Reply to "Racists are recruiting. Watch your white sons."

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Reply to ""Racists are recruiting. Watch your white sons.""

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yes. Positive models of whiteness! Like white people who do not center themselves in every discussion about the effects of structural racism and active white supremacy. They’re out there. 
[/quote]

are you trying to say that you think the linked article is "centering" and shouldn't have been published? [/quote]

No, I’m saying that the OP’s insistence that kids can’t be inoculated against becoming white supremacists without “positive white role models” is silly...and racist.

The article is fine.[/quote]

why is that silly? We’re talking about kids. Do you really think that teaching kids whiteness is negative is a good way to raise kids who are anti-racist? I don’t think you’ve thought this through. [/quote]
Whiteness IS negative. I'm white and how I understand it (which I learned from multiple POC) is that whiteness is completely made up. It's a way to band white people of *known* heritages together against blackness. Blackness DOES exist because we stripped millions of black people of their heritage when we brought them over on slave ships. Whiteness is what our society uses to grab power. You can't lump people of English, Irish, Danish, Czech, Russian, Polish, Moldovan, Greek descent together. Hell, the English and the French HATE each other and everyone hates the Germans. I will teach my children to be proud of their Irish, German, and Dutch heritage, and I will also teach them that American "white" culture is a weapon. [/quote]

OP here.  While this may be a useful way for some people to understand whiteness, my sense is that it's a completely counterproductive way to talk about race with a child.  (And I'm not sure your notion of blackness existing and whiteness not is really coherent anyway.) A 7 year old is just going to hear "your skin color is bad; theirs is good."  It's hard for an adult to grasp the concept of race being relative, so I'm not sure how a kid would.  Also, what connection do your kids have to their German, Irish and Dutch heritage? [b]How is teaching them to be proud of being European (if it's not really part of your daily lives - which is the case for most Americans) any different from being proud of being white? [/b]

But you're demonstrating my basic point. The current discourse on race/whiteness/white supremacy is too abstract to be a good teaching tool for kids.  [/quote]
[b]Really? One is being proud of their family roots, customs, culture.[/b] The other is being proud of the color of their skin.

Give kids more credit for what they can understand. Obviously whiteness/blackness isn't a useful concept for a 5 year old, but you should be having these conversations regularly through their entire childhood.[/quote]

My point is that most (not all) white Americans don't really have much of a connection to their Irish/German/Dutch ancestors in any tangible way.  So it's not clear to me what playing up that (imagined) culture would really do?  [/quote]

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