Comment on What's the best way to respond to someone who says "transracial is just as valid as transgender"?

• amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  it is actually because how could racism exist without race? the only people who claim race isn’t real are white

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  • SapientLasagna@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    If the earth isn’t flat, how can there be flat-earthers?

    Race can be pseudo-scientific bullshit, and still have a bunch of racists around. The idea of race is, at its core, a racist idea.

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  • EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I don’t really think I can come up with a more concise way of summarizing the idea than anthropologist Audrey Smedley did on the first result of the Google search “race social construct”

    Race is a culturally structured systematic definition of a way of looking at perceiving and interpreting reality.

    I would recommend you read something like “Feminism and ‘Race’” from Oxford Readings in Feminism or some of bell hooks’ work to understand the idea better.

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    • amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      extremely simple question for you, if bell hooks believed race isn’t real then why does she call herself Black? do you seriously believe she means that in a “race doesn’t exist” way? 🤦‍♀️

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      • EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        You do not need to believe race is a biological reality to acknowledge that the perception of others as you (+ your ancestors) being a member of a race has materially affected your identity

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  • froh42@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    “Race” was invented by racists. There was a lot of fake science here in Germany in the 30s to “prove” that not only “human races” exist, but even so that they have different worth.

    So this is what I always still hear when someone is using the word - and commonly they are racists.

    I do understand where you’re coming from, and I totally agree that there are a fucking lot of supremacist people and yes - if I had been a teenager in the 30s, people would have seen I’m blonde, blue-eyed and tall. So I would have that privilege and still it is a privilege in the modern world.

    Prejudices about skin color exist, I absolutely agree. Racists exist, I agree. Just “race” - every time I hear that, it’s like something out of the Nazi textbooks my grandfather had to use at school.

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    • amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      OK, so at least you’re conscious that the word race makes you uncomfortable. and I’ll ask this in good faith, why do you think that is? maybe because acknowledging that your white phenotype, something you have no control over and could never change, gives you privilege over non-white people?

      I promise you that the words you use and don’t use won’t make racism go away, confronting internalized racism will. and that’s what white privilege is, the opportunity for us to go our entire lives without ever having to acknowledge race still exists, white supremacy is commonplace, and we’re part of that system because of societal brainwashing.

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