malchior wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 5:54 pm
Kurth wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 4:49 pm
malchior wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 12:33 pm
Kurth wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 11:51 am
And, yes, this country has, undeniably been a "white supremacist nation" in the past, but it's certainly not one today.
I just can't buy this idea that a nation has to say 'whites rule' out loud while they do it in the shadows. I guess we could argue whether there is some outward belief in the superiority and its all about maintaining their own power. But that's incoherent when the outcomes are so consistently aligned to race versus other potential groupings.
But the saying out loud part is important to the whole de facto v. de jure question, isn’t it? It’s kind of the whole point.
Only because you are insisting it's important. I think it's meaningless when we are talking about outcomes. Is it more important what we say or what we do?
To be clear, you are the one that first introduced the concept of de jure v. de facto states of being when you made the argument on the last page that "I'd argue [the U.S.] is de facto white supremacist." Again, with the goal of actually saying what we mean, I think, definitionally, that may be an oxymoron. At the least, it's a serious overreach.
malchior wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 12:33 pm
Kurth wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 11:51 am
This is semantics, but it’s also not just semantics. When I google “white supremacy defined,” the first definition I get (Oxford Languages) reads:
the belief that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society, typically to the exclusion or detriment of other racial and ethnic groups, in particular black or Jewish people.
And IMO that definition changes nothing. I even caveated there was a legitimate question there potentially. One could argue whether there really is a belief or just something that produces the outcomes as if the belief exists. That would matter in the sense it'd change how you tackle it. However, it's clear from the reaction people really have cartoonish beliefs about what white supremacy is and think it's hyperbolic when it is more one motive of many to rationalize the reason for these racist outcomes.
If that definition of white supremacy changes nothing, I don't understand why you're caveating that it's potentially a legitimate question. I feel like maybe we agree that if the current racial inequalities in this country are fueled by continuing white supremacy (because this is a white supremacist nation) as opposed to being built on years of systemic racism, we are going to have to tackle the problem in different ways. So, it seems like common sense to me that there's a distinction to be drawn between groups of people who enjoy the benefits of a racist system and are loathe to give up those benefits and groups of people who truly believe they are entitled to the benefits they are enjoying based on their white superiority.
I'd argue (admittedly without any data to back it up) that there are far more people in the first group than in the second. Which gives me some limited degree of hope. That group - the "I got mine" crowd - may eventually be persuaded, whether it's by establishing that their idea of living in a walled garden is short sighted and not really in their own best interests or, maybe, even by exposing them to the harm the inequalities they benefit from are causing. The white supremacists, on the other hand, are basically unreachable. And, more often than not, so are their children, who are born into that hateful mindset.
Even if we look at something as pernicious as racial gerrymandering, to me, that smacks of power trying to maintain (or acquire greater) power. Is it awful? Of course. Should it be legal? Hell no. Is it unacceptably racially motivated? Definitely. Is it an example of this being a white supremacist nation? Possibly in some jurisdictions, but generally, no.
Or, take another example: Jury selection. Have Blacks been purposefully excluded from juries in some cases since they were first called to serve on juries? Yes. Is it illegal and unacceptably racially motivated? Definitely. Is it an example of this being a white supremacist nation? No. It's an example of lawyers trying to cherry pick a jury that will deliver the verdict they are seeking, notwithstanding the fact that this has had terribly unjust and racist results in incarceration.
How about a cop who routinely pulls over Black drivers more frequently than White drivers? He's racist. He's illegally profiling. Is he necessarily a white supremacist? I don’t think so.
malchior wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 12:33 pm
Kurth wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 11:51 am
White supremacy is a whole different flavor of racism. People can be racist in an uncountable number of ways and for many different reasons. But a true white supremacist is a very specific beast, and, yes, it definitely has a lot to do with the outward belief in the superiority of whiteness. To say that we live in a racist country is one thing. To say we live in a white supremacist country carries a distinctly different meaning.
I disagree. I took pains to explain that I believe we are a nation where it was driven underground but never actually conquered. IMO we still see the signs of it everywhere. It isn't just garden variety racism. And I'd acknowledge that the law of the land as toothless as it is speaks to equality. But it also did when we were an outwardly white supremacist nation.
On this we may have to just disagree. Setting aside the whole de facto v. de jure argument, I think there's far, far more racism in this country than there is white supremacy. Again, I don't have data to back this up. If you want to show me some that supports the notion that we are a nation of white supremacists, I'll certainly take a look and have what's left of my optimism crushed. Maybe you should go kick some puppies while you're at it.
malchior wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 12:33 pm
Kurth wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 11:51 am
And I agree 100% with LawBeefaroni that no one who’s participating in good faith in a discussion about racial inequality in this country should be leaving the table because of a disagreement over labels. But, at the same time, if we’re trying to get more people to sit at that table and engage, shouldn’t we be trying to use labels that are more accurate and less inflammatory?
If you are taking this as inflammatory that's part of the problem. I'd recommend instead of arguing against the label that you engage on the thought exercise which I laid out.
With respect, your thought exercise didn't make any sense, at least, not as I understood it. You asked to consider a system where equality was the law of the land but the results were consistent with racial preferences year after year. You asked, "Where is the point you have to recognize that it has essentially has blurred the line between what is 'de jure' vs. what is 'de facto'? You can't draw a binary line."
But you can. There is, in fact, a binary line between de jure and de facto. By definition, if the racial inequality is enshrined in law, it's de jure. If it's observed in outcomes, regardless of how consistently and undeniably that observation occurs, then it's de facto.
Maybe I'm fundamentally misunderstanding your point. Or maybe I just don't know what de facto and de jure mean.
malchior wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 12:33 pm
In the end IMO this type of pushback is solely about feelings. And that to me is good in way. At the end of the day what I've experienced is a lot of white people get angry when they are confronted that what we face is darker than just racism. And getting past this backlash and just constantly proving the case might be the only way to make progress on it. I mean nothing else has really worked. We're almost 60 years from the Voting Rights Act and it's dead. And were seeing so-called racist gerrymanders making it through some systems as we speak. And they mostly are about building durable white control of government in the face of changing demographics.
Of course it's about feelings. Again, confronting people with the racial inequalities their choices lead to seems far more effective to me than trying to force them to accept the fact that they are really, down deep, a bunch of white supremacists. If faced with the fact that they're benefiting from a system that is racially unjust, they may start to feel bad about it, but I'm pretty sure they'll definitely just feel mad if they have people calling them white supremacists. And, in the end, if you really believe the root problem is that these people are truly white supremacists, what are you going to accomplish by pointing that out to them? Do you think they're going to change?
malchior wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 12:33 pm
Kurth wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 11:51 am
If a prerequisite to starting an honest dialogue about racial inequality and systemic racism in this country is agreement that racism is a significant problem in U.S. and, in many respects, the U.S. remains a racist country, I think we can widen the circle and get more people involved. If the prerequisite is agreement that the U.S. is a “white supremacist nation,” I think the circle shrinks significantly.
This is the part of problem. If facing what might be the truth makes people so uncomfortable that we have to play these word games...we're never going to make progress. I mean look at the argument here. To paraphrase, 'we're just racist, people tend to agree on that, stick to it, and maybe more people will engage'. Yet as the argument goes on it'll drives people away when you try to assign a motive to that racism. That's pretty slippery ground and it artificially limits the discussion.
Only if the sole possible motive is that they are white supremacists. If the motive behind that racism is, instead, greed or fear or ignorance, I think that can be a very different and constructive conversation. But you seem to be operating under the assumption that the motivation underlying most racial inequality in the country is white supremacy, which I think is at the root of our disagreement.
malchior wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 12:33 pm
We seem to all agree that the nation had at some level outward white supremacist periods. Why do we think that is 100% behind us? If it is this notion of 'what does the law say', then how do we address when we see efforts that saw these laws hollowed out and the laws have no meaning or impact anymore? How do we account that white supremacist extremism is one of the fastest growing domestic terrorism issues we face?
I'd never say this country has 100% left white supremacy behind, and the growing threat of white supremacist extremism (which is a great example of what white supremacy really is) highlights that. But that's a far cry from defending the proposition that the U.S. is a "white supremacist nation."
malchior wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 12:33 pm
It comes down to basic questions. Where does this racism stem from? Is it just baked into the machine and the machine is still stamping out racist outcomes? Or is resisting change to fix it an 'underground' or unsaid expression of white power stemming from a belief they deserve power more than other races? You have to wonder why is it so uniformly distributed against blacks in particular? That is why I think we need to stop pretending we don't have at some level a white supremacy problem at the root of this. Is it *all* white supremacy? No. There are also competing interests but still a blanket denial? When outcomes look a whole lot like what'd happen if we were outwardly white supremacist? That doesn't seem too wise to me.
At this point, it feels like you're kind of moving the goal posts in this discussion. I'm arguing that it's an inflammatory overstatement to say that "the U.S. is a white supremacist country." I've never argued that we don't have a white supremacy problem at some level or that white supremacy doesn't play some role.
And I'm not sure how you can say that the outcomes in the U.S. today - as racially inequitable as many of them are - are anything like the outcomes we've seen from outwardly (de jure) white supremacist countries (e.g., Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa, the U.S. for much of our history, etc.). Trying to equate the two doesn't seem that wise to me.