Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

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I mean, the white people who colonized everyone often do themselves as benefactors. I don’t think it’s paranoid to ask what contemporary benefactors are getting out of it for themselves: https://contexts.org/blog/who-gets-to-define-whats-racist/

I’m from Bangladesh and my dad has a lot of beefs with the British, but I can’t say Mercator projection has ever come up as one of them. I heard it for the first time from white people. Who came up with the idea that the Mercator projection is racist? Who popularized it? Who gains power if minority kids learn that in schools and come to believe it’s true?

I think there is evidence to justify skepticism. When we came to this country, white people had nothing to say about Bangladeshi identity. That issue was owned by Bangladeshis themselves—through communities and what parents would tell their children. In the last decade or so, suddenly I’m hearing a lot about “brown” identity (we’ve been reduced to a color) from white people and white dominated institutions. And they really want me to be angry at/scared of other white people, which was never something my parents told me growing up. I don’t think I’m paranoid to ask where that’s coming from.

There is a dominant discourse that is cultural and inevitably ethnic. How is this going to work in a plantation earth corporate future? So dismantling this appears to have been decided.

Looking beyond existing cultural controls, what can replace it? If it is not strictly based on facts and reason (think along "the medium is the message") then control of medium grants societal control. At some point I think this will move on from historic grievances platform to some arbitrary 1984ish 'receive social instructions hour' sort of thing.

I too, btw, am an immigrant, born in Iran. And equally baffled as to what beyond the usual trope of incompetence can explain this sort of clearly orchestrated effort at inflaming social tension along every seam, ludicrously exaggerating the crimes of the dreaded White Man. Reminds me of the Monty Python skit in Life of Brian, discussing all the evils of the Romans. The whole thing is a strawman that you just know at some point will be robustly done away it, ushering in what? Possibly fascism. Certainly someone is insistent on making sure at some point things boil over.

I think that a lot of the purposeful exaggeration of these smokescreen like issues everywhere, are not necessarily with an ulterior motive, but in a banal sense, just to make things more interesting to read or make the person or company reporting about the issue, seem more interesting and just for fighting these made up paper monsters.

"suddenly I’m hearing a lot about “brown” identity (we’ve been reduced to a color) from white people and white dominated institutions"

Even here, you're committing the same fallacy by using the term "white people" which is promoted by the same people. There are no "white people". I presume you know something about European history. Try finding unity in that mess that could legitimize the notion of a coherent "white people". One "white" country subjugated the other. Much of the continent was never involved in any colonial endeavors, and it ignores the imperialism elsewhere in the world. "White people" almost smells like an attempt by former colonial powers to diffuse responsibility. They can't deny they were involved, but they can obfuscate it by unjustly spreading the blame across all of Europe, all Europeans. It's also a way to get ahead of the problem and to draw from victim cache by association. You see similar attempts by some to downplay German atrocities during WWII by exaggerating complicity in conquered countries.

But I agree with your general point and the right to your suspicion. There are political incentives to promote this kind of anti-intellectual stuff. All it does is reinforcement racist ideologies that e.g the Americans specialized in. It also results in division and conflict, something political regimes have long used to distract the people and keep the ire of the public away from the ruling class.

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