What valid reason could Anglo English speakers have for wanting to play at being the subaltern over online semantics?
*stares at this sentence for a while* *reads "subaltern" page on wikipedia* *comprehension dawns. Kinda*
I agree (I think :)): I think there are issues with the america=default attitude that predominates online (although I don't think it affects us as much as it does, say, people from non english speaking backgrounds) but there's nothing to be gained by martyred, petty complaints about terminology.
I'm not very connected to wider australian dialogues about race so I don't feel qualified to comment on their dynamics. What you're saying sounds like what I'd expect, though.
I wonder whether the reason so many Australians will declare that "we're less racist than the USA!', despite that being really untrue and a senseless benchmark; is because they're getting information from images from USA media taken out of context - rather than looking at POC anti-racist opinion about how this plays out here.
Yes, I think saying "Clearly we have less racism because our POC never complain about it" misses the possibility that (a) Maybe they do and we ignore it and (b) Letting POC have a (sometimes critical) voice is a good thing, and the fact we don't have it so much is a bug not a feature.
And of course, it doesn't really matter how we "compare" anyway (if such a comparison even makes sense), any more than going "We're less sexist than Saudi Arabia!" removes the need for feminism.
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*stares at this sentence for a while*
*reads "subaltern" page on wikipedia*
*comprehension dawns. Kinda*
I agree (I think :)): I think there are issues with the america=default attitude that predominates online (although I don't think it affects us as much as it does, say, people from non english speaking backgrounds) but there's nothing to be gained by martyred, petty complaints about terminology.
I'm not very connected to wider australian dialogues about race so I don't feel qualified to comment on their dynamics. What you're saying sounds like what I'd expect, though.
I wonder whether the reason so many Australians will declare that "we're less racist than the USA!', despite that being really untrue and a senseless benchmark; is because they're getting information from images from USA media taken out of context - rather than looking at POC anti-racist opinion about how this plays out here.
Yes, I think saying "Clearly we have less racism because our POC never complain about it" misses the possibility that (a) Maybe they do and we ignore it and (b) Letting POC have a (sometimes critical) voice is a good thing, and the fact we don't have it so much is a bug not a feature.
And of course, it doesn't really matter how we "compare" anyway (if such a comparison even makes sense), any more than going "We're less sexist than Saudi Arabia!" removes the need for feminism.