Chap wrote: ↑Thu Feb 03, 2022 1:36 pm
MeDotOrg wrote: ↑Thu Feb 03, 2022 4:44 am
.... The idea that racism is
only what white people do to non-white people is disproven by history.
To anyone with an acquaintance with history, that is screamingly obvious.
If you explained about Japanese anti-Chinese racism under the militarist government to WG, I'm sure she'd say "Oh .... I see what you mean".
The fact is, however, that the only kind of racism that she had noticed much in her life was the (for a black American) in-your-face everyday and well back in the memory of your family kind - white on black racism. So since Jews are "white people' like the Nazi Germans were, the (she did not dispute) horrible things that were done to European Jews must have been perpetrated for some other reason. I doubt if she thinks that any more.
Chap, Whoopi lives in a context that you are completely ignoring. I don't think you appreciate the extent to which the broader American Social Justice Movement has permeated our culture, especially among elites. And I think it's fair to characterize Whoopi as being among the elite, both as an entertainer and as a host of a widely viewed talk show that discusses political and social issues. The things that Whoopi said are not just being said by ignorant black women. Millions of black folks have lived their lives disadvantaged by racism without concluding that racism uniquely applies when they are the subject. They are being said by people educated at elite liberal arts schools. They are being said in some diversity education programs. This particular issue -- that Jews are part of the white supremacist oppressor class in the U.S. and, therefore, cannot be the subject of racism -- has been talked about in the U.S. media for several years now. And the summer of 2020 exposed lots of Americans to the social justice movement which, on the topic of race, is heavily influenced by Critical Race Theory. Books like "White Fragility" and "How to be an Anti-Racist" and a number of others were all the rage. Google "Jewish Privilege" or "Are Jews White" and look at the discussions.
The problem stems from some oversimplified over the top presentations of social justice theory. Part of the oversimplification is that they are focussed on social justice in the U.S. Here is a rough example: the U.S. can be divided into two classes: the white supremacist oppressor class and the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color). Racism is defined as a system used by the oppressor class to harm BIPOC. Under that definition, whatever white people may do to each other, it must be something other than racism. That, in my opinion, is an extremist and oversimplified position. Unfortunately, you can find it far to often in social justice circles.
If white people hurting other white people can't be "racism," then what is it? It's something like white on white crime or man's inhumanity to man. What this oversimplified view doesn't take into account is that people don't neatly fit into one of two categories and that, even in America, the concept of who is white has changed over time. Inflexible categorizing of people ignores an important part of social justice theory: intersectionality.
Under this simplified model, what happens to American Jews? Because, as a group in America, they do not tend to be economically or socially harmed, they get thrown in the white supremacy category oppressor. They are part of the oppressor class. And because the oppressor white supremacist class can't oppress itself, whatever it is that white neo-nazis do to Jews, it's not "racism" by definition. And because indigenous people are included in the oppressed class, there is a great affinity with the Palestinians in the middle east, with the Jews again being oppressor class.
If you make an effort to tune in to discourse about racial justice in the U.S., you will inevitable be exposed to this kind of thinking. Your explanations for her comments require her not only to be uneducated, but to have completely ignored how racial justice is being discussed in America. Not just uneducated, but deliberately ignorant. That just doesn't fit.
Dismissing Whoopi as some kind of aberration based solely on her own experience is to close our eyes to the fact that she is far from the only person who says those things, and they are not based on personal experience. They are based on a theory of how to think about race and racial justice in the U.S. As someone who is both on the left and a proponent of social justice, I think it's critical to recognize the harm that superficial and simplistic thinking can do, point it out, and try to eliminate it.
