the_dunk_tank

i've never loved this framing, not because i think it's wrong to call white people krakkker and mayo (never gonna stop doing this ) but because it feels like a semantic squabble with limited utility.

like, white liberals have a common understanding of the word racism which is pretty... shallow: essentially just being mean to someone based on race or racial characteristics. this simplistic definition of the word reveals a lack of understanding of what racism-- institutionally and culturally enforced otherization-- actually entails for those deemed other. but i hate arguing definitions and semantics, like asserting that a word can't map to multiple concepts simply isn't how words and language work. i'm more inclined to tell someone that their experience of racism is remarkably shallow and acute than deny that the word racism can map onto such shallow and acute experiences.

As I type this I suppose "limited utility" isn't actually accurate, this kind of rhetoric can serve a few purposes: force people who still identify with their whiteness, exude white fragility, to either deconstruct their identity or out themselves and leave the group. maybe it's just the way people focus on semantics that bothers me.

it's more than that, actually. this thread gives me a vibe that I feel fairly frequently within online leftist spaces, not really unique to this topic. it's the misconception that because we're right (we are) we don't need to be tactful or strategic about how we do things, suggesting an underlying assumption that the universe trends towards rightness or justice or whatever. which i don't think it does. like, just because something's right or justified doesn't make it the most effective tactic to achieve our goals. i'm always "justified" in being the most aggressive leftist i want to be, but more often than not (at least irl) it's more effective to hide my power level and blend in, slowly advancing ideas without raising peoples' defenses.

so take this topic as an example (which I could go either way on, this is just an example). the function of this thread seems to be to re-enforce a sort of "party line" about how we define the word, which is fine I suppose. but that seems to preclude any talk of tactics, because any question of whether this rhetoric is effective is conflated with questioning whether this rhetoric is right/justified. another example, the idea that any bullying of soon-to-be/current/former soldiers is justified. It is, they're imperialist war criminals, but there still may be utility in trying to get through to them on some level.

it makes me think of mass line, specifically "unite the advanced, win over the intermediate, and isolate the worst of the backward." Most people are intermediate, and most of the intermediate have backwards traits and beliefs (especially white people in the US), but there has to be a balance between isolating people with one or two "backwards" views, at the expense of the movement, and allowing reactionary views to fester and grow within the movement, also undermining it. looking at it in a more granular way, in some contexts it may be more useful to move people from "backwards intermediate" to "advanced intermediate" or whatever, than some sort of "radicalize or bust". no historical movement has been made up of ideologically pure, advanced masses, they've been mixed bags that are able to unite a critical mass of overlapping/intersecting interests.