Does systemic racism against blacks even exist anymore?
30 Aug 2021, 9:43 pm
King0fSpades wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
King0fSpades wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
i mostly pass for white, but POC saved my butt in the army so i am indebted to them.
My dad was Polynesian but he pretty much abandoned me after I was born. My mom is white and I was raised by her and my half siblings who are also white I'm light skinned with black hair and hazel eyes, so I identify mostly as 'white'. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm actually racially mixed as well.
White passing = white so long as you don't get the "So where are you from" question.
It only matters if you are trying to join a far right organisation nowadays
Lol well the only two times in my life that I ever felt like I wasn't white was when I had one girl in high school ask if I was Jewish and another girl ask if I was half Chinese.
Pretty sure girls asked Keanu Reeves and Richard Gere that question too. Neither of those two had problems with the ladies
30 Aug 2021, 11:18 pm
Dox47 wrote:
uncommondenominator wrote:
If all you're going to do is come up with excuses to not engage with me anymore, wouldn't it be easier to just scurry away already? OR, just not engage with me? As opposed to continuing to engage with me, long after you were whining about how it wasn't worth your time to engage with me.
Nah, it's more fun to draw you out, sell you the rope with which to hang yourself, if you know what I mean. Just keep those personal attacks and insults coming, if there's one thing I've learned in my years here it's how to ignore bait.
However you choose to fellate your own ego is your own business.
Speaking of drawing people out and letting them hang themselves, remember that time you told us that you'll totally date black girls - and other races, too! And tried to flaunt the fact that you even MARRIED one! Funny how you were so cocky to point that out, yet don't seem to want to talk about it anymore. Like, at all. You were so AHEM proud of that fact. Now you seem to want to run from that discussion. I'm sure if you tell us more about how open-minded you are, that'll TOTALLY shut us up.
First you screech about how I'm too long-winded, now you LIKE letting me go on and on. You claim I'm baiting you, and that you know how to avoid it, yet you continue to engage with me. If anything, you're avoiding talking altogether as much as possible, aside from off-topic whining mixed with misplaced cockyness.
Did you plan to add anything to the TOPIC, or are you now just idly puffing up for attention? Yes yes, you got me, and my little dog, too. Whatever helps you sleep at night.
Meanwhile, on topic...
KingOfSpades, a question. Where exactly did you get the idea that BLM has anything to do with marxism? And in what way does BLM supposedly embrace marxism? Genuinely curious, as I've not heard this claim before.
I dare say it may be impossible to make a system that pleases everyone, cos there's always going to be someone who wants something unreasonable. People seek power for the benefit of advantage in competition. People compete for things which are finite or limited. People don't usually fight when there's excess. Even lions and gazelles will drink from the same lake at the same time - so long as the lake is big enough.
Even the most universally fair system will still have those who are dissatisfied, because they don't want to be equal, they want to be better - or they don't want fair, they want to be able to cheat people.
In that same vein, nationalism is strong, and every nation likes to think they're "the best" on some level or another. it can take different forms and be of different intensities, but it's all from the same place. Everybody likes to find reasons why they're good, but nobody likes to find reasons they're not. Some people do find their own faults - some people even obsess over them - but they still don't enjoy it. And it's a fairly visceral reaction to avoid that which is unpleasant.
In times long past, when nations largely stood alone, it was easier to build up the walls of society, and use it as a form of solidarity, like a football team chanting "we're number one!" before every game, even if they actually lose more than they win. It's good for morale, but don't take it too seriously.
Western culture has been blowing smoke up it's own arse for so long, and has gotten so good at it, that it takes it far too seriously. It loves to point at it's buildings and discoveries and inventions and advancements, as proof of it's greatness - "manifest destiny" being a fine example of the end result of the mentality - where even in today's toned down global world, western civilization rides the edge of arrogance akin to "I'm not saying I'm better, but, *gestures at western civilization* look at how great everything is" - which is only half true - it's pretty good if you're on top which is true in most civilizations. Kings seldom starve no matter how bad the winter.
Realistically, western culture has been a massive blob spreading across the planet, absorbing whatever it could from other cultures. For a long time, our biggest benefit was that we were so big, we could simply out-do other nations on scale alone. In addition to that, those resources have also allowed amerca to absorb other nations' talent. Enticing people from other nations to come to america, and to take credit for the inventions. Russians and germans and italians having invented or pioneered many of americas achievements - and as such america didn't really invent it, america bought the rights to it, financed it.
Just as england trod all over ireland scotland and wales, anglo culture smeared itself eastward thru india, all the way to australia, and westward across the entirety of north america's midsection all the way to hawaii, acting like it's totally always been there, and should totally be there, ever and always. And as western culture spread, it treated every nation it subjugated as animals, and convinced itself that it was doing them a favor by teaching them the ways of Man - told ourselves that we needed to keep them in line, for their own good, lest they just run amok. More often than not, comparing them to monkeys or apes.
Western culture, and american culture, is so used to selling itself on it's own bald-eagle-screechin' greatness, so utterly takes for granted it's own hype, it genuinely thinks that it's an unbiased point-of-fact, and uses it as justification for inequality, under the pretense that it's not unequal cos you've earned it by being better.
It's natural to set the bar of expectation to coincide with something you're already good at or have in spades. And realistically, much like how we've enticed people from other nations to come to america so we could use their talents for our benefit, america's biggest talent, has always been finding ways to take advantage of other people, for the benefit of an elite few. America was prospering because almost all of it's labor was free, and production was only limited by the number of slaves you had. Americans didn't build america. Americans told their slaves to build it for them. No, not all americans had slaves. But it wasn't frank and gussie's corner store that was blowing up america's economy. It was the plantation owners and the factory owners. The big businesses that would have had to employ great numbers of people - had they not had slaves.
People are quick to point out that, well, the africans actually trapped and sold them, which, yeah, and we still bought and used them. That's like justifying a crack addiction by saying "well, he was selling it, so..." - not to mention, the tribes probably sold them, cos if they didn't the europeans would just hunt and take them anyways - so better you give them someone from a rival tribe than from your own. "They totally did it of their own accord after they realized that the alternative was worse".
America only brought slaves here to use as labor. Beasts of burden. When slavery was banned, they were no longer wanted here - they weren't serving the purpose they were brought here for. So america started to say dumb crap like "go back to africa" as if they chose to come here to begin with - found ways to target ex-slaves and POC in general with biased laws, used an excuse to send them off to "work camps". All you had to do was say "the n**er did it", and they'd be hauled off. To this day, that same skewed burden of evidence persists, where a whiter person says so, and that's all it takes.
Now several hundred years later, white people are so used to playing on a tilted table, they think that's how it's supposed to be. And any attempt to tilt it back to actual equality makes it feel like the game is now rigged against how they're used to playing, not realizing they've always been cheating to begin with. Suddenly the ball doesn't automatically roll towards them by default, at which point they cry foul, cos it always did before, and if it doesn't, something must be wrong!
Entitlement and expectation are fairly indistinguishable to the entitled. Just as effort and luck are nearly indistinguishable to the lucky, and inconvenience and injustice are nearly indistinguishable to the privileged.
Breaking a nail is terrible if the worst thing you've ever broken is a sweat, and miniscule if the worst thing you've broken is a rib.
Racism still exists all over the world. But americans, being american, are kinda gonna focus on american racism, since that's kinda where they live and all, and can like, actually do something about it.
30 Aug 2021, 11:24 pm
uncommondenominator wrote:
Meanwhile, on topic...
KingOfSpades, a question. Where exactly did you get the idea that BLM has anything to do with marxism? And in what way does BLM supposedly embrace marxism? Genuinely curious, as I've not heard this claim before.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/ ... story.html
The woman who co-founded Black Lives Matter describes herself as a "trained marxist." and she is not the only one.
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31 Aug 2021, 12:27 am
uncommondenominator wrote:
Speaking of drawing people out and letting them hang themselves, remember that time you told us that you'll totally date black girls - and other races, too! And tried to flaunt the fact that you even MARRIED one! Funny how you were so cocky to point that out, yet don't seem to want to talk about it anymore. Like, at all. You were so AHEM proud of that fact. Now you seem to want to run from that discussion. I'm sure if you tell us more about how open-minded you are, that'll TOTALLY shut us up.
I'm happy to discuss all of the mentioned topics with other, less caustic people in the thread, but not you, I wouldn't have brought up my history if I weren't wiling to discuss it, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to waste my time with bilious randos. You're not going to chase me out of here with personal attacks, but I'm also not going to give you more of my time than I have to, and well it takes two to tango, you can stop savaging my shadow whenever you want to.
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Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer.
- Rick Sanchez
31 Aug 2021, 2:33 am
^
Brilliantly simple visual representation of the point.
Sometimes I wonder how many people who use those tactics:
A) Don't actually want to win anyone over to their cause, but would rather actively repel people just to have more "bad guys" to point at.
B) Are just trolls. I know they're not all trolls, but sometimes, to preserve my hope in humanity, I have to tell myself that at least some of them are.
(Just to be clear, I'm talking about people arguing in a caustic manner, on any side, not people who disagree with me.)
31 Aug 2021, 3:17 am
vividgroovy wrote:
^
Brilliantly simple visual representation of the point.
Sometimes I wonder how many people who use those tactics:
A) Don't actually want to win anyone over to their cause, but would rather actively repel people just to have more "bad guys" to point at.
B) Are just trolls. I know they're not all trolls, but sometimes, to preserve my hope in humanity, I have to tell myself that at least some of them are.
(Just to be clear, I'm talking about people arguing in a caustic manner, on any side, not people who disagree with me.)
Brilliantly simple visual representation of the point.
Sometimes I wonder how many people who use those tactics:
A) Don't actually want to win anyone over to their cause, but would rather actively repel people just to have more "bad guys" to point at.
B) Are just trolls. I know they're not all trolls, but sometimes, to preserve my hope in humanity, I have to tell myself that at least some of them are.
(Just to be clear, I'm talking about people arguing in a caustic manner, on any side, not people who disagree with me.)
You know, for the most part I don't think there's any real strategic thought to it, it's worked for them in the past and so they stick with it, not seeing that it's actually a counterproductive style that turns people off just on principle. I suspect that a lot of people who use it learned it as a face to face technique, where you can bluster and physically intimidate people to go along just to get you out of their face, but it doesn't really translate well online, as the blustered at can simply thumb their nose and mock the person trying to do it.
I'd say the same thing about moralizers, it works for them when they are in their little like minded communities where everyone shares roughly the same opinions and they can punish dissent, but when they get out into the larger world where people don't care about their values, they're often shocked to discover that beating people over the head with the "you're a bad person if you disagree with me" act is not in fact persuasive, quite the opposite. It's as true for religious types as it is for wokes, though I'd argue that they're functionally a religion at this point anyway, though I find the religious more aware of the fact.
_________________
Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer.
- Rick Sanchez
31 Aug 2021, 3:38 am
Going to throw up some links to various articles that I find useful on this topic, they might not directly relate to systemic racism, but they're adjacent and do a good job explaining a lot of my personal feelings on the topic.
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/pe ... ave-agency
Quote:
Several times in my life I have gotten into a fight with other members of the anti-imperialist left over a question that I would not ordinarily consider a question: was Japan an imperial power?
I felt (and feel) that there was not much to debate. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Japan engaged in what would be seen, in any European context, as straightforwardly imperialist behavior. They developed a militaristic and nationalistic ruling philosophy at home and used this as justification for an aggressive and expansionistic foreign policy, conquering and annexing vast swaths of territory, plundering these places for resources and treasure, and setting up puppet governments or out-and-out imposing foreign rule. Nobody, including the people I debated this question with, disputes these basic historical facts. One would think that would be sufficient to settle the question.
Ah, but the Japanese are not white. And for many people I have known in the anti-imperialist left, all historical crimes, especially imperialism, are assumed to be the product of white people and their actions, however many mental hoops you have to jump through to get to that point. You may rush to say that this is an exaggeration, but no. I know people who will unapologetically tell you that there is no such thing as a historical crime conducted by people of color that they are themselves ultimately morally responsible for. I wish I could do a better job of summarizing how this plays out with the example of Japan for you, but I’ve always found the basic claim so ad hoc and bizarre that I genuinely don’t think I can do it justice. The arguments as I understand them include the idea that British and other European actions in China provoked Chinese behavior that in turn provoked Japan’s behavior which we called imperialism, that Japan’s expansionism can be excused because they suffered from land and resource constraints other expansionistic powers did not, that Japan would never have thought to engage in these behaviors if they hadn’t seen the European example first…. One way or another, all roads lead to a world where white people were responsible for Japanese rulers ordering invasion after invasion, slaughtering local populations, and raping local women, where the Japanese committed war crimes and yet were blameless. Blameless - and thus powerless.
This is, on the face of it, anti-white ideology - all of the bad stuff in the world happens as a direct result of white actions, white power. Yet I have always felt that there’s something else going on in these debates. I suspect that placing all of the blame for historical crimes on white people is strangely comforting for white leftists: it advances a vision of the world where only white people matter. It says that the sun rises and sets with white people. It suggests that white people wrote history. It assures white people that, no matter what else is true, they are the masters of the world. That all of this is framed in terms of judgment against the abstraction “white people” is incidental. I think if you could strip people down to their most naked self-interest and ask them, “would you be willing to take all the blame, if it meant you got all the power?,” most would say yes. And of course in this narrative people of color are sad little extras, unable even to commit injustice, manipulated across the chessboard by the omnipotent white masters whose interests they can’t even begin to oppose. All of this to score meaningless political points in debates about inequality and injustice.
The leftist conception of history as a series of crimes committed by white people against the virginal and defenseless brown masses is a perfect example of where radical American politics ostensibly castigates establishment power and the white people who wield it, and yet ultimately comforts those who express them, who are themselves white in dominant majorities. And what I’ve witnessed the last several years is that this condition has been generalized to domestic politics too: in the liberal mind of 2021, white people do, people of color are done to. Were I a person of color, I would find this impossibly insulting.
I felt (and feel) that there was not much to debate. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Japan engaged in what would be seen, in any European context, as straightforwardly imperialist behavior. They developed a militaristic and nationalistic ruling philosophy at home and used this as justification for an aggressive and expansionistic foreign policy, conquering and annexing vast swaths of territory, plundering these places for resources and treasure, and setting up puppet governments or out-and-out imposing foreign rule. Nobody, including the people I debated this question with, disputes these basic historical facts. One would think that would be sufficient to settle the question.
Ah, but the Japanese are not white. And for many people I have known in the anti-imperialist left, all historical crimes, especially imperialism, are assumed to be the product of white people and their actions, however many mental hoops you have to jump through to get to that point. You may rush to say that this is an exaggeration, but no. I know people who will unapologetically tell you that there is no such thing as a historical crime conducted by people of color that they are themselves ultimately morally responsible for. I wish I could do a better job of summarizing how this plays out with the example of Japan for you, but I’ve always found the basic claim so ad hoc and bizarre that I genuinely don’t think I can do it justice. The arguments as I understand them include the idea that British and other European actions in China provoked Chinese behavior that in turn provoked Japan’s behavior which we called imperialism, that Japan’s expansionism can be excused because they suffered from land and resource constraints other expansionistic powers did not, that Japan would never have thought to engage in these behaviors if they hadn’t seen the European example first…. One way or another, all roads lead to a world where white people were responsible for Japanese rulers ordering invasion after invasion, slaughtering local populations, and raping local women, where the Japanese committed war crimes and yet were blameless. Blameless - and thus powerless.
This is, on the face of it, anti-white ideology - all of the bad stuff in the world happens as a direct result of white actions, white power. Yet I have always felt that there’s something else going on in these debates. I suspect that placing all of the blame for historical crimes on white people is strangely comforting for white leftists: it advances a vision of the world where only white people matter. It says that the sun rises and sets with white people. It suggests that white people wrote history. It assures white people that, no matter what else is true, they are the masters of the world. That all of this is framed in terms of judgment against the abstraction “white people” is incidental. I think if you could strip people down to their most naked self-interest and ask them, “would you be willing to take all the blame, if it meant you got all the power?,” most would say yes. And of course in this narrative people of color are sad little extras, unable even to commit injustice, manipulated across the chessboard by the omnipotent white masters whose interests they can’t even begin to oppose. All of this to score meaningless political points in debates about inequality and injustice.
The leftist conception of history as a series of crimes committed by white people against the virginal and defenseless brown masses is a perfect example of where radical American politics ostensibly castigates establishment power and the white people who wield it, and yet ultimately comforts those who express them, who are themselves white in dominant majorities. And what I’ve witnessed the last several years is that this condition has been generalized to domestic politics too: in the liberal mind of 2021, white people do, people of color are done to. Were I a person of color, I would find this impossibly insulting.
That last two paragraphs in particular really strike at it, I just had to quote the earlier part for context.
More from the same source:
Quote:
We can, I think, generalize this in some ways. The movement that I grew up in that would eventually come to be called the LGBTQ movement once held that queer people were strong, that they were so much stronger than they were given credit for by society. The foundational assumption of the LGBTQ movement of today is that people in those communities are permanently and existentially weak; any insult or injury to them, no matter how small, will inevitably be a life-altering trauma. They are considered devoid of resilience and incapable of recovery. They are portrayed, by their loudest allies, as lost little children, wounded by language, utterly vulnerable at all times to those who could derail them with a bad look. This is not progress.
Current debates about the (very real) spike in violent crime exemplify the patronizing and counterproductive attitude towards race currently gripping progressive America. Liberals and leftists seem, in general, to be confronting this problem by not confronting it. They are either ignoring it altogether or dismissing it with the kind of useless sarcasm that is the stock in trade of today’s left, refusing to countenance the fact that, yes, there are sometimes tradeoffs that have to be made when it comes to crime and policing. Many seem to think that their duty, as defined in the past year of post-George Floyd America, is to simply pretend that crime does not exist as a political issue. They do this supposedly in the name of Black people, ignoring the fact that policing remains popular in the Black community, which is sensible considering that you are more sensitive to property crime when you have less money to replace property and more sensitive to violent crime when you are more likely to be the victim of violence. It seems that discussing crime simply presents too much risk of talking about race in anything other than the most simplistic, good-vs-bad terms that liberals have become used to. So they are hiding in various ways.
Consider this “study” out of the University of Michigan. The authors launched it with great fanfare, particularly claiming that this report debunks the idea that Black men have committed many of the anti-Asian crimes that have been so much in the news lately. How did they arrive at this conclusion? By defining what counts as a hate incident in utterly absurd ways. The report aggregates statements the researchers consider racist with actual violent incidents, leading to (for example) a gross equivalence between the vicious beating of an elderly Asian man with a cruise line refusing to serve those with passports from China and Macau. Of the 184 listed incidents, 55 are just Trump saying his usual looney anti-China s**t! This is not what anyone means when they talk about the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans. Why would they undertake this absurd project? Well, this dishonest aggregation allows them to release headline numbers that show that Black men are responsible for a low percentage of the incidents. They presumably felt the need to do this because, if you have kept up with this news, it certainly seems that a disproportionate number of these incidents (the actual violent attacks) have been committed by Black men. Now they have a mendacious pseudo-study that liberals will be citing until the end of time.
Current debates about the (very real) spike in violent crime exemplify the patronizing and counterproductive attitude towards race currently gripping progressive America. Liberals and leftists seem, in general, to be confronting this problem by not confronting it. They are either ignoring it altogether or dismissing it with the kind of useless sarcasm that is the stock in trade of today’s left, refusing to countenance the fact that, yes, there are sometimes tradeoffs that have to be made when it comes to crime and policing. Many seem to think that their duty, as defined in the past year of post-George Floyd America, is to simply pretend that crime does not exist as a political issue. They do this supposedly in the name of Black people, ignoring the fact that policing remains popular in the Black community, which is sensible considering that you are more sensitive to property crime when you have less money to replace property and more sensitive to violent crime when you are more likely to be the victim of violence. It seems that discussing crime simply presents too much risk of talking about race in anything other than the most simplistic, good-vs-bad terms that liberals have become used to. So they are hiding in various ways.
Consider this “study” out of the University of Michigan. The authors launched it with great fanfare, particularly claiming that this report debunks the idea that Black men have committed many of the anti-Asian crimes that have been so much in the news lately. How did they arrive at this conclusion? By defining what counts as a hate incident in utterly absurd ways. The report aggregates statements the researchers consider racist with actual violent incidents, leading to (for example) a gross equivalence between the vicious beating of an elderly Asian man with a cruise line refusing to serve those with passports from China and Macau. Of the 184 listed incidents, 55 are just Trump saying his usual looney anti-China s**t! This is not what anyone means when they talk about the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans. Why would they undertake this absurd project? Well, this dishonest aggregation allows them to release headline numbers that show that Black men are responsible for a low percentage of the incidents. They presumably felt the need to do this because, if you have kept up with this news, it certainly seems that a disproportionate number of these incidents (the actual violent attacks) have been committed by Black men. Now they have a mendacious pseudo-study that liberals will be citing until the end of time.
I've definitely noticed the shift he's alluding to, from describing minorities as strong people who've persevered through many obstacles to victims lacking in all agencies who have to be protected from any harm lest their fragile dreams be crushed, which is really just insulting. I don't know why the people pushing the victim narrative think they're actually helping anyone, except themselves in feeling like they're making a difference, whatever that is worth.
More good stuff:
Quote:
Elite liberalism is a land of misconceptions, and few are more wrongheaded than the perception that complaining about “white people” as a concept is injurious to white people in the specific. There’s a piece in the Times today about a Black novelist whose book challenges the racial inequality in publishing. The article’s headline runs “Her Book Doesn’t Go Easy on Publishing. Publishers Ate It Up.” The idea here is that the first sentence should make the second one surprising, but of course it doesn’t; I guarantee that the elite white liberals in publishing didn’t just eat up the book proposal but specifically the indictment of whiteness it contained. It’s a point that I’ve made many times - most white people, and certainly white liberals, aren’t actually hurt by insults directed at white people. Because white people are not internally racialized by our culture (which certainly is a form of white privilege), these statements will always be easily dodged by our egos; when the subject of an insult or accusation, “white people” transforms unconsciously into “those other white people, the bad ones.” It’s the same reason that terms like “honkey” don’t hurt: my brain asks, which honkey? Where? What does whiteness have to do with me? I am not alone in this.
Meanwhile, the price of the obsessive fixation on white people as the sole movers of all history and current events leaves us in a world where people of color are cast as permanent children, well thought of, constantly “honored” and “celebrated,” occasionally worthy of a little help and a little liberty, but ultimately subject forever to the whims of white people, buffeted by hatred on one side and by toxic condescension on the other. Our discourse makes liars of us and dulls the possibility of cross-racial solidarity by making hard conversations impossible. I assure you, when Asian Americans who are not political obsessives look at the news about these attacks, then read in the newspaper where some elite liberal explains that Black people have nothing to do with it, it does not convince them. It makes them more suspicious of all progressive arguments and leaves them subject to conspiratorial thinking. Again: for what? Who is helped by this condition? No one, in material terms. It just makes white people feel good and enables people’s pleasant fantasy of a simplistic moral universe.
Meanwhile, the price of the obsessive fixation on white people as the sole movers of all history and current events leaves us in a world where people of color are cast as permanent children, well thought of, constantly “honored” and “celebrated,” occasionally worthy of a little help and a little liberty, but ultimately subject forever to the whims of white people, buffeted by hatred on one side and by toxic condescension on the other. Our discourse makes liars of us and dulls the possibility of cross-racial solidarity by making hard conversations impossible. I assure you, when Asian Americans who are not political obsessives look at the news about these attacks, then read in the newspaper where some elite liberal explains that Black people have nothing to do with it, it does not convince them. It makes them more suspicious of all progressive arguments and leaves them subject to conspiratorial thinking. Again: for what? Who is helped by this condition? No one, in material terms. It just makes white people feel good and enables people’s pleasant fantasy of a simplistic moral universe.
This is something I come back to again and again, white people are generally not race conscious, and it would be better if they remained that way, as openly advocating for their race is still largely taboo among white people and limited to the fringe, and I don't think the results would be good for anyone if that were to change.
That whole article is worth reading in full, as is most of the stuff posted there, largely for free, Freddie is a Marxist who is not impressed with identity politics and has a very clear eyed perspective on these issues and others.
_________________
Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer.
- Rick Sanchez
31 Aug 2021, 3:43 am
This one's even less connected to systemic racism, but addresses many of what I consider to be the follies of the modern identitarian movements:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/th ... irst-brick
Quote:
Some people find me kind of theatrically pessimistic or doomsaying. (No clue how they got that idea.) I do have a lot of optimistic feelings about the future, but in politics in particular I am constantly confronted with a basic problem: change in the favor of the poor, the powerless, and the marginalized requires solidarity across difference, but the political ideologies associated with pursuing that change have become obsessed with emphasizing the differences instead of the solidarity. All the left has is people power. But that can’t work if you insist some people are more important than others.
For years now there has been a percolating argument about the beginnings of the Stonewall riot. (I’m sorry, we are meant to say “uprising” now, because all we have is semantics.) Who threw the first brick, everybody wants to know? I have heard about Stonewall since I was a child, and yet I never heard a word about this “controversy” for the first 35 or so years of my life. It just never would have occurred to me to wonder. But people have become very, very invested in this question, and now fight constantly about the issue. In particular, many now insist that a Black trans woman started the action. When I say insist, I mean it: this is not a question on which some people will broach disagreement. As in so many things on the left these days, people frequently will insist on this point without evidence and act like those asking for some are committing a crime. Of course, this doesn’t mean that I believe that the people who say Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick are wrong. I have no idea, and I don’t care.
From the most old-school parts of my leftist heart: it doesn’t f*****g matter who individually threw the first brick. It doesn’t matter. That fixation on individualism is contrary to everything we are meant to stand for. The whole point of this style of politics is to recognize that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one - including the need for recognition. “Not me, us,” remember? Stonewall was a triumph of the movement. It was a victory for collective action, not individual heroism. The fixation on dividing up the praise fundamentally misunderstands the meaning of solidarity and its preeminence in left culture.
The most basic vocabulary of progressives has become bent towards the needs of the individual, and many people seem to feel that the elementary job of politics is to make people feel like they’re prioritized. In fact the elementary job is to actually improve their lives in material terms. But now it’s essential that some people are “centered,” whatever the f**k that means, and if you’re centering some people you are necessarily telling others that they are marginal. I’m not saying that we don’t have special responsibility to marginalized groups, or that we shouldn’t focus particular attention on oppressions of race or gender. We do and we should. But the whole point, for about two hundred years, has always been to show how those problems interlock and interact, how injustice against one group of vulnerable people is in fact the same injustice that afflicts us all, and that none of us get free unless all of us do. All of that is gone. All that remains is the worship of the particular, to put it as neutrally as I can. And I cannot articulate a scenario in which liberation against the forces of establishment power (capital, militarism, domination) can win under those terms.
The term BIPOC exists particularly to stress the distance between different types of people of color, and insists that some are a higher priority; acronyms like LGBTQQIP2SAA1 and AANHPI get longer and longer, because lord knows the last thing we’d want to do is share an identity category with people who are somewhat dissimilar from us. People mistake their Tinder bio for politics and vice versa. The list of sexual identities and orientations gets more ludicrous by the day. My identity makes me different. My trauma makes me different. I am disabled, but not in the same way as you are; you may be Black, but you’re light-skinned and thus can’t share my pain, or my cause. I have no interest in weighing in on the legitimacy of these divisions in and of themselves. If they’re useful in therapy or sociological research or online hobby communities, fine. Self-identify however you would like, and take your own trauma and problems seriously. But those things cannot be the basis of a political movement. Current trends have resulted in an utterly fractured progressive landscape, and it’s a disaster - no movement, only competing claims to having the greatest need. The basis of left-wing organizing is the statement “I am just like you.”
Consider that Stonewall argument again. Breakdowns of the individual identities within the LGBTQ population are tricky, but most estimates put the total population within this group at around 5%. How could it possibly make any strategic sense for the groups within the broader community to constantly divide themselves into smaller and smaller chunks? In a representative democracy? But this seems to be the only thing that gets some “activists” out of bed in the morning, asserting their moral superiority over some other group that is itself within the vast tent of “marginalized.” Cisgendered gay men have been written out of the movement by a lot of other LGBTQ activists; sure, as a political class gay men have money, numbers, and organization, but hey. The important thing is to be a social club first. This attitude is ruinous. Listen: almost everyone is politically motivated by self-interest. They will do what they can to help others, but they coalesce together into a movement when they recognize that they share the same interests as their neighbors. That’s not Ayn Rand talking; it’s common sense and a basic assumption of centuries of left-wing and progressive thinkers and leaders. It’s also a necessity. The right has money, organization, a structural advantage in the makeup of our system, and a large media apparatus. Progressive people can’t afford to be divided. They just can’t. But it’s baked into the culture now.
As with all things on the left, this is all a symptom of powerlessness: when you can’t actually achieve real change, all you can give people is attention.
I constantly get asked questions of political identity, and in particular if mine has changed. I am specifically asked a lot about supposedly being a left contrarian and whether I am “post-left.” I don’t have the f*****g slightest idea what that could mean, post-left. I’m the same guy I was at 16, at 22, at 28, at 35: a leftist, a socialist, a Marxist. That is to say, a collectivist, which is the beating heart of left-wing thought and always has been. I don’t care that liberals and their enablers have decided that the goal of politics is to be defined rather than to take power. I still believe in the basic principles of solidarity, liberation, compassion, egalitarianism, and a future beyond capitalism. I’ll go down with this ship. I’m not post-anything. What’s now called the left or liberalism went post- when it abandoned the commitment to equality and brotherhood for the pursuit of an ideology of vanity.
Perhaps this is too cute, but the irony is that a single brick can never build a solid foundation. Only a lot of bricks can do that. But it’s hard to believe that the people in today’s “movement” would ever consent to being just one brick among many.
For years now there has been a percolating argument about the beginnings of the Stonewall riot. (I’m sorry, we are meant to say “uprising” now, because all we have is semantics.) Who threw the first brick, everybody wants to know? I have heard about Stonewall since I was a child, and yet I never heard a word about this “controversy” for the first 35 or so years of my life. It just never would have occurred to me to wonder. But people have become very, very invested in this question, and now fight constantly about the issue. In particular, many now insist that a Black trans woman started the action. When I say insist, I mean it: this is not a question on which some people will broach disagreement. As in so many things on the left these days, people frequently will insist on this point without evidence and act like those asking for some are committing a crime. Of course, this doesn’t mean that I believe that the people who say Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick are wrong. I have no idea, and I don’t care.
From the most old-school parts of my leftist heart: it doesn’t f*****g matter who individually threw the first brick. It doesn’t matter. That fixation on individualism is contrary to everything we are meant to stand for. The whole point of this style of politics is to recognize that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one - including the need for recognition. “Not me, us,” remember? Stonewall was a triumph of the movement. It was a victory for collective action, not individual heroism. The fixation on dividing up the praise fundamentally misunderstands the meaning of solidarity and its preeminence in left culture.
The most basic vocabulary of progressives has become bent towards the needs of the individual, and many people seem to feel that the elementary job of politics is to make people feel like they’re prioritized. In fact the elementary job is to actually improve their lives in material terms. But now it’s essential that some people are “centered,” whatever the f**k that means, and if you’re centering some people you are necessarily telling others that they are marginal. I’m not saying that we don’t have special responsibility to marginalized groups, or that we shouldn’t focus particular attention on oppressions of race or gender. We do and we should. But the whole point, for about two hundred years, has always been to show how those problems interlock and interact, how injustice against one group of vulnerable people is in fact the same injustice that afflicts us all, and that none of us get free unless all of us do. All of that is gone. All that remains is the worship of the particular, to put it as neutrally as I can. And I cannot articulate a scenario in which liberation against the forces of establishment power (capital, militarism, domination) can win under those terms.
The term BIPOC exists particularly to stress the distance between different types of people of color, and insists that some are a higher priority; acronyms like LGBTQQIP2SAA1 and AANHPI get longer and longer, because lord knows the last thing we’d want to do is share an identity category with people who are somewhat dissimilar from us. People mistake their Tinder bio for politics and vice versa. The list of sexual identities and orientations gets more ludicrous by the day. My identity makes me different. My trauma makes me different. I am disabled, but not in the same way as you are; you may be Black, but you’re light-skinned and thus can’t share my pain, or my cause. I have no interest in weighing in on the legitimacy of these divisions in and of themselves. If they’re useful in therapy or sociological research or online hobby communities, fine. Self-identify however you would like, and take your own trauma and problems seriously. But those things cannot be the basis of a political movement. Current trends have resulted in an utterly fractured progressive landscape, and it’s a disaster - no movement, only competing claims to having the greatest need. The basis of left-wing organizing is the statement “I am just like you.”
Consider that Stonewall argument again. Breakdowns of the individual identities within the LGBTQ population are tricky, but most estimates put the total population within this group at around 5%. How could it possibly make any strategic sense for the groups within the broader community to constantly divide themselves into smaller and smaller chunks? In a representative democracy? But this seems to be the only thing that gets some “activists” out of bed in the morning, asserting their moral superiority over some other group that is itself within the vast tent of “marginalized.” Cisgendered gay men have been written out of the movement by a lot of other LGBTQ activists; sure, as a political class gay men have money, numbers, and organization, but hey. The important thing is to be a social club first. This attitude is ruinous. Listen: almost everyone is politically motivated by self-interest. They will do what they can to help others, but they coalesce together into a movement when they recognize that they share the same interests as their neighbors. That’s not Ayn Rand talking; it’s common sense and a basic assumption of centuries of left-wing and progressive thinkers and leaders. It’s also a necessity. The right has money, organization, a structural advantage in the makeup of our system, and a large media apparatus. Progressive people can’t afford to be divided. They just can’t. But it’s baked into the culture now.
As with all things on the left, this is all a symptom of powerlessness: when you can’t actually achieve real change, all you can give people is attention.
I constantly get asked questions of political identity, and in particular if mine has changed. I am specifically asked a lot about supposedly being a left contrarian and whether I am “post-left.” I don’t have the f*****g slightest idea what that could mean, post-left. I’m the same guy I was at 16, at 22, at 28, at 35: a leftist, a socialist, a Marxist. That is to say, a collectivist, which is the beating heart of left-wing thought and always has been. I don’t care that liberals and their enablers have decided that the goal of politics is to be defined rather than to take power. I still believe in the basic principles of solidarity, liberation, compassion, egalitarianism, and a future beyond capitalism. I’ll go down with this ship. I’m not post-anything. What’s now called the left or liberalism went post- when it abandoned the commitment to equality and brotherhood for the pursuit of an ideology of vanity.
Perhaps this is too cute, but the irony is that a single brick can never build a solid foundation. Only a lot of bricks can do that. But it’s hard to believe that the people in today’s “movement” would ever consent to being just one brick among many.
_________________
Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer.
- Rick Sanchez
ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 68
Gender: Male
Posts: 39,637
Location: Long Island, New York
31 Aug 2021, 7:48 pm
Off Topic
King0fSpades wrote:
uncommondenominator wrote:
Meanwhile, on topic...
KingOfSpades, a question. Where exactly did you get the idea that BLM has anything to do with marxism? And in what way does BLM supposedly embrace marxism? Genuinely curious, as I've not heard this claim before.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/ ... story.html
The woman who co-founded Black Lives Matter describes herself as a "trained marxist." and she is not the only one.
BLM Marxists or Communists? I have my strong suspicions.
A Short History Of Black Lives Matter
Quote:
JARED BALL, PRODUCER, IMIXWHATILIKE: What’s up world, and welcome to another edition of I Mix What I Like here at the Real News Network. I’m Jared Ball in Baltimore. After the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin three black women, Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and our guest this segment Patrisse Cullors, formed what has since become the global phenomenon of Black Lives Matter.
The first thing, I think, is that we actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.
The first thing, I think, is that we actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.
Black Lives Matter under fire for controversial statement defending Cuban regime
Quote:
Black Lives Matter is facing fierce criticism on social media for defending the Cuban government and blaming the antigovernment protests on the U.S.
On Wednesday night, Black Lives Matter issued a statement saying Cuba's troubles were a result of the U.S. embargo, calling it "a cruel and humane policy" that was "instituted with the explicit intention of destabilizing the country and undermining Cubans' right to choose their own government."
The organization's statement also implies that Cuba always helped African freedom fighters and civil rights movements.
“Cuba has historically demonstrated solidarity with oppressed peoples of African descent, from protecting Black revolutionaries like Assata Shakur through granting her asylum, to supporting Black liberation struggled in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and South Africa,” the statement reads.
Shakur, a former Black Liberation Army member who is still wanted by the FBI, escaped from prison in 1979 and fled the U.S. after she was convicted for the murder a New Jersey state trooper.
On Wednesday night, Black Lives Matter issued a statement saying Cuba's troubles were a result of the U.S. embargo, calling it "a cruel and humane policy" that was "instituted with the explicit intention of destabilizing the country and undermining Cubans' right to choose their own government."
The organization's statement also implies that Cuba always helped African freedom fighters and civil rights movements.
“Cuba has historically demonstrated solidarity with oppressed peoples of African descent, from protecting Black revolutionaries like Assata Shakur through granting her asylum, to supporting Black liberation struggled in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and South Africa,” the statement reads.
Shakur, a former Black Liberation Army member who is still wanted by the FBI, escaped from prison in 1979 and fled the U.S. after she was convicted for the murder a New Jersey state trooper.
After about 1959 the Cuban people have chosen nothing. It is an authoritarian state.
Cuba's sent troops to help the "Peoples Movement for the Liberation of Angola", trained the "Mozambique Liberation Front" Those were black nationalist organizations fighting white colonial powers who were also communists. The Cuban motivation was not so much lifting the oppression of black people but spreading communism.
_________________
“Self Acceptance is a process not a performance”
“You are autistic enough. And you always have been”
Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity.
31 Aug 2021, 8:00 pm
ASPartOfMe wrote:
Off Topic
King0fSpades wrote:
uncommondenominator wrote:
Meanwhile, on topic...
KingOfSpades, a question. Where exactly did you get the idea that BLM has anything to do with marxism? And in what way does BLM supposedly embrace marxism? Genuinely curious, as I've not heard this claim before.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/ ... story.html
The woman who co-founded Black Lives Matter describes herself as a "trained marxist." and she is not the only one.
BLM Marxists or Communists? I have my strong suspicions.
A Short History Of Black Lives Matter
Quote:
JARED BALL, PRODUCER, IMIXWHATILIKE: What’s up world, and welcome to another edition of I Mix What I Like here at the Real News Network. I’m Jared Ball in Baltimore. After the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin three black women, Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and our guest this segment Patrisse Cullors, formed what has since become the global phenomenon of Black Lives Matter.
The first thing, I think, is that we actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.
The first thing, I think, is that we actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.
Black Lives Matter under fire for controversial statement defending Cuban regime
Quote:
Black Lives Matter is facing fierce criticism on social media for defending the Cuban government and blaming the antigovernment protests on the U.S.
On Wednesday night, Black Lives Matter issued a statement saying Cuba's troubles were a result of the U.S. embargo, calling it "a cruel and humane policy" that was "instituted with the explicit intention of destabilizing the country and undermining Cubans' right to choose their own government."
The organization's statement also implies that Cuba always helped African freedom fighters and civil rights movements.
“Cuba has historically demonstrated solidarity with oppressed peoples of African descent, from protecting Black revolutionaries like Assata Shakur through granting her asylum, to supporting Black liberation struggled in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and South Africa,” the statement reads.
Shakur, a former Black Liberation Army member who is still wanted by the FBI, escaped from prison in 1979 and fled the U.S. after she was convicted for the murder a New Jersey state trooper.
On Wednesday night, Black Lives Matter issued a statement saying Cuba's troubles were a result of the U.S. embargo, calling it "a cruel and humane policy" that was "instituted with the explicit intention of destabilizing the country and undermining Cubans' right to choose their own government."
The organization's statement also implies that Cuba always helped African freedom fighters and civil rights movements.
“Cuba has historically demonstrated solidarity with oppressed peoples of African descent, from protecting Black revolutionaries like Assata Shakur through granting her asylum, to supporting Black liberation struggled in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and South Africa,” the statement reads.
Shakur, a former Black Liberation Army member who is still wanted by the FBI, escaped from prison in 1979 and fled the U.S. after she was convicted for the murder a New Jersey state trooper.
After about 1959 the Cuban people have chosen nothing. It is an authoritarian state.
Cuba's sent troops to help the "Peoples Movement for the Liberation of Angola", trained the "Mozambique Liberation Front" Those were black nationalist organizations fighting white colonial powers who were also communists. The Cuban motivation was not so much lifting the oppression of black people but spreading communism.
Kinda reminds me of how many African nations are siding with the Chinese Government and many Black Lives Matter supporters and Woke Leftists have defended the Chinese Communist Party against the accusations of ethnic cleansing and human rights violations from countries like The US and Australia. Even going as far as to accuse anybody who criticizes the CCP of being a racist.
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31 Aug 2021, 8:05 pm
King0fSpades wrote:
Kinda reminds me of how many African nations are siding with the Chinese Government and many Black Lives Matter supporters and Woke Leftists have defended the Chinese Communist Party against the accusations of ethnic cleansing and human rights violations from countries like The US and Australia. Even going as far as to accuse anybody who criticizes these Chinese government of being a racist.
That's a curious habit of the Western left, the complete blind eye turned to horrific human rights abuses committed by non-Western regimes, when they're not outright defending them. One of the articles I just linked goes into some detail on this phenomenon when it comes to excusing non-white regimes and the logical contortions some leftists will perform trying to explain how it's actually the fault of white people when say, the Japanese imperial army brutalizes their neighbors in the early to mid 20th century.
_________________
Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer.
- Rick Sanchez
auntblabby
Veteran
Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 115,266
Location: the island of defective toy santas
auntblabby
Veteran
Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 115,266
Location: the island of defective toy santas
31 Aug 2021, 8:12 pm
auntblabby wrote:
you can't reasonably expect a long-marginalized minority to embrace the system that marginalized them. marxism is, among its faults, at least NOT capitalism.
If you think racism is any less pervasive or virulent under Marxism than under capitalism, I've got some bad news for you...
_________________
Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer.
- Rick Sanchez
