Casual Conversation

3008 readers

451 users here now

Share a story, ask a question, or start a conversation about (almost) anything you desire. Maybe you'll make some friends in the process.

RULES (updated 01/22/25)

Be respectful: no harassment, hate speech, bigotry, and/or trolling. To be concise, disrespect is defined by escalation.
Encourage conversation in your OP. This means including heavily implicative subject matter when you can and also engaging in your thread when possible. You won't be punished for trying.
Avoid controversial topics (politics or societal debates come to mind, though we are not saying not to talk about anything that resembles these). There's a guide in the protocol book offered as a mod model that can be used for that; it's vague until you realize it was made for things like the rule in question. At least four purple answers must apply to a "controversial" message for it to be allowed.
Keep it clean and SFW: No illegal content or anything gross and inappropriate. A rule of thumb is if a recording of a conversation put on another platform would get someone a COPPA violation response, that exact exchange should be avoided when possible.
No solicitation such as ads, promotional content, spam, surveys etc. The chart redirected to above applies to spam material as well, which is one of the reasons its wording is vague, as it applies to a few things. Again, a "spammy" message must be applicable to four purple answers before it's allowed.
Respect privacy as well as truth: Don’t ask for or share any personal information or slander anyone. A rule of thumb is if something is enough info to go by that it "would be a copyright violation if the info was art" as another group put it, or that it alone can be used to narrow someone down to 150 physical humans (Dunbar's Number) or less, it's considered an excess breach of privacy. Slander is defined by intentional utilitarian misguidance at the expense (positive or negative) of a sentient entity. This often links back to or mixes with rule one, which implies, for example, that even something that is true can still amount to what slander is trying to achieve, and that will be looked down upon.

Casual conversation communities:

Related discussion-focused communities

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

orangeNgreen@lemmy.world

neidu2@feddit.nl

BoozeOrWater@lemm.ee

-10

What's up with many white people in the US self-hating/having internalized white guilt? (lemmy.selfhostcat.com)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) by ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com to c/casualconversation@lemm.ee

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I understand America's history of poor treatment of minorities but what has caused many liberal white people to casually talk as if they aren't white.

Some examples:

A friend has an eastern European neighbor move in. He says he's glad they are that instead of American white.
Feeling they are individually responsible for what their ancestors and/or rich and politically affluent white people did in the past.
Acting as if white people anything is bad.
Making jokes at their own expense but won't dare say the same thing to another ethnicity.

I don't mean this post as a worm-brained right wing or political discussion, but just seeking to understand this odd internalized behavior I've seen recently.

Rule 3: Avoid controversial topics (politics or societal debates come to mind, though we are not saying not to talk about anything that resembles these). There’s a guide in the protocol book offered as a mod model that can be used for that; it’s vague until you realize it was made for things like the rule in question. At least four purple answers must apply to a “controversial” message for it to be allowed.

I really don't mean this to be about politics but about how people act!

Edit Thanks for the report @lolola@lemmy.blahaj.zone I tried not to frame this in a controversial manner.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] ZDL@ttrpg.network 1 points 15 hours ago

A friend has an eastern European neighbor move in. He says he’s glad they are that instead of American white.

Have you ever been in a gathering with just plain, white-as-in-bread Americans (especially the middle class on up, but not exclusively so)? They are boring as all fuck! They eat boring food, have boring conversations and are in general just tedious to be around when that's all that's present. (Part of this is, naturally, contempt for the familiar, but the other part is that yes they really are that boring!).

I'd much rather live in a neighbourhood that has a dozen different cultures (note: I'm not saying "races" here because "races" are nonsense) than a bunch of middle-class, white-as-in-bread Americans. So if I'm living in a neighbourhood that is mostly just plain-as-pancakes (minus the syrup) white folk, I'll celebrate an Eastern European family moving in too!

Feeling they are individually responsible for what their ancestors and/or rich and politically affluent white people did in the past.

If they genuinely feel individually responsible, that's just idiocy. The kind of idiocy that the privileged can express because there's no real cost to them, in fact.

If they are, however, just acknowledging that they have privilege based on their artificial elevation over others (c.f. "redlining") through systematic racism, and you're interpreting this as feeling individually responsible, you likely need to have an awareness adjustment.

Acting as if white people anything is bad.

This is just stupid with no qualifiers like the previous one.

Making jokes at their own expense but won’t dare say the same thing to another ethnicity.

Well fucking duh! Self-aware, self-directed humour is the high road. Punching down on someone else for their differences is the low road. (Punching up is the middle road.) I'll take it from my angle:

German jokes: I'm half-German ethnically, and spent some of the most important formative years of my life living in Germany. When I'm making jokes about Germans, it comes from an informed position with at least a degree of sympathy for the targets of my jokes. When some American dude from the middle of Montana does the same, they come at it from a position of ignorance and stereotype that is usually a) ignorant, and b) hostile, rather than sympathetic.
Chinese jokes: Where Americans (not of German descent, and even many who are) make German jokes have at least some cultural warrants in common, there are almost zero cultural warrants in common with Chinese people. White Americans are so incredibly ignorant of Chinese culture, society, behaviour, and beliefs that they think "Ching Chong" sounds like Chinese (protip: not even fucking close!) and they think "Confucius say" jokes¹ are a) plausibly real, and b) funny (protip: neither is true). Use either of these in my presence and you're going to get the stink-eye and a confrontation you will not enjoy. Yet ... I can tell jokes about Chinese people because, again, I'm ethnically half-Chinese, I've lived in China for almost a quarter of a century now, and my jokes will actually a) be based on knowledge, and b) be based on sympathetic sharing of values while poking fun at idiosyncrasies.
Jokes about white folk: Here's where you're going to probably find it "unfair", but the fact is that white folk are the dominant folk in Europe and North America. All y'all's culture is everywhere, overriding everybody else's. And all y'all're the culture with the greatest proportion of money. And here's the thing: minorities punching up is fine. Indeed laudable. Every king needs his jester to prick his ego and make fun of his excesses. The jester making fun of the king is laudable and brave. The king beating down the jester is not. So like it or not, not only is it bad for white folk to be making fun of minorities, it's cowardly. And the reverse, however, is fine (and brave). I already know from the nature of your question that you're absolutely going to hate that I said that, but it's true nonetheless. Punching down is mean-spirited. Punching up is not.

¹ Consider how typical Americans would react to someone making "Yeshua ben Yusuf" jokes about Christ's purported sayings that are as offensive as these "Confucius say" jokes are. Now flip the script. Yeah. That.