Considering how rapidly the right’s “war on woke” is expanding, it was perhaps inevitable: Self-identified “mama bears” on a Texas school board are angry that a classroom had a poster showing people of different races holding hands. Last week, the school board in Conroe, Texas, a small city north of Houston, turned the right-wing mania for censorship into a dark parody of itself. At issue? A poster that seemed to imply that interracial friendship is possible.
According to ABC 13 Eyewitness News in Houston, things started when school trustee Melissa Dungan declared that she had spoken to parents who were upset about “displays of personal ideologies in classrooms.” When pressed for an example, according to the news report, “Dungan referred to a first grade student whose parent claimed they were so upset by a poster showing hands of people of different races, that they transferred classrooms.”
“I wish I was shocked,” Dungan said of the poster. “I am aware these trends have been happening for many years.”
You pulled that percentage out of your ass. 😏
White-passing Americans (white or white-mixed) make up 71% of the country. 35% are white men. Based on the most common numbers I’m seeing, 30% are straight and cis. 80% of America is Christian (fug it’s that high???), so that gives us roughly 22% straight white cis christian males.
That huge mass of people is predisposed to being anti-woke because they stand to lose the most from anti-racism and anti-sexism and queer acceptance and religious tolerance etc. Structural injustice isn’t just a historical accident, it was a deliberate creation by the ruling class through the usage of genocide and slavery and apartheid to ensure that a huge minority of the population would be too comfortable and to loyal to their rulers to ever revolt and would stand up for their privileges against the mobs of the havenots.
Call them anti-woke if you want. They’re also settlers, reactionaries, and Amerikkkan Nazis
90% of the population are either too poor not to be suffering structural injustice, or are relatively well off but still too Black, too queer, too female,. Class and race cannot be separated. If we ignore the people who are struggling just because they’re blaming the wrong people for their struggles, fascism will win.
Do you think a working class Israeli faces the same injustices as a working class Palestinian? A working class Jew in 1935 Germany the same as a working class Christian?
You’re the one trying to separate class and race. Don’t think of America like a country, think of it like an occupation or a regime.
We gotta destroy whiteness. You can’t win by just making whitey woke.
No, of course I don’t. But a working class Israeli has a hell of a lot more in common with a working class Palestinian than they do with the Israeli ruling class. And they may not get much publicity (and a lot of jail time) but quite a lot of Israelis recognise that; I know because I have worked with some of them.
Oppression Olympics is a dismal fucking sport. Divide and fucking rule from the bottom up. Completely self-defeating. It is structural and if you refuse to expose the structures, you’ll never change a thing.
This isn’t oppression olympics, it’s anti-imperialist struggle! Divide and conquer already happened when the ruling class elevated a portion of the working class to use as a bludgeon to oppress the rest of the working class. It’s too late to coddle the white mob and beg them to join us in the struggle for liberation - we have to take away their whiteness, render them as workers just like the rest of us.
The woke philosophers have only interpreted structural oppression in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.
The concept of whiteness needs to go. But white people are no more a homogeneous blob of identity than Black people, or LGBT people, or Jewish people (some of whom are white). I’ll oppose those who turn to racism and bigotry as a solution to their problems. As I do Louis Farrakhan for his anti-semitism, homophobia, misogyny and general cunty conservatism. Being oppressed is not an excuse to do some oppressing of your own. But it’s really fucking easy to see how people fall into that trap. And really fucking racist to believe that Black people can’t be authoritarian fuckwits, or that Jewish people can’t oppose Israel, or that white people can’t be oppressed by poverty.
Steven Avery and Brendan Darcy were fucked over because they are poor, not protected because they are white. Black people are fucked over with impunity because the colour of their skin is a marker of powerlessness. Women and LGBT people are fucked over because that which is feminine is despised.
This is a really useful example of what I am talking about. The woman was mistreated because she was Black. She got (a form of) justice because her family is rich.
As soon as she opened her mouth … “I think we made a mistake.”
I completely agree, and in fact, abhor whiteness because it seeks to turn all so-called “white” people who accept it into such a homogeneous blob of identity. That’s why it was invented!
What I’m trying to say is that the white identity, itself, has to be abolished. As long as whiteness exists it will be used by the US/NATO empire to enforce its own hegemonic rule over its imperial subjects in the Global South and on subjects in its internal colonies.
It’s important to note that whiteness is a lot more complicated than just skin color. Did you know white women that married Japanese men were sent to internment camps? Their fair skin did not protect them, because by race mixing they lost the privilege of being “white”.
… I have no idea where I’m going with this. I just think white people being woke isn’t enough. White people need reject whiteness, not just be made aware of it.
We don’t disagree. This has been a great discussion, thank you.
Likewise!