Dares Not Speak Its Name

[supergee]

55 Ways White People Say ‘White People’ Without Actually Saying ‘White People’ [Very Smart Brothas]

Thanx to Metafilter

Comments

[gingicat]

They left out “colonizers”

[bibliofile]

Not a complete list, which would contain hundreds if not thousands of words.

[arlie]

Chunks of that list have obvious meanings that include people of all races.

In a universe where being categorized as white did not prove that I was racist, I would believe that my use of most of these terms did not exclude black, asian, native or "hispanic" people. Last I heard, there were "Americans" of all those racial categories (term 1). Black americans are famous for their Christian religiosity (term 10). Locally Hispanic people are over-represented among essential workers (term 52), as any bloody fool can see from the covid statitics.

The common euphemism for "white people" that I encounter these days is "Northern European" - used particularly by and of Americans; Europe itself has a division into weak, profiligate economies and stronger ones, that roughly follows meditteranean vs north-of-mediteranean lines, so that term means somethign else there. But Americans who actually want to say "Northern European" generally say "Scandinavian", or "German", or "Slavic" - whatever best fits.

It's not even on the list.

But what would I know? I'm the child of the daughter of British immigrants on one side, and Russian Jews on the other. Thus infinitely and unatoneably racist.

[bibliofile]

Euphemisms. These terms are often used as euphemisms for "white people." (I think that the Tucker Carlson video is meant to be a pretty broad hint.)

[arlie]

I'd figured that eithe the compilers of the list, or the OP in this thread, was more thinking in terms of dog whistle words.

But either way, if you say "patriot" and I mentally see the last US soldier I encountered, who happened to be black, your intended communication has failed. (Ditto if I see a collage of all the veterans I've ever encountered...)

[bibliofile]

Are you saying that this list is all wrong, just because the words can be used more generally?

Good on you for seeing a variety mental images to match the most general terms. You're not doing the thing that the list is about, which is kinda the point, right? Using these words as a euphemism for "white people" is both inaccurate and wrong.

[conuly]

Assuming you're commenting in good faith, people like that would rather people like you don't know what they mean, because they're not speaking to you, and they'd really like to pretend that they're the victim when other people call them out on their dogwhistling garbage.

Of course, there's always a chance, I don't know you, that you're not commenting in good faith, that you know perfectly well that they use those terms in that way and you're choosing to provide a smokescreen for this rather than just stumbling into it by accident.

[arlie]

I don't know whether I'm commenting in good faith or not, from the standpoint of a person who would post or approve of this list, particularly a white person. It may be that I'm an utterly unreconstructed evildoer by a standard I neither share nor understand, and am farthermore just trying to command the tide to stop coming in.

I am an old liberal. My instincts run to race blindness, gender blindness, etc. etc. I regard things like affirmative action as the result of a choice between evils - an attempt to compensate for failures of race blindness, and for uneven starting positions caused by past discrimination.

Obviously if some are race blind, and others are all biased in the same direction, race blindness won't be enough on its own. And there's something a bit disgusting - though very realistic - in helping the non-hegemonic to imitate hegemonic behaviours, from learning and using middle class American (or British, etc.) English to dressing like that same middle class - or more so, to cancel out the impression given by their visible differences. (Zuckerberg's hypothetical son can get away with not dressing appropriately, and speaking and writing as badly as he cares to do; Joe or Jane Random from the ghetto cannot, and will have worse chances than Z jr regardless.) And it's perhaps at its worst when it turns into (sub)cultural abandonmnet, complete with being ashamed of and avoiding parents and cousins who don't make the same effort.

But it's still the best opportunity for any individual, and seems to be the primary method many past oppressed groups have used to become part of the hegemonic minority. (I should mention that I'm half Jewish, and old enough to have met concentration camp survivors.)

It also tends to result in large chunks of the previously-non-hegemonic culture gaining status, though too often after many of its decendants have lost track of their roots.

It's not perfect. Perhaps I shouldn't have had to "act like a man" only more so, to have been successful in engineering. I'm happy that as more women have gotten involved in engineering, this has gotten less true. But - I was also acting like the person I am, who would have had an even worse time perfroming "femininity" to an adequate standard.

And there's been explicit push back against some groups in particular, notably Blacks, and to a lesser extent Natives, who are particularly prone to being encourged/forced not to act above their station, attempt to better themselves, etc. (I.e. they get a double whammy, and not just from their own folks - acting too white, or too middle class, or becoming prosperous enough to be middle class, all get pushback, sometimes via the legal system.)

I don't know what can fix that, other than jumping down the throats of anyone you catch trying it - with some caveats about e.g. whites getting involved in attempts by black people to push other black people to avoid acting white.

Going back to more ordinary approaches to "good faith", and questions of strategy. I would be unsurprised to find politically-minded people capitalizing on others' tendencies to visualize (a) people like them and (b) hegemonic people, when faced with ambiguous terms. Joe Lily White, living in his Lily White enclave, will tend to imagine people like him, for any term he sees as including him. Jim Pitch Black will imagine a mix of people like him and people seen as standard. (One reason to try to include a mix of races in random publicity etc. Cultural styles too.) Of course people for whom blacks are strongly Other won't think of them. But that's not really about the words chosen - any word will do, provided it fits with Joe's self image.

And suggesting that anyone who uses those words intends them as dog whistle, or whatever - seems like it's just a good way to convince random non-political types that you're going to be mad at them whatever they do, so they shouldn't bother listening. (See my sad crack about being defined as "racist" by the colour of my skin. It may mean "benefitting from white privilege, and probably unconscious of all the ways that happens" to those who used it originally, but that message isn't being transmitted to outsiders - or, I suspect, to rather a larger proportion of self-described allies and activists.)

[p.s. you'll notice I didn't try to use "black" names for my non-white examples. I'm not plugged in enough to which names seem "black" to others to do that competently, and would just manage to appear to be making fun of black people. Sorry about that.]

[conuly]

So - just to be clear - the only thing going on in the preceding eleven paragraphs is you making sure I understand that you're totes not a bigot.

Would you like to type up another eleven paragraphs where you explain that you understand what I said in the beginning of my comment? Or should I just assume that since you are a Very Good Person you totally get it and understand why pointing out that "not all patriots are white people" is a useful contribution to the thread and not at all an obnoxious derail?

[arlie]

No actually. I got your message.

1) it was a derail, and will be seen as obnoxious.
2) we don't have the ability/motivation to successfully communicate on this topic.

Frankly, people who are using e.g. "American" and expecting it to be understood as "white Americans" may be trying to suck me into their game, but they succeed only to the extent that they fail at any specifically white-hegemonic meta-game they may be playing. If they advocate for laws to help the poor, expecting non-white poor to be excluded, I'm going to be supporting their measure in a somewhat simplified form ;-( If they are just blathering about how good "we" are, I'm probably going to be ignoring them. And if they say innocent things in one venue, and something else at their friendly neighbourhood KKK rally, someone's going to make it their business to post their more incriminating statements.

If they have the sense of a moldy turnip, they aren't bothering to attempt to influence me.

[conuly]

(That was a little sarcastic. Please do not spend eleven more paragraphs on this.)