Poll: "I am non-white"

Are you white?


  • Total voters
    47
ok, so, if i am mostly west slavic, does that make me caucasian by this polls standards? most people cant tell the difference...

the last person i dated was a bisexual black jewish girl. who was raised by a biracial gay couple.

what is the point of this thread again?
 
:rolleyes:

we are considering whether the concept of polyamory is representative of people who do not consider themselves caucasian

Elsewhere, I contended that polyamory largely reflects a white (& middle-class) mindset -- something I'm totally cool with, so long as it's not swept under the proverbial rug -- which limits the inclusivity often claimed, because (IME, at least) many people aren't comfortable being the "odd duck" in the room.

Further detail belongs in another thread.
 
As a black poly lesbian...

This is actually really, really interesting to me. The power dynamic in relationships between white women and black women in a white supremacist society can really be pretty awful sometimes. It's definitely more comfortable when my partner (s) are other women of color.
 
ok, so, if i am mostly west slavic, does that make me caucasian by this polls standards? most people cant tell the difference...

the last person i dated was a bisexual black jewish girl. who was raised by a biracial gay couple.

what is the point of this thread again?

I cannot speak to the OP's point of having this poll, but what I can speak to is being the odd one out in relationships with regards to race. The power dynamic, no matter how "woke" white partners seem to think they are with regards to race, can be staggering. I am healing from a break up (well, I'm over her for sure, but really grieving the loss of a loved one, really, that happened during the same time), but the woman I was dating was white. She often made racially tone deaf comments and really didn't recognize her privilege as a straight-passing white woman. She even tried to argue me down while comparing fatphobia to racism. So, yeah. I actually, if it didn't mean narrowing my dating pool, would date mostly - or all - WOC. I am not saying all white people are racially insensitive or anything, but it can be a pretty hard hill to climb.
 
The changing nature of race and social standing continues to amaze me. My own history with it is mixed. I'm mostly Eastern European...I ended up with pale skin, blonde hair, etc... But contrary to the idea of privilege, my life up til age 17 was appalling. I was born in a shack with a dirt floor and no running water....in America. I barely had enough food for myself, and had to start supporting my sister when I was still a child. I was subjected to police brutality, and I lived in terror that the police would break up my family and separate me from my sister and send us to some state home somewhere. I was ostracized at school because of difficulties learning to read/write/speak.

My family members have different cultural identities. My husband mostly identifies as Caucasian, but has a number of cultures in his background with a strong Hispanic influence. Reina is of mixed ethnicity. Swift immigrated from Mexico. Renarde and Corsac's parents are from Eastern Europe. Artemis is Vietnamese. I'm not exactly sure where the power dynamic in our family is, or if there is any significance to the role of race and culture in our family. The other girls might have a different opinion on this issue, but the topic hasn't come up.
 
The changing nature of race and social standing continues to amaze me. My own history with it is mixed. I'm mostly Eastern European...I ended up with pale skin, blonde hair, etc... But contrary to the idea of privilege, my life up til age 17 was appalling. I was born in a shack with a dirt floor and no running water....in America. I barely had enough food for myself, and had to start supporting my sister when I was still a child. I was subjected to police brutality, and I lived in terror that the police would break up my family and separate me from my sister and send us to some state home somewhere. I was ostracized at school because of difficulties learning to read/write/speak.

My family members have different cultural identities. My husband mostly identifies as Caucasian, but has a number of cultures in his background with a strong Hispanic influence. Reina is of mixed ethnicity. Swift immigrated from Mexico. Renarde and Corsac's parents are from Eastern Europe. Artemis is Vietnamese. I'm not exactly sure where the power dynamic in our family is, or if there is any significance to the role of race and culture in our family. The other girls might have a different opinion on this issue, but the topic hasn't come up.

When people reference "white privilege" we're not diminishing the hardships of white or white passing people. We're talking about the systemic racism that people of color experience as a result of the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, continued voter suppression, mass incarceration, employment discrimination - on and on - with regards to the system of white supremacy in which we live. In fact, part of having white privilege is just what you said - not having to think about race.

If you are white or white passing in America, you have white privilege. It doesn't mean you didn't have a hard life. It just means that you aren't subject to the kind of oppression I am talking about.
Watch this, if you get a chance:

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/-...ca-watch-msnbc-s-full-town-hall-1244256835526

EDIT: Re: what you said about your partners of different races not saying anything - Obviously I cannot speak for them and I don't know them, but just speaking as a person of color who has dated white women, often we don't say things on the subject of race, because there's no way white people can step into walking through a racist world, and often any suggestion of privilege is taken just the way you took it - they turn it around and make it about themselves and start talking about their own hardships instead of the issue at hand. It is exhausting and frustrating. I'm actually getting to the point of questioning whether or not I want to date white women. I honestly think the relationship I just ended is the last white woman I'll ever date, because while I cannot do anything about that power structure in wider American society or world society, what I CAN do is make sure that I don't have to deal with it in intimate partner relationships. Just food for thought. I'm not saying to rock the boat and ask them about it or anything. Just something to think about. It can often become a situation of denying that racism and white privilege and that white supremacist power dynamic is a thing, and we know it is...and we don't want to try to tear down that wall, because we know in the end we won't be heard.
 
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When people reference "white privilege" we're not diminishing the hardships of white or white passing people. We're talking about the systemic racism that people of color experience as a result of the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, continued voter suppression, mass incarceration, employment discrimination - on and on - with regards to the system of white supremacy in which we live. In fact, part of having white privilege is just what you said - not having to think about race.

If you are white or white passing in America, you have white privilege. It doesn't mean you didn't have a hard life. It just means that you aren't subject to the kind of oppression I am talking about.
[/QUOTE

I'm not seeing this system you mention. I've moved around enough to see that America is very much a patchwork, and any single explanation is too simple to fully address why people suffer. Things are even quite different from one county to another, let alone state to state.

You've made the assertion that I am privileged because I don't often have to think about race, like somehow this is due to an accident of my birth. I think that is inaccurate, as in my experience it varies tremendously on location and demographics. Where I grew up, I definitely had to think about race. It was on my mind every time I had to walk down a street in my (predominantly black) neighborhood to the sound of catcalls and whistles. It affected my ability to survive, because I was part of a minority. Due to my gender, skin color, hair color, limited English, etc... I was at significant risk. I was threatened with physical or sexual assault numerous times. My husband grew up with me, and had similar issues. That's the cost of being seen as "different."

I moved away as soon as I could. When I moved, the world changed for me and people were quite different. For a while, I lived in an all-white community. I didn't fit there...I was too foreign. Where I live now, there literally isn't a black vs. white dynamic. It just doesn't happen. Due to the high Hispanic population here, it's actually a "black+white vs. Hispanic" situation, as black people and white people are united by common language and interests. Unfortunately, a common prejudice against immigrants goes along with it.

Thirty miles from where I live now, the area becomes almost entirely white. You'd think this would be a happy, privileged paradise but it isn't. In the absence of minority races or cultures, the people invent other differences to fight about, such as who comes from what family/clan. It is Hatfields and McCoys all over again. Swift comes from Mexico, and she tells me that it is similar where she is from - the differences aren't racial or cultural but based on other facets of life.

Wealth, technology, and numerical superiority seems to make the difference in who is treated well and who is treated badly. Skin color, language, or culture doesn't change how crappy people can be toward each other. Any time one group of people has an advantage over others, they'll take it. Doesn't that seem like human nature overall is the problem? Perhaps this ugliness we find in our world is more of a soul issue than a system issue? What is it in our nature that drives us to always have some kind of enemy?
 
When people reference "white privilege" we're not diminishing the hardships of white or white passing people. We're talking about the systemic racism that people of color experience as a result of the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, continued voter suppression, mass incarceration, employment discrimination - on and on - with regards to the system of white supremacy in which we live. In fact, part of having white privilege is just what you said - not having to think about race.

If you are white or white passing in America, you have white privilege. It doesn't mean you didn't have a hard life. It just means that you aren't subject to the kind of oppression I am talking about.
[/QUOTE

I'm not seeing this system you mention. I've moved around enough to see that America is very much a patchwork, and any single explanation is too simple to fully address why people suffer. Things are even quite different from one county to another, let alone state to state.

You've made the assertion that I am privileged because I don't often have to think about race, like somehow this is due to an accident of my birth. I think that is inaccurate, as in my experience it varies tremendously on location and demographics. Where I grew up, I definitely had to think about race. It was on my mind every time I had to walk down a street in my (predominantly black) neighborhood to the sound of catcalls and whistles. It affected my ability to survive, because I was part of a minority. Due to my gender, skin color, hair color, limited English, etc... I was at significant risk. I was threatened with physical or sexual assault numerous times. My husband grew up with me, and had similar issues. That's the cost of being seen as "different."

I moved away as soon as I could. When I moved, the world changed for me and people were quite different. For a while, I lived in an all-white community. I didn't fit there...I was too foreign. Where I live now, there literally isn't a black vs. white dynamic. It just doesn't happen. Due to the high Hispanic population here, it's actually a "black+white vs. Hispanic" situation, as black people and white people are united by common language and interests. Unfortunately, a common prejudice against immigrants goes along with it.

Thirty miles from where I live now, the area becomes almost entirely white. You'd think this would be a happy, privileged paradise but it isn't. In the absence of minority races or cultures, the people invent other differences to fight about, such as who comes from what family/clan. It is Hatfields and McCoys all over again. Swift comes from Mexico, and she tells me that it is similar where she is from - the differences aren't racial or cultural but based on other facets of life.

Wealth, technology, and numerical superiority seems to make the difference in who is treated well and who is treated badly. Skin color, language, or culture doesn't change how crappy people can be toward each other. Any time one group of people has an advantage over others, they'll take it. Doesn't that seem like human nature overall is the problem? Perhaps this ugliness we find in our world is more of a soul issue than a system issue? What is it in our nature that drives us to always have some kind of enemy?

The fact that you don't see it is white privilege in and of itself. Anyway, thanks for chatting, and watch that everyday racism link if you are so inclined. IDK how you think that 200+ years of white supremacy, slavery, and Jim Crow suddenly tore down a racist system with a stroke of LBJ's pen, but I think what it is is this: You don't see it because a) you don't want to and b) you don't have to. That in and of itself is white privilege.

Then again, racism denial is the new racism. That is what is happening here. Good luck.
 
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I believe that white privilege is a thing and that racism against blacks is a problem throughout the United States. I'm not familiar with the situation in other countries.
 
I believe that white privilege is a thing and that racism against blacks is a problem throughout the United States. I'm not familiar with the situation in other countries.

Yes, I was just speaking to the Black America experience, which is mine, when the other poster tried to say that she didn't believe it was true.
 
Yes, I was just speaking to the Black America experience, which is mine, when the other poster tried to say that she didn't believe it was true.

Unfortunately, white privilege (which is really a legacy of white supremacy, even though many people find that term difficult to swallow) exists in all of the countries and cultures that benefitted from western colonialism. How it looks may differ from culture to culture, but it still exists across all of them.
 
Yes, I was just speaking to the Black America experience, which is mine, when the other poster tried to say that she didn't believe it was true.

At the same time, you are denying her experience is valid. I suspect she lives in my area, or someplace very similar, where white people are the minority. In this area the systemic racism stems from the hispanics. I also saw the same thing on a smaller scale in the city near Seattle in which I lived.
 
At the same time, you are denying her experience is valid. I suspect she lives in my area, or someplace very similar, where white people are the minority. In this area the systemic racism stems from the hispanics. I also saw the same thing on a smaller scale in the city near Seattle in which I lived.

I am not denying her experience. She simply flatly said there was no white privilege. I told her she's wrong.

Many white people never want to admit that white privilege, on a SYSTEMIC level in America and other colonized western nations is a thing. What I am talking about is criminal justice systems/policing, systemic hiring practices, voter suppression that targets minorities, laws that target minorities, mass incarceration...anyone who thinks that 54 years of the Voting Rights Act cured centuries of white supremacy is complicit in racism, period.

I explicitly said it didn't mean she hadn't had a hard life. She insists that because she hasn't seen it, it isn't real.
 
Unfortunately, white privilege (which is really a legacy of white supremacy, even though many people find that term difficult to swallow) exists in all of the countries and cultures that benefitted from western colonialism. How it looks may differ from culture to culture, but it still exists across all of them.

This is why we need a board on here for POC. Even on a supposedly open minded forum, white people rule, and deny the existence of white supremacy.
 
At the same time, you are denying her experience is valid. I suspect she lives in my area, or someplace very similar, where white people are the minority. In this area the systemic racism stems from the hispanics. I also saw the same thing on a smaller scale in the city near Seattle in which I lived.


To be clear - there is no legal, system wide racism against white people in this nation, period. To claim that minorities have the legal and social power to oppress white people in the way you have and continued to oppress us is, in and of itself, racist.
 
This is why we need a board on here for POC. Even on a supposedly open minded forum, white people rule, and deny the existence of white supremacy.

As a white, non-Hispanic Caucasian, I think inclusiveness is the way to fight white privilege. It's just hundreds of years (or more) of privilege can't be fixed in a few decades no matter how fervently we wish it could. It's really the same with gender equality. Unless you're directly involved with or affected by the 'losing' side of the equation, it can be easy to not even realize there is an equation. That's not an excuse, just an explanation. I also think it's the word 'privilege.' It can be hard to explain to a white kid who grew up as the minority in a violent, poverty-stricken area to understand the 'privilege' he/she received. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just means that it's hard to understand that you were privileged when your experience felt anything but privileged, kwim?

Volunteer for a while in enough prisons, NICUs, schools, court houses, etc...read enough statistics and it becomes really hard to deny that white privilege exists.
 
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As a white, non-Hispanic Caucasian, I think inclusiveness is the way to fight white privilege. It's just hundreds of years (or more) of privilege can't be fixed in a few decades no matter how fervently we wish it could. It's really the same with gender equality. Unless you're directly involved with or affected by the 'losing' side of the equation, it can be easy to not even realize there is an equation. That's not an excuse, just an explanation. I also think it's the word 'privilege.' It can be hard to explain to a white kid who grew up as the minority in a violent, poverty-stricken area to understand the 'privilege' he/she received. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just means that it's hard to understand that you were privileged when your experience felt anything but privileged, kwim?

Volunteer for a while in enough prisons, NICUs, schools, court houses, etc...read enough statistics and it becomes really hard to deny that white privilege exists.

Yes, inclusiveness helps. But I cannot tell you how EXHAUSTING it is to have to CONSTANTLY be explaining this stuff, and usually it falls on deaf ears. Just look at this thread. Sometimes you just want to be amongst people who TRULY get it, to vent frustrations, to have support, etc. The same is true of women, or LGBTQ people, or religious minorities - whatever outgroup (s) a person may belong to. We need that safe space. I know this board is supposedly inclusive, but just look at this thread of exhibit A to see how oppressive it can be to minorities.

Then again, this thread also cemented my decision to take a break from dating white women. I don't need that power dynamic in intimate partner situations, especially since I have it everywhere else.
 
To be clear - there is no legal, system wide racism against white people in this nation, period. To claim that minorities have the legal and social power to oppress white people in the way you have and continued to oppress us is, in and of itself, racist.

Yeah. “Systemic racism” is a lot bigger than whatever white people feel when in the local minority. I’ve lived where my whiteness wasn’t appreciated. It sucked. But it wasn’t anything like the generations of cradle to grave oppression minorities in the US have faced.
 
Yeah. “Systemic racism” is a lot bigger than whatever white people feel when in the local minority. I’ve lived where my whiteness wasn’t appreciated. It sucked. But it wasn’t anything like the generations of cradle to grave oppression minorities in the US have faced.

This is what I have been trying to get across. Thank you so much.
 
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