
Anyway, the assumption that these movements exist as some kind of Marxist monolith that can be held accountable (and direct its focus) in a singular way without sounding hypocritical in the process is why the whole Woke vs Anti-Woke conflict is bunk. One points the finger, the other points it back – Uighurs in China are still in their camps.
Not sure what point you’re making about “Woke ideologues” being “American-centric”. Is New Discourse a site hosted in Singapore and are these “tough conversations” being written in Malay? Are we speaking in Arabic?
Maybe I am being too hard on you. You did, after all, say that your contention was simple.
True, they do make one exception to their definition in order to apply a double standard for Jews.
Hey SJ(W), maybe the point was too simple for you, or maybe you needed to make your desultory collection of one-ups with the most nearly relevant comment convenient, but you never even addressed the claim, nay, fact that Woke ideologues are American-centric because they are really just anti-American. If you have not noticed the antipathy toward American values, the American Constitution, American history included the founding of the Republic and the political date of when whole dang thing started, the 1st Amendment, the 2nd Amendment, MLK, colorblindness, and exactly all our legal and cultural heritage from England, you really haven’t paid any attention to what Social Justice and anti-(white)-racist adherents are saying on TV, online, and in academia, because I don’t even have to give an example at this point it’s so obvious. The POINT, emoto-ranter, is that wokesters do not see beyond the American context, proven by their consistent misapplication of their simplistic frames on nations and even continents they very clearly do not apply, because they are fixated on America, blame America for all evils, consider America somehow uniquely guilty of traits and historical crimes nearly all nations and certainly all succesful great nations have committed in the past, and, due to this rabid fixation + their ignorance of fact and detail in nearly every field they’ve invaded, make clear both that ignorance and the impunity to which they are accustomed when they try to speak on anywhere else as well. Thank you for exhibiting their characteristic incuriousness and self-righteousness of the wokester. Um, read American history ever. The rest of you, here is a substack with a free essay on the real political meaning of Squid Game, which everyone in American media has neglected to mention in reviews of the show:
https://turaj.substack.com/p/when-the-next-season-of-squid-game?s=w
Enjoy.
SJ, you can read it too, but I warn you, it’s a lot longer than a Vox hit piece.
The assumption that these movements exist as some kind of Marxist monolith that can be held accountable (and direct its own focus) in a singular way is a hypocritical exercise and it is why the whole Woke vs Anti-Woke conflict reads as bunk and useless. One points the finger, the other points it back – Uighurs in China are still in their camps.
Not sure what point you’re making about “Woke ideologues” being “American-centric”. Is New Discourse a site hosted in Singapore and are these “tough conversations” being written in Malay? Are we speaking to each other in Arabic?