layman wrote:@Political Interest in western countries there is some anti white sentiment but it isn't institutional or systematic. This makes it infinitely less potent. This is what I meant by the binary term racism. For it to mean anything really useful you need to qualify which sub category you mean.
Someone who is basically good but has some unconscious bias could be considered racist. Calling such a person by this term is unhelpful and counter productive though.
In Western countries white privilege would be obvious. The majority of the population is white. Institutional power is held by whites.
However the discourse does not limit white privilege to Western countries, it posits a universal white privilege that exists on every continent.
Atlantis wrote:Sure, there are undoubtedly cases in which whites are discriminated against, but it's unlikely to be systematic. In 50 years abroad as a white European, I have occasionally experienced discrimination, but more because people preferred locals to foreigners and not because of racial discrimination. For example, when applying for a job, an employer may give preference to a local over a foreigner because the foreigner may not have the same language or cultural competence as the local, or the employer suspects that the foreigner may not stay in the country for very long. That doesn't really amount to racial discrimination.
It could also be because locals simply prefer a non outsider. The reasons you listed could merely be excuses. All in all it is very difficult to quantify or prove one way or the other.
The expatriate experience is not proplerly representative of the full experience of life as a white minority because expatriates live in parallel communities separate from the wider populations of their host nations. Expatriates are brief sojourners, their migration to Asia or Africa is not permanent. In most cases they are beholden to a white boss from a Western corporation with its headquarters back in the West. Expatriates can in many cases choose to live in enclaves, join emigre clubs and live insulated lives apart from the wider society. They must comply with local laws but that is more or less the limit to which they are beholden to local institutional power.
We know of very few examples of a white working class community in Asia or Africa that holds citizenship and works in working class occupations with local non-white bosses. Perhaps the Russians who live in China are the only example of this. South Africa is another country with a white minority but because of apartheid it got a head start so to speak and has a leg up which the rest of the black and other POC majority does not have. It is therefore not representative of an authentic white working class non-expatriate experience in a POC majority society.
There is essentially no suitable example to gauge the experience of non-expatriate white minority populations in majority POC countries. There have hardly been any empirical or sociological studies conducted on them either.
Atlantis wrote:Even in cultures like in Japan and China, which have very strong national identities, discrimination is usually leveled at other Asians or at colored people and not at whites. In Asia and much of the 3rd world, whites usually enjoy a privileged status. In fact, there are plenty of low-lives from Europe or the US who emigrate to the 3rd world to enjoy a status they would never enjoy at home. Their only qualification is often being a 1st world citizen and speaking English reasonably well.
Again, most whites in Asia are privileged expatriates who are in many cases more beholden to Western power structures than they are local ones.
The low lifes and degenerates very rarely take citizenship in Asian countries.
Atlantis wrote:Even if some whites may occasionally experience discrimination for whatever reason, the systematic discrimination experienced by many colored people all their life on a daily basis is a very different thing. It forms a person to the point where discrimination is suspected even where non is intended.
Most whites living in Asia are insulated from the wider society around them. Their destiny is not tied to local structures, and they are insulated from locals. Many can and do assimilate but this is a personal choice as opposed to a necessity. Most of them do not send their children to local schools.
The expatriate experience is not a local experience and therefore not represenative of the authentic experiences local white minorities in Asia and Africa.
Donna wrote:That's not what racism discourse is remotely saying.
It's important to address the distinction between discrimination/prejudice and racism.
Michelle Houlston wrote:Racism is more complicated than a person of one race disliking a person of another race and acting on it. Despite the dictionary definition (racism: noun “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior”), I’m supportive of the modern argument that it comes from systemic privilege, which, in general, people of colour (PoC) do not have. If a group of PoC do not like a white person simply because they are white, the same logic applies. Racism causes racial tensions which means yes, hostility exists on all sides and tension can be elevated by any person of any race. But still, reverse racism is not a thing.
For example, if a person of colour initiates violence against a white person, solely because they are white, it is because of prejudice, not reverse racism. It is as condemnable as it would be vice versa. But it does not require a secondary definition or explanation of racism in the form of reverse racism. All racial tensions are products of the same structure of racism.
Source:
https://gal-dem.com/reverse-racism-not-exist/The structural definition of racism defines it as a system of power that benefits white people. The discourse does not deny the possibility of discrimination and prejudice against whites or even violence. However the distinction still exists. It is important to establish what this distinction means.
It is an acknowledgment that whites can indeed be victims of discrimination and violence, but yet this discrimination is not strctural. There is very little elaboration as to whether non-structural discrimination means that it is less prevalent or less virulent than structural discrimination and prejudice, although this very much seems to be the implication.
There is a dearth of empirical data about white minorities in situations where POC hold institutional power. For example, if a society consists in the majority of POC and they are the majority in the police, the armed forces, the judicial system, government, business elites and the general population in what way is white supremacist structural racism even possible? A white person under such conditions, providing they have citizenship, would not be in any position to hold institutional power because they do not have the numbers to do so. This is of course excluding the possibilty that POC can discriminate against themselves in favour of whites, which perhaps discourse has some literature we can review on this subject.
We could imagine such a scenario in a country such as Japan where the majority of the business elite and wider society are Japanese. Most whites in Japan are expatriates and their experience is often a brief sojourn in the country. Very few take citizenship or are beholden to Japanese institutional power. We don't have the case studies or demographic numbers to create an adequate study of such a question.
Now lets look at case studies and discuss how they fit in regarding the discourse.
The murder of Kriss Donald took place in 2004. Donald was killed by a Pakistani gang in Glasgow and the crime was judged to have been racially motivated. It was a retaliation killing after the gang leader Imran Shahid was attacked at a night club by a white gang. The victim was chosen as retaliation for this attack because he was white:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of ... _News_3-12http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6125660.stmAnother example we have is of sexual abuse and trafficking by a gang in Rotherham.
According to the article one of the victims was called a, "White bitch and trash," by one of the defendants.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news ... 76080.htmlWhere do cases such as these fit into the discourse? Would they be considered prejudice and discrimination or racism? At a functional or qualitative level what is the real difference in such cases? This discourse seems to be advancing the notion that if a white person is a victim of a hate crime that is discrimination or prejudice whereas if the victim is a POC the crime is racism.
- By Godstud
- By wat0n