The Danish health minister should “get on a plane and visit” some of the thousands of women thought to be living with the consequences of being forcibly fitted with the contraceptive coil as children, Greenland’s gender equality minister has said.
In an attempt to reduce the population of the former Danish colony, at least 4,500 women and girls are believed to have undergone the medical procedure, usually without their consent or knowledge, at the hands of Danish doctors between 1966 and 1970 alone.
The total number of those affected by the procedures, thought to have continued for decades, is understood to be far higher. Victims and their lawyers say generations of Inuit women were left traumatised and suffering reproductive complications, including infertility, as a result of the Danish state’s policy.
Earlier this month, a group of 143 women sued the Danish state over the alleged violations, but they have yet to receive a response from the government, despite the Danish prime minister visiting Greenland – now an autonomous territory of Denmark – soon after.
Yes, white people are negatively affected by being denigrated too.
When you’re mixed-race, often you’re not seen as mixed-race. Often, you’re seen as whatever race is most convenient to the prejudices of the observer.
“Denigrated”? Sure. We’re talking about the specific oppression you’re talking about, and I don’t see any examples of this kind of racism affecting white people.
And starting with “When you’re mixed-race” doesn’t really create the impression that this is a form of oppression that affects other people.
You… don’t see any examples… of white people being denigrated for their ancestry…?
Like, it’s obviously not on the level of anti-Black racism. But are you being serious right now?
… I don’t really understand where you think anti-white denigration to a mixed-race individual springs from if not anti-white sentiment. Like, by definition, here, mixed-race individuals are attacked in many cases because they’re seen either as completely white, or as ‘too white’.
Is it… only not okay to engage in anti-white racism if you’re sure the person is of Pure White Blood™? If I get called a cracker, should my response be “No, no, I’m mixed-race, I’m one of the cool ones”?
If a black person called me a cracker it wouldn’t scare me very much because I know that I have the privilege of being white, and I know that, whether I like it or not, the entire white-supremacist apparatus of the state is likely to prevent me from having to deal with any racial oppression. Those individual people could still hurt me, but so could anyone. They are still far less likely to attack me because they know how dangerous that would be for them, but a white person attacking a black person is more likely to be protected.
When you get called “cracker”, you know that you don’t have that apparatus behind you. You know that cops, the legal system, and myriad other racist things that you probably know better than me, are still going to treat you as non-white. So the “cracker” attack hurts because you’re being excluded from the community that would otherwise protect you when the apparatus of the state won’t. I’m not trying to whitesplain this to you, that’s very much what you described when you called it “rage and absolute isolation”.
That’s why the attack hurts you as a mixed-race person, but not me as a white person. I do not experience that isolation. That’s the difference.
That’s simple, that’s because you’re racist.
Nah, they’re just being realistic about what it is being white in a world with systemic racism that privileges white people against other minorities.
… do you think racists often engage in in-depth calculus of their odds, or are they impulsive shitheads? Because in my experience, racists are the latter.
Or they might treat me as white.
No, that’s definitely not it. The “cracker” attack hurts because it’s an invalidation of who I am, or who I’m perceived to be. I don’t expect my community to protect me where the state wouldn’t. That’s… not even close to my experience of expectations of community.
If I get called a cracker by someone who doesn’t share either of my racial backgrounds, do you think that hurts… less?
What you are describing is rage and absolute isolation, but not the rage and absolute isolation I was talking about.
You don’t experience the isolation. That doesn’t mean that denigrating you for your ancestry suddenly becomes acceptable. It is racist, and, furthermore, the prevalence of anti-white racism, even when not directed at mixed-race people, is still harmful to mixed-race people.
Another way of putting it - a man’s daughter hears him calling her mother a bitch. It doesn’t matter that it’s not directed at her.
But it’s not especially harmful to white people. That’s the point. You laid it out so perfectly that I don’t feel like I have much more to add to be honest.
It’s not especially harmful to white people to be denigrated for who they are…?
If society as a whole wasn’t horrifically anti-Black in its racism, would it then be okay to use anti-Black slurs? Because it wouldn’t be ‘especially harmful’?
Were these supposed to be trick questions?
I already said it wasn’t harmful to them, yes. But also, “White” is not an identity, as I have already said. It is a fucked up political category that serves to say, “these people are not any of the racialised categories”. That’s what I said at the start - it is only an exclusionary category. It does not identify any particular set of cultural or ethnic groups. There is no such thing as “white culture”. There is Norwegian culture, British culture, Texan culture, etc, but no white culture. Black culture, on the other hand, very much does exist, because black people as a group have been forced to construct a culture in response to their racist oppression.
Blackness as a concept was invented by racists for racist purposes. Anti-black slurs wouldn’t exist without that, so you couldn’t use them.
That’s a fucked up thought.
So as long as the category is artificial, you can denigrate ancestry all you want?
You’re dodging the question.
I’m done here. It’s incredibly shitty, and left-spaces should really fucking know better. But hey. Mixed-race folk always get the short-end of the stick. Why should left-spaces be any different, right? Cracker signing off, I guess.
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