Rolling 2014 Thread on Race

That Hernandez piece shows how the real value or strength of "journalism" is sapped when we allow Eurocentric biases to prevail. I am not a Latina. -I- want to read about Colombia. Our country is up to its ASS in Colombia. Why wouldn't an American reader of any color want to read a story about Colombia?

One reason we get few narco-wars stories is because affluent white advertisers think they're a "downer" - when they are acutely relevant to all Americans.

I have been noticing the use of "black bodies" in a lot of recent pop left writing. I have been told it comes from Foucault. I don't actually know the context, but without context I kind of don't like the term -- it almost seems to achieve the effect it seeks to call attention to, i.e., dehumanization.

fancy that

idk about "black bodies" for foucault, but def bodies (and hegemonic manipulation of bodies) is a big thing for him. black bodies more evokes for me moten's in the break (i hope i'm remembering this correctly bc it has been a few years since i read it) where he talks about marx's "the commodity that speaks" and uses that as a way to discuss the black body in slavery (particularly noted in Frederick Douglass’s Aunt Hester narrative). in that sense it comes directly out of black studies in the academy.

I'm open to being convinced otherwise, just when I see it in some salon article or something I find it a little jarring and unclear what the term is supposed to be doing.

Do you have an example? I've come across the term with some frequency too but it never struck me as 'off'

Also seems to connect with discourse in feminism about women's bodies

it's definitely a term closely linked to dehumanization + specifically abjection, but intentionally so

also i think derieck scott talks a bit about this in Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination

https://www.google.com/#q=%22black+bodies%22+site:salon.com

tbf salon is trash

Yeah I think maybe my problem is just with it as used in pop writing (as I said, not familiar with the original context). Lots of crit theory terms get abused when they trickle into the mass internet.

Still not seeing what you're finding objectionable

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body

I guess for example:

"Mike Brown's death forces us to confront the dehumanization of black bodies"

Why not just say "black people?" Saying "black bodies" seems to almost accept the dehumanization, and even if not it just seems like a pointless use of a theory term that doesn't actually do any work there, since the sentence already contains "dehumanization."

Because a form of inhumane prejudice based on the differing physical appearance of black people still ultimately finds its way back to the physical appearance of black people and it's good to remind America of that?

also america's economy is literally built on black bodies as such

Do you have similar issues with talk of women's bodies in reproductive justice?

imo it's a shocking term that confronts the read with the idea that they, or society writ large, don't see a group as having human agency

honestly, I could see the term "white bodies" and it makes no sense to me, but so much writing about black people does concentrate on physicality and objectifies without necessarily meaning to that putting it out there, if lazy writing or misappropriation of theory, seems like a reasonable tactic

龜 otm

Black bodies is the exact language of "strange fruit"

it emphasizes labor physicality ownership literally slavery because the rhetoric of equality elides all of that pesky history and there is a need to not whitewash

Also in the case of Michael Brown it is especially appropriate (without implying that its use elsewhere is less than appropriate). Racial profiling by police and police brutality against black people starts and ends with the appearance of the victims. Michael Brown's body was left in the street for four hours and directly recalls the practice of leaving lynched bodies - again, strange how this term keeps on popping up - to hang in the days of Jim Crow as a warning to other black people. It is also no mistake that one of the talking points embraced by conservative media focused on Michael Brown's height and weight, as if that should have any relevance at all in a case where an unarmed 17 year old was shot and killed by a police officer.

Do you have similar issues with talk of women's bodies in reproductive justice?

― 龜, Tuesday, September 30, 2014 11:32 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No, but it's usually used differently -- "Don't tell women what to do with their bodies" "Don't try to control women's bodies" etc. There's still a "women" in the sentence. It's not "Black people's bodies." Anyway, above arguments seem reasonable enough.

https://www.google.com/webhp?q=site%3Asalon.com%20%22female%20bodies%22#q=site:salon.com+%22female+bodies%22

I've been following this thread, but hadn't clicked on the links. I was siding with Hurting because I assumed someone was writing about dead black people.

I can kinda go along with the phrase now, when color is relevant and in a Don Delillo sort of context.

I don't actually know the context, but without context I kind of don't like the term

what a series of words this is

yeah that came out really garbled, what I meant was that I don't know the ORIGINAL context (i.e. how exactly it was used by foucault et al), but it rubs me slightly the wrong way in the typical salon article context.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/01/justice/michael-dunn-loud-music-verdict/index.html

This is a good outcome but what the hell is this:

Killing Davis was lawful, Healey told the jury, if Dunn acted in the heat of passion or if he unintentionally caused Davis' death. The jury could also find Dunn not guilty if he was in danger, acted in self-defense and exacted a justifiable use of force, the judge instructed.

So basically, if I fly off the handle and kill someone, I can argue that the killing was lawful because I was acting in the heat of passion???????????

That...can't be right

The classic example for that is the person who comes home to find their partner in bed with another person and kills in the heat of passion

It's a defense, and if the jury accepts it the murder gets downgraded to a manslaughter conviction

Jurors began deliberating on the new charges just before 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday, after Judge Russell Healey dismissed two of the three alternates and provided instructions for the charges jurors were to consider.

The first charge to consider, Healey said, was first-degree murder, which would require that Dunn premeditated killing Davis.

If the jury didn't feel the state proved first-degree murder, it was instructed to move on to second-degree, which would mean Dunn killed Davis via a criminal or depraved act.

The third charge was manslaughter, which would require a finding that Dunn unlawfully caused Davis' death.

Killing Davis was lawful, Healey told the jury, if Dunn acted in the heat of passion or if he unintentionally caused Davis' death. The jury could also find Dunn not guilty if he was in danger, acted in self-defense and exacted a justifiable use of force, the judge instructed.

That doesn't seem right, I can see them downgrading the murder charge, but letting him off the hook completely for an "act of passion" sounds off

Here's a slightly more reasonable sounding summary:

http://www.news4jax.com/news/michael-dunn-jury-instructions/28356706

I think what's missing from the CNN quote is that it would have had to occur "by accident and misfortune in the heat of passion, upon any sudden and sufficient provocation." So it's not like walk in on your cheating spouse and shoot heat of passion.

But in any case he got first-degree murder, so good work, jury

Pretty sure there is no state that completely lets you off the hook for heat of passion alone.

That's an exception big enough to swallow the rule imo xp

maybe I'm just being dense/sensitive but I can't think of any reasonable scenario describable by "When killing occurs by accident and misfortune in the heat of passion, upon any sudden and sufficient provocation" that wouldn't qualify as manslaughter, particularly when said incident involves firing a gun at someone

TBH I'm not exactly clear on what it means to accidentally kill someone in the heat of passion upon provocation.

like maybe, you're leaving a room and someone grabs your arm and you jerk violently away, unbalancing the person who grabs you and they fall awkwardly into a wall, breaking their neck?

Maybe it would be like the intruder scenario -- you're cleaning your gun, you hear glass break, you turn and see the silouhette of a figure with what looks like a knife, you shoot in a startled moment, turns out it was your drunk roommate who forgot his key and he was going to slice himself some salami??? I don't fucking know.

But that would actually more easily fall under other exceptions so nm

yeah that's scenario #1 IMO

You decide to go outside and drive away rather than risk being in the same room as your cheating spouse, but you run over someone as you speed away

Was provoked into pulling gun and my finger twitched, was provoked and shot big window behind the dude who provoked me and flying glass cut an artery -- that kinda thing, I think.

but you were speeding; I don't know if that falls under the manslaughter definition or not

You were provoked into speeding, you would argue.

I can only imagine the mental/linguistic gymnastics that prosecutors in Florida need to perform in order to circumvent the insanity of stand-your-ground.

Or it happens while under the speed limit (i.e. it's dark and you hit someone at 20 mph, and that person happens to be an elderly person with an unreliable pacemaker) idk

I can only imagine the mental/linguistic gymnastics that prosecutors in Florida need to perform in order to circumvent the insanity of stand-your-ground.

"There's no national attention and I shot a black person."
"ACQUITTAL"

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/05/millennials_racism_and_mtv_poll_young_people_are_confused_about_bias_prejudice.html

Last point dead-on:

Which gets to the irony of this survey: A generation that hates racism but chooses colorblindness is a generation that, through its neglect, comes to perpetuate it.

I had this kind of epiphany reading some facebook comments about the recent Jacobin article about gentrification that liberal individualist ideology kind of hampers people from seeing structural problems, because they can't see past their own noses and "choices." I think this carries over into race -- racism has been made into a personal choice issue. "I'm not racist because I choose not to do/say racist things." "It sucks that that guy got shot but I don't think the guy who shot him was being racist, he was just afraid."

afraid and racist

Re: the "black bodies" argument, if the choices are "that sounds racist and dehumanizing" or "Well, if you've read Foucoult you'll grok my steez," is just a bad decision to go with the latter in a general interest publication...

Or possibly the phrase is a rhetorical device intended to emphasize the racist, dehumanizing situation and not a phrase you're supposed to feel comfortable with

racism actually is a personal choice issue in the sense that we have to make an active choice to circumvent the structural-racist status quo, which takes more effort and commitment than just saying "i'm not racist". in order to not be racist, we have to fight racism by doing things. it means putting yourself in new situations where you might feel vulnerable or possibly look foolish, but that should be how we learn and live, no?

I think that's right, but I guess what I'm saying is that if structural racism is embedded enough then racism is almost the default position, whereas the liberal individualist tends to think that as long as he isn't actively doing "racist" things (saying the "n-word", expressing negative generalizations about black people, assaulting black people because they walk through his neighborhood, etc.) he is not racist and can go about his business, meanwhile ignoring ways in which racism might be embedded into institutions and structures in ways that have racist effects far beyond what any individual says or does. I don't think many people who post in this thread fall into that category fwiw. I guess I'm partly talking about emphasis, and a focus on "are my hands clean or dirty" rather than on how racism operates.

"are my hands clean or dirty" or is there just mud everyfuckingwhere?

I think that's right, but I guess what I'm saying is that if structural racism is embedded enough then racism is almost the default position,

Aka white supremacy

Well yes but not the hood-swearing, stormfront reading kind is my point

Or possibly the phrase is a rhetorical device intended to emphasize the racist, dehumanizing situation and not a phrase you're supposed to feel comfortable with

― 💪😈⚠️ (DJP), Thursday, October 2, 2014 11:33 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, by black writers, sure!

I still think it would be a little #problematic in the hands of other ppl tho

it means putting yourself in new situations where you might feel vulnerable or possibly look foolish, but that should be how we learn and live, no?

and i mean also being mindful of how lucky it is to be able to do this with minor risk compared to victims of racism, respecting the stakes of others who have a lot more on the line. i'm thinking of volunteering for a latino community organization just to learn something and hopefully be useful setting up chairs for potlocks or w/e. trying to get on the right wavelength for it. i'm bad at people and shy.

Well yes but not the hood-swearing, stormfront reading kind is my point

everyone else's point is that this image is not what "white supremacy" means in 2014

Well yes but not the hood-swearing, stormfront reading kind is my point

Yeah - I mean when any modern writer is talking about 'white supremacy' it's not about the klan, it's about a preference for whiteness that permeates society at every level

But the repurposing of the phrase 'white supremacy' was not by any means accidental

Xp Dan as I said I think most ilxors agree about this. My realization was just that a lot of people think in a narrow individualist way that prevents them from seeing these structures.

This is a couple years old (came out during the whole KONY thing) but I think relates to what is being discussed in more concrete ways: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/

like, thinking about the ramifications of what exactly it means beyond abstractions abt systemic vs personal

k someone from my would be progressive church posted this shit from george takei's FB and i just want to make sure im not dreaming that this is not slam dunk transphobic/islamophobic/anti-black racist trifecta

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/429256_363067520389374_284782731_n.jpg?oh=38903f9ddff74c245795240b952abde0&oe=54CB29BE&__gda__=1420787628_6a01a53ab475b5fadc3b8227f4f13f33

also wimmin, who be shoppin

YEAH

posted as "maybe not politically correct, but so funny"

which i mean...this stupid ass church already has a hard enough time with diversity as it is

This is a couple years old (came out during the whole KONY thing) but I think relates to what is being discussed in more concrete ways: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/

like, thinking about the ramifications of what exactly it means beyond abstractions abt systemic vs personal

― deej loaf (D-40), Sunday, October 5, 2014 3:09 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

Good article

The White Savior Industrial Complex is a valve for releasing the unbearable pressures that build in a system built on pillage.

Perhaps a little glib but this also reminds me of Donald Sterling, i.e. something highly visible and easily condemnable that is easy to rally around

That is a great article Deej, thanks for sharing. It deserves to be read and re-read, it is indeed timeless. Cole's last paragraph says it all really, it's very prescient. Kony 2012 wasn't a success. It was a Facebook hit, not even more than that. It was the ten dollar bill donated to Haiti.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/10/05/how-tos/daughters-tell-stories-war-brides-despised-back-home-u-s/#.VDKgiSldWXg

Always knew that there was a War Brides Act but wasn't aware of the stigma

have we discussed this anywhere yet? http://s2smagazine.com/2014/10/06/raven-symone-im-not-african-american/

fwiw as a millennial i grew up believing that we were all aspiring to some post-racial color-blind utopia and to a large extent that's how i understand raven's statement. obv there's a backlash against this kind of race 'naivety' going on atm - like in that slate article dayo posted last week. i know there are more dramatic narratives of self-disavowal + shame that could be read here too.

I don’t need language.

O RLY

that's so raven

whew thought i'd need to read gawker comments to hear that joke - spared

I'm not interested in forcing any labels on her besides perhaps "narcissist"

have we discussed this anywhere yet? http://s2smagazine.com/2014/10/06/raven-symone-im-not-african-american/

― Mordy, Monday, October 6, 2014 2:53 PM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fwiw as a millennial i grew up believing that we were all aspiring to some post-racial color-blind utopia and to a large extent that's how i understand raven's statement. obv there's a backlash against this kind of race 'naivety' going on atm - like in that slate article dayo posted last week. i know there are more dramatic narratives of self-disavowal + shame that could be read here too.

― Mordy, Monday, October 6, 2014 3:04 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark

I guess my reactions to this are twofold: (1) I'm not gonna question how she self-identifies and (2) If she is able to structure her community, society, and whole world that she interacts with in a way where race is never a factor for her, then she has my blessing and best of luck to her

you guys: http://www.whitenessproject.org

That is very interesting! Good design. Watched about a half dozen of those; I've heard variants on those conversations pretty much all my life so it's hard to tell whether or not these seem exceptional? the white=normal thing and the "i don't see color" trope seem the most pervasive sets of blinders.
tattooed girl's line of argument was something i wrestled with awkwardly in college, lil' embarrassing to hear it spat back now.

What's your neck say?

Yeah I'm skinny and effeminate and have long hair, 'twas a spectacularly misguided attempt at solidarity that led me down that road, so glad I wasn't *too* much of a prolific internet poster/interview subject when I was a teen. That said I can't imagine I would have actually said "people don't treat me like a white person," that shit's a bridge too far.

*worriedly searches posting history from early aughts*

xp "#notallwhitepeople"

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/09/-sp-north-carolina-teenager-suspicious-death-lennon-lacy

Warning: pretty rough story to get through

There was a similar incident in Texas a few years ago where a very suspicious death was also ruled a 'suicide'

That detail about the shoes really creeped me out

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/21/upward-mobility-race_n_6016154.html

New study from Brookings Institution finds that upward social mobility is much more achievable for poor white people than poor black people

Which is why when people say "It's a class thing it's not about race" I think inside my head "STFU"

The interesting thing about that from my anecdotal experience is that, depending on where you are and who you're dealing with, if you can make that mobility breakthrough you gain more power to exert control over the sphere in which you operate in, effectively reducing the amount of specifically personal racial nonsense you have to put with or notice. So, it's difficult to make that step but once you do, things get SO much better; it's one of the reasons I believe my life has been so ridiculously charmed (and my parents, while solidly upper middle-class, are a couple of notches below "rich" as understood by having the ability to have your baseline lifestyle defined by extravagance; there's no huge house, their cars are nice but they've owned them for well over a decade, they travel everywhere by car rather than by plane and stay with family whenever they can, etc etc; of course on the flip side my dad started a tiny vanity vinyard as a retirement project so maybe I'm delusional about how well off they are).

What's your neck say?

― pplains, Friday, October 10, 2014 8:47 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Imagine all the DWTs that "just as discriminated" person must have on her record!

One reason poor black people really have a hard time is that they often live in communities that no one truly cares about - I don't think institutions are encouraging their residents to "look upward" and who can blame them? Little to no faith is invested in those communities - literally. If you're not from those places, you don't visit there, don't shop there. It perpetuates the negativity.

Whereas poor whites can be found living in the low-income sections of otherwise middle-class communities.

Getting annoyed with people in my class peer group lately - they often shrug and say, "don't blame me, I voted for Obama." As if resisting Republican pressure tactics is worthy of a medal. We have to do better at viewing the poorest black people as OUR NEIGHBORS.

New study from Brookings Institution finds that upward social mobility is much more achievable for poor white people than poor black people

Which is why when people say "It's a class thing it's not about race" I think inside my head "STFU"

― 龜, Wednesday, October 22, 2014 11:15 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the social genome model they discuss in that study is really fascinating:

The model is structured as a series of regression equations in which outcomes in each life stage are treated as dependent on outcomes in all prior life stages, plus some more contemporaneous variables.

http://i.imgur.com/hcDu4YG.png?1

Whoa, that's fascinating.

I'm trying to figure out how you combine the probabilities, e.g. if you start at the "on track" birth stage, what's your overall probability of getting to "on track" adulthood.

Here we go...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B01QbhDCAAAhxQt.jpg

fuck

Joke's on them, their faces are stuck that way :)

fucking hell

Follow-up on the diversity stories from Silicon Valley:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/new-numbers-reveal-asian-wage-gap-tech-n223196

Would like to see more detailed breakdown of the data, feel like AA #'s are high 1) because of H1B visa immigrants but 2) that keeps wages down

I...

http://instagram.com/p/uldv8WnPZD/?modal=true

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B04C1wjCMAAEPcw.jpg

definitely racist, though also the rare case where the inherent racism is maybe not the biggest problem with the thing

least fun internet game: what is most offensive?

rolling is this child abuse thread 2014

i posted this video on facebook earlier today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A

in orbit had some good comments on it, which i hope she doesn't mind if i repost here:

...you will not be surprised to hear that I totally agree with you, but can I just say it is representative of Hollaback's general tone-deafness on racism that they sent a white woman around NYC where she gets harassed/stalked by mostly non-white men.

Maybe they think their audience IS mostly white women who, because they live and move in areas with a large non-white population, perceive that street harassment is something that happens in the presence of black and brown men? Nice that they added one line in the last screen that says "of all backgrounds" because we know that's really code for "I'M NOT RACIST, HONESTLY" which does not actually absolve them of furthering racist stereotypes.

(i thought i'd just move the discussion here rather than doing the epic facebook comments thing + risking intrusion from the pool of terrible random facebook acquaintances, and also so that other ilxors can weigh in if they want)

in the description of the video on the Hollaback website there's a little section that says "Like all forms of gender-based violence, street harassers fall evenly across lines of race and class. It is a longstanding myth that street harassment is a “cultural” thing, perpetrated mostly by men of color. We believe that street harassment is a “cultural” thing in the sense that it emerges from a culture of sexism — and unfortunately — that is everyone’s culture", but it's not in the Youtube description. and words like that ring hollow if they're posted under a video which contradicts them.

although i know enough about Hollaback to understand and support their goal of documenting harassers, i don't read it frequently and so if they have a history of tonedeafness on racism I haven't been aware of it. in orbit had some good posts on their history earlier in this thread (march 9 and 10) which helped me to understand why one would be skeptical about how they acknowledge race.

but i guess my questions are: do you think the entire idea of the video (documenting a woman getting harassed dozens of times in the course of a day) is flawed, and if not, how would you improve it? filming in a different (whiter) location? using a person of color as the subject rather than a white woman? Editing the footage so that the races of the harassers are more balanced?

i don't know, i guess i'm just torn because if the subject of the video lives in a area with a large POC population and as a result gets harassed by a lot of POC, isn't it her right to document her experience without editing it to be something that it's not? at the same time i understand that a video like this might have the effect, for some people, of perpetuating this idea that catcalling is more prevalent among POC...which brings me back to the question of whether it's better, on balance, for the video to exist at all. like is the education value of showing all of this harassment overshadowed by the perpetuation of a myth?

(also, obv i am a white dude commenting on catcalling, so i'm prepared for the possibility that i am way the fuck off, and if so i'd like to be schooled!)

admittedly as i initially watched the video i noticed that it was mainly POC doing the catcalling, but it didn't stand out to me as racist (again i am prepared for the possibility that i am severely wrong) because when i'm walking around with my gf in my neighborhood (97% POC) and somebody makes a comment or compliments me for my "good taste" or says "you better hold on to that ass" or whatever, it's inevitably a person of color because that's where we live. so the video above just looks like "normal" catcalling as i typically observe it. i understand how people living in areas with different demographics would see the video and be like o_O, and how, even worse, someone might view the video and come away with the wrong idea about race and catcalling.

but then again, how does a white person living in a heavily minority area go about documenting catcalling? and should groups like Hollaback refuse to show videos that are racially skewed, even if they accurately represent the experience of the subject of the video? it's just kind of a weird problem.

sorry for long posts.

No this is awesome! I totally want to talk about this! I'm just making some food right now so give me a sec.

The story about street harassment of white women is really also the story of gentrification. Do all races and cultures harass? Obv, because they all are shaped by patriarchy. But white men, with, on the whole, educational and economic privilege, may do their harassing in other spaces than the street, like the office or job site or in the home to their domestic laborers--and when young white women move into majority-minority neighborhoods, their experience of SH can be almost completely that of being harassed by Black and brown men whose home community they are now living in.

That is the dominant story that gets told about street harassment, and that story is then used to not only "raise awareness" of SH as a problem, but also as a basis for criminalizing harassment and harassers and pursuing police involvement, forming a legal definition of SH, trying to pass laws that assign penalties to those determined to be "guilty" of SH, and so on. This will definitely disproportionately affect men of color because a) the problem, as it has been diagnosed, is being located in their communities, and b) white women have greater privilege in the court and carceral system to be heard and believed.

It also erases the experiences of Black and brown women WHO WERE ALREADY LIVING THERE and who have presumably been dealing with patriarchy in their own communities all along (and who have it worse in many ways that are different from what white women experience--Black women are already EXTRA sexualized and objectified because thanks, racism!).

Phew. I probably forgot something but let me take a break there.

Lots of people can be complicit in telling this story. Holly Kearl, founder of Stop Street Harassment, just got a big grant and a took a lot of time off to go around the US and document SH in lots of places and do some kind of survey of attitudes that she then published like an academic paper. The reason for releasing a study on something is to use it to

Oh damn sorry that last para wasn't supposed to be there.

oh I thought you were taking that break

;-)

haha, me too! i mean taking a break midsentence is not the usual course of action but

Anyway the only way I think that video could have advanced a positive gender and race critique is if the woman at the center of it was a WoC. It wouldn't make it completely unproblematic, but it would at least give priority to the reality of walking around in a Black woman's body and giving the viewer an idea of what THAT is like. What if in addition to all those comments that other woman got, she was also being called "chocolate" and racist insults at the same time? And that's, like, the MINIMUM that would happen.

Maybe like 10-12 years ago, another white woman made a SH doc called War Zone where she took a (non-hidden) camera around various cities and tried to talk to the men who harassed her. Some of those cities had a majority white poverty class who were more vicious and obscene than any of the New York PoC she spoke to, and some of them had white-collar men on their lunch break who harassed her even harder than non-white men but were way more ashamed of it when they got recorded/confronted.

xp lol of course

thanks for your response!

Anyway the only way I think that video could have advanced a positive gender and race critique is if the woman at the center of it was a WoC.

right, and this is what i started to think too. but again, then, where does that leave a white woman in a majority-minority neighborhood in terms of documenting her harassment? i'm not trying to be captain-save-a-white-person here but is her proper role to go to meetings and donate money to anti-SH groups and share articles and the like, but not to document her experiences in the form of images or video? i understand that she could still easily speak out/write about her experiences without the need to mention the race of the harasser, but when you visually document something - which i think is important and should be done as often as possible - there's no getting around race. suggesting to a white woman that she should participate in anti-SH in THIS way but not in THAT way just seems off. but i don't know, it's messy. EVERYTHING IS WRONG

If a white person is going to pursue any kind of goal that involves the lives of a lot of non-white people, there is just no possible way they can do that on their own imo. Especially considering the history we already have in the US of stirring up panic that Black men are just waiting for the opportunity to sexually assault a white woman and spoil her purity, which we will never be free of because it can never be undone.

On a ground level, if a ww wants to do something about SH in a historically or majority non-white community, she needs to find some WoC to talk to about it and see what they have to say.

there is a lot of harassment in that video which is :( sadface making. otoh I am also kind of bummed that saying "hello"/"how you doing today" is construed as harassment. I mean I get how it's all part of a rich tapestry of bullshit she's enduring and that she doesn't know these people so why are they saying hello but.. idk it's just depressing.

Is it me or there is a bunch of white dudes harrassing her in the video too?

I took a quick tally before I started talking about it this morning and by my count it's about 5 probably white guys / 18 definitely Black (or Afro-Latino or whatever but presenting as Black) guys / 3-5 ppl that either I couldn't tell (because faces are blurred out) or couldn't see who was speaking.

I am also kind of bummed that saying "hello"/"how you doing today" is construed as harassment.

Hahahahahah COME AT ME, BRO.

I took a quick tally before I started talking about it this morning and by my count it's about 5 probably white guys / 18 definitely Black (or Afro-Latino or whatever but presenting as Black) guys / 3-5 ppl that either I couldn't tell (because faces are blurred out) or couldn't see who was speaking.

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Tuesday, October 28, 2014 5:11 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also it's an edit so what I said is a moot point, they made the choice of showing more blacks.

But white men, with, on the whole, educational and economic privilege, may do their harassing in other spaces than the street, like the office or job site or in the home to their domestic laborers-

Really interesting - hadn't thought of it this way before, also saw this story earlier today and just made the connection

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/lawyer_says_he_misunderstood_wind_up_period_in_lifetime_ban_on_representing

I think I link to this photographer's work every time this subject comes up but I always thought this series by a WoC photographer was very interesting:

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/entertainment/Hannah-Price-photographs-cat-calling-on-the-streets-on-Philly.html

Hahahahahah COME AT ME, BRO.

nah I know, and this is not a thing I do, saying hello to random people on the street male or female. (People def do it to me but I am a man so it doesn't have the sexual overtones, at least not most of the time afaict, more "I am about to ask you for money"/"about my pet cause" overtones lol) It just bums me out that sexist assholes ruin things as basic as saying hello.

xxp

is her proper role to go to meetings and donate money to anti-SH groups and share articles and the like, but not to document her experiences in the form of images or video? i understand that she could still easily speak out/write about her experiences without the need to mention the race of the harasser, but when you visually document something - which i think is important and should be done as often as possible - there's no getting around race. suggesting to a white woman that she should participate in anti-SH in THIS way but not in THAT way just seems off.

I think organizations that work on SH have a responsibility, especially since they're working toward righting an injustice, have a STRONG responsibility to be accountable for their race, LGBTQ, etc positions as well. Hb has been around for long enough to notice that they have a problem with a lot of white women telling stories about being harassed by Black men, and that without any intervention, the air in the room can be completely used up by that one thing. (And the way we can talk about it sometimes gets SUPER uncomfortable really fast.) But they keep making these dumb missteps, like, whatever they SAY about not intending to single out PoC that's what they end up doing again and again.

there's an icon on public transportation here accompanying the dictum "no offensive language or conduct" that looks like an angry person of unverifiable color, i'll have to post a picture obv. that "rule" is so obnoxious and race/class weighted language police, why not "be considerate of others" ffs. the jackasses in charge of public transit here make me so angry.

I don't take any credit for working this shit out on my own btw. I didn't. I didn't know ANY of this when I moved to Crown Heights over 10 years ago. I didn't know that any stereotypes HAD been assigned to Black men because I almost literally didn't know any Black men or know anyone who knew any, basically, so I'd never heard of those slurs before.

But what I did feel was increasingly angry and traumatized by being sexualized everywhere I went, and also very, very ASHAMED. Like the things men said to me were my own fault, like I was being stripped and exposed and made dirty by their eyes and their words and the way they called public attention to their power over me because of my gender presentation, how helpless I was because they were in groups and I was alone--not that I was in danger, but that they always had the crowd on their side. And there was nowhere for my shame and anger to go, nothing positive or productive to transform it into, it was just eating me up.

The group that I meet with now gave me an outlet, they gave me a chance to try on a whole different framework about SH and objectification and to have a vision of transforming it into something better. I owe BMC like everything. No, I will not stop talking about them because they're so amazing.

http://brooklynmovementcenter.org/anti-street-harassment/

No Disrespect envisions a world free of harassment, particularly of people whose identities have been historically marginalized. We reject domination and objectification as the basis of public interaction and are working towards a world in which these interactions are instead based on mutual respect and love. We further believe that powerful, organized, and sustainable communities are rooted in the deep and compassionate understanding between individual members; and that the current culture of intimidation and harassment undermines our overall potential to create these healthy versions of community living.

that looks like a good group of people orbit.
yelling shit at people on the streets is bullshit. harassing people in offices is bullshit. basically people are bullshit is the way i break it down to an extent.

I kinda feel like in 2014 if a man doesn't *get* the difference between a friendly "hello" and a "hey hot girl you make me horny" hello, he has some self-examination to do. FWIW I almost never say a friendly "hello" to someone on the street unless there's some weird awkward eye contact moment and I need to break the tension. I might do so in my building lobby or somewhere more familiar, but not on the streets of NYC, that's just life in the big city imo. I can see how if you live in a small, tight-knit neighborhood it might be more of a thing to say hello to people on the street in that neighborhood. I can also see how if you were a woman in a small, tight-knit neighborhood, even the "hey you are hot" hello might be less threatening (not saying unthreatening) -- not necessarily wanted, but at least you are more likely to know who the person is or recognize them. Doing it to someone totally unfamiliar in a totally unfamiliar setting just seems menacing.

I just make a grand gesture of tipping my hat and offering a firm "m'lady" to let her know that she is not to be threatened by me.

I say hello to the next three men just so they know I'm a weirdo who says hi to everyone on the street, not a threatening menace. Then I mentally un-hello the men.

Pplains as ron burgundy ovah heah

more on the video, from Slate: The Problem With That Catcalling Video

...The video is a collaboration between Hollaback!, an anti-street harassment organization, and the marketing agency Rob Bliss Creative. At the end they claim the woman experienced 100 plus incidents of harassment “involving people of all backgrounds.” Since that obviously doesn’t show up in the video, Bliss addressed it in a post. He wrote, “we got a fair amount of white guys, but for whatever reason, a lot of what they said was in passing, or off camera” or was ruined by a siren or other noise. The final product, he writes, “is not a perfect representation of everything that happened.” That may be true but if you find yourself editing out all the catcalling white guys, maybe you should try another take.

...Activism is never perfectly executed. We can just conclude that they caught a small slice of catcallers and lots of other men do it too. But if the point of this video is to teach men about the day-to-day reality of women, then this video doesn’t hit its target. The men who are sitting in their offices or in cafes watching this video will instead be able to comfortably assure themselves that they don’t have time to sit on hydrants in the middle of the day and can’t properly pronounce “mami.” They might do things to women that are worse than catcalling, but this is not their sin.

"White people just aren't as loud as persons of color. Now a Puerto Rican, there's someone who can drown out a firetruck siren."

This whole thing is getting way overthought imo. The video pretty effectively makes the point overall and now it's getting drowned out by the think piece arms race. But why not just do a sequel? Have multiple women of different races walk around and caption the white guy comments that are allegedly too hard to hear. Sun is gonna rise again tomorrow and men are gonna keep catcalling too, easy to repeat the result.

So... is Slate implying that only white people have office jobs or visit cafes on purpose or did they just do the exact same thing Hollaback did?

At least the Rosin piece doesn't throw in "differing cultural expectations" like a lot of the pieces I've seen, like you know "Hey, I don't want to be a presumptuous white person here, maybe black and latina women love being harassed on the street." I even saw one that said there should be a "study" of how women of different races and classes feel about catcalling before we make any assumptions. I'm being a presumptuous white guy here too, but my presumption is that most people of all races and classes don't like being harassed on the street by strangers, until proven otherwise.

I think that's a safe bet. Also just in general I'm pretty sure anyone who wants to talk about how it's a "cultural" thing is being hella racist. But if that dude wants to ask a bunch of Black and brown women how they feel about street harassment, I support that! He might even learn something.

Dan: I...don't know? That sentence went right by me. I don't have a take on it, but if that's your read, then the piece has a problem.

Did you feel the same way when I said (above) "white men, who on the whole have academic and economic privilege"? My take, if anything, is that she's referencing that fact without specifying it. Maybe that's too charitable, or maybe it's important to be specific?

But if the point of this video is to teach men about the day-to-day reality of women, then this video doesn’t hit its target. The men who are sitting in their offices or in cafes watching this video will instead be able to comfortably assure themselves that they don’t have time to sit on hydrants in the middle of the day and can’t properly pronounce “mami.” They might do things to women that are worse than catcalling, but this is not their sin.

If the main criticism of the video is that it unconsciously pitches catcalling as something more likely to happen when men of color see a "white" woman, causing a swathe of white men guilty of or complicit in similar/analogous behaviors to go "phew, not me!", this section in that context reads to me as casting comfortably middle-class men in offices and cafes as almost exclusively white. "Man" is intended to be read as "white man". I don't have a strong problem with the baseline sentiment but it should be expressed explicitly, not implicitly.

(I do have a small problem but I have a meeting to go to)

Hurting, I currently live and work in an area with a lot of gang members, street people, drug addicts...and I'm coming to the difficult realization that 1) guys who take a friendly gesture as an indicator of romantic interest are OF this class of people - whether they live like a street person 2). these people don't KNOW what self-examination is and probably find the concept threatening.

Thanks for the report from the trenches

U R Wronged

I think I M Losted's statement is grossly inelegant and incomplete but not inaccurate; where it falls down is the implicit "only" in the statement

I currently live and work in an area with a lot of gang members, street people, drug addicts...and I'm coming to the difficult realization that 1) guys who take a friendly gesture as an indicator of romantic interest are OF this class of people

I don't think I get what he's trying to say here but I actually think I disagree w it? None of those categories are made of up a "class" of ppl, first of all. It's possible a reader could grok the sentiment? But otoh most white people envisioning the categories of "gang members," "street people," and "drug addicts" are going to imagine them as being made up of Black ppl so it's just super unhelpful at the very least? (Esp gang members, altho maybe West Coast ppl are more used to seeing white homeless alcoholics or something, I don't know.)

I M Losted's comment kinda reminds me of the TFA teachers who after their first 6 months on the job start essentializing their students

But mostly because I feel safe saying that "guys who take a friendly gesture as an indicator of romantic interest" do NOOOOOOOT only come from any particular "class" no matter how you define class.

^^^ my point as well

Yeah actually I would say misreading cues from women, at times wilfully, is a trait of men that crosses race and class.

but I couldn't exactly follow what IMLosted was trying to say tbh

I try to clarify that whole issue for men who catcall/hit on me by being as mean as possible right off the bat. Because I am just that helpful! You're all welcome, btw.

A friend of mine, when asked, "What do you think are some effective strategies against catcalling?" said, "Tasers. I think the answer is tasers." Which is turns out it's illegal for civilians to carry tasers in NYS but we're working on it.

i got heckled on the street yesterday and it's definitely a good thing i didn't have a taser

"gang members," "street people," and "drug addicts" are going to imagine them as being made up of Black ppl so it's just super unhelpful at the very least? (Esp gang members, altho maybe West Coast ppl are more used to seeing white homeless alcoholics or something, I don't know.)

haha gtfo this is a ridiculous assumption

1) guys who take a friendly gesture as an indicator of romantic interest are OF this class of people - whether they live like a street person

i think I M Losted accidentally left off "or not" at the end of this. if that's right, i guess the point would be that guys that take a friendly gesture as an indicator of romantic interest, regardless of economic class, can be grouped together with gang members, drug addicts, and street people as...people who are lacking social skills (?)

??? Do you think that most white people don't assume "gang members" are black? I'd be willing to let "homeless" go but I'd even bet on "drug addicts"!

I would say that in any given metropolitan area there are gang members, homeless people and drug addicts of all ethnic groups. this is certainly true of where I live (which is yes, the west coast)

sorry but wtf does i m losted mean when he says "street people"

I...didn't say that wasn't the reality, though. I said that I would bet that most/a lot of/do you really want to argue about this? wite ppl would mentally picture a gang member or drug addict as Black.

idk what the pt is of assailing theoretical strawmen who automatically assume all gang members, homeless people and drug addicts are black. Sure these people exist but let's not let extrapolation get outta hand here.

Oh my god it was in the context of saying, maybe this isn't an effective way to talk about the problem also it doesn't make sense in the first place, so jesus christ ease up.

it puts the emphasis on class rather than race, which may be relevant. or maybe not idk. these things are all knotted up together. "rich white people harass like THIS" lol

HARASSMENT IS ALSO NOT ABOUT CLASS IS THE THING HERE.

the kind of street harassment we're talking about might be, though... and hard to avoid with this subject?
like generally rich/white/whatever people do their harassing in other places if i go by the standard stereotypes, unless you're talking about, I don't know, Italian construction workers or whatever

"Ayyyyyyy, BOSCHK!"

Me, yesterday:

The story about street harassment of white women is really also the story of gentrification. Do all races and cultures harass? Obv, because they all are shaped by patriarchy. But white men, with, on the whole, educational and economic privilege, may do their harassing in other spaces than the street, like the office or job site or in the home to their domestic laborers--and when young white women move into majority-minority neighborhoods, their experience of SH can be almost completely that of being harassed by Black and brown men whose home community they are now living in.

Maybe like 10-12 years ago, another white woman made a SH doc called War Zone where she took a (non-hidden) camera around various cities and tried to talk to the men who harassed her. Some of those cities had a majority white poverty class who were more vicious and obscene than any of the New York PoC she spoke to, and some of them had white-collar men on their lunch break who harassed her even harder than non-white men but were way more ashamed of it when they got recorded/confronted.

To be more specific in light of today's posts the "white-collar" men in question were iirc all white but I haven't seen the movie in a long time so I might be overlooking other people in a group scene where office dudes are sitting outside eating lunch. And in any case street harassment happens regardless of either race OR class/employment/whatever.

hey guys guess what
http://news.yahoo.com/woman-seen-harassed-nyc-streets-video-gets-rape-180905117.html

The nightmare scenario is that somehow Gamergate merges into this

kinda feel like it already is

eh i don't think so

i asked my students* to define and give examples of street harassment today and they were 100% on it -- examples, animated discussion, laughing/stories, the whole thing. they asked about the video, they knew all about it.
my guess is that they don't know what gamergate is and if they did, they would not care

SH is way bigger
that's kinda why i think the infighting "the problem with the problem with" rhetoric/position jockeying is annoying to me -- that video was really effective regardless of how PROBLEMATIC it was
"the conversation" is going on -- there's no way to control it; better to encourage it to continue and fret about who's doing it better behind closed doors
imo

*14 young women 18-24, 1 young man in the same age bracket, all Latina/o/Hispanic aside with one exception and she grew up in Turkey

Are there any other videos out there doing the same basic experiment as '10 Hours'? I bet a bunch are going to start popping up in the next week.

LL, that is like EXACTLY what I was saying in a clusterfuck facebook thread about this today -- I think I even used something to the effect of "The Problem With The Problem With..." "Position-jockeying" is exactly how I feel about a lot of the response, as much because of the tone ("This stuck up white girl doesn't even see her privilege!") as the actual content. I agree, video was effective, particularly in showing just how pervasive and commonplace this is.

this ebony article on it was good

I liked the Lemieux article too and shared it on fb today but it doesn't address race at all--in fact, maybe unsurprisingly given the outlet is Ebony--it addresses the reader w some implicit assumptions of Blackness.

Why do they think all Caucasian women living in cities are "moving into" some POC community?

Got news for you - in urban areas, not all "street people" are brown-skinned.

Why don't these people get off their behinds and go to some REAL places.

Not every Caucasian woman in the city is the Central Park Jogger.

I'm not your loathed stupid middle-class white woman. I grew up in a white ethnic and working-class urban area.

I'm glad I allowed you to feel smug and superior. Why do you assume things? Yes, I grew up with gangs and drugs - white people.

I agree "the conversation" IS going on!! And I loooooove it! But when ppl insist that any action or resource like this video is an overall good because it "starts a conversation" even if it does other harms, even unintended ones, I don't want that in my corner.

I grew up "in the trenches". Not only middle class teacher / stereotype / nerd people commit the indulgent crime of owning a computer.

Give me a BREAK, you phonies. You're the kind of people who idiotically argue that DV doesn't have a "class". It does too - rich people don't beat their kids and spouse as much and you know it. Unless you get all of your info from the women's studies department. Which is staffed by (generally) upper middle class types.

I'd wondered if that video would garner discussion on ILE/ILX...

IM Losted, I'm not trying to ignore you, I genuinely don't know where you're coming from so I don't know how to engage.

Following up from my other posts though I realize now that a fair statement would be, "I don't want my liberation to be bought with someone else's oppression." Now, the fact that I can say this is coming from a position of relative liberty already, ie I have enough liberation to move around and to a large extent live my life, so I can afford to step back sometimes and not take everything that's offered without inspecting it. For ppl who are or feel that they are struggling to survive, I don't expect the same things that I hope I require from myself. I respect their need to survive and protect themselves. This is subjective and personal.

I'm ANGRY with Hb and the makers of this video because they created a situation where I can't support a project that does SOME good work that I care about, that furthers a cause I deeply care about, because they haven't done the SMALL AMOUNT of interrogation that they would need to do to see that their goal of liberating women from street harassment is transactional. And I think liberation is antithetical to transaction--I don't think liberation can be bought AT ALL. Either we're all in this together or there is no "this."

But now that the project is out there and obviously resonating with some people, I do not begrudge people who are just now having their experiences validated the satisfaction of that support. I do convict the parent organization with having done a profoundly shitty job of making sure that their output isn't itself furthering someone else's oppression.

Give me a BREAK, you phonies. You're the kind of people who idiotically argue that DV doesn't have a "class". It does too - rich people don't beat their kids and spouse as much and you know it. Unless you get all of your info from the women's studies department. Which is staffed by (generally) upper middle class types.

― Threat Assessment Division (I M Losted), Friday, 31 October 2014 01:20

This is a genuinely weird statement to make. So weird, in fact, I'm going to turn it around and ask what your sources, and your info comes from, for making this statement.

Because as far as I can see, there's two angles that could lead to this equally erroneous belief. 1) people from a middle or upper class background, who wish to believe (as an expression of classism) that DV is a 'working class problem' and 'that never happens here!" 2) people from a working class background who want to discount the experiences of middle or upper class women ('Those women have nothing to complain about!") I have encountered this attitude on occasion from working class men who wish to discredit *all* feminism, as just being some hoity-toity middle class concern, in order to maintain their own gender privilege.

Violence against Women and Girls (I'll use this term because it shows things like harassment (street or otherwise) and DV as part of a continuum, an exercise of power and domination as expressed through the language of sex and control) does not have a class. The *form* of expression it may take is sometimes dependent on class because of what kind of access to women they are allowed is changed by men's class status. (as in orbit pointed out above, middle class men have access to office staff they can abuse in private, upper class men have domestic staff they abuse in their own homes.) Being middle or ruling class is not some kind of ~protective sphere~ that stops men from abusing women. But what class buys is it buys *privacy* and it buys *silence*. Men from higher classes do not just control women with catcalls and fists. They control them with fear - fear for their jobs, fear for their careers, fear for their professional reputations being ruined, fear of legal action if they do anything more than whisper their concerns to other women.

Where does my information come from? 'Women's studies'? (Well, it's funny how you discount that. After all, why would the study of women have anything useful to say about VAWG?) Ironically, at the moment I am trying to research this stuff in pursuit of a job. I've been looking at government statistics, women's shelters, charities, etc. What do they say?

Myth: It only happens in poor families on council estates.

Anyone can be abused, no matter where they live or how much money they have. Abused women come from all walks of life. You only have to think of the celebrities we hear about in the papers to realise that money cannot protect you from domestic violence.

Men who abuse women are as likely to be lawyers, accountants and judges as they are milkmen, cleaners or unemployed.

Where does my information come from? My own experiences. I have dated people from many different class backgrounds. Of the ones who were abusive or violent towards me - one was an Oxbridge educated solicitor at a Chancery Lane law firm. (I am going to assume you can translate this into an American milieu yourself.) The other was the trustafarian son of a millionaire. I come from an Upper Middle Class family. Upper Middle Class men beat their wives and molest children. My brother married into a 1%-er family. 1%-ers beat their wives and molest children. If it happens in lesser numbers, it is only because there are less of them in numbers. If it is reported less among the powerful and the wealthy, it is because powerful and wealthy men are able to buy privacy and buy silence.

It's one thing to say "there are more working class women, and they have less access towards resources, so agencies dedicated to helping them should direct their resources towards helping working class women." That is completely pragmatic. But when people paint VAWG solely as a Class Problem, or try to pretend it doesn't happen in "Our" classes, that makes me very, very suspicious of their motives.

To return to issues of race and street harassment. My own personal experience of it (which is, albeit limited, it's not something that has been an issue for me for a very long time) was that when it did happen, when I was still working in clubs/bars and riding a lot of night buses, the absolute *worst* perpetrators of it were packs of pissed-up, lairy, white, middle-class men. The encounters I dreaded were gangs of drunk bankers or lawyers hepped up on their own entitlement, spilling out of City pubs at closing time. That is the most visceral 'OMG, I'm going to get shouted at, abused, grabbed' fear I have ever experienced, when I was living in the East End. (Transatlantic translation: at that time, the neighbourhood that was the seething edge of gentrification.) Gentrification is absolutely about class, and class plays a very salient part in determining the *expression* of harassment, but the idea that white men or men from non-working class backgrounds don't perpetuate it is a flat-out lie.

And always, lies make me suspicious. I've seen a ton of stuff about Rob Bliss (the filmer of the video, mentioned above, but I do wonder if more links have disappeared behind the cut) floating about on twitter, and questioning his involvement, not with Hb, but with groups involved with gentrification. This is a man who has an agenda, and his agenda is gentrification and the resulting social cleansing that results is a deliberate part of his agenda. Time and again, men with agendas have shown themselves capable of *using* genuine women's issues as justifications of their own ends. These men are not actually interested in 'women's issues' and will quite happily throw WoC and working class women under the bus. Their interests are usually money (and all its accompanying props of preserving class and race privilege).

So, to cut an unnecessarily long story short, many of these issues *are* about class, but not in the ways that IM Losted is representing. It's about excluding the actual demographics of class and race (sometimes literally, such as the white street harassers who have been edited out of the video, sometimes metaphorically as in IM Losted's 'women's studies' comments) to paint VAWG as a class or race issue, and then using women and their struggles as a blunt instrument to advance deeply suspicious race and class agendas. I am not OK with that, even as I support the dialogues that said video has been stoking. (Stoking, rather than starting.)

You're the kind of people who idiotically argue that DV doesn't have a "class". It does too - rich people don't beat their kids and spouse as much and you know it.

http://www.popcenter.org/problems/domestic_violence/PDFs/Rennison&Welchans_2000.pdf

http://i60.tinypic.com/a1u5j4.png

guessing the unemployed are more likely to beat their wives, as they have that much more time on their hands and a lot less to lose

There is a difference between "rich people don't beat their kids as much" and "rich people don't beat their kids."

The translation of the former into the latter (with race included as an aspect of class) is at the heart of why so many people are finding this video a problem.

Men of privilege (race privilege or class privilege) find other ways to abuse and control women that go beyond street harassment and domestic violence. That does not mean that white men, or high income men never abuse women.

This has probably been posted before (a ton of stuff has rolled up under the cut) but I did find that criticism on why it's worth criticising Rob Bliss' agenda in making this video:

https://storify.com/Aut_Omnia/why-you-shouldnt-share-the-nyc

He is not about street harassment; he is about gentrification. Hence why he cut the white guys out.

Apologies if this is a repeat; it just luckily crossed my twitter again.

Tbh the bar for doing harm here is even lower than that--he doesn't have to be some evil genius with a clear ulterior motive. He just has to be thoughtless and coast on what he knows from being himself, a white dude. If he doesn't look any further than that, his projects will always be oppressive somehow because he'll always be erasing or silencing or worse, criminalizing some group of people he hasn't even spared a thought for.

PS: I know from Grand Rapids, believe me. It's hilarious that he did that video.

Is there a little more backup for the "this is all a plot to punish minorities and encourage gentrification" theory? Because it seems a little truthery to me.

er I guess what laurel said

Here's a change of topic, just because I'm interested: ARE iSIS Halloween costumes offensive?

http://gawker.com/a-childs-treasury-of-this-years-most-offensive-hallowee-1652874318

lol yes they are

They are just generic racist caricatures of people from the Middle East with guns added on.

What if I specifically dressed as this guy though

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02942/wahid_2942025b.jpg

this is sure to be a very unpopular opinion, but i think it's strange how so many people are taking this quote from the slate article...

At the end they claim the woman experienced 100-plus incidents of harassment “involving people of all backgrounds.” Since that obviously doesn’t show up in the video, Bliss addressed it in a post. He wrote, “We got a fair amount of white guys, but for whatever reason, a lot of what they said was in passing, or off camera,” or was ruined by a siren or other noise. The final product, he writes, “is not a perfect representation of everything that happened.” That may be true but if you find yourself editing out all the catcalling white guys, maybe you should try another take.

...and translating it to "they edited out all the white guys" without a second thought, case closed. we don't know what raw footage they captured in the first place. it's a huge assumption to claim that there's a bunch of footage left on the cutting room floor of white guys saying stuff clearly, on camera, which they decided to cut. i kind of have a hard time believing that they have clear footage of a white guy saying "hey sexy" on camera and then didn't include it in the video. it's much more believable to me that they DO have lots of clips where the harasser is off camera and the audio is difficult to hear, and a result they didn't include it in the video. the footage was captured by having the film's subject walk behind a guy with a hidden camera in his backpack - that's a really messy process. i can't count the number of harassers in the clip because i'm at work, but there aren't even close to 100+. that means that tons of them were left off. one could argue that they should have included all 100+ incidents in the film, even if some of them had to be subtitled or if the people were off-camera or whatever, but...that would be a different film! it would have been much longer. it wouldn't have the same effect, and it almost certainly wouldn't have reached 15 million+ people, or whatever they're up to now. it's the filmmakers' right to use whatever clips they have to maximum effect.

i realize that Bliss is an asshole but it's kind of weird for people like Automnia (author of the storify article just above) to get enraged and leap to these conclusions without any evidence: "So this white guy, Rob Bliss, records a woman getting street harassment from loads of men, then cuts out most of the shit from white guys." and "A white guy takes the oppression of women and uses it as a tool to further the oppression of people of colour." jeez, hope Automnia never gets selected for jury duty!

"A white guy takes the oppression of women and uses it as a tool to further the oppression of people of colour."

Yes, I like to refer to this as "the history of the United States."

I mean it's 200 years later, can we please stop doing this? Get one goddamn clue, Mr Bliss. I read somewhere that he first noticed street harassment when his girlfriend expressed that it was happening to her, and her experiences are what motivated him to make this project. Where's her project? Why is this coming from a dude?

You know what men should be doing about street harassment? Talking to their men about how not to do it. That's it. It's an incredibly important job that only men can do! But we really don't need people like this guy taking up the air in the room with their pet projects, esp when they only noticed it was a problem when it involved "their" women. Ugh.

Yes, I like to refer to this as "the history of the United States."

totally, but it's another thing to take that general historical truth and apply it to a contemporary and specific person and incident, without evidence. that just doesn't feel right to me. i'm sure Bliss is a terrible person, but it's not right to accuse someone of a racist act without being able to prove it. and sorry, not accusing anyone here, which i should have been more clear about. it's more the blog thing where everyone is linking back to the Slate piece and citing it as proof that the racist white guy edited out all the white guys before maniacally cackling at the moon all night.

HE DOESN'T HAVE TO BE AN EVIL GENIUS TO DO A RACIST THING THO! He just has to be a little intellectually and critically LAZY, which he demonstrably is!

it's not right to accuse someone of a racist act without being able to prove it.

ZS I love you but this is a ridiculous burden of proof.

i know, but here it is again: that statement assumes that either a) he had a bunch of good footage of white guys and cut it out, or b) he had a bunch of poor footage of white guys and made a mistake by not including it anyway, or c) they should have went out and filmed a new version of it.

a) is impossible to prove, because real life is weird and you can walk around manhattan one day and get a bunch of clear footage of white guys harassing woman, and then go out the next and get nothing. it was filmed on the back of a guy wearing a hidden camera. b) is a judgment on the creative work of the filmmaker. i can totally see how they wouldn't want to include shitty off-camera footage. if they did, the film wouldn't have the same impact and it wouldn't have reached so many people. c) is the only persuasive argument, and it assumes that they would have captured all of this footage, spent however much time editing it, and then scrapped it and told the subject of the film "hey could you go out there for another 10 hours please? we need a do over."

c) is a totally fair criticism. but a) and b) aren't imo and a), especially, seems to be the default stance of bloggers/tweeters/whathaveyou on this

hah, I was about to say the same

acts aren't racist because of the intent (well, unless you're a _total_ asshole), they're racist because they reinforce or exhibit racist attitudes

whoops, xpost on that.

it's not right to accuse someone of a racist act without being able to prove it.

this is a ridiculous burden of proof.

is it, though? i'm not saying that 100% clear proof is needed, like a FBI camera that captured Bliss working on the video and clicking a little segment that had a white guy harasser, and saying out loud "well we won't be needing THIS clip, will we?" as he deletes it. i'm saying that even a preponderance of evidence would be nice, something more than "i'm sure he had more footage of white guys, he just must have".

eh, i guess we're talking about different things, an intentional racist act vs. more of a lazy/subconscious one. sorry

guess i'm just not comfortable seeing this kind of thing:

Automnia @Aut_Omnia
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So this white guy, Rob Bliss, records a woman getting street harassment from loads of men, then cuts out most of the shit from white guys.
114 Retweets 81 Favorites

even if it was mediocre or slightly off-camera, wouldn't you at some point think "hmm, I cut out all the white people, that doesn't seem quite right"

if you have the internal narrative that street harassment is mostly a thing where poor people of color harass women, then you're going to unwittingly cut your film to match?

yeah, i guess i don't know a lot about Bliss' background, so if he has a pattern of behavior than i can see how you wouldn't want to give him the benefit of the doubt

You know that other word we talk about a lot, that word 'privilege'? Well, one of the ways that it functions, is through what kinds of people are routinely given 'the benefit of the doubt'.

You have a guy who is deeply committed to the idea of gentrification, or at least stands to gain a great deal from it. Gentrification is a phenomenon that involves racial issues and class issues right down at a root level. But somehow this guy makes a video on street harassment which predominantly focuses on working class PoC, and... oh no, we must not think that he or his beliefs have anything, conscious or unconscious to do with it, it would be so unfair to judge him, we *must* give him the 'benefit of the doubt'.

That maybe, just maybe, the problem here is not Automnia *failing* to give this guy 'the benefit of the doubt' but the fact that so many people who see a middle class white guy just routinely *do*?

yeah, i guess i don't know a lot about Bliss' background, so if he has a pattern of behavior than i can see how you wouldn't want to give him the benefit of the doubt

Almost every American citizen of every race has that pattern of behavior because it's how our society was formed.

having biases is pretty human imo

good posts. I guess my problem is that I do want to give the benefit of doubt to people, to everyone. but i suppose that goal is really flawed, considering that everyone has biases, whether we acknowledge them or not, and I'm probably granting too much to this other middle class white guy because i'm a middle class white guy.

Experiencing racism sucks about a billion times more than being called a racist. I'll never understand why people are more defensive about being called a racist than they are about offending other groups. Totally self-absorbed nonsense.

I sort of understand it when people give the benefit of the doubt to an artist whos records they like (presumably they dont want it to be true), but its weird to me when people jump through these kinds of hoops to defend a random person theyve no connection to at all

But you're exhorting people to give the benefit of the doubt to Bliss. You're not exhorting people to give the benefit of the doubt to Automnia. In fact, you've p much been calling Automnia a "Truther" for pointing out that racism exists and gentrification is closely to it!

...closely related to it...

xxp not "random person with no connection"--the connection exists, the connection is whiteness/white privilege & wanting to blind ourselves to the socioeconomic processes (gentrification etc.) with which we are all complicit

Depends on how big a factor intention is in determining the initial problem.

I think we can broadly all agree that it's possible to commit racist acts through thoughtlessness, carelessness, ignorance, 'good intentions', etc. In those situation there shouldn't need to be any burden of proof, benefit of the doubt, etc. The act stands alone.

Where a malicious motive is implied, it's understandable that people are going to want to have some kind of evidence to base it on before piling in. That doesn't stop things in the second category fitting into the first automatically, though.

in America "giving the benefit of the doubt to" a black man means assuming he has never been to prison or belonged to a gang, while "giving the benefit of the doubt to" a white person means assuming he doesn't want to bulldoze the black man's house & put in a gastro-pub

obviously most white people are not out there in the trenches saying "that one's gotta go, time to jack up the rent" but that doesn't mean you can't be complicit in a social order that produces those outcomes; this is why the "malicious intent" argument holds so little water

I don't really understand what this has to do with "gentrification" tbh. It looked to me like a lot (all?) of the video was shot in Manhattan, maybe some in Harlem but most of it did not look like "gentrifying" areas. Unless the point is just that generally if it makes minorities look unsavory that will somehow contribute to the desire to gentrify them out, as though gentrification even needs a push in NYC.

xposts

I guess I wasn't clear in my tl;dr's, but i was trying to make the point that no one knows what footage he had to work with in the first place, so it's not possible to state, as a fact, that he cut out certain footage. i'm very comfortable saying that the decisions he made on where to film, and to not do another take when he noticed it was lacking white dudes, were racist in nature. no disagreement there! but that's not what automnia (and others) are saying - they leap to an accusation that he did this very concrete thing - deleting scenes, editing out footage of white people. i'm not criticizing automomnia for pointing out that racism exists. i'm criticizing automnia for asserting a fact without acknowledging that it's based on speculation. i don't understand why it's not enough to stick with what is known - that Bliss is an asshole, has a history of being an asshole, and big surprise, he produced a video that supports his gentrification agenda.

i guess that comes across as defending Bliss and attacking those who are criticizing him, but really i think it's just more important to stick with the strong accusations that one can back up, and to lay off of the stuff that's speculative. the former argument is much more powerful and important than the latter, imo

What was I just saying this morning, about who gets to have their 'intent' considered when assessing harm. (And whose 'intent' is always overwritten, assumed, and otherwise erased or subsumed under labels like 'crazy' and 'angry' and things like that.)

Where a malicious motive is implied, it's understandable that people are going to want to have some kind of evidence to base it on before piling in. That doesn't stop things in the second category fitting into the first automatically, though.

this, basically

sorry, didn't copy and paste in full. THIS, basically:

I think we can broadly all agree that it's possible to commit racist acts through thoughtlessness, carelessness, ignorance, 'good intentions', etc. In those situation there shouldn't need to be any burden of proof, benefit of the doubt, etc. The act stands alone.

Where a malicious motive is implied, it's understandable that people are going to want to have some kind of evidence to base it on before piling in. That doesn't stop things in the second category fitting into the first automatically, though.

Sometimes racists are just, y'know, racist, and sometimes they're intentionally racist! It's really important to always give white men the benefit of the doubt when establishing which it is!

whether or not this video paints street harassment as a cultural issue, or a class issue, or whatever, I think it is easy to buy into the argument someone made upthread about how street harassment remains invisible and unreported when it's happening to women of color, & only becomes 'an issue' when gentrification throws white women into contact with men who have been harassing their less-visible sisters for years--THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT 'THOSE MEN' OR 'THEIR CULTURE' ARE THE PROBLEM--it is far more productive to think of this as a public-health/policing issue, in which case it would just be another ugly symptom of persistent underinvestment & lack of public spending in minority communities

xp to noone in particular

sorry I had to deal with my toilet backing up this morning so I started drinking very early, apologies if I'm not really making sense, what werere we talking about

Experiencing racism sucks about a billion times more than being called a racist. I'll never understand why people are more defensive about being called a racist than they are about offending other groups. Totally self-absorbed nonsense.

― Cousin Slappy, Friday, October 31, 2014 3:50 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Basically.

xp NO, that is a lot of the problem with this shit, you've basically got it.

it is far more productive to think of this as a public-health/policing issue, in which case it would just be another ugly symptom of persistent underinvestment & lack of public spending in minority communities

My/our take is that it's a public MENTAL health problem, ie a masculinity problem. The only real solution is a transformation away from that kind of masculinity being broadly accepted as normative. Criminalizing men who street harass is not a solution. Calling them "creeps" and "pervs" and writing them off is not a solution. Excluding them from the idealized community that you envision is not a solution...unless due to race & class lines they weren't part of your vision of the future IN THE FIRST PLACE so you don't perceive any costs when you exclude them because they're not part of "your" community anyway.

Sometimes racists are just, y'know, racist, and sometimes they're intentionally racist! It's really important to always give white men the benefit of the doubt when establishing which it is!

It is if you want to address the issues effectively. Sometimes people need to be educated on why their behaviour / attitudes are racist because they genuinely don't understand, sometimes people need to be stigmatised and ostracised. It doesn't change the nature of the offence but does feed into the nature of the response.

street harassment remains invisible and unreported when it's happening to women of color, & only becomes 'an issue' when gentrification throws white women into contact with men who have been harassing their less-visible sisters for years

It is literally impossible to say this enough times btw.

With, as an addendum, the fact that white men toooootally street harass too, but men generally street harass women who they think aren't powerful enough to successfully object, ie white dudes harass women of identities that they think they can get away with, in places where they feel comfortable doing so. And bc they have power in private spaces too, to some extent they basically offshore their harassment to places other than the street.

a bunch of white people telling a bunch of non-white people that their men are sexist and need to change their behavior is never going to go well, change has to come from within etc.

Yeah no shit where do you think my entire analysis and commentary on this came from?

was odd talking about this w my wife last night in that I was the one taking the more feminist position and she was like "eh, this stuff happens I don't let it bother me, I'm not going to change those men's behavior by engaging w them (which more often than not will just create a worse/more threatening situation)". we did both agree that kind of the most personal, directly effective thing we can do is raise our son to not be a sexist asshole.

xp

He wrote, “We got a fair amount of white guys, but for whatever reason, a lot of what they said was in passing, or off camera,” or was ruined by a siren or other noise. The final product, he writes, “is not a perfect representation of everything that happened.”

Z S, how is this in any way ambiguous or open to interpretation? Dude baldly states "I edited out a lot of footage of white guys catcalling" and you're reacting to people's (in my view understandable) "that's kind of fucked up" response, especially given that his excuse is undercut by the fact that the entire video is subtitled.

Yeah, that is the weirdest point. This is about a white guy making a video of black guys harassing, and people are saying we should be careful how we critisize the white guy, or he'll never learn? Like, did the black guys just become invisible all of a sudden?

xxp Your wife otm tho, a woman's safety is the most important thing, and we all do what we need to, reach the compromises we need to get on w our lives. And one on one engagement is a big risk as a woman, plus a huge amount of work and also not your fucking job when someone just verbally assaulted you. It really takes a group to share their strengths and hold each other up and spread the work out, I think. I mean community organizing 101 obv.

Z S, how is this in any way ambiguous or open to interpretation? Dude baldly states "I edited out a lot of footage of white guys catcalling" and you're reacting to people's (in my view understandable) "that's kind of fucked up" response, especially given that his excuse is undercut by the fact that the entire video is subtitled.

if you have a bunch of off-camera audio of white guys saying terrible things, you'd have to label to subtitle it something like

White Guy: "Hey Sexy Thing"

in order to show that it was a white guy saying it. and that would be weird, because then you'd have to do the same thing for all of the off-camera harassment audio. and also off-camera footage just isn't very effective, i imagine - you need to the person doing it. so it's easy for me to see how an editor would come to the conclusion that they just shouldn't include any off-camera stuff. and given that the raw footage was captured pretty haphazardly (back of backpack style) it's easy for me to see how they'd have a lot of off-camera stuff they just couldn't use. i dunno, i guess that line of reasoning appears to be jumping through hoops for the rich white racist asshole, but it seems very plausible to me.

ugh, missing words syndrome yet again, sorry. i meant

"and also off-camera footage just isn't very effective, i imagine - you need to SEE the person doing it."

i guess that line of reasoning appears to be jumping through hoops for the rich white racist asshole

Yes. Yes it does. Also this is the point at which maybe you have to reexamine the WHOLE PROJECT because if it just leads to confirm your existing biases there's PROBABLY SOMETHING WRONG WITH IT.

And I think liberation is antithetical to transaction--I don't think liberation can be bought AT ALL.

such a t-bomb. and great posts from b. bell. the idea of a white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy from bell hooks keeps echoing around in my head wrt all this. the proof is around/in us all the time.

Dude baldly states "I edited out a lot of footage of white guys catcalling"

also, he doesn't state this! here are his relevant bits from Slate:

“We got a fair amount of white guys, but for whatever reason, a lot of what they said was in passing, or off camera,” or was ruined by a siren or other noise. The final product, he writes, “is not a perfect representation of everything that happened.” That may be true but if you find yourself editing out all the catcalling white guys, maybe you should try another take.

he doesn't say he "edited out a lot of footage of white guys catcalling" - the writer says that.

if you have a bunch of off-camera audio of white guys saying terrible things, you'd have to label to subtitle it something like

White Guy: "Hey Sexy Thing"

in order to show that it was a white guy saying it. and that would be weird, because then you'd have to do the same thing for all of the off-camera harassment audio. and also off-camera footage just isn't very effective, i imagine - you need to the person doing it. so it's easy for me to see how an editor would come to the conclusion that they just shouldn't include any off-camera stuff. and given that the raw footage was captured pretty haphazardly (back of backpack style) it's easy for me to see how they'd have a lot of off-camera stuff they just couldn't use. i dunno, i guess that line of reasoning appears to be jumping through hoops for the rich white racist asshole, but it seems very plausible to me.

I'm going to repost the actual quote with some added emphasis:

He wrote, “We got a fair amount of white guys, but for whatever reason, a lot of what they said was in passing, or off camera,” or was ruined by a siren or other noise. The final product, he writes, “is not a perfect representation of everything that happened.”

You're focusing on the "off camera" part and ignoring the "in passing" part that precedes it, a description which is true of virtually all of the footage shown in the video aside from the two dudes who followed her.

also are you unfamiliar with paraphrasing or just being really stupid here

"We got a fair amount of white guys [who presumably were catcalling since that was what we were attempting to capture with this video], but for whatever reason, a lot of what they aid was in passing, or off camera [so they were edited out]" yes I am making an assumption here but it seems to be a reasonable one to make?

ZS you are in contenderizer territory here, just go down and stay down, honestly. You're in the wrong on this one and you may need to work through that and you should do that on your own terms but don't do it by throwing yourself against the wall here again and again.

Things can exist on a personal level; things can exist on a systemic level. Existing on one of those levels does not preclude it existing on others.

I understand the point about being pragmatic, but when responses to racism basically boil down to "but we need to figure out how to make this argument more ~palatable~ to white people" it just makes me feel like such a fundamental point has been missed. This is not about ~sparing out feelings~. It's about acknowledging our part in something which is larger than just us.

Your wife otm tho, a woman's safety is the most important thing

well yeah of course, I was just surprised how she was v dismissive of the video being made at all, she was very "eh dgaf, not important". Granted she is a hardened citybilly and mother of two and I'm sure she a) doesn't get it as much as she did when she was younger and b) has been dealing w it for so long that it no longer phases her/she's not even aware of it

many xxp

i feel like i'm under pressure to say that something that had a 80% probability of occurring actually 100% happened and can be stated as a fact. and that's frustrating, especially when there are many other constructive things that can be said (and have been) without venturing into the land of assumptions. if somehow there was a way to prove this one way or another, i would certainly make a bet that Bliss made racist editing decisions on purpose. for sure. based off of his background, and what he said, it seems more likely than not. but having a hunch about something is different than knowing for sure.

but if i'm in contenderizer territory i must have made major mistakes somewhere along the way, so i'll just stfu.

Patriarchy and street harassment are real, scary, and dangerous. It doesn’t take a graduate degree in gender studies to understand that calling out and making comments about strangers passing on the street is not positive social behavior. It’s an exercise of male dominance and power that can easily lead to threats of violence and assault. But so too are the media images and narratives that single out “blackness” as its own threat to white security, selectively culling and dismissing the behavior of everyone else, are their own exercise of white supremacy.
They contribute to the illusion that black criminality and threats are present on every street corner, they justify the biased policing of brown and black male bodies, and they reinforce age-old myths about black hyper-sexuality and lasciviousness. Furthermore, they marginalize the experiences of black and brown women in the very same spaces.
Let’s end street harassment, for sure—but let’s do it for all of us.

That's from http://qz.com/289449/women-of-color-are-upset-over-the-catcalling-video-but-not-why-you-think/

Sorry on phone so can't format better

oh good a "not why you think" article.

That's a great article!

i feel like i'm under pressure to say that something that had a 80% probability of occurring actually 100% happened and can be stated as a fact. and that's frustrating, especially when there are many other constructive things that can be said (and have been) without venturing into the land of assumptions. if somehow there was a way to prove this one way or another, i would certainly make a bet that Bliss made racist editing decisions on purpose. for sure. based off of his background, and what he said, it seems more likely than not. but having a hunch about something is different than knowing for sure.

but if i'm in contenderizer territory i must have made major mistakes somewhere along the way, so i'll just stfu.

I'm not talking about intent. I'm talking about the artifact he produced, reviewed, and decided to put out to the world. I understand that deflection drives part of my objection, but I don't think it drives all of it.

in reference to white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy and what io and b. bell have been saying so clearly here, it's a problem when one point of that triangle is singled out using the other(s) as leverage (the transactional concept io brings up) (+ intent is a moot point!), that's a zero sum game, and the problem is not discussion about why that's a problem.

and djp too.

i feel like i'm under pressure to say that something that had a 80% probability of occurring actually 100% happened

Yeah but it doesnt feel right does it? sure its not 100% certain and you cant prove it, but it doesnt sit right. why is your first inclination to defend this person, to look for 'well maybe the equipment wasnt so good that day", even though 80% of you thinks thats not really true. I understand wanting a higher percentage in your mind before criticizing, but what is it thats making you sign your name to flimsy excuses you don't seem convinced of even yourself, to defend a guy that you've no real reason to align yourself with. This is what is confusing to me

do you need 100% proof that a guy that pushes you out of the way on the subway is kind of a dick, or well it could be he has problems with spacial awareness

One thing I hope doesn't get lost in all of this is that catcalling sucks and dudes really need to reacquaint themselves with the concept of "death by a thousand papercuts" before getting all "what, you can't even say 'hello'?" defensive.

such a t-bomb. and great posts from b. bell. the idea of a white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy from bell hooks keeps echoing around in my head wrt all this. the proof is around/in us all the time.

― mattresslessness, Friday, October 31, 2014 4:49 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thank you thank you! I was just talking it over w one of my anti-street harassment community org sisters last night and that distillation came to me. I was trying to see La Lechera's point about effectiveness and the basic truths that resonate w people and their right to feel that validation and be part of something but where does the responsibility actually lie and why do I care so much? In a way that is as simple as possible. And boom. :D

xp I am not even talking to those guys anymore, I did that for most of yesterday and I was SO REASONABLE AND CALM and I am done.

I understand the point about being pragmatic, but when responses to racism basically boil down to "but we need to figure out how to make this argument more ~palatable~ to white people" it just makes me feel like such a fundamental point has been missed. This is not about ~sparing out feelings~. It's about acknowledging our part in something which is larger than just us.

I'm not sure if you can ever get the message that acts can be racist without racist intentions accepted and understood unless you uncouple it, to some extent, from the broadly accepted message that overtly racist acts are socially unacceptable, though. It's not simply soft-peddling a hard truth that could otherwise be made more effective with forceful delivery, it's explaining the very basic point that 'i didn't mean it to be racist' doesn't mean it wasn't racist to people who have no conception of that reality.

The starting point you're working with (and correct me if i'm wrong) is that most / all white people are both personally racist and complicit in broader systems of racist oppression but can make an effort to educate themselves and limit (but not necessarily remove entirely) the negative effects. Act stemming from those failings are by definition racist but are not necessarily de facto evidence of any greater personal shortcomings than exist in the man on the Clapham omnibus. Focusing on the individual and not the act isn't helpful. That's probably true but that's not the starting point that most people are currently working with.

The video maker may be overtly racist, there's a case to be made for that on the evidence available, so may not be the best example here, but the broader idea that the benefit of the doubt should be extended on malicious intent but that this doesn't mean removing racism from the agenda when that intent's not there, or not proven, seems like the best way to start most conversations around grey areas.

tl:dr but the gist is that the failure to distinguish between overt and systematic /endemic racism makes it's harder to convince a lot of people that systematic / endemic racism exists.

The problem with this video is that even though it claims to speak for the experience of all women, the women who are disproportionately affected by street harassment are nowhere to be seen. If this video had featured a woman of color, one who belonged to the LGBTQ community, there would have been a better representation of what the most common victims of harassment actually face. But who knows if a video like that would have garnered as much sympathy, or as many donations? Well, Hollaback probably knows, which is exactly why they endorsed this white-washed version rather than depicting a day in the life of someone who is far more likely to be victimized.

Don't think this Brooklyn Mag article has been shared here yet? But the above conclusion seems very otm to me.

Love that. My friend just said last night that she felt it was financially motivated and extra gross when she saw the appeal for donations at the end, which tbh I had just ignored so hard I didn't even notice it.

Yeah but it doesnt feel right does it? sure its not 100% certain and you cant prove it, but it doesnt sit right. why is your first inclination to defend this person, to look for 'well maybe the equipment wasnt so good that day", even though 80% of you thinks thats not really true. I understand wanting a higher percentage in your mind before criticizing, but what is it thats making you sign your name to flimsy excuses you don't seem convinced of even yourself, to defend a guy that you've no real reason to align yourself with. This is what is confusing to me

do you need 100% proof that a guy that pushes you out of the way on the subway is kind of a dick, or well it could be he has problems with spacial awareness

i think there is plenty of indisputable evidence of Bliss' background of assholeishness, and plenty of indisputable reasons to criticize the end result of the video (the racial inbalance), and that it's very useful to draw connections between these two things. that's already a powerful argument! my problem is extending that stance to headnod along with everyone else that since there's a good chance that he acted intentionally, and he is definitely a dick and the final product has a racial imbalance, then therefore we should all agree that he certainly acted intentionally. why do that? why venture off into making up facts? why not stick with what's already certain, which is already damning for Bliss? i just don't get it, sorry.

also although my first reaction to getting told to stfu is to stfu and hate myself for the rest of the month, since i'm already pissing everyone off i may as well continue the trend by saying it's a really shitty thing to tell someone that they're not allowed to engage in a conversation about something. it makes sense if someone is straight up trolling, so if that's how i'm coming across then i deeply apologize. i realize (PAINFULLY REALIZE) that whether or not he did it intentionally or not ultimately doesn't matter, so i apologize for making that aspect of it more prominent than it needs to be. but i thought it was pretty non-controversial to say that no one can actually prove that he had a bunch of footage and edited it out. but hey, since he probably did it, then he did it. let's just round up to "100% certain", facts don't really matter.

Buddddddddy, I don't think you're trolling and I like you a lot. I think you are WAY over-inspecting something because something about it makes you uncomfortable and you want to turn away the full point of the argument against it, even if you can only splinter off a little bit of it, it seems like a "win." That kind of rhetorical hair-splitting is something we know well around here and we've probably all done it. It's just your turn today. We still love you.

I just wanna echo something that in orbit said above.

Things I've been saying are not my original ideas; I did not come up with them on mine own. These are ideas that I have heard from (and in some cases discussed with) Women of Colour, and I want to acknowledge their role in shaping - and relearning - my thoughts on these issues. Most of them are women I follow on twitter through a shared interest in music or pop culture, who have opened my eyes - J., Rana, Chitra, Bim, Reni and others. These ideas come from blogosphere people like Sara Ahmed and Flavia Dzodan. These ideas come from reading books by bell hooks and Angela Y Davis and a primer on Black Feminist Thought which included many other writers (like Audrey Lorde) whose works are harder to find in the UK. They come from blogs like Gradient Lair and Racalicious and Crunk Feminist Collective. And many other tweeters and writers whose names are escaping me right now but whose words and experiences are cycled constantly by the labour of women of colour. These are their ideas, I am not claiming them as mine own.

It's not that I don't appreciate a shout-out from mattresslessness, it's that I am not the one who deserves it. I agree with these arguments, I support them - and I am also painfully aware that as a white woman, I am far more likely to be listened to by white men than women of colour are.

Also who the fuck cares what his intentions were? I don't. The product he created is racist, it is undeniably influenced by unexamined racist beliefs whether the creator knowingly espouses them or not. Okay. No one cares. The influence of the product is to increase inequality, or to privilege one kind of "equality" against another kind in a perceived zero-sum game. That's shitty anti-oppression work. If anti-oppression struggle is your job and you put out that, you're doing a bad job at your job. Do better.

but i thought it was pretty non-controversial to say that no one can actually prove that he had a bunch of footage and edited it out.

http://gothamist.com/2014/10/30/how_the_100_catcalls_in_10_hours_st.php

Directly from his own statement:

Was any street harassment footage cut out of the edit? So in total, we had by my estimates 108 street harassments that took place during the shoot. Of that, we got both the quality audio and video we needed to have a scene, for roughly 30 to 40 scenes. The drop off came mostly through the difficulty of this shoot. Not only did we need quality in both pieces, but we frequently missed a shot because of noise, people standing in front of the camera, technical issues (batteries dying, for example), rain/wind, etc.

Since this video was also meant to serve as a viral video, it needed to be short due to internet audience attention spans. So we whittled away at this until we had the video just a tick under two minutes. This left us with just 20 scenes total, 18 of which have someone visible on camera.

[...]

Do you have a response to the race comments/criticisms? I think the biggest misconception here is not understanding how inaccurate a sample size of 18 people is going to be, out of the tens of thousands of cat calls that happen. For example, the two dudes that stalk her, they alone account for 50% of the video, wildly swinging the scales with just two guys. What if they were Italian, or Russian? Does that mean that we're saying or implying that 50% of Italians are responsible for cat calling?

The biggest problem is people are acting like this is a survey, and there's no way anyone would trust such a survey of 18 people, especially with two people making up half the vote. There's no way that's going to be accurate. Like, there's no Asian men in this video either, are we saying that Asians don't catcall? People are drawing way too broad of conclusions. We filmed for a short period of time, we captured a few dozen interactions, and since we knew that they wouldn't necessarily represent the full demographics, we talk at the end of the video about how people from all backgrounds catcalled during our shoot.

Also I can even walk you through it, but there were 6 or 7 white guys in this video that catcalled, that's 33% to 40% percent. It's tricky picking everyone out because all their faces are blurred, which has only lead to more confusion. Additionally, their scenes were short, where those two guys who were non-white, they alone ate up half the video. So the run times yes, heavily portray blacks/Latinos, but the actual number count is much closer. And that's the problem with a 18 person sample size, inaccurate results, which is why this video shouldn't be treated like a survey.

So, by dude's admission, he had usable footage of 30-40 incidents, which was edited down to the video we saw. We don't know the ethnicity of the people whose takes weren't usable and we don't know the ethnicity of the people he decided to cut. We do know the ethnicity of the people he decided to include and particularly the two he chose to highlight, and the impression formed about the video from that decision. So yes, we do know that he edited dudes out, and even if you carry the actual demographics of the guys in the video over to the ones who were cut as opposed to the impact demographics, you can extrapolate that a significant number of them were white. At a bare minimum, it's unlikely to me anyway that ALL of them were non-white.

thanks for posting that DJP, i didn't know that there were more extensive comments available (don't think Slate linked to them)

how was the camera set up? it also stands to reason that they missed the white guys in their shot because they were out there to capture footage that fit their assumptions and never really aimed the camera at white men

it was literally fixed on a backpack, so no

lol

this shit goes deeper than benghazi

(that is a joke btw)

B
E
N
G
H
Also I can even walk you through it, but there were 6 or 7 white guys in this video that catcalled, that's 33% to 40% percent.
Z
I

you jest, but I have actually seen internet comments to the effect of accusing the video of having been faked

but can you PROVE that it hasn't? because unless you can prove with 100% certainty that *death by tomato pelting*

hahaha

the meter was redefined so that the speed of light, stated as 299,792,458 m/s, is 100% accurate, i.e. there are no more significant digits. We only need to redefine '100% racist' wrt this video to be certain that the video is '100% racist'. in other news, there are now halloween costumes that are 2 million % racist.

I saw this one comment that was like "I used to work in a TV news crew and I know for a fact that there is no way to get that steady a shot with a hidden camera, you need a very expensive device called a STEADICAM."

Think it's a pretty standard post-processing techinque to be able to minimize camera shake

U can post process that shit

uh sorry 龜. zing touch.

yeah also I kind of wanted to say "maybe tech has changed a bit since you worked in tv news old man"

it sounds like he went to Tech Day and maybe believed everything that the representative from Steadicam Corp told him

Well, there's this:
http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2014/10/is-catcalling-racist-harrassment/

(misleading URL btw)

Hey, as long as it's a slow day in this thread :/ ... seems this play (and the two segments to follow) might constitute an important epic in our epoch. I'm seeing it in a couple weeks:

http://www.vulture.com/2014/10/theater-review-father-comes-home-from-the-wars.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/theater/father-comes-home-from-the-wars-by-suzan-lori-parks-at-the-public-theater.html

This sounds fascinating and so wholly dependent upon cast/director synergy in order to work that I can't imagine it being performed after this initial run.

Well, I saw the play she won the Pulitzer for about 12 (gasp) years ago, and I don't know if it's had much of a touring / collegiate life? Mos Def was in it.

I'd semi-expect it could transfer to Broadway once this sold-out run is over, but even August Wilson's plays were pretty spotty in that regard, and things are significantly worse for original plays w/out movie stars there now.

karl, i feel for you in this thread

Gradient Lair and Racalicious and Crunk Feminist Collective

All of the above plus bad dominicana,she is the bossssss

sorry to reopen a can of worms, but i wanted to put this set of tweets in here but i couldn't find them again until now:

https://twitter.com/tgirlinterruptd/status/527489366935875584

seen together with this nonsense:

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/10/31/do-we-need-a-law-against-catcalling/street-harassment-law-would-restrict-intimidating-behavior

yet another instance where Official Feminism/Liberalism need to think a little harder about law enforcement

that would be a very, very difficult law to draft reasonably

Criminalization is a terrible failure of an idea, not least because when has criminalizing something ever changed the conditions that lead to it happening?? Plus the obvious racialized costs via the overpolicing of Black & brown people and communities that I've already talked about above.

I'm really hoping that the Hb video has been SO BADLY received in some sectors that it will force a confrontation with SSH and Hb's horrible race politics and slow down/stop the move to legislate against street harassment.

Yeah the last thing police need is another law in their toolbox

I'm just amazed at Hb and Holly Kearl at SSH for their absolute deafness and refusal to engage with Black women/WoC activists about...well anything really. It's just like, why don't you just make a public statement about who your work really is and is not for?? They're not even sorry.

Brittney Cooper from Crunk Feminist Collective playing nice on Chris Hayes the oth night btw, acknowledging the flawed race critique of the video but prioritizing the experiences of all women with SH. HOWEVER I think a Black woman has the required license to make that call--calling on Black men to see the natural relationship between police harassment and gendered street harassment, that both are a revocation of one's rights to a public life, to be a body in public space.

When white women activists try to do that, the effect is to erase Black men's experiences with overpolicing & police brutality and replace them with a store in which ww are the victims (often of Black & brown men, again, in this continuing narrative). But hell, Brittney Cooper can do whatever the hell she wants.

*replace them with a storY

it's a sephora store tho

Well that changes everything.

That entire stream of tweets was a great read.

Oh yeah that was righteous. Then I read the opinion pieces and got distracted by how disgusted I was.

Anything worth bookmarking? I should actually be doing some work today

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh (dear jesus please let me have spelled that correctly) wrote one that was good but could have used even stronger language. The others, not so as you'd notice.

tyty

Okay the ACLU dude was good on the points, now that I went back and read his. The two white women who contributed were abysmal and really embarrassing, unfortunately.

the ACLU guy's points about the negative effects laws like the ones being advocated could have were well worth reading

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/03/jeff-chang-who-we-be_n_6081320.html

Good read, Jeff Chang's the author of Can't Stop Won't Stop which I remember more than a few ilxors love

aaaah I hadn't clicked on the NYT link and didn't realize all four of the pieces under discussion were in one place; I was sitting here half-seriously thinking "why does everyone besides me magically know where to find these things oh wait I might be doing something dumb here"

just for posterity's sake

https://twitter.com/annamilton/status/529067160778575872

Hahaha yessss

awesome

I really loved when you talked about "the opposite of a micro-aggression," that kind of moment of recognition between two people -- the "I see you" moment. I thought that could be a hopeful note to end on.

(Laughs) I think that that's what we're trying to achieve -- we talk a lot about empathy, and of course empathy should lead to recognition. I'm recognizing your struggle, I'm recognizing who you are. I'm not being blind to who you are. And I think that that's ultimately where we all want to get. That should be the product of whatever kind of conversation we're trying to have.

There was an article on Medium this week about "the nod" -- I remember in college I would hang out with a lot of black activists and I would notice that every time they passed another black student on campus they'd nod, and I'd go, "Oh, do you know them? Who's that? I see them around all the time." And they'd go, "I actually don't know." I'd ask "So why do you do that?" and they'd say "Well, you do. You just do it." Or when someone is on stage and they're performing and someone in the audience goes "I see you!" I'd always think about those kinds of cultural practices as being critical to solidarity-building.

^^
"The nod" is still alive, and even in this supposedly enlightened era it's something that can make me feel good when, at times, I feel like some people are afraid of me. I think I did a splicetoday piece on it a while back, I'll have to find it.

i haven't read it yet but will of course bc jeff's dope, but i'm really, really curious how his book squares w/ ideas of afro pessimism (i feel like it wont?)

It is all still about race: Obama hatred, the South and the truth about GOP wins - http://www.salon.com/2014/11/04/it_is_all_still_about_race_obama_hatred_the_south_and_the_truth_about_gop_wins/

Read about how southern whites respond to polls about race. This after I just got done reading a book about George Wallace's campaigns, and all of the intentionally brutal, abusive and unfair things done to black people not much more than fifty years ago. Southern whites bombed and burned black people's homes when they asserted their rights. And THEY'RE "to blame".

http://splicetoday.com/pop-culture/the-nod

true or false, 'the nod' is a nod with the chin and not the forehead?

Good piece xp

i always visualize the nod as the external occipital protuberance dipping back between the shoulders; people who do it from the chin often look like they're sneering to me

Larry: I have a tendency to nod to black people.
Jeff Greene: Wait... what reason would you have to...
Larry: I don't know, I don't know! I just find that I nod to them. More so than white... I never nod to white people.
Jeff Greene: I've never heard of, uh, "white liberal nodding guilt."
Larry: Yeah. It's a way of kind of making contact. You know, like "I'm okay. I'm not one of the bad ones."

I've caught myself doing this too, with similarly vague but positive intentions.

While living in Japan there was a lot of nodding in passing to/from other (visibly) gaijin non-tourists.

Wow

http://blog.angryasianman.com/2014/11/they-assumed-their-adopted-son-was_5.html

http://np.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/2km4et/tifu_by_making_a_stupid_assumption_about_my/

well, that is certainly an interesting situation

On one hand I am very appreciative of their efforts to try to expose their son to what they thought was his culture

On the other hand I wish they would have confirmed that he was of that ethnicity to begin with

I have kinda mixed feelings about their efforts too, I mean, if you're going to raise someone as your son, it seems kind of forced to go out of your way to have them learn all this stuff that is only their "roots" genetically, I mean that's not really how culture works.

The counterpoint to that is that they're gonna be treated as if they're of that culture in America anyway so they might as well have been given the opportunity to know more about it?

If this story is real, it's not only awful but totally weird - like, what kind of person tries so hard to give their adopted kid a great sense of his culture without double checking where his family is actually from?

It's also awful/weird to me that no one ever pointed out this kid's family were Korean during the whole adoption process.

TBF the kid's family were Korean Americans (making the distinction between that and children who were adopted from South Korea directly)

I can't imagine it would be all that damaging from the kids perspective which is probably what matters most, i.e.
"Yeah so my well-meaning foster parents erroneously thought I was of Chinese ancestry and raised me as such. I love them but they're idiots. On the plus side I'm fluent in Mandarin, well versed in Chinese culture and get stacks in red envelopes at new year from my fake uncle and aunt!"

it'd give you a good story to tell

GREAT college essay

do people in norway who adopt children from latvia send them to summer camps with the latvian embassy, teach them latvian folk dances and so forth? almost all of the reasons for intensive acculturation in 'native' culture this well meaning liberal person would cite depend upon their child being a 'visible minority' to use the canadian term

if the kid is clever it's a useful lesson in the arbitrariness of 'roots' 'cultural background' etc, if he is sufficiently inclined he can acculturate as a korean if he wishes

assuming this isnt just made up by a reddit poster

I call hoax. The dad knew the names Park and Kim were Korean when he looked at the adoption papers, are we to believe he never heard or read their names during the entire adoption process? Or was he clueless about last names 17 years ago?

this sounds like total bullshit

Yeah it's the 'visible minority' part that makes me agree w/ the Reddit parents decision to acculturate their child

I've posted a few pieces itt by non-white adoptees who have wished that their parents would have emphasized their ethnic or racial heritage in their upbringing rather than raising them 'colorblind'

The dad knew the names Park and Kim were Korean when he looked at the adoption papers, are we to believe he never heard or read their names during the entire adoption process? Or was he clueless about last names 17 years ago?

― nickn, Thursday, November 6, 2014 4:34 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

TBF this is the kind of knowledge that could come from 17 years of trying to learn more about Chinese culture

I make these mistakes all the time (latest one was w/ the surname Yu which I now know is also a surname in Korean)

I didn't catch how old they were when they did the adoption, so maybe they really didn't know. But Park and Kim are the most common Korean surnames, it seems, like comically so (like naming an Irish character in a book Patrick O'Brien).

I also noticed the comment about how mad they were that it was so easy to adopt a non-white baby compared to a white one. Would these people go to such great lengths to acculturate a "second choice" non-white baby?

Park and Kim are some of the most common Korean surnames yeah but I'd wager not many white Americans would know those surnames as specifically Korean rather than just generic 'Asian'

the bit about the adoption process - judging from what I know of other people who have gone through it - sounds p specious. maybe things were a lot looser/simpler 17 years ago but I kind of doubt it.

the story is probably fictive but the idea that 20 years ago adoption people referred to their prospective child as 'asian' or 'chinese' interchangeably isn't entirely implausible

the child described as 'chinese' to describe nw asian appearance rather than filipino, malay etc etc

Yeah it's been my experience growing up at around the same time this kid was presumably adopted that most kids of East Asian descent were just called 'Chinese'

Think Millennials and post-millennials are using 'Asian' more though

The father also said this, though "...because we live in an area on the west coast where there are a lot of Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Americans have been living for generations and generations." so I assumed he should be somewhat familiar with Asian names.

I can say that a coworker in the 80s didn't know our boss's last name, Kuruma, was Japanese and not Chinese, so it is possible.

just realized I kind of assumed a couple of my new coworkers were Chinese-American so I double-checked to make sure I'm jumping to conclusions. Chen and Chang, I think I'm probably in the clear

Well it's true that there is somewhat of a geographical divide. San Francisco has historically been the site of Chinese immigration, while Korean immigration has focused on LA

Anyway (assuming this is true) he's writing from the perspective of someone who has been spending 17 years at least trying to get to know more about Chinese culture? So I'm not surprised by the ex post facto nature

Also with these matters I'm comfortable in assuming that the average white person is more ignorant w/r/t these matters than less ignorant

Chang is a very common Korean surname and Chen is a spelling variant of another xp

I know nothing

I guess a good example of this would be the brouhaha in last year's thread from J.K. Rowling deciding to name the only East Asian character in her book 'Cho Chang' w/o giving much thought to what connotation it has

whew, google and social media to the rescue

now I'm just wtf @ my coworker with a PhD having the same job title I do

Pro-tip: If Chang is not Korean then he's probably Taiwanese or HK or other Chinese diaspora

you are completely on point, as expected (thanks, linkedin)
Languages:
Chinese
Native or bilingual proficiency
English
Professional working proficiency
Taiwanese
Limited working proficiency

Yeah Taiwanese would have been my first guess based on those two names but Korean would have been second

yeah, not sure where Duh0ng is from but I haven't worked with him much

idk i can't really imagine what it would be like for this kid, but my first thought is that it must be really fucking with his sense of identity? like, what a totally weird situation to grow up fully believing you're chinese, learning the language and culture, regularly visiting the country of your supposed ancestry, only to find out you're korean???

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/06/i-taught-my-black-kids-that-their-elite-upbringing-would-protect-them-from-discrimination-i-was-wrong/

what does cho chang connotate

i def got a wiff of 'white person saying ~chinese sounds~' from that when i first read it

that is the connotation, yeah

Irish girl turned down for South Korea teaching job because of 'alcoholism nature of your kind'

what does cho chang connotate

i def got a wiff of 'white person saying ~chinese sounds~' from that when i first read it

― deej loaf (D-40), Friday, November 7, 2014 3:10 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

It's not quite exactly 'ching chong' but she just sorta took two random East Asian-sounding surnames and stuck them together

max made the point in last year's thread that a lot of characters in the book have names that are evocative of character traits like Draco Malfoy - whereas Cho Chang and Padma and Parvati Patil have names that just signify 'this character is not white'

oh lord I was going to post "ching chong" but when I tried typing it I felt too much guilt to submit post

^ But you just did anyway

you broke the ice

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/07/1342840/--pointergate-may-be-the-most-racist-news-story-of-2014#

This is so bad

(KTSP, not the story)

http://i1253.photobucket.com/albums/hh586/TheDailyLike/tumblr_m5rs96B18h1ryn5npo1_500.gif

More followup on that KTSP story http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/07/mayor-betsy-hodges-gang-sign_n_6120650.html

white republicans on the internet have a surprising depth of knowledge of gang signs in 2014

we made it!

https://twitter.com/DLAGPrez/status/530727433776164865

creep tv reporter wasn't "fooled" by motivated police sources if he wanted to be fooled

https://twitter.com/webster/status/530602073255972864

always down for a S/W joke

https://twitter.com/NickHannula/status/530800149963243520

Lmao

I posted this story to Facebook and one of my douchebag conservative former coworkers posted "Damn Koch brothers!"

Oh goody, they're all taking the day off from casting aspersions on Somalis.

DJP can you make heads or tails of this, or is it "lol liberals"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/06/i-taught-my-black-kids-that-their-elite-upbringing-would-protect-them-from-discrimination-i-was-wrong/

― 龜, Friday, November 7, 2014 3:29 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This almost reads like bad satire of Boule black folk . For someone so well educated his outlook is impossibly naive and I struggle to believe he genuinely thought he could buy and affect his way out of racial prejudice.

1. There are so many black people at Ivy League like this, it's amazing.
2. Once you cross a certain economic threshold, particularly if you have an Ivy League degree to your name, you can exert enough influence on your social contexts (and sometimes your professional contexts as well) that you can remove 95% of the noticeable racial disparity from your everyday life.

Also re: the KSTP thing, I now know why it was my parents' least-favorite local news channel.

People's faith in capitalism is p much always misplaced

It did seem like he was playing a bit of the faux-naiïf or gilding the lily - like the original target publication for this was Princeton Alumni Weekly or w/e

Like I think he knew who his audience was before writing it

xp
1. Yeah I've got relatives like that but I guess they're odd in so many other ways that it doesn't really stick out as part of a noticeable trend plus other black ivy leaguers I know aren't that way at all.

2. Its not so much a racial disparity at play here; the privilege of elite education + money can allow you to bypass a lot of systemic discrimination, but this isn't so much about 'navigating a system'. Here he's referring to specific incidents of verbal abuse and an interposing consciousness of race in daily interactions. He taught his children they would never have to deal with any of that because of their privilege and good manners. "Racial abuse is something that happens to other black people not as good, decent and rich as us, who don't play by the rules." He has essentially instilled in his kids the the idea that racial abuse occurs as a direct response to things that black people do and not because racists are prejudiced and ignorant, and its amazing that dude doesn't seem to fully comprehend why this is so harmful even beyond his sons reaction to the ordeal.

The places where I experienced the worst verbal abuse and ignorant nonsense from white people were boarding schools in the US and UK so while I scoff at his father's convictions, I genuinely feel for his son and I can entirely relate to his insecurities as a young teen trying to temper his racial identity in an environment that can potentially be hostile towards it or misunderstand it. I remember times I bristled but held my tongue because I knew my anger wouldn't resonate with the pervading experience of those around me and I'd be viewed as a pariah. That being said I never felt compelled to understand or legitimize the logic and motivations of racists. My parents didn't necessarily go out of their way to instill in me a great sense of pride but they taught me not to take the existence of racism as cause to look inwards or alter our behaviour. to that end he has to see how he's doing his kids no favours. He struggles to explain abuse to his son not because its particularly complicated or mystifying but because he has willfully blinded himself to the dynamics of racial prejudice.

Also I refuse to believe that his mother actually put chicken and watermelon in his lunchbox when he was a kid. Its stuff like that throughout that makes the thing read like an ill considered but weirdly elaborate Onion article.

http://features.columbiaspectator.com/eye/2014/11/06/studying-while-black/

It would be a shame for that article to be ignored because of the awful, awful writing.

Wow you criticized a college student for their writing. You're fearless

Wow, you sure stuck it to The Man (me), my brother in fearlessness.

I only commented on the writing because the article is very, very difficult for me to read w/o rolling my eyes at the writing, and it is not a subject I want to roll my eyes at.

But you're right, Columbia isn't known for its journalism program, is it?

I think it's a curiously unengaging article given the subject matter but I don't have a particular issue with how it's written. I'm just fatigued by confirmation that being smart doesn't matter.

Yeah this piece and the Washington Post piece really drive home the fact that respectability politics is a shell game

I don't get what's so bad about the writing?

xxxp Oh okay.

ven in every mildly heartening, on-the-spot victory like Walker’s, many black students walk away with the distinct impression of a racist social system that extends beyond the confines of whatever words they exchange with a uniformed guard

Even when you win, you lose. It must be exhausting.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/11/navell-gordon-kstp_n_6141238.html

Navell Gordon from 'Pointergate'

Remember the argument we had last year about whether Kim Kardashian was white?

http://thegrio.com/2014/05/08/kim-kardashian-racism-baby-north/

Does lex even check this thread

the kardashians are white - just look at how popular their show is

― you are not a better writer than f. scott fitzgerald. you are not a b (k3vin k.), Wednesday, 22 May 2013 15:19 (1 year ago)

Not since the Dzhokar Tsarnaev argument, apparently.

The Kardashians are secret Muslims?

http://www.theawl.com/2014/11/serial-and-white-reporter-privilege

interesting to see a discussion like this take place in the comments of a well-heeled section of the awl rather than the typical easy targets

It gets worse. Also in the second episode of Serial, Koenig reads passages from Hae’s diary. Koenig notes, “Her diary, by the way—well I’m not exactly sure what I expected her diary to be like but—it’s such a teenage girls diary.” (My emphasis added.) This statement seems to suggest a colorblind ideal: In Koenig’s Baltimore, kids will be kids, regardless of race or background. But I imagine there are many listeners—especially amongst people of color—who pause and ask, “Wait, what did you expect her diary to be like?” or “Why do you feel the need to point out that a Korean teenage girl’s diary is just like a teenage girl’s diary?” and perhaps, most importantly, “Where does your model for ‘such a teenage girl’s diary’ come from?”

This is kind of a weird reading. Seems like she was saying "I read a murdered girl's diary and was surprised that it was just your standard teenage girl's diary. But then, what was I expecting?"

Yeah, that seems like a weird thing to pounce on.

I dunno, that's something you probably get more attuned to when you're not the norm, and people are always going around like "Your English is so good!" or whatever, all the time.

kind of a weird way to put it. i imagine many listeners would have thought that. okay. i agreed with other parts of the article while still thinking koenig did a decent job with this stuff but i interpret the diary comment to be like, wow, i'm reading stuff a dead person wrote, and it's just like a normal teenage girl.

Yeah, me too. But I'm open to being told that things that I don't see holding meaning can hold meaning for ppl whose experiences are different. Obv?

Haven't heard the podcast but I think he points out that it's the accumulation of little things like this, coupled with the judgment of Chaudry, the person who originally reached out to Koenig about the story, that Koenig is not coming at this story the right way

Agree that the examples he gave are sort of limp on their own (esp to someone who hasn't heard the podcast) and it's very possible that they ring more resonantly to someone who's familiar with the material + talked to Chaudry

word yeah i agree, maybe not the best example but kind of beside the pt.

full disclosure im a "fan" of JCK but I think he's done a nuanced take on this ... at some level i get some of the consternation in the comments bc its like, well, unfortunately not everyone can go to book-length detail on every reported story, and the problem is quite evidently at the level of hiring practices & opportunity throughout the system which isn't something an individual reporter can answer for; as a reporter, you have to be able to step out of your comfort zone bc its the nature of the job, a foreign correspondent is by definition an outsider ... that said i'm not sure how you operate a lever on those hiring practices without calling out examples of the drawbacks of predominantly white staff when u see them. alternately if the point is 'do better by your subjects' then obv that's something everyone can get behind but doesnt really answer the concern about diverse news rooms, or implies that knowledge/experience can 'make up' for a lack of diversity which is obv also not the case ...

idk, interesting subject / nb i have not listened to the podcast but it's been fun watching the responses as they mutate

There's def. something to be said about a white reporter trying to throw in doubt the verdict of a majority black jury and cast a bunch of guilty vibes at Jay, the black kid who testified against Adnan.

http://urltv.tv/nigga-please-a-response-to-piers-morgan-by-talib-kweli/

Good read.

Yes that is very good

That looks like a stolen content farm version. Original is here https://medium.com/cuepoint/nigga-please-93b5d29a615

good article +1

hmmm http://jaimegreen.net/post/102812521331/the-problem-with-the-problems-with-serial

bang bang https://medium.com/@jaycaspiankang/the-problem-with-the-problems-with-the-problems-with-serial-bf50970772af

yeesh whole thing got ridiculous quickly: http://observer.com/2014/11/no-privilege-needed-in-defense-of-serial/

free jay kang

deej have you listened to the podcast in question yet

i wont guarantee its 100% free of problematic narration but i will promise you its a more rewarding experience than reading and sharing multiple think-pieces about a program you have not listened to yourself

agree

I haven't listened to Serial but pointing out the "whiteness" and "privilege" of any particular NPR program just seems like a fish-in-barrel exercise and a waste of effort unless there is something REALLY problematic about it.

Well I think you can make an exception given the subject matter of this particular NPR program

by some measures Serial is The Biggest Podcast Of All Time with unprecedented audiences and attention and is a story about minorities and immigrants being told by white people so obviously there's something to examine there that could magnify a greater dynamic or societal prejudice but, man....

(btw i am white, but) when i heard SK refer to HML's diary as "SUCH a teenage girl's diary" i read it as a middle aged person observing ~the world of young people~ and not "wow, turns out this Korean girl was actually pretty normal"

i feel like Kang might have had a good personal essay along the lines of "being a minority, when i hear ____ i think ____ when dominant culture thinks ____" that would have been an enriching and interesting take to read and reflect on in the wake of this huge podcast that's getting lots of attention.

instead he's feeding the old reliable internet outrage machine by zeroing in on one or two lines (out of literally hours of nuanced and exhaustive reporting) that he's listening to with a very unforgiving ear and labeling them as problematic

agreed. He may have a point or two to make but he really shot his argument in the foot with that diary example.

i feel like Kang might have had a good personal essay along the lines of "being a minority, when i hear ____ i think ____ when dominant culture thinks ____" that would have been an enriching and interesting take to read and reflect on in the wake of this huge podcast that's getting lots of attention.

― ✓ out this insane nakh yall (gr8080), Wednesday, November 19, 2014 12:17 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

http://worthopedia.s3.amazonaws.com/images/thumbnails2/1/0511/28/1_bdba10d629b049dfd30d97bd87bd523d.jpg

I'm sure the next time "a minority" needs to know what to think they'll call you, gr8080.

the problem with gr8080's post

i kind of feel like i was echoing your post upthread, io.

i can see how it was said in a shitty way though.

committing to serial feels like committing to yet another TV show

im not avoiding serial bc it is problematic, or something, lol @ the idea of that keeping me from being interested in almost any pop culture

I'm a minority. I have listened to the first five of these podcasts. Is there something just slightly icky, from a racial perspective, about Serial? (If I wasn't used to the general NPR ethos it would probably irk me more, and even then probably just from a tonal perspective.) Sure, a little, but not to the extent that we need 3,000,000 think pieces about it. Ridiculous.

(Seriously, let's have 3,000,000 think pieces about the Keystone pipeline or sexism or the late capitalism circle jerk. Those we NEED.)

Well we can have both, it's not either/or

The Internet is not going to kaput once Peak Thinkpiece happens

I know, I know. It all just seems silly.

This podcast seems to be taking over all my social media feeds (I'm assuming it's coming towards a narrative climax) so I think it's understandable if there's some blowback?

honestly i was icked out just by the title - serial - which seems to like an invite for the audience to treat ongoing investigative journalism into a real-life murder as a popcorn whodunit. can't speak to the content but the concept sounds like some Kickstarter Truman Capote shit - "now you don't have to wait until i've finished doing my work before enjoying the juicy deets!" it's possible i'm assuming too much, but i've been surprised that the blowback is just over whether the reporter/host is missing some racial aspects, and not the enterprise as a whole.

(and as suggested by the truman capote ref i'm not suggesting that the enjoyment of true crime as popcorn is new or something i'm above - just that this new twist on it isn't one i'm excited to get it on)

xxpost ha ha I wish there was going to be a narrative climax.

For real, there were some questionables in the episode last week, where she made a black juror seem like a dupe, and there was all this "Jay was black...but he listened to Rage Against the Machine!" type stuff.

i accept that there are some issues with this thing and i hate arguing against it but the black juror is a bad example too! i cringed most at "jay plays lacrosse" because it was only surprising to her because he's black and also a sign of not understanding baltimore as something i didn't understand when i moved here is black people play lacrosse.

or i should say before i moved here

like this quote from ira glass "We want to give you the same experience you get from a great HBO or Netflix series, where you get caught up with the characters and the thing unfolds week after week, but with a true story, and no pictures. Like House of Cards, but you can enjoy it while you're driving." is it any surprise that people who proudly think like this might also show some cultural insensitivity as well?

even the lacrosse detail could be read as "this complex dude central to this story was a stoner drug dealer but he was also a jock"

It could be read that way but the racial aspect comes across much more strongly imo (just going from what's been posted)

they've got at least 4 episodes to go and i'd imagine at least one or two of those are still being worked on; it would be cool if they devoted one (or a post-script episode) to the meta narrative surrounding the show imo

I didn't know there were a lot of black lacrosse players in Baltimore, doubt most people here did. I mean it's a pretty notoriously white-heavy sport nationally. I am sort of agreeing with Beyerstein on this -- "problematic" is starting to feel like this lazy, cheap word we can throw around when we don't quite want to commit to saying something has serious racial issues but we still want to blog, like a way of scoring internet points for noticing things. What is the point here? If it's that NPR is too white, and that more non-white people need to bring their perspectives to all this reporting, I completely agree! But that's a broader NPR problem. Is the reporting in serial "problematic" in a way that's actually harmful or is it just sort of benignly "problematic" and if it's the latter I kind of shrug at it. If it's really "problematic" then commit to it, explain what's actually problematic about it. If the show as a whole is actually presenting a narrative that gets things wrong in a significant way or that perpetuates harmful ideas about black people or asians or pakistanis or whatever then explain that, but all this "zomg she was surprised that he played lacrosse" stuff feels like pointless gotcha.

i didn't either and don't expect people to but this is a former sun reporter, it just seemed kind of weird. it wasn't meant to be a gotcha though i would accept it would be pointless. thanks though.

i actually felt it was a good example of her lack of sensitivity in that she pointed out all these things about jay as if they were surprising to her, unlike the hae's diary thing which was a totally weak example. i didn't write an article on the awl about it so i'm not sure why you are singling that out.

If the first article had made more people be like Hey maybe I don't understand other people's experiences, I'll take this under consideration, then we wouldn't have 10 thinkpieces about it. What might look to the casual reader like a point-scoring back-and-forth comes out of seriously lazy pushback that basically said, "If you have a problem with the racial lens of this product you're not the target audience." Which kind of proves the first point.

that's the problem though. the first article wasn't that amazing. what if you do take it into consideration and do have a problem with the racial lens of most everything on public radio but you just don't think the thinkpieces are that good. am i part of the problem or part of the solution \(o_o)/

the important thing to remember is that none of this matters. even a little bit.

i think people aren't actually reading JCK's original post

which, btw, never actually uses the word 'problematic'

that's the problem though. the first article wasn't that amazing. what if you do take it into consideration and do have a problem with the racial lens of most everything on public radio but you just don't think the thinkpieces are that good. am i part of the problem or part of the solution \(o_o)/

― flatizza (harbl), Wednesday, November 19, 2014 9:06 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it did seem like the first piece was basically attacking a pillar of how journalism is conducted right now, so it does kind of feel like it's trying to pull the rug up from under you

but i don't know that using Serial as an example is a bad way to make a point just because its true of many other places as well!

The character of Bunk Moreland on the Wire played lacrosse in high school! It comes up in multiple episodes!

Everybody plays fucking lacrosse in parts of Maryland, and not knowing that is culturally ignorant, and expressing surprise that a person of color plays lacrosse adds racism to cultural ignorance. This is NPR.

Bunk Moreland definitely played lacrosse in high school, but don't he and Omar have a laugh at one point about how rare it was for a black kid to play lacrosse?

Found it:

"You was the first brother I ever seen play that sport with a stick. What's it called?"

"Lacrosse, man," Bunk answers. "Prep-school boys used to wet themselves when they'd see old Bunk coming at them."

In Season 2 he came to the detail office wearing his lacrosse sweatshirt and sweatpants, and it was discussed then as well.

i don't feel that that portion of the wire was accurate as it is not rare and no one in maryland would say "that sport with a stick" but anyway this is the most otm post in this thread

the important thing to remember is that none of this matters. even a little bit.

― a total laugh package (s.clover), Wednesday, November 19, 2014 10:27 PM (Yesterday)

fwiw I finally listened to the first ep last night thanks to this thread. Pretty good. Def a trace of that well-meaning-but-sheltered-white-lady thing that you get in a lot of NPR programming, but not to the extent that I thought it harmed the reporting or story. Ultimately I thought that was outweighed by the ways in which the story very much avoids and confounds the *black urban high school* and *immigrant muslim family* tropes you get in a lot of media, including even elsewhere on NPR.

er maybe more suburban high school, wasn't really clear on the geography from the first episode and don't know baltimore too well

Woodlawn is kinda straddling the city/county line.

The trippiest thing for me about this story is that I grew up in Baltimore County and knew people in Woodlawn, plus a lot of the landmarks are familiar. Some of the referenced businesses are places where I shopped, so I'm like "was I served by characters in this story at some point?"

I don't remember if there was a phone booth at Best Buy. BUT...

(Bmore people help me here) Was there a phone booth on the main road leading to Best Buy, near the bus stop, near McDonald's? In my memory there was.

feel free to ignore this bit of small-time twitter racist ugliness, but i wanted to express some admiration for the iron calm of florida tv reporter Tammie Fields:

https://twitter.com/tammiefields/status/535522913013997568

lol @ "open season on whites in America"

jesus...

also, the brass balls of saying 'open season on whites in america' in literally the same breath as mentioning ferguson, where an unarmed black man was shot dead by police.

he meant "open season on [accountability for] white in america", which isn't even happening

whoa, what a dick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDK4Wzy9oIg#

Some good talk about the overuse of 'white privilege' at the ~10:00

Reminded me of why I wasn't really feeling JCK's original piece, or at least the part about 'white reporter privilege'

if you mean it was a rhetorical failing, maybe you're right, but i think his piece overall is describing a complex system and isn't using 'white privilege' in a lazy way

that was an all around enjoyable podcast, though

Chaudry clarifies her comments in the JCK case

http://www.refinery29.com/2014/11/78161/rabia-chaudry-serial-adnan-syed

"Honestly, that piece in The Awl...If I had known that was the angle I would not have interviewed with him. That’s not what I meant when I spoke with him. We all come with certain privilege, that doesn't make you a manipulative or malicious person. To me, that’s not a condemnation of Sarah. It just means she’s a white woman. She put more time and energy and nights away from her family into this case than other Muslim Pakistanis who just walked away.

"As far as the descriptions of Jay, she used his friends' language and quotes in describing him. That’s not Sarah’s language. People can say 'I read a piece that was a very stereotypical of an urban black boy,' but these are the facts. No one is making that up. If that’s how his friends remembered him, then that’s how it is. Sarah didn’t come away with that impression when she met him. She said he was gentle and polite. I don’t agree with these criticisms. The fact that the Serial team is all white means that maybe they won’t quite get some things about Korean culture or our [Muslim] culture, but so what? Then we explain it."

I mean, made to JCK for that Awl piece

I think I agree with this Jeff Yang take:

http://qz.com/300476/serial-can-actually-teach-white-people-how-to-talk-about-race/

Which is why Koenig’s approach actually offers up a valuable lesson for other journalists covering communities to which they do not belong. You may take issue with her sensitivity, or with the effort she makes to immerse herself. What you can’t challenge, however, is the level of transparency she provides regarding her blinkered perspective.

Contrast her befuddled candor with the spectacle we regularly see of television reporters parachuted into erupting hotspots in the Middle East or Africa or Asia—or Ferguson, Missouri—and gravely giving “authoritative” standups, expecting us to accept their instant analysis about the intensely complicated events unfurling around them.

In that light, Koenig’s openness about her cultural ignorance makes her a model by comparison… and not just for white journalists. In listening to the series, I’m finding myself forced to confront a lot of preconceptions and biases I personally have about teenagers of color and about immigrant families and communities—ones that I probably wouldn’t think through as closely if the podcast weren’t being hosted by an oblivious white reporter.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/11/17/363841262/is-beauty-in-the-eye-lid-of-the-beholder?sc=17&f=3
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/11/18/364670361/the-many-stories-behind-the-double-eyelid-surgery

Two part series on double-eyelid surgery

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/11/14/as-chinas-adoptees-return-home-a-new-genre-tells-their-tales/

Had no idea that the number of Chinese adoptees since 1990 was 120,000

just found this in an unrelated search and have spent too long browsing through 70s and 80s edition

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SWzJ_3S6MmkC

read this book review & thought it might interest ilx:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2014/12/empire_of_cotton_a_global_history_by_sven_beckert_is_a_great_history_of.html

Well, Serial today is certainly...thought-provoking.

Seriously, this is probably the right week for this episode to come out and get discussed in public.

looking forward to getting around to that tonight -- there was just a news story about him getting a new appeal (ineffective assistance of counsel based on failure to seek out the alibi witness)

SK basically shoots down the basis for that appeal in this episode--also about 20 minutes on anti-Muslim bias

aw man, spoiler!!!

For real though it sounds like quite a longshot from what I know about ineffective assistance appeals. And I never thought the alibi story itself was that strong in light of other evidence.

More opinion than spoiler

http://www.buzzfeed.com/durgachewbose/finding-myself-in-the-first-person

Good stuff here

http://www.theroot.com/blogs/the_grapevine/2014/12/strange_fruit_pr_firm_vanishes_after_getting_a_history_lesson_from_twitter.html

Wow. That is mind-boggling.

I mean... what

http://www.buzzfeed.com/durgachewbose/finding-myself-in-the-first-person

Good stuff here

― 龜, Monday, 8 December 2014 14:17 (5 hours ago) Permalink

There a certain reverent tone in articles like this that make them incredibly difficult to get through

Strange Fruit was also the name of John Peel's record label for 18 years, of course. Presumably chosen on a similar rationale that the records were outside of the mainstream.