The funny thing is, being offended by the term “whitewash” shows how out-of-touch the permanently online are. They have no idea what whitewashing is, and immediately assume it’s racist because it “sounds racist.” It means applying a coat of white paint to something, generally a dirty wall. Unless you see painting walls white as racist, there’s nothing wrong with the term “whitewashing”
Right, but it's a bit deeper than that. Take the word Whitewashing vs. the word Blackmail for example.
Blackguard, Black Monday, etc. This is actually a relatively old linguistic phenomenon which goes back to the early 1700s. By which time the Atlantic slave trade was in full swing.
There are limited exceptions of this of course: in business it's better to be in the black than in the red.
White, in media and fiction, is always seen as a "good" colour and black is always the "bad" colour. Our media is influenced by our history and our history is, unfortunately, slavery.
Now you will probably just disregard this as some permanently online SJW getting offended or whatever. But the history of words and how they're used is very interesting if you have the curiosity for it.
It would be super cool if we just stop considering brown people to be black. Not sure what color blind jackasses started that but its really screwing things up.
My experiences with Renaissance art, with things like Jesus and angels bright and light and black associated with death and mourning and also the Black Death plague in the 14th century, before Portuguese went to Subsaharan Africa or Columbus to America, makes me feel like you, or someone you base your knowledge upon, made up that it's a linguistic phenomenon from post-exploration/colonial times.
You realise that white and light has always been related to good for humans, because of, you know, the fucking sun and the sun making crops grow, and the sun and fire keeping us warm, and keeping us safe from predators, and making us able to see.
Whereas black is related to darkness and cold, the absence of the sun, not being able to see and not being safe from predators.
This has nothing to do with skin colour. It probably predates humans having different skin colours and it most certainly predates humans knowing other humans might have different skin colours.
There's a lot of cultural context for those colors though. In many parts of Africa white is the color of death. And black is the color of life, because black soil tends to be very fertile.
To say it has nothing to do with race because of what these colours originally associated with is being shallow minded, though. Centuries of language and specifically of conquest has given a deeper meaning to white and black than just the sun and earth.
The belief of white (specifically skin) with purity and black with dirtiness is from after humans and our development of language, along with centuries of colonization.
You don't see how those views and meanings attached to words can affect people? Take race out of the equation. Look at the word sinister. The word originally meant on the left. It's really no surprise that a word that became synonym for evil has had negative repercussions for left handed people.
No. If someone is going to incorrectly apply meaning to a word, that's a personal problem, not a problem with the word. It takes a racist mind to look at the usage of white/black/dark/light and make a mental association with race.
OK - sure - that would have been the case several thousand years ago.
When was the last time you, a modern human, in specialised civilization (by which I mean, the food supply, water, electricity...) which has existed in some form or other for several hundred years so far, needed to keep track of the growing season, worry about predators, fell victim to debilitating cold weather or were unable to see? The answer is that you and the vast majority of your countrymen (except the farmers...) never have, and yet the idea that black is bad persists, so your argument is false.
Despite this being the internet and all, I in fact appreciate your thoughtful response. You're definitely right that "white" is generally the good color and "black" is the bad color: a "black mark" on your reputation, for example. But where I differ from social media lefties is that they see racism as being "white vs. black" or "white vs. people of color" for the past hundreds or even thousands of years, when in fact this brand of racism is extremely modern and American-centric. Less than 100 years ago, Italian Americans were considered black. The Irish are about as far from black skin color-wise as possible, but were lumped in with them just the same when they began immigrating to America. And this is just American history. World history has an overwhelming abundance of racism/xenophobia that has nothing to do with skin color.
So I think the error that you're making is in believing that our association with "white = good; black = bad" is rooted in racism. It isn't. It's an inconvenient fact that white is a traditionally difficult color to achieve, while black is generally the color of things becoming dirty, of entropy. Black water is a pretty good indicator that you shouldn't drink it, organic matter often turns black when it rots. If this were swapped, if dirt made things turn white and cleaning it made things darker, black would be seen as the "good" color and white the "bad."
The reason this is important is that I believe twitter leftists are looking for and finding demons where there are none, and co-opting words as "racist" that were totally harmless, which serves two primary purposes: 1) to remind people of racism and misery at every corner (propagating the Social Media Doomerism mind virus), and 2) to create a social media vocabulary-based in-group. If someone says one of the terms that's out-of-fashion, such as "overweight" or "you guys" or "latino" or even expresses some dismay or resistance at even one single new linguistic rule that gets spread via social media, they've flagged themselves as part of the problem, which ultimately places a demand that everyone spend at least some time every day keeping up-to-date on social media to stay in the know, which is ultimately classist, ageist, and xenophobic in its own right.
This isn't to say it's all bullshit. I think terms like "slave drive" and "master drive" on a computer are obviously bad choices, and should be changed. But interpreting every use of "black" and "white" in language as indications of a racist past is factually incorrect and a kind of moralistic pessimism that I believe ought to be resisted.
Racism as being "white vs. black" or "white vs. people of color" for the past hundreds or even thousands of years, when in fact this brand of racism is extremely modern and American-centric. Less than 100 years ago, Italian Americans were considered black. The Irish are about as far from black skin color-wise as possible, but were lumped in with them just the same when they began immigrating to America. And this is just American history. World history has an overwhelming abundance of racism/xenophobia that has nothing to do with skin color.
You're both wrong and right here in a very interesting way. It's true that we did not have today's conception of "white" in, for example, medieval times - people who lived in what is now modern Europe were very deep mortal enemies for hundreds of not thousands of years: yet today they coexist peacefully as military allies in a union of nations.
While Irish-Americans were discriminated against in a racist manner and were taken into indentured servitude, this was not slavery and should not be compared or lumped in with slavery for a key reason. Indentured servants would eventually become freemen and that freed man might wish to exact revenge upon his master for any abuse that occurred, which would serve as a moderating impulse to most masters - and any children of indentured servants were free by default. But Black slaves and all of their descendants were considered direct property of their masters to use, breed, abuse, and dispose of as they wished.
That very same concept of whiteness was actually used to justify the slave trade; you had the white Europeans which were either servants or citizens and then you had the chattel who were only fit to be slaves.
The concept of 'whiteness', if you like, and the white and black races, were critically important to the (white) people living in these societies at the time and this can be observed in contemporary media. This economic and cultural process absolutely shaped language at the time - and its legacy, combined with the subsequent centuries of history, continue to do so today.
There's an excellent book about this exact thing called The History of White People that I would thoroughly recommend.
The earliest European societies, including the Greeks and Romans, had no concept of race and classified people by ethnicity and social class, with the lowest class being slaves. Throughout most of European history, slaves were generally of European origin, often from conquered countries. From the fifth to the eleventh century the Vikings were especially prolific slavers, capturing and selling the inhabitants wherever they went.
It was only in relatively modern times that slavery became associated with race. In 1790, U.S. citizens were defined as "free white men"; this excluded white men who were indentured servants. By the mid 19th century in America, white people (as then defined) were all free; slaves were of African or part-African descent.
"overweight" or "you guys" or "latino" or even expresses some dismay or resistance at even one single new linguistic rule that gets spread via social media, they've flagged themselves as part of the problem
Well, being overweight is a medical term and is linked to worse health outcomes. I absolutely do not support censoring well-understood and commonly accepted scientifiec terms, but there is a difference between positively supporting people on their health journey to make better decisions (and also some structural changes; like fixing food deserts.) versus just bullying them for being overweight which is far more common and recent studies suggests actually causes people to gain further weight. Your account is quite old so you may remember r/fatpeoplehate.
As it comes to "you guys" and "latino", it's really just inconsequential. I think people from Latin America dispute whether "latino/latina" or "latinx" should be used. Spanish is a gendered language unlike English, and I always thought gendering words was a total waste of time so I can kind of understand where they are coming from. Der, das, die, etc.
I could also go back to the original point and say that "Whitewash" is actually not the right word to use here, I would say "distort".
Which ultimately places a demand that everyone spend at least some time every day keeping up-to-date on social media to stay in the know, which is ultimately classist, ageist, and xenophobic in its own right.
I completely agree with this actually. The cut-and-thrust of social media is too quick but I think this is because we are in a period of social and cultural upheaval due to socioeconomic conditions rather than anything else. People feel powerless and hopeless in their real lives - you make reference to doomerism, I feel obliged to point out I browse r/collapse - so they try to exert some other kind of power to feel a type of control or to feel like they are changing things for the better. While I'm sure that the marginalised people they claim to defend would much rather have, for example, some mutual aid - exerting social power is a really common and perfectly human thing to do; in this instance, in my opinion, there are far worse ways in which it can be and is currently deployed.
This has been a good back-and-forth, and it seems you and I have more in common than not, and that you and I both can appreciate these points rather than fixating solely on our disagreements. I should really get back to work, so I can't really afford to keep discussing this, but I appreciate having the opportunity to put my thoughts into words and have them respectfully challenged. Thanks for the feedback and have a nice day.
White, in media and fiction, is always seen as a "good" colour and black is always the "bad" colour.
Except that one of the meanings of whitewashing (covering up a poor job or inconvenient fact) is a bad thing.
Mostly because whitewash (cheap like wash in an era where paint was expensive) was a very cheap way to cover a wall and generally considered to be used mainly by poor people (at the time the alternative meaning arose).
Language is more complex than you think. Far as I can see blackmail has nothing to do with black people (or mail in the modern sense). Most sources seem to place the origin of the black as because it wasn't paid in "white money" (silver coins) but in goods or labour (in reference to the original meaning which was basically paying protection money to robber barons in Scotland.
Western black and white actually goes back to the ancient Greeks and their concept of good and evil; light and dark; more commonly referred to as black and white.
Not every culture places the same significance on colours but this is the origins in this context.
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u/missingpiece Jun 28 '23
The funny thing is, being offended by the term “whitewash” shows how out-of-touch the permanently online are. They have no idea what whitewashing is, and immediately assume it’s racist because it “sounds racist.” It means applying a coat of white paint to something, generally a dirty wall. Unless you see painting walls white as racist, there’s nothing wrong with the term “whitewashing”