People are extremely bad at categories, which is one reason why I can't tolerate a lot of intersectional politics.
I am half Sami. If I were born even 50 years earlier, I would have been a suspect class of citizen, subjected to cultural darwinist "normalization".
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Nobody, in Norway or abroad, ever parses this fact. Why?
- Overt state discrimination against Sami people ended shortly before my birth
- I don't "look different""
- I am "white"
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I've rarely experienced discrimination, but half my family are MESSED UP. Why? Most of their culture was obliterated, in living memory.
I don't have any reason to complain about racism, but I couldn't learn my second language in school - even though it's a constitutional right.
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My grandparents don't speak the language they spoke as children.
The barest fraction of the people whose families identified as Sami a 100 years ago, in full or in part, still do today.
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I, of course, don't experience racism like many groups do. I am not under threat of being shot by walking too close to a police officer, for example.
My point is not to compare to that. Rather, it's about the complete invisibility of all these issues.
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Nobody knows about my culture because that was the point of the Social Darwinist policies.
Half my family is a broken mess, because that was the point of the Social Darwinist policies.
I don't speak Sami, because that was the point of the Social Darwinist policies.
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Most oppressive, discriminatory power dynamics are just like that - invisible unless you know where to look.
I understand it's not the same as cops murdering hundreds of blacks a year, or Nazi marches, or lynchings, but that's a whole 'nuther problem.
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The point is, if you make it a cornerstone of your ideology to assign people a social value based on things like their privilege (or lack thereof), you're playing the same game.
This whole franchise is colonial thinking in drag. Obliteration by other means.
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As for the "privilege" of not being shot by the local pigs, corralled into camps or raped, we have an entire vocabulary of basic rights to fall back on.
What does privilege add to this repertoire? Mostly a way to avoid engaging with people on an individual basis, as you should.
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