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By David Futrelle
So over on 4Chan’s /pol/ board, the anons are talking about ways to save blondes with blue eyes from what anons think will be their eventual genetic demise. Never mind that the notion of the “disappearing blonde gene” is scientific nonsense; these guys love to get worked up about things that aren’t true.
In any case, one anon proposes what he sees as a solution to this imaginary problem, According to him, those with blonde hair and blie eyes
should only breed with alike phenotype. There should be serious incentives from the government if they have 7 children or more. There should also be a blonde hair blue eye ethnostate.
I would say I did Nazi that coming but I sort of did.
But as bad as this is, another anon manages to outdo it with a proposal that combines racism and misogyny, and even a bit of antisemitism, into one giant casserole of terrible:
I don’t even know where to start with this one; in addition to being utterly repugnant, I’m not sure it contains even a single sentence that’s true. Fertility (or the lack thereof) is tied most to birth control and abortions than it is to rape or promiscuity; there are plenty of traditionalist married couples with tons of kids. Black men aren’t out there raping white women en masse, nor are they “savages.” While “forced seduction” is a thing in some romance novels, women in real life don’t generally fall in love with their rapists. Consent — or “concent” — doesn’t make sex bad; it’s what distinguishes sex from rape. Jews are not sending financial aid to people of color. Black people aren’t churning out countless babies in their “gettos,” and, in fact, birthrates of people of color are declining rapidly. And while China is growing in worldwide influence, there’s no reason to think that Jews will soon be sharing the throne with Asians as kings of the world. (I mean, they make up 0.2 percent of the world’s population.)
Is that it? I may have missed an incorrect fact or two; it’s hard to keep track with something so densely wrong as this.
I’m extremely pale white skin and red hair and my husband did find all of that incredibly attractive. He calls me his moon light because of how pale I am. I on the other hand was attracted to his deep brown eyes, tan skin and curly brown hair. We look the opposite of each other and if you want to get all evolution on that, it makes since because in a preproduction stand point that encourages diversity in genes.
Dark hair is rare in my family, We’re mostly a bunch of red heads and blondes.
@C. A. Collins:
Oops, my mistake.
As for Feder’s reaction (or rather non-reaction) to the intentional bit of cringe, it’s either self-selective memory at work, or (given that he’s a fundie, and that the true roots of the modern fundamentalist religious right was Southern white reaction to the civil rights movement – they later decided to camp abortion because by the time the late 70s rolled around keeping up an overt segregationist attitude was a losing proposition) he considered it to be the proper way to speak to a black woman and so he didn’t consider it worthy of comment.
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I’d say it was somewhere in between the two.
That is, Feder supposedly believes in old-fashioned manners. Trouble is, even in the 19th century and later, there were “well-mannered” people who could never quite grasp the difference between being “friendly” and making uncalled-for, personal remarks, whether the remarks had anything to do with a person’s being inherently “different” or not. So if someone had pointed that scene out to Feder, he might have said: “Well, *I* wouldn’t do that, but so what if other white people do it? They’re just trying to be friendly, and they probably seldom meet black people.” As if that were an excuse.
(I should probably also make clear, at this point, that Feder is a Jewish fundamentalist – but offhand, I don’t remember anything about his columns that really distinguishes him from someone like, say, the Baptist theologian Albert Mohler. They’re both pro-natalists, for one thing – and almost certainly both anti-gay.)
Btw, in 2013, I got into a long debate with libertarian columnist Amy Alkon as to whether or not it should be OK to ask someone with a clearly foreign accent “where are you from” (as opposed to “where do you live now”). She stubbornly insisted that no one has the right to be annoyed when asked such a question, even though Judith Martin (Miss Manners) says otherwise. I said that just because SOME people don’t mind answering the question doesn’t make it an acceptable question.
Excerpts:
Amy: If you aren’t sneering at them for it but are merely interested, why would this be intrusive?
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Me: Maybe for the same reason it’s never been officially polite (aside from children and teens connecting with their peers) to ask someone you hardly know “how old are you”?
Please don’t tell me THAT rule is somehow “obsolete” just because some people don’t mind and lots of people are nosy enough to ask.
Some adults also don’t mind having strangers call them by their first names when doing business with them – but plenty still do mind, so managers would do well to make their employees stick to the old ways.
And I think it’s obvious that something as hard to get rid of as an accent is far more personal than something you can get rid of whenever you please, such as a flower in your hair or a shoe.
Accents are very much like the face you were born with. Over and over, I hear stories of people with strong foreign accents being asked “where are you from” only to be told the name of an American city, so clearly it was an unappreciated question – or worse, when a person with NO accent gives the same answer and the other person says “no, I meant originally” – as if your ethnicity were more important than where you were born and raised.
There are other ways to be friendly with people you may not see again – or to make friends. Once you do, they’ll tell you what they want you to know – even if it takes ages.
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Alkon: Again, if your interest in someone not being native born involves sneering at them, then yes, it’s rude to ask. If you’re truly interested, it’s nice to show interest.
The old ladies of etiquette tend to not quite perceive that the world has changed in some ways and their advice gets a little moldy because of it.
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Me: It seems to me that there’s more than one way to show interest, and if one is determined to find out a certain detail, there are far more subtle – if longer – ways to go about it.
Again, just because you think you’re being friendly doesn’t automatically mean other people will think so – they may just think of you as arrogant and nosy…They may well be thinking: “I wouldn’t ask YOU any similar questions; why are you doing it to ME?”
The Golden Rule is not “moldy.”
Here’s an old joke about Brits, BTW – I have no idea whether it rings true in the U.K. today or not:
“Never ask an Englishman where he’s from. If he’s from Yorkshire, he’ll tell you, and if not, it’s unfair to embarrass him.”…
…Of course, even the Golden Rule can be a bit complex. G.B. Shaw famously said: “Do NOT do unto others as you would have them do unto you; they may not have the same tastes.”
So whether you’re a friendly customer or a friendly employee, that’s worth remembering. Modern isn’t always better.
The Golden rule is best treated as a guide how not to behave than how to behave well. E.g. “I would like not to be shot, therefore I should also not go about shooting at people.”
@Lenona
Your style of using horizontal lines only at the bottom of a quote to delineate the end of a quote, without a corresponding beginning-of-quote marker, makes it somewhat difficult to see where your response starts and ends. I suggest using the quote tags instead.
@Dalillama
That’s also how it was originally written IIRC, as “do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.” It’s also how I was taught it.
The other irony is that they mention Sweden’s “viking anscestors [sic]” — when Norse law actually punished rape with outlawry. (That’s not to say it didn’t happen, though — otherwise, they wouldn’t need a law in the first place. And I figure that Vikings frowned less on raping, say, a thrall or foreigner than on raping someone of higher status.)
@Naglfar – Sorry for the slip and duly noted.
@epitome – Oh, hey a fellow Montrealer (well, I’m from the northern suburbs, but still)! Hadn’t realized it yet, or it slipped my mind. To be fair, we francophones do have have our fair share of islamophobes (Alexandre Bissonnette comes to mind), but yes, as you said it doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and I’d be happy to discuss Quebec issues some time and compare our viewpoints. And it’s not like anglophone racism towards francophones is dead (despite even Rationalwiki saying it’s a persecution complex :/); I remember a National Post op/ed where the columnist actually bashed Jacques Parizeau for his Oxbridge education when it was pretty damn obvious he’d never hold that against an anglophone (yes, Parizeau definitely had his faults, but come on). And let’s not go into the difficulties francophones outside Quebec province have, despite Canada being officially bilingual…
@Lenona – Huh, I did not know that Feder was a Jewish fundie (then again I didn’t know Feder at all before this thread…). Not surprised he sounds so much like a Christian fundie, though – if they go far enough, most Abrahamic fundies all start sounding much the same except for the particulars of which other Abrahamic faith has it wrong and must be convinced of the error of their ways, by force if necessary.
Also, and I know this won’t win me points here, but I’ve often asked other people about their origins when striking up conversations with them, including complete strangers (yes, I sometimes strike up conversations with complete strangers); maybe I’ve been lucky, or it’s the way I ask, but so far I’ve only had positive responses.
Maybe it helped that I always was earnest about it, or that those I talked to noticed soon enough that I knew a lot more about their place of origin than the average North American, or that I was also willing to volunteer info about myself, or something else, can’t be sure. All I know is it’s led to many great conversations and never to recriminations or refusals, and my Russian colleague from Kazakhstan is still surprised three years after we started working together about how much I know about his country of origin and culture (that said he’s taught me plenty more).
Like I said, maybe I’ve been lucky to only fall on people who weren’t bothered by it, I don’t know. They usually told me they were even glad to have someone to talk about it, or to talk about it with a chap who was eager to learn…
@RV97
I challenge your assertion that (to paraphrase) white people are more accepting of gender and sexuality “non-conformance”.
If I recall correctly, trans women of colour were the motors of many important US inclusivity movements, for example on Christopher Street and ACT UP.
Please let us not whitewash history here. There is enough whitewashing elsewhere on the net.
Lenona – I worked a retail job at a nationwide US chain for ten years and was required to wear a name tag with my first name. I always hated for customers who were being “friendly” to address me by my name; I found it jarring, condescending, and unfair since I didn’t know their names. AND we were not allowed to make our feelings known.
I’ve also been treated to customers’ unsolicited political views while at work. It was always such a joy to be a captive audience. 9_9
@Daughter
I admit it’s been relatively recently that I’ve been aware of trans women of color’s role in events such as the Stonewall Riots.
Unfortunately I don’t think others within my immigrant community and some other communities will be able to even see this, and may still dismiss being gender non-conforming and being sexually active as a “white” thing, an “atheist” or “Satanic” thing or an overall “western” thing (even if the gender non-conforming and/or sexually active individuals in question were not white) – this may be considered more true by those who hold those views in the age of the information superhighway (and authoritarian regimes), when information about culture can spread at a much faster rate than in the past.
Gender non-conformity and sexual promiscuity may still be seen against religious values and/or otherwise against a certain culture too. I think it may have something to do with the fact that such phenomena seem to only be brought to attention in the west or have most coverage in the west but I’m not sure. Countries that became colonized would have worried about being invaded more I think. I also think that even without colonization, individuals can still have repressive views with regards to gender and sexuality.
As Western culture is still over-represented, whether it’s accepted or not, this information superhighway sort of serves only to reinforce the views of those who believe gender non-conformity and sexual liberalism are alien to non-Western societies.
Reading through the comments here I may consider Naglfar’s word with regards to what she believed should be done:
You know, for all it terribleness I do sort of like “Ikean”. At least we know we’re talking about flatpacks and allen wrenches and not chocolate and clocks, right. Also, why do people call them allen rather than hex wrenches? Who’s Allen and what did he do to deserve this ignominy? Furthermore, back in Ikealand we call them “in-six wrenches” because we care about explication in the language.
But that digression aside, it is curious how all the mighty whiteys fetishize something which is still fairly rare around these parts. I mean, while I know plenty of blondes, few of them are platinum/bottle/peroxide blondes. Most of them are on the spectrum of rye to mouse blonde. Me, I’m of course less pure Scandinavian because of my Finnish blood, but while my curls were dark brown when they were, and my eyes are a gilded brown, at the very least I do tan fast and beautifully. Although that’s the sort thing that makes for unplanned tan lines, as well.
But it’s funny how while my appearance is rather not the thing they imagine, my heritage is. And me and mine are very much not their allies, for a myriad of reasons.
But about that, have you ever seen an American white supremacist try to recruit a European socialist, b’cause white, tossing out neo-nazi talking points? Hi-fucking-larious.
@Feline
W.G. Allen, inventor of the Allen Safety Screw and the corresponding wrenches.
@ feline
Allen is one of those ‘generic trademark’ things like Tannoy or Chapstick.
Hex keys have been around for ages; but for some reason they became associated with the Allen tool company.
Maybe because they bulk manufactured hex screws and keys in standard sizes?
We call them Allen Keys here.
ETA: Ninja’d by Dali
@Feline
It was originally a trademark secured by the Allen Manufacturing Company in 1910, but is now essentially a generic trademark.
Edit: Ninja’ed by Dalillama and Alan.
@Alan
Yup. He was the first one to work out how to make hex scews en masse to tight tolerances.
Still think it’s a pity that Robertson heads never really caught on outside of Canada. They’re a total dream to use – great engagement with no slippage and subsequent unplanned finger piercings.
(Screw heads are way more interesting than whatever lenona’s wittering on about)
Feline
Not to Godwin here, but those who accepted a 5’9″ brown haired Hitler telling them that Dolph Lundgren types (6’5″, blond hair & blue eyes) were the “perfect Aryan prototype” seem to have no problem with their fantasy & reality contradicting .
(See also Religious Fundies & the pussy grabbing, twice divorced Trump.)
Apparently Robertson heads were in direct competition with Philips heads (Henry F. Philips of Portland, OR), and Philips heads could be used with a flat head screwdriver, which the Robertson can’t
As a Land Rover aficionado you get very familiar with all sorts of standards. They’ve been making them since 1948 and as they moved between series they just updated the new bits but kept the old. So you have imperial bolts, metric bolts, whitworth bolts etc. And it seems they were determined to use every possible screw head, and size, that they had in the parts bin.
They’re currently made by Zoroastrians. That’s not especially relevant; but I find it interesting.
@Paireon – *waves from somewhere in general vicinity*
Yeah, people forget that white anglophones had more economic and social privilege in Quebec than francophones until fairly recently. And the National Post seems pretty anglocentric and conservative. (The NP bought the Montreal Gazette a few years ago and so the international section now is from the NP.)
The only place I differ, I guess, is that I’m not used to using the word “racism” when talking about anglophone-francophone prejudice or the reverse…maybe that it could minimize more serious racism against PoC/indigenous folk or that it isn’t a matter of “race”…but I don’t know if I’m right on that.
I mean, there’s been loads of racism between groups of “white” people, not even counting what the Nazis did. I remember reading about a British clergyman in WW1 saying that the “German race” was inherently bad and deserved to be destroyed. But I don’t know how much this kind of rhetoric was used among people from European backgrounds in North America.
…On another topic, I’ve asked people what language they’re speaking when I don’t know, but I think it might be rude to ask what their accent is when they’re speaking English, esp. if I don’t know them well. I’d elaborate, but I’ve been too wordy already 🙂
@Epitome
I know that after the Irish potato famine when millions of Irish immigrants arrived in America there was a lot of discrimination against them. The Irish were generally not considered to be white and were often suggested to be another race due to stereotypes that existed about them and the fact that they were Catholic. This often manifested in violence from groups like the KKK and housing/employment discrimination.
@Epitome
Hugely, and much of it persists in less explicit language. England has always considered the Irish a separate (and inferior) race, and as Naglfar points out that relationship persisted between members of the relevant ethnicities in the US. ‘Proper’ white people are Anglo-Norman or Anglo-Saxon (in that order), below whom are Germans and Scandinavians, who are trustworthy so long as they don’t keep any ties to the old country. Then you have the ‘white trash’, who are Scots and Scots-Irish, followed by the Irish, who at least mostly speak English, then other Catholic peoples, like Slavs and Italians. Below them are Greeks, Armenians and neighboring ethnicities, who even today aren’t really accounted as white by the sort of people who really care about such things, and then we get into the part where the racism gets really blatant and everyone here knows how it goes.
@Naglfar, @Dalillama – Thanks for the replies!
I wasn’t thinking about the whole religion thing: like the Irish settlers, a lot of the French settlers were Catholic. Also, being considered “white trash” also applies; many inhabitants of New France were poor farmers, and when the British won the war in 1763, the newer English settlers probably considered them “backwards.” (The land was called British North America from then to 1867, before Canada became a country.)
And there was definitely discrimination towards the Irish here*. Not as much the Scots, who had a powerful presence in the city early on. James McGill (a slave-owner, more here) donated his land to what would become McGill University, and even today the big Presbyterian church St. Andrew and St. Paul does a lot of concerts and cultural stuff.
*Concordia University’s School of Irish Studies, e.g., documents this. Reminds me that there’s a push to get an African and Caribbean Studies dept. at McGill – hope this Google Doc is visible here, it adds more detail abt. the latter.