#therefore. you will be regulated/returned to th outgroup

[gabbigabz]

Someday I'll write a real paper on this with like scholarly sources and shit but it's late I have a migraine and it's summer maybe I'll throw something together next semester, but for now here's what we got.

One day Some Asshole came up with race theory as a way of doing mental gymnastics to try and reconcile the contradiction of basic tenets of Christianity with the obvious abomination of chattel slavery. The most base level Oppression is Okay because They aren't like Us. (Unfortunately this will be a repeating theme)

For as many idiots cite the argument that "Africans were selling Africans into slavery" like that absolve European colonialism of how it fucked up everything for everyone forever (including white folks). This is ironically symptomatic of thinking of Africa like it's all one culture and people without doing the same to Europe, something Europeans both then and now WOULD TAKE GREAT OFFENCE TO (not that Africans don't or shouldn't I just wanted to point out the hypocritical nature of it.) European Did Not think of themselves as "European" they would be Dutch, or French, or Irish, or Spanish, or Italian, ect. And that didn't change when they crossed the pond. At first.

I'm gonna kinda do a speedrun here forgive me for glossing over stuff. So the American colonies were split between Spain, France, and Portugal with some middling attempts by other European colonies such as England. (Sidebar: for all that the Mythology that the American Educational system tries to pass of as History about the "Original 13 Colonies" Spain was the main one making money off of the "New World" that they stole from the Indigenous population, largely owing to getting entrenched early in the colonizer game. That and, of course, the heinous violation of human rights that was their labor force)

At this point "white" was dependent upon who you asked. Spaniards were white, according to Spain, unless you were born in America then there was a Formally Written Legal Hierarchy (look it up) to define where you fell on the "How White Are You?" Scale. But English people would not refer to a Spaniard as "white" that would imply sameness similarly no Dutchman would refer to a Frenchman as "white" as some sort of point of commonality because none of them were cool with each other like that. None of these Europeans had any interest in each other's bs. White was more of a short hand for European Descent as opposed to the Other, but they would all consider Themselves to be the "Real White People" as whiteness exempted you from the rightful treatment of subjugation and dehumanization of the enslaved.

Then the war for "Independence" happened the European empires that had been getting fat with cash spent a bunch of money on a war that most of them only participated in to piss the others off and protect their own business interests ironically becoming too expensive in the long run so the former colonies were now trying to figure out how to function without wealthy benefactors.

This presented a problem for the elite class in the fledgling states as now there's a bunch of people who just fought a war to get a bunch of out of touch rich fucks to stop telling them what to do, who now had to try and convince them to fall in line and listen to a bunch of out of touch rich fucks telling them what to do. The solution? ✨️Racism!✨️ rather than let these peasants realize that together they could overthrow All the Rich Fucks they instead pitched the idea that a melanin deficiency made the Rich Fucks Just Like You, Actually. And that You fine English and Dutch and German men are all instilled with inherent dignity by being White. (I forgot to mention this same tactic was used during colonialism as well for the same reason, keep the working class divided against itself) It should be noted that at this time the colonies that would eventually become modern USA Did Not Include Irish Italian or Polish, ect in the definition of White. In fact these "Non white" pale Europeans were almost as bad as the black folks (but never quite that low).

But as time passed and you had more and more immigrants say from Italy now there is a significant presence of Italians and if they aligned with say the Polish (hypothetical example) and the blacks they would be enough to disrupt the "White Majority" so suddenly Italian was under the banner of "White". We see this again with the Irish who go from "No Irish Need Apply" to suddenly being "White" and this is once again because significant immigrant presence threatened the status quo of "White Majority". All it took was a name change and an assimilation to the language and you could be "White" because race isn't real and if it weren't for a bunch of arbitrary ass shit you wouldn't be able to peg someone's exact country of origin until they start talking. Continent? probably yes, country/specific ethnic group? Most likely not.

The worst part was that this idea of "White makes right" had now been so ingrained that the populace at large was willing to buy into it. Like you had poor White folks that would look around at each other and say "We may be penniless but at least we're white, that unites us in being better than black people." And by this point the hatred of POC and ESPECIALLY Black People Was the unifying thread of commonality between white people of various descent. In a few short generations most no longer identified with their Ethnic County of origin instead aligning themselves under the banner of White Americans or Real Americans, nevermind that many of these people would not have qualified as White in the past they were White Now and that was all that mattered, and as far as they were concerned that's how it always had been.

The definition of White has been a continuously shifting goalpost. Italians aren't white! They aren't like Us and therefore deserve Oppression! Oh wait, there's a lot of them. Okay, Italians are white now. The Irish aren't white! They aren't like Us and therefore deserve Oppression! Oh wait, there's a lot of them. Okay, the Irish are white now. The Polish aren't white!...

Whiteness was never intended to be inclusive. It was forced to include more or risk no longer existing as the majority. And it cannot survive without it.

But the real root of this is that this classification only came to exist as a means to justify the Oppression of Black people.* And that has never changed.

I dont want this to come off as virtue signaling because it's a very real issue issue I feel we need to address but as a white person dealing with other white people one of the dumbest and most persistent things I run into is calling people on racist shit and getting "Wow it doesn't affect you why are you offended?"

Like I once had a person make a "comment" about Black people, sweeping generalization right, and when I went "dude what the fuck" they straight up said, with Sarcasm, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were Black."

LIKE??BITCH?? I'm not an elderly botanist with a soy allergy named Francine either but if you pushed one down an escalator and I was like "what the fuck dude" would you be like "Damn sorry I forgot you lost your aunt to polio in 1935" like BRO YOU KNOW THATS NOT WHY RIGHT