What do you mean, "What does that mean?" Thought I told you kids to get off my lawn. . .
Unlike Metafilter, where I keep quiet because I gots no choice, I could actually chime in on the Plastic discussion, Whitey's Gotta Go:
Race itself is a product of social discrimination; so long as the white race exists, all movements against racism are doomed to fail... The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race. Until that task is accomplished, even partial reform will prove elusive, because white influence permeates every issue in U.S. society, whether domestic or foreign.What's that!? The insane ramblings of some Al Sharpton wannabe? Ummm, no. It's Noel Ignatiev, fellow at Harvard's W.E.B. DuBois Institute, author of How The Irish Became White and the man who runs a website called Race Traitor whose motto is treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity & believes that the deconstruction of the white race is the only hope for worldwide social change.
It's the Sharpton line that tempts. And I don't even like the man that much.
In the comments, which are in no way influenced by the inflammatory title and condescending write-up, someone named dswensen writes:
White people don't have any more choice about the circumstances they're born into than anyone else. Asking people to give up their privileges based on their race seems to me just a whit counterproductive to the idea of abolishing racism.
In his -- call me crazy, but I'm thinking "he" -- in his defense, this reply is titled "I'm posting drunk, please forgive me."
On the other hand, readers have declared the remark nuanced.
I only quoted the first of two paragraphs, and "declared" in this instance refers to the karma system on Plastic, but it's hard to riled up including all those details.
Fairly standard stuff. Is there a Federal mandate that someone in these sorts of discussions say, "There's just one race, the human race," or "Forget Italian-American or African American, we're all just Americans," or something to that extent? Or are there really people out there who find such statements profound?
Rhetorical question. I've met people like that.
They usually live in the suburbs.
I just have to say that I'm going to have to trackback your ENTIRE BLOG tonight...when I have more time to read and respond appropriately. You are on fire.
I'm hoping this will cause me to overtake blogrolling and google on your referrer list, so it will appear even more like I am obsessively reloading your site over and over and over again. I'm really self-conscious about appearing to be a stalker...there have been days where get more than half of the amount of hits I get at my site...from my site.
Anyway...just to let you know.
please pardon me while i, in a fit of passion, culturally appropriate a few terms, if i may be so bold: YEEEEAAAAH BWOOOOYYYY!!! A-TO-THA-MUTHAFUCKIN'-K!!!!! I have to say I *L*O*V*E the "racetraitor" site and have ever since I found it a while back, gosh, can it be like two years already?? I was trolling some messageboards/ chatrooms with erstwhile-allegedly "progressive" slant under the moniker "racetraitor" and was elated to find someone out there who shared my views and articulated them so much better than i could. euro-americans or those who choose to identify themselves as such need to stop identifying with whiteness, and in so doing identifying people of color as "the other"; it's a psychological thing as much as it is an economic and political thing. sometimes it brings me down how much people amongst my families and friends who, like me, are somewhat photon-reflective, still choose to keep these blinders on. next time a cop asks you if a person was "black or white" (it shocks me how much they still do this, which i guess is ridiculously naive), you should say something like "are those my only choices?" or "i'm not sure, he could have been liberian-appalachian..."
F_J, y, I think Race Traitor has been around since like 96 or so. All of a sudden, the press has had this epiphany that it exists. Interesting.