that thing white ppl do when they disparage 'white ppl'

Black majority - most of US blacks.

hilarious

lolwat?

I get...zero points for contrarian obtuse bullshit

fuckin'

man oh man

well now i just feel silly being on this thread

i read cane in my modernist lit class too! did you guys read nightwood too?

― max, Friday, April 23, 2010 12:05 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

Tired. You can engage if you disagree. Maybe noise dudes can't?

re: black majority

Wtf else could it mean? Oh, wait, I see what's wrong with that. Is that quoted out of context? Didn't I add a couple of sociological qualifiers.

I get...zero points for contrarian obtuse bullshit

fuckin'

man oh man

― brad whitford's guitar explorations (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Friday, April 23, 2010 1:10 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well, u know, being smart is gay--ask any black youth

bamcquern, why u want to troll + breaked mine <3?

THAT COMMENT WASNT DIRECTED AT YOU IT WAS DIRECTED TO THE FUCKING POSTER WHO HAD JUST BEEN WRITING ABOUT THE BOOK CANE

1000TimesYes Can't believe there's enough boring white ppl in NYC to make High Violet a trending topic. Come back #Beiber, all is forgiven about 1 hour ago via web

When you say things like "black people select entertainment that paints them in a negative light" without acknowledging:

- the history of the entertainment industry in which they are working, which was controlled for years by white people only interested in negative depictions of black people and, to a large degree, still is controlled mostly by white people;

- the fact that depictions of negative situations such as crime, gang violence, poverty, etc in entertainment are not de facto tru-life stories that are directly analogous to experiences in the lives of every black person (I have not looked at statistics recently so I can't authoritatively say whether these experiences impact a majority of black people, but I can say through anecdotal evidence from my extended family of teachers, firemen, banker tellers, parole officers, lawyers, architects, football wives, nurses, engineers, bus drivers, sommeliers, etc. that more of them live crime-free lives than not, and those that do are all concentrated in one city, pointing more towards an issue with an urban area than an intrinsic issue with black people);

- black people are more than just brown and furthermore all people who would likely be classified as "black" in America don't necessarily identify themselves as being part of the same group (see, for example, the kerfuffle in Major League Baseball over African-Americans versus black Hispanics);

... when you start adding these things into the mix, you're talking in empty, useless platitudes with a bunch of ingrained, unchallenged assumptions that I, personally, as an upper-middle-class Ivy League-educated black man who has never been in any real form of poverty or danger yet still considers himself just as much of an African-American as the next person, find immensely dismissive of the fact of my existence and borderline offensive.

xp: okay yes, like that "definitions" post of yours is almost exactly what I'm talking about; I don't really care if you are like "your experience is different" because it is, but there are a significant number of people out there who have had experiences like mine, plus not everyone in the situations you describe react to them the same way, plus talk to any group of white 8th graders and they will ALSO tell you that being smart is gay

like I really don't want to be in a position where I'm defending Tyler Perry but...

wait, I haven't refreshed, but I'm sorry, max, for that engage comment, because I didn't read that whole interaction.

barnes shorts are better, btw

lol this thread

anyway I would say that the phenomenon the thread-starter is discussing is probably just another example of the whole "cynical distance" thing that my man zizek argues is an essential part of any ideological formation. but in general I wish americans would worry less about race and more about class (which would probably also help them arrive at 'better'/more progressive views about race)

dude, max, was correcting my error, mr caps

anyway I would say that the phenomenon the thread-starter is discussing is probably just another example of the whole "cynical distance" thing that my man zizek argues is an essential part of any ideological formation. but in general I wish americans would worry less about race and more about class (which would probably also help them arrive at 'better'/more progressive views about race)

that is fucking super OTM

my man zizek

Daniel, Esq to thread? jk.

1000TimesYes Can't believe there's enough boring white ppl in NYC to make High Violet a trending topic. Come back #Beiber, all is forgiven about 1 hour ago via web

that's the sort of thing i had in mind when starting this thread....

yeah whiney loves to talk about white ppl

Dan, that's all true and well-said, but my orig complaint was not with black people, it was with the structural problems in place that lead to those phenomena. Which is why upthread I mentioned the structural v. behavioral.

when people start thinking about class don't they do the same thing though - everybody looking down on "bourgies" when they themselves are dictionary-definition bourgeoisie - and thinking they're somehow excluded from that definition because they like to talk shit about the category - cf. also "hipster"

text:"white people" AND displayName:Whiney G. Weingarten

which is to say, "this thing people do when they disparage groups to which they belong" is a broader category maybe? and "white" is a red herring here?

that's because people don't know what the word bourgeoisie means

And my original comment was an offhand thing that I guess I figged would be overlooked because it leaned toward the obvious, but instead it was interpreted as, what, lol black people?

- black people are more than just brown and furthermore all people who would likely be classified as "black" in America don't necessarily identify themselves as being part of the same group (see, for example, the kerfuffle in Major League Baseball over African-Americans versus black Hispanics);

Others still are Africans or non-hispanic blacks from the Carribean or Brazilians... So what are some commonalities amongst native African-Americans in the various states and cities?

plus talk to any group of white 8th graders and they will ALSO tell you that being smart is gay

Yeah, but they're just copying the black kids. ;)

& you, Dan, highlighted those structural problems. I didn't meant to elide that fact in my post.

like it's more like something Liz Lemon would do in a 30 Rock episode than real people IRL. (Or I could be totally off-base and there are loads of people who do this.)

i did this last night. :/ a friend asked what i was reading and i told her it was the 33 1/3 book about neutral milk hotel, so that i could talk to my white friends about music. "white friends" meaning some of our specific mutual friends who obsess over indie rock (which i don't really listen to).

xxxxp

So what are some commonalities amongst native African-Americans in the various states and cities?

1. They were born in the US.
2. ...

these friends emailed me this morning about the national btw

2. back in 8th grade they thought being smart was gay

I still think, despite the gay point you make, Dan, that with most black youth (another generalization), there's an unhealthy societal pressure on them to be "black" as a means of fitting in and boosting self-confidence that's not as striking as pressures that average white kids face.

Jordan, did you mean it, or were you uncomfortable about reading a book about a band you felt had a very narrow cultural audience and it was a joke to elide that? (Whether or not that discomfort was appropriate or not.)

com on ppl now smile on ur brother :)

the latter

xp

lol "gay point" - I mean point about white 8th grade kids also thinking smart = gay.

re: crime stats: I read a pretty recent (2009 I think?) book which, IIRC, gave 1 out of 3 as the proportion of young black males (I forget exactly what the age range was for this statistic) currently in jail, on parole, or on probation. just in case anyone was curious.

(Punishing the Poor by Loic Wacquant, if yr interested)

why did thread about white ppl disparaging other white ppl turn into a thread about "black culture" and now crime statistics?

I still think, despite the gay point you make, Dan, that with most black youth (another generalization), there's an unhealthy societal pressure on them to be "black" as a means of fitting in and boosting self-confidence that's not as striking as pressures that average white kids face.

― bamcquern, Friday, April 23, 2010 12:25 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

ok, what's your point?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Franz_Xaver_Winterhalter_King_Louis_Philippe.jpg/210px-Franz_Xaver_Winterhalter_King_Louis_Philippe.jpg

King of Bourgies

bourgeois is just secret code for jewish anyway

why did thread about white ppl disparaging other white ppl turn into a thread about "black culture" and now crime statistics?

I chuckled at the Jewish guy saying, "Keep this thread white!" Also at anyone hoping an ILX thread could remain on topic. Btw, if we're going to talk about black people on this thread, ILX protocol demands that we either start arguing over food or music w/in 40 posts.

bourgeois is just secret code for jewish anyway

And Protestant, btw, at least in France.

I am an authentic white person, please disparage me as you will.

I totally misread "despite the gay point you make" and was about to get mad again.

As far as the average white kid not having the same types of pressures re: conformity and fitting in... Have you not been watching the news for the past decade? Did you forget that Columbine happened? Have you not heard about the case going on right now in MA where 6 teens are being tried for harassing a girl into killing herself? Did you not hear about the woman who cyberbullied one of her daughter's friends into killing herself? I think there is a dangerous level of romanticism both positive and negative in your conception of teenage life in this country that privileges one type of suffering over another, or maybe more to the point only acknowledges one type of suffering as valid.

why did thread about white ppl disparaging other white ppl turn into a thread about "black culture" and now crime statistics?

this is a very funny and pertinent question

& I still think that ongoing disruption of the family unit and community increase the pressure. disruption - prison system, the razing of neighborhoods to build projects, deindustrialization, and other things.

iiijjjj - why did the conversation after my post go in the direction it did instead of toward issues such as Dan brought up in his longer post. Why was there a presumption that I didn't understand those things, that they weren't strongly implied by what I said.

Also - "what's your point?" is not being used sincerely. It's like a kid saying "but why" again and again.

This post is so outdated already

lol, i'm not yelling that the thread should get back on track or something. i think it's relevant that this comes up in this thread. like: "why do some white ppl disparage other white ppl," makes sense would culminate in a discussion about the Wire half-way down the page. cause, ya know, ways of talking about race in America (on ILX?).

Oh, that's a good point, Dan.

have u guys seen the bottle openers they sell overseas

Which I wanted to post before things slid by, but I never meant to distinguish different kinds of suffering as more or less valid than others. The scope is certainly different, though. News stories versus numbers.