privilege as a meme

I mean PS8 isn't really more complicated -- it's still the same issue, i.e. racial and income segregation of housing. One of the results is that the parents in the rich neighborhood are able to do a lot of extra fundraising and pull a lot of strings for their schools. Also more likely to be a non-working parent at home who has time to volunteer and organize, etc.

Yeah the parents at a selective middle school near my public middle school raised something like half a million dollars last year. We raised about $10k, and organizing the fundraiser almost broke our PTA.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/09/06/liu-brooklyn-campus-contract-dispute-faculty-union-tells-400-professors-they-will-be

faculty lockout at LIU brooklyn

Individual faculty members are taking to social media to talk about what it's like to lose a middle-class salary and health insurance overnight.

"This is terrifying," wrote Emily Drabinski, associate professor and coordinator of library instruction at the university. "We talk a lot about privilege in my circles, and the way that privilege insulates people like me from encounters with raw, brutal power, how terrifying and total it is, how people in power can make the difference between living and dying in instants. This is one of those encounters with brute power and its capacity to overwhelm and kill you on a whim. I live a pretty privileged life; I walk about the world as someone who really belongs in it. The police really do want to protect my well-being and my property, and with each passing year of accumulated middle class wealth, the entire economic system seems invested in ensuring my leisure-class pursuits of marathoning and working toward medallion status on my preferred commercial airline. Until it doesn’t. It’s a different thing to know in your body what that means. I am learning a lot this weekend."

yeahp a lot to learn here

The LIU situation is v shameful, and I think "privilege" is just about the last narrative that needs to be explored here, although I can see how that person might feel sort of bewildered and guilty enough to go that route. It almost makes privilege-checking sound like a tool to keep people in line -- "Shut up, you don't have it as bad as those other folks."

This is a really good example of a time when class analysis would be a lot more useful than "privilege" analysis.

who are the scabs - desperate grad students?

As yet I think they're hypothetical. I mean I don't know if they have any yet, let alone enough to fill most of the spots. But yeah, I guess they would be desperate grad students/underemployed PhD's. I can't imagine they really expect to replace all their faculty this way so it's probably more of a power move, but who knows.

xxp adjuncts i think, mordy - and so probably also grad students, given the locale

taken seriously her reflection also seems to point to a pretty unhappy implication of the 'x bodies' discourse when it criss-crosses with privilege-checking discourse, that 'knowing in your body' is treated simultaneously as the guarantor (when the body is one targeted by privilege-sustaining systems) of all kinds of potential political power, if converted appropriately into self-assertion, self-identification, claims to solidarity, etc etc, yet so tied to having actual social/economic experiences that cause it that it can still fundamentally elude people who are swimming in privilege discourse

btw just for context it's the downtown brooklyn campus and not actually out on long island proper, so there are a lot of academic types in the immediate vicinity who I guess could hypothetically scab here, although otoh those types tend to be pretty lefty so I sort of doubt it.

given what i'm making i'd have to have a think about scabbing for an adjuncting gig or not, in principle it would be bad but the unionized academics in my region have not exactly been trying to stem the tide of adjunctification in the first place, so it'd probably be the same old job anyway except with more precarity than normal

fwiw adjuncts can now unionize, a new development

yes i mean they are already included in union contracts at some institutions, but that doesn't change their relative status

Hundreds of Long Island University students walked out of their classes at noon on Thursday to protest the administration’s continued lockout of their professors, a move they say has compromised their education and the rights of students and teachers alike. Many said that classes—taught by an interim staff—were as disorganized this morning as they had been on Wednesday, the first day of the semester.

“We aren’t planning to go back to class at all until our professors are back,” said Sharda Mohammed, 18, a sophomore studying philosophy. “Today I walked into my English class and the guy gave us a syllabus and told us we could leave. He couldn’t even pronounce the names of the books.”

“They are charging us full tuition for this, and they’re not teaching us,” she added. “I was in class for five minutes today.”

Gina Pacifico, a 19-year-old sophomore from Queens, said she had a two-hour organic chemistry lecture in which the instructor left after an unproductive 40 minutes. “He didn’t teach,” Pacifico said. The business school seemed to be less affected by the lockout. Business major Gabriel Torres, 27, said his business classes were “fine, so far.” While Shelleyanne Esquilin, 17, said her professor was running between rooms, essentially trying to teach two classes at once.

lol business school is such bullshit it's the only thing that didn't change

or it did but business students can't tell the difference

man organic chemistry is really something you don't want someone halfassing

Lol business students get jobs lads

thanks for reminding us that capitalism is bullshit

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v87/Inuxx/Franco_zps47m6lhhv.jpg

xp no charge, ironically

HOT DAMN SOMEONE FINALLY NUTSHELLED IT pic.twitter.com/ogYTnXaWMM

— EastCoast (@Gw1Valentine) April 16, 2018

Can't tell if the purpose of this post is to laugh at some element of the discussion or agree with it. Personally I think they're pretty spot on.

in a sense they are. but really any adult who identifies strongly with almost any fictional character is off

you're off

I mean, I don't exactly agree that "Fight Club is my favourite movie" = "I idolize Tyler Durden" but eh, it's not really any worse than most litmus tests that people use when it comes to dating (which I assume is the context for this?).

Have you seen Fight Club recently? I remember loving it in college and finally rewatched it last year after reading all about the russian/alt-right infatuation with it. It's pretty hilarious to rewatch.

Not recently tbf

I remember on 9/11/01 a friend emailed me, "No one's going to watch Fight Club ever again."

They need to add On the Road to that list above.

my favorite movie is Super Troopers...I've always seen myself as sort of a Farva

I'd add every work with a hyper-competent Sherlock Holmes knock-off who is so much smarter than all the dum dums around them

i only like works of fiction about kind, attentive protagonists who take care of all the ppl around them and when sing birds gather round to harmonize

in a sense they are. but really any adult who identifies strongly with almost any fictional character is off

― President Keyes, Wednesday, April 18, 2018 2:41 PM (fifty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm interested in this idea - are there any cases where a person saying "I strongly identify with protagonist x" would cause ppl here to think well of that person? who would the protagonist be?

(I understand that part of the argument is about whether you can love the work without identifying with the protagonist, or can identify with the protagonist without idolizing them/being blind to their faults - but are there good characters to idolize?)

Leo Bloom sort of

I don't think most people would say they identify with a protagonist or the maybe misinterpreted premise/theme of a work, it's implied. That hot damn comment in the original post above I was reading as a sarcastic DUH at first (although that's wrong). I've had this same conversation with other women over the last decade. Oh, your favorite show of all time is Mad Men because Don Draper is so smooth? yikes.

a hyper-competent Sherlock Holmes knock-off who is so much smarter than all the dum dums around them

works of fiction about kind, attentive protagonists who take care of all the ppl around them and when sing birds gather round to harmonize

are there any cases where a person saying "I strongly identify with protagonist x" would cause ppl here to think well of that person? who would the protagonist be?

big ups to j christ + the gospels, historical fiction

he's smart and surrounded by a lot of dum dums, kind to the meek, and billions have been urged to strongly identify with the protag

Saying you "identify" with Jesus is definitely a bigger red flag, typically, than saying you identify with Tyler Durden!

i only like works of fiction about kind, attentive protagonists

Would be interested in encountering more modern literary or film protagonists who are indeed good/kind/heroic.

Or worth emulating in a realistic way (i.e. Jesus is a high bar).

Would be interested in encountering more modern literary or film protagonists who are indeed good/kind/heroic.

https://i.imgur.com/vAlkRnX.jpg

I did like that movie!

i only read parts of the screenplay but it did look good

are there any cases where a person saying "I strongly identify with protagonist x" would cause ppl here to think well of that person?

Pretty much every young adult novel ever written is designed to encourage identification with the main characters and their plights, while teaching lessons about how to become a more competent and compassionate adult.

P.S. I wrote a book in which I am the protagonist. It is non-fiction - to the degree that any book containing humor can be considered non-fiction. Not coincidentally, I identify strongly with the protagonist and also think well of myself. Case closed.

yeah lots of ppl identify with antiheroes

I am the antihero of my own story

poor holden, fidgeting at the end of this lineup of murderous sociopaths.

if a man says he really wants to be a drug kingpin, a godlike genius, a teenage spree killer, an imaginary embodiment of displaced masculine aggression, or to take care of people so that they can be happy without fear? RUN.

The HOT DAMN NUTSHELL tweet has to be a pisstake of the screenshot right

no it’s serious I’m pretty certain

I get the sentiment behind the quoted comment but I don’t think it takes an especially discerning person to see how silly/arbitrary/absurd it would be to literally think that way

she recommends elphabaforpresidentofgallifrey's twitter account and podcasts in the replies so I think the HOT DAMN was sincere

Yeah, as I mentioned above I read it as a sarcastic "no shit" at first and then realized it was sincere.