Today I Learned
What did you learn today? Share it with us!
We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
view the rest of the comments
Can we stop this "it actually goes back to" argument style.
Look I understand that racism is very entrenched in America from its very beginning, just like every other country on Earth. To frame an argument like that is to say through subtext that no act of reformation can ever be enough.
It reframes humans as inherently ignorant which I hope we all know isn't the case, any of us who know better only do so because we were taught to think critically.
I understand it's important to have historical context when defining issues of race and inequity but the issue comes from it being a way to sweep all talk of change under the rug.
It also gives current figures moral cover by saying that no one person is specifically responsible, letting any recent figures off the hook when they're very culpable. It frames racism as an issue of human nature which it may be but it's in tandem with ignorance, something only some of us were able to escape because of education.
It's weaponizing historical context to take away our feeling of agency which is something that has been a tactic on the right and particularly in Russia for years.
Racist rhetoric didn't begin with Trump but the scale, centrality, and normalization is like no other.
Deep roots should never be a way to absolve recent actors. So while I think historical framing is important, I think it's also important that we're mindful we don't weaponize it to both belittle our progress and erase the possibility for change.
Of course the system has systemic inequality and racism, of course we should work to change that and we should use historical context to identify the disadvantages that have been given to people and how we can fix them. But in the meantime we can still hold the people here and now accountable for what they have done to accelerate the normalization of direct racist tones.
To spend your life tracing only original sin would be to miss the nuance of how it's evolved.
One of the most important pieces of Trump's 2024 election was getting the Hispanic vote. Sure, he spent years before, during, and after his first term talking about cracking down on immigration on the southern border, talking about how all of the people coming from Mexico or further south were a bunch of criminals and drug dealers. BUT he courted the Cuban population in southern Florida - mostly the descendants of people who were wealthy enough to have their wealth redistributed by Castro. By calling Harris a communist he was able to get their votes, win Florida, and that would have made the difference in the election.
The very concept of who counts as "white" changes depending on what the racists of the time want. In the not-too-distant past, Irish and Italian people were not considered white. I still don't know if Bernie Sanders or other Jews are considered white or not.
Even for data like this... Is it really a black women vs white women issue, or is it a rich person vs poor person issue? And yes, those economic division have deep roots in the history of racism, but that doesn't explain the whole picture.
Look at the people around Trump. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is one of those Cuban south Floridians. Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer is a Hispanic woman. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is part Samoan, born in Somoa. FBI Director Kash Patel is Indian - his family fled persecution in Uganada.
And then there's foreign policy. Trump seems to largely be pushing the USA away from predominantly white European countries that have historically been allies. Trying to break up NATO and undermine the EU, making threats against Canada and Greenland. Cozying up to Muhammed Bin Salman.
The people in power love when the masses fight amongst themselves.
couldn't agree more, divide and conquer taken to the world stage. Division down on race, background, employment and anything else to keep us busy while the rich rob us blind and Trump's cabinet lines their pockets
That's the point though. When you frame it that way you turn it into an extreme issue, to which you allowed an extreme reaction. You can never acknowledge progress or growth or change. It's can therefore be perpetual ragebait. And Americans eat this up. They love it.
One of the key tenants of modern leftist ID politics is that racism is a form of original sin that can never be washed clean.