Just saying.
The bolded bit especially reflects one seriously significant but unexamined aspect of White culture, which is the power imparted to semantics. From an extremely young age, White children are socialized to have a giant vocabulary and use it creatively. If you take a look at political, religious, and moral discourse among Whites, semantics and word-choice both play a MASSIVE role in determining who has the upper hand in a given exchange. In many cases, a command of language trumps all, including actions.Combined with that latent White Supremacist foundation, language has become one of the most powerful tools Whites instinctually use to avoid criticism concerning racism.
To be clear, while it’s particularly damaging in interracial discussion, derailing another person’s argument by debating semantics is central to pretty much all White verbal sparring. The basic idea can be summarized as: There’s no need to acknowledge another person’s argument if you can use their wording to imply their logical fallibility or intellectual weakness. After all, why bother attacking the actual issue (which is likely to have an objective rightness or wrongness) if you can focus on word-choice (where the subjectivity of definitions can provide all the shelter one needs)? This concept is modeled perpetually to White children, and they become very good at applying it by the time they hit adolescence.
Obviously, it’s a crucial crutch in the White psyche. This is part of the reason AAVE is so attacked by Whiteness. It takes the White person out of their element, forcing them to communicate in an environment that won’t guarantee their safety to express every opinion they want to, unchallenged. It’s also part of the reason the White-PoC conversations I see happening on SJ blogs get out of hand so quickly. When a White person approaches a debate, they rarely actually argue about ideas. More often than not, their focus is on the words used to describe said ideas. Now, word-choice is significant in every conversation or debate. But in White culture, semantics can and will transcend all else: If you can make it sound reasonable, it is reasonable. As fucking obtuse as this clearly is, it’s nonetheless appropriate behavior in White culture. Of course, when a giant portion of your ethnic identity supports the blatant mistreatment of other human beings, there’s really no better coping mechanism.
That last line you wrote pretty much sums up how I feel about it. These things are ingrained in me, are a part of my personal identity. Nobody writes about what Whiteness actually is. There’s plenty of literature on White Supremacy, plenty of literature on White people, but little to none on Whiteness. I couldn’t tell you what being White means, beyond being privileged. So I’m attempting outline what White culture is, what White Identity is, etc etc. Maybe if I can explain, I can fix it. I want to make it clear I’m not saying this is some “oppression” or “burden” Whites have. It’s a cultivated lack of self-awareness that means I was dropped into a fucking awful situation and given all the tools necessary to make it worse. The reason racism persists is because Whites don’t know a thing about themselves and make no effort to rectify that flaw. They can tell you about other races. They can tell you about other Whites. But they can’t tell you a thing about themselves, except to insist in convoluted language that they’re not doing anything wrong.
Bolded for excellence. I had to reblog this again because this is so fucking relevant to my life right now.
(Source: luvyourselfsomeesteem)
