Will Shetterly's Blog, page 7

Things I Didn’t Say to a Black Racist Bicyclist

Note: In the comments, a few identitarians suggest I made up this story. I understand why they think it’s odd — I thought it was odd when…

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On Identitarian Mass Shooters, including Blacks Who Target Whites

I only have one point to add to the observation that “Mass shootings are always acts of violent suicide”: Mass shooters are either…

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Hello, I must be going.

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind." - Kurt Vonnegut
This site has been working hard, so it's retiring now.

Who Am I to Write about Race?

1964: My brother and I at a civil rights march. Either my sign is turned sideways to the camera or it fell off.

I first learned about race from my father when I was a small boy who had just moved to Florida in 1959. He explained that ignorant people think skin color makes a difference in whether one person is the equal of another, and the most ignorant people refer to black people as “niggers”, and if he ever heard me use that word, I would get the worst spanking of my life.

My family got caught u...

Caste is Race Because It’s Based On Your Parents, Not You

Giveaway285, CC BY-SA 4.0Thinking about prejudice in Igbo society, I had a simple realization: caste is race because it’s about our parents, not us. Most Americans think race is based on what we look like, but the old phenomenon of race-passing shows that’s not true—in this century, Rachel Dolezal and Jessica Krug were able to pass as people of color until their parentage became public knowledge.

Tibetan Slavery was Not Better than American Slavery. It was Differently Abominable.

Tibetan slave, working in the field while shacked“I may not be free under Chinese Communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave.” —Wangchuk, quoted in “In Tibet, a Struggle of the Soul”“Old Tibet was dark and cruel, the serfs lived worse than horses and cattle.” —Dechen Chökyi Drönma, the 12th Samding Dorje Phagmo, quoted in “Female living Buddha condemns Dalai Lama”“When the Chinese

African Slavery was Not Better than American Slavery. It was Differently Abominable.

The Door of No Return, jbdodane, CC BY 2.0“African chiefs were the ones waging war on each other and capturing their own people and selling them. If anyone should apologise it should be the African chiefs.” — Yoweri Museveni, President of Uganda, 1998“We cannot continue to blame the white men, as Africans, particularly the traditional rulers, are not blameless. … In view of the fact that the

The White Bear Problem Explains Why Anti-racism Training Doesn’t Work

Pcb21, CC BY-SA 3.0Studies of anti-racism training find it doesn’t work or makes racism worse. The reason seems counter-intuitive to anti-racists: Teaching people to think more about race can make them more racist. But the reason is clear if you remember this old observation:“Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind

How to End Racism—King was Right that Basic Income is an Essential Element

John Englart (Takver), CC BY 2.0When Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States came out in 2018, many writers wrote about how racially unequal the US still is and ignored the promising findings: There are places in the US that show no signs of racism. We can apply the lessons from them to end racism in the entire US.The researchers, Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Maggie R. Jones, and

Medium Tags show Class is Still the Last Taboo in Politics

Prof.lumacorno, CC BY-SA 4.0Medium’s tags make it easy to know what people are happy to talk about. The tag for racism has been used 65,000 times, and race has been used 25,000 times, but the tag for class has only been used 3,900 times, and classism has been used less than 400 times. On Medium, writers are more than six times willing to talk about race than class, and 170 times more willing to