Hello hi um!!! Confession: I think my main problem is that people say “oh gt has a racism problem” and then they don’t elaborate on the why, they simply provide examples which should be “obvious” and it’s like great ok buddy thank you for explaining nothing and stirring the pot pointlessly! You did so good (lie)!!!!
This is going to be a long ask and I miiiiiight run out of room so I’ll break it into parts if that happens. It’s about racism because Nobody Here Has Ever Talked About It In A Constructive Way Once. And I ammmmm sick of it. I know why the conversations around race go badly and I finally have the tools to actually describe why (through the lens of someone who grew up in the imperial core/is white tho so take everything I say with a grain of salt as is) soooo I’m gonna try to do it.
Also kink blogs/regular gt blogs are free to rb this like this is for everybody everywhere. I invite discussion and there are no wrong questions or answers. We’re all working on ourselves and developing ways to exist in the world and that should be honored.
MY ONE SINGULAR FUCKGING RULE: you can’t insult people’s intelligence because intelligence isn’t real and it does not belong in this conversation. Get that eugenicist language out of here before I fucking kill you with my beam. No calling people stupid/idiots/whatever for coming at this in ways which perpetuate racism. If you can’t call out someone’s behavior without insulting them you are not constructing a good argument, even if it is a fun argument and a bit of a self-soothe. That shit belongs in your discord server that you have with like 6-7 other people who enjoy being haters privately and this is a public space. Learn how to act or leave.
Also to those of you who are white and like “oh but theyve proven they aren’t ready for this conversation 💅💅💅” hi. You don’t know how to have the damn conversation either. And if you’re a person of color, it is not your job to explain your oppression or participate in this convo at all unless you want to engage, and you’re allowed to feel however about it bc of how Unbelievably Fucked things have been for the past several hundred years. White people already know that they don’t have to engage and that’s!!!!!!!! Kind of the whole problem!!!!! Engagement has long been a choice based on comfort level and this is noooooot a healthy way to engage w this. Something, something white neutrality, something bullshit,,,,,something.
And if anyone sees any errors in my logic or things that I might’ve missed/would like to elaborate on a point I’ve brought up, anyone is welcome to do so.
Also I have resources if anybody would like additional reading lmfao I’m just kind of going off abt this lol. You shouldn’t rly trust a single source anyway, or like one series of tumblr asks by Some Guy who knows Some Stuff.
Part I: Race as an intellectual tool/weapon
Thiiiis isn’t gonna get into the gt element yet but it has to be forced out of the way early bc of reasons which should be really obvious once you read this.
Everyone (especially USAmericans) grows up in a world where race is made real through complex social engines which drive capitalism. Race is not a real thing, though, like, at the end of the day, calculating our genetics are less about who is actually from a place and more about comparing the percentage of people in that place to our own genetic makeup. Plus, genes can change over time as we develop by external environmental influences. It’s all not real and everything changes forever. I can get into the historical construction of race (first used to sort people based on external characteristics—shockingly not negative until the institutionalization of chattel slavery) if people want that but for now let’s move on. Also I’d have to get into the whole “the concept of the soul is an essentialist supplemental tool that allows racism to function” thing which I’m like. I don’t wanna get into that just yet bc people get very touchy about it and I need to break down that touchiness first.
The part that makes race and racism real is the belief in white hegemony and the exertion of that belief through systems humans have created over time to gain resources. In order to gain resources, they socially raced certain groups to disenfranchise them based off of external characteristics. The cultural idea of race changes over time depending on who society is trying to economically fuck over, basically. This is why USAmerican individuals with ancestry in northeast Africa/southwest asia (commonly known as the Middle East, even though that term is fading out of social appropriateness in the same way that ‘the orient’ did) were broadly considered white for a while (this was somewhat changing slightly) until 9/11 raced them into otherness though the aftermath and all of the US’s various propaganda campaigns. This is why people from that region are considered white on certain medical forms and in census data but you’d be hard-pressed to find a hijabi who doesn’t get at least a bit anxious about going through the TSA. Alternatively, formerly raced groups of people can also be indoctrinated into whiteness via eugenicist ideas (see: Italians, Poles, the Irish, other various cultural groups that are considered white in the US at this current point in time).
So, if racialized status can change over time to affect different groups: it’s not real. Race changes and shifts depending on the power dynamics of a given area. Because of US imperial interests, people who were not raced in the 90s are now being raced in order to allow for empire to seize resources. That’s just kind of how imperialism has always worked on a social level. Race is a tool and racism is the weaponized form of that tool because it is the belief that race is real, and that certain groups are beholden to certain characteristics innately. The ‘innate’ part of this is very important because it implies that race is something static that does not change.
Race is made real through how our beliefs affect our actions. For example, the white police officer that pulls over a person of color is a threat because of his belief in white hegemonic superiority and can act upon feelings of being threatened in order to cause actual danger to the driver of the stopped vehicle. So it’s indoctrination of belief (societal norms) -> assertion of belief (actions taken by officer) -> perpetuation of hegemonic whiteness (everything that happens externally and internally during the interaction between officer and driver as a racialized interaction)
In a gt context, what do you think the perpetuation of hegemonic whiteness would look like?
Try to think of some examples while I write part 2. If you can look at your own work and think of ways in which it perpetuates an unnatural hierarchy kudos to you for overcoming your discomfort.
- Good vs Evil and why that’s not real or helpful
- Colorblindness and the perpetuation of racism through the creation of The Taboo.
- Power Relations/Power Dynamics
- and, supplementally: SHUT UP ABOUT THE ÜBERMENSCH
Feel free to comment/answer/ask questions on this post too. Ummm I might make a sideblog for talking about this if people want more resources/want to continue discussion. And remember. Don’t fucking use eugenicist language to put down other people even if you’re angry for the love of god. Stop using fascist engines of communication to perpetuate colorblind racism by demonizing people who participate in it because they’ve never been taught how to not do that. I’m gonna fucking explode. That’s not helpful and it pushes people further into racist belief systems.
