Talk:White supremacy

Anti-Catholic?

Why would Catholic white supremacists be anti-Catholic? Alfie Gandon (talk) 19:32, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

The article is saying is that such groups are typically opposed by white supremacist groups. White supremacy as a set of ideologies aren't confined to simply saying that white people are supreme end-of-story. The term is also used to describe ideologies which includes other beliefs.

Catholics, Jews, and immigrants (and Muslims, Hispanics, Africans, Asians, etc.) can all be white, as can people of color, but that doesn't stop them from frequently being opposed in various ways by white supremacists. As the article white people makes clear, "white" isn't a strictly defined concept, and it's common to see boundaries shifting based on convenience and convention. Grayfell (talk) 21:54, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Then why use what is transparently a description of one white supremacist organistion, the KKK, to describe all in the lede? White supremacists in Catholic countries can be anti-Protestant; should we put that in the lede too? Alfie Gandon (talk) 09:53, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

So are you contesting the point itself, or the source? The sentence makes a lot more sense as the end of a longer paragraph: "Different forms of white supremacism put forth different conceptions of who is considered white, and different white supremacists identify various racial and cultural groups as their primary enemy. White supremacist groups have typically opposed people of color, immigrants, Jews, and Catholics." Discarding the entire sentence because one word isn't satisfactorily supported by a source doesn't seem like the right way to fix this problem. The book is a 244 page college textbook which provides an overview the topic. It can be browsed online (at least it can where I am). I haven't found anything unambiguous for this, but it does support that they overlap.

Anyway, if you have reliable sources about Catholic white supremacists, then I would be curious to see them. Among sources I'm families with, there is a documented overlap between white supremacism and anti-Catholicism (in and out of the KKK), but those are biased towards the US. I believe this is true for South Africa as well, but again, I would like to see more sources about this. Is there a specific area of overlap between white supremacism and anti-Protestantism you are thinking of? Grayfell (talk) 21:38, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

My problem's with the sentence, which is accurate for certain white supremacist groups in the US (e.g. the KKK), but not representative of those in other countries. I wouldn't have a problem with noting somewhere in the article that US white supremacist groups (and South African if you're right about that, although I've never heard about anti-Catholicism in SA) have a tradition of anti-Catholicism, but the article as it stands makes a sweeping statement about white supremacist groups that isn't true of most of them outside of the US. As it stands, it's unsuitable for anywhere in the article but especially in the lede. Alfie Gandon (talk) 18:22, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

I can't comment on that at the moment, but why aren't Muslims mentioned? And I agree it's an error to remove the whole sentence. Doug Weller talk 14:12, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Anti-immigrant?

White immigrants are often white supremacist; why would they oppose themselves? Alfie Gandon (talk) 12:18, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

You would have to ask them that question, but expecting hate groups to interpret things in the most inclusive way possible seems absurd. From what I've read, white supremacists often oppose white people immigrating to non-white or multicultural communities, as it leads to race-mixing and other perceived problems. I've also read examples of white supremacists who accept white tourists, but reject on principle long-term immigration outside of (arbitrarily) defined boundaries. There's a survivalist group with supremacist ties in which adherents refuses to associate with anyone outside of a specific x-mile radius of their home, also. Sorry, I cannot remember the name of this group.

White people are sometimes immigrants, but they are also sometimes Jewish, and nobody is denying that they're identified as enemies, right? Jewish white supremacists exist, but that's piss-poor at deflecting antisemitism. Again, in context, the sentence is explaining "various racial and cultural groups" they identify as their enemies. Wikipedia is simply saying that they have been identified as enemies by white supremacists. The article isn't saying that it's a logical target. The statement on anti-immigration is not presented as being all-inclusive of every white supremacist, nor of applying to every single immigrant regardless of context. We could rephrase it to specifically say "non-white immigrants" but that seems pedantic to me and not entirely accurate. As a general overview in the lead, this seems sufficient. The point of white supremacy is the assumption that whiteness is acceptable and that non-whiteness is to be opposed, but how that manifests in practice is much more complicated, and that's what the article should attempt to explain. This is not confined to the US, either. European white supremacists tend to blur lines a bit more,[1] but the underlying tenet is the same. Grayfell (talk) 22:45, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

White supremacist groups in neo-Europes, e.g. the US and South Africa, are very much in favour of further white immigration. Alfie Gandon (talk) 17:19, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Which doesn't make them pro-immigration however. They are still basically anti-immigration. Doug Weller talk 17:28, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it does. They aren't. Alfie Gandon (talk) 17:50, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

McWhorter and Drum

This is regarding this edit. For the lead, no sources that I saw uses "lazy" or "mean". The source was one op-ed, which seems entirely insufficient for making such a stark claim with such prominence. Saying "has been argued" is a WP:WEASEL, and while the quotes were sourced, there were not attributed in text, which is very important for providing context. All sources added reference two people, Kevin Drum or John McWhorter. Conor Friedersdorf also agrees, but his article is specifically about social media arguments about Drum's statements, making this sort of... diffused. Their opinions are of interest, but I do not think they should be emphasized in the lead without more substantial secondary coverage, ideally non-opinion coverage, which is lacking. Maybe not, but saying it's "lazy and mean" isn't going to work.

The This CNN source from McWhorter is another example of him making his point, but it doesn't really discuss the usage of the term "white supremacy" in any depth, so I've removed it. Grayfell (talk) 03:38, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree with your edit. The material deleted gives undue weight to a political argument that has apparently only arisen in the last year or so based on the references used. There certainly is no justification for including it in the article lede. It also seems to be a violation of NPOV by only referring to the criticism of whatever the "leftists" are allegedly doing. If we are even going to keep the remnants of Pengortm's edits (as you have done), then we should describe the "leftist activist's" position in their own words rather than relying of the critics characterizations (i.e."overly broad and misused to shut-down productive discussion") of a position that they oppose. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 04:37, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Sure, I have no attachment to that wording. There is something to this, but I'm not clear on how to include it, if at all. The article is about the entire global history of the concept, so even mentioning this feels like WP:RECENTISM. My take is that McWhorter's opinion as a linguist is the most useful, since this is specifically about the phrase. As columnists, the large volume of political noise out there makes the other two seem less relevant without non-opinion sources discussing their opinions. Grayfell (talk) 05:02, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the good faith edits and careful engagement on the article and talk page with my suggested edits. I'll look over it all more closely later. I believe the "lazy" and "mean" quotes came from the On The Media audio--not easily keyword searched--but in the source. I'll have to double check later if I decide those add substantively. -Pengortm (talk) 06:46, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Oh right, the radio clip -I overlooked that. I guess that shows that I didn't actually listen to it...

So having listened to it, it's an interesting interview, but I don't think we should over-state this. The words are used conversationally as part of a dialog, and were not highlighted with any particular emphasis that I could hear. The impression I get from that interview was that he considers the phrase "white supremacy" to be part of the euphemism treadmill, which does seem worth mentioning to me, but doesn't seem particularly surprising or controversial. Lazy and mean are both strong and unusual enough that they would have to be very clearly attributed to McWhorter by name, and I don't think the lead would be the right place to do that without a much more substantial source. Grayfell (talk) 07:23, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to listen. I think we're largely in agreement and also thank you for improving my first stab at things. I've made a few more edits trying to clarify the substance of the debates/arguments a bit and adding a sentence to the academic usage section. -Pengortm (talk) 01:44, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I made a few more minor tweaks. It looks good to me, and it's useful to indicate how contentious the term is even among people with the same basic ideological goals. Even accounting for recentism, I strongly suspect there are more sources out there, but for now I think this as much as sources support. Anyway, it's better than it was, so thank you. Grayfell (talk) 03:55, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I coincidentally came across this article from The Atlantic which discusses Drum and Friedersdorf's articles. The gist is that persuasion isn't necessarily the goal of the label, and Drum's argument only makes sense because of decades of hard work fighting white supremacy, work which was constantly decried as uncivil just as Drum himself is doing. Anyway, I'm going to resist the temptation to add this, but I'm sure it's just one of many on this topic, and figuring out due weight is only going to get more tricky. Again, non-opinion coverage would be ideal. Grayfell (talk) 09:51, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Citations needed.

I have tagged two unsourced passages as needing citations. I have been involved in editing this page for awhile on and off and am not WP:TAGBOMBing. These are simply things that should be referenced (I noted that I guessed one of these was true in my edit summaries). The two passages are:

"White supremacy has roots in scientific racism and often relies on pseudoscientific arguments for portray white superiority."

"White supremacy has ideological foundations that at least date back to 17th-century scientific racism, the predominant paradigm of human variation that helped shape international and intra-national relations from the latter part of the Age of Enlightenment (in European history) through the late 20th century (marked by the abolition of apartheid in South Africa in 1991, followed by that country's first multiracial elections in 1994)."-Pengortm (talk) 22:04, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I have a problem with this for a couple of reasons. While citations are very important, the number of potential sources supporting this routine point is very large. White supremacy is so closely intertwined with scientific racism that not mentioning it would be jarring. By tagging it, and tagging it very specifically, it's implying (without actually saying) that this point is controversial or contentious, or should be considered for removal, which is false. While I know that CN tags aren't always intended that way (I don't always use them that way, at least), that's definitely the message being sent when applied to such fundamental perspective. Using tags to cast doubt on academically accepted aspects of a controversial topic undermines the neutrality of the article. This is worse because the template:citation needed span tag alters formatting in a jarring and noticeable way. This draws a lot og attention to what otherwise would be a minor issue. This template is used less often in part because it's so distracting. Including this in the lead is even worse. Since leads summarize the body (and leads of subsections can summarize the body of the subsection) this doesn't appear to be a neutral or appropriate action, and the issue should be discussed first so as not to damage the article. Grayfell (talk) 22:21, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

If material cannot be substantiated it should be removed. I suggest that if there is unsubstantiated language which someone thinks should be included but can't be sourced, it should be removed from the article and brought to the talk page until it can be adequate sourced. I don't think this material that I have tagged is highly controversial and that a tag is the best way forward. Your concerns about implications are simply not how wikipedia works as far as I can tell (please correct me if I am wrong). If there are a vast number of sources for a statement, than the job of finding references for it should be very easy. According to WP:CITENEED "A "citation needed" tag is never, in itself, an "improvement" to an article: it is nothing more or less than a request for another editor to verify a statement: a form of communication between members of a collaborative editing team." I think your reaction to remove CN tags runs contrary to the normal working of Wikipedia and makes the collaborative work we are trying to do together more difficult. Please point me to precedent for your deletions of my tags, put the tags back in, find sources for these statements, or remove the statements.-Pengortm (talk) 22:47, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

The tags damage the article by implying a controversy where none exists. I trust your intentions, but the history of this and related articles means that such tags can introduce difficulties and lead to less neutral "compromise" language when none is necessary. This isn't just a slippery slope issue, this is from past experience. Both tagged sections were leads, and the content is discussed (somewhat obliquely) in the body of the article. The article mentions Arthur de Gobineau, Mendelian inheritance, Eugenics, Nordicism, and other concepts which are fundamentally connected with scientific racism. Summarizing sourced content is perfectly acceptable, although I agree that this could be handled better. Did you look for sources yourself? If you're specifically looking for sources supporting this point, it's not hard to find. Grayfell (talk) 00:24, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Frankly, you seem to be inventing new ways to edit on wikipedia based on your own personal experience and putting the burden on other editors. I've gone here to avoid an edit war, but resent the new hoops your making me jump through and the waste of my time when I am following normal wikipedia procedure and editing in good faith. To the substance of the discussion and setting aside the procedural issues, I don't know which sources you are referring to which of the tagged passages.-Pengortm (talk) 01:34, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, I'm trying to explain where I'm coming from and why I think it's a problem based on context and experience. If you want to label that an invention, sure, whatever. But yes, the burden is on you when challenging consensus on an otherwise relatively stable page. From Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section, specifically WP:LEADCITE: Leads are usually written at a greater level of generality than the body, and information in the lead section of non-controversial subjects is less likely to be challenged and less likely to require a source; there is not, however, an exception to citation requirements specific to leads. and The presence of citations in the introduction is neither required in every article nor prohibited in any article. We "get" to use consensus for this, lucky us.

I'm not sure what the point of confusion is regarding sources. I don't understand your last sentence. That indirectly supports my point, actually. If your intention with tagging the article was not obvious, then it's better that we're discussing this on the talk page anyway. Here are some references, for discussion, that I found after a quick search:

• An introductory textbook from South Africa discussing The Enlightenment and white supremacy.
• One from Oxford University Press about the contrast between North America and South Africa which discusses the Enlightenment in depth
• Another academic book which covers the contradiction more generally from a modern POV

Was this more about the significance of Apartheid? Tell me what I'm missing, here, and we can figure out how to fix it, but the tags are premature in this case. Grayfell (talk) 04:02, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

"Racist Ideology" in lede

Having "racist ideology" in the lede makes the article sound childish, and as such I will remove it. Post here if you disagree. Please don't revert edits that shouldn't be reverted. Deciduous Maple (talk) 04:58, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

You've already been reverted, with ample reason. "Childish" is not a valid reason for altering long-standing consensus. The burden in on you to make your case, per WP:BRD and common sense. Grayfell (talk) 05:01, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

It is very obvious that "white supremacy" is racist from the rest of the article. Having the word "racist" in the lede make the article very unprofessional. This was discussed at length in December of 2014, when the consensus was to leave the article in the form "W.S. is a form of racism." Now it seems someone is displeased with that outcome and changed it back to their way. If that is so, I will change it back to our way. In the mean time, I will change the article back to the compromised version. Deciduous Maple (talk) 05:09, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

What's childish is actually having this discussion.Volunteer Marek (talk) 05:10, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Ah, Volunteer Marek, long time no see. It appears you still haven't developed a mature style of debate and must still resort to low-effort put-downs in place of actual debate. Deciduous Maple (talk) 05:16, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Oh lord, give me a break. It's pretty ironic to see someone try and gloat about being mature. Articles evolve over time, and edit warring is not appropriate. The claim that "Racism" is a made-up, artificial word used as a silencing tactic is so ridiculous that it undermines neutrality and credibility, and suggests that this discussion is a dead end. Grayfell (talk) 05:29, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Saying something is "ridiculous" is not an argument, mate. Explaining why something is not true would be more appropriate; why don't you try that instead? P.S. If you had seen Volunteer Marek's behavior in dec 2014, you'd understand why I am quick to call him immature - because he is. Deciduous Maple (talk) 05:32, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Again with the irony! Oh, you're killing me! All words are "artificial" and Wikipedia uses words to define concepts. Playing pedantic games to try and downplay the connection to racism is against the overwhelming consensus of both Wikipedia editors, and of reliable, academic sources. Grayfell (talk) 05:44, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm with Grayfell and Volunteer Marek on this one. Current wording seems good and I think a more convincing argument needs to be made on the talk page before we consider changing it. As of now, I see now convincing argument and User:Deciduous Maple wasting other editors time. -Pengortm (talk) 06:17, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

The other editors are wasting their own time. Since no one wants to have an honest discussion, I am going to change the article back to the compromised form. Deciduous Maple (talk) 22:20, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

• It is hard to imagine an ideology that is more inherently racist than White Supremacy, having this as part of the definition seems inevitable.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 06:48, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

True, but there's no reason to put that in the lede. It's a waste of words and makes the article sound emotive and childish. I never said it wasn't racist. Deciduous Maple (talk) 22:20, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

I also think "form of racism" is more appropriate than "Racist ideology" —ASPENSTI—TALK—CONTRIBUTIONS 22:24, 7 March 2017 (UTC)