Rolling 2014 Thread on Race

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.