Yeah, and I agree with this entirely.

The question in the title and at the end were sincere, when I posted this, there was another reality where the sentiment was "yeah, we know, you're 100 years behind". But now I have my answer and it's something worth expanding on actually.

I'd start by saying "white people don't exist" is kind of a punchy short version of it, but I do still feel contention about identifying as white without qualification. I wouldn't "Well actually 🤓☝️" someone who is talking about white people. I do agree that "white people" as a group exist but it's mostly useful to describe their proximity to privilege, not about culture.

Every time I try to write anything succinctly on the matter I end up still writing so many words. (I ended up writing 500+ words in response to Holly on the matter! And I had to cut out ~200 words from this reply to get down to 400)

My draft essay is 1500 words atm and not done. One of the struggles is in trying to find the posts and essays I read years ago and I'd be referencing in the essay.

And like, once I have all the citations I need, why not just link to those? I think the instinct of "not talking over" people is a well-intentioned one but which I think also provides a permission/incentive structure for people to stay deleteriously silent, but I don't have anything new to say. And ultimately, the reason I'd want to post it is just to touch base with, "Hey do people still think these things?"

(you can ignore this) If I were to summarize each paragraph of my draft essay into a sentence: Whiteness is an intentionally constructed ideology. White culture is meaningless (and it'd be sus at minimum to identify with it). White supremacist ideology does exist and therefore so does white privilege. Ethnicity, ancestry, and upbringing aren't usually meaningless though. (Also, cultural adjacency to whiteness seems like a spectre that haunts everybody except white people, but that's not my thing to say? See: Jstpst post I want to reference, Key and Peele interludes..) "White people" can't be defined in a meaningful way. "White people" are insulated from having to think seriously about this or identify with white-supremacist struggles, which has gotta be contrary to human instinct. (Then many paragraphs re: white supremacist radicalization, the bordersof whiteness, and how a white-nationalist state weaponizes the definition, needing scotus citations.) In conclusion: Dead racists who believe in White Jesus want to disentangle 100 billion humans throughout history along their imaginary lines, that's as silly as the Four Humors

But anyways I spent 30 minutes on this reply so maybe I should just touch up my essay and post it here as a comment