Rolling Race 2021

I don't know the right way to deal with this but it's not great that there is a whole industry now catering to "anti racist allies" which seems to have a primarily therapeutic purposes for the "anti racist" on a personal level

heh, this goes back to the Catholic Church selling indulgences.

the religious thing is just the most accessible language we have for something this huge but it's a problem if anti racism becomes about seeking personal absolution instead of changing the world whatever language it's wrapped up in

I think the guilt is baked in and won't go away as long as colonialism and white supremacy still structure the world

see there's kinda the crux of it though ... like, is that even possible (for colonialism and white supremacy to not structure the world)? And that goes back to the sinful nature of humanity issue that is tied up with the colonialism and white supremacy ...

so from one perspective an answer could be no which is why the world and humanity (if both are taken as colonial constructions) must be abolished

from a perspective that takes the world and humanity as givens there would still have to be reparations but I don't see how there could be any point at which people could say it's sorted and the world is fixed now

wrt national guilt spurring people into action my family is german and that country has gradually become better at rhetorically acknowledging the awfulness of one specific period of its history (don't mention namibia)- to the extent that there is sometimes a twisted form of national pride over how good they are at apologising for their past (which is nevertheless firmly in the past) meanwhile the world has been irrevocably changed and Germany is (relatively) thriving again. then you have fringe weirdos like the Antideutsche as well as more mainstream liberals whose apparent rejection of the legacy of nazi antisemitism just becomes an excuse for islamophobia and uncritical support for US foreign policy. and those for whom all this shame is humiliating, who demand an unapologetic nationalism to make Germany great again. guilt seems to be a factor in all of these responses and if this example is anything to go by it's not encouraging as the only motivator for "reconciliation" (a euphemism). which obviously isn't to say that shamelessness would be better

don't get me started on britain and its weirdly aggressive combo of nostalgia and denial that characterises its attempt to suppress any guilt over how it got rich (because everyone knows, really)

The idea of associating the left = guilt implies the left is mainly white people. A start might be following black ideological leadership imo

yeah we're pretty much talking about white people in the race thread ... Deej otm

Journalists will never fucking change.

Just an observation about the media:

We’ve gotten dozens of request from political reporters asking to be connected with veterans who became right-wing extremists.

But we’ve gotten zero interest in the perspective of POC troops who had to cope with extremists in their units.

— Alexander McCoy (@AlexanderMcCoy4) January 21, 2021

inserts "pretends to be shocked.gif" here

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/25/us/black-us-senators-history-trnd/index.html

I would like to see a similar rundown for other ethnicities.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-donald-mcneil-accused-of-using-n-word-making-other-racist-comments
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2021/01/28/donald-mcneil-new-york-times-controversy

So, did he call a student the n-word or was he participating in a discussion where he introduced the n-word as an example of a certain style of rhetoric, because if it was the latter I am much more inclined to think the NYT did the right thing

i think that's likely the question being had in the boardroom right now and i'm assuming it's the latter as well.

y'all what is going on with K-Pop

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/01/entertainment/k-pop-sowon-nazi-photos-apology-scli-intl/index.html

This is a linked article from 2018: https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/13/asia/bts-simon-wiesenthal-complaint-intl/index.html

Nothing new here:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xd5bdd/nazis-chic-is-asias-offensive-fashion-craze-456

In 2016 Sony Music had to apologize after Japanese girl band Keyakizaka46 wore black capes and hats similar to the SS uniform during a stage performance.

Two years before that, South Korean pop group Pritz said they never intended to look like Nazis when they dressed in black shirts with red armbands in a music video.

this is fascinating to me

btw I'm not clicking on a Vice link on the rolling thread about race, that is taking irony several steps too far

xp
wth is going on with Vice's "more like this" algorithm

Haven't been keeping up with Vice's latest transgressions, sorry.

Try this instead:

https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/27/asia/taiwan-nazi-school-asia/index.html

that 2016 CNN article is quoted in the 2018 CNN article I posted

lol I guess CNN was like "nailed it the first time"

you can track this in India too

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/world/asia/india-hitler-childrens-book.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8660064.stm

That's not Hitler on the cover of the book, it looks like a waxwork... of Bruno Ganz.

color me unsurprised: https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/08/entertainment/morgan-wallen-record-sales/index.html

I keep hearing that this is getting worse.

https://www.thecut.com/2021/02/the-us-is-seeing-a-massive-spike-in-anti-asian-hate-crimes.html?fbclid=IwAR0pvq2ZLSpxoX0iSQ3p1HBPJPOkyNJNSocsyH0-gmFcXvAz4fEF16F4M2M

smith college again:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/us/smith-college-race.html

https://www.espn.com/soccer/ac-milan/story/4324640/zlatan-ibrahimovic-to-lebron-james-do-what-youre-good-at,-stay-out-of-politics

I don't follow soccer but I've seen this guy's name before. If anyone needs to shut the fuck up, it's him.

In a February 2011 interview, Ibrahimović stated that the boxer Muhammad Ali is one of his role models, going on to say: "One of my idols in sport and outside the sport also..he believed in his (principles) and he never gave (them) up."

good thing Muhammad Ali never did any politics

You can tell Ibrahimović follows his own advice. He proudly doesn't use his brain for anything outside of playing his position.

I’m sure Zlatan is 100% cool with this totally apolitical incident:

https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11863/12227404/zlatan-ibrahimovic-uefa-opens-investigation-after-ac-milan-striker-racially-abused-at-red-star-belgrade

ibrahimovic is an obnoxious idiot

Ibrahimovic is a mouthy fuckhole

he was in MLS last year, lots of fans grew to hate him statewide

😕

I love Black history.
But the 1619 Yoga Project is a little too much for me. pic.twitter.com/V1TffnyCTl

— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) February 27, 2021

oh no

it's hardly the most upsetting element of the video, but that CADENCE

Uhh...

the cheerful warmth of the tone and cadence makes it sound that getting on boats to become slaves was a nice thing for black people to do .... yeah, ughhhhhh

Meanwhile, over at Oberlin:

https://www.facebook.com/1569723009914148/posts/2922254581327644/?d=n

that is terrible but it is also...hilarious.

did no one, when putting together that banner think..."oops. maybe we don't show their photographs?"

and this is Oberlin? ... damn.

A friend sent this to me last night— (I minored in music comp at said institution). Seems like an obvious case of someone shitting the bed on design for a flier, the response to criticism being atrocious, and the whole thing spiraling into an awful controversy because of a hit parade of mistakes on the Con's end of things.

Another friend posted on the original (now removed) IG post— "Well there is a little bit of the color black in each photo, maybe it's a conceptual piece?"

lol ... your friend is great.

(You'd probably get along with him, sarahell, he started West Nile, the east coast version of East Nile. One of the Shinkoyo boys.

ohhhhhhh nice!!!

that is terrible but it is also...hilarious.

a million times OTM

A little bit white really.
Very condescending sounding tone to the yoga teacher's voice. Is that intentional cos she's got kids in her audience.
& is the idea thought through properly should this be the 2 elements you want to combine.
Couldn't you reenact the voyage of Abu Bakari from 200 years earlier if you wanted to be positive. Or pretend you were wearing leg chains in an oh so tasteful way if you didn't.

I would say “don’t pretend you’re wearing leg chains”

Just thunk it about matched the taste level.
& it might just possibly wake whoever was writing that routine up.
Like wondered if there was a point too far for tehm

Stevolende, there's some talk on the Canadian politics thread.

Genocide was enshrined into the very purpose of the Residential Schools of Canada pic.twitter.com/H9qdEzErUq

— The Serfs (@theserfstv) June 24, 2021

To make the connection even clearer, the line famously used by the founder of one of the first residential schools was "Kill the Indian and save the man."

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/08/entertainment/blackfishing-explainer-trnd/index.html

I'm mostly posting this because of how hard the picture of Iggy Thee Stallion made me laugh

yikes

Is this a New Jersey

I keep thinking about how Usher gave us Justin Bieber and T.I. gave us Iggy Azalea and it makes me shake my fist southward and shout "ATLANTA YOU WRONG FOR THIS"

Who Could Have Predicted: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07/11/nation/tennessee-teacher-taught-ta-nehisi-coates-essay-poem-about-white-privilege-he-was-fired-it/

Besides “everyone”, I assume?

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/who-actually-gets-to-create-black-pop-culture

that piece is staggering imo

map do you like this is revolution podcast

i will check it out!

i think it is the episode from a couple days ago that talks about the cosby show, look on youtube. was listening to it this weekend and didn't finish because their episodes are lonnggggg but i think you would like it.

super interesting, thanks for that map

(I am bad at podcast listening but will have a look at that one)

There's a ton of Black pop culture made by people from poor backgrounds. Entire bookstore sections' worth of romance and crime novels written by and for poor Black people. But Bertrand Cooper doesn't read them, nor do the white people he's lecturing in his piece. So that just gets completely overlooked.

The piece might benefit from more clearly establishing that he's talking about the kinds of esteemed cultural products (HBO series, elite magazine gigs, Oscar winners, etc.) that cross over to widespread success and are therefore taken as a sign of a culture industry successfully "diversifying." I'm not convinced ignoring historically disregarded/disparaged art like romance novels means he's overlooking something crucial here

Then the piece is just another part of the circle-jerking elite cultural ecosystem it purports to criticize. He’s basically a Black J.D. Vance, the way he talks about his upbringing in a way perfectly calibrated to thrill and terrify the Helen Lovejoys in the audience.

cool

Entire bookstore sections' worth of romance and crime novels written by and for poor Black people.

wrt crime novels there's a history of these authors dying poor and getting screwed by their white-owned publishers as well

also correct me if i'm wrong but black crime fiction, afaik, only truly shaped pop culture as we know it through its repeated reference in rap music (which, black music is deliberately excluded from this essay for probably obvious reasons)

Thought this might be interesting but gave up on it after a while cos I just found it annoying

Jul

26
'More Than One Way to Burn a Book'
by Free Speech Champions
107 followers
Free
Actions and Detail Panel

Event Information
A live, online, interactive event with Lionel Shriver, Tomiwa Owolade and Inaya Folarin Iman on contemporary censoriousness in literature.
About this event

‘More than one way to burn a book’: literary censorship in the 21st century

Online Drop-In Event: Monday 26th July 7-8.30pm (BST)

Speakers: Lionel Shriver and Tomiwa Owolade

Host: Inaya Folarin Iman

News this month that a school in Edinburgh is to cease teaching Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, on the grounds of its ‘white saviour narrative’, should make us ask, was Ray Bradbury right when he said, five decades ago, that “there is more than one way to burn a book, and the world is full of people running about with lit matches”?

While we may have moved on from the prudish attitudes towards sexuality and profanity which saw works like Lady Chatterley's Lover banned, it is worth pondering whether the old matches have been fully extinguished. Perhaps more overt, state censorship carried out by authoritarian regimes, such as Turkey, Hungary and Thailand, blinds us to the subtler ways in which censoriousness operates in publishing in the Anglosphere. This can manifest itself through accusations of cultural appropriation and stereotyping in the creation of characters on the page, or demands for ‘cancellation’ due to personal misdemeanours in the author’s own life.

We are delighted to be joined by two eminent speakers, the novelist and columnist Lionel Shriver and the writer and critic Tomiwa Owolade, to explore the differing threats from de jure, or legally imposed, censorship, and de facto censorship, perpetrated by individuals and private companies. We will consider whether our current cultural clashes shackle or stimulate the literary imagination and ask, is one person’s ‘censorship’ another person’s ‘sensitivity’?

Lionel Shriver: A prolific journalist with a fortnightly column in The Spectator, Lionel Shriver has written widely for the New York Times, the Guardian, the London Times, Prospect, the Financial Times, Harper’s Magazine, and many other publications. She has published the bestselling works of fiction The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, Big Brother, So Much for That, The Post-Birthday World, and the Orange-Prize winner We Need to Talk About Kevin (a 2011 feature film starring Tilda Swinton). Her most recent novel is Should We Stay or Should We Go (2021). Her work has been translated into over 30 languages.

Tomiwa Owolade: Tomiwa is a writer and critic who lives in London. His work has appeared in the Times, Spectator, Evening Standard, Unherd, Quillette and Literary Review, among other publications. He holds degrees in English Literature from Queen Mary, University of London and University College London, and has written extensively on books, politics and racial identity.

99% of authors in the history of publishing have gotten screwed by their publishers and/or died poor.

also correct me if i'm wrong but black crime fiction, afaik, only truly shaped pop culture as we know it through its repeated reference in rap music (which, black music is deliberately excluded from this essay for probably obvious reasons)

Well, who the "we" in the phrase "pop culture as we know it" is, is kind of the whole fucking point (and exactly what this writer is getting wrong). This is about who's reading what, and why. No, EL Griffin's Hood Love and Loyalty is never gonna be nominated for a National Book Award, but it's not because the author didn't go to the right college.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41E7JjKKjAL.jpg

99% of authors in the history of publishing have gotten screwed by their publishers and/or died poor.

oh man, didn't realize publishing was operating at such a loss

Thought this might be interesting but gave up on it after a while cos I just found it annoying

Interesting as what? As an example of hideous anti-woke right wing garbage?

oh man, didn't realize publishing was operating at such a loss

One Stephen King pays for a thousand writers whose books sink to the bottom of the ocean unread. Wait till you find out how many actual copies you need to sell to have a New York Times bestseller. (Triple digits will do it.)

sometimes i feel like On Here i've read a completely different article or post. or i read too fast, but i thought he was acknowledging the existence of content produced by people from poor backgrounds and pointing out how they don't get boosted because they are presumed to be unpalatable to white people, regardless of how popular they actually are, and the big media companies can still say they are doing diversity without offending anyone important.

actually delete the first sentence, i shouldn't apologize for how i read it

off topic but

John Oliver has a net worth of 30 million dollars. He could heal many wounds just with his own wealth, yet he chooses not to. It’s almost like he’s full of shit. https://t.co/QiRbLZedST

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) July 26, 2021

this guy has truly figured it out

Charles Murray, everybody!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7QIxCNX0AQFpvV.png

excellent contributions itt keep it up

sometimes i feel like On Here i've read a completely different article or post. or i read too fast, but i thought he was acknowledging the existence of content produced by people from poor backgrounds and pointing out how they don't get boosted because they are presumed to be unpalatable to white people, regardless of how popular they actually are, and the big media companies can still say they are doing diversity without offending anyone important.

― criminally negligible (harbl), Monday, July 26, 2021 8:02 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

also, someone with basic reading comprehension skills would be able to tell that he is detailing his experience being the black-poorest with a double intent. yes it establishes his credentials, which is probably important considering the topic of the piece, but he also describes his experience in a way that strips it of the kind of romantic authenticity that others are capitalizing on. flattening that into the grotesquerie of "a Black JD Vance" is an impressive fart even for unperson.

i'm really curious / interested if any of the grant or application programs for minority creatives he describes will ever include a clearly defined "poor person" category.

anyway, by all means keep embedding charles murray tweets itt it is very interesting content

though what i would really be interested in is unperson telling us all why he hates poor people so much

unfortunately i was thinking about it some more while i was walking and the article would make no sense logically if the writer was unaware that there is content created by and for black people! like it kind of sounds like that's what he'd prefer to see more of.

anyway it's nice to see that expressed in the elite circle jerk culture ecosystem

ugh insert "poor" in that xpost

the article would make no sense logically if the writer was unaware that there is content created by and for (poor) black people! like it kind of sounds like that's what he'd prefer to see more of.

He came up with exactly one example — Moonlight, a movie with a budget of $1.5 million according to its director. If he really wanted to make the point that he wanted to see more content by poor Black creators, it would be a simple process of listing some books and saying "More like this, please." (Or allowing music to be part of the discussion.) But he's only concerned with what wins National Book Awards and what gets written up in the Atlantic.

The sentence "A decade of unprecedented interest in Black arts and letters has now passed—the greater portion of it bought with footage of people possessing Floyd’s particulars lying dead on the tar—and still you cannot walk into a bookstore to find a shelf named for Black authors raised in poverty." is absurd bullshit. First of all, the last time I went into a physical Barnes & Noble, there was no section for Black authors at all — their books were shelved alphabetically with everybody else's. But when there have been separate sections (and when I worked at Barnes & Noble 20+ years ago, there were), there's absolutely special consideration for "Black authors raised in poverty" — they call it "urban fiction," and it's books like the one I mentioned above, the kind of books this author has zero interest in promoting, by authors whose names he'll never bother to learn, because the readers of Current Affairs would never let such a thing stain their fingers, and he'd rather attack Colson Whitehead and Roxane Gay (whose name he misspells in the piece) for being rich. (I didn't know Gay came from money until reading this. It doesn't change my opinion of her work one way or the other. I used to know one of Whitehead's sisters, a little. She came to a reading I gave for my first book.)