[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Saya

Its not one ethnic group against another, specifically its white people cannot understand the experience of PoC. PoC amongst themselves may deal with discrimination and debate and not being able to understand each other, but ultimately they understand what it means to be a PoC in a white supremist society. We white people however are raised to be ignorant and oblivious and segregated. While PoC intermingle very well, white people live in white neighbourhoods, want white schools, white marriages, and white jobs. But we don't call it that, its so subtly ingrained in our minds we don't see it. Its very obvious to many PoC, however. Its like having something stuck on your face in public, you don't realize its there until someone lets you know or holds up a mirror for you. An eye can't see itself as it is, it needs a reflection.

1) can we please get away from romanticized parables? Humans are much more complex than eyes, and there are ways of figuring out something is stuck on your face without a mirror or another person.

2) You're making a lot of hasty generalizations. Many cultures live in segregated neighborhoods. Not just white people. A good example of this would be Hassidic and Orthodox Jews, who sequester off into their own communities. Another would be the Amish, who granted are white, but still a heavily discriminated against minority group.

3) People of color, do not always intermingle well, there's really no hard and fast rule here based on skin color. Where you'd think you'd find solidarity, often times you find racism and hostility towards other people of color. You can claim that this is an effect of white hegemony, and I would agree with you at least partially, but this issue is much more complex than PoC vs. White People.

4) Many people live in integrated communities as well. For instance, Sugar Hill here in New York is largely Dominican, but there is a minority of white people who live there and participate in the community. Similar things are happening in Bushwick and Queens. I'm sure you'll dismiss this as gentrification, and in some cases it is, but in others you get a very diverse, very integrated community, in which intermarriage and integrated schools are frequent and desirable. Beyond this, it's impossible to walk out your door in New York without hearing a different language. Often times on the subway I can pick out at least six. I can see why living somewhere like Newfoundland would give you the impression of white hegemony as this monolithic thing, but the fact is, it's not. I will agree that what you have described can be considered a general rule, but to go as far as you have is simply incorrect.

However: the points I have just brought up are really only minor factual quibbles. There are much bigger problems with your argument, which I will explain below.

Intellectually, we can grasp the ideas, but we are raised from birth to be oblivious and we might not ever be able to fully deconstruct that, especially in a society that reinforces we should ignore it. This works for all kinds of privileges that are not easily shared, in the whole elevatorgate thing, Kontan and Versus got that hey, you should respect a person's wish not to be propositioned, but it wasn't until Solumina chimed in that anyone pointed out that elevators are scary places for women. Its an experience that lasts from the cradle to the grave and its hard to articulate, hard to express, and hard to wrap up in a neat package so those who never had to worry about sexual assault can understand. We had to pour our hearts out about our experiences of living in fear of rrape and it still wasn't good enough. In the end it was like we shouldn't have shared it at all, it didn't matter and we were left emotionally drained after trying to. And its not just in that thread, I'm tired of going to schools and dorms and groups and talking about sexual assault and have men roll their eyes at me, or make rrape jokes. Every year at Take Back The Night we mark an X on the Supreme Court building for every gendered violence victim we know, and every year I have more X's to add, and I'm tired and tired of being angry.

This is why I can't expect to know what its like to be a PoC. There's a lot I won't talk to men about because its personal information I can't trust them with. Its getting hard to talk about abstracts and hypotheticals. What if its the same for them? I can't count all the cismen who have ever dismissed me or talked over me or demanded I educate them only to abuse what I've told them, how do I know I'm not one white person in a long line of white people to ask a PoC to educate me?

I'm sorry that such things have happened to you, and I extend my sympathy. However, what you have described is not evidence towards the position that communication and understanding is impossible, simply that communication and understanding is DIFFICULT so difficult that you find it unpleasant (a point to which I will agree) and often fruitless between specific people.

The rest of this post is an emotional appeal, that, while compelling, does nothing for your argument on a rational level.

Intellectually, we can know how the mechanisms of how white supremacy works, but we can't know the totality of the experience of living under white supremacy. Did you watch the Color Of Fear, the movie Alan posted a while ago? Where the white guy was telling the men of colour that they were hysterical and wrong and silly for thinking white men with guns in their trucks might lynch them? Objectively, empirically, no, the white men probably won't lynch them, but does that mean they don't have the right to be suspicious or fearful?

Yes I watched it, and of course they have the right to be suspicious and fearful. However, the right to be suspicious and fearful is not equivalent in any way to the inability for White people to understand them. Nor does it give them the right to demand that their views be accepted uncritically and without evidence.

However, I want to get away from that, and point out the three big things which make this argument untrue, not the least of which is that you, Saya, have actually made an error, and contradicted yourself, in a manner which makes your whole argument fall apart.

Namely:

1) If white supremacy is a created thing (as you stated earlier, and I agree with) it is something which can be undone. If it is something which can be undone, than it's effects can be undone. If it's effects can be undone, then it is not impossible for white people to understand people of color.

The only way for communication between races to be forever stymied, in the manner in which you have described, is if White people are physically flawed in some way that people of color are not, and so your point is objectively, falsifiably untrue.

You can argue that the elimination of white supremacy's effects on a global scale is not conceivable or realistic at this time, and therefore white people are virtually unable to understand people of color (which is still a different argument than the one you made btw) but we're not talking about a global scale, we're talking about individuals, so already the argument is falling apart.

2) But even if this WASN'T falsifiably untrue, your argument still deals not with the material, observable things, like actions, it deals with internal, unobservable things, mainly thoughts and motivations. Therefore there is absolutely no way to objectively test for the inability of white people to understand people of color. Since there is no way to objectively test whether my misunderstanding of Versus was caused by my whiteness and not some other factor (poor communication skills on my part, or a lack of relevant context for instance) You are left with a hypothesis which cannot be proven and thus can go nowhere.

3) Beyond the fact that this is something you cannot prove, it is a completely useless conclusion, because it cannot be communicated effectively and therefore nothing can be done about it. White people would have no way of knowing WHAT they don't know (only that they do not know something) and PoC have no way of adequately expressing what this deficiency even IS to white people in a consistent means that they can understand. We have no way of knowing if presence of the deficiency is being communicated effectively.

What if a person of color misunderstands what this deficiency is? How can you say they're wrong? It's something that's in their head and no one else's and there's no way to test it.

Even if somehow this hypothesis weren't self-contradictory, and even if it was falsifiable, and even if it was then subsequently proven under laboratory conditions, the only conclusion one can draw from this is that white people must always cede to a person of color on these matters, no matter who that person of color is or what they claim. This can literally only lead to neo-segregation, and one form or another of supremacy. It literally means that white people are inherently mentally inferior to people of color.

Saya, I understand the urge to explain in very strong terms that white people should, as a general rule, check their privilege and grant ethos and deference to People of Color in a conversation about the experience of those people and the effects of white privilege upon them, and racism, etc. However, to take it a step further, and claim that this is not something which can be communicated to white people is both verifiably untrue, cultishly totalitarian, and socially dangerous for everyone involved.

This is not a conclusion that is subjective. This is not some opinion I have. This is math. On this point, barring myself missing some crucial piece of evidence or having made a major reasoning error, you are just wrong and that's all there is to it.