Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

[FaxModem1]

Racist against Whites, that is

Texas State newspaper fires student author of anti-white column
BY JOE CONCHA - 12/01/17 12:12 PM EST 140
226

Texas State newspaper fires student author of anti-white column
© Getty Images
A columnist at Texas State University's student newspaper was fired Thursday after authoring an anti-white opinion piece, titled "Your DNA is an abomination," that resulted in major blowback on campus, including demands for editors to step down.

“Ontologically speaking, white death will mean liberation for all … accept this death as the first step toward defining yourself as something other than the oppressor,” Rudy Martinez wrote in the column published Tuesday in "The University Star."

“Until then, remember this: I hate you because you shouldn’t exist. You are both the dominant apparatus on the planet and the void in which all other cultures, upon meeting you, die," the philosophy major added.

After the university's student body president threatened to defund the paper amid media attention, including nationally from Fox News, the newspaper's editorial board released a statement on Thursday conceding the column should have never been published.

“As editors, we allowed a hateful column to be published and hurt our community that deserves better,” the newspaper’s editorial board said on the newspaper website on Thursday.

"We screwed up," it added.

The piece has since been deleted and Martinez fired from the paper.

“We fully acknowledge the repercussions of our actions in allowing for such an incendiary and divisive column to make it into print,” the editorial board also wrote. “We were unequivocally wrong in printing it. It was neither constructive nor appropriate.”

Martinez, 20, still stands by what he wrote.

“The article speaks for itself,” the author told TheCollegeFix.com on Thursday after being fired. "Though my language, especially when I claim to have only ever met ‘12 decent white people,’ could be deemed as hyperbolic (just barely), it has accomplished its goal: starting a conversation and outing racists.”

Thoughts?

[Crazedwraith]

Seems reasonable. To take action about the article, I mean. I should hope they'd act the same way whatever race was targeted.

Unless I'm missing something.

[Simon_Jester]

Gonna be honest, people who snap and write "your DNA is an abomination" probably shouldn't be writing for a newspaper affiliated with a public institution of any kind.

The best possible interpretations are:

1) They are, at least in that moment, so angry and so short on perspective/rationality/calm that they cannot possibly be engaged in objective reporting and commentary, OR

2) They're writing a satire piece, in which case Texas State is under no obligation to provide a platform for a piece of 'humor writing' many of its readers won't think is funny.

[Patroklos]

3.) They are racists.

[TheFeniX]

Texas is.... well Texas, whatever. But I'm 99.9% positive that if this article was reversed (white guy ranting against minorities) out of a state institution, he'd rightfully get shitcanned as well. And, not surprisingly, this article reads near exactly like that "final solution" type drivel you see out of white supremacists.

[Straha]

Gonna be honest, people who snap and write "your DNA is an abomination" probably shouldn't be writing for a newspaper affiliated with a public institution of any kind.

The best possible interpretations are:

1) They are, at least in that moment, so angry and so short on perspective/rationality/calm that they cannot possibly be engaged in objective reporting and commentary, OR

2) They're writing a satire piece, in which case Texas State is under no obligation to provide a platform for a piece of 'humor writing' many of its readers won't think is funny.

3.) They are racists.

4) They're implicitly, or explicitly, citing the works of anti-colonialists like Frantz Fanon and/or Afro-pessimist scholars in the vein of Frank Wilderson and Jared Sexton and A. not realizing how the academic rhetoric they use doesn't translate well outside the discipline and B. screwing it up by conflating the question of the structural position of Whiteness and White identity with biological DNA.

Once you break apart that conflation of the question of the DNA of whiteness and the ideological effect of the notion of Whiteness on North America and the Non-European world and read their work as critiquing the second and not the first then, frankly, they're right.

[Elheru Aran]

Gonna be honest, people who snap and write "your DNA is an abomination" probably shouldn't be writing for a newspaper affiliated with a public institution of any kind.

The best possible interpretations are:

1) They are, at least in that moment, so angry and so short on perspective/rationality/calm that they cannot possibly be engaged in objective reporting and commentary, OR

2) They're writing a satire piece, in which case Texas State is under no obligation to provide a platform for a piece of 'humor writing' many of its readers won't think is funny.

3.) They are racists.

4) They're implicitly, or explicitly, citing the works of anti-colonialists like Frantz Fanon and/or Afro-pessimist scholars in the vein of Frank Wilderson and Jared Sexton and A. not realizing how the academic rhetoric they use doesn't translate well outside the discipline and B. screwing it up by conflating the question of the structural position of Whiteness and White identity with biological DNA.

Once you break apart that conflation of the question of the DNA of whiteness and the ideological effect of the notion of Whiteness on North America and the Non-European world and read their work as critiquing the second and not the first then, frankly, they're right.

The problem being, how many average readers are going to be perceptive enough to make that out? If this was a scholastic publication with a readership that mostly constitutes of academics, that would be one thing. But a campus newspaper is going to be read by the average college student (read: kid out of high school who has just learned right from left). If that was truly the writer's intent... methinks he shot a bit high.

[Straha]

Yeah, definitely, and even within their field they're wrong. The conflation of whiteness to DNA is something that those scholars would, by and large, reject. That doesn't mean that they should be fired or pilloried for being racist. It means we should treat this like we would a bad college essay.

[TheFeniX]

That doesn't mean that they should be fired or pilloried for being racist. It means we should treat this like we would a bad college essay.

This was an opinion piece circulated in a paper. It's not exactly the same thing. IMO, it's nowhere near the same thing. There's nothing... collegiate about a statement like: "“When I think of all the white people I have ever encountered - whether they’ve been professors, peers, lovers, friend, police officers, et cetera - there is perhaps only a dozen I would consider ‘decent,’” student author Rudy Martinez writes in the University Star."

Imagine replacing "white" with "black" and the shittiness of that statement is laid bare.

It's literally just "your race sucks, I hate you." Whatever scientific/pseudo-scientific tripe is tossed in along with it, the intent is pretty evident.

Even if the facts backed up the assertion, there's a rather large difference between:
"US black males commit more crime per capita than any other race. We need to tackle the socio-economic and racial factors that lead to this"
and
"US blacks males commit more crime per capita than any other race. The world will be a better place when they all die."

One can start a dialog, the other starts a fight.

[Simon_Jester]

Gonna be honest, people who snap and write "your DNA is an abomination" probably shouldn't be writing for a newspaper affiliated with a public institution of any kind.

The best possible interpretations are:

1) They are, at least in that moment, so angry and so short on perspective/rationality/calm that they cannot possibly be engaged in objective reporting and commentary, OR

2) They're writing a satire piece, in which case Texas State is under no obligation to provide a platform for a piece of 'humor writing' many of its readers won't think is funny.

3.) They are racists.

I'm not responsible for that (3) and will thank you not to attribute it to me, Straha. I know you can't edit it, can/should we get someone with mod power to do that? Because I take exception to it being included as a 'best interpretation.'

4) They're implicitly, or explicitly, citing the works of anti-colonialists like Frantz Fanon and/or Afro-pessimist scholars in the vein of Frank Wilderson and Jared Sexton and A. not realizing how the academic rhetoric they use doesn't translate well outside the discipline and B. screwing it up by conflating the question of the structural position of Whiteness and White identity with biological DNA.

Once you break apart that conflation of the question of the DNA of whiteness and the ideological effect of the notion of Whiteness on North America and the Non-European world and read their work as critiquing the second and not the first then, frankly, they're right.

If DNA means anything other than literal DNA, then the text in question is not in the English language and the author is merely playing obnoxious motte-and-bailey word games.

More generally, if one wants to specifically walk up to someone, anyone, and tell them "you are not allowed to have an identity," or "your identity is an abomination because of where your ancestors come from," then bluntly, one deserves every bit of anger and suffering one gets.

Yeah, definitely, and even within their field they're wrong. The conflation of whiteness to DNA is something that those scholars would, by and large, reject. That doesn't mean that they should be fired or pilloried for being racist. It means we should treat this like we would a bad college essay.

If the same "bad college essay" would be pilloried if the races were reversed, it should be pilloried as-is.

There has to be some limit on how savagely one is allowed to punch, in the name of "punching up."

[Straha]

So, let's unpack a few things here:

This was an opinion piece circulated in a paper. It's not exactly the same thing. IMO, it's nowhere near the same thing. There's nothing... collegiate about a statement like: "“When I think of all the white people I have ever encountered - whether they’ve been professors, peers, lovers, friend, police officers, et cetera - there is perhaps only a dozen I would consider ‘decent,’” student author Rudy Martinez writes in the University Star."

I think there's a contradiction in your claims between this being 'collegial' or an opinion piece. If we're judging this based on "Opinion pieces in Newspapers" then reprehensible fucks like Ross Douthat get pieces in the New York Times where they shake their at the loss of American (read: white) culture all the time. This is an opinion-piece, it states an opinion and while it might be wrong it's not remotely the most offensive thing being printed in the United States this week (more on that below).

If this is to be judged as collegial then there are two questions here:

First, is this the work of students who need to improve? Yes. That's the point of college, to be in a cloistered space where you can be wrong academically and improve. They are mis-citing their sources and not understanding the difference between academic language and the vernacular use of said language leading to massive mis-readings of their work. They need to be more cognizant of this and improve and we need to recognize that while we critique this work.

Second, should Black political projects seek to be collegial and friendly with White folk? Using the authors I mentioned before, the answer is a flat "No." Let's explore that.

Imagine replacing "white" with "black" and the shittiness of that statement is laid bare.

1. It is flipped, all the time. The President of the United States campaigned using explicitly racist imagery in his depiction of Black and Latinx peoples and a majority of White people endorsed him. The rhetoric around things like Black Lives Matter or NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem shows just how racism from predominantly white sources permeates the popular discussions here. White people are pretty awful in the United States (and arguably the rest of the world) and they are pointedly awful to minorities and they have a very very thin skin when it is pointed out to them. Hence, the op-ed.

(A subpoint: if you're going to say "Not all white people!" 1. read below, and 2. imagine that in the context of the #metoo discussion. Not all white people have to be awful people in order for the structural position of white people to be bad and need discussion. Hence, the op-ed.)

2. Part of the problem with this article is the conflation of DNA with the structural position of whiteness. Using DNA as a stand-in is bad. Period, no ifs ands or buts. The structural of white people is important here because it brings forward that your question is non-sensical. There is no possibility of flipping the stance of white and black. White people came here by choice, took land that was not theirs to take and gave it to other white people and then spent the vast majority of the history of the country doing whatever they could to make it so non-white people couldn't have anything here. Black people*, by contrast, did not come here by choice. They were forcibly removed and dispossessed from their homes, forced into bonded labor that benefited white folk, and then denied any meaningful access to politics for all of American history. The ontological status of Black people means that their lives are always fungible and subject to random violence. Disagree? Consider how controversial the simple statement of "Black Lives Matter" is/was. When people are counter-protesting your demand to exist and be politically counted there's a problem. Think also Flint, Michigan.

All of which is the point of the op-ed. White existence in the United States has been a major ethical and political disaster for all other peoples, and the continued protection of the status quo keeps in place both the violent structures of society that target non-white folk and prevents the possibility of repairing the system or making meaningful strides to undo that damage. If this is true, then why the fuck should non-white folk try to be collegial with white folk? Why should they trust them at all?


* An important distinction. Blackness =/= from Africa. The point of Black in academic circles is to identify how dehumanizing the slave trade was. Africans went on the slave ships and were forcibly stripped of their cultural history and markers and turned into Black people. African Immigrants post the 1950s don't deal with this for a variety of obvious reasons.

[Straha]

I'm not responsible for that (3) and will thank you not to attribute it to me, Straha. I know you can't edit it, can/should we get someone with mod power to do that? Because I take exception to it being included as a 'best interpretation.'

My explicit apologies. I misread the author line and am deeply sorry. Really, no defense of that. I should have known better as well.

If DNA means anything other than literal DNA, then the text in question is not in the English language and the author is merely playing obnoxious motte-and-bailey word games.

Let me be blunt: The use of DNA at all was wrong in the original text. It should not have been used. My defense of them comes with that as a major and looming caveat.

More generally, if one wants to specifically walk up to someone, anyone, and tell them "you are not allowed to have an identity," or "your identity is an abomination because of where your ancestors come from," then bluntly, one deserves every bit of anger and suffering one gets.

See my post above for this discussion.

There has to be some limit on how savagely one is allowed to punch, in the name of "punching up."

Why? Is there a reciprocal limit for how savagely people are being punched down?

[TheFeniX]

I think there's a contradiction in your claims between this being 'collegial' or an opinion piece. If we're judging this based on "Opinion pieces in Newspapers" then reprehensible fucks like Ross Douthat get pieces in the New York Times where they shake their at the loss of American (read: white) culture all the time. This is an opinion-piece, it states an opinion and while it might be wrong it's not remotely the most offensive thing being printed in the United States this week (more on that below).

It's an opinion piece on a publicly circulated paper, not a paper read by a professor and turned in for a grade. There are AREAS of college where such discussions can and should take place, but the institution itself has every right to protect itself from assertions made this way.

First, is this the work of students who need to improve? Yes. That's the point of college, to be in a cloistered space where you can be wrong academically and improve. They are mis-citing their sources and not understanding the difference between academic language and the vernacular use of said language leading to massive mis-readings of their work. They need to be more cognizant of this and improve and we need to recognize that while we critique this work.

I feel you're missing mine, and some other's point, by focusing on his flawed reasoning and ignoring the race baiting. I'm not going to argue the DNA portion because I feel it's irrelevant.

1. It is flipped, all the time. The President of the United States campaigned using explicitly racist imagery in his depiction of Black and Latinx peoples and a majority of White people endorsed him. The rhetoric around things like Black Lives Matter or NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem shows just how racism from predominantly white sources permeates the popular discussions here. White people are pretty awful in the United States (and arguably the rest of the world) and they are pointedly awful to minorities and they have a very very thin skin when it is pointed out to them. Hence, the op-ed.

The failure of society to not apply sanity fairly doesn't mean you don't call out bullshit when you see it. And "the other guys do it" is not all that different than saying "well, everyone else is doping."

And a State Institution doesn't really get to make that call anyway.

All of which is the point of the op-ed. White existence in the United States has been a major ethical and political disaster for all other peoples, and the continued protection of the status quo keeps in place both the violent structures of society that target non-white folk and prevents the possibility of repairing the system or making meaningful strides to undo that damage. If this is true, then why the fuck should non-white folk try to be collegial with white folk? Why should they trust them at all?

How does race baiting do anything to break up the status quo? All it does is force people to draw battle-lines.

[Straha]

The failure of society to not apply sanity fairly doesn't mean you don't call out bullshit when you see it. And "the other guys do it" is not all that different than saying "well, everyone else is doping."

This isn't "the other guys do it". It's "The other guys have built a judico-ethical system in this country based on oppression and one that keeps us dispossessed. We think that's fucked up."

In order for you to win this claim you need to win that black, latinx, and Native peoples have an equivalent political and social existence to white folk. That's just not true.

How does race baiting do anything to break up the status quo? All it does is force people to draw battle-lines.

How should oppressed people frame their requests/demands so that their oppressors will change their political structure?

[Simon_Jester]

Why? Is there a reciprocal limit for how savagely people are being punched down?

Would you like there to be?

If the answer is "yes," then some measure of civility has to be observed on both sides. If the cause of anti-anti-blackism is promoted by savage, frothing animals, then you may be assured that civil people who are not themselves anti-black will have little incentive to restrain the savage, frothing animals that promote anti-blackism. One cannot argue "support me and oppose my enemies because it's the right thing to do!" without exhibiting a measure of good character and personal decency.

You can complain that this is asymmetrical, but the thing is, the vast majority of the population already polices itself. Asking the anti-anti-blackists to police themselves too is not an extraordinary burden.

This campus newspaper guy got fired for a doing at thing that would be at least as unacceptable if he was launching the same screed as an anti-black screed rather than an anti-white one. The majority of the population already has some limit on how much anti-black-ism and anti-woman-ism and so on that they're prepared to tolerate. It may be a higher limit than you'd like, but it exists.

If no corresponding limit exists for anti-white-ism and anti-man-ism, then the situation can easily become blatantly unfair in ways that no person with even an iota of self-respect or self-preservation will tolerate. If you want it to be illegal for whites to lynch blacks, or for husbands to beat wives, you do still have to have laws that also prevent blacks from lynching whites and wives from beating husbands, even if these are rarer outcomes.

I think there's a contradiction in your claims between this being 'collegial' or an opinion piece. If we're judging this based on "Opinion pieces in Newspapers" then reprehensible fucks like Ross Douthat get pieces in the New York Times where they shake their at the loss of American (read: white) culture all the time. This is an opinion-piece, it states an opinion and while it might be wrong it's not remotely the most offensive thing being printed in the United States this week (more on that below).

if you want to create a norm that deplorable opinions should be punished when expressed by a newspaper, you can't restrict that opinion to only one side of the political spectrum. The hypocrisy will not be stood for.

If this is to be judged as collegial then there are two questions here:

First, is this the work of students who need to improve? Yes. That's the point of college, to be in a cloistered space where you can be wrong academically and improve. They are mis-citing their sources and not understanding the difference between academic language and the vernacular use of said language leading to massive mis-readings of their work. They need to be more cognizant of this and improve and we need to recognize that while we critique this work.

Second, should Black political projects seek to be collegial and friendly with White folk? Using the authors I mentioned before, the answer is a flat "No." Let's explore that.

If a political project seeks to be deliberately hostile, it loses its claim to make use of shared spaces and venues. Because those shared spaces and venues will be totally destroyed, a la tragedy of the commons. they cannot survive unless an effort is made to police them and weed out deliberately hostile or disruptive activity.

If I proclaim a war between the sexes, I cannot also call for co-ed dormitories so that this war may be waged at closer proximity. It's gross hypocrisy.

If I proclaim that my fellow blue kids should be beating up the green kids as revenge for the atrocities the Greens committed two generations ago, I cannot also call for green parents to send their children to blue schools where (if I get my way) they will be beaten up. It's gross hypocrisy.

If I proclaim that my Boravian countrymen should be staging terrorist bombings inside Moronia, I cannot reasonably call for the Moronians to open the border to Boravian tourists and visitors. It's gross hypocrisy.

So if the authors you mentioned are right, then it might be true that blacks should be as hostile and confrontational as possible... but it will also become true that whites will deliberately exclude them from discourse, not because they are black, but because they are actively sabotaging the discourse. I can't have a stable conversation with someone who denies the importance of having rules of conduct and behavioral norms that govern the conversation.

Imagine replacing "white" with "black" and the shittiness of that statement is laid bare.

1. It is flipped, all the time. The President of the United States campaigned using explicitly racist imagery in his depiction of Black and Latinx peoples and a majority of White people endorsed him. The rhetoric around things like Black Lives Matter or NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem shows just how racism from predominantly white sources permeates the popular discussions here. White people are pretty awful in the United States (and arguably the rest of the world) and they are pointedly awful to minorities and they have a very very thin skin when it is pointed out to them. Hence, the op-ed.

The op-ed deserves to get slammed because it is actively even worse. I suspect it's worse than any anti-black piece Texas State has published in decades, possibly even longer.

(A subpoint: if you're going to say "Not all white people!" 1. read below, and 2. imagine that in the context of the #metoo discussion. Not all white people have to be awful people in order for the structural position of white people to be bad and need discussion. Hence, the op-ed.)

And if you say "white people are foul and loathsome, of the thousands i have known only twelve were decent people, you are abominations (that is, things which should not exist)," you are not actually discussing the structural position of white people. You are being a shrieking sphere of pure racial hatred.

If you WANT to have a discussion of structural racism, you are going to need to create norms for discussion that permit people to participate in that discussion without being savaged by useless and hateful crap. Otherwise, the white people will avoid the discussion for the same perfectly understandable and non-racist reason that they would avoid a pit full of feces-smeared rabid attack dogs. So will a lot of the brown and black and yellow and reddish people, even the ones you wanted to have in the conversation. They don't want to deal with feces-smeared rabid attack dogs either.

And thus, the discussion will serve no purpose that wouldn't be better served by a course of primal scream therapy.

2. Part of the problem with this article is the conflation of DNA with the structural position of whiteness. Using DNA as a stand-in is bad. Period, no ifs ands or buts. The structural of white people is important here because it brings forward that your question is non-sensical. There is no possibility of flipping the stance of white and black. White people came here by choice, took land that was not theirs to take and gave it to other white people and then spent the vast majority of the history of the country doing whatever they could to make it so non-white people couldn't have anything here. Black people*, by contrast, did not come here by choice. They were forcibly removed and dispossessed from their homes, forced into bonded labor that benefited white folk, and then denied any meaningful access to politics for all of American history. The ontological status of Black people means that their lives are always fungible and subject to random violence. Disagree? Consider how controversial the simple statement of "Black Lives Matter" is/was. When people are counter-protesting your demand to exist and be politically counted there's a problem. Think also Flint, Michigan.

Using DNA as a stand-in is a badness that so fatally compromises the thesis of the op-ed, when combined with the utter, mad, snarling loathing of its tone, that it completely fails to make the intended point.

All of which is the point of the op-ed. White existence in the United States has been a major ethical and political disaster for all other peoples, and the continued protection of the status quo keeps in place both the violent structures of society that target non-white folk and prevents the possibility of repairing the system or making meaningful strides to undo that damage. If this is true, then why the fuck should non-white folk try to be collegial with white folk? Why should they trust them at all?

Because the alternative to peace is war. If you refuse to honor the customs of peace, including reciprocal enforcement of civilized norms, then you have war. Most likely a losing war, because everyone has an incentive to join the side that is against you, and declare you an isolated hostis humani generis.

You cannot create a just and stable situation in which A is free to savage B without consequence, but B is punished for savaging A.

I want racism gone. I strive to police my own behavior. I strive to punish racist behavior by whites that harms minorities. If someone tried to publish an article a tenth as offensive against blacks in MY newspaper as the one this bozo published against whites, I'd throw the bozo out on their ear. I want racism gone.

But if you tell me that part of the price I have to pay, for racism to be gone, is to stand still and let people kick me in the balls forever whenever they feel like it, I'm not going to stand still for that.

You cannot make me do that by appealing to fairness, justice, or other positive values. You cannot expect me to comply with a demand for my unilateral disarmament on account of what other people's ancestors shot at your ancestors, while you are shooting at me with the weapons in your own hands. No one with the faintest clue how human beings of any and all races actually behave would expect that to work.

* An important distinction. Blackness =/= from Africa. The point of Black in academic circles is to identify how dehumanizing the slave trade was. Africans went on the slave ships and were forcibly stripped of their cultural history and markers and turned into Black people. African Immigrants post the 1950s don't deal with this for a variety of obvious reasons.

Being a guy who teaches high school math to a mix of Black people and African immigrant children, I'm going to have to note that my lived experience partially contradicts this. West African immigrant children can and do assimilate into Black culture, for better and for worse, if they live in the same areas with large numbers of Black children.

[TheFeniX]

This isn't "the other guys do it". It's "The other guys have built a judico-ethical system in this country based on oppression and one that keeps us dispossessed. We think that's fucked up."

Yea, that would have read a lot better than "I hate you because you shouldn't exist."

In order for you to win this claim you need to win that black, latinx, and Native peoples have an equivalent political and social existence to white folk. That's just not true.

Simon is doing a better job explaining this, but I never argued equivalence in the first place.

How should oppressed people frame their requests/demands so that their oppressors will change their political structure?

I gave you an example in my first response. To reiterate: something besides "people I don't like should all go die."

[Straha]

Would you like there to be?

No. I want it not to happen.

If the answer is "yes," then some measure of civility has to be observed on both sides. If the cause of anti-anti-blackism is promoted by savage, frothing animals, then you may be assured that civil people who are not themselves anti-black will have little incentive to restrain the savage, frothing animals that promote anti-blackism. One cannot argue "support me and oppose my enemies because it's the right thing to do!" without exhibiting a measure of good character and personal decency.

You can complain that this is asymmetrical, but the thing is, the vast majority of the population already polices itself. Asking the anti-anti-blackists to police themselves too is not an extraordinary burden.

1. The term used inside the field is Anti-blackness. Just a clarification.

2. The point of the article and the field of thought is that there are no white people who are not structurally anti-black, and the policing of language (and laws) that occurs is one that protects anti-blackness on a fundamental level. The point of this article, and many other books, is less to say "Let's rally!" and more to say "You too are culpable."

3. Your argument is almost explicitly a ransom. "Pretend we're good people or else we will not do anything to stop the bad people." I don't think I need to unpack the implications of taht.

This campus newspaper guy got fired for a doing at thing that would be at least as unacceptable if he was launching the same screed as an anti-black screed rather than an anti-white one. The majority of the population already has some limit on how much anti-black-ism and anti-woman-ism and so on that they're prepared to tolerate. It may be a higher limit than you'd like, but it exists.

Which is the point of the article. You are explictly saying white people inhabit a position that structurally protects them compared to others. The article says those structures are violent, and white people by inhabiting those positions are complicit in the violence. Everything else you're saying requires pretending that violence does not exist. Which begs a question: How can you possibly fix the violence while pretending it doesn't exist?

If a political project seeks to be deliberately hostile, it loses its claim to make use of shared spaces and venues. Because those shared spaces and venues will be totally destroyed, a la tragedy of the commons. they cannot survive unless an effort is made to police them and weed out deliberately hostile or disruptive activity.

YES. AGREED. Full stop.

The American political project is hostile, and designed to be hostile, to non-white people. Dispossession of land, slavery, racial segregation, and the refusal to engage in any serious reparative project for those crimes protects the hostility of that project. This is why shared spaces and venues do not exist for non-white people and why demands for entry into those spaces (like I outlined above) are treated so violently and are policed out.

This is why the article is hostile in response, because how else can you engage that hostility?

So if the authors you mentioned are right, then it might be true that blacks should be as hostile and confrontational as possible... but it will also become true that whites will deliberately exclude them from discourse, not because they are black, but because they are actively sabotaging the discourse. I can't have a stable conversation with someone who denies the importance of having rules of conduct and behavioral norms that govern the conversation.

You've actually hit the nail on the head with Afro-Pessimism with 90% of that. Afro-Pessimism says that the United States and the Western Political Project is irreparably anti-Black. The only distinction is that they would posit that the creation of spaces for discourse are done in ways to foster, produce, and protect whiteness. Blackness is always seen as sabotaging discourse and must be reacted to in a hostile manner. If that's true, they argue, there is no positive political project under the current system and it must be literally burned down.

And if you say "white people are foul and loathsome, of the thousands i have known only twelve were decent people, you are abominations (that is, things which should not exist)," you are not actually discussing the structural position of white people. You are being a shrieking sphere of pure racial hatred.

How is that not discussing the structural position of white people? "You think you're good, you're not. Your position makes you so and makes you oblivious to the violence that you both create and need to have created to protect your position." It's personal, yes, but I don't think that's a sin.

If you WANT to have a discussion of structural racism, you are going to need to create norms for discussion that permit people to participate in that discussion without being savaged by useless and hateful crap. Otherwise, the white people will avoid the discussion for the same perfectly understandable and non-racist reason that they would avoid a pit full of feces-smeared rabid attack dogs. So will a lot of the brown and black and yellow and reddish people, even the ones you wanted to have in the conversation. They don't want to deal with feces-smeared rabid attack dogs either.

I think this is handled above.

And thus, the discussion will serve no purpose that wouldn't be better served by a course of primal scream therapy.

Y'know, that ain't necessarily a bad thing. If that's all you have left to you... maybe you should scream?

Using DNA as a stand-in is a badness that so fatally compromises the thesis of the op-ed

I disagree with the rest of this sentence, but this is 100% right. Full stop. Again, it has no defense.

Because the alternative to peace is war. If you refuse to honor the customs of peace, including reciprocal enforcement of civilized norms, then you have war. Most likely a losing war, because everyone has an incentive to join the side that is against you, and declare you an isolated hostis humani generis.

How very Carl Schmitt of you.

Again, this begs the question is peace what's going on now? The answer is no, the customs of peace are war targeted against non-white people. To demand that non-white people respect those customs to demand that they respect their own destruction.

* An important distinction. Blackness =/= from Africa. The point of Black in academic circles is to identify how dehumanizing the slave trade was. Africans went on the slave ships and were forcibly stripped of their cultural history and markers and turned into Black people. African Immigrants post the 1950s don't deal with this for a variety of obvious reasons.

Being a guy who teaches high school math to a mix of Black people and African immigrant children, I'm going to have to note that my lived experience partially contradicts this. West African immigrant children can and do assimilate into Black culture, for better and for worse, if they live in the same areas with large numbers of Black children.

The cultural assimilation claim is flat true. The distinction is mainly one of structural positioning. People who are immigrants post-1950s have access to capital, education, and cultural backgrounds that help to mitigate the processes of anti-blackness.

[Straha]

This isn't "the other guys do it". It's "The other guys have built a judico-ethical system in this country based on oppression and one that keeps us dispossessed. We think that's fucked up."

Yea, that would have read a lot better than "I hate you because you shouldn't exist."

But they shouldn't. White people should not exist in North America. White people have no right to be in North America. Their existence here depends on a legacy of slavery and ethnic cleansing and continued violence that they do not suffer. Why should we tell someone who has been a victim of this that the hatred of their oppressor is wrong?

[FaxModem1]

This isn't "the other guys do it". It's "The other guys have built a judico-ethical system in this country based on oppression and one that keeps us dispossessed. We think that's fucked up."

Yea, that would have read a lot better than "I hate you because you shouldn't exist."

But they shouldn't. White people should not exist in North America. White people have no right to be in North America. Their existence here depends on a legacy of slavery and ethnic cleansing and continued violence that they do not suffer. Why should we tell someone who has been a victim of this that the hatred of their oppressor is wrong?

Because one's creation and existence is beyond their control? Because telling an entire race of people that they should die because of what their ancestors did is a step too far?

[Kane Starkiller]

But they shouldn't. White people should not exist in North America. White people have no right to be in North America. Their existence here depends on a legacy of slavery and ethnic cleansing and continued violence that they do not suffer. Why should we tell someone who has been a victim of this that the hatred of their oppressor is wrong?

Why only North America and not South America? Do white people have a right to be in Vladivostok? Do Turks have a right to be in Istanbul? Who gave you the decision making power to decide who has a right to be where? Why are non whites continually streaming in US? Shouldn't they be emigrating out of US to escape oppression like people did in communist countries? If you live in US when do you plan on getting the fuck out of stolen property?
Give me the names of living people that were slaveholders, slaves or were victims of ethnic cleansing. What a load of virtue signaling horseshit.

[The Romulan Republic]

This isn't "the other guys do it". It's "The other guys have built a judico-ethical system in this country based on oppression and one that keeps us dispossessed. We think that's fucked up."

Yea, that would have read a lot better than "I hate you because you shouldn't exist."

But they shouldn't. White people should not exist in North America. White people have no right to be in North America. Their existence here depends on a legacy of slavery and ethnic cleansing and continued violence that they do not suffer. Why should we tell someone who has been a victim of this that the hatred of their oppressor is wrong?

In a perfect world, colonialism would never have happened, but in a perfect world, people from all over the world would intermix freely and peaceably, rather than saying "this land belongs to this race".

But what should have been and what are are two different things. There are hundreds of millions of white (and other non-Native American) people living here, who never murdered, never enslaved, never invaded anyone's home- who's crime amounts to possession of stolen property as a consequence of where they were born and who there parents were. We should be aware of that privilege. We should do what we can to redress existing inequalities.

But do NOT tell me that 300-plus million people TODAY deserve to be deported or killed because of crimes committed by their ancestors. Colonialism never should have happened, but it did, and we bloody well HAVE to find a way to coexist together, because the alternatives are:

a) Perpetual conflict.

b) Ethnic cleansing that completely eliminates all but one group.

[Straha]

But they shouldn't. White people should not exist in North America. White people have no right to be in North America. Their existence here depends on a legacy of slavery and ethnic cleansing and continued violence that they do not suffer. Why should we tell someone who has been a victim of this that the hatred of their oppressor is wrong?

Why only North America and not South America? Do white people have a right to be in Vladivostok? Do Turks have a right to be in Istanbul?

The answer to the first is because we're discussing North America. The answer is the same for South America. The rest is not relevant to the discussion.

Who gave you the decision making power to decide who has a right to be where? Why are non whites continually streaming in US? Shouldn't they be emigrating out of US to escape oppression like people did in communist countries?

Oh, please.

If you live in US when do you plan on getting the fuck out of stolen property?

That's a complicated question. If you want to have a serious discussion I'm willing to play that game. If you're just looking to wave off any implications around this then it's really not worth my time.

Give me the names of living people that were slaveholders, slaves or were victims of ethnic cleansing.

The Cherokee who were pushed out of their lands at gun-point against a ruling by the US Supreme Court, relegated to largely worthless and uninhabitable lands in Oklahoma, and given reservations where they were legally and physically restrained. There are many living survivors of the era of more direct restraint, and their descendents live on land where they were pushed to. They are living victims of ethnic cleansing.

[Straha]

But do NOT tell me that 300-plus million people TODAY deserve to be deported or killed because of crimes committed by their ancestors. Colonialism never should have happened, but it did, and we bloody well HAVE to find a way to coexist together, because the alternatives are:

a) Perpetual conflict.

b) Ethnic cleansing that completely eliminates all but one group.

1. The original article never calls for that. This is the conclusion of the original article:



2. The statement I'm offering is simple. The response "White people shouldn't exist in North America" should be "True. What next?" not "How dare you!" The followup statement of "This violence makes me hate you because of how you perpetuate and benefit from it." should not be met with calls for the person to shut-up.

[Straha]

Because one's creation and existence is beyond their control?

So is non-white people's. They get the worse of this, not white folk.

Because telling an entire race of people that they should die because of what their ancestors did is a step too far?

Sure, okay. So I think I know where the problem is: The mention of DNA (and looking at it now, I see that DNA is actually ever mentioned in the headline which is usually controlled by the editor and not the writer of the article. This makes me want to walk back a few things I said above about the author) is problematic here because it makes the existence seem biological. As I've said multiple times that's something nobody is seeking to attack. Anyone who attacks white people for their biological nature is wrong, full stop, no question.

The discussion is structural. Whiteness is a system of political and social structures that are tied to biological markers. That system of social and political structures is violent and horrifying and needs to end. It needs to die. White people who benefit from that system and are not actively trying to dismantle it are also guilty of that violence and need to be held accountable for it. In a perfect world that means there are no more white people because there are no more people supporting that violent structure. It does not mean that everyone with bright pigmented skin ends up dead.

[Kane Starkiller]

The answer to the first is because we're discussing North America. The answer is the same for South America. The rest is not relevant to the discussion.

Sure it is. We are discussing the principle of someone taking a place by force in the past centuries. Should Turks rename Istanbul Constantinopole and get the fuck out. Should white people get the fuck out of Vladivostok. Should recent Chinese immigrants to Tibet get the fuck out of Tibet. Do Japanese,Korean,Vietnamese americans have a right to "exist" in North America?

Oh, please.

Yeah yeah "please". Answer the question: why is there such a gigantic pressure by the non whites to get into the oppressive white supremacist country called the US? People with degrees and opportunities who could go elsewhere.

That's a complicated question. If you want to have a serious discussion I'm willing to play that game. If you're just looking to wave off any implications around this then it's really not worth my time.

It's not really complicated if you think that white people have no right to exist in North America is it? Are you serious about that statement or was it just a platitude to virtue signal? Bonus question: if white people have no right to exist in North America what right did they have to craft an immigration policy that let in tens of millions of other non white people that weren't native to North America?

The Cherokee who were pushed out of their lands at gun-point against a ruling by the US Supreme Court, relegated to largely worthless and uninhabitable lands in Oklahoma, and given reservations where they were legally and physically restrained. There are many living survivors of the era of more direct restraint, and their descendents live on land where they were pushed to. They are living victims of ethnic cleansing.

The Cherokee removal act was in 1839. Back when the population of whites in US was something like 15 million people. How many whites are there who can't even trace their ancestors back to 1839. Are Eastern Europeans who immigrated in early and mid 20th century also on the hook?
Is anyone stopping the Cherokee to move to whichever part of the US they want to today? I don't suppose Cherokee ever fought any other native tribes did they? Natives never took each other land and killed each other?