Social Justice Warriors are racist. · 7:30pm Mar 8th, 2016
Holy shit, look at that clickbait right there.
Right this is just about a specific mindset that annoys the hell out of me, and it's fairly prominent in Australia.
Oh! Oh! I know how I should preface this! It's foolproof! I don't know why it's never been done before!
I'm not racist, but-
A lot of the people who will argue these topics will come from sociology, psychology or philosophical backgrounds. Maybe political science. I'm not one of those people. I'm arguing this specifically from a far more important viewpoint, a media viewpoint.
And don't fuckin' tell me that's not an important viewpoint, because it's something I'm told often enough.
I also want to clarify I'm not here to start fights, though I am absolutely certain I will be causing one. I'm probably going to be saying something that is very unpopular to some people who are very vocal about their opinions. That's absolutely cool, you're very welcome to think I'm a bigoted idiot.
Right, now that that's out of the way, here's a picture of Australia Day's Google Doodle of 2015:
What's the problem here? Firstly, it's meant to depict an Aboriginal woman having her children stolen from her by the white man. Which was a terrible thing that did happen fifty years ago. But for the second problem, you need to zoom out just a little more, both in space and in time.
Here's the picture of the Doodle with its artist, Ineka Voigt, and its title, "Stolen Dreamtime" and, look, Ineka, I'm sure you're a lovely person. You certainly seem nice enough in all the newspaper photos I've seen you in. But do you not see the problem with a white, seventeen year old girl trying to be the face of indigineous injustice? You're also from fucking Canberra. Those of you not in the know, Canberra is Australia's wealthy capital city.
See, Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's biggest two cities, once had a big fight over who would get to have all the politicians. At the end of the day they compromised and shunted them off to the arse-end of nowhere so no one had to deal with them. Unfortunately, it ended up creating a little echo chamber of upper class ponces and is egregiously white -- Which is to say, the census puts their population of Indigenous Australians at about a third the rest of the nation's average -- and that's not inherently a bad thing. It's simply important context.
What is a bad thing, however, is when this woman's work is thrust into the public eye as the international symbol for Australia! and Australia! day as a representative of a culture she simply isn't a part of. Telling us how they should be perceived.
Don't get me started on how the Noble Savage ideal is almost the stock standard definition on justifying keeping a culture as 'outside' your own.
Look. Her art is gorgeous. It's more than slightly bullshit though.
My response to this is simply; Who are you helping by doing this? Making people angry about something is not the same as fixing something. Anger is a genuinely powerful emotion, but it's best used as a subtractive force. So what are you trying to accomplish by emphasizing the distance between us and our fellow countrymen?
There's a genuine, serious argument that we should change "Australia day" to "Invasion day", and it's gaining an annoying amount of traction. To rebut that it's not a celebration of our invasion and usurpation of a local culture, but of our federation, our secession from Britain, is met with outcries of "Racist!" and that infuriates me.[1]
I'm going to say something, and I want you to answer honestly, before you read what follows, how much you agree or disagree with this statement:
"It is our job, as those who live in comparative privilege, to elevate minorities to our level of status because they are not in a situation where they are capable of doing so themselves."
This is the mindset behind White Man's Burden, the thought patterns that justified slavery for so many years. The problem is it's an insidious thought, and it seems so attractive to hold because it seems beneficiary and philanthropic. But all you manage to achieve with it is an "us" vs "them" mentality, I believe.
This is embarrassing. I had a dynamite study to put here on how telling people to not be racist actually makes them more racist. Came with pamphlets and statistics and everything. But I can't seem to find it... Bah and humbug. It's around here somewhere. It's just a pain, because have you tried finding anything impartial using those keywords? It's a goddamn nightmare.
Anyway.
I think the designation of minorities as an 'other', even in the efforts to help them, is offensive. I think it hurts your cause far more than it helps it. I think it justifies racial tensions rather than unifies us, and I think that's a bad thing.
I talked to a rather avowed social justice advocate in the process of thinking about what I wanted to put here, and this conversation ensued:
So lets play out a hypothetical scenario;
If my grandparents were thieves, and they stole a lot of money from your grandparents, got rich off them and prevented them from ever getting ahead. As a result, I am brought up with all sorts of advantages from this. I go to a fancy school, am well connected, get an advantage in job interviews, etc. and you are disadvantaged by this theft. Even though i had no agency whatsoever in my grandparents actions, don't i morally owe you something?
I think the difference lies in; "I came from a family who wronged you and I am obligated to help" and "Because of actions that were not my own, I am in a position to help" and a big problem is how often the first mindset is the one that's emphasized.
In the first you're portraying yourself as the enemy, as the other, making reparations. In the second you still understand an injustice has been done, but you -- yes, you personally -- have not caused or contributed to it willfully. In fact, to get this far, you're probably trying to fix things. Fan-fuckin'-tastic! The world needs more fixing, it's looking a little rough around the edges these days.
But to draw lines, to constantly draw up the injustices of the past as a reason to care about the injustices of the present, is bullshit. There is reason enough to care in that there is inequality, injustice. Your history, your race, should be rendered irrelevant by that.
You know what I would have loved for that Google Doodle? An actual Aboriginal making an artwork that wasn't overtly "Aboriginal". Something that was just good. That could have been drawn by any Australian, because they are just any Australian, and it's fantastic on its own merits.
And I don't see that as wanting to eradicate his culture, because any artist brings their own culture to the table. And art is an incredibly powerful way to do that. It's why art exists. I want you to have to fucking Google that artist to find out he's Indigenous and for it to not be a big deal, because that's what equality is.
To do anything else is to draw a line of us against them.
I know it's the same in the United States with your black population. Do you know how badly I cringe every time I hear "Famous Black Comedian"? Like it’s a legitimate difference? Do you know how much physical pain The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore causes me? Not because he's black, but because he's a swaggering bully who dares try to represent an entire race, and to hold it up as some other within the nation.
Who does this mindset help?
Compare it to Trevor Noah, who is just... passively black. He brings it up when he comes up, because he's comfortable with his identity, but it's not his defining characteristic. He's a calm, smooth comedian who shows a lot of integrity. And you know what? Fuck me sideways, that's all I'm asking for. I'm not asking for black people to try to be white, and I don't want there to be no difference. But I don't want that difference to be so goddamn tribalistic because that only ever leads to bad things and negativity, even with the best of intentions.
When's the last time you could tell someone's race from a well-written comment online, anyway?
The current mindset does things like, and again I'll talk about my native Australia but I know for a fact this is a global issue, cause small film grants to only be given to the indigenous population. The arts funding was taken down and scrapped, with funding provided only to Aboriginal Australians now. Because our government believe this less-than-five-percent of the population better represents Australia than I do and/or needs the support more than I do. But we've been the Commonwealth of Australia for a hundred and fifteen years now. Why is there this background mindset that we need to be segregated? Isn’t that what led to the problems in the first place?
Why, in a society that constantly touts its multicultural values, is my cultural identity seen as 'less' valuable than the indigenous population's? One man does not have the right to silence the hundred as the hundred do not have the right to silence the one. So when you make this declaration, this statement, that only their culture gets promoted for the sake of fairness...
You've made it us vs them. You've made me slightly more racist by necessity. I'm keenly aware of the opportunities I'm denied because of my race, after all. And you can call it poetic justice or righteous irony all you want, the end result is only going to be that I am more resentful of a race because it has been defined as more worthy of support and a voice than I am.
You can't create equality by punishing people for actions that weren't their own. All that does is breed and foster resentment.
You can't beat people over the head with the injustices their race have caused. I am keenly aware that, because of actions that are not my own, I am in a better life situation than I otherwise would be had I been born, say, in an impoverished community.
But I'm going to be a lot more involved in the United Nations pulling out of Liberia today than I am about what my ancestors might or might not have done without my consent.
Addendum: Zach Wiener is the best at this. Every comic is just... interracial, same-sex, whatever, and it's never drawn attention to or given special attention. It's just normal. Every time. And that's exactly how it should be.
[1] Note from Aragon:
Point from a Spaniard: There are a lot of people who complain, both here and in America, about Christopher Columbus being a racist asshole who should be labelled as a murderer.
I actually understand where that comes from if you're an American. Due to the nature of what is being discussed in this blog, I won't say if you have to be a Native American or just a person who happens to live there, but I get it -- Columbus was a bloke that went there, said "this is now mine" and then a lot of people died.
But I've seen people defend that viewpoint in Spain.
And look, I know murdering people is not okay, but what Spain celebrates on October the 12th is both the discovery of America (that brought riches to our kingdom and made us an important figure back in the day) and the fact that Spain was suddenly pretty damn powerful.
So yeah, I see complaining about how Columbus was an assassin as something both stupid and out of line, in here. We're celebrating that our country got something that made our culture evolve and turn what it is now. Nobody ever got offended by the fact that Spanish people celebrated how Spain got one of its finest victories back in the day (again: I understand that for a Native American this sucks, but every war has two sides), until very recently, when it became cool to always go with the victims.
Even if you're not one of them.
Even if you're not actually complaining about something that attacks the victims.
Fuck patriotism, really -- but attacking something that is clearly not about the people who died, but about the cultural meaning of the discovery, just because it seems to be politically correct and that way you're defending offended people that didn't exist on the first place...
Well.
Read the rest of the blog, I guess.
I don't read that much into the picture, to be honest. You have legitimate concerns, but perhaps you're seeing political opinions where none are intended?
(I'm talking specifically about the painting, not the other stuff.)
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Here's the news article that ran with it
Some excerpts:
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Point taken! And yes, there are many insane people who think they are helping others by forcing you to do stuff.
If more people understood the idea behind what you just said, we would probably have much fewer problems of the inane variety.
SJW: they aren't the special snowflakes they think they are.
Good blog. Good subject. Always interesting to hear about this.
Yeah, this is a well known opinion, sadly mostly between those that have no power doing anything about it (read, educated people outside of media and politics). And truth to be told, this opinion does not sell, so it will be mostly ignored by those who can change public opinion. So many opinion.
By the by I remember my first time reading about Canberra. The conversation in my head was like:
-Hey, we need a capital, there are these two big-ass cities, both would be perfect in every way. It's Sydney and Melbourne.
-Okay, Canberra seems the better out of these two.
Now that I really think about it, certain women rights activists look similar to this. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against women (I should get ready for death threats anyway), but I don't really see most of the problems they talk about. I mean yeah, I am from a post Warsaw pact country, and communism had the tendency of not giving a crap about gender, so we might not have as many problems, but some things I hear is plain ridiculous. For example, I was told that there are laws about having to hire at least x% of women. Yeah, imagine that in the engineering industry. There is a quite glaring male majority in every educating place, henceforth, companies must chose an under-qualified woman over a man, cus reasons. I kind of understand the idea, but you are making life harder for anybody else.
A family member actually finished university as a programmer and as a female. She said, she would get waay more money in the US than her husband, who is also a programmer. (both are trying to snag a job out there)
You see a similar issue in the US of A regarding Thanksgiving, with people wanting to change its name to "National plunder of the Native Americans" day, or something like it. This rather pointedly ignores the fact that the first Thanksgiving is rather famously one of the most friendly and cooperative points between the Native population and the incoming Europeans, and resulted in a peaceful co-existence that lasted for a good deal of time.
A point (or two) on Columbus. Over here in the states, one of the primary reasons I have seen in defense of Columbus as a historical figure does not stem from the fact he was an intellectual and an explorer, but rather simply because children need more "christian" heroes. This often comes with a great deal of whitewashing his less stellar actions.
And of course, the other side of it over here is you get people who want to just wipe him from the history books altogether, downplaying his accomplishments. (The vikings discovered America first! He only discovered the West Indies, he didn't find America proper.) It always seems like everyone wants to write what they want history to be, instead of studying what it actually was.
I have less fear of being labeled a racist because it's a moot point. I'm from Mississippi and white as wonderbread.
It's interesting, really, because in a lot of ways the concept of whiteness is vague. Italians didn't count until suddenly they did. I wouldn't have counted--O'Neal is the name--because the Irish were subhuman until they weren't. In the south, revisionist histiography tends to see the south in terms of violent one dimensional planters and poor suffering slave masses.
Bullshit.
Southern society had three primary strata, and the missing one is telling. The vast majority of whites were poor whites. When I say poor whites I mean people pushed slowly year after year onto worse and worse land until they were forced to be tenement farmers, completely disenfranchised and controlled in what amounted to a near-feudal state of affairs. These people are the origin of the term "white trash". Nothing gets my blood up faster than those words, because when we say them we perpetuate an old injustice. The concept of whiteness became a way of controlling these bitter, hopeless masses. "See, your lot isn't so bad, at least you aren't THEM" with the Them/Other being the enslaved blacks they had no chance of owning usually.
Why were these poor non-slaveholders who hated the planters as much as they hated the black defend the institution? For that matter, why did they become the source of the most violent and virulent racism in America?
Because it was kind of all they had. They had no political recourse, diminishing economic power, no traction, no hope. You were a dirt farmer with no chance at advancement. You were the Bundren family in As I Lay Dying and that was it, world without end hallelujah. Hating these people beneath you was the only thing you had to keep you from being on the bottom forever.
Reconstruction was an opportunity to turn "whiteness" on its head. To throw off the stupid bullshit and upraise the masses, to make things right. Instead, they plucked out a tiny part (except in Mississippi where the black/white ratio was like 70/30 at one point) and left the "white trash" to rot. Of course that festered. What did you think was going to happen? They watched opportunity come and then when the occupation ended of course they helped destroy what could have been their hope as well, because it had passed them by and they resented it. Of course they hated the young college boys coming down to register new black voters--who cared about them? They were cannon fodder. The later attempts to uplift them from poverty were always foiled or half-hearted. Mississippi is a third world country full of bitter impoverished people who'll never escape because the only people who could help them burned all the bridges and the same landed and moneyed interests that have ruled since the sharecropper days have made capitol off of that failure.
It doesn't excuse Freedom Summer. It doesn't excuse cross burning and it doesn't excuse the murdering of innocents.
But the noble savage is a lie. When we reinforce arbitrary racial lines in order to uplift one while we ignore another, we create an artificial resentment and exacerbate natural tensions. It's one thing to try and correct an injustice. It's another to dump the sins of an entire race on small segments of it, let alone people generations removed who have done nothing wrong.
It's not an excuse, but its an explanation, and a I think it's a damning one. The more simplistic and vindictive we try to make the question of race, the more wrong we will be.
*CLAP* *CLAP* *CLAP*
I live in a country with low diversity of races and nations. But the mindset of promoting "us" vs "them" is universal even here, on different axes, but it is.
There are two ways to approach this statement, I feel, both of which are informed by the stance you're taking, Numbers.
The first is that, on a practical level, policymaking and social influence in most democracies are based around... well, votes. Most western democracies have some sort of supermajority requirement or divided government system in place (or, here in the States, both) designed to protect certain aspects of society we deem to need more buy-in than a mere 50+1% of the vote to alter, but basically speaking you need votes to get stuff done. It is therefore a basic political fact that oppressed and unprivileged groups will usually need the aid of privileged groups in order to help eradicate that privilege; they are, politically and socially speaking, incapable of unilaterally forcing that change to happen.
But.
The keyword in that sentence is "help." The statement you put together is centered upon acting on a group, rather than acting with a group. It doesn't say "It is our responsibility to help elevate" or "it is our responsibility to work with" or any formulation like that; it simply assumes action or inaction on the part of the privileged with no actual consideration for what work the actual unprivileged groups think of the matter or want.
That's what you want. What does the aboriginal artist, who perhaps had to spend years painstakingly rediscovering the classic artist techniques and traditions of his people because it was official policy of the government of Australia for over a century to try and grind the culture he came from into dust, want? Perhaps he wants it to be a big deal that he's an indigenous Australian, because he's specifically celebrating an art form that a lot of people shed a lot of blood trying to destroy, only they didn't manage it and he's still here.
That doesn't seem wrong to me.
This is something of an issue here in the states re: Native American art and culture. A lot of people feel feel justified in doing "Native-inspired" art and cashing in on that, on the justification that Native Americans do precisely the same thing, so why shouldn't they? This... kind of ignores the context of the fact Native Americans whose only reliable income on the pieces of shitty land the conquest of the continent gave them is by selling their traditional crafts and demonstrating their culture to tourists are in a different situation than a white dude living in a loft in Brooklyn.
It is a legitimate difference, especially to, you know... black people.
I'm gonna relay one of my most favorite nerd stories now.
Many people will reading this will know who Nichelle Nichols is; Lieutenant Uhura from the original Star Trek.
What a lot of people don't know is that she nearly quit after the first season of that show, and had to be talked out of it by... MLK.
In fact, I'm just gonna quote the interview:
And it was important not just that talented actress Nichelle Nichols Lieutenant Uhura, but that talented black actress Nichelle Nichols was playing Lieutenant Uhura. Because if you were a little white boy in the 1960s, you were awash in art that depicted people who looked, sounded, and acted like doing all sorts of amazing things, on movies and on TV and in comics and everywhere you looked.
If you were a little black girl you could see people who looked, acted, and sounded like you being... maids. When you saw them at all. Which you usually didn't.
So having a specifically black woman be an officer on a starship was a big fuckin' deal. Uhura gave orders to white men and those white men didn't drop an n-bomb and then crack her across the mouth for speaking out of turn! Suddenly you were in a piece of popular art, where before you hadn't been!
Hollywood and American society in general these days isn't as racist as it once was, but its still pretty racist. Black people are still routinely denied roles and opportunities they are well-qualified for for no other reason than that they are black. (Or brown. Or asian. Take your pick.) When roles do come up, they're for the best friend, or the sidekick; when leading roles come up, they're for roles that are specifically marked out as "black" entertainment as opposed to things that are designed for a wide audience, because the (often depressingly accurate) assumption is that white people won't watch something with a predominantly black cast.
Things are better than they once were. Idris Elba can play Stacker Pentecost and nobody really cares that he's black. But boy howdy, when his name was floated as a possible James Bond (a role he is more than qualified for, because James Bond is the closest thing the British have to a superhero and Idris Elba is 1) an amazing actor, and 2) British) didn't people freak the fuck out.
So yeah. There's value in saying "famous black comedian" or "famous black actor." Not... universally. I've seen and heard it used a pejorative, people who say "famous blaaaaaack comedian" and roll the word around on their tongue smugly while giving you a look that basically says "what I'm saying is they're ghetto. That they're a n*****. But I didn't actually say that explicitly, so you can't get mad at me, and if you do I'll just say you're bad because you just said an awful thing about me."
But plenty of black people are working their asses off to get recognized specifically as talented black people, because the notion that black people are talented is something that is still actually controversial. Chris Rock doesn't just want to be known for being hilarious; he wants to be known as hilarious black comedian Chris Rock, who had to work twice as hard as the white equivalent to get where he's at, and won't forfeit that label until lazy, slackass black comics can achieve the same level of success as lazy, slackass white comics.
Larry Willmore is hardly a bully. I've rarely seen him take runs at anyone who isn't astonishingly more powerful, connected, and wealthy than he is. When your main line of attack every night is "look at how awful these rich, powerful people are" I don't think you can rightly be construed as a bully. He's obeying the first law of comedy; punch UP.
He does have a lot of swagger. I'll grant you that. And he does sort of try to speak for the African-American community, which is a thing. He might be doing it badly; a lot of people who try and speak for a whole community do it badly. But attempting to do so isn't on its face illegitimate.
And as for blaming him for black people being othered... that happened three and a half centuries ago here in this country. It's still a thing. Willmore isn't perpetuating that; he's attempting to smash it apart. You don't make a lot of progress by pretending everything is all right when it manifestly is not. If you gave Willmore a buton he could press that would make it utterly unremarkable to be a black person in America, a fact about as noteworthy as being Irish, or German, he would work that button like a hamster at the feeder bar.
Trevor Noah is passively black here in the United States, because Trevor Noah isn't African-American; he's South African. He specifically doesn't have the American black experience and thus doesn't feel compelled or, indeed, comfortable taking deep dives into that pool.
He damn well was not passively black in his native South Africa; being of mixed race was a front-and-center part of his career, persona, and materiel.
Trevor Noah is also the one who is greenlighting all of Jessica Williams materiel, and she, if anything, is even more in-your-face about the bullshit black women specifically have to put up with than Larry Willmore is about the bullshit black people in general do. That's not happening despite Trevor Noah. He approves the scripts.
Often, depending on how you're defining "well-written." I spend a lot of time on political blogs. (Quelle surprise, I know.) It is often possible to tell the race of someone who wrote an erudite, well-constructed, eloquent argument, because that argument is in defense of something vile and racist.
This is a very passive construction. Spain didn't really discover America; it was already there and already peopled. And... well, I'm not sure that celebrating getting rich through thievery and violence is a good thing? Nor is merely celebrating the acquisition of power for powers sake?
I'm Italian-American, and here in the states Columbus is claimed as "one of ours." (There isn't a huge Spanish population here in the states; there are a lot of Hispanics of Central and South American origin, but that's different.) And there's a similar brouhaha in our own community; on the one side you have "He's the only Italian given a prominent federal holiday!" and the other side is "We'd rather have nobody than someone who perpetuated a genocide."
... yeah, and sometimes one of those sides was the wronged party. It doesn't take two sides to start a war, it takes one.
I don't even know how to approach that logic.
Is there... is there a time when it's wrong to go with the victims? That seems... dubious.
So you're saying solidarity is bullshit. This also seems dubious.
3798008 Question: (And I come from a very biased, privileged white liberal middle-class male Southern Californian perspective) Why do so many poor whites on welfare continue to vote for the Republican politicians who don't give two shits about them? Is it because
culturalreligious issues (gays, abortions, guns, etc.) trump economic ones?You know, this could be done, Just let racial tensions die off. But some people just want a reason to justify hating another person, or getting offended about something that really doesn't matter in the long run. The long run being around the sun's heat death. So when you have a sense of perspective, these things matter a little less. I probably sound like a huge asshole don't I? Ah well, I'll explain this further if someone misinterprets it.
EXTRA EXTRA, READ ALL ABOUT IT:
MR. NUMBERS POSTS DIFFICULT BLOG ABOUT RACIAL TENSION AND COMMENTS REMAIN CIVIL. DISCOURSE MAINTAINS DISCUSSION WHILE OFFERING DIFFERING VIEWPOINTS.
Man, I'm glad somebody has finally quantified how I feel about this topic, but have never been able to articulate. Worth noting, but I am white. It's a tough thing to feel like I'm 'wrong' because I don't feel the same as so many people around me do about race and race relations. I agree that the things that happened in the past in the USA concerning race and social stratification were terrible, but the turn around of making it out like we all must, as the majority, pay for those mistakes and uplift the minority is so irresponsible. That is just treating people differently and promoting the idea that we are different. It's the kind of thinking that is making things worse, not better. I should want to help people and get off my ass and stand up for what I feel is right REGARDLESS of what my race is or the group in trouble's race is, because it is the right and moral thing to do. Not because my great great grandparents on some side once did some terrible stuff and now I have to make up for it. Doing something out of obligation and shame is the most fake, false, and phony reason to do something.
3798008 also has some super-insightful things to add to the conversation.
Yeah, these are basically the thoughts I've had over here in NZ, where to get a certain type of scholarship you must either perform at a really high level or at an average level and be Maori. I used to find this really unfair but after years of relentless societal oppinion in the other direction I can't get worked up about it. It's a good thing to help people who need it, but it seemed to me a wealth check would do the job without creating the 'us and them' mentality.
Although to play the devils(?) advocate for a moment, in terms of arts funding; one might say the jump to the idea that one culture is more valued is a stretch. It could be that they are equally valued but one is underrepresented so the funding is to equalise. But I don't know how you measure (perceived) value of a culture, relative representation or any of these other ideas.
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You could argue that by continuing to perpetuate the differences between an actor, and a black actor today, you are actually subverting the very thing Nichols had accomplished on Star Trek. Her character was important to the black community, important enough that MLK Jr. encouraged her to stay on, because her race was not even an issue within the context of the show. She was an officer, she was not a black officer. Not to the population of the Enterprise, not to the people of the Federation. Chekov was an officer, not a russian officer. Sulu was an officer, not a japanese officer. That is not to say that these characters ignored their cultural heritage (see the little talk between Chekov and Scotty about Scotch and Vodka.), but it didn't define them in the show. It was, however, extraordinarily important outside the show.
3798083 What civil? What is this farce? We must remedy this at once! ...Ummmm.... you're a meaniepants! Yes.
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The initial wave of what I think of as post-Shelby Foote historical revisionism definitely made this error, yeah, as part of an over-correction against the Dunning School. However, I feel like the post-James McPherson southern historiography has done a much better job of this.
(Seriously, the first few chapters of Battle Cry of Freedom could almost stand alone as a brief primer on the economic realities facing white southerners outside the planter class, as well as those facing the emerging worker class in the north.)
Fortunately, part of the point of historical revisionism is that it's a process. It doesn't end. Sometimes it goes backwards, but you can always at least try to get closer to a more accurate picture of history.
This is not actually entirely true. It is true that much of the rebuilding of the south after the war centered on the newly freed slaves, but that was sort of because they were newly freed slaves.
However, poor whites were far from excluded; indeed, the nascent Republican Party in the south (which was still electing Governors and Congressmen and state lege members well into the 1890s) was eager to seek out poor whites (which in this context means poor white men) and form electoral coalitions with them on explicitly economic grounds. And the federal government, before it completely fucking gave up on the south and agreed to let it run its own racist terror state, spent quite a lot of time and effort on poor whites as well during the Reconstruction years. President Grant in particular was eager for this to happen; it's a shame he was incompetent. (Ulysses Grant was a fine general, a fine writer, and absolutely bloody usless at anything else.)
There was a surprising and oft-forgotten amount of black-white solidarity in the south along those lines. The poster child for this was North Carolina, where "fusion" voting (whites and blacks voting together) elected Republican/Populist administrations successfully for quite some time. It was ultimately stopped by the application of hardcore terrorism and insurrection; there's a colorable argument that the final battle of the Civil War was the Wilmington Coup of 1898.
That said, your own analysis is mostly part of the historical mainstream these days for those who study the American South seriously; the economic maltreatement of non-elite white southerners by what was once called the planter class is one of the many poisons still affecting our body politic.
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I am not, of course, Cynewulf, but the answer to this question is basically "yes."
I expect at least some people in this thread have seen/heard of the book "What's The Matter With Kansas?" and other books, articles, and people who have wondered "why do so many poor people support politics that seem to promise to not only continue their immiseration, but to actually increase it?"
And the answer to that is basically "economic priorities do not drive every single decision made by people." This is a viewpoint that's hard to grasp for a lot of people who live in a capitalist society, whether they're ardent defenders of capitalism who fantasize about making a fortune in bitcoin and then retiring to their own seastead with all the hookers and blow they could ever want, or they're a pissed-off Occupier who wants to string some bankers up by lampposts while belting out a lusty chorus of "Ah! Ca ira!" and then implement radical syndicalism, since state socialism has proven to be such a failure. (Full disclosure; I am far closer to the latter than the former.)
And, well... class absolutely doesn't account for everything. Marx made that mistake; so did Hayek. Economists who are also political theorists in general, really. Culture counts for a lot. And sometimes people make the calculation "I care about my cultural needs a lot more than I care about my economic needs."
This drives a lot of political theorists nuts. It doesn't drive a lot of actual politicians nuts, because they grasp it on an almost instinctual level.
3798039
In summary and in order: The keyword is help and that wasn't unintentional, the second;
That's art that would represent Aboriginal culture, which is a meritorious endeavor for the very reasons you describe.
However, on Australia Day, a day that's meant to be about inclusion, it's being used to tell people you're not Australian enough, you're an invader. That's not a message that makes me inclined to rethink my racial biases. If anything, it would probably reinforce negative ones.
And again;
-- Yes I certainly saw that in the seventeen year old white girl they got to represent the art form.
Aboriginal Dot Painting is gorgeous and I've got some in my living room. I'm hugely appreciative of the culture. But Jesus Christ do I want to stop drawing a line between their culture and my culture and just accept we live on the same continent, neither of us is buggering off after two centuries now, so we might as well agree to call it our culture at least one day a fuckin' year.
After that:
Yes, I disagree with the famous 'black' anything, because it puts them in a category where they're no longer equal, somehow, to their peers. They're in a different field defined entirely by their race. And when you split cultures down racial lines, you split cultures down racial lines. And since culture is an ongoing thing, a constant that we're only aware of in hindsight, I think it's dangerous and toxic to create such a large alienation or isolation between groups.
Hollywood is racist as fuck. That is literally the least of its problems. It's the same institution that says the guy behind Final Destination Five gets the screenplay rights for Sandman. Television is a far better barometer to use, and I could spend literally hours going through every reason why. Funnily enough, your Star Trek example is a wonderful one.
Right. And the solution to that is not to continue to cause a cultural divide. It's because a predominately black cast is then sold and marketed as a movie by blacks for blacks, and fuck that noise, because any culture that markets only to itself is an echo chamber, and historically that's always led to tension.
Less crimes are racially motivated when racial differences are less observed.
Here's one of my favourite British comedians. I could count on one hand the amount of times his race is brought up on The IT Crowd. I couldn't, however, count the amount of times he made me laugh. The exact opposite is true of, say, Cedric the Entertainer.
Right. Except even he said that it was ridiculous, and Bond is an upper-crust white aristocrat. That's just who he is. Black doesn't work for the character. That's not so much a race thing so much as Bond was a semi-autobiographical account of its author. Give Elba his own spy-thriller under a different branding. Is suggesting he get his own IP offensive? Why? I have the exact same problems with white washing.
Now, you want a real problem, go look at Gods of Egypt and get back to me.
Right. But unless you were explicitly looking for it... you can't look at a Youtube comment and go, why yes, this was written by a black man, I can tell by his punctuation choice. Which is what I'm going for here. You're looking for reasons to divide people on old culture, and the thing is, that's historically what's gotten, say, the Jews in trouble a lot of times. That's not a pejorative, they're just a fantastic demonstration on cultural isolation developing into persecution.
I'm putting up my standard policy for replies this long: I'll read everything you respond to this with, but I won't respond with more than a paragraph. It's just a way to stop the comments sections getting super bloated.
3798085
Unfortunately, these grants are set up explicitly to promote Australiana culture, since our government is the only one who would pay for it. It's to allow the culture to develop without having to rely on the private market, who wouldn't support us. Which is where the unfortunate connotations come in.
3798050
There's a whole pot of reasons, but I want to touch on the abortion one, because it feels like you're kind of dismissively lumping it under 'religious reasons', and I think you're doing yourself a big disservice by doing so.
There is a tendency, here on the left, to dismiss it when people call abortion murder. We don't want to think that people really, truly believe that, because it's much easier to think that your political opponents are just assholes instead of people who see the world differently from you. But the truth is, millions of people in the US absolutely do believe that a fetus is a defenseless human being, and are genuinely horrified by the act of abortion. This is not a lie they tell in order to control women's lives, this is a thing they really think.
Note that there isn't necessarily a religious component to this--it's about when someone thinks a human life starts, which is something that may or may not be informed by religion, and which reasonable people can disagree about. By some measures, it would arguably be reasonable to say there isn't a 'person' there until about 6 months after a baby is born, when an EEG would start to really pick up brain activity 'higher' than the brain stem level, but no one's arguing for legalizing infanticide before six months. Why not? What makes birth the dividing line? Birth appears to be primarily triggered when the lungs release hormones signaling that they are done developing. Is the line between human and not-human one of having a set of fully-functional lungs? Does the continuing advancement of medical technology, which allows babies born more and more premature to survive, change when we think a fetus becomes a person?
What I'm getting at is that it can be very easy to dismiss the extreme cases (spilled seed, a six-month-old baby), but reasonable people can come to very different conclusions somewhere in the middle.
So I want you to conduct a thought experiment. Start from this assumption: millions of people are being legally murdered in the US every year. How many other issues would you be willing to ignore in order to stop that happening? What, in fact, could be more important? What wouldn't you believe about a group of people who are willing to kill millions of babies?
The point I'm making is this: in a single-issue abortion voter's mind, they are making the only moral, rational choice it is possible to make when they vote for the only available anti-abortion candidate. If you try to tell them that they are screwing themselves economically, they will shrug and say 'so?', and furthermore regard your economic message with suspicion because you apparently want to use it to justify killing babies.
This is why abortion and gays have been such amazing wedge issues for the GOP in the US--the left doesn't seem to be willing or able to understand and address why people on the other side of the issue vote the way they do. It's never been about a woman's right to choose--it's about when a human life starts. It's never been about gay marriage--it's been about whether gayness is even a real thing.
So anyway, yes--these issues do trump economic issues for some people, and it's very important to try to understand why.
Lf>tldr version
Seems like the usual outcry I see for the right thing that is overlooked in the modern society but got the shit end of a stick.
Uh, the Aboriginals weren't savages. This isn't someone painting the 'noble savage' trope, this is someone painting the Aboriginals.
If you want to get mad at someone for the fact that you have to hear about how the natives were wiped out, maybe get mad at the ones that wiped the natives out.
A lot of big, serious discussion going on in here, and that's good. It's nice to have civil discourse about stuff like this. I don't quite have the inclination to get into the whole thing so I thought I'd put in a bit of my own perspective real quick, as a vary rare breed indeed: a white minority.
I live in New Mexico, where just over half the population (50.7%) is Hispanic (as of Census 2014 and illegal immigration estimates of 2012). The next two highest are the White population and then the Native-American population. Anyway, there are about a quarter-million more people of Hispanic heritage than anyone who identifies as White. Is White the minority by a lot? No. Is it one that's noticeable growing up? Yes.
And guess what? I don't care. No one I know who grew up here, cares. Sure there're a lot of transplants that care a whole lot (anecdotally, usually from Arizona), but not native New Mexicans.
Speaking of growing up, I didn't know "race" was a thing until I was SIX. Part of that was my upbringing, but I had been in school for a whole year. Seriously, very few people care in New Mexico.
And there's a reason to care, by the way. As much as many people tout "white privilege", it's Latino privilege around here. The majority of people in power are Hispanic, Hispanic kids have more programs available to them in school, Hispanic teens/adults qualify for more scholarships to local Universities purely by virtue of their race, insurance and government aid is also easier to obtain for a Hispanic family, hell it's significantly easier to get a job if you speak Spanish (though, I grew up with plenty of Hispanic kids that knew less Spanish than me, so this one isn't as one-sided).
But still, there's rarely, if ever, been an "us vs them" mentality. We're all just people. Though, sometimes when I'm paying my student loan bill for the month, I get a little bit ticked that I couldn't qualify for certain scholarships just because I'm supposed to identify as "White" (I actually qualify on closest relation for a Native American scholarship, but those scholarships are legit racist and only let you have it if you spend X amount of the year living on the res. No one in my family has lived on the res since my great grandma was 15).
It's just that the big thing is no one talks about it like we're different. People are just people here (again, barring certain loud obnoxious voices, like the racist, rich retirees coming here and fucking up our property values), and even if we're literally not on equal footing, we at least feel equal.
So go ahead and keep your aid programs and whatnot, but stop making the media attention and all this cultural shit about our differences. We're all just people. Maybe we grew up in a different place, or our skin color, or our bone structure is a little different, but we're all the same. It's really easy to learn that when you grow up in a place where it's totally normal to have a mixed culture. Honestly, with how much people travel and have been settling down in different areas, completely separate from where they grew up, I'm a little sad it hasn't happened before now. It's about time people just fucking deal with it.
3798211
I'm referring to a seventeen year old white girl in the most insulated city on the continent painting a piece called "Stolen Dreamtime", and our country's romanticism for their tribal roots while doing very little about any developing or manifesting culture in their descendants. It definitely manifests in the racism that pops up here -- no, the 'black fella' down the street doesn't eat witchety grubs for dinner, no matter what you were taught in primary school.
3798196
Here's the thing, tho. When someone says "Abortion is murder!" but they're also adamantly against things that would dramatically reduce the rates of abortion, it becomes real hard to take them seriously. It becomes especially hard to take them seriously when they also espouse philosophies of gender essentialism. It becomes triple-hard to take them seriously if they're someone who has had an abortion themselves or assisted others in obtaining one, but are still out there campaigning relentlessly against it.
I'm Italian, which in this context means I'm also Catholic. Lapsed, but I can claim it culturally. I have a few family members who are really really Catholic and also into Liberation Theology who believe abortion is murder and should be illegal; and, because they believe that, they believe in robust and fully-funded sex education across the nation, universal health care (to ensure that mothers-to-be receive the prenatal care they need), safe places where a person can abandon a child without being arrested (and they're horrified by that, but the alternative is back-alley abortions or children abandoned in dumpsters), and promoting a cultural context where a woman has the means, power, and agency to control her own sexuality and reproductive choices. They're politely horrified by things like the quiverfull movement, which they view as a sort of cult.
I take them seriously as people who believe abortion is murder.
I don't take the guy who has "Spousal rape is an oxymoron" as a political belief alongside "Abortion is murder" very seriously at all.
3798105
I recognize that issues of race are really really important and in many ways very urgent[1], but I think that MrNumbers' point can perhaps be summarized (with a certain amount of imprecision) as: It doesn't work. The thing being done now, the new segregation, the activism, it doesn't work. Indeed, it's making things worse.
Take me, for instance. I live in a predominantly white country. We've some black people[2], certainly, but they tend to answer to "Your Excellency" and "Professor" because that's the sort of people that came over from various African countries with which we have rather good relations.
I don't think I am racist. I mean, I'm not sure I can tell, but I have literally no preconceived opinion on black people. All stereotypes about them seem utterly outlandish lunacy to me. *shrug* If I am racist, I've managed to hide it from everyone, especially myself.
Anyway. Given that I really ought to be a shoo-in for an ally of the progressive cause. I'm so left-wing that, in America, my ideological position can only be seen with the aid of a powerful telescope. I haven't had the time to marinate in a racist society. It should be simple.
And yet from my point of view, the combined activism of what is fashionable to call people of color[3] has looked rather like a concerted effort to get me to hate them. I don't. I refuse to. But it does get so very wearying. Why does it have that effect? Well let me construct a sample dialogue between me and an activist that illustrates my mental state as I read an article or, on occasion, talk online.
Me: Ah, hello! You had something to say?
Activist: YOU ARE WORSE THAN HITLER. WHITE SCUM.
M: Pardon?
A: YOU SLAVING SCUMBAG! DIE!
M: But... I've never enslaved anyone...
A: Yeah, but your ancestors were, and you've grown fat off the labor of MY PEOPLE!
M: I am fat but... none of my people as far as can be determined ever enslaved anyone. They were slaves themselves, in fact the word 'slave' is derived from 'Slav' because we—
A: You grew fat off colonialism!
M: No, we didn't do any of that either. Mostly, we really just sat there. Occasionally people tried to kill us. Great fun.
A: STOP WHITESPLAINING! CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE!
M: For the love of Celestia and Luna, sweet sisters both, not everywhere is America, and not all people are Americans!
A: RACIST!
M: I give up.
Now, the above is particularly clear (if jokified) because, as it happens, I don't really 'inherit' any guilt, but fundamentally that's not the point. I am extremely skeptical of the whole "Sins of the Fathers" argument. I mean, being morally dubious aside, when does it stop? There's not an inch of land on Earth that isn't soaked in the blood of those it has been taken from. Usually more than once. When does it end? Everything today proceeds from everything that was, so you can't really use the 'fruits of the poison tree' argument because, of course, everything is. Ultimately, something killed the Neanderthals, and I bet you that Homo Sapiens Sapiens had an adaptable tool-using hand in it.
Now, I want to see true equality. I don't want to stick a fork into the Status Quo and call it done and perfection achieved. But I won't cleave to the politician's syllogism either ((a) Something must be done! (b) This is something! Therefore: (c) We must do this!). As matters stand, the aggressive neo-segregation is only going to make matters worse. Historically, the way oppression ended and equality began was through the powerful and precious realization that we are, all of us, one family, one people, and fundamentally once vast branching culture. Undermining this idea... is not a good course of action.
Now, you might say that what we should do is see all people as completely different and separate but still believe in their equality but I honestly don't believe that's a practical goal. See all the different facets of human experience in their full breath across seven billion lives, and a hundred billion stories, and feel one with all of it? Well, maybe if you were a God. I don't think human brains can do that. We can pretend we do, of course, but you'll note that the most common error perpetrated by the racially righteous is to treat $OPPRESSED_GROUP as if they were goddamn elves instead of human beings in most ways exactly like them. There's where we get the noble savage and all that lot. The savage isn't noble. Or, indeed, a savage. There's no noble savages, no elves, nor goblinoid caricatures beloved of the classically racist. There's only ever us.
[1] Every once in a while American police goes and kills someone from the Underclass. One of the ways you get sorted into the Underclass is being black. That's a racial problem right there. Though, if I had to pick, I'd say that the existence of the Underclass whose members can be killed is an even bigger problem.
[2] We're a bit brown ourselves, but we live in Europe so we get called white.
[3] The euphemism treadmill is tiring enough without it occasionally going backwards to confuse you.
Fucking thank you. This is why SJW and "equality proponents", or at least 99% of them, are the scum of the earth. And all of the arguments you just gave also apply to most "feminists", and really any similar kind of SJW.
While I don't support racism, misogyny, etc, putting it as "us vs them", "black lives matter", "blacks and minorities are underrepresented", "men are rapists" only serves to increase the problem.
I strongly believe in equal opportunity, but NOT equal representation; if you're under-qualified, you shouldn't get any privileges just because you're a minority. (Nor if you're a majority, obviously.)
3798246
Welp, there sure as hell aren't many Aboriginals around these days. It would've been great if they had picked a piece of art by an Aboriginal artist, but I get the feeling they didn't get a whole lot of submissions from the people and culture that was completely decimated.
This seems like a weird hill to die on.
3798096 And you sir, can eat a bag of doo-doo!
3798264
Anarcho-Communist?
3798250
You've got
1) People who have really seriously thought their shit out and carefully considered extensive systemic ripple effects while attempting to construct a self-consistent world-view,
and you've got
3) assholes,
but you're missing
2) People who just kind of go along with stuff they've been told or brought up with, were never taught the mental framework for that kind of self-assessment, and just go all the way through life in a cloud of unnoticed doublethink.
2) is a big group. They're not necessarily assholes or bad people, and a lot of the time they're amenable to persuasion, if you come at it the right way. That's part of how the big shift on gay marriage has been coming about.
3798607 You make a strong point and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter, Jordanis.
Hey everyone, it is I of steal-y grandparents comment fame! It's my first time on this forum, and as a rule, I try to stay away from telling people they're wrong on the internet, but I thought I should throw in my thoughts. As it turned out as I wrote this, I have a lot of thoughts on this. Hold on folks, this is gonna get wordy.
So MrNumbers and I discussed this a bit before he posted this (or more, he pitched the idea and I tried to convince him that he was wrong), and I've read most of the comments, so I'll try to not to repeat what's already been said.
I think that the approach to these issues that is being advocated in this post and by many of the commenters here is well-intentioned but lacks a deeper understanding of why these distinctions are salient.
A few points:
1) To clarify the hypothetical with the grandparents: I think that it critically matters whether or not you benefit from it. If my grandparents stole from yours, but then spent it all on themselves, and I end up in a similar socioeconomic situation to you, I owe you nothing. To use a historical example, I don’t think the Germans owe the Jews anything because of the Holocaust, because modern Germans aren’t better off than modern Jews as a result of this injustice. Think of it like a limited liability corporation; if your equity goes below zero you can go bankrupt and you don’t owe anyone anything.
This also works if your ancestors didn’t commit the crime, but you’re benefiting (and someone else is suffering) due to it. If your parents were born in Russia and moved to Australia 25 years ago (after a lot of the biggest atrocities), and you’re born in Australia and live a middle class life here, you’re benefitting from a society built on genocide and have to adopt some responsibility for helping the people who are still suffering from the effects of that (the aboriginal people.) You are living on stolen land, in a society made rich by the products of that land (agriculturally and extractively) and are benefitting from the spoils of this crime while others are impoverished and oppressed as a direct result of that crime. If you ended up in poverty, homeless, whatever, I think your personal responsibility for remedying these injustices diminishes significantly because you’re not (in a meaningful way) reaping the benefits of the society.
2) Australia day doesn't commemorate Australia's federation, it commemorates the landing of the First Fleet (the creatively titled first fleet of convicts and settlers from Britain to come to Australia with the intention to stay, for you non-Australians) and it indisputably marks the beginning of a campaign of physical and cultural genocide (that I would argue is in many ways continuing.)
I'm not a fan of patriotism, but I get the appeal of having a national holiday - making it that day rather than (for example) Federation is pretty fucked up, and a pretty direct slap in the face to the Indigenous community. To use an analogy that most of you will understand, it's basically the equivalent of if America's national holiday was Columbus Day. (yes, I know Columbus didn't actually land in what's now the United States, but it's a very close analogy.) It white-washes an atrocity into something to celebrate. It re-enforces the prevalent sentiment right beneath the surface of Australian society that Australia begins where the Aborigines end, that white people saved them from savagery and that they should be grateful we didn't finish the job of exterminating them.
3) I wasn't aware that the person who made the Google Doodle was white, and frankly that makes me uncomfortable too. It's an extension of a long history of well-intentioned white people speaking over and speaking for colonised people, fetishising them as the other or as the noble savage or whatever. The thing is, any progressive activist with half a brain recognizes exactly why having a white girl paint that is a problem, and will have wanted that kind of aboriginal story told by an Aborigine.
But it's not good enough to just have an aboriginal artist paint something broadly Australian for the doodle on Australia Day - it matters that this day is commemorating the beginning of colonization. The Aborigines who call it Invasion Day or Survival Day and protest it every year don't want the white people to leave and aren't under the impression that you or I have some control over what has already happened. They're using the occasion both to celebrate their culture in defiance of society (kind of a "hey, you've been an arsehole to me, then threw a party and invited me in a calculatedly rude way? Fuck off, I'm throwing my own better party, and you're welcome to come when you're ready to stop being an arsehole") and drawing attention to the ongoing oppression they face.
4) About the Screen Australia grant: If you want me to tell you that it’s right that there is only money for aboriginal filmmakers, you’ll be disappointed. Of course there should be more money to produce films in Australia! I do think that a certain amount of the money should be earmarked for aboriginal artists given that there aren’t many aborigines in the position of bankroll film for-and-by them, and as a small and impoverished demographic it’ll probably never be profitable to produce film for them as consumers.
But here’s the thing, your enemy here isn’t aborigines, it’s capitalism (note to readers: MrNumbers has been counting down the seconds ‘til I brought up this elephant in the room.) Aborigines didn’t take away your funding, the government did, just as they cut funding for healthcare and education and science and a non-tin-can-and-string-based-internet and women’s shelters and mental health and (wait for it) basic services in aboriginal communities. It was what was necessary to maintain the profitability of capital, which is the “good” our society serves at all costs.
The reason that the aboriginal film funding was the one thing left standing is that dollar-for-dollar it’s just about the cheapest way for the government to pretend that it gives even the most tangential shit about the aboriginal community. A bit of money for indigenous filmmaking, some Australian of the Year awards, a speech saying sorry for the stolen generation, a couple visits to aboriginal communities by the sitting prime minister; these are much cheaper and easier than actually making an earnest effort at addressing the issues.
Indigenous Australians have a life expectancy almost two decades shorter than the national average, the majority of aboriginal men will serve time in jail at some point in their lives, and every few weeks another young aboriginal man is beaten to death by the police. Many aboriginal communities live under martial law with curfews and even when they are able to find a job, the government often confiscates a large portion of their income and tells them have to spend it (for their own good, they can’t be trusted to make the right decisions you see?) The stolen generation is still ongoing, aboriginal parents face much more intense scrutiny by the government, and aboriginal children are seized from their families and put into state care at an extraordinary rate, often with very little justification given and with little-to-no recourse for the parents.
I don’t pretend to know all the answers, but if the government gave a shit about aborigines, there are some pretty obvious and easy steps to make things a lot better.
Summing up (kinda)
The things that are pissing you off are the token efforts made to avoid actually dealing with the injustices. The racial injustices in question are not reducible to other injustices (e.g. income inequality) so you can’t actually discuss the issue without acknowledging that there is a significant difference between the experiences of indigenous and non-indigenous Australians even when you hold all else equal. You also can’t begin to understand or unravel this without understanding and acknowledging the history of how this situation arose. I’m sorry, but you just can’t. Pretending these things can be ignored just allows the
Trust me when I say that I get where you’re coming from. Your article could have been written (albeit less eloquently) by me 4 years ago, I felt precisely the same way. But these problems can’t be solved by pretending these divisions don’t exist, that only lets them fester. Oppressed groups don’t win liberation by politely not drawing attention to how they are oppressed – they need to shout it from the rooftops, and have allies willing to back them up. The dominant culture only concedes ground on these things when it is absolutely impossible to ignore it any longer and conceding ground is the best option it has left.
To use the ever-overused, but still instructive example of the American civil rights movement, Martin Luther King favoured non-violence but he made it absolutely clear that this division existed and made it clear that he thought there was a special place in hell reserved for people who wanted to deal with inequalities in a way that ignored the racial underpinnings of that inequality. And he wouldn’t have had the slightest chance of succeeding, except that it was clear that the alternative was Malcolm X, Black Panthers, etc.
The same model has been true of every similar struggle, and one common factor is people saying that they want to address the inequalities without dividing people into these oppressed and oppressor classes. They have invariably been wrong, and when those arguments succeeded, it has always extended and deepened the suffering of the oppressed, never remedied it.
I want a society where these divisions don’t matter as much as anyone, but the only way we can get there is by acknowledging that here and now, they do.
3798607
Thing is, though, no matter how much you respect the members of group 2 as people, taking their views seriously doesn't make sense. It'd be like taking seriously the views of someone who rolled a die to decide their position - after all, they put in the same amount of rational thought. Even when they happen to be right, it's just a fluke, and as soon as the situation changes it's once again up to chance whether or not they'll stay correct.
Fortunately, as you mentioned they often can be educated and persuaded, but remember: in the process they move out of group 2. So while it's obviously wrong to not take the people in group 2 seriously, their views are a different story; after all, if their views were worth listening to, you wouldn't have labelled them part of group 2 in the first place. (Well, I suppose you could make an exception for group 2ers who explicitly follow the views of group 1ers they trust, and don't try to fill in any gaps in their knowledge of said group 1ers' views with guesses, but I'd argue that that level of self-awareness and clear thought elevates them to group 1 as well. If you're unqualified to properly assess an issue, trusting an expert is the correct choice.)
3798815
Alas, in my experience, everyone struggles with 'love the sinner, hate the sin'.
Anyway, taking those people's views seriously is the best way to engage with them. They take it seriously enough to vote on that basis, after all--just because they haven't or can't work their way all the way through the consequences doesn't mean they don't believe they're taking the issue seriously. If no one has ever shown them how the issue is more complicated, they may simply think there is nothing more to think about--and let's be honest; we all have things that we take a too-simple view of because we've run out of headspace to deconstruct them properly.
Really, one just at all costs has to avoid condescending to people. Be earnest and forthright and kind. It's human nature to dig in your heels when someone's being an asshole about something, after all (it offends a very deep-seated primate sense of fairness when someone wins by being an asshole), so allowing the slightest hint that you don't take those people and their views seriously is the surest way to shut down the conversation.
Pretty much on point.
I always found Social Justice Warriors to be detestable people, whose actions have never done anything but ferment the bigotry they claim to be against. Speaking as an American, I can tell you that most of these dipshits don't really care about the lives of blacks. They would NEVER go to a black neighborhood just to help out. Teaching kids, helping elderly people, maybe starting a business... Nope, these people always make it about them. It's about making themselves look like the defenders of the other against the cruel, hateful white man. Not only does this do nothing to alleviate the plight of black people in this country, but it actively creates anger among whites who suddenly find themselves branded the villain through no fault of their own. In many ways, this is the reason Trump is doing so well.
I imagine it's the same way in Australia with aboriginal people, in Europe with Muslims, really anywhere with a minority large enough to be noticed at all. Do these SJWs actually go to help people in minority communities? Or is it limited to just publicity stunts to make them look like heroes against the white devil, despite their own lily-white appearance? I'm going to bet the latter.
Hopefully, Donald Trump will get close enough to the Presidency that everyone will see the pitfalls of all this naked pandering without giving him the White House. The death of political correctness can't come soon enough.
I told myself I was going to stay out of this, but I lied. But I do only have one breif thing to say.
3798039
This is true. However, along the lines of the always intelligent 3798264 's plea that what is happening in social justice isn't working, let me share my experiences dealing with a similar thing as a woman.
So, as a feminist, I was told, and indeed found it to be true that society largely dismisses the female perspective. We can be the token girl, sure, but men don't want to read books by or about women, or watch movies with an all female cast. And heaven help us if we start to talk about gender and video games!
Except.
As my life went on, a strange thing happened. Someone made a show with an all female cast that obviously they expected to only appeal to girls. That's how it works, right?
You probably see where this is going. Suddenly I'm surrounded by men who want stories about female characters. They want them so badly they'll work for free to produce them. They'll get fighting mad if someone indicates that these characters aren't as relatable because they're female.
This wasn't because someone lobbied for more female representation. Shows like My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake and JEM have been languishing in the pink ghetto for decades, and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was supposed to be there right alongside them. But Faust and the team made it good, legitimately good. And it turns out that if something is legitimately good, men can overcome their innate sexism and relate to female characters without even knowing it. If you want another example, look at Mad Max: Fury Road.
What's interesting is that I have several friends here in the community who are ardent #gamergate supporters. It's hard to think that they're misogynist when they spend so much time and energy watching and writing about female characters. That's because they're not misogynist, any more than, say, the Oscar voters are racist. They just want something good, that speaks to everyone, not something that they see as putting "diversity" in media above quality.
I think you can tell that my time here has really changed my views on diversity in media. We do need more diversity, but the way to get it isn't to get more women or people of color into mainstream media first, and then hope they do something good. It's to look at what they're already doing, in the pink/chick flick ghetto, in those films with all black casts that white people don't watch, and encourage them to make something really good. And when something really good-- not somethign we're pretending is good because it was made by a woman or a POC, but something really good-- comes along, celebrate the hell out of it.
Don't tell people they should relate to people unlike themselves. Show them.
I agree with a lot of this.
I am personally sick an tired of SJWs in general.
I work very hard to treat people fairly regardless of race or gender or anything else. I know it's probably not perfect, but neither am I, and I'm actually trying here. Yet still I see these morons insulting me because I'm white and male.
My life has not been full of privilege and opportunity due to my birth lottery. Not to mention that lottery gave me shitty parents, bad genetics, and more. Most people have a much better life than I do, including those whom SJWs feel the need to stand up for.
You want to actually help? You want to provide true equality and change? Instead of shaming an entire group of people for the actions of a few, try focusing on the real issues! Pay inequality, harassment, and being excluded. Or, worst of all, being taken advantage of, denied proper education, and held down by the rich (true rich, not actor/musician/athlete).
Look at the past. Movements for equality based on shaming the majority, or worse, resorting to violence, don't work. Only by proving, beyond any doubt, that we're all the same, will things change. Negativity just bring more division.
Oh, and as for the "Safe Space" garbage I keep seeing from these people? GROW UP!
The world does not have to bend to your sensibilities. And your feeling do not trump things like freedom of speech.
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So, what you're saying here, is that you are Finnish?
3799106
Perkele, man, whatever gave you that idea?
Seriously, though, I am not Finnish. Wrong end of Europe.
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I think a lot of people fail to realize that white privilege is actually kind of a myth. It never had all that much to do with being white (or, I guess it did, but it was more specific than that). It was about being a member of a certain in-group, which people sometimes refer to as WASPs (though even that is misleadingly broad). The KKK hated Jews, Catholics, carpetbaggers, and blacks. Was that because Jews and Catholics weren't white?
No. The reason was that they weren't members of their social group. The idea that the KKK was actually a "white supremacist" organization in its original incarnation is a modern-day recasting of what the KKK was. That's not to say that they didn't hate black people - they totally, totally did. The problem is that what they thought of as important wasn't "white people" in general, but them and theirs. They were, in effect, a tribalistic organization which was entirely white, but it was more discriminatory than that and was obsessed with preserving a particular social order which excluded outsiders, including blacks, those damn Yankees, and immigrants.
There have been groups which were about the promotion of "white people" as a race, but back in the 1800s, it wasn't about being white, it was about being one of "us".
That's not to say that people didn't discriminate against black people, but they also discriminated against the Irish, not because they weren't white, but because they were the 1800s version of the dirty Mexican.
People often conflate these ideas, and come up with the idea that the Irish "weren't white", but it wasn't really about that.
Aha! I've spotted the problem. The artist is shit at conveying her intended message. Seriously, I would not have seen that at all if it wasn't explained to me. There aren't even any white people in that picture. It just looks like an old lady drawing on the ground while either a pair of children run towards her or she thinks about a pair of running children. There's a vaguely ominous eye, but that doesn't look white either. I do agree that if anyone could see the intended message it would be a horribly divisive thing to put up as representative of your country, though.
RE: Columbus. While I'm not sure your "He was an murderous asshole, but he made us a lot of money" argument has a firm foundation, I really don't care either way. Lots of historical figures were terrible people. Mostly I'm offended by people thinking he was a visionary when his entire success was based on dumb luck. And I do mean dumb luck. People already knew the world was round and had worked out how large it was with math. There were some competing ideas, none of the major ones matched what Columbus believed. That's why Portugal wouldn't support him and the Spanish court mathematicians argued against his plan. Columbus tried to sail to Asia without enough supplies to make the trip because he refused to believe the world could actually be that big. If it wasn't for stumbling across a huge mass of land he didn't believe existed, he and everyone on his ships would have died. Then he tried to insist that he'd been proven right because what he'd found were islands off the coast of India. There's a reason the continents are named after Amerigo Vespucci and not Christopher Columbus. But if you want to celebrate that one time Spain backed a moron out of naked greed when it should have known better and almost consigned hundreds of its own people to slow death as they ran out of supplies, but it worked out by sheer luck, I guess that's... not as bad as some other holidays. Probably.
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I think part of the problem comes from the fact that no one pays attention to it when it works, because it is utterly unremarkable. If a show or movie does a good job with its female cast, no one remembers because they treated them like people.
Thus, when people try to think of female characters, they end up thinking of a lot of examples of female characters done poorly, because the ones who were done well don't stick out in their minds as women.
So when you have people trying to be all awkwardly socially conscious and include women, or blacks, or whatever else, they end up making a crappy character more often than not because they're focusing on them being women or black or whatever, instead of people who happen to be female or black or whatever.
I couldn't get a scholarship in college because of this kind of segregational racism. Everything available relevant to the degree I was seeking required a student of a specific race, age, gender, or location. There's hundreds of scholarships that apply only to a specific subcategory of people, singling them out, and leaving the rest of us to just have to deal with crippling student loan debt because there was nothing left. :/
I mean, I don't know if I just overlooked some somewhere, but every time I went searching (and with 60k in loans now to pay off, you better believe I was searching for scholarships often), I just plain didn't qualify due to combinations of my origin, race and gender.
What little was left over was always a contest.
If I were simply allowed to apply for any scholarship in my degree field, and get accepted or rejected on my own, individual merit, I probably would have half the debt to repay now that I do.
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Considering that I agree with most of what it looks to me like you're saying, I think we may be running on different interpretations of the idea of taking views seriously. At a guess, you're using "take views seriously" to mean what I'm thinking of when I say "take people seriously".
"take people seriously": Be earnest and forthright and kind, engage them with respect and don't condescend/attack them. Whether or not you can safely let them realize you think their views are bunk depends on the person in question. A rational person will talk it out and decide based on reason/evidence without letting hurt feelings keep them from accepting what's correct (though of course you shouldn't try to hurt them). With an irrational person (sadly, the most common type...) you may have to be more circumspect, but as long as both parties treat each other respectfully it should hopefully be possible to eventually work through any problems.
"take views seriously": Let their views have any sway on your own. Remember, by this point you've already assessed them as not having a coherent viewpoint (if they did, they wouldn't be in group 2 and we wouldn't be having this discussion), so until you see a lot of evidence that indicates they're misclassified (which does happen, but depressingly infrequently) it's safe to conclude that letting their views influence yours will make your own views less coherent. This holds true even if they happen to be right on a given topic, and even if they happen to be right about something you got wrong - at that point, you should look into the issue on your own and accept it on the basis of the evidence demonstrating it's correct, not on the basis of "because that person thought it" (though of course you should thank them for bringing it to your attention).
Everyone does, but that doesn't mean that people who are honest with themselves should stop trying. (The slapdash qualification is intended to weed out people who won't realize or accept criticism that they're messing up, since their attempts are likely to just make things worse; feel free to suggest better ways of phrasing it. Yes, this aside kind of ruins the impact of the actual response....)
Quite true, but sadly, wrong for a well-justified reason is still wrong, and those who know enough to recognize when someone's way off-track shouldn't give credence to their erroneous views, no matter how understandable their mistake happened to be.
I feel like I ought to say more, but I can't think of anything immediately, so in the interest of not spending three hours on this I guess I'll leave it at that for now.
The argument with Collumbus (First time seeing that translation, actually. I had always known him as Cristobal Colon) stems more, IMO, from Spain having been a really, really shitty country at the time that openly discriminated having any culture and pretty much exhiled their best artisans for purely racistic reasons, which lead to many of their crisis. Every European country was supremely fucked up at the time anyway, and a good chunk of the continent was at the brink of an ecological collapse that wouldn't have been avoided without the extra recourses injected at the time. America wasn't a pure paradise like they described, but a place where most ecosystems still worked as they should.
I can't say I completely understand the jump from Spain having been in a bad shape at the time to hating Spain to the date for what their people did at the time, but hey its there.
3799195 Same here about the painting. It just seems like a cultoso and utterly forgetable thing made by an uninspired teenage girl who wants to look clever, what a wonder, it is. I won't deny the technicall skill of the painting tho.
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Reading the rest of your comment, I believe you are correct, here.
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3799115
*Adds a couple more items to the large corkboard covered in notecards with an incoherent tangle of string stretched between them under the heading 'Where is Ghost From?'*
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His biological parents, I should presume.