oNlY ThRoUgH CaPiTaLiSm wE CaN GeT RiD Of wHiTe sUpReMaCy

I was halfway through typing a big long comment about this but decided that it actually doesnt matter because everyone who will see this comment is likely broadly in agreement on why this dork is wrong, so whatever I say is just circlejerking.

imperialism/settler colonialism arose from the notion Whites are superior

Immediate demonstration of why materialism matters

Is my reading comprehension that bad or do they never make the argument you’re putting in their mouth? That they’re saying getting rid of capitalism doesn’t get rid of white supremacy doesn’t mean they think capitalism is the way to get rid of it right?

Well-versed decolonial indigenous scholars disagree

Weird invoking decolonial scholars as being exclusively indigenous and a monolithic ideological bloc.

Feels very tokenistic and like a strategy to silence discussion by invoking the concept of "decolonial indigenous scholars" as a sort of ward used to dispel "erroneous" thought rather than directly referencing them and engaging with the conversations that "need to be had".

Like, I get it - it's Twitter. In these sorts of slapfights online I'll either name-drop a theorist or two or I'll name drop a concept that I'm drawing directly from to provide the other person with a clear indication of the angle that I'm taking as shorthand and as a way of not being a condescending prick while also feeling out whether the other person has done the reading.

For example I'll mention that Saïd has already thoroughly skewered the notions that someone is relying upon or I'll just directly call their arguments Orientalist.

This is me signalling that we can take the discussion to the next level if they've done the reading and where they can cut to the chase and provide their rationale or their criticisms of Saïd but typically I find I get really naïve nonsense where a person will say something like "Some nobody Middle Eastern art critic has no relevance to the discussion of the CCP" (which is just a giant flashing sign telling me "I haven't done the reading, I only skimmed the Wikipedia entry just now") or "I fail to see how the representation of the Middle East has anything to do with my criticisms of the DPRK" (which just screams "I don't understand the concept of Orientalism, this is my first exposure to it, and I think I've got some peak-Redditeur slam dunk argument to dismiss this concept out of hand"). It's rare that someone actually gets on the level and continues a debate, even rarer when they do me the courtesy of assuming that I've done the reading by signalling their own ideological angle that they're approaching the discussion from because they'd rather soapbox and go to great lengths to typically do a poor job of regurgitating arguments from someone who wrote a book, usually leading me to tell them where they're getting their ideas from, how they are grossly misrepresenting them, and why they are wrong. It gets really fucking tedious.

But this person isn't doing that. They're just invoking the spectre of decolonial indigenous scholars.

I get it, settlers have a lot of work to do on decolonising both internally as individuals and externally in society. But I feel like this exchange is about 2 minutes away from this person making the vague accusation that the other person is a "coloniser" to shut them up. What's particularly frustrating about this is that they're pretending to adopt the guise of call-in culture to encourage accountability and self-reflection when they're actually just engaging in reflexively dismissing and shutting down the other person for holding a different opinion.

If you want to call people out and just assert your position as being incontrovertibly correct because you hold the position of Absolute Truth™ then do so.

If you want to actually have a discussion, educate, and foster dialogue and introspection then do so.

But don't piss on my boots and tell me it's raining.

Relevant Boots Riley explanation: https://youtu.be/JmyWvjszBOw

Also, Bacon's Rebellion is an interesting topic related to this, since this seems to be where the racial hierarchy in the US really began to solidify:

Bacon’s “army” consisted of many poor whites (both freed and bonded) and poor Blacks (freed, bonded, and enslaved). Poor white and Black workers and farmers joined together in a revolt against the colonial regime and big landowners responsible for their exploitation and impoverishment. Even when Bacon died, they persisted in their rebellion, forcing English ships to threaten them with bombardment before their final surrender. The last group of one hundred rebel holdouts consisted of eighty Black people and twenty English.

Their cause undoubtedly denied indigenous people’s rights. But this unity between poor white and Black workers and farmers terrified the planters and the colonial government. If white and Black workers could unite again in the future, they could easily overthrow the government and planter aristocracy, which was of course only a small minority of the population. They had to find a way to make sure it never happened again.

They quickly hit on a cunning, cruel, and divisive way to do so: give white workers certain rights and advantages over Black workers, while at the same time enshrining Black slavery into law. In the next twenty-five years, the colonial legislature passed a series of laws designed specifically to privilege white workers over Black, and to divide the two groups. In the words of one historian, “by a series of acts, the assembly deliberately did what it could to foster the contempt of whites for Blacks and Indians.”

Once the legislature was done, Blacks were not allowed to own slaves; Blacks were not allowed to own weapons; Blacks were not allowed to “lift their hand” against Christians; Blacks could be punished by dismemberment, but white indentured servants could no longer even be whipped; slaves were deprived of property, which was then turned directly over to whites; harsh punishments were implemented for miscegenation; people with any African heritage were defined as Black; release from slavery was forbidden.

By 1705, with these laws, Virginia’s system of slavery based on skin color was in place. White workers were given freedom from servitude, the ability to own property, and other privileges that Blacks were specifically denied. And the mixing of the two groups was more restricted than ever before. These factors all made it less and less likely that poor white workers and farmers would risk their small privileges to help more oppressed Black workers. And, once white-only slave patrols were instituted in 1727, white workers and farmers actually were tasked with directly oppressing now enslaved Blacks, and were usually paid to do so.

In other words, the rulers – the tobacco planters and colonial government – had successfully divided white workers and farmers from Black workers, who were now legally enslaved.