It’s also important to mention that the concept of which race you are changes and fluctuates with history and the groups that take power over others. That’s one of the reasons why the definition you use is flawed. White people as a concept didn’t even really exist until the exploration era. Irish people weren’t even considered white until the mid 1900s. When talking about racism, focusing on the existing power structure helps to recognize these things.
I would even argue that the act of trying to bar white people from being able to define their experiences as racism is systematic racism in itself… we’re taking away their literary and oral agency and trying to make them feel like getting beaten up, threatened, fired or killed isn’t a big deal because they’re white. Changing language is a systematic change in itself
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That’s not true at all! I wouldn’t go into history with a British and Irish historian. All white people had been set above all other POCs to try to justify slavery. Including Irish people - some of whom had slaves. They were discriminated against for their ethnicity, not their race.
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Just like in Nazi Germany. Hitler discriminated against Slavs. That doesn’t mean he didn’t consider them to be white. It just means he didn’t care about whiteness. He cared about something more specific.
I think you’re forgetting that the Irish were the first to be colonized. English people excused it by saying that the Irish people had differently shaped skulls and so therefore they were less than human. The owning of slaves doesn’t dictate who was and wasn’t persecuted. Native Americans owned slaves and in fact their slaves weren’t liberated the same time as everyone elses.
Lol not true at all!!! Really, you don’t want to start arguing this with someone who’s dissertation is “What was the impact of Irish literature upon the Nationalist movements from 1789 to 1921?”
Dude I don’t know that I believe you considering that you won’t acknowledge that England colonized Ireland.
By the English, the Irish were mistrusted for being Catholics when England became Protestant. Then they were mistrusted for largely siding with James II (being Jacobites)
They had a whole potatoe famine because of it.
Sigh. In that case, England colonised Wales in the medieval times and Scotland decades before Ireland.
The potato famine was a potato blight - an airborne disease passed on from South America. The potatoes literally rotted in the ground. They’d also been in a union with England for 45 years by that time.
A union that the Irish people voted for by the way.
Grattan’s Parliament voted itself out of existence at the end of 1800 and then the bill came into effect at the beginning of 1801
I understand, and we can go into a whole debate about colonialism and how it effected Ireland and the culture later but that wasn’t my point. My point is that race fluctuates and is defined by the era we’re talking about. That’s why using broad definitions about race doesn’t work.
The Irish weren’t colonised in the same way and I find that offensive as someone who has Indian, Caribbean and Irish family. I mean, the Irish had MPs in parliament and were allowed to vote on English issues. They also voted to be part of the United Kingdom. They weren’t part of the empire as such, but rather as part of a more intimate union with Britain.
Hence it was called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
You’re missing my point again. I’m saying that the broad definition of racism you’re using doesnt work being of the reasons I listed. (btw I’m west indian too where are u from?)
Of course it works. Racism is racial prejudice. That includes anyone. It’s when you try to claim things that aren’t true when it SEEMS flawed. In fact, trying to narrow it down more is more flawed.
You’re stuck asking questions like “if racism has to be systematic, can POC be racist to one another? If not, what do we call specifically racial discrimination and prejudice?”
As a mixed race girl, can black people be racist to me? What about Indians? What about Chinese people?
YES because racism is just racial prejudice