(Screenshot/4Chan.org).
All us lefties are going to start foaming at the mouth, wilt, and just give up in the face of It’s Okay To Be White. Odd, but I don’t feel a swoon coming one, and my monocle is unpopped.
In right-wing internet message boards, users are encouraging one another to print and hang posters that state simply “It’s OK to be white” with the goal of exposing what they claim is anti-white racism in liberal communities and on college campuses.
Creators of the signs were first inspired by a news report that police were investigating fliers hung at Boston College that depicted Uncle Sam and the text, “I want you to love who you are” and “Don’t apologize for being white.” Reporters noted that the signs were posted near the planned location of an anti-racism rally on campus.
Earlier this week, 4chan users called on one another to hang fliers in their own communities with a more succinct spin on the Boston signs, making the statement “It’s Okay To Be White” in large easy-to-read font with no other context. One post detailing the plan explained the goal was to make liberals go “completely berserk” and ruin their credibility, marking a “massive victory for the right in the culture war.” [The linked post actually says media will go berserk.]
The campaign also urges participants to use adhesives that are non-permanent in order to avoid violating any laws and to conceal the signs’ connections to “racists or the alt-right.” One campaign graphic reads: “The simplicity is the point. It’s working.”
Right-wing YouTube creators have also taken notice, including Infowars editor-in-chief Paul Joseph Watson and white nationalist Paul Ramsey. Alt-right video bloggers James Allsup and Nick Fuentes even launched their own spin-off of the signs that read “Make your ancestors proud. Never feel guilty for who you are,” and solicited donations to produce and distribute their posters.
Oooh, be proud of your ancestors! Okay, I am. Funny how my pride amounts to “you stupid Indians, shut up! Pipelines are good!” and the like. That’s the problem with white pride, it excludes everyone else. Of course, exclusion is what white colonial pride is all about: “white people masters, everyone else, lay down to be trodden on.” This little campaign is hardly different from all the other shite supremacy, so it’s not a shock, it’s not even a surprise. White people being suuuuuper assholes simply has zero shock value.
This has inspired me to track down the source of a quote that lodged itself in my head long, long time ago:
“The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen.”
-click-
That’s a good quote. I agree.
I saw the title and just thought, “Oh, for fuck sake!”, read the article and nearly killed myself with the eye roll.
Listen up, white people: you’re in charge of the entire country. You’re in charge of all three branches of government. You’re in charge of the army. Why do you feel so attacked? Who could POSSIBLY attack you? And all this, because you can’t treat other people with respect? You can’t be polite? You can’t let other people have rights? We’re not talking about pie, here, it’s OK for other people to have rights, it does not take yours away. For crying out loud.
Kestrel:
My exact reaction.
I googled “white is not the default” and found this
https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-10/why-whiteness-default-hollywood
I’ve only seen one of those movies. That’s pretty powerful.
What I find comical/disturbing (haven’t really decided which yet) is that in my 62 years I have never, ever heard anyone say it wasn’t okay to be white. On the other hand, I have in my 62 years heard over and over so many times that its not okay to be anything other than a straight, white, christian in this country. Just shaking my head at this foolishness. I am mostly not white, but I look white. And I can tell you racism is alive and well in this country because it is expressed freely around me because ‘you’re one of us. I have had lots of fun in my life calling out peoples racist bullshit because they think they are free to be that way around me because I look like them. Idiots all. They can yell its okay to be white all they want, because it is all right. What isn’t all right is the way they treat everyone who isn’t like them. How is that hard to understand?
Poor picked on white folks. How was your life when you were slaves white people? Oh yeah, that’s right, you weren’t. How was your life when you had your life taken for being straight white folks? How many white people were lynched for being white? How many white men were murdered for looking at any women who wasn’t white? Yeah, that’s what I thought. White people are picked on and abused just about as often as those poor christians are. Life sucks when you cant treat anyone like they are shit because they don’t look, behave, have sex like you doesn’t it. Assholes.
Stoned Ranger:
Same situation here.
For no reason in particular, that graphic put me in mind of that seminal work of bizarro fiction “Everybody Poops.” In that vein, I’m tempted to carry some white-out with me, that I might edit any “It’s Ok To Be White” signs I should encounter so that they read “It’s Ok To Poop.”
Because I’ve heard far more people say it’s not ok to poop than I’ve heard say it’s not ok to be white.
StonedRanger:
Didn’t we go to war with the Barbary States over slaving, among other reasons?
Who is “we”?
The beautiful thing about that acronym version is that you already have to know what it stands for in order to understand it.
Now, the only times I’ve felt less than enthusiastic about my skin colour is when people pull shit like that and it is assumed that there is some sort of underlying agreement and that I am somehow part of this. Same with “family values” talk. I’m not blaming marginalised folks for not giving me the benefit of the doubt, I blame the asshats.
And yeah, Schopenhauer was an all around arsehole, but he was right with that.
What if we modify the signs to say “it’s not okay to be a white nationalist”, or add “but it’s not okay to be racist’ to them? It’d be pretty funny to see these racist assholes flip their shit and start tearing down their own signs. It also avoids the feezepeach complaints; you’re not censoring them, you’re just providing a counterargument.
Oh come on! Whites do not need to call out some special privilege! #allpeoplematter #allcolorsareok
Hmm. Somehow, I don’t think the people behind #alllivesmatter are going to be decrying this one.