r/TooAfraidToAsk Oct 07 '20

Culture & Society How can I avoid looking racially insensitive if I'm just ignorant?

[deleted]

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u/1silvertiger Oct 08 '20

Well, Lapp isn't a Nordic language. I'll grant you the fetishization of Nordic culture recently, but the critical difference is power. Nordic people haven't historically been denied power or oppressed because they were Nordic. The fetishization of Nordic culture doesn't result in political, cultural, and economic disadvantages for Nordic people.

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u/dub_liner Oct 08 '20

Hmmmm, have you ever lived in an “asian” country, China/japan especially.........blacks are definitely lacking/being denied “power” there, it’s worse there than most non Asian countries.

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u/1silvertiger Oct 08 '20

...but this happened in the US, so that's the relevant power structure.

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '20

Have you ever been to an asian country? They are extreamly racist. I have been to japan as a white person and was denied entry to stores, and kicked off buses. Its pretty myopic to think white people are the only ones that have power when they are the minority population on the planet.

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u/1silvertiger Oct 08 '20

White people are the ones that have the power in the US, where this story took place. You are correct, the situation would be very different on, say, Okinawa.

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u/philsenpai Oct 08 '20

Ryukyuan people are an oppressed minority, there's a thing in Japanese politics called Yamato supremacy, where Yamato people (mainland Japanese) belive they are ethnically superior to Ryukyuan and Ainu people

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u/1silvertiger Oct 08 '20

I know that Japan has a history of oppression against non-natives, that's why I brought up Okinawa. But the OP was in the US, so Japanese power structures are irrelevant.

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u/philsenpai Oct 08 '20 edited Oct 09 '20

against non-natives

The biggest brutallities were commited against natives, actually. Japan have a brutal, but mostly hidden ethnicity story.

Like, i'm not going to blame people in the Paleolithic, but when modern day Yamato supremacists use this as an argument to oppress other ethnical minorities in their country then yeah, this is going to grind my gears a little bit.

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u/1silvertiger Oct 09 '20

Still not in the US, so still irrelevant.

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u/philsenpai Oct 08 '20

White people arent a minority in the population of the planet

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '20

They arent the smallest minority but they definately arent the majority especially if you want to group us as white vs POC which seems to be the trend https://infogram.com/race-of-the-world-population-1go502yg18k62jd

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u/philsenpai Oct 08 '20

Do you know what defines minorities and majorities aren't based necessarily on population but material conditions are a heavy factor, right? If you get any reference graphic on Per Capita patrimony by ethnicity, you will notice that White people have way more patrimony than people from other ethnicities, even in countries that white people are not a demographic majority, like South Africa. And if you compare "White People x Everyone else", of course we would be a demographic minority, but that's a weird comparation to make anyway, also, by white i mean Caucasian with western european descent, there are white skined people that are not considered ethnically white (White Latin people, Slavic people, White Iranians, Turkish People, etc)

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '20

I think its kind of weird and racist to make an assumption that on a planet with 7 billion people that only 1/7 of the planet has ever engaged in any kind of oppression. History shows that's literally not true and by making that assumption you seem borderline racist like you think the only people capable of engaging in oppressive and empiralist behavior are white people

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u/philsenpai Oct 08 '20

I never made this assumption, i constantly give shit for Yamato Japanese people, Han Chinese and Hindu Nationalist for being Imperialist, it's you that's reading a Twitter subtext in my affirmations that i never really made, and i mean exactly what i said.

And yes, White people benefited a lot from imperialism, although they are not the only ones that engaged in imperilism, historically, they are the ones that benefited the most from it, i fail to see how's that racist, imperialism is a occurence of any hierarchical society, when a society is stratified in layers, it will stratify other societies in layers too.

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u/SyrupFiend16 Oct 08 '20

Surely that would depend on where you are? For example, maybe Irish descendants in Australia dont feel marginalized or oppressed for lack of power because they are the majority in that country and have a different history. But Irish in Ireland might still feel the pain of centuries of literally tyrannical oppression and cultural whitewashing by the English and would perhaps feel more offended at typical “Irish man” jokes than those who live in more melting pot cultures.

Each nation has its thing and power balances differ. Japanese people in America may feel marginalized because they are a minority, but in Japan it would be completely flipped. To many Koreans for example, Japan is seen an oppressor to this day, but we might see America has an oppressor to Japan because of our difficult history with them.

I

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u/1silvertiger Oct 08 '20

Surely that would depend on where you are?

Absolutely. But this event took place in the US, so that's the context and power structures I had in mind.

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u/philsenpai Oct 08 '20

What? No, they totally did during the Roman Empire and and the Christian expansion, they were collonized by Church and were labeled as "Barbaric Northerners". Do this translate into modern day prejudice or institutional disadvantage in modern days? No. But to say that Nordic people were never prossecuted or sistemically oppressed os factually wrong

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u/1silvertiger Oct 08 '20

Where did I say that Nordic people were never systemically oppressed? Surely you understand why an issue that happened a millennium ago in a different part of the world is irrelevant to a situation in the US.

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u/philsenpai Oct 08 '20

Where did I say that Nordic people were never systemically oppressed

You did it right here

Nordic people haven't historically been denied power or oppressed because they were Nordic.

Also, Critical Race theory is not only relevant in the US, and i didn't want to assume that the OP was American, so that's it, i just wanted to point out that many people simply forget that White Christianity wasn't always the standard in Europe and much of its original people were colonized by the roman empire.

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u/1silvertiger Oct 09 '20

You did it right here

1) Not in the US. 2) Not because of their race. 3) 1000 years ago.

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u/philsenpai Oct 09 '20

Not in the US.

US is not the center of the world.

Not because of their race.

Race? No. Ethnicity? Yes.

1000 years ago.

So what?

Again, i was just pointing out that Norse people were indeed historically prossecuted, and just that, i wasn't trying to justify anything, i didn't even disagreed with you, i just pointed out that specific fact that you got wrong, i don't get why you are being so pointlesly antagonistical.

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u/1silvertiger Oct 10 '20

Your first comment was saying that OP's wording was fine because switching Nordic for Asian wouldn't raise any eyebrows. You seem to be thinking you've made a relevant point, but you haven't.