The sentiment of being sensitive about racism beats being insensitive about racism, even if it takes some thinking to do it appropriately.
Bullshit. You were responding to my post about the Republican voter, the topic of your previous posts about "backlash" and "identity politics" in the context of the recent election. You quoted it. That's not why you said - that's new. And you are newly missing the point. The point would be that Madonna wearing dreads is (or could be) racism - not the cause, the effect of the cause. That's a hope, not a "narrative". If people learn to treat each other with basic, minimum courtesy, they will get along better, is the thinking. Now you're being silly - these stereotypes don't exist ? Nonsense. You apparently didn't listen to the video very carefully - these matters are dealt with, directly, in it. In plain language. It seems that you perhaps did not listen to that video at all. How could you have overlooked its major points so completely? So? As was explained to you, in the video: Europeans - men, especially - have over the years put great effort into "owning" classical music and ballet, and to this day the effects of their position of power and control in those efforts afflict others; meanwhile, those others have had no comparable means of enforcing ownership of anything similar, against the whims and ignorant presumptions of those European men. That is the context, and meaning derives from context. When some people can treat others like garbage without suffering consequences, surely those others may complain a bit once in a while, at least ask for courtesy?
#bulletpoints | #WhatTheyVotedFor Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ... space and time and click for space and time and click for space and time ... No, but generally speaking the way it seems to work is some YouTuber here or there tells them what to believe, so they believe. Like, I knew this guy who for whatever reason decided to do this cheap pretense of ignorance about rape culture, and if he is to be believed, his understanding of the term comes from a YouTuber who complains about SJWs and snowflakes. He claims to have done research, but the only thing he was capable of doing was telling people to watch these long-assed YouTube videos by some guy who has a problem with women. When they see it on Facebook and YouTube, Iceaura is likely right; the most part of them aren't combing the primary source material themselves. It's kind of like this guy I know who happens to be a Trump supporter, and it used to be that someone would send him a chain email telling him the Clintons were international drug lords, and he would believe it. I promise you, he isn't out doing the primary source research himself. Oh, right, that one ... let's see, my stepmother's ... someone. Great-someone. Great aunt? I think. Anti-Fed. Seriously, she's not out doing the primary source research herself, but rather, forwarding existing conspiracism about the Federal Reserve. Yeah, you can get it from YouTube and Facebook, but most of what Trump voters are consuming on such occasions is tertiary and more likely quaternary stylings.
Except these exercises in trying to curb 'cultural appropriation' whatever that means, is the whole platform of SJW and it doesn't beat racism, it doesn't address racism at all.
I always use the quote. If I were referring directly to Republicans I would have said 'republicans'. You speak as if they are the only people who find a problem with identity politics when there is already a dynamic criticism and a robust debate on the use of identity politics and political correctness happening on the Left. The idea that the appeasement of identity politics translates into true political change is absolutely wrong. "I would argue that the more the identitarians try and play their identitarian games, the more they will lose support and standing in progressive communities. Already, young black activists with Black Lives Matter and various other community organizations are challenging the dominant liberal narrative that having people of color in powerful positions will automatically result in better conditions for people of color. As a result, my black activist friends are not interested in replacing a white police chief with a black police chief. And my female friends are not interested in replacing patriarchy with patriarchy-light. Hence the reason young activists aren’t engaging in the same absurd ideological games as their elders. In many ways, the identitarians have already lost the ideological battle. After all, Latinos are being deported in record numbers, African Americans are worse off today than they were prior to Obama taking office, and women are facing unprecedented attacks from religious conservatives. All of this after forty years of identity politics. Obviously, focusing on what Chris Hedges calls “boutique political issues” hasn’t resulted in better living conditions for people of color or women. Yet, the public is more educated about these issues than ever before." https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/08/the-curse-and-failure-of-identity-politics/ The idea that identity politics leads to positive social change and interaction is false. "The left has made itself ridiculous. Let’s get our act together. Many of us on the left are tired of playing a losing game. Too often we are unhorsed by the worst excesses of our own side, in particular the mindless peddling of identity politics as a substitute for rigorous debate. Each week brings with it a fresh litany of petitions, articles and social-media posts, all contributing to the impression that the left has turned into a coterie of preening killjoys, unschooled in the art of self-awareness. Recent low points include calls for Doctor Who to regenerate as a black woman in an effort better to reflect the diversity of the Time Lord community; Caitlin Moran’s advice to young girls that they should avoid reading books by male authors; and Lincoln University Students’ Union’s banning its conservative society from using its social media account for the crime of highlighting restrictions on free speech. Irony, it seems, is not a strong point among these guardians of social rectitude." http://www.spiked-online.com/newsit...eft-wingers-stood-up-to-pc/19639#.WVUg5TOZP1w I just love Slavoj Zizek. You? He analysis the mental affliction called 'identity politics' End of part 1
Part 2 "Boutique political issues" I think best describes the problem with identity politics, it focuses on minutiae and sucks the energy out of activism which should be imbedded in real issues that affect people's lives not amount to pet peeves around 'identity'. If you are correct and the goal of identity politics, which has been going on for at least 25 years, is to get people to treat each other with the 'minimum of courtesy' then do you think it has worked? What does a white woman wearing dreads have to do with observing 'common courtesy' anyway? You claim that the cultural stereotypes created out of identity politics is silly and doesn't exist but I'm in good company In an analysis titled "Identity Politics, Feminism and Social Change", Associate Professor in Sociology Joan Mandle of Colgate made this interesting observation identity politics, a politics that stresses strong collective group identities as the basis of political analysis and action. As political engagement with the society as a whole was increasingly perceived to have produced insufficient progress or solutions, and in the absence of a compelling model of a society worth struggling for, many progressives retreated into a focus on their own "self" and into specific cultural and ideological identity groups which made rights, status, and privilege claims on the basis of a victimized identity. These groups included ethnic minorities such as African-Americans, Asian- Americans, Native Americans, religious groups, lesbian women and gay men, deaf and other disabled people. The desire to gain sympathy on the basis of a tarnished identity was sometimes taken to absurd lengths, as for example when privileged white men pronounced themselves victims based on their alleged oppression by women and especially by feminists. Indeed in the last decade there has been an explosion of groups vying with one another for social recognition of their oppression and respect for it. This has been especially exaggerated on college campuses where young people have divided into any number of separate identity groups. Identity politics is centered on the idea that activism involves groups' turning inward and stressing separatism, strong collective identities, and political goals focused on psychological and personal self-esteem. Jeffrey Escofier, writing about the gay movement, defines identity politics in the following fashion: "The politics of identity is a kind of cultural politics. It relies on the development of a culture that is able to create new and affirmative conceptions of the self, to articulate collective identities, and to forge a sense of group loyalty. Identity politics - very much like nationalism - requires the development of rigid definitions of the boundaries between those who have particular collective identities and those who do not. Many progressive activists today have come to base their political analysis on collectively and often ideologically constructed identities which are seen as immutable and all-encompassing. These identities, for many, provide a retreat where they can feel "comfortable" and "safe" from the assaults and insults of the rest of the society. Today it is the case that many of those who profess a radical critique of society nonetheless do not feel able, as activists in the 60s and 70s did, to engage people outside their own self-defined group - either to press for improvement in their disadvantaged status or to join in coalition. Identity politics defines groups as so different from one another, with the gap dividing them so wide and unbridgeable, that interaction is purposeless. Not only is it assumed that working together will inevitably fail to bring progressive change that would benefit any particular group. In addition, identity groups discourage political contact because of their concern that the psychological injury and personal discomfort they believe such contact inevitably entails will harm individuals' self-esteem and erode their identity. Identity politics thus is zero-sum: what helps one group is thought inevitably to harm another; what benefits them must hurt me. It is a politics of despair. In the name of advancing the interests of one's own group, it rejects attempts to educate, pressure, or change the society as a whole, thus accepting the status quo and revealing its essentially conservative nature. Identity politics advocates a retreat into the protection of the self based on the celebration of group identity. It is a politics of defeat and demoralization, of pessimism and selfishness. By seizing as much as possible for one's self and group, it exposes its complete disregard for the whole from which it has separated - for the rest of the society. Identity politics thus rejects the search for a just and comprehensive solution to social problems. https://userpages.umbc.edu/~korenman/wmst/identity_pol.html It makes sense to me that liberals would love 'identity politics' and 'political correctness' because it allows and individual and even a national party to pander to specific groups, feign outrage over subject matters they are not prepared to truly tackle and it allows white liberals the honor of infantilizing specific groups by turning them into mere 'victims' that need protection, like the bald eagle or something. Its nauseating. What is real racism? Racism is not someone holding a 'ghetto party' at a frat party, racism is not white women wearing dreads while twerking. Its not the misuse of the word 'Indian' for 'native american', real racism is prejudice plus power utilized to disenfranchise a person or a group. It is most perniciously expressed through institutions (financial, political, educational) and is expressed through policy. Anything that doesn't deal with that is just being a nuisance and PISSING PEOPLE OFF! It turns what should be proper activists into emotional and intellectual weaklings 'triggered' by anything that bruises their fragile sense of self. That's not a good profile for a 'warrior' bent on changing entrenched racial or gender bias. More importantly it doesn't make much room for much needed grass roots coalition, as Mandle noticed in regard to the impact identity politics has had on feminism "The hegemony of identity politics within feminism, in my view, has helped to stymie the growth of a large scale feminist movement which could effectively challenge sexism and create the possibility of justice and fairness in our society. On the one hand identity politics makes the coalitions needed to build a mass movement for social change extremely difficult. With its emphasis on internal group solidarity and personal self-esteem, identity politics divides potential allies from one another." Identity politics is a failed strategy, cultural appropriation is a silly flawed concept without any merit or social value whatsoever. "Europeans - men, especially - have over the years put great effort into "owning" classical music and ballet, and to this day the effects of their position of power and control in those efforts afflict others; meanwhile, those others have had no comparable means of enforcing ownership of anything similar, against the whims and ignorant presumptions of those European men." What planet are you from? Really? What planet? So patronizing. Here are a few black men and women who would probably hold that statement as an ignorant, condescending sentiment: 1. Bessie Coleman, 1922, first African-American pilot. She wasn't allowed into flight school in the US so she went to France and got her license and returned home to great accolades. 2. Marion Anderson, born 1897, first black celebrated opera singer. Turned away from music school because she was black. She was offered many roles at important European companies but she preferred concert recitals. 3.George Bridgetower (1780-1860) was a child prodigy with an African American father and a German mother. As a child he joined the retinue of the Prince of Wales (later George IV), who arranged music studies with established musicians. In 1802 Bridgetower obtained permission to travel to the Continent to visit his mother. In the Spring of 1803 he met Beethoven, who quickly wrote his “Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. 47” for him. Beethoven played the piano and Bridgetower played the violin at the highly successful premiere of the sonata in Vienna on May 24, 1803. Before the work was published, the two men had a disagreement, causing Beethoven to replace Bridgetower's name on the manuscript with that of Rodolphe Kreutzer. These are just a few, there are more but three is just enough to illustrate exactly what's the problem with PC and identity politics, it forces groups of people to be stereotyped (Europeans for example or blacks) and with that stereotype we think we know who they are, what they need and what their experience is as a human being. It assumes there is a group of people who need special protection and consideration, reduces people to their sex, their race and rendering them victims to being defined by others, hence the need to control the thoughts and actions of others. Its the worse kind of pandering by those who pretend to want a equitable society when the immediate impulse is to treat people as special persons. None of the men or women in that short list needed anyones insipid pity to prove to the world through they were more than their skin color! Did they care if it changed white people's minds about the abilities of blacks? Probably not because haters gonna hate! And why do you care what or how Republicans view the subject anyway? The important question to ask is whether PC and identity politics works, is it instrumental towards social change, does it have the power to protect people or change minds and the answer is no. All its managed to do is PISS PEOPLE OFF!!
SJW isn't a real thing, it's an epithet applied by assholes to stuff they don't like. It isn't a movement, it doesn't have a platform. But eliminating offensive stereotypes is an important aspect of fighting racism.
I don't think that meant what you think it means. A safe space is a useful academic principle that, like all things, can be misused and misunderstood. It's not that students need to feel safe all the time, but it can be useful to set aside criticism in a limited setting for a specific purpose.
Yes but we eliminate offensive stereotypes by allowing people to be who they are outside of a narrow identity (ie. race, gender, cultural). By treating people as special persons for consideration we are reinforcing the idea that blacks, gays, feminists are so different, so victimized, so exploited that any 'other' (men, white people) have to walk on eggshells just to bloody interact with them and that's just balmy and it quells much needed discussion.
Wow, it's that hard not to be an asshole to blacks, gays, and women? And you can't let people be who they are without acknowledging their history of oppression? Why?
That reminds me of an incident once where someone was rude to a friend of mine and I said "Wow, that was so rude" and he replied "life is rude". LOL! My response to 'safe spaces' is similar. You want a safe space stay at home! The world isn't a 'safe space' and life doesn't provide a 'safe space', to teach students that there is such an abstraction as a 'safe space' amounts to treating them like novices in a convent, too peckish for the real world.
Self-Defeating Supremacism Look, at the point your argument requires that striving to participate in society equals some manner of separatism, you're doing it wrong.
So you think people who play loud music and yell in a library should be left alone? And if you don't like it, you're not fit for the real world?
Nope that is not what I'm saying and I'm not sure how you made that assumption so I cannot address it. When I lived in Cambodia I didn't deal with every Khmer as a holocaust victim. I didn't need to acknowledge their history of genocide to live with them, be friends with them, share in their culture. I didn't even need to be aware of the intricacy of their history to treat them like 'a person'. Foster treatment based on individual attributes not the entirety of their cultural history. When you meet a Jew do you begin by telling them you're sorry for their loss? Do you apologize to a black waiter for slavery? Do I have to acknowledge the potato famine when I go to Ireland on vacation? Do you announce to a new female date that you respect women's autonomy over hors d'oeuvre? Give me a break. It also makes a lot of assumptions. It assumes all people of a specific group care about the same issues in the same way, it assumes all women are offended by being called 'baby or 'sweetheart', that all black women are somehow neurotic about who's wearing a dashiki while wearing dreads. It takes normal interaction and confines it within formal parameters, no one can speak or behave freely because someone else might be offended.
Who's striving? Who's not participating in society? Yes identity politics forces everyone to look at people based on their groupings, and political correctness supposes to treat them accordingly . Those groups are accorded a special kind of respect merely for belonging to that group which is why a Democrat can pretend to be equitable just by placing a gay or a black or hispanic in a position where they would carry out policies just as harmful as any white in that position and pass it off as 'progressive'. You know what I have to say about Obama being the first black president? All things being equal, all it proved is that a black president can be just as disappointing as a white president. How's that for equality? Identity politics assumes that one is a victim of something or other just by being a member. It identifies these groups as needing special status and careful handling because their history has made them socially fragile. It has nothing to do with that individual nor their experience in the world And how could it when that person is nothing but a mirror of their history, their gender or their race? Its not the best recipe for creating a society where everyone participates.
Awesome Channel Four documentary on identity politics and political correctness and why exactly its all a mistaken set of assumptions and taboos. If we don't have an honest discussion of culture then we can't have an honest discussion about 'identity'.
Oh that is a nice theory and all, but A) I have a counter theory that I will get to and B) there is nothing we can do about that. Counter theory: there are liberals spouting talking points and policy objectives that specifically ignores the white underclass and even appears to blame them, as a result we lose the white underclass and they turn toward thee republicans and the likes of trump for acknowledgment. Example, this morning I was listen to MPR, and they had two black social workers talking about Philando Castile case, and how blacks have generations of trauma etched into them epicgentically, and a caller comes in and ask about what about the fact that the majority of people killed by police are white? Oh well these numbers don't negate "our feelings" and how we need to deal with this trauma and how white people need to feel bad (while doing nothing mind you) and how the jury's deep seated racism was why they let the officer off scott free and not that they were following the law, that law the specifically allows police to kill with impunity (law that we should change, you know, do something! Instead of just sitting in "healing circles" bitching about white people! ) no no we need to bring this all back to racial suffering. These are liberals, on a nationally syndicate radio news program, shooting us all in the foot! When I speak of youtube and facebook, I'm not talking about the Alex Johns, or Milo, or what ever her name is, that hypocritical tradcon canuck... Lawrence Southern, I'm talking about the liberals, the endless stream of them, that they rightfully point at, as destroying the liberal cause. When liberals come out protesting them, attacking them, demanding they shut up, in only gives them MORE attention and brings more voters to them. Well there is no rapeculture at least here in the USA, and your inability to understand or even tolerate other people's perspective on that is your problem not mine. You can call me a misogynist all you want about that, I will call you a trump enabler, savy? As long as you call anyone that disagrees with you a misogynist, homophobe, what ever, you alienate people who would normally vote liberal, and that is the actions of you and your ilk that helped elect trump. Now I've been over this with you repeatedly, you even had me repeat word for word my affirmation for the full human rights of women, "full stop", none the less I believe rapeculture is bullshit, the numbers of actual rapes of women is orders of magnitude below 1:5 US women, and the demonizing of men and removing of presumption of innocence and infantilizing of women, alienates millions of male voters, who do what, what do you think they do? They turn around and vote Trump. Oh, your actually talking about someone else, carry on then.
That would require that this white underclass be up on the various schools of thought in American liberalism. There is no evidence of that. How do you know they were "liberals"? Because they were black? And why do you blame liberals for the shortage of good, strong, left libertarian voices on the major media? And why is dumbass white bigot gullibility for wingnut media feed the fault of the nearest liberal who can't figure out how to get through to his garbage dump of a mind? An endless stream that I find very easy to step over on my way anywhere else, and that you seem to think is an encompassing ocean. Very, very few of the 63 million Trump voters "normally vote liberal", or ever have. Trump tapped what has been the normal Republican voting base since Nixon/Reagan and the "Southern" (racial identity) Strategy took hold in the Republican Party.
The outcome you purport largely depends on self-deception establishing straw men against which an individual then reacts. It's a straightforward notion of tilting windmills, such as your example demonstrates: Example, this morning I was listen to MPR, and they had two black social workers talking about Philando Castile case, and how blacks have generations of trauma etched into them epicgentically, and a caller comes in and ask about what about the fact that the majority of people killed by police are white? Oh well these numbers don't negate "our feelings" and how we need to deal with this trauma and how white people need to feel bad (while doing nothing mind you) and how the jury's deep seated racism was why they let the officer off scott free and not that they were following the law, that law the specifically allows police to kill with impunity (law that we should change, you know, do something! Instead of just sitting in "healing circles" bitching about white people! ) no no we need to bring this all back to racial suffering. When white supremacists wish to depict dark skin as inherently criminal, they will point to ratios, such as proportional overrepresentation in prison. When white supremacists wish to denigrate concerns about police violence, they turn to raw numbers. Furthermore, narrative is not itself identity politic. However, asserting that a narrative has no place in the discourse because it makes an identity politic nervous is identity politics. You complain about talking points and policy objectives that "specifically ignores the white underclass and even appears to blame them". If discussing an issue that impacts nonwhites is to specifically ignore white people, then you only prove the point. If the history of American racism and its impact on human beings should be verboten because it makes white identity voters uncomfortable, then you only prove the point. Oh, I understand that there are people who perceive a stake in convincing others that society at large does nothing to condone, justify, or mitigate the act of rape. I do assert that if you attempt to define the rape culture you purport doesn't exist, you'll be describing another one of your straw men. See, the thing is that you lose credibility when you skip out on reality in order to diddle around with your own straw men. I gave you three examples all about different people. Don't you feel silly for making up lies and pitching a childish temper tantrum? Seriously, though, for the record, your line would work better if that was all there was to it. Functionally speaking, you just went out of your way to make yourself look extraordinarily stupid. Timing is everything in comedy, which, I'm certain, you've heard before, and if I suggest reflection on the point it's not some test you need to answer for me, but, rather, very nearly analogous to what's wrong with your political argument in general. Timing is everything, and that's why your punch line fails so badly as to suggest a certain degree of self-loathing and self-denigration. Which is its own point: Splitting hairs with malamati is an exercise best undertaken by those smart enough to simply shrug and not bother trying. That just needs to be said, at some point.
