White identity

hi I'm slime friends pretty pretty weird title alright that's that's not one you want to see this one's gonna be spicy with the title like that you're probably wondering is there old pal thought so I'm gonna say something racist and well jeez everybody I hope not but I am a white person who's about to talk about race for like 15 to 20 minutes so yeah probably I mean I'm gonna do my best but I think it's fair to assume then I'm gonna fuck it up in some ways and I'm not saying that because I think you should go easy on me or not criticize me but to point out that there are a whole lot of people who have a much more relevant perspective on this issue I've listened to some of them in the description so if you'd rather not hear a white dude lecture you on this bullshit and who could blame you you have options of particular note is the lecture from Nell Irvin painter the writer of the history of white people which informs a lot of what I say about the history of race in this video the question arises hey what gives you a lot slime a noted white person the right to talk about this at all well I think the things I'm going to criticize in this video are largely things within my experience I can't speak to the experience of black people or First Nations people or Asian people but I can talk about the white experience from a white perspective more importantly the things I'm going to criticize are used to emotionally manipulate people like me and I think it's important that it's not just people of color calling that shit out it's possible that I misjudged and if so I'm sorry I recognize that I am not at all an authority on this subject and I hope that this video is the start of a more fruitful discussion than I am capable of providing on my own oh and if you're just scrubbing through the video hoping you can convince people that I said some an oculist thing was racist so you can be like look the left calls everything they don't like racist let me save you the trouble I don't know ice cream is racist use that anywho I was taught in school that there's no such thing as a stupid question with that in mind what are white people that's a rhetorical question I think I know what they are or at least I know what people mean when they say it I know that I'm a white person for example what if anything does that mean like literally how does one define what a white person is I started thinking about this because my girlfriend and I were discussing some liberal bullshit like an anomaly and Dhanam or something I forget exactly what it was and she said really mad man why are white people like this and then she paused then she turned to me and she's like oh I'm sorry is this does that offend you when I say that and it didn't it didn't even occur to me that it was something that I could be offended by which is pretty weird right like essentially she's saying what's wrong with people like you and I'm thinking they're like yeah what is wrong with people like me glad I'm not at people like me it got me thinking why don't I hear white people and think of myself how come white people are a group that I somehow think I'm within but also seem to think I'm entitled to judge from the outside something I'm inescapably a part of but I get to act like it doesn't define me or like I'm above it why don't I have a strong emotional connection to being white what does it mean to be a white person and to possess whiteness let's start with the obvious answer skin color white people are pale we have milky pink skin like a little baby bird but I mean obviously that's not the answer or else every albino person on earth would be white and anyone could become white simply by bleaching their skin and people would temporarily lose their whiteness when they got a suntan also even if you ignore that Palestinian activists ahead Tamimi is fair-skinned and blond but she's not considered white she's considered Arab so I think we can safely rule out skin color or physical appearance is it being of European descent because what does that mean Roma people have been living in Europe for generations upwards of two thousand years but they're not considered white even though they have pale skin but let's be real here when people say that they don't mean geographically they mean genetically your distant ancestors have to be from Europe a distinction that would have been lost on literally all of them how distant it's unclear but less distant than like when we all lived in Africa a couple of problems with that metric though I've never had a DNA test I haven't studied the genetic makeup of people I think of his white I couldn't tell you a thing about Jim against genetic makeup but you're not going to convince me that dude isn't white also if we were categorizing people by genetic differences race would be a real bad way to do that there is more genetic diversity in Africa than any other part of the world or between any other parts of the world combined all non-african humans to the extent that any human can truly be considered non African are the result of about 60,000 people leaving Africa and going to the weird parts of the earth two random African women could be more genetically disparate than I am from a random Japanese person but I'm considered a different race from a Japanese person and the two African women would not be furthermore the types of racial categories we group people into now predate the discovery of DNA so if genetic differences are what makes a person a certain race how come we were grouping people into races before we knew what genetics was before Charles Darwin saw some weird turtles and he was like whoa look at these weird turtles what's up with these turtles probably an evolution happened here in this island a lot of very white people who studied race believed in a theory called poly Genesis meaning they believed quite sincerely that God created each race at a different time some of them going so far as to suggest that only white people could trace their lineage back to Adam and Eve who were real and therefore all the different races are different species which makes no sense because we can clearly reproduce with one another others argued that climate alone accounted for racial differences and that black slaves in the American South were gradually turning into white people in the mild American weather why white people wouldn't therefore turn into First Nations people didn't seem to occur to them suffice to say the scientific rigor of these gentlemen leaves a little to be desired but we still use racial categories that these types of boneheads cooked up even though they sure as heck didn't based their findings on genetics a concept that once again had not yet been invented you expect me to believe that random ding-dongs in the 19th century around the time that people thought traveling on trains drove you mad because the high speeds rattled your brain around too much just happened to stumble ass backwards into the exact correct scientific taxonomy of human beings and boy wouldn't you know it all the categories that these old-timey geniuses discovered through strict observance of the scientific method and not just guessing based on their own prejudices just so happened to align perfectly with their own economic and political interests lucky stuff right otherwise it might make that whole slavery genocide or colonialism business seem like some of the worst things ever done racial categorization is continuously shaped by whatever is most convenient for powerful people at any given time remember if you look at the way other people's forehead slope they're not as as we are I'm looking over my data here as we get to have all of your land and stuff and you have to do whatever we tell you to do I don't like it either but that's just cold hard numbers according to science white people are smarter and cooler because we evolved in colder climates but not as cold as where any wet people evolved that that's too cold the perfect temperature for making smart and cool people is Northern Europe oh shit a bunch of poor Irish people are coming to my country well I mean not that Northern Europe they're not white they're Celts which is a race now I guess if you look at the way their noses point it's it's like an monkey nose so they're not white they don't get to vote go what's that Irish people you support the institution of slavery well hell maybe we misjudged you welcome to the white people club none of this categorization is genetic in nature because race is not genetic I mean its heritable for sure you're gonna be the race that your parents were and for your parents were mixed race we'll we'll figure something out but citizenship is also heritable royal titles are heritable last names are heritable none of those things are genetic skin colors genetic mind you I possess the same mutant pale person genes that my parents did superficial differences in appearance are genetic no doubt about that but we've already disqualified those things from being race so nowadays modern racism is even more mercurial look at the hodgepodge of complete nonsense that comes out of Dickie Spencer's mouth when you ask him who white people are my definition of race is not purely genetic in the sense that obviously an African cannot become a white person but in terms of who is white this can be a vexing question there's this very famous National Geographic cover and it's actually one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century it's a photograph of a striking Afghani woman with green eyes that woman is at some level that that woman has perfectly similar DNA to me if she really does she really have a European identity I would say no the fact that she is a Muslim changes that fundamentally but but identity it's not just purely about race so I mean I know this is a you could say a wishy-washy way of answering it but I don't you know I'm not someone it's not like you're gonna show me your 23andme account and it's official like it's it's it's deeper than that it's bigger than that but yes obviously the genetic component of race is a indispensible aspect of racial identity I mean you you cannot I cannot become black an African cannot become white but if you're a white you know it your speech at Texas A&M you stated to a protestor that you don't believe that people can just self-identify as one race or another how do I address it as the Rachel Dolezal question Spencer just made the nutsoid claim that whiteness isn't even a racial category it's an identity to be white you just have to behave like a white person does whatever that means problem solved if you're white you know you're white but obviously you can't base your race on self-identification of you I can I know I'm white but you can't you might be of Aryan stock but you're too different to me to be white cuz your religion or whatever whiteness is like pornography I don't know what it is exactly but I know it when I see it so to recap skin colour doesn't necessarily make you white being of European descent doesn't necessarily make you white genetics straight up have nothing to do with race and it's not even your fucking race anymore so what is it what is whiteness what is the one thing that all white people have in common that also excludes people who aren't white and my answer to that question might make you a little uncomfortable if you consider yourself white but it shouldn't so just stick with me and let me explain whiteness is the absence of racialization the process of attributing essential racial characteristics to groups of people whiteness is a category of exclusion and denotes nothing but that the people who possess it are not part of one of the out groups that the white in-group has created essentially to be white means to be not on white and also nothing else now that might sound pretty demeaning let me be clear I do not believe that white people have no culture or no identity of our own of course we do it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise everyone has a culture everyone has an identity polish people are majority white and there's definitely polish culture German people are majority white and there there's definitely a German identity same with Irish people or fish fans or werewolves all of these groups are majority white and they all have their own culture also white people can belong to cultures which are not just majority of white people cultures people are parts of lots of cultures there out their lives there's more to our identity than race we just don't have a white culture or identity because there's no such thing as that a lot of the time lumpy people pretend that all people who we would nowadays conceive of as white are part of a shared white lineage Mozart Plato Shakespeare Julius Caesar Joan of Arc erik the red they're all your ancestors you come from the same stock that's who you are white person you're the sum total of all those cool people you know from history and not any of the illiterate peasants you've never heard of but not really though that's wishful thinking I mean humans move around so much and do so much of that sweet sweet miscegenation that it's very difficult to establish a genetic line between anyone alive today and any of those famous widows except maybe Mozart and culturally there is disparate as you can get and their influence spreads to all parts of the world so you can't buy coke you can't go by cultural influence either you think I have more in common culturally with Eric the red than I do with like Hannibal Buress Hannibal Buress and I speak the same language and we've probably watched some of the same TV shows also we're in the same time period so that helps whatever I talk about race weirdos accuse me of being anti white a charge I don't really understand they claim I'm a self-hating white person who's ashamed of my heritage because of white guilt imposed upon me by anti white elites it feels like most elites are white so I don't know where that would come from but that's garbage because I'm very proud of my heritage I come from st. John's Newfoundland I'm extremely proud of my Newfoundland heritage as anyone who has ever called me a new fee a term I consider pejorative can tell you while I was writing this video about how white identity doesn't exist and how it's a shitty exclusionary buzzword Jessie Brown of Canada Len said that anybody who's offended by the word Newfie it just wants Newfoundland to be a white ethno state and I just want to say Jesse eat my entire dick chow down on my whole hog like for real go fuck yourself anyway I'm proud of my culture despite the fact that being a Newfoundlander comes with it the inescapable baggage of being a white settler on stolen land whose ancestors were responsible for the literal extermination of the be avec people my people did and continued to do some real evil shit and I recognize that reality but it doesn't and shouldn't make me less proud of my culture or home because the things that I'm proud of the things that I do love are not those things it's not about how good we are killing people I like like the music or the cool flag or our dialect or my friends and family because there are aspects to Newfoundland culture that don't revolve around the exclusion of a racialized other sometimes white nationalists or identitarian or whatever you want to call these things will claim that society is biased against white people because it's considered racist to be proud of being white but not to be proud of being black or Asian or what-have-you and on the surface that seems like a double standard doesn't it our heritage is demonized while other peoples are celebrated no fair but you can be proud of being American without anyone giving you side eye you can be proud of being Canadian or German or Italian nobody's mad about your heritage but to be proud specifically of being part of the huge Vegas Ortman if cultures and people's whose only unifying connection is that none of them are part of the races we treat it like dog shit historically it's obviously a little bit different isn't it the only thing which connects all white people the only commonality between all of us is racial privilege for example we have an easier time getting a job than an equally qualified candidate of color so it's kind of a weird thing to be proud of isn't it it's like going to a golf tournament and asking for a trophy because you had the highest handicap like why are you proud of that it made shit easier for you however the same cannot be said of other racial identities they do have a unifying experience which is the oppression they receive as part of that minority the plurality of cultures among black people or Asian people or First Nations people are just as diverse as the cultures of Europe but the fact that they're put into racial categories with one another means that they get treated similarly the racialized identity that to be clear we imposed on them becomes reclaimed and used as a unifying factor to fight back against that shared oppression not to mention that a lot of people's traditional ways of life were deliberately destroyed during colonization families were and are separated traditional languages and religious beliefs are stamped out meaning that some colonized people may not know anything about their heritage or background beyond these arbitrary racial categories their race becomes a sort of substitute heritage where at least they know their peoples post-colonial history and they can draw strength in a sense of community from that so then black pride could be said to be a reaction to a shared experience of black oppression they have the common goal as indeed we all should have of eliminating that oppression white people do not have that experience because we're not oppressed now don't get me wrong a white person can be oppressed like if they're a woman or queer or poor or disabled or what have you but categorically white people as a group are not oppressed so then what common goals what a white pride movement work towards if you believe white people must unify around our whiteness what are we unifying against seems to me like we have it pretty good actually like we already make the most money we're less likely to be arrested for doing the same crimes and if we are arrested we usually get a lighter sentence what are we even fighting for the answer whether or not these groups are willing to admit it is the continuation of those privileges through violence and suppression of minorities in the extreme and slavish devotion to pretending like racial injustice doesn't exist in the mundane any concession towards a minority group must be challenged no matter how trivial it seems to the rest of us that's why they get so mad when they there's a person at color in a Star Wars movie white people are not racialized and therefore to these ding-a-lings their prayers is completely apolitical but a person of color of course that's that's forced diversity there racialization represents a deviation from the white status quo it's why they viciously oppose any idea that centers people of color no matter how benign or immediately obvious it appears to you or me the phrase black lives matter becomes an attack against white people how dare you say your lives matter sir you know whose lives really matter the police the people you're asking to stop murdering you for nothing they're sent out there every day into the mean streets with nothing to defend themselves but body armor state-issued firearms and the legal sanction to kill anyone they think is a threat imagine how scared they must be also they have tanks it's why they can present refugees fleeing war zones or extreme poverty as a wave of dangerous criminals coming to destroy your culture and way of life even though you know most of the dangerous criminals lately are white nationalists bottom line white identity is constructed specifically to exclude and dehumanize outsiders to whatever is the politically convenient definition of whiteness at any given moment now if that makes you feel sad or like you're losing something consider instead what you have to gain by not deliberately excluding yourself from the rest of the world you're gaining access to a far more amazing far more ancient and far more accomplished race than the one you had before goblins no shit sorry sorry I misread my notes it it's the human race it's the human race god ah that would have been so powerful if I didn't fuck that up I'm sorry everybody hey one last thing from the history of white people before I go I couldn't find a way to fit this into the video but it's amazing and I have to tell you about it did you know that the term Caucasian was coined by a dude named Johann Friedrich blumenbach because he owned a skull that was his absolute favorite skull of a georgian sex slave who everybody agreed was very good-looking and so was her pretty pretty skull so he gave the name caucasian after the caucus mountains in georgia to white people to honor this skull that he hiked he wanted to make out with now you know that and you can't unknow it you're gonna think about the weird sex skull every time you hear the word Caucasian you're welcome everybody hey if you liked the video pretty please hit that like button that helps me get noticed on YouTube you can also subscribe for more videos like this and I have a patreon at patreon.com slash lots lime also in the in the description you'll find a link to the unas tagging camps website the eunice Totten camp is defending traditional wetzel weten land from being invaded by the Canadian government to establish big oil and gas pipelines in a land that they have no claim to and that sucks and they could definitely use our support so go ahead and check them out if this video isn't the monetize I'm going to give all of the revenue from the first month of its this video which is where most of its going to come from to the moon its thought and camps because it would be a little fucked up for me to profit off of this particular video the video probably will be demonetised though so that sucks you

Channel: Thought Slime

Views: 183,558

Rating: 4.8211207 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: KPY-IBFCxuQ

Length: 22min 10sec (1330 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Jozarin]

I'd like to point out that that experience of losing your actual cultural heritage due to colonialism and having nothing to replace it with but whatever racial category you're seen as is sometimes shared by white people.

It's why, for example, I still go to Mass every week despite not really Believing™ anymore and having many serious problems with the doctrine and clerical hierarchy of the Catholic Church

[u/[deleted]]

Good video. I once had an (infuriating) conversation with someone on reddit about how "it's acceptable to make fun of white people and that's racist". Didn't have the vocabulary at the time to explain how "whiteness" is an inherently oppressive and exclusionary concept. Thanks SlimeFriend

Werewolves are white

Sorry SlimeFriend, you are cancelled. It's been a fun 22 minutes and 9 second.

[u/Wumbo_Chumbo]

Maybe this is just me being nit picky but why is he talking about being proud of his Newfoundland heritage when he’s an anarchist, especially the part about the flag. Isn’t that like literally nationalism, which anarchism opposes?

[u/st-ove]

This is probably the best and most easy to understand video I've seen on race and identity so far. I truly feel like I learned a lot.

[u/MalygosFanBoy]

My absolute favorite video on race!

Realizing that whitness is in fact not a race but a concept to categorize and exclude others will be my new argumentative basis

[u/Ziggie1o1]

Good video, though nothing really new or groundbreaking. Honestly given how many warnings and preambles he gave I thought there was gonna be some massive credibility-destroying hot take somewhere in there like, idk, solidarity is racist or something like that. Glad there wasn’t.

[u/dirtbagbigboss]

If this is a new idea to anybody you need to listen to this podcast.

https://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/