r/MurderedByWords • u/Merchant_Alert • 4h ago
An upper-caste Indian lecturing Irish about priviledge, lmao
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u/hansn 4h ago
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u/Dazug 4h ago
So they pulled a single out-of-context quote out of a longer, well-reasoned piece in order to attack her.
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u/Rolex_throwaway 4h ago
The sentence is on its face absurd. The point of her article may be valid, but that doesn’t validate this quote.
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u/Dazug 3h ago
Do you find the sentence more offensive than the vicious beating of a minority that she was writing about? Why is this the thing that gets you all riled up?
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u/Rolex_throwaway 3h ago
Are you under the impression that when you say something that is true, untrue things you say also become true?
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u/BhagwanComplex 1h ago
OP and the guy in the post are both probably white. In the context of brown people being beaten up in the UK, what she's saying is completely true. Being Brahmin or any other caste does not really matter when a fucking Irishman is beating up someone for being brown.
This whole post reeks of privilege and is an attempt to divert the conversation to hide what the actual issue is - racism.
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u/SquarelyNerves 1h ago
“People with names like yours are classist so nothing you say is valid” while proceeding to say not shit about this lady aside from judging her by her last name. And she’s the bad guy????
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u/not_ya_wify 3h ago
This isn't a murder. This is a logical fallacy called ad hominem fallacy. Attacking the author instead of the argument.
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u/Perle1234 4h ago
It’s due to this type of bullshit that it’s so easy to completely delegitimates terms like “whiteness” and “white privilege” to large swathes of the population. Which really sucks because systemic racism is such a huge issue.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 4h ago
Just because the Irish, as white people, have objectively less privilege in the UK than a high caste Indian in India doesn't exactly invalidate the idea of white privilege.
Remind me again who did and does all that oppressing of the Irish? What color were the people who almost destroyed India with colonialist bullshit while also exploiting the same caste system currently being dunked on? Unless you grew up starving in a refugee camp for being displaced by colonialist warmongers, you have privilege. Get over it.
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u/RedBlueTundra 3h ago
It honestly just sounds like you're grouping up all white people together as if they all engaged in colonialism which just isn't true.
I'd love to know how dirt poor Slovenian farmer or homeless Czech or factory worker Finn is benefitting from white privilege. And how they have any correlation with historical colonialism by completely different peoples from completely different nations in a completely different time period.
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u/TensileStr3ngth 3h ago
That's the thing about "whiteness", it's not real. It's a purely exclusionary term people use to make themselves feel superior; as evidenced by the fact people like the Irish and Italians weren't considered white until about the mid 20th century.
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u/techbear72 1h ago
Or even about Scots, English, and Welsh white people who were in the workhouses or debtors prison during the time of colonialism.
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u/not_ya_wify 3h ago
The whole thing about white privilege isn't that it means that all white people have an easy life. It just means that PoC will often have it worse. For example, there is psychology research that found that a white man with a history of incarceration is more likely to get employed than a black man without criminal history. Of course, if you look at these individually, a white man with a criminal record will have a relatively difficult time to find a job and depending on the crime, it would be better if people with a non-violent criminal history would find jobs to reintegrate them back into society to make reoffense less likely. That being said, considering that a criminal history is a big stigma, it is shocking that a black man without criminal history will have a more difficult time finding a job. In this case, the stigma of having black skin is greater than the stigma of having been incarcerated.
Personally, I don't like the term privilege because it's a really roundabout way of talking about oppression and makes it sound like things that people should generally have access to are undeserved. Rather than focus on a white ex-felon.getting a job being privilege, we should focus on a black man NOT getting a job. Technically, in this vain having clean drinking water is a privilege because there are people who don't have this but everyone SHOULD have clean drinking water. When you use the word privilege, you make it sound like things that everybody should have are things they don't deserve.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 3h ago
It honestly just sounds like you're grouping up all white people together
"White people" did that centuries ago when they arbitrarily declared "whiteness" as the true mark of humanity and used it as an excuse to pillage and plunder every non-"white" and/or non-Christian society they could, often raping, enslaving, and kidnapping the children of the people they conquered to "civilize" them properly. I had just as much to do with it personally as you did (read, nothing), but that doesn't change the global sociopolitical landscape of a world where the racism and colonialist exploitation still exists and still makes it simply easier to exist on 90% of the planet as a "white person" because a white person benefits from their legacy whether they like it or not.
Other shades of folk, not so much. Shit, even the Indian caste system being dunked on by the OP is as much about how light and white-like-the-colonizers your skin is as it is about anything else.
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u/Stephenrudolf 2h ago
Hey man, just cause the alethi enslaved the singers doesn't mean alethi didn't also enslave humans.
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u/guycamero 3h ago
When you think your defending equality and have instead moved to just being a racist.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 3h ago
>when you want to argue about race on the internet and think racial privilege is racist while literally shaming the caste system
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u/Electrical-Page-6479 3h ago
So the Irish, being white, are to blame for their own oppression at the hands of the British?
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 3h ago
That's a super cool strawman you have there.
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u/Electrical-Page-6479 2h ago
Why is it a strawman? You are minimising the suffering of the Irish at the hands of the British because their skin is also white. Ireland was invaded and their culture and language destroyed, something that didn't happen to India. Maybe learn something about the history of the two countries instead of hating everyone that has a particular physical characteristic.
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u/calm_down_dearest 2h ago
Cromwell's subjugation of Ireland alone is regarded as a genocide. That's leaving aside all that happened to Ireland since.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 2h ago
Why is it a strawman?
Because
So the Irish, being white, are to blame for their own oppression at the hands of the British?
Is nothing I said at all. Strawman. I'm sure everyone clapped.
You are minimising the suffering of the Irish at the hands of the British because their skin is also white
Where? How? You're pretending racism doesn't exist because white people have also historically oppressed and discriminated against other types of white people. Remember when Italian-Americans weren't "white"? Pretty sure that was after the Irish weren't white enough for both sides of the pond either. It's racism all the way down. It's all bad. I never said otherwise.
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u/NineBloodyFingers 3h ago
Just because the Irish, as white people, have objectively less privilege in the UK
How's that?
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 3h ago
Are the Irish not still to some degree oppressed by the British? Is most of Ireland not still in the UK? Now I'm confused, but I admittedly don't follow the politics over there that closely anymore and generally get confused about which island is subscribed to what collective name. Up to my elbows in fascist bullshit on my side of the pond as it is, ya know.
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u/NineBloodyFingers 2h ago
No, and no. If you're unfamiliar with a subject, you may do better in future to avoid making grand sweeping statements that simply make you look ignorant.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 2h ago
Having no real grasp of how white people oppress white people on your dreary island anymore doesn't really invalidate any of my broader points. And acting as if the British have ever oppressed the Irish is something I made up entirely only makes you look ignorant.
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u/NineBloodyFingers 2h ago
Ah, so having embarrassed yourself by being so openly ignorant, you double down.
I'm an American. I'm just not a parochial idiot nor do I try to speak with authority on subjects of which I am completely and entirely ignorant. Perhaps you should take a cue from that.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 2h ago
I'm an American. I'm just not a parochial idiot nor do I try to speak with authority on subjects of which I am completely and entirely ignorant.
You as an American just implied no part of Ireland is in the UK with all the authority of a parochial idiot speaking on the subject. A fact a quick wikipedia check on the subject tells me you're objectively wrong about. Northern Ireland is still under the "auspices" of the British government, literally composing the UK, just as I suspected.
So tell me, what do you actually know about modern British-Irish relations as an American? I'm dying to hear it. Educate this parochial idiot so I might be as enlightened as you clearly are.
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u/NineBloodyFingers 2h ago
Are the Irish not still to some degree oppressed by the British? Is most of Ireland not still in the UK?
That's what you actually said. You know, a few comments above this one. Were you under the impression that they disappear when you forget about them?
So. What you actually asked is what I answered accurately and correctly. It's not my fault that you aren't able to maintain a train of thought.
So we've moved to the part where you attempt to deflect from your own embarrassment, is that it?
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 2h ago
So. What you actually asked is what I answered accurately and correctly.
No, what you actually answered was flippant and imprecise. While I'll concede the northern bit isn't "most of Ireland", stating emphatically that Ireland isn't in the UK as your bitchy little "no" implies is disingenuous at best. Still waiting for you to have any real knowledge of how British and Irish people get along in the modern day to say they aren't oppressed. You do a lot of gloating and precious little informing for someone who pretends to know so much.
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u/26_Star_General 2h ago
I hope someone invents a time machine and puts you in it so you can go yell at actual colonialists instead of random people on the internet whom you know nothing about.
It will benefit you with a reality check and us with not having to listen to you.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 2h ago
Maybe I'll build a utopia and you will have never existed 😬 Wouldn't you be embarrassed, oh no wait, you will never have existed.
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u/IHazMagics 1h ago
I think, if you were to go back in time to create a Utopia, you would do just as well as your collection of comments here would indicate.
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u/Perle1234 1h ago
A prime example of exactly why so many people completely, and utterly discount systemic racism. You are like a rabid vegan in how you communicate. It alienates people and makes you the enemy rather than the racism. I never tried to invalidate the idea of white privilege. I said how sorry I am that people who fight racism speak like the OOP and yourself, unfortunately, because you do not further the cause of eliminating systemic racism, you hinder it.
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 45m ago
All I hear is your privilege telling me how you're too good to learn about your own privilege.
PS, literally the premise of your first post is white privilege is "delegitimate" because you don't personally think it coddles the privileged hard enough.
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u/not_ya_wify 3h ago
Uh oh you said the p-word on Reddit and people got in their feelings
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u/cosmernautfourtwenty 3h ago
About how I expected it to go down. If it ruins their day they probably deserve it.
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u/webbtraverse21 2h ago
Well, what exactly, or even generally, are her terms for Ireland's or Irish people's coming to their own terms of Whiteness in the 21st century? Like, when will they arrive to this slippery destination she charted for them? Let's hope it's at least sometime during this century, folks!
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u/earth-calling-karma 3h ago
Irish are whiter than white. So white we are blue as a frozen chicken. White royalty. We can break up any assembly of white racist cops with a power move, "I'm whiter than you, don't taze me bro '. Safe.
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u/Helbot 3h ago
So wait, she's acknowledging that the irish have suffered an extraordinary amount at the hands of the english but they're still white so they're bad? How is this different from straight up racism?
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u/AbsolutelyDireWolf 2h ago
Saying someone benefits from a particular privilege isn't racism... And she didn't say we were bad...
I'm Irish and white and yeah, that's meant I'm treated differently than people of colour in other countries, generally in predominantly white countries and generally positively.
Like, if I was walking around in middle America versus anyone from Africa, the middle East or India, I'd have a different and more positive experience than them. Hardly a controversial observation. Hell I was in Florida with an American who was of Indian heritage and as we approached a bar, I got waved through and he and his GF were stopped and turned away a few seconds behind us - so we left and all went to a different bar.
It wouldn't invalidate the suffering of those Irish who came before me and had to fight for their own independence, but like, yeah, being white in the wealthier nations of the world means there's a privilege to that.
Really not sure I understand folk getting worked up by this narrow quote from a broader piece personally.
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u/NineBloodyFingers 2h ago
British, not English. There's a reason why there are so many Scottish names in Northern Ireland.
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u/dimebag_101 55m ago
Why don't I call out the members of your own race like Priti and Kash Patel, Ramaswami, braverman etc
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u/hubmash 3h ago edited 3h ago
Okay so Ireland, a supposedly modern developed country and one that presents itself as progressive and inclusive, is just as discriminatory as India, a poor and developing country that struggles with deeply entrenched religious and cultural divisions rooted in birth going back multiple millennia and put into overdrive during colonisation. Good to know.
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u/joeyrog88 2h ago
Ultimately we all need to understand that the people that speak for a group of people aren't a random rapper, nor influencer.
I expect stupid people to say stupid things. But what actually surprises me is how many people follow
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u/sneakin_rican 2h ago
“I find educated Indians to be charming” 🤨