Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

Treeship: The statistics that started the whole debate about life expectancy were always about white people. Black people, as a group, are living longer and longer, though still shorter than white people. If he wanted to talk about general economic misery, he could say 'life expectancy is too low for many groups', but he took a statistic that was true for one race, and made race invisible. Which, again, does not make him a bad person, but it's indicative of how easy it is to turn a white identity into the de facto identity when speaking of class.

darragh, you just threatened that you'd help get me 51'd. You are a pathetic coward.

i would never disagree with you that black people in america face tons of obstacles that whites don't. the discrepancies in our criminal justice system alone are unspeakable and that's just the start of it. our neighborhoods and schools are segregated. but i think that it is worth pointing out that black, white, latino and all other workers are subject to the same brutal economic forces, the same heartless privatization and union busting policies. white and black residents of flint michigan are drinking the same poison water. if we keep arguing about how to frame this reality i don't think we'll ever address it. i also think things like criminal justice reform go hand in hand with addressing poverty and empowering labor organizations.

Fred could you remind us again how you know so much about racial politics in America and how to undo the centuries-spanning injustice of the country's foundational sin, over which a devastating civil war was fought, with one weird trick

I've read Ta-nehisi Coates.

Also, you are currently repeating a debate we've had for fifteen years in Denmark, since our populists became the foundation for the right-wing government in 2001. The US is not the only country in the world where the left is dealing with an identity/class conflict of emphasis.

i agree with fred that we shouldn't go for a kind of race blind new dealism that would overwhelmingly benefit whites. i just also don't think sanders was advocating that. he was more criticizing the kind of identity politics rooted in tokenism, like clinton's glass ceiling rhetoric, or the idea that inequality is fine as long as the people on the top include representatives from various genders and races. while the success of anti-discrimination legislation is important, and must continue and go much further, there are other problems to address too -- problems that affect people of all races and prevent them from leading healthy, fulfilling lives

thanks for new hi-concept dn tris

can y'all, like, grab a smoke, a drink, or listen to the Tribe album? Some of you have been writing words that may or may not turn into sentences since early this morning.

did u really hate nocturnal animals, im missing the spurs game tonight to go see it ffs

yeah go watch it (I hated it)

otm, everyone take a thread break, listen to Tribe

I'm just going to stop to try to figure things out because smarter people have already done so and I'm going to follow their trail ie. Rev. Barber.

Fred could you remind us again how you know so much about racial politics in America and how to undo the centuries-spanning injustice of the country's foundational sin, over which a devastating civil war was fought, with one weird trick

― slathered in cream and covered with stickers (silby), Monday, November 21, 2016 10:14 PM (thirty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've read Ta-nehisi Coates.

― Frederik B, Monday, November 21, 2016 10:19 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

too good. i had to take it, first time I've ever used a display name

lol

Alexis de Wokeville

haha

A+

pretty good

i don't even remember what i was thinking when i came up with my ugly ilx name (collardio etc)

Frederik Douglas... xpost to Treeship 'if we keep arguing about how to frame this reality i don't think we'll ever address it.' It scares me, with guys like Kobach possibly going to lead DHS that people aren't solely focused on the possible damage to so many lives. forget theory for a second. it'll still be there.

Man, Kobach is such good evidence for the theory that sinister motherfuckers actually look sinister.

like most of middle school was spent kicking the shit of people

yeah, exactly lion in winter. and it's hard for me bc i love a good theoretical argument. but right now i feel like, i know who my enemies are. and they aren't the other people on the left who perhaps have a different understanding of the mechanisms of inequality than i do.

yes, that exactly. He has the face of a locker-stuffer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/business/media/trump-summons-tv-figures-for-private-meeting-and-lets-them-have-it.html

so apparently this actually happened?

yeah, i heard katy tur and some bro from the washington post talk about it on msnbc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVg2EJvvlF8

https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/800914868039655425

Republican Congressman from Michigan, speaking out against Trump

Ok, "speaking out" is a bit strong. "Is critical of Trump" probably makes more sense

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/business/media/trump-summons-tv-figures-for-private-meeting-and-lets-them-have-it.html

so apparently this actually happened?

― k3vin k., Tuesday, November 22, 2016 4:29 AM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

his awful twitter fans seem absolutely cock-a-hoop about this, all those people who leave aggro comments below online articles can't believe they have a president who can actually say this stuff to journalists faces

i thought that everyone in america knew they were at least supposed to pretend to believe that the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, should be inviolable.

i really need to stop paying attention to this stuff

Oh hey - http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/putin-moves-his-missiles-in-new-threat-to-europe-fbqpr9m9g

(didn't mean a matter of them slavishly following their mate) xp

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Monday, November 21, 2016 3:47 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

okay cool - sorry for jumping on you. just read very oddly to me in that moment.

to Tracer, re: rural black culture in the south - FWIW not that this captures even 10% of what you're trying to get at, but the cartograms linked up thread, or any map that breaks out results by county/district rather than state, still registers profoundly the black belt. depending what counts as 'country' there is good reason to point up as you do that black rural life, in the here and now (and not just before the great migration) exists and is severely underrepresented in areas like "country music"...

finally, let me just say holy shit at "Alexis de Wokeville"

truly let it not be slept on

^ nice turn of phrase

Have we mentioned that the weirdness of 2016 is never-ending, and Green Day popped up on everybody's FB feeds because they worked in a modified _MDC_ lyric of all bands into their network TV appearance?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiC9ofpzVZw

weird, i went to see MDC last month and they sang the "no trump" version of that song. really felt pretty cathartic to jump around and sing along to that.

no Casino you're right, there IS black country life but it is so thin on the ground, and so completely unrepresented.

LOL @ Fred running amok itt

FP is a bullshit move and always has been, i don't do it anymore even for dolts/tragedians

https://www.bclm.co.uk

the argument w/in black studies etc is that the truth is the reverse; race is a deeper, more deeply rooted issue w/in western philosophy that pre dates capitalism as currently constituted. The argument wd be that class is "conflict" & can be addressed through regulation and reform, but race is an antagonism, unresolvable w/in the current paradigm

D-40 do you have any recommendations for people/pieces addressing this? I've been reading a lot of colonial & imperial history recently but have not come across anything quite like this

To see how almost a century ago Progressive (and progressive) writers elided race, check out Matthew Josephson's The Politicos.

ogmor, IANAD-40, but he did post this link last year: http://www.incognegro.org/afro_pessimism.html

(and a quick Google provided a longer and deeper one: http://www.rhizomes.net/issue29/sexton.html)

Apparently New York Times refused to see Trump to be yelled at. He cancelled the meeting after he accused them of changing the conditions.

the argument w/in black studies etc is that the truth is the reverse; race is a deeper, more deeply rooted issue w/in western philosophy that pre dates capitalism as currently constituted.

not sure this is right? surely race, and hierarchical ideologies around race, were a foundation stone of capitalism as practiced by the western european nations that colonized the new world and exploited it on the backs of slaves and subjugated peoples? this was the precise moment that capitalism emerged from feudalism. it couldn't have happened without an ideology of race.

benedict anderson to thread

I think you're agreeing there?

ha ok good!