Rolling Race 2021

oh for sure

If a person had a white saviour complex how would they see it?
JUst wondering, like its probably not a single idea but surely there would be some recognition of a perspective taht would be seen from outside as being 'classic white saviour complex'.

Like the idea that somebody would take a supposedly radical theatre group based on theory that was upposed to be addressing this idea of heirarchy and then come out as though their perspective was the only one necessary to the exclusion of people supposedly involved. Leaving the coloured people in the group in a really tokenist position and being treated like they were children who didn't have her insight. When she appeared to be totally tone deaf on the subject of race. As she showed several times.
God, what an annoying person. I think she thought she was like woke and needed to help people along with her great understanding. I now think she is a complete idiot and should be removed from any position of authority. Gah, what can you do.

I think "people were always racist"/"people weren't always racist" is probably a difficult thing to parse out, sort of like ideas about homosexuality in history. Like I think racism in some sense probably always existed, but the particular ways in which it's constructed and the role it plays have changed over time. In other words, I think people have probably always been aware of difference, including difference in features, skin tone, etc., and I think that those superficial differences have probably been linked to class or status at various times throughout history in ways that were sometimes negative or discriminatory, but I don't think the particular form of anti-black racism we have in America is ahistorical or inevitable.

But, at the same time, it can't be excised on an individual level alone so long as it exists at the structural level.

"people weren't always racist so it's not just human nature or anything"

not sure how you can say racism hasnt always been there. white racism might be most pernicious and dominant because of how european countries sought to dominate the world in recent centuries, but prejudice, and discrimination based on genetic differences (if not skin colour, then something else) is as old as humanity. basically, what man alive said.

there were sorts of proto racism in antiquity & medieval times but what we call racism now is the european colonial project & associated ideology

calling e.g. ancient prejudices against "barbarians" racist is ahistorical. ancient imperialism wasn't anti-black or based on pseudo-natural hierarchies of skin colour

p sure second class citizen ethnic minorities existed outside of and predating colonialism though

Charles Mann suggested that there was a population rise in Africa after maize was introduced in the wake of Columbus trips to teh New World. So there was now a population in Africa taht could be seen presumably as surplus which seems disingenuous because tehy must have been somebody's children and relatives. & it was these people taht fed into the slave trade.
BUt it does seem like the idea of black asinferior and white as superior dates back to the slave trade. I thought the heirarchy was not along those lines until then.
I think he also says that at the time of first contact with the mesoamericans the idea of Europe being advanced beyond teh Americas, Africa and Asia was pretty absurd. But as a result of that contact and heavy exploitation resulting from it they managed to gain dominance reformatting the areas they were in contact with along the way.
Either he said it or somebody else I've listened to recently did.
& subsequent thought could be put down to victor's historiagraphy. Like if the victor writes the history and then bases his philosophy on things a posteriori as though this was the way that their deity had arranged things from the start.
They even changed teh colour of the avatar of that deity along the way.
I do need to know a lot more about the Coptic and other Eastern and African Christian churches that predate European Christianity.
Paul Crookes the west Indian family history researcher has said that he has looked at ships logs from the middle passage that show the names of the shipped and indicate Christian and Judaic belief among them .

im fine with Racism being specific to white racism as we see played out in western societies, but idk, it doesnt take too deep a look into countries in asia, africa or europe to find examples of prejudice being used to justify heinous treatments of other groups within those societies, both historically and in the present. and im not saying that to excuse white racism, just to point out that this idea of racism as being the invention of white europeans does something of a disservice to people in many parts of the world. if you are anti racist, then surely you have to be against both white racism, and all the structures and beliefs it has led to, as well as other forms elsewhere. its also a bit slippery IMO, as you can then risk getting into dangerous assumptions around cultural relevatism etc.

I think that the caveat you include - if not skin colour, then something else - suggests that what we're discussing here would be more usefully framed as bigotry (or tribalism, if ya wanna be fancy) than racism. Don't think that's potato pohtato either, if someone's trying to unlearn the specific racism that they grew up in (whether that's a purposeful or acheivable goal or not) I think that's quite different from unlearning bigotry period.

Not that we shouldn't unlearn bigotry too of course! But becoming aware of current structures and historical contexts is different from struggling against some timeless evil.

fair point. though how they play out has many overlaps, whether youre talking caste-ism, tribalism, etc. and if im thinking of casteism, or discrimination based around religion, then its not just some railing against some broad, nebulous timeless evil, its quite specific, with its own histories, patterns, structures etc

If you haven't read Caste by Isabel Wilkerson yet, it explores a lot of these ideas. Tough read (due to the descriptions of the horrors experienced by lower castes), but eye-opening.

Did i hear that a lot of the caste system was imposed by European influence?
Think I came across that. Like it taking on a much deeper weight afterward.

not read Caste, but i read a review, and it seemed like it was much more interested in applying the idea of caste to US society than casteism as practised elsewhere, so IDK if I need more about racism in the US in my life.

xpost casteism was not imposed by european influence but it was affected by it, at times manipulated by it, and other times used as an opportunity to exacerbate pre existing divisions.

FWIW, I recently heard some commentator (can't remember where) define Racism as a product of the scientific age, and dated it to the 19th Century. It used the flimsy veneer of science (or rather pseudoscience) to categorize different groups, with white anglo-saxons perched atop everyone else. Of course prejudice and bigotry have been around forever, but racism and racialism are decidedly modern ideas (according to this author and I can't recall her name).

Was it one or both of the Fields sisters (authors of Racecraft)?

I honestly don't recall.. I think I was making dinner with the radio on

yeah, racial science is def a big component.

did you guys comment on this?

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/19/uk/un-uk-race-report-intl-gbr/index.html

the development & formulation of scientific antisemitism, from but distinct from anti-judaism in the revolutionary/colonial era, is instructive here I think

UK pol thread talked about the report I think, which was clearly intended as a deliberate fuck you

the UN criticism being on an empirical basis seems to miss that part of it

I thought Angela Saini's book Superior was very good at debunking Race Science while covering its history and looking at its reappearance in recent years. Also left me even more disgusted at the theatre group I talked about above since she showed why the project we were working on was looking at things in a very wrong way. Quite apart from the tokenism and supporting what I had been thinking at the time.

Oh & that was before Black lives Matter became a worldwide movement with great momentum.
& I would think most things would need to be reassessed in teh light of that.
So hope more things are before somebody manages to whitewash everything again.
Would be so good if that farcical UK report acted as a catalyst more than anything else. I know a lot of people are seriously angry about that and should be

It may well be Saini that I heard on the radio.. I just looked at a Guardian review of that book

One thing I tend to hammer on in periodic Facebook posts — a very effective way of influencing people, obv — is the specific economic underpinnings of American racism. (True in many other varieties of racism too, of course.) Slavery was an economic system, as was sharecropping, as was convict-leasing, as is the low-wage work performed by undocumented immigrants, all of them made palatable by the encouragement of a belief that the people performing the enslaved/low-wage work are inferior in one way or another.

American discussions of racism have for so long focused on individual thoughts and attitudes, without engaging with the forces that fostered them.

I am intrigued by how a person who can be seen to have a white saviour complex does see themselves. Is the answer in the question in as much as they're seeing their inept misapplication of misunderstood thought to be purely benevolent and more conscious than the people they're treading on.
Assuming that it is a basic misunderstanding of things and that anything more intentional would go by another name. BUt it may be more harmful in its ineptness. I dunno.
Like struck by the idea that a perfect parasite doesn't kill its host too.

discussed on the desus/mero thread but here's ziwe on showtime
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP8xKsIpxAI

ok, lol @ all persistence matters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY6_QrOdwfo

swinging back to that depressing SNL video upthread

Bless this guy and his new series: “How everything on [TikTok] originated from Black culture” pic.twitter.com/nNOWfEJaLc

— black boy bulletin (he/him) (@blkboybulletin) May 12, 2021

The NFL says it will halt the use of “race-norming” — which assumed Black players started out with lower cognitive functioning — in a $1 billion settlement of brain injury claims. The practice had made it harder for Black players to qualify.https://t.co/OQpzSD88xM

— The Associated Press (@AP) June 2, 2021

uh

I have profoundly low expectations for the NFL, but this is still shocking

"The standards were created in the 1990s in hopes of offering more appropriate treatment to dementia "

"more appropriate"

wtaf?

ALAB pod (iirc) did a good episode on this topic

had to read that tweet several times to make sure i understood what i was seeing

That is unreal

I thought Angela Saini's book Superior was pretty good on the history of race science and what was inherently wrong with it. Assume it's not the only one that's good and would like to know others was pretty succinct and understandable though.
But sounds like just another element of misrepresentation of ethnicity in medicine and I think especially US medicine. Up with black people don't feel pain for useful knowledge for medical practitioners or more likely not. Wonder who did the research leading to this conclusion and if they had any other agenda at all.

I, too, did not realize the NFL’s racism could still shock me. Heads need to roll.

I haven't watched a single NFL game in many years now. Given the possibility of the Bears having a decent QB again, I was considering watching a game or two this fall, but nope, fuck this organization forever.

Stevolende: it's been a long time since I looked at it, but Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man might be of interest. It's from 1981, so I'm not sure how it's aged, but I just read this article five minutes ago, so apparently it's at least somewhat evergreen: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pupil-size-is-a-marker-of-intelligence/.

thanks

so this sentence:

The standards were created in the 1990s in hopes of offering more appropriate treatment to dementia patients

implies that race-norming is common practice in testing for dementia treatment?

it's common in a lot of medical procedures, I am learning today

also Simon mentioned this, haven't listened myself: https://www.alabseries.com/episodes/episode-21-baked-in

This has been talked about for years, certainly well before this article: https://www.statnews.com/2016/04/04/medical-students-beliefs-race-pain/