Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

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Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-02-24 03:25pm At first glance, the differences are large enough to make the similarities unhelpful. At least, unhelpful as an analogy that addresses the core of the issue for me.

And I can't do more than first glances without a clearer idea of what you're talking about.
People who had ever reason to hate oppressors/genociders (Israel) working with their former oppressed. Look at the reconciliation process. It can work. I am suggesting that you look at that process to find hope on how it can work.

Toxic rhetoric by some people on the other side aside.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

Post by K. A. Pital »

Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-02-24 10:30amAnd you can hold me in contempt for saying this, and all i can say is "well, you held me in contempt anyway, so this doesn't change anything."
I don't hold you in contempt or something, I don't even say you have to join the struggles of others who you don't belong to.

I just said that oppressed people wouldn't normally welcome someone who doesn't join their struggle. It's very natural.

Also when I see a fight isn't mine, I don't join. But it's up to everyone to make their choices.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

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Thanas wrote: 2018-02-24 03:54pm
Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-02-24 03:25pm At first glance, the differences are large enough to make the similarities unhelpful. At least, unhelpful as an analogy that addresses the core of the issue for me.

And I can't do more than first glances without a clearer idea of what you're talking about.
People who had ever reason to hate oppressors/genociders (Israel) working with their former oppressed. Look at the reconciliation process. It can work. I am suggesting that you look at that process to find hope on how it can work.
It's not a lack of hope, or whatever I use instead of hope, that's the problem for me.

It's that... I can't bring myself to care, personally, after being sufficiently shrieked at and sufficiently ignored.
K. A. Pital wrote: 2018-02-24 06:17pmI don't hold you in contempt or something, I don't even say you have to join the struggles of others who you don't belong to.

I just said that oppressed people wouldn't normally welcome someone who doesn't join their struggle. It's very natural.
When this is used specifically as a pretext for telling people who want to support the struggle, or people who have endeavoured to do so, that their opinions don't matter and they're just being controlling assholes...

At that point, such a thing is the act of people who don't want the oppressed people's struggle to get any reinforcements.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

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Simon and Elheru, if you're getting the impression that all your interactions with marginalized activism will forever without a doubt turn sour from Straha ... well, I'll let Straha respond, because this thread has been sufficiently long enough that I may have forgotten certain statements he may have made, so he'd be better to answer it.

If you're getting that impression from me, then I don't know what to say because you are reading meanings from my statements that don't exist.

If your response is to take your ball and go home at a sign of criticism from the marginalized that hey, maybe there could be something off with your praxis, or maybe other people around you could stand for improvement on their praxes, would you perhaps consider that you are living the sort of example that they describe?

Please consider: I am not a person of color nor a Native American. I am also white. Why is it that I don't feel as if I'm unwelcome, or don't feel that joining an effort of activism is hopeless? I am trans but even with that aspect, my experience is only surface-deep in understanding their experiences. Yet, I don't encounter issues with them. And I clearly wouldn't describe myself as "masochistic" enough to repeatedly take insults and endless anger.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

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Fortunately for all concerned, I've never encountered browbeating a la what Straha and Effie have exhibited in this thread from people I've tried to ally with in the real world. I suspect that if critical race theory has concluded that no white people ever can truly aid the cause of minority rights, most people in that cause thankfully haven't gotten the memo.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

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Yeah, on that note even the fairly extreme blackfella groups I've reached out to have been friendly. They don't want whitefellas speaking for them or ruling them, but they're more than happy to have whitefellas who'll speak with them and might be able to help out with legal issues etc.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

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Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-02-24 06:33pm
Thanas wrote: 2018-02-24 03:54pm
Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-02-24 03:25pm At first glance, the differences are large enough to make the similarities unhelpful. At least, unhelpful as an analogy that addresses the core of the issue for me.

And I can't do more than first glances without a clearer idea of what you're talking about.
People who had ever reason to hate oppressors/genociders (Israel) working with their former oppressed. Look at the reconciliation process. It can work. I am suggesting that you look at that process to find hope on how it can work.
It's not a lack of hope, or whatever I use instead of hope, that's the problem for me.

It's that... I can't bring myself to care, personally, after being sufficiently shrieked at and sufficiently ignored.
K. A. Pital wrote: 2018-02-24 06:17pmI don't hold you in contempt or something, I don't even say you have to join the struggles of others who you don't belong to.

I just said that oppressed people wouldn't normally welcome someone who doesn't join their struggle. It's very natural.
When this is used specifically as a pretext for telling people who want to support the struggle, or people who have endeavoured to do so, that their opinions don't matter and they're just being controlling assholes...

At that point, such a thing is the act of people who don't want the oppressed people's struggle to get any reinforcements.
Ok. Here is the deal <Takes off mod hat and becomes a person>

Straha et al have crawled up their own ass. People don't actually behave using Straha's rhetorical lens, and from what I've read in this thread, he's fallen down the rabbit hole of critical theory and can't crawl out. There's a lot of valuable stuff in critical theory, but there are very few empirical checks on it and... well you've seen the result. It's like when people take social constructivism so far they reject math. If he hasn't, his rhetorical style is so impenetrable it's hard to tell the difference.

In reality, communities of people don't behave like that. Black people know you didn't ask to be born, and didn't ask to be born with a cultural boot on their throat. If you honestly want to help, ask them "What do you need me to do?" and the activists--the people who devote their lives to making their situation better--are gonna say something along the lines of "come to our rally next thursday, scream at that racist congressman. Also, do you know a good defense lawyer? I might have to punch a Nazi."

And that's it. No one in reality actually wants white people gone (ok, maybe a few do, but they're not exactly common). They want to change what it means to be white, so that one day white people can look back at history and honestly say, and have it actually be true "holy shit, I'm so glad we stopped doing that, and helped our black brothers and sisters make the world a better place".

Substitute black for any other oppressed minority group. Objectively, I have every reason to hate straight people. I don't. I hate what straightness currently means. That is a BIG distinction.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

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Alyrium Denryle wrote: 2018-02-25 01:14am
Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-02-24 06:33pm
Thanas wrote: 2018-02-24 03:54pm People who had ever reason to hate oppressors/genociders (Israel) working with their former oppressed. Look at the reconciliation process. It can work. I am suggesting that you look at that process to find hope on how it can work.
It's not a lack of hope, or whatever I use instead of hope, that's the problem for me.

It's that... I can't bring myself to care, personally, after being sufficiently shrieked at and sufficiently ignored.
K. A. Pital wrote: 2018-02-24 06:17pmI don't hold you in contempt or something, I don't even say you have to join the struggles of others who you don't belong to.

I just said that oppressed people wouldn't normally welcome someone who doesn't join their struggle. It's very natural.
When this is used specifically as a pretext for telling people who want to support the struggle, or people who have endeavoured to do so, that their opinions don't matter and they're just being controlling assholes...

At that point, such a thing is the act of people who don't want the oppressed people's struggle to get any reinforcements.
Ok. Here is the deal <Takes off mod hat and becomes a person>

Straha et al have crawled up their own ass. People don't actually behave using Straha's rhetorical lens, and from what I've read in this thread, he's fallen down the rabbit hole of critical theory and can't crawl out. There's a lot of valuable stuff in critical theory, but there are very few empirical checks on it and... well you've seen the result. It's like when people take social constructivism so far they reject math. If he hasn't, his rhetorical style is so impenetrable it's hard to tell the difference.

In reality, communities of people don't behave like that. Black people know you didn't ask to be born, and didn't ask to be born with a cultural boot on their throat. If you honestly want to help, ask them "What do you need me to do?" and the activists--the people who devote their lives to making their situation better--are gonna say something along the lines of "come to our rally next thursday, scream at that racist congressman. Also, do you know a good defense lawyer? I might have to punch a Nazi."

And that's it. No one in reality actually wants white people gone (ok, maybe a few do, but they're not exactly common). They want to change what it means to be white, so that one day white people can look back at history and honestly say, and have it actually be true "holy shit, I'm so glad we stopped doing that, and helped our black brothers and sisters make the world a better place".

Substitute black for any other oppressed minority group. Objectively, I have every reason to hate straight people. I don't. I hate what straightness currently means. That is a BIG distinction.
If the reasons for hatred are objective, and you refuse to do it, is that a moral stance, or self-delusion?

In any case, there's something pathological about posts like these:
Rogue 9 wrote: 2018-02-24 08:38pm Fortunately for all concerned, I've never encountered browbeating a la what Straha and Effie have exhibited in this thread from people I've tried to ally with in the real world. I suspect that if critical race theory has concluded that no white people ever can truly aid the cause of minority rights, most people in that cause thankfully haven't gotten the memo.
Where a strawman is put up and then handily knocked down as being irrelevant to the real world.

If I may quote:

"8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak."

Eco was talking about fascism, but we can see the psychological effect here. On the one hand, the nebulous "critical race theorists" must be humiliating, seeking to tear the individual down at the deepest levels, offering annihilation beyond death, something which can obliviate any ethical reasons for antiracist actions. But on the other hand, they must also be a phantom, something which does not exist in reality, so that the individual can retain their self-image as a moral person who is of course opposed to racism, (with the proper assuaging).

Thus, the individual can retain the high ground of privilege and oppression while insisting they are on the side of the oppressed.

We might consider this a harmless peccadillo, a kind of effervescent courage, if not for the fact that this still maintains a position of exaltation where the subaltern individual must approach the altern and beg for their help. And in turn the assumption is that the subaltern cannot accomplish anything without the benevolent grace of the altern. Bluntly put, this is ahistorical. It is far more common for the subaltern to set the tune the sympathetic altern must dance to, as in the American Civil War, the Haitian Revolution, and indeed many other revolutions throughout history. It is also demeaning to the altern, who is apparently an amoral entity at best, unable to behave justly except through emotional bribery.

Thus, harsh language is important for asserting equality. Part of that equality is necessarily the ability to tell people to fuck off when they demand emotional bribes, because it makes clear that they are not saviors, they are not Dustin Hoffman in Dances With Wolves. If they join the struggle, it is as equals, as brothers and sisters and siblings, and this means conceding the mantle of inequality they have worn their whole lives. This can be painful, but so is lancing an infected injury. It has to be done sooner or later, and it's better if it's done quickly and early.

Consider, for example, how many white people refer to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as "Martin Luther King" versus "Dr. King." That's a learned habit, of cutting away markers of respect, and it's something that must be shed if we are to achieve equality. It's a small thing, but I'm sure there are people for whom it hurts, for whom it rankles. And yet it must be done.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

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Effie wrote:If the reasons for hatred are objective, and you refuse to do it, is that a moral stance, or self-delusion?
The syntax of that statement matters. Or do you have trouble with word order?

I've been the victim of hate crimes (plural, including rocks being thrown at my head, and attempted sexual assault by object-penetration), disowned by half my family and have had to watch as my civil rights were voted on and lost. To say nothing of the wonderful people who aren't here anymore. If someone came to me, hating straight people after experiencing what I have, I would not be shocked if they hated straight people. I'd understand, because I've lived through that rancid shit too and know exactly where that comes from.

But that's different from saying the reasons for hatred are objectively correct. Because they're not. There's a good chance I would be dead if not for a pair of straight people hearing about a plot to beat me into the hospital and putting themselves on the line to stop it. I didn't even know about it until a few years later. They just came to school nursing injuries and wouldn't say how they got them, because they didn't want me to feel beholden to them like that. Straight teachers and parents looked out for me and provided refuges I could retreat to. They didn't have to do that, but they did, because they saw someone who was suffering and gave a shit.

You have absolutely no right to try to dictate to me how I should feel about that. None.

Heterosexuality isn't the problem. It's the behavioral expectations, default status and heteronormativity, notions of masculinity/femininity etc that our society has constructed around heterosexuality that's the problem. Straight people didn't ask to be born that way, and most of them don't know the ways in which these structural problems impact my life--and theirs--negatively. I can hate the ones who are douchebags about it, but hating straight people as an entire class--as distinct from what Straightness means in our society--is counterproductive and logically fallacious.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

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Note: For the purposes of this sub-discussion moderator functionality is recused. But is retained for all other sub-discussions.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

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Alyrium Denryle wrote: 2018-02-25 04:25pm
Effie wrote:If the reasons for hatred are objective, and you refuse to do it, is that a moral stance, or self-delusion?
The syntax of that statement matters. Or do you have trouble with word order?

I've been the victim of hate crimes (plural, including rocks being thrown at my head, and attempted sexual assault by object-penetration), disowned by half my family and have had to watch as my civil rights were voted on and lost. To say nothing of the wonderful people who aren't here anymore. If someone came to me, hating straight people after experiencing what I have, I would not be shocked if they hated straight people. I'd understand, because I've lived through that rancid shit too and know exactly where that comes from.

But that's different from saying the reasons for hatred are objectively correct. Because they're not. There's a good chance I would be dead if not for a pair of straight people hearing about a plot to beat me into the hospital and putting themselves on the line to stop it. I didn't even know about it until a few years later. They just came to school nursing injuries and wouldn't say how they got them, because they didn't want me to feel beholden to them like that. Straight teachers and parents looked out for me and provided refuges I could retreat to. They didn't have to do that, but they did, because they saw someone who was suffering and gave a shit.

You have absolutely no right to try to dictate to me how I should feel about that. None.

Heterosexuality isn't the problem. It's the behavioral expectations, default status and heteronormativity, notions of masculinity/femininity etc that our society has constructed around heterosexuality that's the problem. Straight people didn't ask to be born that way, and most of them don't know the ways in which these structural problems impact my life--and theirs--negatively. I can hate the ones who are douchebags about it, but hating straight people as an entire class--as distinct from what Straightness means in our society--is counterproductive and logically fallacious.
So, on the one hand, people can't dictate to you how you should feel, but you can dictate to other people how they should feel? Your argument is fundamentally incoherent- it goes from "I understand why someone would hate straight people" to "hating straight people is counterproductive and logically fallacious."

It also suggests that hating straight people as a class is the same thing as hating all of them personally, which, uh, no. That's not what that phrase means. It also relies on the idea that straightness is the same thing as heterosexuality, which is not really coherent, since there's overlap with transphobia and oppression of asexual people and regulation of how heterosexuality is expressed bound up in straightness. There is, well, a reason why it's LGBT+/QUILTBAG and not LGB.

Furthermore, straightness is not imposed by some nebulous conspiracy, it is actively created and enforced at many levels, so all straight people are, in fact, complicit in the oppression of LGBT+ people. Thus, it's not actually logically fallacious to hate straight people as a class of people, because all of them, yes all of them, are involved in oppression. Now, some people are better than others on an individual level, but we are not talking about hatred on an interpersonal level.

Furthermore, if we understand straightness as the expression of heteropatriarchy, we must hate straightness so that we might kill the straightness and let the human beings chained by straightness be born. What Straha was referring to as ontological death earlier. That is, if we understand hatred as the desire to destroy, it is almost necessary, practically morally compelled to hate straight people so that we might erase the straightness and let them live free as people. This understanding of hatred as a liberating emotion is hardly an invention of critical theory, either. There's close to 2000 years of precedent on it:

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters--yes, even their own life--such a person cannot be my disciple."

The author of Luke, and Jesus himself if he spoke those words, was obviously not suggesting that his disciples be suicidal or homicidal.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

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Effie wrote: 2018-02-25 03:23pmConsider, for example, how many white people refer to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as "Martin Luther King" versus "Dr. King." That's a learned habit, of cutting away markers of respect, and it's something that must be shed if we are to achieve equality. It's a small thing, but I'm sure there are people for whom it hurts, for whom it rankles. And yet it must be done.
Point of order:

I also routinely call the famous German/Swiss physicist "Albert Einstein" instead of "Dr. Albert Einstein." Is this because I am intentionally stripping him of markers of respect? Or is it because his name is such a household word that when I utter the words 'Albert Einstein,' it is clear that I am referring to a unique individual who shook the sciences to their foundations, and whose very name is a title of respect more worthy and significant than a mere doctorate from the University of Zurich could ever be?

There have been many doctorates in physics out of the University of Zurich; it is a prestigious honor but hardly a unique one. There is only one Albert Einstein, and the world will be luckier than it deserves if it ever gets another like him.

And Dr. King's name is also a household word, also a title worthy of more respect than a doctorate of theology from Boston University could ever be. There are hundreds of Boston University theology doctorates, living and dead- perhaps thousands. There is only one Martin Luther King- his country would, again, be far luckier than it deserves to be graced by another.

What is it, that makes you so quick to assume that I am following different rules for Dr. King than for Dr. Einstein? You don't know me.
Effie wrote: 2018-02-25 05:43pmFurthermore, straightness is not imposed by some nebulous conspiracy, it is actively created and enforced at many levels, so all straight people are, in fact, complicit in the oppression of LGBT+ people. Thus, it's not actually logically fallacious to hate straight people as a class of people, because all of them, yes all of them, are involved in oppression. Now, some people are better than others on an individual level, but we are not talking about hatred on an interpersonal level.

Furthermore, if we understand straightness as the expression of heteropatriarchy, we must hate straightness so that we might kill the straightness and let the human beings chained by straightness be born. What Straha was referring to as ontological death earlier. That is, if we understand hatred as the desire to destroy, it is almost necessary, practically morally compelled to hate straight people so that we might erase the straightness and let them live free as people. This understanding of hatred as a liberating emotion is hardly an invention of critical theory, either. There's close to 2000 years of precedent on it:

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters--yes, even their own life--such a person cannot be my disciple."

The author of Luke, and Jesus himself if he spoke those words, was obviously not suggesting that his disciples be suicidal or homicidal.
I find it interesting that, given how strongly you feel about how the altern should not approach the subaltern and tell said subaltern how the subaltern's own movement should behave...

You are awfully quick to lecture the gay man on how to feel about straightness.

Now, perhaps you are a fellow 'subaltern' in that particular debate... But it's still an interesting change of pace.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

Post by Effie »

Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-02-25 05:49pm
Effie wrote: 2018-02-25 03:23pmConsider, for example, how many white people refer to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as "Martin Luther King" versus "Dr. King." That's a learned habit, of cutting away markers of respect, and it's something that must be shed if we are to achieve equality. It's a small thing, but I'm sure there are people for whom it hurts, for whom it rankles. And yet it must be done.
Point of order:

I also routinely call the famous German/Swiss physicist "Albert Einstein" instead of "Dr. Albert Einstein." Is this because I am intentionally stripping him of markers of respect? Or is it because his name is such a household word that when I utter the words 'Albert Einstein,' it is clear that I am referring to a unique individual who shook the sciences to their foundations, and whose very name is a title of respect more worthy and significant than a mere doctorate from the University of Zurich could ever be?

There have been many doctorates in physics out of the University of Zurich; it is a prestigious honor but hardly a unique one. There is only one Albert Einstein, and the world will be luckier than it deserves if it ever gets another like him.

And Dr. King's name is also a household word, also a title worthy of more respect than a doctorate of theology from Boston University could ever be. There are hundreds of Boston University theology doctorates, living and dead- perhaps thousands. There is only one Martin Luther King- his country would, again, be far luckier than it deserves to be graced by another.

What is it, that makes you so quick to assume that I am following different rules for Dr. King than for Dr. Einstein? You don't know me.
I don't care how you rationalize it, I care about the broad pattern of behavior which you admit you follow to a T. I care about the structural phenomenon of people omitting titles of respect for people of color and especially for black and Amerindian people. Part of countering this structural phenomenon is getting people to stop engaging in the structure regardless of their personal intent.
Effie wrote: 2018-02-25 05:43pmFurthermore, straightness is not imposed by some nebulous conspiracy, it is actively created and enforced at many levels, so all straight people are, in fact, complicit in the oppression of LGBT+ people. Thus, it's not actually logically fallacious to hate straight people as a class of people, because all of them, yes all of them, are involved in oppression. Now, some people are better than others on an individual level, but we are not talking about hatred on an interpersonal level.

Furthermore, if we understand straightness as the expression of heteropatriarchy, we must hate straightness so that we might kill the straightness and let the human beings chained by straightness be born. What Straha was referring to as ontological death earlier. That is, if we understand hatred as the desire to destroy, it is almost necessary, practically morally compelled to hate straight people so that we might erase the straightness and let them live free as people. This understanding of hatred as a liberating emotion is hardly an invention of critical theory, either. There's close to 2000 years of precedent on it:

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters--yes, even their own life--such a person cannot be my disciple."

The author of Luke, and Jesus himself if he spoke those words, was obviously not suggesting that his disciples be suicidal or homicidal.
I find it interesting that, given how strongly you feel about how the altern should not approach the subaltern and tell said subaltern how the subaltern's own movement should behave...

You are awfully quick to lecture the gay man on how to feel about straightness.

Now, perhaps you are a fellow 'subaltern' in that particular debate... But it's still an interesting change of pace.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

Post by Rogue 9 »

Effie wrote: 2018-02-25 03:23pmIn any case, there's something pathological about posts like these:
Rogue 9 wrote: 2018-02-24 08:38pm Fortunately for all concerned, I've never encountered browbeating a la what Straha and Effie have exhibited in this thread from people I've tried to ally with in the real world. I suspect that if critical race theory has concluded that no white people ever can truly aid the cause of minority rights, most people in that cause thankfully haven't gotten the memo.
Where a strawman is put up and then handily knocked down as being irrelevant to the real world.

If I may quote:

"8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak."

Eco was talking about fascism, but we can see the psychological effect here. On the one hand, the nebulous "critical race theorists" must be humiliating, seeking to tear the individual down at the deepest levels, offering annihilation beyond death, something which can obliviate any ethical reasons for antiracist actions. But on the other hand, they must also be a phantom, something which does not exist in reality, so that the individual can retain their self-image as a moral person who is of course opposed to racism, (with the proper assuaging).

Thus, the individual can retain the high ground of privilege and oppression while insisting they are on the side of the oppressed.

We might consider this a harmless peccadillo, a kind of effervescent courage, if not for the fact that this still maintains a position of exaltation where the subaltern individual must approach the altern and beg for their help. And in turn the assumption is that the subaltern cannot accomplish anything without the benevolent grace of the altern. Bluntly put, this is ahistorical. It is far more common for the subaltern to set the tune the sympathetic altern must dance to, as in the American Civil War, the Haitian Revolution, and indeed many other revolutions throughout history. It is also demeaning to the altern, who is apparently an amoral entity at best, unable to behave justly except through emotional bribery.

Thus, harsh language is important for asserting equality. Part of that equality is necessarily the ability to tell people to fuck off when they demand emotional bribes, because it makes clear that they are not saviors, they are not Dustin Hoffman in Dances With Wolves. If they join the struggle, it is as equals, as brothers and sisters and siblings, and this means conceding the mantle of inequality they have worn their whole lives. This can be painful, but so is lancing an infected injury. It has to be done sooner or later, and it's better if it's done quickly and early.

Consider, for example, how many white people refer to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as "Martin Luther King" versus "Dr. King." That's a learned habit, of cutting away markers of respect, and it's something that must be shed if we are to achieve equality. It's a small thing, but I'm sure there are people for whom it hurts, for whom it rankles. And yet it must be done.
Oh my God, you're a moron.

1.) I'm quite familiar with the fascist playbook, but I was not following it. "Critical race theorists" are not my enemy; they're a practical irrelevancy. That's the truth, not rhetoric. Outside of interacting with you and Straha, this is not something that's ever come up. I know who my enemy is; the Klan and its ilk that my paternal line has opposed for four generations. I don't need to tear you down; I just need to go on about my business. This discussion is a mildly entertaining diversion, not a threat to me. I can't speak for anyone else in this discussion, but you haven't caused my resolve to waver one bit.

2.) I didn't say anyone needed to approach me and beg for my help. That's ridiculous nonsense that you just made up on the spot. I offer my help. I do not hold court demanding people beg me for it.

3.) You're talking to the wrong person if you want to berate people for not using Dr. King's honorific. Observe.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

Post by Simon_Jester »

Effie wrote: 2018-02-25 05:59pmI don't care how you rationalize it, I care about the broad pattern of behavior which you admit you follow to a T. I care about the structural phenomenon of people omitting titles of respect for people of color and especially for black and Amerindian people. Part of countering this structural phenomenon is getting people to stop engaging in the structure regardless of their personal intent.
So here's my question:

Is the structure that primarily affects King "people leave off titles of respect for people of color," or is it "people leave off titles of respect for people whose names are household words?" Other people as famous as King, who happen to have doctoral degrees, get the word "doctor" left off their names on a regular basis too. This even happens when they are famous specifically for academic work (e.g. Albert Einstein), let alone when they are famous for work that does not directly relate to the field in which they received their doctorate.

I can certainly believe that there is a mathematically provable relationship between being a person of color and having people omit one's academic titles, military ranks, and so forth, in conversation. In fact, I'm unhappily sure there is.

But I don't think that fixing that structural issue would result in everyone saying "Doctor Martin Luther King Junior" instead of "Martin Luther King," and I don't think that insisting that everyone say "Doctor Martin Luther King Junior" would fix the structural issue. Because you've conflated two separate processes, one innocuous and one racist, and you're using an example adequately explained by the innocuous process as an instance of the racist process. Which makes you sound like a conspiracy theorist, even when you're not, as is likely the case here.

Again, one doesn't have to be oppressed to notice which things won't help if you try to pour them in a gas tank.
I'm a trans lesbian, you smarmy little inquisitor of a man.
Does it count as an inquisition if you feel like you need to tell me something to defend your own conduct, when no one is opposed to you and when I wasn't seeking the information because I had no expectation of it?

I mean granted, I understand why you felt like you had to bring it up after I pointed out the issue with your behavior towards Alyrium. You'd just done a thing that roughly 95% of the population would be obviously unjustified in doing, by your own argument. Your justification for such conduct, if any, was based on your membership in a small minority of the population... And I don't recall you ever actually mentioning your membership in that minority. How was he to know the difference between you lecturing him on how to feel and just anyone lecturing him on how to feel?

I mean, I didn't expect and wasn't seeking information about your gender identity or sexual orientation, since I had no clear ideas about it beyond "well, Effie sounds like a girl's name so probably woman most likely but maybe not?" As inquisitors go, I'm pretty amateurish and bumbling and unmotivated.

But I suppose that's all beside the point.

I mean, am I correct or incorrect to infer that your status as trans, or your status as a lesbian, or both, gives you a license to deliver the aforesaid lecture? To tell gays how they should feel about "straightness?" I get the part where you have a license to tell me. After all, I'm clearly a part of the oppressive structure in question, and deserve as many tongue-lashings as can be given, regardless of any other factors that might be in play (since I couldn't go into those without making unfalsifiable claims or grossly violating someone's privacy or both it would be pointless).

But does it give you a license to lecture everyone? To shut them out if they say things like "I fully sympathize with your generalized broad-spectrum loathing of the people who put you here, but this hatred is irrational and counterproductive, and you're taking it to extremes beyond even what is normal and proper and useful for people in this situation?" Could anyone ever tell you that, believably?

Because at some point I have to wonder, who would you listen to, if you really were losing the plot? If people started telling you that in your adventures exploring the depths of angry identity politics, you had become a threat to your own cause and risked disappearing into a self-sustaining white-hot sphere of helpless rage that achieves nothing, not even the happiness and welfare of the people inside it... Could anyone warn you against that fate? Or would you be so busy telling them "DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO" while telling other people what to do, that it wouldn't even register on you what was happening?

Everyone needs someone capable of convincing them to stand still long enough to make sure they still pass a sanity check. It obviously can't be me, but who could? And what social dynamics evolve as a consequence of the answer to that question?
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

Post by Dragon Angel »

Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-02-25 08:46pmI can certainly believe that there is a mathematically provable relationship between being a person of color and having people omit one's academic titles, military ranks, and so forth, in conversation. In fact, I'm unhappily sure there is.
There is yeah, unfortunately. It happens with women as well, so there's an intersection present there.

Honestly though, for the reasons you've mentioned, I think Effie is being ridiculous here. MLK is not the best example to put out for this effect.

Also, I personally am not in the business of legislating what people can or cannot think about their own oppressions. For example, there are trans women (some of them friends) who describe themselves with words that ... are slurs, said by anyone else. It bothers me when that happens, but, it's not really any of my business to tell them they cannot use those at any point.

It's a complex issue that can't really be summarized in a forum post and, well, I don't have the energy for that conversation sadly.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

Post by Simon_Jester »

Dragon Angel wrote: 2018-02-25 09:17pm
Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-02-25 08:46pmI can certainly believe that there is a mathematically provable relationship between being a person of color and having people omit one's academic titles, military ranks, and so forth, in conversation. In fact, I'm unhappily sure there is.
There is yeah, unfortunately. It happens with women as well, so there's an intersection present there.
Yeah, I know. As St. Vincent Millay put it, "I know, but I do not approve, and I am not resigned."

I mean, everybody else spent much of the last ten years or so calling Secretary Clinton "Hillary." And I remember saying to myself "you know what, that just seems disrespectful, and her husband's not really politically active anymore so it's not even confusing," and started calling her "Clinton" the same way we'd talk about "Obama" and not "Barack" or "Romney" and not "Mitt," at least most of the time.
Honestly though, for the reasons you've mentioned, I think Effie is being ridiculous here. MLK is not the best example to put out for this effect.
It's not even a question of Effie being wrong to point out that this is a thing, but the targeting is so bad, the choice of example suggesting that she just has not thought it through. That's the kind of thing I'm getting at: how can you be effective at anything, including self-advocacy, if when people try to tell you that your head has disappeared up your own butt, you don't listen, because "FUCK YOU I DO WHAT I WANT!"

It's like, I respect people's autonomy and certainly respect their right not to be dictated to. But one of the side-effects of having autonomy is that you have to know how to take advice, because otherwise your whole life just crashes and burns.

Children can afford to be petulant and stupid about choosing not to hear well-intentioned advice, and reject it out of hand for whatever personal reasons suit them, precisely because someone else has the power to bail them out when they predictably screw up as a consequence. Adults do not have that privilege; when they ignore advice and feedback, they tend to wind up paying heavily for it.
Also, I personally am not in the business of legislating what people can or cannot think about their own oppressions. For example, there are trans women (some of them friends) who describe themselves with words that ... are slurs, said by anyone else. It bothers me when that happens, but, it's not really any of my business to tell them they cannot use those at any point.
I get you.

It's like, even from being part of the faceless legions of oppression (allegedly) I can totally understand people from the ground-down underclasses hating the guts of myself or the system I happen to share some DNA with. But I'm not going to lie by omission and pretend that this hate is a winning strategy for anyone, including them.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

Post by Alyrium Denryle »

Effie wrote: So, on the one hand, people can't dictate to you how you should feel, but you can dictate to other people how they should feel? Your argument is fundamentally incoherent- it goes from "I understand why someone would hate straight people" to "hating straight people is counterproductive and logically fallacious."
Not really. Say I run into a hard core queer separatist. You know the type. The sort of people who are some variety of queer and yet think we shouldn't be able to get married because that's a cishet thing. I can understand where they're coming from, while at the same time knowing that their response to whatever life experience lead them down that path is irrational and ultimately counterproductive. I might argue with them on an abstract level (say, by making the argument that queer people should be able to choose for themselves whether or not they want to get married), but I haven't earned their trust, I'm not emotionally close to them. I have not earned the right to deconstruct their thinking on that level.

Plus, at the time I made that argument, I had no way of knowing you were anything other than a cisgender heterosexual person like ~95% of the human population, and thought "Oh here it is. Some breeder trying to tell me how I should process being abused. Fan-fucking-tastic"

Now we can talk.
It also suggests that hating straight people as a class is the same thing as hating all of them personally, which, uh, no. That's not what that phrase means.
Really? When did that happen within the english language? Common use determines the meaning of words. If the same term means different things in technical jargon then it is on the user of technical jargon to precisely define the meaning they intend so as not to cause confusion. When you wade into an argument and use jargon, it is in fact your obligation to explain that jargon in clear language. Much like it is my job, when discussing the biochemical mechanisms of action for organophosphate pesticides, to explain what an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor is.

There are instances where this is not the case, especially on platforms with limited character space like twitter, where a feminist might say Men Are Trash. They don't usually mean actual men, they mean the cisheteropatriachy, or they're grousing about some douchebag manspreading on the bus. But in the general case, they don't actually mean they literally think men are all individually terrible people, which is what hating a class of people is in common use.

Jargon use cases are a second definition, not an overwrite. I made the distinction through context which use I was utilizing, because it was clear Simon was operating on the same set of use cases.

Friendly advice: Don't take someone's common use case of words and then twist everything into a jargon use case and recast their argument as something it isn't, or attempt to invalidate their use of language, which is what you did when you called me deluded. I'm willing to stipulate that it might not be intentional, but that is what you did.

Also, it might be a good idea to not craft posts as an impenetrable wall of jargon, as a general rule. It became very clear to me reading through this thread what everyone else means by "having a right to live in a place" and what Straha means by it, and what it implies, are different things.

Ending up in a merry-go-round of equivocation and miscommunication is not your friend.
It also relies on the idea that straightness is the same thing as heterosexuality, which is not really coherent, since there's overlap with transphobia and oppression of asexual people and regulation of how heterosexuality is expressed bound up in straightness. There is, well, a reason why it's LGBT+/QUILTBAG and not LGB.
That I will grant. From here on in I will specify further.
Furthermore, straightness is not imposed by some nebulous conspiracy, it is actively created and enforced at many levels, so all straight people are, in fact, complicit in the oppression of LGBT+ people.
Now, here's a semantic argument I can cut my teeth on. Complicity requires knowledge. The cisgender straight dude over there doesn't know why he's uncomfortable showing affection to other men, he just is, because everything in his society told him "that's gay and it's unacceptable" in so many subtle ways he doesn't even remember. And he'll do his part to pass that on to his own children without ever realizing he's doing it.

That, to my mind, is not complicity. There might not be a better word for it in English, but complicity is certainly not what that is. Tragic is what it is.

Would you be willing to accept a convention for the purposes of this discussion?
(gonna give a couple examples as well for illustrative purposes)

Agnostic Complicity: The state of being a participant in and benefiting from structural oppression 1) without consciously held prejudices and/or 2) having no or highly deficient knowledge of one or more aspects of said same structural oppression, and not understanding that they may act in such a way as to maintain a privileged position.

Example case: Your straight male friend who benefits from his privilege in ways he doesn't fully understand, but who wishes nothing but good toward you and actively works for your benefit, he might have internalized homophobia he doesn't recognize the origin of that causes him to behave in certain ways. He might have even done a lot of work to expunge that, but the job isn't done.

Gnostic complicity:The state of being a participant in and benefiting from structural oppression while also 1) having consciously held prejudices and/or 2) having sufficient knowledge of structural oppression and working actively and knowingly to maintain a privileged position

Example case: Your racist uncle, or your born again sister who "loves you" but doesn't think you should be allowed to get married because it isn't what The Lord Intended. Electronic Arts during the development of Mass Effect (I am still sore I had to mod the game to get it on with Garrus because they wouldn't let bioware gay it up until ME3. Don't judge me!)

The reason I make this a hard distinction is because in a lot of ways, cisgender heterosexual persons are victimized as well. They occupy a privileged position, but the system of oppression hits them too. For instance internalized homophobia means that non-romantic/nonsexual emotional and physical intimacy is basically impossible or highly restricted between straight men, for instance (and other aspects of the cisheteropatriarchy reduce this between men and women as well). This creates a lot of damaged people.

Plus, if everyone is complicit, we MUST make distinctions between someone who is willfully complicit and someone who is complicit merely by being born and raised, otherwise we are unjust.
Thus, it's not actually logically fallacious to hate straight people as a class of people, because all of them, yes all of them, are involved in oppression. Now, some people are better than others on an individual level, but we are not talking about hatred on an interpersonal level.
It is in most people's use of the terms "I" and "Hate" and "Straight People" in a sentence. That's the problem, and it's the reason why I made the distinction between "hating straight people" and "hating what straightness currently means". Straight people, as in, people who are heterosexual and cisgender, are going to exist. Sexual orientation and gender identity are driven by genes, gene regulation, and morphogenesis in the brain(if you want to fight me on that, do know that my PhD is in Quantitative Biology and I'll just laugh at you and bombard you with papers). What that means within a culture is a construct.
Furthermore, if we understand straightness as the expression of heteropatriarchy, we must hate straightness so that we might kill the straightness and let the human beings chained by straightness be born.
With the caveat that we're taking about the cisheteropatriarchy as a social construct, sure. But merely "an exclusive sexual/romantic preference for those of the same gender"? No. And that is where you lose people when you don't make those distinctions very very clear.
That is, if we understand hatred as the desire to destroy, it is almost necessary, practically morally compelled to hate straight people so that we might erase the straightness and let them live free as people. This understanding of hatred as a liberating emotion is hardly an invention of critical theory, either. There's close to 2000 years of precedent on it:
And there is where your rhetoric fails, because to anyone not seeped in your way of using language, that statement makes no god damn sense.

I know what you mean. Anyone coming in an reading this cold, will not.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

Post by loomer »

Shit, I know what Effie means and she's still coming off like a goddamn lunatic.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

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Her language is certainly not helping her cause.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

Post by GuppyShark »

Ironically, it's the clumsy use of language that precipitated this thread.

The guy who wrote the article in the OP is a young radical, who went overboard: Suggesting that without 'whiteness' white people would be 'zombies', and later doubled down on his article with the assertion that 'only white people can be racist'.

He's a student. I take what he wrote with a pinch of salt because he's young and probably did not expect his article to be the subject of international scrutiny. I do not expect him to be an accomplished scholar of the field.

I still think there is meaningful insight to be gleaned if we can keep level heads.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

Post by Simon_Jester »

GuppyShark wrote: 2018-02-26 05:48am Ironically, it's the clumsy use of language that precipitated this thread.

The guy who wrote the article in the OP is a young radical, who went overboard: Suggesting that without 'whiteness' white people would be 'zombies', and later doubled down on his article with the assertion that 'only white people can be racist'.

He's a student. I take what he wrote with a pinch of salt because he's young and probably did not expect his article to be the subject of international scrutiny. I do not expect him to be an accomplished scholar of the field.

I still think there is meaningful insight to be gleaned if we can keep level heads.
The problem is, a process which turns sophomore* students into screaming lunatics, or people who convincingly impersonate screaming lunatics, is only a trustworthy process if it promises to turn the students back when they get their bachelor's degree. If following a certain trajectory screws up your sense of perspective and ability to use language to communicate ideas in a reasonably non-offensive manner, then following that trajectory further is going to cripple you in important ways, unless it takes the things it screws up and screws them back down.

The value of a field is reduced, in that our ability to learn actionable and useful things from it is endangered, if it actively subverts its practitioners' ability to keep level heads.

Not all academic disciplines have this problem. I'm pretty sure most don't. But uh... whatever... the thing is that Effie and Straha did, it seems to have this problem associated with it.

___________________________________

*In the literal sense as well as the '1-2 years into the educational institution' sense. The word 'sophomore' originally meant something like 'wise fool' or 'enlightened fool:' One who knows enough to behave foolishly as a result of new ideas, but not enough to put those ideas into context and apply them sensibly.
Alyrium Denryle wrote: 2018-02-26 01:27am
It also suggests that hating straight people as a class is the same thing as hating all of them personally, which, uh, no. That's not what that phrase means.
Really? When did that happen within the english language? Common use determines the meaning of words. If the same term means different things in technical jargon then it is on the user of technical jargon to precisely define the meaning they intend so as not to cause confusion. When you wade into an argument and use jargon, it is in fact your obligation to explain that jargon in clear language. Much like it is my job, when discussing the biochemical mechanisms of action for organophosphate pesticides, to explain what an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor is.
Especially since what's being defended here is very similar to a common defense of anti-minority bigotry: "When I say I hate the Martians, I just mean I hate their habit of [doing thing Martians do]! If they'd stop doing that everything would be fine! Some of my best friends are Martian!"

Whatever is going on under the hood, it LOOKS very much like a straightforward mirroring of the biases and prejudices normally used by the majority to oppress the minority. And a lot of people who simply oppose such oppression dislike it when it's pointed the other way, even if they find it less unsympathetic under those conditiosn.
There are instances where this is not the case, especially on platforms with limited character space like twitter, where a feminist might say Men Are Trash. They don't usually mean actual men, they mean the cisheteropatriachy, or they're grousing about some douchebag manspreading on the bus. But in the general case, they don't actually mean they literally think men are all individually terrible people, which is what hating a class of people is in common use.
And such tweets STILL tend to cause misunderstanding that feeds a great deal of honestly offended and confused backlash.

While most men have on some level internalized that when a specific man does something particularly stupid in a characteristically 'masculine' way, women will throw up their hands and shout "MEN!"... A lot of men don't seem comfortable with the idea that this license to cast aspersions on the group due to frustration with individuals generalizes to being able to say "men are trash."

And a lot of men who have no desire to filibuster "women's right to complain about jerkish men" or whatever wind up weighing in on this, because "Men are trash" is not generally understood to mean "some specific men, plus a larger social infrastructure that most men didn't create and have little or no conscious desire to preserve, are trash, while some other men are not trash or at least not necessarily trash."

If you create ambiguous language in which you routinely say "all men are arsonists," you can expect a fair number of men to complain that this is unfair and inaccurate because they've never set a fire in their lives, or at least never set a building on fire.
Also, it might be a good idea to not craft posts as an impenetrable wall of jargon, as a general rule. It became very clear to me reading through this thread what everyone else means by "having a right to live in a place" and what Straha means by it, and what it implies, are different things.
See, I couldn't even tell if this was the case. Straha was using "right to live" in a sense I am unfamiliar with, but showed no sign of that.

I mean, if I say "this person has no right to be in this place," and this place legitimately belongs to someone, the conventional understanding of my words is that in a lawful society, the person who properly owns the place has every right to order the intruder escorted off the patch by law enforcement. Scaled up to entire ethnic groups this becomes ethnic cleansing; anyone who says "Jews have no right to live in Boronistan" is effectively advocating for the expulsion of the Jews from Boronistan by force. And furthermore, more to the point, it explicitly says that if the Jews were to resist such an expulsion order, they would be in the wrong for doing so.

There may be some very specific philosophy-of-social-science sense in which "no right to live" means something more innocuous like "has to be polite and deferential and apologize when asked and probably owes the owner some money or something." But that's another one of those terms that has to be defined.
Gnostic complicity:The state of being a participant in and benefiting from structural oppression while also 1) having consciously held prejudices and/or 2) having sufficient knowledge of structural oppression and working actively and knowingly to maintain a privileged position

Example case: Your racist uncle, or your born again sister who "loves you" but doesn't think you should be allowed to get married because it isn't what The Lord Intended. Electronic Arts during the development of Mass Effect (I am still sore I had to mod the game to get it on with Garrus because they wouldn't let bioware gay it up until ME3. Don't judge me!)
My first thought was "well, it's okay for EA to write in straight characters.

At the same time... they clearly did not hesitate to create an attractive bisexual female alien, and indeed created an entire species of attractive bisexual female aliens. Saying "hey no fair, I want an attractive bisexual male alien too!" is totally fair.

Even when one is not actively being oppressed by one's "agnostic complicity," it's still there and impacts the way one analyzes things.
Plus, if everyone is complicit, we MUST make distinctions between someone who is willfully complicit and someone who is complicit merely by being born and raised, otherwise we are unjust.
This. If we're going after giant society-wide Nebulous Evils, there has to be some way to categorize the majority of the population as being guilty of little or no crime, or at least no crime beyond the relatively petty level of "insufficient wokeness." Otherwise the struggle reduces to a tiny minority of the Woke against a vast majority of people actively hated by the Woke, and that literally never ends well.
That is, if we understand hatred as the desire to destroy, it is almost necessary, practically morally compelled to hate straight people so that we might erase the straightness and let them live free as people. This understanding of hatred as a liberating emotion is hardly an invention of critical theory, either. There's close to 2000 years of precedent on it:
And there is where your rhetoric fails, because to anyone not seeped in your way of using language, that statement makes no god damn sense.

I know what you mean. Anyone coming in an reading this cold, will not.
Plus, even after one has learned what is nominally 'meant' by all this...

I will ever after have to wonder:

How literally should I interpret this? Once we create a situation where people can just calmly say "we must destroy maleness" or "we must destroy whiteness" and expect that this will be casually accepted by everyone around them... Well, how do you differentiate between people who want to "destroy maleness" in some abstract sense, and people who literally want to destroy all the men and create a society of parthenogenic women or rely on giant sperm banks and tissue cultures? It's really easy for people to equivocate rhetorically between positions trending towards the literal destruction of men, and the defense 'oh, I only mean toxic masculine behavior patterns!'

...

I mean, one of the biggest things we try to do in stamping out overtly evil forms of bigotry is making it clear that it is just plain not okay, to fire off broad shotgun blasts of destructive intent towards the entire minority group. Even if "that's not what I meant!" A man who says "Women! Should just lock them all in barrels and feed them through a hole in the side!" should be met with a response like "SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK", not a bunch of people smiling and nodding and saying "okay, I understand that when you say that, you meant to say something relatively unobjectionable like 'there are some problematic female-coded behaviors in our society that need to change.' "

Because we don't want there to be men who take this literally and start literally locking women in barrels, and we know from experience that this can and WILL happen in a society where a lot of men think they have a socially accepted right ot do so.

...

I think similar arguments apply to our efforts to create a future society. The words for literal genocide or the cultural destruction of things that don't cause problems, and the words for destruction of genuinely harmful institutions that everyone would be better off without, should not be the same words.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

Post by Simon_Jester »

Addendum:

The issue here isn't even "do the people who say 'destroy whiteness' literally think it would be best if the white people got thrown into ovens, yes or no?" I'm not accusing anyone present of that.

What I'm saying is that if we create a situation where "destroy whiteness" or other similar phrases can become BOTH the phrase used for "eliminate some undesirable cultural customs" AND "throw people into ovens," we make it very, very much easier for people to 'flip' from one proposition to the other.

It's sort of like the proposition behind Orwellian Newspeak, or the evolution of any other language. If two fundamentally different concepts are referred to by the same word ("honor," "justice," "equality," "purity") those two concepts are apt to become conflated in the minds of the general public.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

Post by MarxII »

Reading over this thread and comparing it with my own experience, I find it hard to shake the feeling that the misunderstandings at issue are not entirely unintentional, at least not in all cases. It seems to me that probably for a blend of reasons (social capital, academic marketability, genuine satisfaction at outing racists by whatever standard, et cetera) there is in some circles an incentive to cultivate the miscommunication that has been the basis of these several pages.

I don't want to jump straight to dismissive of these viewpoints or theoretical frameworks even (or especially) as I disagree with them. But if, as seems to have been demonstrated, there is a considerable gulf between the specific and nuanced ideas that are attempting to be conveyed and the way in which they are received by the lay (and voting) public, it strikes me as very important to look at ways this problem can be solved, rather than writing off whatever majority as irredeemably ensnared in societal sin and continuing to play "gotcha" with the remaining slice of people who will stick around to listen.

Even if we take as read that the aforesaid most of society is ultimately responsible for their failure to grasp in detail such ideas as, say, the original article is advancing, it seems clear to me that the material interests of the oppressed here on the non-theoretical plane are best served by a calm look at whether and how the more basic and nearly universal values already held by the better part of us (people should not be oppressed, that is wrong) might not be getting lost in the shuffle, and their use as a vital connecting tissue along with them.

And while I feel the need to take a moment and disclaim any particular expertise with this issue, I also feel that to be very nearly the point of this thread.
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Re: Texas State Newspaper writer fired for racist column

Post by Lord Revan »

The minorities aren't 100% guiltless of the misscommunications here. Don't assume is is some "crypto-racist don't want to hear ideas they don't like so they intentionally misshear the message" case here, that line of thought is very dangerous. Sure there are some who are like that but there's also people who can't understand what you're because you're using language that at best is easy to missunderstood and at worst is meant to be missunderstood for a cheap excuse to preach hate.

I'll apologize (and provide translation) for the next part but to demonstrate my point here. So let us begin.

Silloin kun kirjoitat artikkeleita koko kansalle, on erityisen tärkeää että käytät kieltä jota ei voida ymmärtää väärin ilman intiimiä ymmärrystä asianalasta ja artikkelin sanoma on selvä kaikille. Tämä on erityisen tärkeää silloin kun ala kohtainen terminologia on lähellä tai identtinen yleiskielen sanojen kanssa mutta merkitys ei ole sama.

Most of you probably didn't understand what I wrote there, don't worry it was intentional on my part to prove a point and I'll provide translation of what I said (though you'll have to excuse my rather imprecise translation I'm no linguist).

Here's the translation Spoiler
When you write articles for everyone, it's especially important that you use language that cannot easily be missunderstood with intimate knowledge of the subject and that your message is clear to all. This is of paramount importance when subject specific terminologia is close or identical looking with words in the common langauge but the meaning of those words is different.

I have neither the time nor the energy to learn and memorize the subject specific terminology for each possible subject in existance, I wouldn't do that even in finnish which is my native language, nevermind in english, if you insist on using terminology that can easily be missunderstood then you must accept that it'll be easily missunderstood. This isn't bigotry, this is you being intentionally unconstructive and missdirective. I most people like me wouldn't any more chance of understanding such article then your average american regardless of race would have chances understanding that part I wrote in finnish without translation.
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