Rolling 2018 Thread on Race

A lot of people will be dismissive of concepts unless they are presented within the context of implementation. People may agree with it philosophically but be skeptical of how to actually get it done ("the devil is in the details").

A majority are perfectly fine to support Medicare for All *as a concept* without needing a 20-point implementation plan.

I think those concepts are pretty different but if you think we can sell reparations at that level, then great.

Yeah, figuring out the details of a Reparations plan is nothing compared to get a majority of Americans on board.

(though the comparison with Medicare for All is dangerous. I'm still fairly sure a lot of Democrats are jumping aboard fully expecting it to fail once the trade offs become known. One is a feel good concept that's complex in implementation, the other is... let's say more divisive)

I'm not inviting a direct comparison, just saying that getting at least a baseline *familiarity* with the concept out there comes way first.

so i’ve been thinking a lot about the politics of arguing with your friends’ racist families and friends on social media

and i have decided it is more classic than dud

A friend of ours has bought our kids a few childrens' books on activism. I sort of thought they were too mature for my 6 year old but she insisted on me reading them to her. One is about civil disobedience and has various examples of protesters getting arrested etc. I've been sort of concerned that her young mind might take the wrong message away -- that since she hasn't yet gotten the nuance of "police aren't always good," she might think the people getting arrested were bad.

This morning my 6 year old said "I'm glad I don't have brown skin, because then I would protest and get sent to jail." Not sure how to address that. I tried to explain that they wanted to go to jail, and that they didn't do something bad. But I'm not sure she got it.

The “Ordinary People Change The World” series by Brad Meltzer is the balm you and your 6yo need.

xpost she might actually.. totally get it??

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/a-new-lynching-memorial-confronts-americas-history-of-racial-terrorism.html

With brutal, unspeakable violence, white men affirmed their manhood, white communities affirmed their virtue, and the white South, as a whole, affirmed its power. To murder with impunity, in full view of the public, is to claim total authority. On the other side, both black men and black women were shown their essential powerlessness in Southern society. And the extent to which black women were lynched—Mary Turner, for instance was killed with her unborn child for complaining about the lynching of her husband—served to underscore the scant value attached to their lives and “womanly virtue.” If the master-slave relations of the antebellum South were shattered by the Civil War and Reconstruction, then lynching helped recreate them, albeit on more “democratic lines,” as all white Southerners—and not just a select, propertied few—could claim the right to kill. Lynching dramatized the South’s emerging caste system at the same time that it defined its terms.

That rigid caste system may be gone, but the central narrative of lynching—the lie of inherent black criminality—still shapes public life. Just weeks ago, 14-year-old Brennan Walker was shot at after knocking on a door in the predominantly white Rochester Hills, Michigan. The woman at the door thought he was there to rob them, and her husband, who heard her screams, ran down with his shotgun. Walker had simply stopped, on his way to school, to ask for directions. He was lucky. In 2013, 19-year-old Renisha McBride knocked on a door in a Dearborn Heights neighborhood, seeking help after a car crash. The homeowner, Theodore Wafer, opened his door and fired his shotgun, killing her. Compare both incidents to a lynching account presented at the memorial: “A black man was lynched in Millersburg, Ohio, in 1892 for ‘standing around’ in a white neighborhood.”

I have had no reason to ever travel to Montgomery, Alabama, but if I somehow wind up there, https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/ is obviously mandatory.

A collection of other stories on the National Memorial and the Legacy Museum is here: https://eji.org/national-memorial-and-legacy-museum-media

Not related to race, but from what I can tell it looks like there is some pretty impressive architectural / engineering sleight-of-hand going on, in that some of the pillars are structural, even though most of them aren't.

http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/articles/afro-pessimism-and-unlogic-anti-blackness

thought this was absolutely storming piece against 'afro-pessimism' and Americanised conceptions of race, with lots of good stuff on Fanon, race as a technology of imperialism and 'non-black poc'

It's a very good read that kinda convinces me, but then Morbs posted this on the Roseanne thread:

Roseanne should have stuck to saying insanely racist things about Palestinians, which is something that that you can do freely without consequence in the United States for some reason.

— Murtaza Mohammad Hussain (@MazMHussain) May 29, 2018

Anyways, it's fair, careful and incisive. Great read! Even though I'm not sure I buy the overall 'settler colonial' framework, that framework seems kinda disconnected from the actual history of the non-european world. But I need to dive further into that at some point.

Real situation I was just confronted with: what happens when your younger black friends in academia have requested that you (me), a white man, drop "slave" from your vocabulary in favor of "enslaved people" due to the belief that term provides more agency and humanity to the generations of black people who were held in bondage here against their will and without mercy, but then a friend of a friend, an older black woman also in academia, calls you out for using the term "enslaved people" and says her ancestors were indeed slaves and that the softening of the language around that is offensive?

I don't know if this is a young/old divide or not, but the last thing I want to do is show my ass if I ever find myself in this conversational pivot again.

White people problems are barely even problems, I know, but any guidance here would be appreciated.

Adjust your language to different generations? I understand this only works for conversations and not written text and it is painfully obvious but I’ve been in a similar situation when discussing sexual assault with younger and older women in the context of #metoo and thats the only method I found. However, my context is outside academia and those not include written text.

My take: You’re in a unique position to broker and explain the differences in perception that can come from usage. Use your privilege for good, as an educator, but not an arbiter.

Also everyone is allowed to take issue with you as necessary- that’s what being a trust broker means, whenever complicated shit comes up.

My take: You’re in a unique position to broker and explain the differences in perception that can come from usage.

Good answer!

I should point out that I'm in no way involved in academia. I just seem to have found myself fortunate enough to have several scholars in my life.

i've had some fun times reading the alt-papers this week. seattle's stranger has this to say about cameron whitten:

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/06/07/27192471/portland-in-flames-after-alleged-racist-incident-at-vegan-bakery

in the meantime, the portland mercury has this to say about cameron whitten:

https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2018/06/06/20394535/alt-right-trolls-put-local-businesses-on-edge-for-hosting-reparations-happy-hour

Par for the course in Quebec...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/arts/music/protests-shutter-a-show-that-cast-white-singers-as-black-slaves.html

The production bills itself as a “theatrical odyssey” inspired by “traditional African-American slave and work songs.” It also features a nearly all-white cast performing the music. Its director, Mr. Lepage, is white, as is its star Betty Bonifassi. Two of the seven cast members are black, including Kattia Thony, who plays a young black woman searching for the roots of her identity.

On Wednesday, the storm proved too much, and the jazz festival and Ms. Bonifassi canceled the show after only two performances. It had sold more than 8,000 tickets and was scheduled for 16 performances. The festival said it had been “shaken” by the intensity of the response. “We would like to apologize to those who were hurt,” it said in a statement. “It was not our intention at all.”

The anger provoked by the production had been visceral and swift as artists of all stripes asked why Mr. Lepage hadn’t bothered to hire more black actors and singers. The production also raised thorny questions about how to differentiate cultural appreciation from cultural appropriation and accusations, fairly or not, that its white creators had engaged in a modern-day form of blackface.

https://nextshark.com/crazy-rich-asians-poster-vandalized-racist-comments-vancouver-nothing-will-shake-us-says-director/

A theatrical poster of “Crazy Rich Asians” in Vancouver, Canada was vandalized with racist comments ahead of the movie’s opening this month.

Several incidents of racial harassment or low-level assault in Ontario over the last week or two getting shared a lot. I don't know where it's coming from:

https://www.facebook.com/teejay.meer/videos/10156095612873591/UzpfSTgwNTU4MDE2NDoxMDE2MDcyMjg3MzE2MDE2NQ/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/race-incident-london-sobeys-1.4768191
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/white-man-threatens-kill-indian-13000193

Security appear to be restraining or taking away the victims in the first video (about 2 wks old) rather than doing anything against the aggressor.

Guy kept yelling about "my province" which who tf gets that way about Ontario?

I made the mistake of reading the comments on F#A#'s article.

Ugh. Let's hope this won't snowball.

it's bad all around i'd say

National Book Award winner Ibram Kendi has some thoughts, and a new antiracist center in Washington.

The goal is to identify inequalities, identify the policies that create and maintain those inequalities, and propose correctives in six areas: criminal justice, education, economics, health, environment and politics. Kendi also hopes to create an online library of anti-racist thinking. He’s still considering initial projects.

But when he talks about racism, he is not still puzzling out his ideas. Kendi has spent thousands of hours reading thousands of documents, including “some of the most horrific things that have ever been said about black people,” to uncover the origins of racist thought. His words are distilled, precise, authoritative. His voice never rises. He is, temperamentally, an antidote to the heat of the subject matter and the hyperbole of the times.

“We have been taught that ignorance and hate lead to racist ideas, lead to racist policies,” Kendi said. “If the fundamental problem is ignorance and hate, then your solutions are going to be focused on education, and love and persuasion. But of course [Stamped from the Beginning] shows that the actual foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate, but self-interest, particularly economic and political and cultural.” Self-interest drives racist policies that benefit that self-interest. When the policies are challenged because they produce inequalities, racist ideas spring up to justify those policies. Hate flows freely from there.

https://theundefeated.com/features/ibram-kendi-leading-scholar-of-racism-says-education-and-love-are-not-the-answer/

Van Dyke murder trial verdict to be read at any moment.

Guilty, 2nd degree murder.
Guilty of 16 separate counts (one for each shot fired) of aggravated battery with a firearm
Not Guilty of official misconduct

and not guilty on 1st degree murder

weird that we don't have a racism in europe thread so putting this here

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/travel/racism-travel-italy-study-abroad.html

This is a racism thread. It covers racism anywhere. The predominance of US racism as a topic here is merely a byproduct, not a dictate.

it's cuz we're so good at it

youtube is recommending me a video where a young white man with a beard calling himself "the pop song professor" explains the lyrics to "how much a dollar cost"

please try to remember this the next time somebody asks why white people hate themselves

I don't get it.

Also I don't hate myself for being white, I'm not American. Can you please start saying 'why (some) white Americans hate themselves' instead? Thanks.

I don't get it.

― pomenitul

give it a couple years and perhaps the pop song professor will have a video explaining it

I don't get why someone – even, yes, a white dude – explaining that song to people who don't get it is a problem. Not everyone who watches YouTube is American and intimately familiar with your history, for starters.

I haven't seen the video so I have no idea if he does it well, though. But the implication that such a thing is simply inconceivable due to his skin colour is frankly absurd.

pomenitul have you heard the song

I have and I still don't get your point. Why don't you spell it out for me, since I clearly need to have it explained?

because i didn't come here for a stupid internet argument

i'm sorry i insulted someone who turned out to be your favorite streamer or something

Suit yourself. I frankly have no idea what you're talking about at this point and your refusal to accept that only reinforces the notion that, yes, there might be some value in explaining what's going on in that song and in this 'argument' both. There are people out there learning English in part through songs like this one who might be tempted to search for its 'meaning' online, whether on YouTube or elsewhere. I see no harm.

I've never watched this guy's videos. For all I know they're complete shit. I just take issue with the argument that his being a white dude with a beard tackling this topic somehow justifies white self-loathing.

rushomancy laying down the semiology of beards

a really, really sad story, at the intersection of america's problems with guns and racism

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/11/12/1812296/-Chicago-Man-is-Shot-and-Killed-by-Police-For-Being-a-Hero-Security-Guard-While-Black

Jemel Roberson, 26, was working early Sunday at Manny’s Blue Room ― a bar in the predominantly black Chicago suburb of Robbins, Illinois ― when a patron who was part of a drunken group that had been kicked out returned with a gun at 4 a.m. and opened fire, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Several people were shot.

Roberson, who was armed at the time, grabbed one of the men, held him down and waited for police, according to witnesses.

However when the police arrived, one of the officers shot at Roberson, who died later.

[A witness] said the officer shot an innocent man and that people on the scene tried to warn police that Roberson was a security guard.

“Everybody was screaming out, ‘Security!’ He was a security guard ... and they still did their job, and saw a black man with a gun, and basically killed him,” Harris said.

This interview with Wesley Yang is interesting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/17/us/kansas-official-master-race.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

But Mark Loughry, the administrator of Leavenworth County, which is just outside Kansas City, said in a statement that Mr. Klemp’s comments were misconstrued and had nothing to do with Nazism.

Mr. Loughry said Mr. Klemp had used the term “master race” several times in the past year to refer to people with gaps in their front teeth, and his comment was meant to include both Ms. Penelton and himself.

annie olaloku-teriba who wrote the piece on afro-pessimism i linked upthread in may had an interesting interview on the groundings podcast with some particularly interesting stuff on the relationship between afro pessimism, anti blackness and black nationalism

https://groundings.simplecast.fm

Dorchester historical society apologizes, says it's horrified by Christmas card it sent out to advertise an upcoming event. pic.twitter.com/144ukLTxj5

— WBZ NewsRadio (@wbznewsradio) November 27, 2018

I feel like I'm missing something here. I mean, it's obvious they're talking about snow. "Dreaming of a white [fill in the blank]" is an extremely common phrase about hoping it will snow. Why is this so obviously a racist faux pas? Is it because they used "Dorchester" instead of "Christmas"? I guess usually it's Christmas but idk, I still feel like that's a stretch.

by foregrounding it, it puts focus on "innate intelligence" as a specific criterion of human value, whereas, I would like to assume, that as non-sociopaths, we value all humans equally because they are humans, regardless of whether they are born smart, born average, or have intellectual disabilities.

(not the most important point maybe in this discussion, but i suspect the current new republic has shed a LOT of that layer of readership -- it's a very different animal than the rag that marty peretz ran)

(also -- less important still obviously -- but "croissant munching"? come on dude)

who munches croissants ffs? It is not a particularly "munchable" food.

take it to my only good thread i guess: "croissant-munching, latte-sipping": instances of misconceived media-class self-loathing ITT

I definitely agree with you on the speciousness of innate intelligence, sarahell. And (only because it's part of substance of this argument) I might challenge you on the idea that some humans are born 'smart, average, or with learning disabilities,' because I'm not sure that there's even science to back up the idea of those characteristics as plottable on a continuum. I think we've all got some areas of smarts, some idiocies, and some learning disabilities –– whether recognized or not.

I might challenge you on the idea that some humans are born 'smart, average, or with learning disabilities,' because I'm not sure that there's even science to back up the idea of those characteristics as plottable on a continuum. I think we've all got some areas of smarts, some idiocies, and some learning disabilities –– whether recognized or not.

It would not be much of a challenge ... that aspect is also problematic!

I don't even really get what we're arguing. There ARE people making these arguments in terms of facts and scientific inquiry and they should be challenged on those terms so people realize that it's not just a case of uncomfortable or inconvenient truths being quieted for the sake of politeness or shouted down for ideological reasons. People like Pinker already have a platform. Doesn't mean it is the only kind of argument that should be made or the only response to racism.xps

There ARE people making these arguments in terms of facts and scientific inquiry and they should be challenged on those terms

the terms, themselves, are problematic -- it's a standard debate strategy issue. Where do you draw your line? What premises are you going to accept for sake of engagement / debate?

How would you feel watching some smiling academic gently explain why you and your ethnic group are intrinsically lesser?

Doesn't Murray argue something to the effect that we should value all people and that is why we should not be blind to biologically determined differences in intelligence between groups and how they affect people's outcomes when formulating policy? NB I have not read Murray.2xp

There ARE people making these arguments in terms of facts and scientific inquiry and they should be challenged on those terms

Maybe other social scientists can do this? But I certainly can't out-Pinker Pinker, and I doubt many can. He's got vast amounts of cultural capital and holds the moral(izing) and intellectual high ground in every argument he starts, even though he's dead fucking wrong. It's foolhardy to imagine out-platforming him, out-writing him, out academia-ing -him, out-privileging him.

^^ that too! They also enjoy pointing out the intellectual inferiority of cis-women. Even if I were to watch that with the feeling of exceptionalism ... still gross.

(whoops, that was an xp to gyac)

Yep i agree with you & it’s why I just have no time for anyone giving obvious and dangerous charlatans making those arguments.

xps to soda: I am fairly sure, however, we could outflank Pinker on at least one measure...

Idk what you mean, gyac? It is not an imaginative exercise for me. Philippe Rushton was doing that in the 80s.

we should not be blind to biologically determined differences in intelligence between groups and how they affect people's outcomes when formulating policy

the thing is, there are so so so so many other factors that affect people's outcomes in re policy than biologically determined differences in intelligence! Like, this may be super fucking trenchant, but, a cop is not going to give you an IQ test before deciding whether you are a potential threat that requires use of deadly force -- the cop is going to take note if you are black, brown or white.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't get the leap from 'platforming these hateful fuckers is bad' (ditto) to 'doing more to educate the general public about why racism is scientifically unfounded in addition to being ethically wrong is bad'.

Yeah, I'm not saying it's a good argument (at all!), just that "we should value everyone, forget intelligence" alone may not be enough.xp otm

i haven't followed this conversation closely, but i would guess that the thought was that an honest effort to educate the general public about why racism is scientifically unfounded can end up providing a platform for the disinformers.

that is generally why, in a very different debate, it is not a good idea for climate scientists to "debate" the climate deniers. the uninformed public shuts down whenever it starts to get academically or numerically complicated, and come away with the thought "oh, well i guess it's still unsettled"

xp

Idk what you mean, gyac? It is not an imaginative exercise for me. Philippe Rushton was doing that in the 80s.

however, the possibility of that kind of thing happening does not imply that educating the public about the scientifically rong aspects of racism is a bad idea. but attempting to "educate" anyone is perilous when there is an active disinformation campaign going on, because that is also their stated angle: "we're trying to educate people!"

xp to self and pomenitul

Yes, Karl Malone – I agree. In the Western world of 2020, basically anybody who believes (or purports to believe) in the tenets of scientific racism, or a strictly biological basis for race (intelligence, r/K, etc.,) is either profoundly ignorant, manipulative, or just masking antique bigotries in pseudo-acceptable terms. A well-built argument isn't going to change anybody's mind, because the initial argument's being made in bad faith resting on garbage science.

But if you allow that there is such a thing as garbage science then surely that means it's demonstrable? Why shouldn't it be demonstrated then? In schools, for example.

They're being given jobs in the British goverment, I call that pretty mainstream.

in my mind, social justice / political advocacy is a lot about choosing one's battles wisely. I remember back in grad school (20+ years ago), taking a required media ethics course that partly focused on "agenda-setting" -- which, at the time, seemed kinda "duh whatever" -- but is actually super relevant and important. Like, why focus on this? Why give the racists a platform on this issue? Idk, as an American, in terms of combating racism, scientific "proof" of biological intelligence is low on the list of what "we" should be spending time debating.

I suspect there are some national differences at play here:

https://time.com/5642773/american-students-taught-race/

xps

xxp the PM is a pretty mainstream role tbf

also Karl otm

For anybody interested, I highly recommend Angela Saini's book 'Superior' on this very issue.

that’s where these ideas always end up leading. Why else would there be so much effort at repeatedly reviving and funding them time and time again?

They are not leading there. They have arrived there and are teaching at Harvard, publishing in the NYT, and advising the British PM. How do you think we should respond?

I’ve already said upthread and you seem determined that that’s not a good enough answer.

Admittedly, I'm somewhat heated and posting quickly but, no, it wasn't obvious to me. The main thing I was getting from your posts was that rational scientific arguments and education won't work and play into the hands of racists. Did you mean that your favoured response is to ignore these people, avoid giving platforms where we can, and continuing to stress the moral wrong of racism?

Yes, that’s why I said those things across several posts.