mekka okereke :verified:
This paper is trash. We do this every few years.
The conclusion is correct (graduate degree holding white men believe the most 'taboo' conspiracy theories), but the reasons it suggests why, are sociology-babble garbage. The real reason is:
* Racism is a lie. To believe in racism, you must believe a set of easily debunkable lies.
* Richer, whiter, maler, more educated populations are not less racist, despite attempts to twist stats to say this. They're more racist.
1/N
mekka okereke :verified:
Most of the major "conspiracies" believed by Black folk, turn out to be proven as fact decades later:
* The CIA is bringing drugs into the US
* The FBI is targeting civil rights leaders for harassment and assassination
* The medical industry is experimenting on Black people, and intentionally getting us sick
* Police lie and plant evidence a lot
* Cops steal from us more than anyone
* A lot of judges are not so secretly white nationalists
Etc.
These are not the same as Holocaust denial.
mekka okereke :verified:
If you read the paper (always read the paper), you'll see the nonsense.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23780231241237654
Eg, the authors had the audacity to say that after Rodney King, Black folk and white folk believed 2 very different "conspiracies":
* Black folk believed a racist gang called the Vikings was working with the cops to torture Black folk.
* White folk believed all the gangs were organizing to come murder the white people.
Only in the footnotes do they show that Vikings turned out to be real🤡
2/N
mekka okereke :verified:
You can read up on the "conspiracy" Vikings here:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/06/the-la-county-sheriffs-deputy-gang-crisis
Fundamentally, white folk in the US do not believe the lived experience of Black folk. When millions of Black folk say that they are being mistreated by the police, white folk don't believe it. They need to see it for themselves, to be able to say "Oh my God the Black people were telling the truth this whole time!" 10 seconds of smartphone footage is more believable than decades of testimony from 40 million people.
4/N
William Pietri
@mekkaokereke One thing that strikes me here is how little white people ever hear that testimony directly. Twitter was the first time I heard the frank, unmediated thoughts from a wide variety of black people. Over time it really changed my perception of many things about American society. But I had to seek it out.
Cat C-B
@williampietri @mekkaokereke That is true. For me, it was Facebook and not Twitter, but without social media, I’d still be compacently ignorant about the level of violence and structural inequality directed at Black folks.
In truth, with most white folks living in self-segregated housing and exposed only to white-dominated media, even without the willful lies of sources like Fox, we’re insanely ignorant of perspectives other than our own—which we call “objective.”
Paul Cantrell
@megmuttonhead @williampietri @mekkaokereke
Same for me re the previous two posts. When I first had that experience of black folks on social media speaking frankly about their lived experience without the press’s intervening filter of whiteness, I was •already• very much on board with the idea that US society is deeply, appallingly racist, and the social media conversations were •still• eye-opening for me. The filters that surround us white folk are just shockingly effective.
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