Every day..... I am stunned (but also honestly fascinated) how many minorities fall under the white spell to adopt terminology and viewpoints that are harmful to themselves.
Every day..... I'm reminded that white people didn't come to power by accident but because they do certain things well that subordinates others; persuasion in this case.
The terms in the title are methods whites use to invalidate minority efforts to combat racism.
1 -"Identity Politics" - TL;dr: Whites bake racism into the system and then attack non-whites for focusing on fixing those issues.
Explanation: The reality is certain issues affect certain racial communities more than others. If blacks are affected more by voting restrictions or if Asians are negatively impacted by unfair college admissions, why shouldn't they support politicians who aid them in those areas?
Of course we support the common interest in most cases, but we shouldn't be bullied out of addressing issues critical to us by phony attacks that it's 'selfish' to do so. Esp. when whites usually created those problems in the first place.
(Whites can sometimes avoid ID politics because minorities don't have the power to create structural racism that they would have to band together to fix. See how they act in South Africa though.)
2- "Cancel Culture" - Whites are scared of Accountability (thanks to the power of social media) - frightened of facing consequences for being racists, they villainize the act of holding their racism accountable.
3- "Woke" - Whites use this term to mock PoC for being overly sensitive about racism. "Woke" is only used to discredit complaints by PoC as "whining"; meanwhile suburban whites scream bloody murder when people say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". Clearly this is not to be derided as "woke" or complaining; it's a serious matter dammit!!!11!!
4- "Political Correctness" - This was white people's early attempt at deriding minority activism. "Woke" is the modern equivalent.
As is typical for all these phrases, whites seize on one extreme example or instance of overreach in order to show that non-whites are "overzealous" or "complaining about trivia" in order to discredit wider and responsible efforts to stop their BS.
It seems that most other forms of toxic identity politics in the US stem from this original source. Usually as an understandable defensive response to it. Once the source is gone maybe the other forms of toxic ID politics will fade? We need to simultaneously fight white ID politics while we champion society wide initiatives like PRO act, M4A and tuition free college. Things that will unite and lift us all as a class and a society. White identity politics may be one of our biggest obstacles in developing class consciousness. What do you think?
