The ad hominem argument is where you seek to discredit someone’s argument by drawing attention to their motive, character, authority, education, age, state of mind, etc., rather than showing what is wrong with the argument itself. It is one of the most common logical fallacies and ways to derail an argument.
For example, if a senator argues for a pay raise you might say:
Of course he would say that. He’s a senator.
It is a logical fallacy, a fault in reasoning, because it fails to point out what is wrong with the senator’s argument. Arguments stand or fall on their own merits, not on who made them and why.
That applies even to arguments made by authorities and experts. Good ideas often come from outsiders. If the argument is wrong there will be a mistake in it somewhere – no matter who made it.
It is also a good way to derail an argument because most people will feel the need to defend themselves. The argument becomes personal.
Unlike slander it can be based on the truth: a person might in fact be a senator – or a high school dropout or work for an oil company or be dating a white woman or whatever will make others doubt him.
Unlike name calling its aim is not so much to hurt someone’s feelings but to discredit what they are saying. Of course you can do both at the same time.
On this blog the ad hominems often concern race.
For example, when a commenter says that blacks have less intelligence than whites, his race is sometimes brought into it. If he is white, he is dismissed as a racist. If he is black, he is dismissed as self-hating.
It is an ad hominem because it seeks to dismiss his argument based on his personal qualities, not on what is wrong with his argument. If there is a mistake it will be in the argument itself – like bad reasoning or bad facts – not in the colour of his skin. Or how you hate his website. Or what books he has not read. Or what trouble he is having with his wife.
Education, knowledge, experience and intelligence do tend to make one’s arguments better, but it does not necessarily make them true. If only it were that simple. Also, one can lack all those things and still be right – or see what someone with a PhD is overlooking.
A reverse ad hominem is where you point out the arguer’s personal qualities to defend rather than discredit his argument. Appeal to authority is the most common kind. Tim Wise has built his life’s work on the reverse ad hominem of his skin colour.
While this tends not to derail an argument and, given human nature, is often necessary to persuade people, it proves nothing in and of itself. After all, authorities can be wrong. Tim Wise can be wrong. Even fair-minded people with no personal reason to favour one side can be wrong.
See also:
I do think ad hominem post was long overdue. Especially given the fact what was going on in the past few days.
I’ll post a better comment later, I just want to ask a quick (and not-quite-on-topic) question:
What are these birds? (Anybody?) I thought they were ducks…
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They are Canadian geese, Branta canadensis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_geese
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American Privilege = assuming everyone else is familiar with your local wildlife.
guilty.
That pic is really funny btw. And illustrates the kind of ad hominem’s I see here frequently. They really do ruin good discussions. “The Africans sold their own people” thread might have been good otherwise.
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I agree, a good timely post. All of us regular commenters would do well to have a “gander” at it.
(Sorry, that was pretty bad.)
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I try not to resort to ad hominem because it IS a logic fail and makes no sense. It’s like saying “your argument is wrong because you’re ugly”- and it’s often exactly what people say (though they often put another word instead of ugly).
However, I won’t pretend I don’t use ad hominem all the time when it comes to politicians, police or any group of people who has a certain power. I admit: I (and many people I know) simply go with: “he’s just saying that because he’s a politician”. End of story. The thing is, it’s difficult for me to process and think about what these group of people say because I do believe they say it not because they mean it, but because they are politicians and therefore want to trick people.
But I try not to use it against “regular” people I meet online or offline.
PS- Thanks for the info on birds, Abagond! It’s not really about local wildlife per se; I am a city girl and I can’t tell difference between animals such as duck and goose. *embarrassed* Which is a shame, because I really like animals.
Btw, here’s an interesting website, with a wildlife photo collection from Serbia.
http://www.wild-serbia.com/home.html
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I tend to think of this as the “bully” argument. It automatically makes me think of grade school bullies.
I have to say this piece makes me laugh (at myself too) after the postings in the “Why so few white men marry black women, part II” thread. It’s very appropriate and overdue.
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Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to attract many people.
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I might be guilty on this. But it is seldom intentional. I just don’t think too much what I say. So sorry, I might do it again if and when I get my diesel goin on. 😀
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The countryside is simply beautiful, Mira. I love hiking and that is a hikers wet dream, pardon my expression.
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“Appeal to authority is the most common kind. Tim Wise has built his life’s work on the reverse ad hominem of his skin colour.”
Yes, yes…YES!!! I’ve been trying to articulate something like this for a while, but couldn’t. Again, I say, YES!
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“but because they are politicians and therefore want to trick people.”
To me, this is probably outside of a real ad hominem. This gets into the issue of bad faith arguments. If you can show that policemen tend to use true facts as cover for bad actions, then you’d be makinga decent argument for why they can’t be bvelieved on account of “what” they are.
This doesn’t contradict what Abagond is saying here, imo. Just dismissing arguments based on personal identity *without any good reason for doing so* is an ad hom.
The point is, there should always be some kind of real reason.
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“On this blog the ad hominems often concern race. For example, when a commenter says that blacks have less intelligence than whites, his race is sometimes brought into it. If he is white, he is dismissed as a racist. If he is black, he is dismissed as self-hating.”
I’ve seen that all over this blog, and it never dawned on me that was an ad hominem, but now that you point it out, I agree. Merely telling someone they’re racist/ self-hating usually does nothing to convince them that their beliefs are wrong. (Unless maybe they hear it so many times from so many people that they feel the urge to examine their beliefs by themselves.)
However, do we really want to stop informing some people that they’re plagued with self-hate/ that they are racist? Surely it is reasonable to point out their hate in addition to explaining to them why their ideas are wrong ?(e.g. flaws in the studies that claim blacks have less intelligence)
To me, addressing hate/racial antipathy is more important than whether blacks are less X, Y and Z than whites.
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Scipio Africanus,
To me, this is probably outside of a real ad hominem. This gets into the issue of bad faith arguments. If you can show that policemen tend to use true facts as cover for bad actions, then you’d be makinga decent argument for why they can’t be bvelieved on account of “what” they are.
That’s what I thought. But Abagond listed this as ad hominem: “Of course he would say that. He’s a senator.” So I am not sure what to think about it.
I agree ad hominem arguments are bad, not because they are “rude” or “evil”, but because they don’t make logical sense. On the other hand, I believe it’s impossible for humans to trust anybody who, in their opinion, has an agenda- not because they think said person is bad, but because they feel they can’t trust him. “Of course you say that. You’re white/black/male/female/gay/straight/etc.” It’s a logical fallacy, yes, but humans are not as logical as they seem to think they are. Most of the people judge someone’s words not just on their own, but based on the fact who said them. Most of the people are unable to accept words of someone they don’t trust, or someone who, in their opinion has an agenda (for example, I believe many people here think Thad does what he does because he is a white male. )
Remember: Ethos, logos, pathos.
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One more thing:
Appeal to authority is the most common kind. Tim Wise has built his life’s work on the reverse ad hominem of his skin colour
What does this mean, exactly? Abagond?
(Does it mean everybody listens Wise because he is white and white people are seen as “responsible”, “intelligent”, “rational”, etc?)
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“I believe it’s impossible for humans to trust anybody who, in their opinion, has an agenda- not because they think said person is bad, but because they feel they can’t trust him. “Of course you say that. You’re white/black/male/female/gay/straight/etc.” ”
A lot of discussion here is based more on opinion than fact. So, in a way it makes sense to consider certain things about the speaker. For example in the Storro thread I’m more likely to take the word of a black women saying that BW by enlarge are not jealous of WW than a white male saying they are, even though neither party has really given any evidence to support their claim. Is that what you mean by reverse ad hominem?
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jelee (I like that name, btw, in my head, I say it like “jel – leeee”. lol.),
“However, do we really want to stop informing some people that they’re plagued with self-hate/ that they are racist? Surely it is reasonable to point out their hate in addition to explaining to them why their ideas are wrong ?”
I think it’s hard to make that call. For instance, how would you know that someone is “self-hating”? People often say this as a response to a person making negative comments about the opposite sex of their perceived race. But maybe the person has had bad experiences with the opposite sex or maybe they believe that their conclusions are logical — it doesn’t have to have anything to do with the way they see themselves. Same with being racist, although that is somewhat easier to call since it has a clear definition. But usually these accusations just tend to confuse the conversation, at the very least.
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jas0nburns,
“A lot of discussion here is based more on opinion than fact. So, in a way it makes sense to consider certain things about the speaker.”
I agree: on these kinds of topics, I think it’s important to know and include the speaker’s background. In fact, it might even be necessary. For example, a white male in Southern Europe who has never even laid eyes upon a black female would not be very qualified to talk about how black females feel or how they are. And it would be relevant to point it out, even if it’s technically ad hominem.
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“For example, a white male in Southern Europe who has never even laid eyes upon a black female would not be very qualified to talk about how black females feel”
it’s funny, when I read that I think to myself “how could anyone including BW presume to know how most BW feel” as if they all feel the same way. On the other hand people tend to identify with others who are exposed to the same circumstances they are. Which is why I feel comfortable talking about what “most whites” think or feel about certain things even though I don’t consider myself to be an average white guy in many ways.
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jas0n,
I’m not saying that they can speak for all black women. But they can at least speak for themselves, which is more than the European white guy can say.
“…even though I don’t consider myself to be an average white guy in many ways.”
Is that so? 🙂
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“I’m not saying that they can speak for all black women. But they can at least speak for themselves, which is more than the European white guy can say.”
Agreed.
“Is that so? 🙂 ”
Yep. I think I’m a special snowflake in some ways, in other ways not so much. That’s probably true of most people. We at the same time all different yet all the same. imo.
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jas0n,
“I think I’m a special snowflake in some ways, in other ways not so much.”
The first comment I read by you, I knew you were a white American male. I don’t even remember what it was, but I know it wasn’t about race. I just had a feeling you were, and later on you confirmed it and I thought “Huh. Right all along.” There’s just certain way(s) that white American males come across, and you ft into that, I think.
This isn’t an ad hominem, by the way. 🙂
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This is interesting, Natasha. I thought he was black until he said he was white. On the other hand, I used to think Abagond was white.
I am also guilty of not guessing people’s gender correctly here. But on blogs like this one, guessing race is often easier than gender.
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Aristotle said you need three things to persuade people: they must trust you (ethos) and you must appeal to their head (logos) and their heart (pathos).
Ad hominem only applies to logos – reasoned arguments where facts and reasoning are what matter. There ad hominems are bad because they are a logical fallacy and tend to derail the argument.
However if you are speaking about your own experience then motive and character and background can matter a great deal. Not just because they affect how you see things and what you regard as important but because people use them to determine how much they can trust what you say.
As to politicians, ad hominems matter when talking strictly about policy. But when it comes time to get your vote, their character most certainly matters because you are putting your trust in them as a person not just as a policymaker.
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Mira,
“This is interesting, Natasha. I thought he was black until he said he was white. On the other hand, I used to think Abagond was white.”
*spits out drink*
Huh?
That’s just crazy. Abagond does not seem white. At the very least he is a mixed male who identifies as black. On the other hand, like I just said, jas0n I think comes across as a white American male. I bet even my SO could guess he is white.
I think the only person I got confused with in regards to gender was Hathor because I thought I remembered her stating she was male. But I think I could see how someone could confuse you for a guy, Mira (you’re somewhat ambiguous on all the boxes — race, gender, class, etc.). Especially since you have a guy in your avatar.
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abagond,
“…However if you are speaking about your own experience then motive and character and background can matter a great deal. Not just because they affect how you see things and what you regard as important but because people use them to determine how much they can trust what you say.”
Agreed. The last point might be why so many like to keep their race/gender private on blogs/forums like these. But I think if most people automatically disagree, you probably don’t have a very convincing argument anyway.
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Now I know he is West Indian, but at one time I also thought Abagond was white, Natasha. I think I even stated as much in another thread. I came by that because of the “Black Beauty of the Day” blog. I can remember coming across a blog like that years ago and it was out of some Scandinavian country, (which one I do not remember) so when I saw it mentioned here, I assumed. And yes, I know the “assumptions makes an Ass out you and Me” saying: I just ignored it. lol
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Ah yes! Changing the link in my commenting policy from Wiki’s explanation, to this one. The picture is perfect!
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I knew Jason was White from a different website, and I assumed Abagond was Black from the beginning since so many of his posts talk about White people assuming they know so much about non-White people and what non-White people like, want, think, and do, etc., so I figured it’d be cosmically hypocritical if he were White. I never thought about him being mixed, but I could see that, given things he’s said about his “colorblind” upbringing. (No ad homs here, lol :-P)
Mira, I know the website you’re talking about…I think it’s called “Thoughts of a White Bwoy”? I know there’s something different about the spelling of the last word…
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My bad Marci, it was you who said that, not Mira.
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Ergh.. why are there no edit buttons on WordPress? That was ‘ “assumptions makes an Ass out of you and Me”. ‘
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@Natasha:
“I think it’s hard to make that call. For instance, how would you know that someone is “self-hating”? People often say this as a response to a person making negative comments about the opposite sex of their perceived race. But maybe the person has had bad experiences with the opposite sex or maybe they believe that their conclusions are logical — it doesn’t have to have anything to do with the way they see themselves.”
Yes, come to think of it, it would be very presumptuous to accuse someone of being self-hating, especially in that scenario (even if it may well be true that person suffers from self-hate). I guess I was thinking of some posts like “are black women ugly or is it racism” etc where one or two random black people always pop by and say, “yep, i’m black and i think black people are uglier than other races”. But you’re right; I think in almost any other situation, claiming someone suffers from self-hate is a no-no.
(I say jelee the same way too in my head 😀 )
@Mira, Natasha, Marci ….: lol, I used to wonder if Abagond was white or black. In my mind it was really split down the middle 50-50; both seemed equally likely. His posts about racism made me think he was black, but his posts about black women in interracial relationships made me think he was white. (I do realise that kind of deduction is flawed and unkind.) I think I read this blog for months not knowing his race. Eventually found one of his “about me” pages and discovered he was West Indian.
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@Natasha
Well, if it’s apparent that I’m a white male, all that means is that I seem to have more in common with other white males than I do with any other race or gender group. which isn’t surprising to me. Your just picking up on the “not so much” part of my original statement….
“I think I’m a special snowflake in some ways, in other ways not so much.”
Seeing how someone fits their demographic is easy, you have to get to know someone a little to see how they distinguish themselves.
For example, you’d be hard pressed to find another white boy who could dance like me. But I still like mayonnaise, indie rock, and The Wire.
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jel – leeee (lol),
Oh, now in that scenario I think the charge of “self-hate” might be more appropriate. But still ad hominem… ish.
…his posts about black women in interracial relationships made me think he was white. (I do realise that kind of deduction is flawed and unkind.)”
Why did they make you think that? Most white guys wouldn’t think that deeply about it or, if they did, would probably never say those sorts of things out loud.
—–
jas0n, but why do you “fit”? Do you know? Because I don’t, I just know that you fit, and very well.
P.S. Do you have brown hair? Just wondering.
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Also, my first few posts inquiries as to why africanblackmilitant’s posts got past moderation. And then I had to explain that I didn’t take it personally as a white person that he thought we were “irredeemable.”
So that’s pretty much a giveaway.
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@jasmin
That’s it exactly! You are good.
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jas0n,
Those wasn’t the first post I read by you though. It was something not related to race.
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@ Natasha
I do have brown hair, but I shave my head.
I don’t know how I fit really. I would say like 75% of what’s in “stuff white people like” applies to me.
Maybe it’s because my habit of thinking about race from a white critical perspective is a relatively recent one. If I were a POC I probably would have been doing that for most of my life.
And no matter how I think about race, it’s always going to be from a white perspective. So that’s a giveaway too.
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“Those wasn’t the first post I read by you though. It was something not related to race.”
hm, I don’t know, If you could remember it might be interesting to know what it was that “gave me away” 😉
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That goes for anyone else who wants to take a crack at it as well “no pun intended” I won’t be offended. maybe we can get all the ad Homs out of the way in one thread. 🙂
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Natasha W,
Someone else said I was male. To clarify, I’m 65 and a Black woman.
Re this topic,
I often get accused of an ad hominem argument, when I am really telling that person, I don’t like them or what else I think of them, which I access in the same way if I had met that person in person. I don’t have body language, but the words.
They are always still arguing, by the time I call you out of your name I am done arguing. Many times it is a response to being called out of my name in such an obfuscated way, that it may be appear to be a valid premise.
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“in that scenario I think the charge of “self-hate” might be more appropriate. But still ad hominem… ish”
Yes, I suppose it’s best not to start turn the discussion onto the poster and start dissecting his/her personal issues. It’s harsh to hear that and especially annoying coming from a stranger. Come to think of it, if I were on the receiving end, I might be turned off from reading the rest of the discussion, which would probably be more useful in “unlearning” the self hate. I do feel sorry for them, though; guess I’ll have to fight the urge.
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Hathor,
“I often get accused of an ad hominem argument, when I am really telling that person, I don’t like them or what else I think of them, which I access in the same way if I had met that person in person.”
Cosign. I’m not attempting to use it as a way to discredit their argument, just telling them; these get confused.
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But giving reasons that you don’t like a person, in the middle of an argument, is an ad hominem nonetheless, because it has the same discrediting effect.
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What if it’s not in the middle of the argument? I’d never do that it in the middle of an argument (unless I meant it to be ad hominem), because it’s a separate situation altogether. I’d put it near the end, usually.
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Yeah, if it’s not in the course of making an argument (as opposed to having one) then I guess it’s not an ad hominem. However, in the course of a debate, I’d say it would be.
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That’s just crazy. Abagond does not seem white. At the very least he is a mixed male who identifies as black. On the other hand, like I just said, jas0n I think comes across as a white American male. I bet even my SO could guess he is white.
Well, the first post I read here was “Black women that white men like” – and he certainly sounded like he KNOWS what white men like about black women, in a way he’s one of those men. Seriously, read that post- he sure sounds like he’s speaking from his own experience.
So it made me believe he was a white guy in a relationship with a black woman. On the other hand, at the time I didn’t know there are only a few whites who would talk like that about other whites, so it didn’t make me realize Abagond wasn’t white (not even his Implicit Association Test result (after all, mine is more biased and I am white), not even his posts on (black) women, nor his general posts on race). I only realized he was black when I read his About page (or wherever he talks about himself).
But I think I could see how someone could confuse you for a guy, Mira (you’re somewhat ambiguous on all the boxes — race, gender, class, etc.). Especially since you have a guy in your avatar.
Maybe it’s because I’m a “foreigner” (non-westerner)? It’s more difficult to judge people who don’t belong to your own culture. And I know many blacks disagree, but blacks and whites in America (and west) do share a common culture.
As for avatar… I get that a lot. But for some reason I always found it the most comfortable to use male celebrity as my avatar. Not sure why.
And hey, it’s not “a guy”. It’s this guy:
😀
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Ooh I got it. I thought abagond was white for about 5 seconds. Until I realized something. He’s not careful. When whit people talk about race, we are always careful.
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King,
Just how long does one argue. 50 comments? 200?1000?
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Mira,
“Well, the first post I read here was “Black women that white men like” – and he certainly sounded like he KNOWS what white men like about black women, in a way he’s one of those men. Seriously, read that post- he sure sounds like he’s speaking from his own experience.”
It was a well thought-out post and I agree with it for the most part; it was the second post I read and what made me want to comment for the first time. It was scarily accurate. I do think it applies only to certain regions of the U.S., though. But I don’t believe you have to be white to write something like that, just have a lot of experience with them. Or NY-ers. Both of which I do.
“Maybe it’s because I’m a “foreigner” (non-westerner)?”
No, I’ve spoken to other non-Westerners online and I could still make out their gender most of the time. Except this Polish woman… who reminds me of you… Are you her? *eyes you suspiciously*
“And I know many blacks disagree, but blacks and whites in America (and west) do share a common culture.”
I agree and I say it all the time. People in America, of all races, have more in common in my opinion, than they do with others.
I know your avvy is Gary Oldman. But he’s a guy… I think. 😉
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lol! Some people argue forever 🙂
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jas0n,
“Ooh I got it. I thought abagond was white for about 5 seconds. Until I realized something. He’s not careful. When whit people talk about race, we are always careful.”
Lol. This is actually very true. They dodge and duck like no one’s business. At least the ones that aren’t racist (or don’t have any clue if they are).
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@ natasha
yeah, I think that whites who haven’t really examined their racism at all are VERY careful. But even when we have, even extensively, there is still this kind of special care we will exhibit in racial discussion that we probably don’t with other topics. Abagond would have a totally different tone if he were white, even if he was saying basically the same thing. There definitely wouldn’t be no 500 word limit!
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@jas0nburns
I agree that being careful is the norm in my experience, but there are exceptions as in everything. My dad is careful when he talks about race (he’s 75), but not the rest of the men in the family(except one brother-in-law who likes to pretend it does not exist). You would think a man who has been married for more than 40 years to a black woman would be a bit more comfortable talking about race, but when it comes to certain matters he just isn’t.
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What gets me is the pseudo intellectualism of blogs. I started reading blogs while finishing my education and having to write many papers. This first thing I noticed that being accused of using an ad hominem argument happened often, even though the one making that accusation often had no substantial data or a self referencing citation. Sometime it took me several links to find the original fact to only find that it was based only on opinion, not a fact. Pointing out that there is no data to support their conclusion, would guarantee that you had made an ad hominem attack. You are attacked in subtle ways, such as implying “you haven’t read the same books, if you had done so you would agree with me.” Staying on topic is another problem, quite often the argument morphs into another subject. Now when you point this out, technically it may be an ad hominem argument, but it is impossible to argue if the topic is ever changing and your citations aren’t accepted as valid.
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Personally, I left “careful” behind a long time ago.
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Pointing out that there is no data to support their conclusion, would guarantee that you had made an ad hominem attack.
No doubt. Happens to me here all the time.
You are attacked in subtle ways, such as implying “you haven’t read the same books, if you had done so you would agree with me.”
I usually get “You have read books so you obviously don’t know a damned thing about the topic, you arrogant f888er.”
Anti-intellectualism is as bad an ad hominem as intellectualism. It’s supposedly an ad hominem for me to say, for example, “look, read some books about this topic. It’s not as you think”. But it’s no ad hominem at all to say, as people routinely do, “The fact that you have read books/have an education/learned about this means that you are obviously out of touch with reality and nothing you say should be taken seriously”. Nor is it considered an ad hominem to say “I am X (white/black/female/male/American/non-American) and you aren’t, so you can’t possibly have as informed a view as me”.
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“My dad is careful when he talks about race (he’s 75), but not the rest of the men in the family(except one brother-in-law who likes to pretend it does not exist).”
“Personally, I left “careful” behind a long time ago.”
Right. So there are those who are either overtly racist and don’t care who they hurt. And those who know they are privileged but don’t mind displaying it because they are “beyond” caring. I suppose I haven’t attained that level yet. (sarcasm)
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“But it’s no ad hominem at all to say, as people routinely do, “The fact that you have read books/have an education/learned about this means that you are obviously out of touch with reality and nothing you say should be taken seriously”
a dissapointing conclusion.
I think if you were being honest the sentiment you are referring to would sound more like: “the fact that you have read books/have an education DOESN’T mean that you know more than someone who hasn’t read the same books, come about their knowledge in the same formal way that you have”
Of course, admitting that would require a certain amount of self examination and criticism which some people just aren’t capable of. That or they’re so far beyond it they forgot how.
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I think many people try to justify emotion with logic and reason, hence these ridiculous fallacies. Anyone interested in this page would really like this book I think, I am not the author and I don’t have shares with the publisher! It’s just genuinely a great book on this subject. (Ignore the first half of the title, I think, “The Use and Abuse of Logic” would have been far better.)
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Jason, if you could give me a decent definition of “privilege”, I’d be interested. Without it, you’re just tossing that word around as an all-purpose beany-boffer.
Happens that I and AP had a nice discussion about “privilege” today and what I and she have relative to each other. I’m pretty clear in my mind what being white, male and American has gotten me.
What I’m NOT clear about is why any of that means that I should not give an opinion, expecially when the supposedly under-privileged person I’m talking to probably beats me out on the class-privilege scale by several knots.
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Mmm, I’m trying to figure out exactly what you mean jas0nburns. Before I assume anything again.. can you explain what you meant.
“Right. So there are those who are either overtly racist and don’t care who they hurt. And those who know they are privileged but don’t mind displaying it because they are “beyond” caring. I suppose I haven’t attained that level yet. (sarcasm)”
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I think if you were being honest the sentiment you are referring to would sound more like: “the fact that you have read books/have an education DOESN’T mean that you know more than someone who hasn’t read the same books, come about their knowledge in the same formal way that you have”
I’m loving it how I supposedly read books in some sort of a formal, ivory tower environment. Most of the time, I check buy them at second hand stores and read them while at work, on the bus, at night… Yeah, Jason, I’m a real privileged intellectual.
And with regards to your comment, in spite if the hypocritical lies that have been spread, I have never claimed that anyone is LESS entitled to an opinion simply because they haven’t read the books I’ve read. I HAVE, however, had people specifically diss me for supposedly thinking I’m superior “just because you have an education”.
Mention that you know something on this forum because you’ve studied it and it won’t be three comments before someone attacks you as a “pseudo intellectual” or what have you. There is a real solid anti-intellectual trend in the U.S. and it manifests itself here on a regular basis.
I’ve been following commentators’ blogs, by the way, and I’ve noticed one in particular which is quite interesting. The person in question is always griping about “arrogant intellectuals” and “privilege”, but is themselves a student at a private American university that I could never have paid to have gotten into. Worse, they’re now several years past her original graduation date, but from reading their blog, they don’t apparently have a job or anything else to do other than school.
This person considers themselves to be sorely put upon by western, eurocentric, capitalist and racist society.
Then we have another poster who has a couple of advanced degrees and who has no trouble at all claiming that they are an intellectual on their own site. They also claim to be a writer (though they apparently haven’t published beyond the vanity presses) and they are as intellectually arrogant as anyone could hope for. This person also went to schools I certainly couldn’t have paid for and doesn’t seem to be doing anything at all in terms of work and they also often launch rants about “privilege” and their relative lack of it.
There are a lot of forms of “privilege” in this world, Jason. I think you need to keep an eye on your own AND on other peoples’ and not be overly concerned by folks who want you to shut up because you are “privileged”, but who unaccountably can’t seem to see their own privileges.
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you know what marci? I think I misunderstood your comment. sorry. when you said “but not the rest of the men in the family” I thought you meant those men said racist things without caring at all. Did you mean that they just aren’t careful in another way? If you mean that they don’t watch what they say about race around POC yet still manage to avoid hurtful comments that’s something else.
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Eek. Let me clarify a bit more myself. My dad being careful is more because of the era he grew up in. He never marched or did anything to protest racism in America. It would have never been on his radar except he fell in love with my mom.
Now my brothers-in-law are different generations altogether. One was raised in a (all white) small town in Missouri. He’s the one who wants to pretend it does not exist and everyone is created equal. The other one grew up in north Jersey, so while he grew up in a more diverse area, his immediate neighborhood was still white-he is quick to pick up on anything he thinks is racist, though he is pretty analytical about it. He knows it’s there, but he doesn’t obsess about it and god forbid if anyone said anything to distress his wife or kids.
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Whoa! That was serendipity in posting- question and answer one after the other.
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@ thad,
I think it’s interesting how you framed your argument in terms of your privilege relative to a few other commentors. as if their privilege or lack thereof has some bearing on yours. Or that whether or not some poster “wanting me to shut up” has any bearing on mine. Are you saying I should care more about class privilege? that I should not acknowledge my white privilege if a rich POC won’t acknowledge their class privilege?
when I referred to displaying privilege I meant behaving in such a way that you either don’t believe you have it, or you believe you do, but don’t think it really means much of anything, and can’t be bothered to refrain from rubbing it in people’s faces.
an exaggerated example would be that as a WP I have no frame of reference for what it’s like to be affected by a racial slur. I can read about it all day for years but there will never be any emotional resonance within me. That is a privilege that I have.
Now, I might one day come to the conclusion that I should be allowed to use racial slurs like the n-word in certain contexts. (I haven’t btw)
However, to do so would be a display of privilege because as a person who can not be effected by a slur I don’t have the right to decide appropriate usage no matter how logical my argument may be or how many books I have read about racial slurs.
I’m not saying you have done this, I’m just trying to clarify my concept of privilege to you.
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So Jason, you’re the guy tossing this term “privilege” about and chiding me to be aware of it, right?
So define it.
Go on.
Are you saying I should care more about class privilege?
I thought I made that pretty clear, Jason. Here it goes again:
There are a lot of forms of “privilege” in this world. I wouldn’t be overly concerned of censoring yourself in homage to them, especially in the internet where your voice drowns out no one.
an exaggerated example would be that as a WP I have no frame of reference for what it’s like to be affected by a racial slur.
None at all, whatsoever? I find that hard to believe. It makes it very hard to believe that you’re as sensitive to “privilege” as you seem to be claiming.
Now, I might one day come to the conclusion that I should be allowed to use racial slurs like the n-word in certain contexts. (I haven’t btw).
Good boy! Here’s a biscuit.
So let me get this straight: you think giving an honest opinion is somehow the same thing as purposefully using a term which is universally considered to be insulting, the only possible use of which would be to cause hurt?
So basically, to you, saying “I think the Catholic Church has some serious issues it needs to clean up with regards to sexual abuse and sexism in general” would be morally the same thing as shouting “CATHOLICS ARE ***-****** WHO **** CHILDREN!!!”?
I mean, given that you live in the U.S. and Protestants clearly have “privileges” with regards to Catholics in that country….
However, to do so would be a display of privilege because as a person who can not be effected by a slur I don’t have the right to decide appropriate usage no matter how logical my argument may be or how many books I have read about racial slurs.
You think you can’t be affected by a racial slur, huh? You’ve led a sheltered life, then.
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@ Thad
I just gave you an example of white privilege. Not being affected by racial slurs. At least it’s an American white privilege. At no time have I heard even indirectly a slur directed at whites that had any emotional impact on me whatsoever. The fact that you would dispute this is silly.
There are others of course we all know what they are why do I need to list them out for you? Is this a test? Unearned advantages bestowed upon one group at the expense of another would be a simple definition.
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Jason, I have to disagree with you there: I am white and have been affected by racial slurs. Now, I’m not engaging in the 500 meter oppression Olympics dash, but it seems to me that if your point is based on the idea that white people can’t be racially insulted, you’re not really thinking about the issue.
I have two words for you, for starters: “white trash”. Do you know the history of the term?
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my point isn’t based on it. it’s just an example of privilege.
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So you’ve never been racially insulted and you think this situation allows you to talk about my experience?
Seriously, Jason: do you know the history behind the term “white trash”? Do you know why you laugh at redneck incest jokes? Are you aware of the history behind this?
I mean, either you’re a very privileged white guy, class and ethnicity wise, or you’re very sheltered and really don’t even know your “own” racial history. (Note that I use “own” advisedly because I personally don’t buy this “my people” s***, but it seems that you do, so…)
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jasonburns says:
“an exaggerated example would be that as a WP I have no frame of reference for what it’s like to be affected by a racial slur.”
Thad says:
“I find that hard to believe.”
For what it’s worth, I find that homophobic slurs somehow affect me in a qualitatively different way than racist slurs (I’m not white and not gay). I consider myself a straight ally; I abhor all sorts of everyday manifestations of homophobia from jokes to senseless violence, I try to stay informed by reading, I can sort of relate to the exclusion that LGBT people experience from mainstream society. Yet, homophobic slurs do not shake me the same way that racist slurs do.
I have a parent who is closeted bisexual and a sibling who is a violent, raging homophobe who has made angry outbursts at that parent concerning their sexuality; it’s heartbreaking. Yet, as much as I love my parent and am shaken by the shame and hate that swirls around that parent, I can’t honestly say that I’m affected in the same way that I am by racial slurs.
Of course, this is only my experience; perhaps some people are wired to empathise completely and some aren’t?
(off topic, I know, sorry)
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Ah, okay, you are talking about racial slurs directed at white people, my bad.
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For what it’s worth, I find that homophobic slurs somehow affect me in a qualitatively different way than racist slurs (I’m not white and not gay).
I believe that, because it’s not directed at you, right? Or isn’t it?
You ever been queer-bashed, jelee? I mean even as a kid? Ever have, say, four or five big tough guys decide that they were gonna prove their masculinity by just punching the living s*** out of you, for no reason at all?
That’s not really an unusual experience for many men, gay or straight, but a lot of men haven’t had that experience.
Now, imagine that you have had that experience, maybe a couple of times: would you say that, perhaps, homophobic slurs might really rock you down to your bone?
I don’t think you’re off-topic, by the way: I think you’re spot on.
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@Well, the first post I read here was “Black women that white men like” – and he certainly sounded like he KNOWS what white men like about black women, in a way he’s one of those men. Seriously, read that post- he sure sounds like he’s speaking from his own experience.
You don’t have to be white to know how white people think. You simply have to study the trends they push/follow and observe them.
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You don’t have to be white to know how white people think. You simply have to study the trends they push/follow and observe them.
But the same thing doesn’t apply to black people, right? Because black people are just so inscrutable.
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@ Thad
I dont care about the term white trash.
I come from a middle/lower middle class background. I was not sheltered. (Even in a thread about ad homs you just cant resist huh?)
My racial history only interests me insofar as understanding how whiteness has been used to exclude other groups from being seen as fully human. After all, thats the only reason race exists in the first place.
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Of course a straight man who had been beaten up by homophobes could subsequently be more affected by slurs. I actually admitted in my post that it was possible for a straight to be affected the same way even without being beaten up. I’m not sure why you are being so disagreeable and trying to prove that a straight can actually be affected the same way as a queer, when I admitted just as much in my previous post.
Most of the men I know haven’t had the experience of being beaten up by a bunch of homophobes, however, so it’s quite appropriate to say that straights largely aren’t affected by slurs in the same way as queers.
Does everyone who is privileged in any form really need to run out and get beaten up/ dig into their history to find something painful, just so that they can finally say, “Yes, YES! Now I can finally relate to your pain!” Just what is so bad about someone being honest and admitting that they don’t feel affected by slurs in the same way (assuming that they are socially conscious/ know the history behind that slur)? There is nothing wrong with that honesty. (There’s too little of it around.) Now, claiming that ALL white people/straights cannot be affected is false (which should be obvious from my previous post), but that’s different from saying, “I’m not affected the same way because I’m straight.” You could argue that “I’m not affected the same way because I’m straight” implicitly means that ALL straights are aren’t affected the same way, but it could just as well mean that most straights aren’t affected the same way, which is true.
And no, really, this is off topic (I’m assuming the topic is about ad hominems.)
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You should: it is a thoroughly racist term and concept.
Straight up truth.
My racial history only interests me insofar as understanding how whiteness has been used to exclude other groups from being seen as fully human. After all, thats the only reason race exists in the first place.
Jason, if you’d bother to really look into the history of race, you’d see that it’s not been simply restricted to the euphemistic people of color. It’s been applied to the white people as well, quite a lot in fact: poor folks, rural folks, women… All of these groups have had classically racist theory slapped onto them. Up to the 1940s, there was a whole slew of “non-white” ethnicities which are today considered white.
So it seems to me that if you’re really from a lower class background as you claim, it shouldn’t be too hard for you to page back in your family history, if you so choose, and find scads of people who weren’t “really” white and who suffered because of that.
The problem is, you think you are white and you think your family’s always been that way. It’s thus easy for you to cry crocodile tears over your priviledge.
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Acknowledging privilege is now the same as crying crocodile tears over it?
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@Jelee
Of course a straight man who had been beaten up by homophobes could subsequently be more affected by slurs. I actually admitted in my post that it was possible for a straight to be affected the same way even without being beaten up. I’m not sure why you are being so disagreeable and trying to prove that a straight can actually be affected the same way as a queer, when I admitted just as much in my previous post.
Forgive me if I’m coming across as disagreeable. That’s not my intent.
But my question wasn’t whether or not getting queer-bashed would affect you in the same way as a gay guy. What I was asking was, do you think such an experience could affect you down to your bone, in other words, to the same degree that racism affects you?
Regarding men and violence… I don’t know what most of the men around me have experienced because men usually don’t talk about moments when they’ve been vulnerable to violence, unless they can be seen as heroic when doing so. So I’m loathe to say what most men’s experience is. I’m beginning to believe, however, that a lot of anti-female and anti-gay violence which so-called straight men engage in has a real severe PTSD component, however.
Does everyone who is privileged in any form really need to run out and get beaten up/ dig into their history to find something painful, just so that they can finally say, “Yes, YES! Now I can finally relate to your pain!”
I certainly don’t think so, but the general opinion here seems to be different.
ust what is so bad about someone being honest and admitting that they don’t feel affected by slurs in the same way (assuming that they are socially conscious/ know the history behind that slur)?
I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that. I am personally, however, against the “you have to be X to feel what an X person feels” dogma, because given that all feeling is subjective, X people don’t REALLY know what other X people feel.
I simply don’t believe that there’s a singular “way” in which x-type people are affected and if you’re a member of the x club, you’re going to instantly understand that feeling.
In short, I don’t buy the myth of absolute identity.
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“The problem is, you think you are white and you think your family’s always been that way. It’s thus easy for you to cry crocodile tears over your privilege.”
wow.
You are, 2 much.
I’m not even going to dignify that BS with a response.
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Acknowledging privilege is now the same as crying crocodile tears over it?
It is when you can’t even define what you’re supposed to be acknowledging in the first place.
“Hi, I’m Jason and I’m white, so I’m priviledged”, tells us nothing at all about what priviledge Jason feels he needs to ackowledge.
Jason seems to feel that his “priviledge” is that he’s never been the target of racial slurs. That may indeed be a privilege he has, but it’s not “white”: I’m adjudged to be white and HAVE been the target of slurs. So when Jason implies that there’s some white experience that we’re all universally taking part in which gives us these privileges, I have to beg to differ. I have certain privileges, which I’m damned sure Jason doesn’t share and vice-versa.
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So let me get this straight, Jason: you think the only reason whiteness exists is to be racist, and yet you claim to be white.
What would be the logical conclusion there?
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@Thad
But the same thing doesn’t apply to black people, right? Because black people are just so inscrutable.
Sigh. Okay, Thad, the energizer bunny of infinite knowledge, I’ll entertain you.
What are you babbling about now? You do realize that assuming a person hasn’t read any books on Africa, or that she has only read ‘Afrocentric’ (whatever this means) literature, and whatever point you’re snipping at above is not the same thing, right.
I never said you couldn’t criticize a black person. I have criticized many black people, and braced the backlash, as I have received from Natasha and Witchsistah on the ‘Bethany’ thread, for example.
So, tell me what’s roaming around in that big brain of yours. School me.
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I think he’s saying that White experience is no more uniform than Black experience and therefore White privilege does not apply universally to all White people??? or maybe just to Jason
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Mel, King,
That’s what I get out of it too.
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“do you think such an experience could affect you down to your bone, in other words, to the same degree that racism affects you?”
I hesitate to answer questions like this; how can one possibly predict how one would act/feel in a hypothetical situation? It’s possible to say, “I’d do/feel X” but then do the exact opposite when the situation actually occurs. But if you’re genuinely interested, I’d have to say I’m leaning towards no. (i.e. after said incident, a homophobic slur would affect me, but still not to the same degree that a racist slur does.) I think I would look back on the incident as a mistake (they thought I was queer) rather than an act of hatred actually directed at the real me. (Not that the actual incident would hurt any less.)
Perhaps there are non-white, non-queer persons who have been queer bashed and lived to tell us that homophobic slurs affect them as much as racial slurs, or maybe even more. But again, how common is this? It would be an interesting case study/ thought experiment, but I guess for convenience sake, especially on a casual blog like this, it’s simpler to just say that straights aren’t affected by homophobic slurs the same way as queers; are queer-bashed non-white non-queer newly-affected-by-homophobic-slurs-as-much-as-racial-slurs people really kicking up a fuss about this detail?
“I certainly don’t think so, but the general opinion here seems to be different.”
It seemed the other way round to me. 😛
“I simply don’t believe that there’s a singular “way” in which x-type people are affected and if you’re a member of the x club, you’re going to instantly understand that feeling.”
Yes, there’s no denying that different people in X club would have very different experiences, and even the ones with very similar experiences may have very different responses to them.
But I think when a white person is honest and admits that s/he has had the privilege of not affected by racial slurs, it doesn’t necessarily mean that s/he assumes that all black people are affected the same way.
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I don’t know how this came about slurs and name calling, but when I grew up, everybody got their share of it. I mean everybody. At that time, 60’s and 70’s it was a normal thing. You either took it and learned to deal with it, or stayed at home all day long.
There was no kid nor a grown up who was sheltered by his/hers family backround or any other thing. Rich kids were sissies and pussies, and ultimately just to name some one as a rich kid was insult. If you had fancy clothes you were a rich kid. Swedish speaking minorities were Father Pays All crowd, meaning they are rich and their fathers pay for everything. Not true, but that was the saying and still is sometimes.
As for the poor, they were sometimes called trolls, because their un cut hairs and dirty clothes. Some kids did not have clean clothes so they were skunks.
If you were an average kid from average family, you were a Nobody or Nothing, just because you were the Average.
And of course you had a million names for gypsies, mixed race kids, russians, foreigners, immigrants, fat kids, skinny kids, kids with disabilities, kids who were too thin, kids who were into sports etc. No matter what, you were under a barrage of name calling, teasing and insults.
It became so normal that it de-sensitised one. Even among friends. You might call your best friend: “Hey, pisshead, you comin out tonite? – Yeah, fuck face, lets meet at the shopping center.” This was nothing, just two good friends talking. “Hey you cocksucker, loan me some money. – I don’t have any you fat fuck”. Like that. I have no idea where from it came. Maybe it was our way of separate ourselves from the official world of grown ups with its polite wordings and hidden meanings and veiled insults. I don’t know.
This lead to some problems later on when one did not understand who gets insulted of what. For you it is normal to call your fat friend Ugly Fatso so when getting to know some one on the heavier side you call them also Fatsos. Meeting a beautiful girl one might say that she is not that ugly. Then they get hurt and you wonder what the hell just happened. Has happened to me often and still does sometimes. As seen in these treads also 😀
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Mel,
You don’t have to be white to know how white people think. You simply have to study the trends they push/follow and observe them.
Abagond sure worded that article in a way it made me believe he was speaking from his own experience (as a white man), not as someone who observed other people.
BTW, do you think the opposite is true? That you don’t have to be black to know how black people think?
It is also interesting to note it’s easier for Abagond to speak about white people (what they think, etc.) than is to him to speak about women (even black women). You’ll notice he didn’t have any problems discussing race, even from white point of view, but even the simplest gender-related posts (from women perspective) is written by another commentator.
It goes for both posts on black women’s perspective (“why do some black women refuse to date white men”) or women perspective in general (posts on most gorgeous men).
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As usual what started out on as a discussion on something else (Ad Hominems) now turns onto another subject of “white privilege” and lo and behold who should be spearheading the debate but sensitive, caring and and all knowingly aware white privileged (but only in some areas, which would need to be defined if at all!) Thaddeus!!!
Well I don’t personally mind because maybe what I am picking up from reading Thaddeus’s copious dissertations is perhaps this topic is perhaps long overdue too.
I don’t mind if people want to engage in throwing Ad Hominems around I reckon I can take it. Even racial or any other kind of slurs I can take those too. I suspect Thaddeus is similarly unperturbed in this respect too which is why he engages in a sly and subtle form of “Ad Hominemy” every now and then.
As I have stated I don’t mind BUT, I am aware other people do. And more to the point it serves as its main effect to detract from the core argument. Unless, of course it is funny or amusing, or provides a needed break, or diversion. Much like this topic of “white privilege”
Thaddeus stated:
To which I recall reading Jason had previously stated:
And I have to say WELL STATED!!! Jason for your honesty and insight. You have obviously been able to grasp what years of study, reading and teaching has, apparently, eluded our esteemed Professor Thaddeus!!!
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@Mira
I do believe what your describing and what Mel is referring to is empathy. It is quite possible to empathise to a degree with anyone’s experience. The extent to which this becomes possible will depend on the level of the emotionally related connectedness of the person.
Some people have high degrees of this and some a lot less. A simply reading of the different commentators and posters easily shows those with more and those with less. But these levels are not fixed we can all work with them and change them, if we so choose to that is.
If you believe that everything and everyone are connected then the degree to which you believe this for yourself will be the degree to which you be able to relate to everything and everyone around you.
Of course the degree to which you do not believe this is the case will also reflect or manifest itself in your experiences too.
So just to illustrate this by way of example:
No the opposite is not true !!. You do have to be Black to know how lack people think!!!!!!!
Just kidding!!!!
You don’t have to be Black but you do have to be able to relate or connect. And its that degree of related or connectedness which you believe is true for you will determine the extent of that experience.
The fact that significant numbers of Black people, like myself, have grown up in a predominately “white culture” (AND have been cut off from effectively what was their own) makes it easier to relate to other white people in what and how they think. Hence Abagond’s blog.
The reverse experience has not (yet) existed for white people so it would be harder for them to have the experience of knowing how Black people. But its not impossible if they choose to want to know.
In the same way, as you point out, men can never fully appreciate or relate to the experiences of women in a male dominated patriarchal society. But its not impossible if they choose to want to know.
Most white people have not had this experience
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That last line: Most white have not had this experience.. should not be there!!!
Its a mistake!!!
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Kwamla,
The separation of Blacks and whites in the south before the Levitt Town phenomena was not that great. In the rural south, as children, there was quite a bit of interaction, but the empathy of childhood was rigidly destroyed toward Black folk by society.
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@ Thad
” I’m adjudged to be white and HAVE been the target of slurs. So when Jason implies that there’s some white experience that we’re all universally taking part in which gives us these privileges, I have to beg to differ.”
all I can do is restate what I said earlier because I think it’s a good description of your behavior.
“when I referred to displaying privilege I meant behaving in such a way that you either don’t believe you have it, or you believe you do, but don’t think it really means much of anything, and can’t be bothered to refrain from rubbing it in people’s faces.”
It seems like you fall into the latter category. you seem to be saying that “yeah, POC have to deal with racial slurs, but I’m white and so do I, so it’s not much of a privilege really”
what you are doing IS rubbing your privilege in peoples faces and it IS oppression olympics. When you say
“I don’t buy the myth of absolute identity.” all your doing is evading responsibility because I don’t even think many people here do buy it. I don’t. but guess what? it’s irrelevent. You keep repeating yourself like a cokehead about absolute identity as if it’s necessary for all white people to have exactly the same experience of privilege in order to have privilege at all.
Or like jelee said:
“But I think when a white person is honest and admits that s/he has had the privilege of not affected by racial slurs, it doesn’t necessarily mean that s/he assumes that all black people are affected the same way.”
so where’s your absolute identity? not. all. black. people. are. affected. the. same. way.
yet privilege still exists (gasp) I guess you’ll need another pet theory to help you evade taking responsibility for yours.
Your trying to say that privilege and disadvantage isn’t universal for all members of each respective group so you don’t have to face up to your own privileges.
That’s the same reason you go pointing the finger at POC saying “oh, oh, sheeee didn’t acknowledge her privililege so why do I have to acknowledge miiiine?”
That is cowardly, dishonest, and irresponsible behavior.
If you can’t even acknowledge white privilege what the f*ck are you doing here?
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here’s another example of white privilege that Kwamla’s posts brought to mind.
Black Americans are forced to grow up in a white dominated society and often find themselves in the situation of being the only POC in the room.
As a white American I don’t ever have to experience this. I do at times but only by choice. not necessity.
Again this privilege operates independently of any type of shared experience of what it’s LIKE to be the only POC in the room. Some may have to deal with hostility from the dominant group and some may not, producing vastly different experiences. However, not having to ever face this at all is still a universal white privilege shared by all white people.
Thad, your theory of absolute identity lacks nuance.
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Kwamla,
I think it’s all down to one simple thing, really: people CAN relate to other people’s experience. They just DON’T CARE.
I don’t think it’s possible to fully understand anybody’s experience other than your own; however, people are ABLE to empathize with others, and are able to use their mind to understand other people’s behaviour.
In that sense, those who don’t (for example, whites who don’t show much understanding or empathy to blacks) don’t do that because they are unable to feel or understand. They can. They just don’t want to/don’t care.
(On a similar note, I believe people in general* don’t care much about things that don’t affect them or their group).
*- Some individuals do, but people in general don’t.
The fact that significant numbers of Black people, like myself, have grown up in a predominately “white culture” (AND have been cut off from effectively what was their own) makes it easier to relate to other white people in what and how they think. Hence Abagond’s blog.
This is true. Dominant groups force their norms, values and culture on others, so even if you don’t belong to a privileged group you’ll learn a lot about its culture. The opposite is not true: they don’t have to learn yours so they’ll know less about it.
This is evident in case of race (blacks do know more about whites than whites know about blacks), but is also true for other types of privilege (non-Americans (Westerners) know more about America/West than America/West knows about them), women know more about male history than men know about female, etc.
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Mira, I think you missed my comment; it was in moderation:
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Natasha,
You’re right. I did miss it. (I don’t understand why it went in moderation).
It was a well thought-out post and I agree with it for the most part; it was the second post I read and what made me want to comment for the first time. It was scarily accurate. I do think it applies only to certain regions of the U.S., though. But I don’t believe you have to be white to write something like that, just have a lot of experience with them. Or NY-ers. Both of which I do.
I agree. I am not one of those people who claim you must be X to understand X. However, the way “black women that white men like” post was written sure seemed he wrote it from his own experience.
So I guess I went with that to his other posts (I believed he was a white guy so I didn’t think much about it before I read he was black). Once again, I had no idea there are only a few whites who would talk about race and racism that way. So it was easy for me to assume he was white.
No, I’ve spoken to other non-Westerners online and I could still make out their gender most of the time.
And what about them? Were they able to tell Westerners’ race/gender? I seem to be particularly bad at it. (But I guess it’s an individual thing with me).
Except this Polish woman… who reminds me of you… Are you her? *eyes you suspiciously*
No. I am only 1/16 Polish! 😉
I agree and I say it all the time. People in America, of all races, have more in common in my opinion, than they do with others.
I understand there are differences between groups in America, but there is a common culture- so I don’t understand why some people deny it. (In fact, I do. It’s difficult for people of different races to see those of other (“enemy”) races as people of the same culture… Just like it’s
difficultimpossible for people here to realize Serbs and Croats share a common culture).I know your avvy is Gary Oldman. But he’s a guy… I think.
Of course he’s a guy! But he’s not just “a” guy. 😀 😉
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Oh, and anybody is interested in making
thiseffect, the word to use is S T R I K E.LikeLike
I think that it could be healthy for more white guys to get into situations were you share the “black experience”. Like I’ve told in previous thread (cant remember which it was) being stopped by white cops in the middle of the night in a car where you are the only white guy is an eye opener. I was scared shitless. Not because the black guys but the cops and their stance:
DRIVER! SHOW YOUR HANDS! PASSANGER; STEP OUT OF THE VEHICLE AND WALK TOWARDS MY VOICE! SHOW YOUR HANDS! STOP! KNEEL DOWN, FACE DOWN. STAY THERE! PASSANGER ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE VEHICLE! STEP OUT OF THE CAR! SHOW YOUR HANDS! STEP BACKWARDS TOWARDS MY VOICE. STOP. KNEEL DOWN. FACE DOWN. STAY DOWN. DRIVER. OPEN THE DOOR. SLOWLY. SHOW YOUR HANDS. WALK BACKWARDS. STOP. KNEEL DOWN. FACE DOWN. LAY STILL!
Everyday thing to my black buddies, but totally new to me at the time back in the 80’s.
Also an eye opener is to sit in a not too uppty tidy saloon in not so trendy neighbourhood of Lagos as the only white guy around in the middle of the night.
I would not do those things today but they certainly had an impact on my thinking.
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Jelee
I think I would look back on the incident as a mistake (they thought I was queer) rather than an act of hatred actually directed at the real me. (Not that the actual incident would hurt any less.)
And this is what lies at the core of the Anglo-American myth of identity: the idea that there’s a “real” and essential you.
Frankly, as someone who has passed through post-traumatic stress disorder due to violence, I have my doubts that you would do anything other than react vicerally to a situation which reminded you of the previous incident.
I think it speaks volumes about American worldviews, however, that the digs that are supposed to hurt the most are the ones that hit one’s presumed “essence”. I think I can say that Brazilians, at least, don’t generally have this view of the world.
Perhaps there are non-white, non-queer persons who have been queer bashed and lived to tell us that homophobic slurs affect them as much as racial slurs, or maybe even more. But again, how common is this? It would be an interesting case study/ thought experiment, but I guess for convenience sake, especially on a casual blog like this, it’s simpler to just say that straights aren’t affected by homophobic slurs the same way as queers; are queer-bashed non-white non-queer newly-affected-by-homophobic-slurs-as-much-as-racial-slurs people really kicking up a fuss about this detail?
It seems to me that there are so many assumptions nested in there that I wonder why you would think such an intellectual view of the world would be “simpler”.
First of all, there’s a presumption that the world can neatly be divided into gay and non-gay. Kinsey’s research nailed that particular presumption back in the 1950s.
Then there’s the presumption that more gays get queer bashed than straights, which I have serious cause to doubt. (Simple statistics would seem to bear this out, if we buy the “official” view that 10% of the population is gay. If only 12% of the straight population has been bashed at one time or another, that’s still more than all the gay population).
Finally, there’s the presumption that non-gays are not “affected in the same way” as gays. I’d suggest to you that this is an article of faith which remits to your unprovable belief in a real “self”, If we look at the situation empirically, with what can actually be proven and not presumed, a straight guy killed or hospitalized by a bashing has had the same experience as a gay guy.
But I think when a white person is honest and admits that s/he has had the privilege of not affected by racial slurs, it doesn’t necessarily mean that s/he assumes that all black people are affected the same way.
This makes a presumption based on ideology the “proof” of honesty and not any empirical proof. The fact of the matter is, here are several ways in which so-called white people get affected by racist slurs, though many don’t recognize this.
The entire concept of “white trash” is very solidly philosophically based on 19th century eugenics and social darwinism. Racism, in short. The beliefe that there were identifiable strains of human biology and that some were more or less evolved than others.
“White trash” is based on the racist, eugenicist concept of aryan degeneration. It is a thoroughly racist concept which has been used to justify all sorts of horrid behavior towards poor white “degenerate” populations. People are completely inurred to this sort of racism, however, because of the myth that racism was/is only directed against non-whites.
As someone who has indeed been called “white trash” on several occasions by other whites and who has met some very hard core – though often unacknowledged – prejudice along those lines, I’m simply not going to get in line for the “I’m white and I’m so gawdammed privileged” trolley along with Jase. My “whiteness” has very rarely been the sort which is understood to be synonymous with “racial superiority”, in the States at least. Brazil is another kettle of fish, but then again, other factors come into play here, too, such as being a gringo and an immigrant, neither of which are particularly “privileged” positions to be in.
Jase can speak for himself. I do not think he’s speaking for people who look like me in general and, in fact, I doubt that he’s honestly appraising his own life, if he is indeed working class and white, as he claims.
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@Jason
Thad, your theory of absolute identity lacks nuance.
Seeing that I DON’T have a theory of absolute identity, that I am in fact critiquing such beliefs as yours, where you situate yourself as soley and unproblematically “white”, you can hardly say it’s my theory.
As for the rest of your post, all I can say is that the road to hell is paved with well-meaning so-called white boys who think they need to atone for the sins of others.
I have my own sins to look out for, thanks.
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Kwamla, your blog is full of your proclamations in the belief of little green men. Fair go. Why not? But I really think that a guy who says “The internet is full of proof of UFOs” has no cause to be tossing snide remarks at me regarding my beliefs, neh? 😀
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Kwamla, your blog is full of your proclamations in the belief of little green men. Fair go. Why not? But I really think that a guy who says “The internet is full of proof of UFOs” has no cause to be tossing snide remarks at me regarding my beliefs, neh? 😀
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Black Americans are forced to grow up in a white dominated society and often find themselves in the situation of being the only POC in the room.
As a white American I don’t ever have to experience this. I do at times but only by choice. not necessity.
Again, Jase, speak for yourself. I live in a country where very, very few people look like me. No even the so-called white people look much like me. I stand out pretty much wherever I go, with the exception of some places in the deep south.
Again, what you claim to be “white privilege” here is another case of “Jason privilege”. The majority of the world doesn’t live in small town or suburban America, Jase.
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@ Thad
“Again, what you claim to be “white privilege” here is another case of “Jason privilege”. The majority of the world doesn’t live in small town or suburban America, Jase.”
I’m only talking about America. Suburban? not so much
And again. You have illustrated with another botched Ad hom that you don’t know what the f*ck you are talking about.
I grew up in a predominantly black, poor urban area. I was one of like 10 white people at my elementary school. For most of my childhood my family was broke.
That vantage point initially made me as suspicious of white privilege as you are, but I came to realize that as a white American adult I am now in control of my surroundings in ways that POC in America are not. Rich, poor, or middle class. That’s because I’m white not because i’m Jason.
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“Seeing that I DON’T have a theory of absolute identity, that I am in fact critiquing such beliefs as yours, where you situate yourself as soley and unproblematically “white”, you can hardly say it’s my theory.”
It is your theory, it’s your little pet strawman that you carry around with you everywhere you go. You just ascribe it to other people when it suits you so you’ll have something to rail against. I certainly don’t believe in any such thing. I never said that whiteness was in someway the essence of my being. YOU just pretend that’s what I think for your own convenience. That’s what sucks about you.
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Oh sh:! I missed the part when you said I claimed to be working class. Hahaha. When did I say that? I guess I grew up working class. Now I would be more accuratly defined as creative class or middle class.
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Jason said@
“an exaggerated example would be that as a WP I have no frame of reference for what it’s like to be affected by a racial slur. I can read about it all day for years but there will never be any emotional resonance within me. That is a privilege that I have.”
Jason, I am glad you said that because it’s your honest opinion…This is why I read these forums…I think it’s good to see different view points from different eyes…none of it is the gospel…you’re just sharing your experience based on how you see it…and that is what a discussion needs…
I don’t think anyone here is a spokesperson for any race, nationality, or group of people…but for sure, people in similar groups can relate to each other on a level that others not in the group can…
…I am a West Indian immigrant, and I do believe other immigrants (from other countries) can empathize with me on the immigration experience to this country (USA) …and even that gets broken down by whether the immigrant came by plane, walked it over, or washed ashore but overall, we all go through a similar process trying to get a green card in the US…
I don’t expect many Americans to sympathize with my struggles because so far, my American (black and white) associates have shown that they don’t understand the frustration and stress (especially after 9/11) of dealing with immigration
….when I used to get pissed because of the hassles I got with Visa issues or dealing with INS, I would get blank looks from my American associates but my white immigrant co-workers felt my pain…
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@thad
“all I can say is that the road to hell is paved with well-meaning so-called white boys who think they need to atone for the sins of others.”
atonement is a funny word. If you think that I feel I should pay some price or apologise for my being white I certainly don’t. But atonement means to make amends. I think one way to make amends is to try to be honest about things especially with ourselves. I think that as WP we bullshit ourselves a lot into thinking everything is fair and even when it’s really not. it doesn’t cost us anything to admit that our being white has given us unfair advantages and I think non-whites are sick of hearing us deny something so obvious. So yeah, maybe I am trying to atone for something. Sue me.
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I understand there are differences between groups in America, but there is a common culture- so I don’t understand why some people deny it. (In fact, I do. It’s difficult for people of different races to see those of other (“enemy”) races as people of the same culture… Just like it’s difficult impossible for people here to realize Serbs and Croats share a common culture
I agree. I have seen the ‘so-called’ black culture of America as different from the white one. It was always the same culture, divided along racial and socio-economic lines.
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The post has morphed.
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Thad:
“Frankly, as someone who has passed through post-traumatic stress disorder due to violence, I have my doubts that you would do anything other than react vicerally to a situation which reminded you of the previous incident.”
Frankly, as a woman who actually has been beaten up by a man, I can honestly tell you that the incident did next to nothing to change my reactions to slurs/ situations which remind me of that incident. Given my past experience and my knowledge of my psychological makeup (neither of which you are privy to), I think it’s perfectly reasonable for me to hazard a guess the way I did.
“I think it speaks volumes about American worldviews, however, that the digs that are supposed to hurt the most are the ones that hit one’s presumed “essence”. I think I can say that Brazilians, at least, don’t generally have this view of the world.”
You’re presuming here, Thad. I’m not American, and I don’t consider my worldview to be an American one (whatever that is) having lived outside North America for most of my life.
Also, at which point did I say that digs at my “essence” are the ones that hurt me the most? I can honestly say that this is far from the truth; the most hurtful things that I’ve heard in my life are not “identity” related insults, but things pertaining to my personality and behaviour. The most you can infer from my writing is that digs that contain a grain of truth hurt me more than digs that are totally false and baseless. This is what I actually meant when I mentioned the real me; I was not alluding to this “essence” of yours, but rather, the degree of truth in an insult. I’m an atheist who doesn’t believe in a soul/essence/whatever, so excuse me if my choice of words suggested otherwise. If person X called you white trash and person Y called you an armpit fetishist, can you honestly say that X didn’t offend you more than Y? (And are Brazilians really immune to this type of difference?)
“First of all, there’s a presumption that the world can neatly be divided into gay and non-gay. Kinsey’s research nailed that particular presumption back in the 1950s.”
No Thad, it’s you who’s making the presumption here, not me. I’ve already mentioned earlier that I’m a straight ally and that I bother to read up about queer-related issues. So why are you presuming that I’m not aware that a gay/straight binary doesn’t exist, or that I haven’t read Kinsey’s work? Is it because I use terms like “straight”, “gay” and “non-gay”? You use them yourself; scroll up and check out your posts above; you throw around things like “gay”, “gay or straight” without any disclaimer whatsoever.
Are phds in anthropology/whatever the only ones allowed to use these terms without it being automatically assumed that they believe in a rigid binary? Do the rest of us non-phds always have to use quotation marks around those words, or disclaimers whenever we use these terms? “Oh, by the way, I’m aware that there’s no clear divide between gay and straight; I’ve read Sexual Behaviour in Human Males, Sexual Behaviour in Human Females, X, Y and Z by Alfred Kinsey, so I know that was debunked properly.” It’s tiresome, and a double standard.
Or perhaps you were under the impression that I was proposing an “intellectual view of the world” as you say, and pounced on it to point out all its methodological flaws. If so, you’re totally wrong. I’m only recounting my personal experiences and subsequent opinions here, and I’d be the first to admit that they hardly count as a rigorous “proof” of anything. If you’re trying to explain to me why my opinion can’t be proven, it’s unnecessary and show-offish, as I’m perfectly capable of seeing the flaws myself. If you’re trying to convert me into believing that the “null hypothesis” is true, that can’t be “proven” either, and anyway I do not see why that should be the default position.
“Then there’s the presumption that more gays get queer bashed than straights, which I have serious cause to doubt. (Simple statistics would seem to bear this out, if we buy the “official” view that 10% of the population is gay. If only 12% of the straight population has been bashed at one time or another, that’s still more than all the gay population).”
Now you aren’t thinking clearly. I most certainly did not imply or assume that more gays get queer bashed than straights, in terms of absolute numbers. I do, however, believe that a larger percentage of gays get queer-bashed than straights, and that is the most you can deduce from my post above. When I said “but how common is this?”, it’s quite clear I was saying that being queer-bashed is not the norm in the straight population, hence most non-white straights would be right in admitting that homophobic slurs do not affect them the same way as racial slurs. Why would you read “but how common is this?” as a remark on the absolute numbers of queer bashed straights versus gays? How does one use those figures to support the opinion that most non-white straights aren’t affected by homophobic slurs as much as racial slurs? I challenge you to try and construct an argument that way (without converting those absolute figures into percentages, no cheating). Frankly, I find it quite dishonest/lazy to twist the meaning of my words this way, and I suspect you are just looking for an opportunity to show off your understanding of “simple statistics” which obviously I’m too stupid to have realised myself.
“Finally, there’s the presumption that non-gays are not “affected in the same way” as gays. I’d suggest to you that this is an article of faith which remits to your unprovable belief in a real “self”, If we look at the situation empirically, with what can actually be proven and not presumed, a straight guy killed or hospitalized by a bashing has had the same experience as a gay guy.
I’ve clarified above my use of the words “real me”, so in future stop referring to my belief/faith in whatever it is you are alluding to. Also, I’ve never claimed or assumed that straights and gays are not emotionally/physically affected in the same way by a queer bashing incident. In fact, I explicitly wrote a disclaimer “Not that the actual incident would hurt any less.” For whatever reason, you are willfully ignoring this, just so you can accuse me of presuming something obviously false. I did, however, say that I personally believe straights largely aren’t affected emotionally/psychologically by homophobic slurs in the same way as many gays are.
Yes, difference in emotional/psychological response to slurs is not really something you can measure/prove empirically. No one is privy to anyone else’s thoughts and feelings, I’m with you on that. What I don’t get is why you seem to vehemently insist that I change my personal belief based on my experiences (I have been the target of homophobic slurs) and observations to your “null hypothesis”, which can’t be proven empirically either, and is equally based on your personal experiences/observations/hunches. You seem to imagine I’m some angry activist who marches around demanding that straights admit they aren’t affected strongly by slurs; if so, you’re overreacting. This is just a blog where I happened to recall my experiences in a derail within a derail within a derail, so chill.
“This makes a presumption based on ideology the “proof” of honesty and not any empirical proof. The fact of the matter is, here are several ways in which so-called white people get affected by racist slurs, though many don’t recognize this.”
You really aren’t very clear here, but I think what you are saying is this: I’m using a white person’s honest admission of not being affected by slurs as proof that ALL white people are not affected by slurs, which isn’t an empirical proof, and some other white people’s experiences serve as a “disproof”. That is indeed a logical fallacy, but it’s something which I’m not guilty of; it’s you who’s presuming that I think along these lines. Read what I said again: “But I think when a white person is honest and admits that s/he has had the privilege of not being affected by racial slurs, it doesn’t necessarily mean that s/he assumes that all black people are affected the same way.” There is no mention of more than one white person in there. It’s only by a Thaddean stretch that one can read that and accuse me of falling for that fallacy.
Also, scroll up to my post on Wed, 01:59, where I already said this: “Now, claiming that ALL white people/straights cannot be affected is false”. Ironically, you seem to have already decided that ALL black people think that ALL white people have privilege X, and you’re determined to rid them of this myth. Clearly, you aren’t bothered to understand others’ views properly, and are more interested in telling others that their beliefs are wrong. This is not the first time I explicitly said I believe something and you subsequently accuse me of believing the opposite.
“As someone who has indeed been called “white trash” on several occasions by other whites and who has met some very hard core – though often unacknowledged – prejudice along those lines, I’m simply not going to get in line for the “I’m white and I’m so gawdammed privileged” trolley along with Jase. My “whiteness” has very rarely been the sort which is understood to be synonymous with “racial superiority”, in the States at least.”
Now we’re back at square one. I’m sorry you’ve been the target of bullying, but here’s what I think about this “privilege of not being affected by racial slurs”:
When a white person says
“an exaggerated example would be that as a WP I have no frame of reference for what it’s like to be affected by a racial slur”,
(1) It doesn’t necessarily mean that s/he believes that all WP do not know what it is like to be affected by a racial slur (though it may well be the case). Why do you think jason used the word “exaggerated”? Also, any blinking idiot can point out the obvious case of a white person who lives in an Asian/ African country where whites are the minority, so for you to point out this kind of thing smacks of a patronising attitude.
(2) It doesn’t necessarily mean that s/he believes that all black people are affected the same way.
(3) It doesn’t mean s/he is “crying crocodile tears”. Admitting that one hasn’t been hurt by racial slurs and describing that as a privilege is only an observation/summary of one’s past, and doesn’t necessarily entail an expression of emotions like sorrow, regret or guilt. There aren’t any “tears” here, let alone crocodile tears.
(4) It doesn’t necessarily mean that s/he wants to “atone for the sins of others”. This is absurd.
(5) It doesn’t necessarily mean that s/he believes that ALL white people have a higher quality of life than ALL black people (i.e. the “unluckiest” white person still has a better life than the “luckiest” black person). I don’t know anybody foolish enough to believe this. That you feel the need to point out that so-and-so black persons have a more comfy life than yours shows that you have an extremely low opinion of our intelligence/grip on reality.
When someone scores yes on all these assumptions (and plenty more, see above unnecessary waste of bandwidth) I’m inclined to think they are being disagreeable and showy, despite any claims to the contrary.
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@Thad
Unpack this for me please?:
“What I’m NOT clear about is why any of that means that I should not give an opinion, expecially when the supposedly under-privileged person I’m talking to probably beats me out on the class-privilege scale by several knots.”
Thanks.
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Jerome,
Yes, I was wondering about that part, too. I believe he meant that he’s not privileged in certain aspects (class), so he’s asking why other commentators (who have class privilege) don’t listen to him. (If we established that privileged people should listen what those without privilege have to say).
But HOW did he (a PhD professor) concluded that he lacked class privilege while other here have it, is what I don’t get.
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(Please ignore blatant grammar mistakes in the last post… I’m multitasking (making a cake & commenting) lol 😀 )
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Mira said:
“But HOW did he (a PhD professor) concluded that he lacked class privilege while other here have it, is what I don’t get.”
Because they seem to have more money than he does: they go to schools he could not afford and, going by their blogs, do not seem to have to work for a living.
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But HOW did he (a PhD professor) concluded that he lacked class privilege while other here have it, is what I don’t get.
OK, Abagond, let me get this straight…
You claim to be an ex-Marxist and yet you apparently don’t understand they concept of class?
I have to explain it to you, is that it?
In the first place, if we use a Marxist definition of class, it has nothing to do with education or even, strictly speaking, money: it has to do with access to capital. Do you work for a living, on a salary, or do you extract a surplus from other peoples’ labor? If you fit into the first category, you are working class, if you fit into the second, you are bourgeosie.
If you extend the definition over to Max Weber, then things lossen up a little, but education STILL has no necessary linkage to class: money and life-style becomes the key point.
So what analysis of class are you using here which says my PhD all of a sudden makes me upper class?
The only one I can think of is the extreme right-wing Tea-Party analysis of class whereby educated people = liberals = trust fund babies.
In any other analysis of class, I’ve been working class my whole life. Even as a university prof these days, I’ll lay dollars to donuts that I’m making less money than practically any independent adult posting here, even with the dollar in the toilet and the Real riding high. I have no car, no house, no property of any kind and it’s only been three years now that I can say that I truly pass for what’s the BRAZILIAN “middle class” (in consumption terms) let alone the European/North American version of the same.
@Mira
Because they seem to have more money than he does: they go to schools he could not afford and, going by their blogs, do not seem to have to work for a living.
Correct. By a Weberian analysis of class, they’re higher up on the class heirarchy than me (and since most of these folks are 10-20 years younger than me, that gap is only going to widen, not lessen, as time goes by). I’d bet all the money in my puny savings account that several of them are higher class even by Marxist standards, with their parents being solidly bourgeois (though perhaps petit bourgeois – car dealership owenrs rather than the scions of fortune 500 families).
What is interesting, however, is that only in the United States could a discussion of privilege not even include class and, in fact, cause a huge discussion as to what class even is.
Remember that our host here claims to be an ex-Marxist and seems to have some trouble with the term.
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I grew up in a predominantly black, poor urban area. I was one of like 10 white people at my elementary school. For most of my childhood my family was broke.
That vantage point initially made me as suspicious of white privilege as you are, but I came to realize that as a white American adult I am now in control of my surroundings in ways that POC in America are not. Rich, poor, or middle class. That’s because I’m white not because i’m Jason.
Give a concrete example of this, please. So far, your only example is that race doesn’t effect you. I’ve showed why it does indeed affect poor whites, though most of them probably don’t have the information or education to appreciate that.
But I find it interesting that your “privilege” so far consists in not being called names.
Given that no one else here has been able or willing to define “privilege” so far (though everyone here seems absolutely sure that they can see it clearly and unambiguously, let me take a crack at defining it:
Privilege is a special right or favor granted to a person or group.
Now you’re saying that not being called racist names is a RIGHT or a FAVOR, Jason?
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Thad,
Your comment was interesting… But it fails to note I, not Abagond, was the one who asked the question.
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@Jason
It is your theory, it’s your little pet strawman that you carry around with you everywhere you go. You just ascribe it to other people when it suits you so you’ll have something to rail against. I certainly don’t believe in any such thing. I never said that whiteness was in someway the essence of my being.
You’re not understanding what I’m saying then. I’m not saying that whiteness IS the essence of your being: I’m saying that it seems to me that you believe that whiteness is some sort of essential PART of you – one that absolutely cannot be seperated from you, something that is so close to the bone it might as well be natural, even though you’ll probably admit that it’s socio-historically constructed.
When I say you see whiteness as “essential”, that’s what I mean, not that you see it as the only part of your being (though you don’t seem to think that any other attributes are quite as important as whiteness, that’s just based on what you say here).
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But atonement means to make amends. I think one way to make amends is to try to be honest about things especially with ourselves.
I agree, which is why I think it’s funny that you seem to feel that racial and ethnic classification hasn’t been applied to white people in the U.S. (I mean, after all, your experience with never being called names is supposedly a “white privilege”, right?)
I think that as WP we bullshit ourselves a lot into thinking everything is fair and even when it’s really not.
I’d hazard a guess that my analysis of the unfairness of it all probably outstrips that of most people here, who, while they are painfully aware of race, seem to have problems looking at other axises of so-called “privilege”: gender, nationality, class and sexual orientation.
It doesn’t cost us anything to admit that our being white has given us unfair advantages and I think non-whites are sick of hearing us deny something so obvious. So yeah, maybe I am trying to atone for something. Sue me.
I’d rather hear what “unfair advantage” you think has benefitted you that’s specifically racial. I mean, I’m open to the idea that such things exist and I think I can see a few of them, in my own life and those of others’, but “not being called names” isn’t one of them.
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In other words, you failed to acknowledge I asked the question based on my cultural standards- not Abagond’s, or yours.
As for applied Marxism (to use euphemism) intellectuals are certainly not seen as working class per se, no no.
You also mentioned you belong to the upper 5% of people in Brazil (when it comes to wealth) (or am I missing something) so I fail to understand why you consider yourself a low class, or, why you consider many of the commenters privileged (more privileged than you) in that department.
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@Sam
You’re bit on police harassment is quite on spot, but then again, I’ve been beaten close to unconsciousness by police officers and I’ve gone through spot checks of the sort fyou describe several times, both in Brazil and the U.S.
I think you need to be a certain kind of white person in order to say that you haven’t experienced things like that. Because of racism, black men get that crap even more. Furthermore, a black man wearing all the right class signifiers will get that whereas a white man won’t. But if you haven’t HAD that experience, repeatedly, then I’d say something is working for you that goes beyond race and that something is most likely class.
Try being a white adult male with a beard and moustache, wearing blue jeans and an army jacket and try WALKING through certain neighborhoods. The cops might not come for as quickly as they’d come for a black guy, but they WILL come for you, no doubt.
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“I’m saying that it seems to me that you believe that whiteness is some sort of essential PART of you – one that absolutely cannot be seperated from you, something that is so close to the bone it might as well be natural, even though you’ll probably admit that it’s socio-historically constructed.”
I view it as something that it part of me yes, I can’t exactly remove it. But it’s only as important as it’s deemed to be by society and the world at large.
I also have a smallish mole on my cheek. If I found myself in a parallel universe in which people with moles on their cheeks were granted privileges at the expense of those without moles on their cheeks then that mole would all of the sudden play a much more significant role in my life than it does now. Without the social significance it’s just a mole. Same with whiteness.
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and, to take my analogy it a step further. Living in that parallel universe with “mole status” would affect my development wouldn’t it? It would give me a worldview
much different from those without “mole status”. So in many ways it would shape my identity.
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@Jelee
Frankly, as a woman who actually has been beaten up by a man, I can honestly tell you that the incident did next to nothing to change my reactions to slurs/ situations which remind me of that incident.
And you’re saying that those reactions are NOT as viceral and powerful as reactions to racism?
I thought we were talking about homosexuality and now, apparently, we’re talking about gender violence. So would you say, as a woman who’s been neaten by a man, that sexist cuts that remind you of theat violence don’t hit you as deeply as racist cuts would?
The most you can infer from my writing is that digs that contain a grain of truth hurt me more than digs that are totally false and baseless. This is what I actually meant when I mentioned the real me; I was not alluding to this “essence” of yours, but rather, the degree of truth in an insult.
OK, but why would race be more “truthful” then than homosexuality or gender?
No Thad, it’s you who’s making the presumption here, not me. I’ve already mentioned earlier that I’m a straight ally and that I bother to read up about queer-related issues. So why are you presuming that I’m not aware that a gay/straight binary doesn’t exist, or that I haven’t read Kinsey’s work?
Well, for one thing where did I presume you didn’t read Kinsey’s work? I just said it nailed the presumption you appear to be making. You could have read it and ignored what it said or disagreed with what it said or even simply forgotten what it said. Secondly, given that you are a person who goes out of their way to repeatedly define themselves as “straight” and “non gay” and “non-homosexual” and to set your experiences off from those of homosexuals, I don’t think it’s an earth-shaking presumption to say that you do indeed believe that there’s some sort of division there. I mean, even in this quote above, you consider yourself to be “straight”. Finally, you believe that that label is attached to a given way ofg experiencing the world, one that you can read about, but can’t experience because you aren’t “that sort” of person.
It seems to me, then, that you do indeed believe that there’s a basic identity and experiential divide between straight and gay, one that can only be crossed with great difficulty, if it can be crossed at all. To me, that’s an essentialist argument. If you don’t think it is, I’d be interested in hearing why.
(And if you think anthros get some sort of special dispensation from these sort of discussions, we actually probably attract MORe questions when we speak about stuff like this, not less.)
When I said “but how common is this?”, it’s quite clear I was saying that being queer-bashed is not the norm in the straight population, hence most non-white straights would be right in admitting that homophobic slurs do not affect them the same way as racial slurs.
This is precisly the presumption that I’m dubious about. First of all, when we look at the male violence research that’s coming out now (I’m thinking in particular of C.J. Pascoe’s excellent “Dude, you’re a fag”), it’s becoming clearer that homophobic violence is THE key to molding heteronormative men.
Secondly, one doesn’t need to have every person in a group subject to something for it to be “normative”. The number of blacks lynched during the 20th century was a very small percentage of the black population, and yet lynching became an iconic black experience in America. You don’t have to do much violence if the violence is adequately performatic and spectacular. Homophobic violence generally is, no matter who it’s directed to.
Finally, the target of the message of homophobic violence is as much presumably straight men as it is gay men. It’s message is “This is what will happen to you if we think you’re acting queer”.
That’s why I think any male, if they’re honest with themselves, is terrified at some level of homophobic violence. Most men, however, have been so socially innoculated to denying that fear that they won’t admit to it, not even on pain of death
So I disagree with you here: I don’t think most straights would be right in claiming that homophobic violence doesn’t mess with their heads. Given the extremely violent reactions men still show when they’re called “queer”, it’s pretty obvious that most men take this sort of thing very personally, indeed.
And I would submit to you that you can only get that sort of personal reaction when something hits close to home, as you yourself said. There needs to be an element of truth in order for an insult to hurt. And, as Kinsey showed, some 40% of men – at least – have SOMe sort of homosexual or homoerotic experience in their history. So…
Also, I’ve never claimed or assumed that straights and gays are not emotionally/physically affected in the same way by a queer bashing incident. In fact, I explicitly wrote a disclaimer “Not that the actual incident would hurt any less.” For whatever reason, you are willfully ignoring this, just so you can accuse me of presuming something obviously false. I did, however, say that I personally believe straights largely aren’t affected emotionally/psychologically by homophobic slurs in the same way as many gays are.
Again, in order for that to work, you need to presume that there’s some sort of essential split between gays and straights, with gays over here “being emotionally/psychologically affected” and straight over there, just being physcially hurt.
I’m not presuming a physical/emotional divide in the effects of gay-bashing, jellee: I think both self-assumed straights and gays (and everyone else in between or outside of this dichotomy) gets run through the physical/emotional/psychological wringer in a bashing incident. And I don’t think one can neatly line up the emotional/psychological effects into a binary set, with gays reacting over here and straights reacting over there. One can’t do that because homophobia works to patrol masculinity in general. All male macho environments such as prisons and the military are notorious for “turning” weaker, younger, or more vulnerable males into sexualized, degraded others. Masculinity, as it’s hegemonically concieved, NEEDS such an other in order to express its self.
What I don’t get is why you seem to vehemently insist that I change my personal belief based on my experiences (I have been the target of homophobic slurs) and observations to your “null hypothesis”, which can’t be proven empirically either, and is equally based on your personal experiences/observations/hunches.
Oh, come on, jellee. Talk about presumptions! where have I called on you to change your personal belief, let alone “vehemently insist” taht you do so? I’m interested in why you feel the way you do and I’m interested in where the edges of this belief are. I’m not interested at all in you changing your beliefs, even if such a thing were possible.
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@Jelee
Now, regarding racial slurs…
Why do you think jason used the word “exaggerated”?
I don’t know, especially when I asked him to give a clear example and he came up with a rather silly and marginal one.
I mean, if this is such a clear cut and obvious phenomena (“privilege”), then you’d think Jase would have a very GOOD one, right at the top of his lips, yeah? But instead, we go right back to this anti-empirical “It affects me in a way that’s imneffably, essentially different than the way it effects him” BS.
Also, any blinking idiot can point out the obvious case of a white person who lives in an Asian/ African country where whites are the minority, so for you to point out this kind of thing smacks of a patronising attitude.
Not at all. Jase himself now says he grew up “in a predominantly black, poor urban area. I was one of like 10 white people at my elementary school”.
So don’t you think there’s something being left unexamined there, given that he earlier claimed he had “Black Americans are forced to grow up in a white dominated society and often find themselves in the situation of being the only POC in the room. As a white American I don’t ever have to experience this. I do at times but only by choice. not necessity.”
So Jase is telling two stories here that don’t completely jibe. I don’t think he’s lying, mind: I just think that his dogma about race and the so-called “white experience” is getting in the way of him observing, dispassionately, his own life and the lives of others.
I mean, how else can you balance “I grew up one of the only white people in my school” with “I never had to deal with being the only white face in a crowd unless I wanted to”?
Apparently, then, this experience isn’t limited to white people in Asia or Africa, is it? And someone who implies that I’m a “blinking idiot” really has no call to be accusing me of presumptious insulting.
It doesn’t mean s/he is “crying crocodile tears”.
Frankly, I think Jase is. I think he has a lot of views on anti-racism which I highly doubt are expressed in his day to day life. This isn’t a presumption, it’s my personal opinion based on what he says and how he comes across.
The “crocodile tears” part comes in when he claims he’s white and privileged, but thinks this is a “bad” thing. Well, if it’s bad, what is he doing to remove his so-called “privilege”? Anything at all? Apparently, he feels that if he publically flogs himself for being “privileged” and saying a few “mea culpas”, this takes care of everythimg. And that’s why I call this behavior “crocodile tears”: Jase has made “privilege” such an essential part of being “white” – and has ascribed this status to himself do thoroughly and so unproblematically, that there’s absolutely no way he CAN fight agaisnt said privilege, short of killing himself.
And he’s obviously not going to do that.
So yeah, crocodile tears.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that s/he believes that ALL white people have a higher quality of life than ALL black people (i.e. the “unluckiest” white person still has a better life than the “luckiest” black person). I don’t know anybody foolish enough to believe this. That you feel the need to point out that so-and-so black persons have a more comfy life than yours shows that you have an extremely low opinion of our intelligence/grip on reality.
The problem with the “privilege” viewpoint is that it takes a chaotic and non-linear situation which can only be understood (and imperfectly at that) via an intersectional analysis and tries to reduce it to one identary axis alone. Then it tries to attribute superior and inferior moral positions for individuals based on that axis. What it boils down to, in this case, is that Jason believes that I don’t have anything substantial about race because I am white. Meanwhile, white boy that he is, he has a lot to say, which all boils down to “Gosh, I’m so privileged”. And he doesn’t even notice that he’s now cast this privilege in such an essentialist and determinist form, that there’s no conceivable way it can be struggled against.
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Thad,
Your comment was interesting… But it fails to note I, not Abagond, was the one who asked the question.
Ah. Sorry.
But the point remains, doesn’t it Mira?
(Though I guess that it may be a bit more understandable from your PoV, given that, from what I gather, the “intelligentsia” was generally synonymous with the nomenklatura in a lot of state capitalists systems. But c’mon: weren’t you raised in a socialist theoretical system? Class should be second nature to you. 😀 )
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@Jason
I view it as something that it part of me yes, I can’t exactly remove it. But it’s only as important as it’s deemed to be by society and the world at large.
Then, Jason, it is ESSENTIAL: it is part of your essence. I am not presuming, I’m merely stating what you in fact believe.
I do not believe that whiteness is essential. Or any racial classification, for that matter. Omnipresent, perhaps, yes, but not “a part of me” which can’t be removed.
I also have a smallish mole on my cheek. If I found myself in a parallel universe in which people with moles on their cheeks were granted privileges at the expense of those without moles on their cheeks then that mole would all of the sudden play a much more significant role in my life than it does now. Without the social significance it’s just a mole. Same with whiteness.
This is part of the problem: you attribute to whiteness the same biophysical reality as the more on your cheek. In fact, it’s a social and psychological construct. As such, it’s not biologically and independently confirmable like that mole on your cheek. If it were, it would be a simple task to add or remove it.
But it’s so deeply rooted in your notion of self that you SEE it as part of your body. See? Essential.
I find that it helps alot to… well, there’s no English word for it… estranhar whiteness. Literally to “strange it”, to seek to see how it’s NOT essential, but very, very conditional. As such, it’s not a fount of “rights”: it’s a debateable condition which can indeed be taken away or superceded.
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“So Jase is telling two stories here that don’t completely jibe.”
that’s why I previously stated: (and you conveniently overlooked)
“I came to realize that as a white American ADULT I am now in control of my surroundings in ways that POC in America are not. ”
As a kid I took a lot of shit for being white in a black neighborhood/school. and didn’t feel very privileged because of it. I still had some privileges but at the time the disadvantages outweighed them. this is no longer the case.
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Thad,
Class IS a second nature to me, that’s why it’s difficult for me to see intellectuals as “working class”. Sorry. Especially given the fact they were not seen as such in the socialism. (Though there was a group of “honest intellectuals”). All in all, education was free (even the highest education) so it wasn’t tied to class privilege like in capitalist countries. Intellectuals were seen as middle class. They (and the rest of the middle class) vanished during the 90s. People who were middle class are poor now; many highly educated people are poor and can’t find a job (somebody mentioned immigrant doctors driving cabs- well, that happens here to educated non-immigrants).
But you do have a good job that suits your education, and you called yourself “rich” (by Brazilian standards), so I really don’t get where “I lack privilege and the rest of you are privileged!” line comes from. (You might argue these people have US privilege 😀 that you don’t have anymore (?) – and we can discuss this).
And seriously, Thad, this oppression Olympics approach doesn’t look like your usual style.
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“Then, Jason, it is ESSENTIAL: it is part of your essence. I am not presuming, I’m merely stating what you in fact believe.”
My whiteness is contained in my skin. If i remove my skin I would die, that’s all I was saying.
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that came out wrong. I was talking about the biological component of whiteness, it’s just white skin / lack of melanin that is essential and physical. Nothing else about whiteness is essential.
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Unless your status in society can influence who you essentially are. Which, it can as far as I can tell. If your experiences shape you as much as your genes do.
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@Jason
“I came to realize that as a white American ADULT I am now in control of my surroundings in ways that POC in America are not. ”
As a kid I took a lot of shit for being white in a black neighborhood/school. and didn’t feel very privileged because of it. I still had some privileges but at the time the disadvantages outweighed them. this is no longer the case.
Perhaps, but wasn’t your original statement that this never occurs and thus no white people can understand this feeling?
My whiteness is contained in my skin. If i remove my skin I would die, that’s all I was saying.
No, your whiteness most certainly isn’t contained in your skin. For a fact, Jase: there are black people out there, right now, who have a paler skin than you. And here in Brazil, we have plenty of white people who are much darker than you.
No, whiteness isn’t contained in your skin. It is not a biological fact: it is a historical and sociological fact.
You seem to hold to this idea that it’s a real biological phenomena, Jase. It seems to me that you really do see whiteness as an essential part of you and you’re not liable to want to let that go. It’s thus no surprise at all, to me at least, that you b uy into so many of the myths of whiteness.
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“but wasn’t your original statement that this never occurs and thus no white people can understand this feeling?”
no. I never say never.
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“It is not a biological fact: it is a historical and sociological fact.”
cool so your saying black people could be white if they wanted to be then. If there is no biological truth that would prohibit this.
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no. I never say never.
Jase, for real, your original argument was that, as a white person, you couldn’t understand this in a visceral sense. Now, given what you’ve said about your childhood, it seems impossible that you can’t understand said experience based on your own life history.
cool so your saying black people could be white if they wanted to be then. If there is no biological truth that would prohibit this.
It’s not a question of wanting or not wanting. It’s not something that’s absolutely flexible. But if whiteness were only based on skin color, as you say, how is it that people who could pass for white are still considered black? How is it that people with brown skin are considered white?
Whiteness is not a biological fact, JAse: it REFERENCES biological facts. In the same way, your astrological sign REFERENCES the heavens, it’s not created by them.
And finally, I’m not speaking about what black people do or not do: I’m talking about you, a white guy. YOU and your relationship to whiteness. You most certainly do not have to be white, Jason. So why do you feel it’s an essential part of you?
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“jase, for real, your original argument was that, as a white person, you couldn’t understand this in a visceral sense.”
I said I didn’t know what it was like to be affected by a racial slur. When I was a kid I did get beat up quite a few times because I’m white, and I got called white boy a lot, but I never had that sense that I was seen as inferior. I was just temporarily outnumbered.
I imagine that being called a n*gg*r by a white person is quite a different experience. I imagine it’s like the whole world is saying it to you, not just that one person. I won’t ever experience that, and neither will you.
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“So why do you feel it’s an essential part of you?”
if everyone sees me as white, and I have white privilege, that’s all that matters as far as whiteness is concerned. I don’t think that I see it as an essential part of me. Why are you pushing that so hard? I see race as something that is imposed upon us by outside forces. I believe it’s a social construct. We are born into a world where people have decided that there is something called race and it’s important. Our skin is used as a reference (thank you) for this racial assignment. happy?
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I said I didn’t know what it was like to be affected by a racial slur. When I was a kid I did get beat up quite a few times because I’m white, and I got called white boy a lot, but I never had that sense that I was seen as inferior. I was just temporarily outnumbered.
And you think this is necessarily a different experience? I know plenty of black people who’d say much the same thing you just did.
I imagine that being called a n*gg*r by a white person is quite a different experience. I imagine it’s like the whole world is saying it to you, not just that one person. I won’t ever experience that, and neither will you.
I could imagine that, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the case.
When I was young, it did seem as if the whole world was saying things to me. Only later did I realize that’s not the case. So given that, I can DEFINITELY feel that sort of sentiment. On the other side of the coin, I know quite a few black people who were outraged by slurs like that when they were children because they knew they were wrong, not because they felt the whole world was saying it to them.
So it appears that there’s a lot of experiences on both sides of the line.
Also, for someone who claims they “never say never”, you realize that this is EXACTLY what you’re doing here when you say ” I won’t ever experience that, and neither will you”?
As I’ve shown, not all black people experience that and some white people do indeed. So much for “never”, neh, Jase?
if everyone sees me as white, and I have white privilege, that’s all that matters as far as whiteness is concerned.
Ahn, but does everyone see you as indistinctly white? You presume that. Is it really true?
I used to presume that until I started meeting people from the right and left coasts who were very wealthy or came from very wealthy families. I gradually realized that they didn’t conceive of my “whiteness” as the same as theres. In their heads, mine included a whole series of stereotypes which references late 19th and early 20th century racialized concepts of degenerate whiteness. I no longer think of myself as indistinctly “white”, nor as fitting into a racial/ethnic category that gives me the same privileges as those folks.
I don’t think that I see it as an essential part of me.
If it’s something that’s inherent and uncheangeable in you, it’s essential. And if this characteristic is essential and mystically linked to the same sort of privilege that the ilk of George Bush and Hilary Rodham Clinton have, then I submit to you that you’re just playing a post-modern version of the old game whereby white trash were encouraged to identify themselves with their upper-class anglo-saxon “betters”. you essentially see yourself as in the same identity boat with yesterday’s slave holders and today’s WASP elite when you most certainly aren’t.
I GUARANTEE you, Jase, that if you are as you portray yourself, those people don’t see you as anything like themselves.
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Jase: “I never say never”
Thad: “Except, of course, when you say ‘not ever’.” 😀
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““jase, for real, your original argument was that, as a white person, you couldn’t understand this in a visceral sense.””
I can’t understand it in a visceral sense because IT’S NEVER HAPPENED TO ME!!!! and I can’t even imagine how it could happen to any white American in a way that would be damaging because there is no history of whites being oppressed and seen as dumb animals or farming equipment.
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And please don’t bother bringing up the roman empire or whatever else. I’m talking about racial oppression in America.
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“If it’s something that’s inherent and uncheangeable in you, it’s essential.”
lack of melanin is inherent. What that means to society is not inherent or unchangeable. As racism is a social construct it is susceptible to change. It could theoretically vanish or intensify and at the very least change. the concept of whiteness has changed over time has it not? In a world without racism my whiteness would cease to exist.
so? If I believe that I must not be an essentialist. can you stop pretending I am now?
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@ thad
I commented on my definition of privilege days ago.
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I can’t understand it in a visceral sense because IT’S NEVER HAPPENED TO ME!!!! and I can’t even imagine how it could happen to any white American in a way that would be damaging because there is no history of whites being oppressed and seen as dumb animals or farming equipment.
Oh, boy. do you ever need to read some history, man. You’d better believe that rural, poor whites were seen in EXACTLY those terms during the heyday of scientific racism in America. There’s a huge bibliography and literally tons of documentation on this, Jason. If you don’t know about it, it seems to me that’s because you haven’t looked.
lack of melanin is inherent. What that means to society is not inherent or unchangeable. As racism is a social construct it is susceptible to change. It could theoretically vanish or intensify and at the very least change. the concept of whiteness has changed over time has it not? In a world without racism my whiteness would cease to exist.
Whiteness itself is not a singular and solid concept, Jason. There is not now and never has been one kind of whiteness in the world and having a certain colored epidermis does not now and has never meant that one is necessarily white. So no, your lack of melanin isn’t some sort of inherent indication of whiteness. You need other markers in order to be “really” considered white. And not all whites were considered superior: poor, rural whites were considered to be a “degenerate branch of the race” which was far more dangerous to “racial hygene” than blacks.
People talk about the sterilization of blacks during eugenic’s heyday in America. surely you realize that thousands of whites were ALSO sterilized for being “racially inferior” during this period?
This is a very clear part of the historical record, Jason.
So what I’m having trouble grasping is how everyone who looks like you now, supposedly, has had the same historical experience of privilege that you claim for yourself.
I commented on my definition of privilege days ago.
You didn’t define it, did you? Furthermore, I can’t see how not being called a racialized name is somehow your “right and privilege” if, as you now admit, you have been called racialized names.
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“You didn’t define it, did you? Furthermore, I can’t see how not being called a racialized name is somehow your “right and privilege” if, as you now admit, you have been called racialized names.”
learn to read. I said not be affected. your inability to even get my words straight has become tiresome. In fact your putting me to sleep.
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Jase, for a guy who says he “never says never”, and then immediately turns around and says “not ever”, you really have no cause to tell me to read your words more carefully.
You’re obviously not reading them yourself.
My question, for awhile now, has been “What’s your definition of privilege, then?” you haven’t defined the concept, just given an example of what you think it is. And a very poor example, too.
So you wanna take a shot at defining it? I mean, seeing as how you toss that word around as if you were sure it means something.
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@Thad
I’m unsure of how/why are you conflating the histories of blacks and whites in America. You mention poor rural whites and how they were considered inferior (because of their class), but how does that have anything to do with an entire (socially-constructed) race of people, no matter their class (as if they could actually HAVE a class in a system that excludes them by definition) being considered inferior?
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I provided a definition days ago. then today i relinked you to the comment where I had previously stated:
Unearned advantages bestowed upon one group at the expense of another would be a simple definition.
Unearned advantages bestowed upon one group at the expense of another would be a simple definition.
Unearned advantages bestowed upon one group at the expense of another would be a simple definition.
Unearned advantages bestowed upon one group at the expense of another would be a simple definition.
Unearned advantages bestowed upon one group at the expense of another would be a simple definition.
Unearned advantages bestowed upon one group at the expense of another would be a simple definition.
see there at the end where it says DEFINITION! that was my definition. talking to you is a pointless waste of time and i’m done. do not address me further on this blog or any other please.
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@Jerome
I’m unsure of how/why are you conflating the histories of blacks and whites in America.
If by “conflate” you mean “confuse”, that’s not my intention. The history of how race has been applied to whites is very specific, in the same way that the history of how race has been applied to Native Americans or to blacks. But it is, indeed, part of the history of racism. Look up “eugenics” and see where that takes you.
The problem with most people’s understanding of the history of race is that they forget that within the structure of racist belief class was EXPLAINED by race. So it wasn’t that poor whites were inferior because of their class: it was understood that their poverty was a symptom of their racial degeneracy.
So the Anglo-Saxon elite who supported these attitudes did not believe themselves to be members of the same race as the white trash – or to put it more accurately, they saw white trash as the inevitable result of racial degeneration.
This didn’t mean, of course, that they weren’t willing to white trash prejudices in order to keep themselves in power.
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Jase, this is the first time I’m seeing that list, so OK.
Unearned advantages bestowed upon one group at the expense of another would be a simple definition.
And these would be…? “Bestowed on a group”, remember, so it needs to be pretty damned universal.
What “advantage” do both you and I have that has been bestowed on us at the expense of another, exactly?
It’s odd to me that you can’t seem to come up with anything but name calling, which we’ve seen isn’t a very good example of what you’re on about.
I can think of two or three things which might fit your definition, But I’d like to see what you think. Frankly, I don’t think you’ve really thought this through, really thought about what privileges you DO have. You’ve just memorized a list of things you supposedly have, as per your name-calling example.
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@Thad
Well then can you show me documentation on this very matter? It is appreciated.
I know what Eugenics are, but I think that you are mistaken if you think that eugenics are done and over with. I will point you to an article: Unshackling Black Motherhood by Roberts.
By the by, while these experiments against poor whites were being taken they didn’t seem to be as brazen as those taken against blacks — the Tuskegee experiments were well known at the time that they were occurring and yet no one seemed to care. Why? Well could it be because they were black?
My main question is: why are you so ardent to attempt to prove that white privilege doesn’t exist when there are obvious markers that prove it does?
Redlining, the fact that while blacks are 3 times as likely to be pulled over and taken to jail their white counterparts are just as likely to be carrying drugs, the fact that on average a black family makes 10 cent on the dollar of a white family. Privilege could also mean being from a group that is NOT only 13 percent of the nation’s population and 43 percent of the nations prison population. I hear arguments from white liberals all the time about affirmative action being unfair, but not one of them stops to ask why affirmative action would ever be needed in the first place?
You’re a learned man and a self-proclaimed anti-racist. I just can’t understand how you willingly ignore the facts.
Maybe this will help:
You’re more likely to be hired for a job than I am, even if we have the same credentials and YOU had a convict record.
http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2007/09/white_convicts_as_likely_to_be.html
Hell my name may trash me.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/29/national/main575685.shtml
If we were looking for mates, you’d have FAR more to choose from than I would.
http://sciencedude.ocregister.com/2009/04/26/uci-finds-racial-bias-in-internet-dating/25693/
There’s more, but I don’t think it would help. I can’t make you see anything, especially if you choose not to see it.
But maybe I can give you some articles to read:
The Avantgarde of White Supremacy by Martinot and Sexton
Gramsci’s Black Marx by Wilderson
Amalgamation and Hypodescent by Hollinger
This last one is really good at explaining what defines “whiteness” and I would recommend it to Jason.
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Jerome said:
“I’m unsure of how/why are you conflating the histories of blacks and whites in America. You mention poor rural whites and how they were considered inferior (because of their class), but how does that have anything to do with an entire (socially-constructed) race of people, no matter their class (as if they could actually HAVE a class in a system that excludes them by definition) being considered inferior?”
This is a common trick of Thad’s. If I say “X was done to blacks” he will say “X was done to whites too!” and then stretch the meaning of X till it fits. So:
– being a slave is no worse than being a serf;
– being called a racist slur is no worse than being called a name of any sort;
– raping slave women was no worse than having sex with your wife.
He will also narrow the meaning of words when it suits him. So:
– If I say “racism made slavery worse”, he will narrow the meaning of “racism” to scientific racism and say that racism came AFTER the slaves were freed.
– If I say wiping out Native Americans was genocide he will disagree because it was never government policy.
It comes off as disingenuous because each time he gets white people off the hook.
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In Thad’s defence (?), I don’t think he does that so he could let whites off the hook. I bet he does the same at “white” boards and blogs (arguing in favour of non-whites).
I am aware what I wrote is ad hominem, but he does seem like a kind of guy who does that. (An arrogant guy who values “being teh smartest on the board” above anything else, especially when it comes to things that simple, average joe can’t possibly understand but cares a lot about, such as race, class, gender… )
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@Jerome
I certainly don’t think eugenics are over and done with.
Regarding the biologization of white trash were seen, a good quicky analysis of this and the attendant literature can be found in the concluding essay that accompanies “Wisconsin Death Trip”. Gould also touches on a lot of this material in “The Mismeasure of Man”, as does Painter in “The History of White People” (check out chapters 18 and 19 in particular, “Degenerate familes” and “From degeneration to sterilization”.
Those are good places to look for starters. The lit from the British Islands, of course, has tons of information with regards to how the Irish were racialized and cast as “degenerate whites” as well.
This stuff is well known among practically everyone who delves into the history of race as a concept. It is not well known among most black and white American anti-racists because it doesn’t fit into the neat dogma of race as something that was never turned against white people at all.
It all depended upon what kind of white person you were. There were plenty of racialized explanations for white poverty and degradation.
By the by, while these experiments against poor whites were being taken they didn’t seem to be as brazen as those taken against blacks — the Tuskegee experiments were well known at the time that they were occurring and yet no one seemed to care. Why? Well could it be because they were black?
The Tuskegee experiments were brazen, yes, but they seem that way because a hell of a lot have been written about them and they have become a cause celebré of those who fight against racism. But I very much doubt that you’ve ever heard of the Kallikak family, for example, or of Buck vs. Bell, have you? You’d be the exceptional anti-racist if you had. Take a moment to look these cases up and read about them.
What wikipedia glosses over regarding these cases is that they were clearly situated, at the time, within a Social Darwinist and über-racialist evolutionary framework which understood the white race as threatened by racial degeneration. So these people weren’t just “unfit individuals”: they were harbringers of the white race’s destiny unless eugenics was to be applied. In short, they were understood to be the evolutionary future of white humanity were nature to take its course. They were, in short, the race white people would evolve into, absent intervention.
An excellent discussion of these theories (with their concommitent links to gender) can be read in Gail Bederman’s Manliness and Civilization.
My main question is: why are you so ardent to attempt to prove that white privilege doesn’t exist when there are obvious markers that prove it does?
Once again, because I do not think that “privilege” adequately describes the mixture of prejudice and accumulated advantage which currently makes up the racism facing 75% of the U.S.’ black population. It is no longer a question of “rights” vouchsafed to one race and retained from another which is the motive force behind racism. One COULD argue that privilege is still a factor when dealing with the 25% of black Americans below the poverty line. The only thing that adequately allows one to understand race and racism’s impact on the vast majority of black and white America today is an intersectional view which does not deal with any one social marker (race, gender, class, etc.) in reductionist fashion.
Redlining, the fact that while blacks are 3 times as likely to be pulled over and taken to jail their white counterparts are just as likely to be carrying drugs…
As I mentioned above, the one place in the American system where I think privilege may still apply – in custom, if not law – is in the legal system and courts, ESPECIALLY when race is combined with class markers.
But Louis Henry Gate’s recent arrest is an excellent example of how “privilege”, in racial terms, simply isn’t a good term for describing a lot of black/white relations these days.
…the fact that on average a black family makes 10 cent on the dollar of a white family.
I’d like to see the data on that, please. That looks like an insti-fact pulled off the internet, something along the lines of “black men are 17,000 times more likely to rape white women than white men are to rape black women). Someone is playing fast and loose with stats there, given that 75% of American black families make 50,000 USD+ aa year these days and, for a fact, white families aren’t making an averag of 500,000 USD annually.
Privilege could also mean being from a group that is NOT only 13 percent of the nation’s population and 43 percent of the nations prison population.
Except for one thing: how much time have YOU or any of the middle-class, college educated black posters here spent in prison, Jerome?
The 25% of black America that’s in the dumps is at the worst and lowest point in its history, ever. And that’s the group that, by and large, is making up that prison population. This isn’t a claim that the system isn’t racist, mind you: it’s a claim that race itself is no longer sufficient to discuss this sort of problem, whereas 40 years ago, it would have been. Class is going to be a much better predicator of the chance that you go to jail, Jerome, and not race UNLESS you happen to be both black and poor.
I hear arguments from white liberals all the time about affirmative action being unfair, but not one of them stops to ask why affirmative action would ever be needed in the first place?
Much like Winston Churchill viewed democracy, I happen to think that affirmative action is the worst idea to ever come along in race relations – except for everything else that’s already been tried. It sucks that we have to have it, but the fact that it has markedly improved American life is unquestionable. It would be nice, however, if we could find a way to make it apply to the 25% of blacks who’re in society’s trashcan, however, because AA’s benefits – like so much else applied to black people these days – are nowhere near evenly distributed.
And you’ll notice, above, my commentary that AA is anemic?
I’m hardly arguing for it’s elimination, Jerome.
Regarding those examples you bring up, they are all true and good examples of racism. What they are not, however, are good examples of privilege. That is prejudice at work and I as a white person certainly cannot simply “bank on it” working in my favor as it’s not systemic, for all that it’s statistically prevalent.
The problem here seems to be the fact that people confuse my argument against the blanket use of the concept of “privilege” with an argument against racism, per se. As I mentioned above, I think you Americans are moving towards a system of racism that we Brazilians have been familiar with for centuries: one which has few institutional barriers but many real barriers created by prejudice and accumulated historical advantage.
What’s the difference, you ask? “Privilege” can be revoked and is fairly easily attacked. How are you going to attack a situation in which whites are twice as likely to get a job call back as blacks? the only possible solution is to construct a “privilege” for blacks (which is what AA attempts), but as McIntosh points out, that in and of itself creates another situation of prejudice.
And this is also why I’m so dismissive of white people like Jason who say “I’m conscious of my race privilege” as if this meant anything at all. Just by being middle class, college educated, English speaking and American, the majority of people posting here, white or black, have so much accumulated advantage over most of the rest of the world that it’s not funny. But I don’t see much soul-searching with regards to that and even less in terms of real proposals for change.
So white people strategically denouncing their race privilege in racially mixed circels has, in my view, become something of a ritualistic hair shirt or, as I mentioned elsewhere, crocodile tears. It’s a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing, which attempts to situate at the individual level a problem which is resolutely social.
Btw, I enjoyed Hollinger’s work, but I think Painter goes far beyond it.
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@Abagond
Let’s be honest here, Abagond. you are making a flat out parody of my true positions.
…being a slave is no worse than being a serf
No, I have not ever said anything like “no worse”. I have said that it’s incorrect to presume that servitude was not the lot for the vast majority of white europeans throughout history. The dogmatic view of reacism which often gets exposed here seems to postulate black slavery with an essentialist white liberty and individualism, which simply wasn’t the case for most of history in most countries. Wheter or not one situation was “worse” than another had much more to do with local factors and customs rather than the use of the term “slave” or “serf”. Think I’m full of s***? Compare life conditions for Russian serfs who built Saint Petersburg in the 18th century and the African slaves working in the Carolina Sea Islands at the same time and tell me which group you’d rather be a part of, if you had to choose.
being called a racist slur is no worse than being called a name of any sort
I have never said “any sort”. I have said that there are other terms out there which are just as bad and just as likely to hit close to a person’s heart. Terms having to do with gender and sexual choice fall into this category.
raping slave women was no worse than having sex with your wife.
This one has been explained time and again, so your misstating it here can only be understood as a conscious attempt to build a strawman or forge an ad hominem. What I have said is that sexual liberty and control of one’s body was not on the menu for 95% of women up until very recent times. Thus, to define “rape” – as many people here do – as “any sex, voluntary or not, conducted under conditions of coercion” actually waters down the experience of black women, as this definition would cause the vast majority of sex acts taking place in the 17th-19th centuries as “rape”. If one uses a defintion of rape as “violent domination against the will of one’s victim”, then we can see a clear cut difference between what many black women went through and what white wives went through. I have never, in no place, claimed that “rape” and having sex with one’s wife are one and the same thing UNLESS one a priori uses the social coercion definition of rape – a definition which I’ve made it perfectly plain I do not support.
If I say “racism made slavery worse”, he will narrow the meaning of “racism” to scientific racism and say that racism came AFTER the slaves were freed.
Actually, my position is that any form of ethnic servitude will allow one to degrade one’s slaves into an effectively non-human state. You’re problem, Abagond, is that you rely on a historical definition of “racism” as something specific to a certain place (i.e. Europe), but then you want to make that definition travel in time so that it covers the entire history of European enslavement of Africans. You coyly make a semantic arguement that the enslavement of, say, one African people by another “doesn’t really” involve racism because racism is a historical artefact that’s attached to Europe in a certain period (completely ignoring the fact that racism isn’t the only way or even the most common way in which people can be deprived of their humanity). But then you want to ignore the equally provable fact that said historical artefact doesn’t cover the European slave trade from start to finish and, in fact, only really hit its stride after abolition. So what you are in effect saying is that any bigoted acts or words made by europeans which presume an essential difference between peoples are ipso facto racism and since racism can only be European, no other bigoted acts or words which presume an essential difference between peoples can be racism.
You propose a tautology, in other words: Racism is European because only Europeans are racist. Your claim that “racism made slavery worse” is thus simply rhetoric which presumes, among many other things, that slavery is a coherent and homogenous thing and that we have a nice, even scale along which to measure “better” and “worse”.
If I say wiping out Native Americans was genocide he will disagree because it was never government policy.
Again, a simple mistatement. It WAS government policy to wipe out the Indians from after the Civil War on, but mostly through forced assimilation, not actual physical extermination. The idea that whites consciously planned to eliminate the native population of North America before that period – a crucial component of the definition of genocide, according to every shcolar who’s ever tried to define it and the U.S. – simply isn’t supported by the historical record.
It makes great rhetoric, though.
Finally, I could care less about “white people”. what I dislike is the pathetic fallacy, where by “white people” – or any “race” of people, for that matter – are understood to be a social and historical actor.
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(An arrogant guy who values “being teh smartest on the board” above anything else, especially when it comes to things that simple, average joe can’t possibly understand but cares a lot about, such as race, class, gender… )
Let me get this straight, Mira: being “non-arrogant” thus means not telling the truth as you see it? So if I’m, say, surrounded by creationists, it would be arrogant of me to bring up evolution…?
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^”…and the UN” in the discussion re: genocide, above.
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Just for the record, Thad, YOU were the one who implied you’re arrogant. You practically admitted it. I thought it was a known fact here, something that you agree with.
(The only name I gave you was “Dr Gregory House”- and you didn’t seem to be offended by it. If you were/are, I’ll stop. The last thing I want is to be mean).
But since you’re asking, being non-arrogant in this context basically means reading what people actually write to conclude what they’re trying to say, not believing you know what they think even if they never said it.
You know, respecting people enough to believe THEY know BETTER THAN YOU what they’re trying to say.
Also, admitting you’re wrong is also healthy from time to time. Face it, Thad, you don’t seem to be good at it.
I am not saying you are the only one who uses this tactic. (See above, Abagond implied you’re doing this to let white people off the hook. I don’t think it’s the case with you, and, judging by what you write, I think you’re doing this to everybody- every group of people. I can only imagine what you’re writing at white supremacist websites, or sexist websites, or feminist websites.)
But unlike others, you are using it all the time, which, more often than not, makes discussion with you difficult, if not impossible.
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@Thad
Where are you getting this figure of only 25 percent of blacks below the poverty line. And please tell me that you are cross-referencing any information gathered from a census accounting with the fact that since the advents of self-identification in the 70s and the “build your own race” option added in 2000 that those numbers have been horrendously skewed.
And where did you get the idea that I was middle-class? LOL. You’ve made an assumption based on my level of education? How much time have I spent in prison? Right now? None. But my father, mother, uncles, aunts, even my little brother has. I’m the statistical anomaly. But, as R.A.T. Judy says in “On The Question of Nigga Authenticity”, it’s the job of the police to turn “good” law-abiding black folks, into “niggers”. It’s probably more of matter of when and not if.
“Once again, because I do not think that “privilege” adequately describes the mixture of prejudice and accumulated advantage which currently makes up the racism facing 75% of the U.S.’ black population. It is no longer a question of “rights” vouchsafed to one race and retained from another which is the motive force behind racism. One COULD argue that privilege is still a factor when dealing with the 25% of black Americans below the poverty line. The only thing that adequately allows one to understand race and racism’s impact on the vast majority of black and white America today is an intersectional view which does not deal with any one social marker (race, gender, class, etc.) in reductionist fashion.”
HAHAHA. I agree with this. Privilege isn’t adequate to describe the system, not even close. And it’s thoroughly intersectional. I do believe that a white person could be “blackened” because of their gender, sexual orientation, class, etc. But I think where we diverge in ideologies is where I think you begin to hold blackness and whiteness in the same position. Positionally they are NOT the same and do not have the same histories. This is why the fact of racism against “degenerate whites” would not, should not, and could not be equated to that done on blacks. “White
“Class is going to be a much better predicator of the chance that you go to jail, Jerome, and not race UNLESS you happen to be both black and poor.”
I AM poor and black. But even then, do you honestly believe that if I put a white person and a black person of “equal” together that the playing field is level? What if the black person was of a “superior” class? (I use quotes because I maintain the idea that blacks can’t actually achieve any class in this social hierarchy, but for the sake of argument we’ll imagine that they can).
“one which has few institutional barriers but many real barriers created by prejudice and accumulated historical advantage.”
And the end result would look like….? I’m guessing very, very similar to the way it looks now. But honestly the system which you are painting seems scarier if you feel that the old one could freely reconstruct privilege at a whim and that this new one will not.
You say “the one place in the American system where I think privilege may still apply – in custom, if not law – is in the legal system and courts…” and I say OF COURSE. How else would/could the police and prisons remain race-making institutions if this wasn’t so? You speak of these systems very blithely, as if they don’t hold incredibly important positions in American society – practically the foundation! They MAKE and ENFORCE the rules.
Contrary to what you may think, I think that any white anti-racist who is to join a multicultural coalition that fights racism SHOULD acknowledge their privilege if only to show to those who are also present that s/he recognizes their position. It’s not crocodile tears but an excellent first step to bridging connections. I couldn’t take a white anti-racist seriously if he honestly thought that our positions were the same. It’s a disavowal of the historical narrative of blacks in America and a personal affront to my own experiences. At the very least, we are not equal because s/he is not subject to gratuitous state violence and I am.
By the by, I have another example of white privilege (I’m adding this because the cultural appropriation is rampant and irritates the **** out of me):
White privilege means that a white boy with blue eyes named Marshall Mathers could get an unprecedented 60 minutes piece with Anderson Cooper and COMPLAIN that GLAAD took him to task about his homophobic lyrics because he was a WHITE rapper and NOT acknowledge that the only reason he’s been taken to task and not the other black rappers is because they are BLACK and what they say really doesn’t mean shit anyway.
THAT’S white privilege.
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Just for the record, Thad, YOU were the one who implied you’re arrogant. You practically admitted it. I thought it was a known fact here, something that you agree with.
No doubt. I just browns me off that on a blog with commentators like Moi and Jasmin, I’m usually the only one who gets slapped with that term.
(The only name I gave you was “Dr Gregory House”- and you didn’t seem to be offended by it. If you were/are, I’ll stop. The last thing I want is to be mean).
From what I wikied, House is competent and unorthodox, so yeah.
But since you’re asking, being non-arrogant in this context basically means reading what people actually write to conclude what they’re trying to say, not believing you know what they think even if they never said it.
The problem, Mira, is that most people here do that and they do it alot, if not all the time. You’re probably the only one who doesn’t. Take Jason’s belief that I’m somehow trying to defend white people, for example, or Abagond’s view that I think black and white women both went through the same thing during slavery. It doesn’t matter how often I explain what I mean, folks just take the easy and dogmatic way out because what I’m saying doesn’t jibe with their stock answer so I MUST be saying the opposite of what they believe, right?
Secondly, alot of people protest “Oh, I don’t mean that!” when it’s quite obvious that they do. In spite of Jason’s protestations, above, it’s pretty clear to me that he sees the “white experience” as basically essential and homogenous. That doesn’t mean he sees all white people as the same, but he does definitely seem to think that, insofar as they ARE identified as white people, “whiteness” applies to each and every one of them in more-or-less homogenous fashion. Is this presumptious? Perhaps. About as presumptious as Abagond, for example, feeling that he knows what goes on in the average white person’s head. You observe and make your call. I try to use “it seems to me” and “what I’m hearing is” as much as I can, at least.
And then we have the sex negative brigade who constantly post here. It’s pretty obvious that they have very conservative views about sexuality – especially female and homosexuality – but they just don’t like to come out and SAY it, flat out. A lot of the protestations here remind me very much of what Abagond constantly accuses white people of doping: dodging and weaving, saying “Oh, but I didn’t mean that!” when it’s damned clear they did…
All told, I’d say only about 1/3rd of the stuff I say that people claim is presumptuious actually is, and that’s about par for the course for this board, including the comments made by our generous host.
Also, admitting you’re wrong is also healthy from time to time. Face it, Thad, you don’t seem to be good at it.
I don’t happen to particularly think I’m RIGHT, either. I like to see good arguments based on observed truth, not simply declarative statements, which is what mostly goes on here. Again, if I were touting a more popular view of race, folks would hardly even notice my comments and certainly wouldn’t find them offensive. But if you work with an intersectional view of human difference on a board that has basically (and for the most part unconsciously) absorbed critical race theory as unquestionable dogma, that’s going to happen.
I can only imagine what you’re writing at white supremacist websites…
I get my proxies kicked and my comments blanked on a regular basis. The difference between a place like Stormfront and here is that all one can do over there is troll. They’re like Ank Mié’s or Macon’s blog: they already know the truth, thanks, and if you’re not in the choir, you can’t stay around. But if you nod your head wisely at them and say “You right, oh mighty ones!” they just love you. My proxie on Ank’s board hasn’t been kicked yet because that’s all it does.
And that’s not dialogue or discussion.
I give Abagond a lot of s***, but his hardcore dedication to free speach is truly and exceptionally admirable. I think he’d s***-can me in a hot second if he wasn’t so ethical and that’s a very strong and good position to take, in my book. A lot better than Ank Mié’s stated program that “If you don’t agree with me, f*** you because I know the truth and you obviously don’t.”
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@Jerome
Where are you getting this figure of only 25 percent of blacks below the poverty line. And please tell me that you are cross-referencing any information gathered from a census accounting with the fact that since the advents of self-identification in the 70s and the “build your own race” option added in 2000 that those numbers have been horrendously skewed.
Eugene Robinson’s new book, which gets it from the Census Bureau. And when the Census Bureau uses race in these things, they use ANY person who claims to be that race. That definition has been around since 1968. The change in 2000 simply allows people to claim more than one race, but that shouldn’t skew things unless one of two things occur:
1) People who declared themselves black before suddenly stopped declaring themselves to be black, which is probably not what happened because this option has been open to them since 1968, or…
2) A lot of non-black people suddenly declared black ancestry.
Which of these two things do you think is occurring in such a way as to “massively” skew the census data? Or is there something else you’re seeing there that I’m not?
And where did you get the idea that I was middle-class? LOL.
Was I talking specifically about you, Jerome? But in any case, you’ve got a decent education and are pulling down how much? 50k a year is middle class for a family of four, half that or less for a bachelor on their own. And whether or not your relatives have went to prison have nothing to do with where you are now. I’d wager you’re probably like me: middle-class with lumpen/working class roots.
I think where we diverge in ideologies is where I think you begin to hold blackness and whiteness in the same position.
See, this is where dogma takes over your brain and you start hearing things I have never said and, in fact, have gone out of my way to clearly explain.
I claim – and quite factually – that racism has impacted on white populations, too. I have also claimed, again quite factually, that racism is so flexible and multi-varied that there’s no way we can talk of a unified experience even for blacks, let alone for the euphemistic “peole of color”.
Now somehow, those statements have gotten turned around in your mind to mean “Blackness and whiteness are in the same position”. Jerome, I don’t even hold that there’s a cohgesive and homogenous BLACK or WHITE “position”, let alone that these two mythical positions are somehow the same themselves.
Racism as it has been applied to white populations has been very different from racism as applied to black populations. Nonetheless, it has been applied and its effects and historical ramifications are very significant.
But even then, do you honestly believe that if I put a white person and a black person of “equal” together that the playing field is level?
It very much depends on the two people involved, because nobody is ever simply a color. I think that the way things stand to day, a rich black person is going to have much fewer difficulties with cops and such than a poor white person. This sort of thought experiment is interesting on a theoretical level, but in real life, the number of factors that need to be taken into consideration are too many to make solid predictions.
Take Gate’s arrest for example. Was he arrested for race or for being a jerk to a cop (something which has happened to plenty of white people, even wealthy white people)? Obviously, there’s a race element involved, given the cop’s deposition. Was it determinative? I doubt it. I think that if Professor Gates had kept his mouth shut or had been polite to the cop, he wouldn’t have had any difficulty at all. And this particular white boy’s working class white daddy taught him to do that, not because cops deserve our respect, but because in the words of my father “If you mouth of to a cop, expect to get your head kicked in”. How do I know that fact of life and Professor Gates not know it if, supposedly, police brutality is something that my race “privileges” me to never encounter (supposedly and incorrectly I might add)?
The fact is that both of us are middle-class university professors, though Gates had infinitely more wealth and status that I do. If I lipped off to a cop – even a cop in my own home – I’d expect to get a beating, not a ticket for DC. Not that this is just, mind you. Far from it. But I’d EXPECT IT.
Professor Gates apparently expects no such thing.
This is why those nice thought experiments simply don’t work when looking at real life. My life experiences and Gates’ life experiences are vastly different and, even though Gates is black and supposedly deeply scarred by racism, he thought he could lip off to a cop and get away with it. Even though I am white and supposedly protected by privilege, I would never make that mistake.
But honestly the system which you are painting seems scarier if you feel that the old one could freely reconstruct privilege at a whim and that this new one will not.
BINGO!!!!!! Hand the man a kewpie doll, will you?
You’re damned right it’s scarier. I’m living in such a system right now and believe me, it’s headed your way. Why do you think I’m bothering to give a “heads up” on this sort of thing? It’s not because – as some folks claim – I’m some sort of crypto racist. It’s because I think I’ve seen the future your kids are headed to and it ain’t pretty, though it also isn’t anything like what the American racial system was in the past.
Contrary to what you may think, I think that any white anti-racist who is to join a multicultural coalition that fights racism SHOULD acknowledge their privilege if only to show to those who are also present that s/he recognizes their position. It’s not crocodile tears but an excellent first step to bridging connections. I couldn’t take a white anti-racist seriously if he honestly thought that our positions were the same. It’s a disavowal of the historical narrative of blacks in America and a personal affront to my own experiences. At the very least, we are not equal because s/he is not subject to gratuitous state violence and I am.
Speaking as a white anti-racist who did precisely that for DECADES, I can tell you that it makes no difference what you do, you will not be taken seriously and your so-called “privilege” will eternally be presumed to be “unaddressed”, no matter how much you peddle it to the public. And the “gap” will continue to be ballyhooed as “unbridgeable” no matter what you say. If you’re a white politician needing the black vote, the strategy you’re talking about might do you some good. Idem if you, like Tim Wise, make your money off of being a professional anti-racist (in which case your cred needs to come from the community you are supposedly championing).
As for being “subject to gratuitous state violence”, I’ve been the brunt of enough of it to realize that my skin doesn’t protect me from it. This is, in fact, the case of most lower class white people. The difference is that the Klan and racist reactionaries are able to convince them that this violence isn’t being directed at them by rich whites but by “liberals” and “special interests”, so they don’t ocrrectly perceive what’s happening to them.
And you’re right: the new analysis of racism that is coming together DOES go against at least some of Black America’s historical narratives. What I’d say, though, is that this has ALWAYS been the case in Black American history. New anti-racist narratives, as the cohere to confront new conditions of racism, apparently contradict what went before, at least on some level. Which is, again, why I’m more interestd in history than in “heritage” or “legacy”.
White privilege means that a white boy with blue eyes named Marshall Mathers could get an unprecedented 60 minutes piece with Anderson Cooper and COMPLAIN that GLAAD took him to task about his homophobic lyrics because he was a WHITE rapper and NOT acknowledge that the only reason he’s been taken to task and not the other black rappers is because they are BLACK and what they say really doesn’t mean shit anyway.
THAT’S white privilege.
That’s a pretty anemic privilege. If that’s what we’re supposed to b**** about and be upset about in the face of the mass incarceration of the poor and the even more intense mass incarceration of the black poor, then let me suggest that the “critical race theory” narrative of racism has finally jumped the shark.
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I’d have to agree with Thad that there is a great deal of prejudice directed against certain segments of the white population. It seems like many upper middle class whites would never publicly say a bad thing about “people of color”, but when it comes to fellow whites who are Southern, Appalachian, rural, religious, or who live in mobile homes, the gloves are off.
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I am too busy now to reply to your comment, Thad (but I promise to do it later). Just one question: how do you define “middle class”? And how do you determine Abagond visitors’ classes (since you don’t know personally any of us)?
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I forgot to mention, on my blog I’ve stated multiple times that I don’t expect anyone to give two sh*ts* what I think*–people who don’t like it can ignore it, just like I do for blogs I don’t like. But obviously you’ve never made it over there, which is good. Stay far, far away!
*That’s probably another prime reason you get labelled as “arrogant” (though it’s more self-centeredness, by my definition)–you expect people (again with the random strangers) to prioritize your comments/responses (and, oddly, seem to put yourself in conversations/situations that have nothing to do with you, which is something I’d expect from someone my age or younger, not a 30-something male, but I digress) when it’s pretty likely that they just don’t care.
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Abagond,
I hope the first comment went to moderation (no idea why) and didn’t get lost–no time to type all of that again!
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@Thad
You’re assumptions connecting my education to my current economic status are greatly overestimated. My family is lucky if we pull down more than 25 percent of that 50k that you are putting out there. And that’s as a collective whole. I’m still very much lumpen (and yes I know that term — learned it from one of my Spanish teachers as meaning the marginalized of the marginalized and it accurately describes my position).
This only puts your numbers game into further doubt. As far as the Census goes…. here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-elam/2010-census-think-twice-c_b_490164.html?view=print
By the by, my mentioning of Eminem was purely a sidebar because of my intense hatred of cultural appropriation and Eminem in general.
I see where you are coming from Thad and I’m happy that, rather than going with my gut reaction of trying to shut you down, that I actually tried to understand first. I’m not where you are in your understanding of racism and I’m not sure that I ever will be. Mind you, I’m NOT conceding that YOU are right — not even in the least. In fact, I take in what you’re saying the same way I take in what Tim Wise says: with a healthy gallon of skepticism. Especially in regards to your claim of their not being an monolithic-black or white culture — because it stinks of essentialism and divide-and-conquer. I know full well that blacks aren’t a monolithic culture/society (if we were that cohesive we’d be a far stronger political power) but I’ve heard the same argument made for good or ill.
And I think one of the key components of your ideology is that racism TODAY has changed from the racism of yesterday and will be a bit different from the racism of tomorrow. What I will do, is keep what you are saying in mind as I continue my studies.
I get that you don’t look at the “legacy” or “heritage” of the black historical narrative, but what you must understand is that by disavowing either as such, there’s almost always going to be a disconnect when you into coalition with black American anti-racists. That legacy is a part of who we are, and you are saying something that is tantamount to saying that it is nonexistent. This allows for you to then make comparisons of Gate’s run-in with the police with your own, and I say that they could never on any scale be the same because they don’t have the same history. They don’t mean the same thing.
(As a side-bar, I think that both you and Gates had the same idea about lipping off to cops — Gates just got wrapped up in the practice and forgot his REAL position. You on the other hand, probably wouldn’t even had gotten the cops called on you. You don’t *look* like a criminal, whatever that means. This “forgetting” happens a lot and one thing that one of my professors has taught me is to not get the practice of a position confused with the actual attainment of said position).
The legacy is there — that you don’t see or don’t acknowledge it doesn’t make it go away, it just means that on some level there’s always going to be a disconnect in discourse. But, honestly, that’s to be expected.
I applaud your decades of attempts. I’m saddened that you felt it was ineffective and disregarded.
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Just one question: how do you define “middle class”? And how do you determine Abagond visitors’ classes (since you don’t know personally any of us)?
Using either Marxist or Weberian definitions, or a combination.
And also realizing that while one changes in class in life, ones class roots and infancy are probably going to stick with one for the rest of one’s life.
In Weberian terms, I’ve been working middle class for three years, with a foot in the door of the working middle intellectual class. Before that, I was lower working class, but with a pretty good education. And my class history is lower working class (on one side of the family) and very petit bourgeoisie (on the other side – my grandfather basically owned his own moving truck, together with his brother).
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Thad,
How other folks run their blog is really none of your business nor do you have any control over that. If you find their content and management style so odious, then you have every right not to go there. They aren’t owed your audience.
But then, YOU are not owed a platform there. We all realize that we post here at Abagond’s whim. He could delete any of our posts for any reason he wishes, doesn’t agree with us, doesn’t find our avatar attractive; he’s got a really bad heat rash on his taint and it’s making him REALLY cranky. And we can complain individually or collectively all we want about how he runs his blog. At the end of the day, it’s HIS blog. He can run it how he likes. Just like you can and do run YOUR blog how you like.
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Thad,
No doubt. I just browns me off that on a blog with commentators like Moi and Jasmin, I’m usually the only one who gets slapped with that term.
Let me take a wild guess: you believe it’s because they “go with popular dogma” and you don’t? (Correct me if I’m wrong).
Plus, contrary to your belief, not everybody here agrees with everything Jasmin or Moi write. (At least as far as I can tell).
From what I wikied, House is competent and unorthodox, so yeah.
House is a genius, but that’s not why I compared you with him (sorry!). I compared you with him because he, like you, uses any opportunity to subtly (or not so subtly- well, you do it subtly most of the time) insult everybody around him, by implying they are incompetent, don’t know what they’re talking about and buy into dogmas. He’s also constantly laughing at their hopes and dreams, ridiculing their beliefs and their ideas.
(Plus, Hugh Laurie has a bachelor’s degree in archaeology and anthropology… so yeah :D).
The point is, people could easily do the same to you- subtly laugh and ridicule YOUR beliefs, ideas, hopes, dreams and arguments. Indeed, some commenters do that from time to time (to you, and others). But you seem to do it all the time. This often makes discussion with you difficult, if not impossible (it also make people less eager to read your posts or anything you have to say- and it’s not I don’t understand their feelings; however, I personally try to read all the comments even if I dislike the author (the only notable exception being trolls such as noslappz and the like). But I understand why/if others don’t want to bother).
Take Jason’s belief that I’m somehow trying to defend white people, for example, or Abagond’s view that I think black and white women both went through the same thing during slavery.
Like I said, everybody do that from time to time. But I give Abagond credit and respect for being patient and for trying to address the arguments and not the commenters.
At the end of the day, you DO end up “defending” white people here, so he wasn’t wrong about it. Now, what you do on other blogs is another matter and he doesn’t have to care what you, or anybody else, does on other blogs. After all, YOU (as a person) are not an issue here, but your comments.
But since none of these comments are anonymous, people (consciously or not) form an opinion on you (and everybody else) here. It’s an old “ethos, logos, pathos” forms of rhetoric.
Secondly, alot of people protest “Oh, I don’t mean that!” when it’s quite obvious that they do.
Eh… If you REALLY want to go in there, you must tell me what you mean by “quite obvious”, what “quite obvious” means to you AND the other person and prove your idea of “quite obvious” is universal (which is not). <- See the problem with this kind of rhetoric?
And then we have the sex negative brigade who constantly post here.
And why do YOU care about other people’s beliefs so much? Do their beliefs hurt you in any way?
So, you think their beliefs concerning sex are rubbish. Ok. But (in words of Dude Lebowski- “It’s just, like, your opinion, man).
I mean, I do agree with you on many issues concerning sex… so what? , but it’s not a big deal. Live and let live. It certainly don’t hurt me or my beliefs if somebody wants to wait for sex till marriage, or till 3rd date, or whatever. Other people’s conservative (or liberal, etc.) views about sexuality (or any other subject) don’t hurt me in any way, so I really don’t understand why you take them so personally.
I don’t happen to particularly think I’m RIGHT, either.
Fair enough. You don’t actually claim to be right. It is interesting to note: you are arrogant and you’d write monologues and monologues and you’d try everything to trash other person’s argument/comment… But you rarely claim you are right or that your side is better or that you are taking a side.
Which only proves discussion here are just mind games for you (some call it “mental masturbation”). So why are you doing it? To prove everybody’s arguments and ideas can be ridiculed or that people, in general are unable to form a rational arguments and defend them in a discussion? What?
I mean, we could certainly take ANY of your (or anybody else’s) posts and do the same. (see above with “what does quite obvious mean” bit). It’s tiring and, honestly, pointless.
My proxie on Ank’s board hasn’t been kicked yet because that’s all it does.
Are you basically saying you are trolling her blog (and other blogs, I assume?) You, the guy who claims to be the only one here (brave? honest? enough) who posts under his real name and last name.
PS-Your explanation on class was fine… In your own case. But it still doesn’t explain how you determine other people’s class based on our posts, since you never met any of us. I guess you assume a lot, as usual. 😦
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“PS-Your explanation on class was fine… In your own case. But it still doesn’t explain how you determine other people’s class based on our posts, since you never met any of us. I guess you assume a lot, as usual.”
This! Dude was telling me all about my age, class, what neighborhood I grew up in, friggin shoe size after like 5 posts. You even eluded that I might not be white. And you were wrong on all counts. Your a smart guy but you ain’t Sherlock Holmes son. Stick to the content of the posts.
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Yes. I pretty much got told “You think X? That speaks volumes about American worldviews!” when I’m not even American. It was unnecessary; if Thad dislikes the type of thinking my posts seem to suggest, it would be awesome if he could explain his disagreement without succumbing to the urge to be snarky/insult Americans.
But I do think Thad is an asset to Abagond’s blog, and I actually agree with much of what he says. I think part of the reason he adopts this style of delivery is to “jolt” people out of their lazy, dangerous ideas (vaguely remember him writing something along these lines somewhere around here).
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Jelee,
The thing is, it’s just a blog. Neither Abagond, nor SWPD (heh), nor Racialicious are going to bring about world peace anytime soon, and I don’t think any of them purport to do so. One of the few good things that came out of SWPD (well, some of the commenters, at least), was the admission that comments on the blog weren’t enough to get an anti-racist pat on the back. It’s not that I don’t think blogs/blogging can be valuable, but equating posting comments to saving the world* is just the latest form of slacktivism.
Not that you implied that, I’m just saying.
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Jasmin,
What/who is SWPD?
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Ah. I got it: Stuff White People Do, right?
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@Jas
I forgot to mention, on my blog I’ve stated multiple times that I don’t expect anyone to give two sh*ts* what I think*–people who don’t like it can ignore it, just like I do for blogs I don’t like.
Don’t get me wrong, Jaslita: I think that you’re totally correct to not care what people think. I just happen to think that you’re arrogant as yours truly over here.
And I’ll comment on your blog when you write something that interests me. I’m not particularly interested in your social or love life.
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@Witchsistah
How other folks run their blog is really none of your business nor do you have any control over that.
No. Really?
Well I’ll be damned.
But then, YOU are not owed a platform there. We all realize that we post here at Abagond’s whim.
Seriously?!
Wow. You could knock me over with a spoon.
Next time, Witchsta, you don’t have to tell us the incredibly f****** obvious. Just the f****** obvious will do, thanks.
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This! Dude was telling me all about my age, class, what neighborhood I grew up in, friggin shoe size after like 5 posts. You even eluded that I might not be white.
Apparently, you think you know all about me and my experiences simply based on the fact that I am white. So your beef is what, exactly, Jason?
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@Mira
Let me take a wild guess: you believe it’s because they “go with popular dogma” and you don’t? (Correct me if I’m wrong).
Mira, if you say what people are accustomed to hearing, you’ll never be considered arrogant: you’ll be labled a genius.
Plus, contrary to your belief, not everybody here agrees with everything Jasmin or Moi write.
Never said people did. I did say that they don’t get called arrogant, even though both pick personal fights with folks all the time and Moi, in particular, believes that anyone who doesn’t agree with her should f*** off.
I compared you with him because he, like you, uses any opportunity to subtly (or not so subtly- well, you do it subtly most of the time) insult everybody around him, by implying they are incompetent, don’t know what they’re talking about and buy into dogmas. He’s also constantly laughing at their hopes and dreams, ridiculing their beliefs and their ideas.
Don’t see many dreams being touted around here and most of the ideas deserve some poking. And if people are being intellectually lazy, hey, that’s their look out, not mine.
The point is, people could easily do the same to you- subtly laugh and ridicule YOUR beliefs, ideas, hopes, dreams and arguments. Indeed, some commenters do that from time to time (to you, and others). But you seem to do it all the time.
More than half the time, people are being insulted not because I called them names or even implied anything at all: they are being insulted – as Jerome is above – because I simply say “Sorry, you’re wrong. That’s not how it is, look here…”
So you want I should call the waaaaaaaaambulance?
This often makes discussion with you difficult, if not impossible (it also make people less eager to read your posts or anything you have to say…
Oh noes!
At the end of the day, you DO end up “defending” white people here, so he wasn’t wrong about it.
If “defending white people” means disagreeing with the statement that folks of a certain color are an exceptionally and uniquely evil – perhaps even inhuman – subspecies, then guilty as charged. Why this should be a problem to anyone but an essentialist ethnonationalist is beyond me.
And why do YOU care about other people’s beliefs so much? Do their beliefs hurt you in any way?
Damn straight they do! People rant here all the time about “white privilege” and how they’ve been hurt by it. The dominant American belief that sex is somehow linked to evil morals has lead to a situation in which the whole world is being pressured by the American government to defend chastity as an acceptable solution to HIV and to treat prostitutes as victims or criminals. Plenty people I know are being KILLED or brutally injured by this stupid-a$$ false morality – which, I’ll add, Obama has signed on to in order to please the Hallelujah Corner of his constituency.
This issue is as real and urgent to me as anything else that gets brought up on this board and I’m as “emotionally linked” to it as Jerome is to 18th century slavery.
So, you think their beliefs concerning sex are rubbish. Ok. But (in words of Dude Lebowski- “It’s just, like, your opinion, man).
No doubt. But there’s two problems with that, Mira: 1) you seem to feel I’m not entitled to express that opinion (whereas sex negative people are blithely allowed to express their’s) and 2) that comment of Lebowski’s was meant to be a remark on the Dude’s essential intellectual laziness, not some deep insight into human nature and the nature of opinions.
Which only proves discussion here are just mind games for you (some call it “mental masturbation”). So why are you doing it?
Because dialogue and thinking are never mental masturbation. Putting thoughts down allows one to turn them over, see what they are, see how others evaluate them. you seem to think that “dialogue” needs must mean “consensus” or “non-confrontation”: it is nothing of the sort.
And what in heaven’s name do you have against masturbation anyhow, mental or otherwise? Masturbation serves several very noble functions. And cut it anyway you like it: 99% of blogging is simply mental masturbation. I write because it helps me think. If it helps others to think, that’s good too.
And Mira, you want to talk about what’s REALLY mental masturbation? Long screeds, such as the ones you post, clucking one’s virtual tongue over how and why people comment the way they do. that’s what I really don’t get. Are you trying to play hall monitor, or what? 😀
Are you basically saying you are trolling her blog (and other blogs, I assume?) You, the guy who claims to be the only one here (brave? honest? enough) who posts under his real name and last name.
Call it an experiment. I’m interested in seeing how Ank responds to obvious BS when it confirms her prejudices. In other words, I’m interested in seeing if she’s really thinking about what’s being said over there or if it’s all just knees jerking up and down.
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“Apparently, you think you know all about me and my experiences simply based on the fact that I am white. So your beef is what, exactly, Jason?”
All I know about you “based on the fact that you are white” is that you haven’t been a victim of racism, and you think that’s somehow not a much of privilege.
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@Jason
I think that we are having unnecessary debates of quantitative and qualitative difference. Thad’s assertion that white privilege doesn’t effect all whites in the same way at the same time is inconsequential to the fact that it exists period. At no time in the America’s has it ever been better to be any other race (no matter how we define what race is) than white.
But before Thad tells me to show the facts, because they are empirical and obvious (and very much alive TODAY) I’ll preempt it by first asking him to point out a time when this has not been true.
No matter the class of whites, they could always say, at least I’m not black. Perhaps that’s not a material wage — it’s certainly a psychological one. And no Thad, that’s not an “anemic privilege”, its a pretty damn powerful one.
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Someone seems to have to tell you the rather fekking obvious since it seems to elude you often. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t be here kvetching about what other people do on their blogs. Now if they came and trolled YOUR blog, that’s one thing. You can wield the mighty banhammer or not. You could ban/report IP addies, or not, whatever it is that takes your fancy. But what they do on theirs, is none of your business.
And you having a proxy on blogs you’re hostile to is low. Ankh’s is a place were Black women can discuss things we feel we need to without the kind of bullshyt you consistently bring to the party. And really, Ankh’s place is whatever SHE decides to make it. The fact you’re there spying is underhanded and frankly a bit obsessive.
Ankh keeps a blog in her little corner of the internet and you’re foaming at the mouth that 1) it exists, 2) it’s hers and 3) she’ll run it as she sees fit 4) and she doesn’t run it like YOU want her to 5) and there’s no way you can MAKE her.
For all the posting you seem to do around the internet, when do you manage to teach your classes? Compile and manage your research data?
I was being polite with you, refraining from the evil ad homs that you so loathe, but I see now that’s utterly useless. You were rude and insulting to me when I was neither to you. That was not called for. That was the action of a jerk and overall douchenozzle. Since you so obviously have no respect for me, I’ll return the favor and treat you with the contempt you have worked to cultivate.
Don’t worry. The way things are going here, it’ll soon be you, Abagond and those White supremacists you so love to “battle” on their websites that there is conveniently no evidence of since they delete and block all your posts/comments. And then you can be king of your very own little ant hill.
Happy trails.
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@ Thad
I seem to be getting the vibe from Thad that all these privileges or advantages or whatever you want to call them (who gives a s**t?) tend to offset and intersect with each other so much that it’s all just a wash and we should just not assume that because someone is white that they have privileges and advantages in life. I think that’s BS. It’s tantamount to saying POC are just whiners who need to sack up and get over it cause we all have problems.
@ Jerome
“I think that we are having unnecessary debates of quantitative and qualitative difference. Thad’s assertion that white privilege doesn’t effect all whites in the same way at the same time is inconsequential to the fact that it exists period.”
Good point.
But I have to disagree with you about EM 😉
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This seems to be a “free for all” to bring Thaddeus to “heel” and take account of himself.
Which given my recent past encounters I feel it highly appropriate I join in!!
Not that he deserves any of it of course!!!…Ah well what the hell!!!
First…Because, Thaddeus you have either a sloppy or intentional habit of not bothering to read people’s posts properly. (Already pointed out to you here by Mira’s response – for example) And not very scholarly.
Second…Because you also have a habit of ignoring or disregarding useful advice or insightful critiques:
Third…Because it doesn’t have to be a dissertation!!!. Just two prime examples from my own diligent reading of this thread.
The First example:
Now believe me I’ve tried!!! But I couldn’t have put this better myself.
Incidentally, Jerome, I stumbled across this. Its what Wikipedia has to say about you:
And the second example: which conveniently links to the first and is a direct consequence of it:
If you really understood what was being conveyed to you in the first example you would begin see why Witchsistah would feel the need to make, in my view, justifiable, appropriately, critical comments towards you in the second example.
Now you probably won’t really get or understand any of this (too bad!!!) and will probably dismiss it with some banal ad hominem but at least you will have evidence of what exactely it is YOU don’t get and a lot of Black people, POC, oh yes and even some “white aware privileged” people DO get!!!
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*Sigh*
You know peeps be lovin’ me. Can’t stay away for ish.
If Thad 1.0 really does have a proxy on my blog, I’m hardly surprised. I’m neither insulted nor flattered either. To tell you the truth, I’m just creeped out even more.
I always figured I’d be a drapto-magnet, but now that it’s actually happening, I foresee more “fan letters” on the horizon.
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Kwamla:
Excellent comment. Thanks.
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Thad,
Don’t see many dreams being touted around here and most of the ideas deserve some poking. And if people are being intellectually lazy, hey, that’s their look out, not mine.
Maybe not dreams per se, but you actively ridicule people’s IDENTITIES, and that’s just not cool, man.
What I’m saying is, as an anthropologist you do know a lot about formation of identities, identity as a process, construction of identity, etc, etc. You also know that none of that is set in stone or “natural”. Fine, I agree.
It doesn’t mean you should ridicule people about their identity, or beliefs, or to ASSUME you understand this stuff better than them.
(Don’t get me wrong, I am not a fan of “you are not X so you don’t understand X” trope either).
they are being insulted – as Jerome is above – because I simply say “Sorry, you’re wrong. That’s not how it is, look here…”
While there are some people who refuse to believe the evidence (statistic data, for example, or what a scholar really said, as the opposite of what is commonly believed (s)he said), most of the time here, people are pissed because you take the liberty of interpreting other people’s THOUGHTS (not to mention words) any way you like. You did this at least once to my thoughts in your last comment, for example.
If “defending white people” means disagreeing with the statement that folks of a certain color are an exceptionally and uniquely evil – perhaps even inhuman – subspecies, then guilty as charged.
True, but that is hardly what most of the commenters here say. And trolls who do say stuff like that (ABM, for example) are not the most popular here.
Damn straight they do! People rant here all the time about “white privilege” and how they’ve been hurt by it. The dominant American belief that sex is somehow linked to evil morals…
*confused* What does white privilege have with dominant American belief that sex is evil?
This issue is as real and urgent to me as anything else that gets brought up on this board and I’m as “emotionally linked” to it as Jerome is to 18th century slavery.
Fair enough. I certainly don’t share your methods (even though I share many of your views concerning this), but if you do feel strongly about this issue, and if it’s something that you care about, I understand. (Though I don’t udnerstand why you sometimes bring that up in unrelated threads).
What I’m saying is, this issues seems to be something you are honestly concerned about- unlike the usual mind games where it seems your only goal is to trash people’s arguments (not matter if they agree with you or not).
you seem to think that “dialogue” needs must mean “consensus” or “non-confrontation”: it is nothing of the sort.
No. But I do think dialogue should include more than one person, and that the person involved must speak the same language, so to speak. It’s impossible to have a discussion with somebody who uses each opportunity to derail the discussion or stop it, like you frequently do.
As for discussing, some of the best discussions I have are with people who don’t share my opinions, but who do share the same values when it comes to discussion.
I mean on values such as: do not derail, do not engage in ad hominem, use logic, do not twist other people’s words, etc. It’s impossible to always stay 100% clean here- nobody’s perfect, and we all go off topic, or misinterpret, or attack sometimes. But as long as people generally share these values, the discussions are possible.
And what in heaven’s name do you have against masturbation anyhow, mental or otherwise?
See, this is one of those things. You ASSUME, Thad. You assumed something about my thoughts that I never even hinted. Who said I had anything against masturbation? I don’t. You just assumed that, because you think people generally have something against it.
For the record, I don’t. I used the expression “mental masturbation” the way I interpret it, and the key element is that’s something you do ALONE and for you OWN satisfaction. (I am aware the word itself is not about what you do alone or to yourself, but I used the most popular meaning of the word). So, all in all, (mental) masturbation, no matter how satisfying is for a person, is not something you do for others, or something that others should care or see (and no, it doesn’t mean it’s forbidden for anybody to see it, however, you should not force it on those who don’t have a wish to watch it).
And Mira, you want to talk about what’s REALLY mental masturbation? Long screeds, such as the ones you post, clucking one’s virtual tongue over how and why people comment the way they do.
Indeed. These posts about you and your commenting style could be classified as such. 😀
that’s what I really don’t get. Are you trying to play hall monitor, or what? 😀
I don’t understand what this means. (Really, I don’t).
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hall monitor
In American schools k-12 a few students are selected or volunteer to patrol the hallways and insure that students are not roaming the halls/breaking rules.
It’s a good way to get out of class once in awhile though I never did it.
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American “Privilege”/ Stuff Americans Do:
-Assume that all English speakers know what a hall monitor is
(sorry couldn’t resist!)
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@Jerome
My family is lucky if we pull down more than 25 percent of that 50k that you are putting out there.
That 50K is the FAMILY budget, entire, for a family of four. So let me get this straight? you claim that your family is pulling down around 12K a year, which comes out to 1000 USD a month. Presuming that you have two bread winners in your family, this means that you’re making an average of 500 USD per person per month.
Last time I looked, Jerome, the U.S. minimum wage was around 5 dollars per hour. In order for you to be making 500 USD a month, then, you’d need to be either un- or underemployed (or in school), retired, or dependent on someone. Either that, or you’re accessing this website from a library computer, prior to going back to your cardboard box under the freeway.
I used to make 500 USD a month washing dishes in the U.S. – and that was back in the 1980s! The BRAZILIAN monthly minimum wage is 350 USD. So how is it that you’re only making 500 a month, Jerome?
Something tells me that there`s some strategic parts of your story that aren`t being related here.
Regarding census numbers and such, The Huff Post plays notoriously fast and loose with the truth when it comes to science and stats. They are about as reliable as Fox News (I did a recent post on one of their out-and-out fabrications of rape stats here: http://omangueblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/bullshit-patrol-one-in-four-college.html)
The problem with your use of this particular article is that it presumes that what happens in Tacoma is happening in tthe same way, everywhere. But with regards to the numbers that Robinson refers to from tthe 2005, census, we know this is not the case. How? Because there are only two ways black people could be counted for those stats: with “mixed” tossed in or with “mixed” tossed out.
If the “mixed” were excluded from those “black” stats – as Huffpo says is the case in the Tacoma housing fight – then the stats are even more telling, because they’d be refering to only people who proclaim themselves to be “pure” black.
If those stats include mixed people, then they might indeed be watered down by including folks who were self-proclaimed as white before 2000 and who presumably have, in aggregate, a higher socioeconomic status than self-proclaimed blacks (again, in aggregate). But if a lot of people who were white before 2000 started putting “black” down on their census forms after 2000, then we should have seen the numbers of “blacks” grow beyond what would normally be the case from 2000 on.
That hasn’t occurred.
What “mixed” picks up is in the vast majority of cases the people who were declared as only black before 2000 and who want their other ethnicities recognized.
If these people are cut out of the “black middle class” that Robinson talks about, as you seem to be claiming based on the HuffPo article you linked us to, then what Robinson is saying is even MORE impressive, not less.
You’re correct that one can never take stats at face value, but that also means that one can’t simply dismiss them as “useless”. The HuffPo has given a case where the census stats are being distorted. It does not logically follow, then, that ALL census data is ALWAYS distorted. Unless you can show me how or why the stats on black economics in the census should be significantly worsened, then all you’re doing is saying “things are the way they are because I say that they are”.
By the by, my mentioning of Eminem was purely a sidebar because of my intense hatred of cultural appropriation and Eminem in general.
While I dislike Eminem, I`m not too concerned with cultural appropriation. Culture isn’t a finite good which can be stolen, like land or money.
In fact, I take in what you’re saying the same way I take in what Tim Wise says: with a healthy gallon of skepticism.
That`s what everyone should be doing, all the time. That`s good.
Especially in regards to your claim of their not being an monolithic-black or white culture — because it stinks of essentialism and divide-and-conquer.
I don`t know why a monolithic view of racial culture would give you a sense of security with regards to “divide and conquer” and yet you don’t seem to find it necessary to posit that there is or should be a monolithic view of class culture, the lack of which is as or even more likely to lead to “divide and conquer” as anything else.
But the belief that cultures should be racially codified and monolithic, with little to no divergence, is properly understood as one of the roots of fascism, which I am against no matter what color it attempts to wrap itself in.
If you want to talk in pure rhetorical terms, “in diversity there is strength”.
And I think one of the key components of your ideology is that racism TODAY has changed from the racism of yesterday and will be a bit different from the racism of tomorrow.
Yep. That`s what I`m saying. You guys are moving to a more Brazilian model off racism and, in that model, essentialist argumentation is going to be increasingly irrelevant and you`re going to get increasing numbers of very privileged light-colored people who`ll want to claim that they are somehow suffering, equally, from racism.
I get that you don’t look at the “legacy” or “heritage” of the black historical narrative, but what you must understand is that by disavowing either as such, there’s almost always going to be a disconnect when you into coalition with black American anti-racists.
Well, in the first place, my main area of action is Brazil, so I’m not that concerned with working with a coalition of North American anti-racists. Secondly, I don’t think truth should be sacrificed to what we down here call “ideological patrolling”. Not because I’m so dedicated to the truth, mind you, but because I think that such strategic “edits” always end up causing far more trouble than they solve. So the idea of working as a political with a group or groups that want to edit reality in accordance with whatever today’s strategic political directive is doesn’t appeal to me. I’ll leave that particular path to Timmy Wise, who seems perfectly happy and willing to stroll down it.
That legacy is a part of who we are, and you are saying something that is tantamount to saying that it is nonexistent.
What I`m saying is that it`s a constructed political artifact which should never be mistaken for an existential and essential characteristic.
This allows for you to then make comparisons of Gate’s run-in with the police with your own, and I say that they could never on any scale be the same because they don’t have the same history. They don’t mean the same thing.
My question, however, isn`t whether or not they mean the same thing. My queestion was, does white skin privilege, on its own, prevent me from receiving the same treatment in the same situation? No, it doesn`t.
You don’t *look* like a criminal, whatever that means.
I look pretty trashy most of the time and have had the cops called on me on several occasions for looking suspicious. The point is, when looking at a concrete social situation AS AN EMPIRICAL EVENT, instead of as a theoretical construct, race, sex, or what have you is hardly ever the only thing in play. It`s a complex event, with several meaning structures being simultaneously employed. Presuming causality because of only one of these structures is a sort of form of scientific autism which clouds our perception of life as it is, not refines it.
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@Jason
All I know about you “based on the fact that you are white” is that you haven’t been a victim of racism, and you think that’s somehow not a much of privilege.
Exactly. You have whopping big presumptions regarding me yourself.
The difference between the two of us, Jase, is that when you tell me “look, it’s not that way with me”, I listen and incorporate what you say.
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@Jerome
At no time in the America’s has it ever been better to be any other race (no matter how we define what race is) than white.
Oh, agreed.
But then again, one could equally say that at no time in America`s history has it ever been better to be working class than bourgeoisie.
And yet the people who commonly post here don`t seem to be particularly interested in investigating that particular axis of advantage. In fact, we celebrate it, as long as it comes with a black face attached.
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@Jason
I seem to be getting the vibe from Thad that all these privileges or advantages or whatever you want to call them (who gives a s**t?) tend to offset and intersect with each other so much that it’s all just a wash and we should just not assume that because someone is white that they have privileges and advantages in life.
Here we go with your presumptions again, Jason.
Presuming that there are multiple axises of power and advantage in a society and claiming that any analysis of a social situation has to take all these into consideration is – MOST DEFINITELY – not the same thing as claiming “everything comes out in the wash”.
In fact, I can’t even beging to fathom how you could interpret my words in that way, given the examples I’ve shown. YOU, my friend, are the one making the homogenous argument here, not me. You’re the guy saying, for example, that abuse directed against a rich woman is the same thing as abuse directed against a poor woman, independent of other concerns.
I’m saying that an abused woman (one idenntity category) is generally in a WORSE position if she’s poor (another category) and generally worse yet if she’s black (a third category) and REALLY bad if on top of that, she’s an illegal immigrant (a fourth category). I think a woman in that situation has no necessary or essential link to a rich white american citizen who’s also suffered abuse. She MAY have a link, or may not: nothing about sharing the category “woman” means that these two experiences are necessarily “closer” to one another: it all depends on the situation.
What YOU’RE saying is that, with regards to sex-based abuse, “it all comes out in the wash” and both victim’s experiences are essentially identical, simply because both of them have a vagina.
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@Witchsta
For all the posting you seem to do around the internet, when do you manage to teach your classes? Compile and manage your research data?
LOL. I’m lucky that I write quickly and that I DON’T watch T.V., hardly ever (“Treme” is the only show I’m currently following since “The Wire” ended here 3 years ago).
But are you seriously suggesting, Witchie, that I need to dedicate myself body and soul to my research, rather like a monk? No time for anything else, ever?
You must be a very dedicated student, woman! I await with baited breath the publication of your first book (or even Ank’s, as the case may be). In the meantime, if you want to do some substantive criticism of my work, please go here:
Click to access sexualidade-e-economia-thaddeus-blanchette-e-ana-paula-da-silva.pdf
…you’d be doing Ana and me a favor if you’d offer a critique. I mean, given that you’re so concerned with my ability to academically produce, that is. Critical readers are ALWAYS welcome.
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@Kwamla
First…Because, Thaddeus you have either a sloppy or intentional habit of not bothering to read people’s posts properly. (Already pointed out to you here by Mira’s response – for example) And not very scholarly.
…and this is a problem, of course, because the folks posting above are so very good at carefully reading each other`s posts, neh Kwamla? And, of course, because a blog like this is a scholarly forum which goes right down on my CNPq-Lattes CV.
😀
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Is there an English version?
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@Mira
Maybe not dreams per se, but you actively ridicule people’s IDENTITIES, and that’s just not cool, man.
Oh, no! Not identity! Not that sacred cow!
Mira, I have not actively ridiculed peoples` identities, unless the people in question started a flame war first. I occasionally question some identites, perhaps, including my own. And I have occasionally ridiculed people’s beliefs – a charge practically everyone posting here can be hit with.
But since you`ve decided to take on the position of censor, please show me where you feel that I am “ridiculing people`s identities” so that I can avoid such behavior in the future, ‘tá?
most of the time here, people are pissed because you take the liberty of interpreting other people’s THOUGHTS…
Like Jason, say, presuming that I`m saying “it all washes out in the wash”? Or like Abagond, claiming that I`m saying marriage and rape are the same thing? Or perhaps you`re thinking about Ank Mié, whose consistent reaction to those who disagree with her is to claim that they are mentally ill? Or maybe I should modell my behavior on people like Witchsistah and Blakgenius, who have repeatedly said that I support the racist abuse of my wife? Or hell, how about good ol` Kwamla, above, who has repeatedly presumed that I think the Atlantic Slave Trade is no big deal.
Please, Mira… [roll eyes]
At least I do one thing most of the posters I mention above DON’T: if someone says, “look, you’re presumptions about me are wrong and this is why”, I at least listen instead of repeating the same old thing over and over again.
True, but that is hardly what most of the commenters here say.
And I`m hardly defending white people against most commentator`s charges. Take the recent discussion on blacks selling blacks, for example. Abagond is right? many white people DO bring that bup to derail. My point is that many black people make an equally mythical affirmation of African slavery as “better” in order to avoid having to deal with the reality that many Africans were indeed enthusiatic participants in the trade. This is HARDLY defending “white people”, unless you ipso facto assume, in the back of your head, the unstated premise that the African Slave Trade was indeed a Europeans only affair.
The reaction to my posts there has NOTHING to do with my defense of whites: it has to do with the fact that I needled a very dear dogma, to whit, Africans had no responsability at all in the trade.
*confused* What does white privilege have with dominant American belief that sex is evil?,
the point, Mira: in your book, people apparently are allowed to have emotional responses to posts when the topic is racism and white privilege. However, when someone articulates an equally noxious view that a dual morality sexual morality is acceptable or that sex is some immoral and reflects negatively on the people who engage in it (unless they are monogamous love matches, of course), then emotional outbursts are intolerable.
It’s impossible to have a discussion with somebody who uses each opportunity to derail the discussion or stop it, like you frequently do.
Mira, this is a virtual forum, as you’ll note. We aren’t all sitting ata atable in your university, chatting. How can WHATEVER I write “stop discussion”? And you`ll notice discussion rarely stops around here, ever.
See, this is one of those things. You ASSUME, Thad. You assumed something about my thoughts that I never even hinted. Who said I had anything against masturbation? I don’t. You just assumed that, because you think people generally have something against it.
And this is a very good example of how this BS about assumptions is simply derailing. You’re original comment was quite cvlearly meant to be understood as criticism. Here it is again: “Which only proves discussion here are just mind games for you (some call it “mental masturbation”). So why are you doing it?”
It’s very obvious that you think “mental masturbation” is a bad thing, otherwise what possible reason would you have to make that statement? And the negative content of the phrase is clearly in the term “maturbation”, is it not? The adjective “mental” isn’t negative. So why would you use that phrase unless, on some level, you thought that masturbation was something negative, mental or otherwise?
I could just as easily ask why you think “mind games” are negative. The point being, Mira, why does this bother you? Why are “games” and “masturbation” so horrid in this context?
There`s no assumption at all here? just a simple and very logical reading of your words, Mira.
I used the expression “mental masturbation” the way I interpret it, and the key element is that’s something you do ALONE and for you OWN satisfaction. (I am aware the word itself is not about what you do alone or to yourself, but I used the most popular meaning of the word).
First of all, the fact that I`m here, taking time to respond to a virtual lynch mob is a pretty good indication that I`m neither doing this alone, nor doing it without thinking about what others are saying.
Secondly, no one here posts for the satisfaction of others, including Abagond, who – as he`s repeatedly pointed out – generally writes about what interests him.
You`re simply making a rhetorical and ad hominem attack, Mira. You`re claiming I`m masturbating – which is an absurd claim when I`m responding to two long missives you`ve written which are explicitly directed at me. Why don`t you just claim that I`m a devil worshipper or a kitten torturer and have done with it? 😀
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@Jelee
American “Privilege”/ Stuff Americans Do:
-Assume that all English speakers know what a hall monitor is
(sorry couldn’t resist!)
Actually, that`s quite interesting. The term in my mind was “Monitor”, which is a position in the Brazilian university system. It’s a student, paid by a professor, to be an assistant and to deal with day-to-day problems in the classroom. In translating that term to English, I picked “hall monitor” because it was the closest term I could think of, in English, whic postulated a student in a disciplinizing position.
If you can think of another English translation, actually, I’d be very thankful. “Teacher’s pet” doesn’t do it because they tend to be informers or the receivers of privilege, but not necessarily disciplizers.
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@Mira
Is there an English version?
There`s a much SMALLER english version which will be coming out in a book in 2011, but it`s not up on the net and I wouldn`t know how to make it accessible.
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@Thad
I’m not going to go into the details of my economic situation on a blog. *I* am a full time student as are both of my siblings, and that’s where I’m going to leave that. It was my natural reaction to take offense at your interrogation of my financial status but…why do I care? What point does it serve?
More than anything, your recent post has just solidified something that I’ve pretty much known since the beginning – we have different ideological foundations. I don’t think you’re right, and you think I’m wrong and, well, that’s how it is. Some of my favorite scholars are in conflict with each other.
This has been quite the intellectual exercise. 🙂 I’ve enjoyed it. I’m in my Senior year and getting ready to graduate (I actually stumbled onto this site while I was supposed to be feeling out grad school apps a week or so ago) and this debate, as it were, has really given me a push as to which field I want to pursue in my graduate studies. And you never know: since the current scholarship of African-American Studies is currently swinging towards the African-Diaspora in Latin America, I think we may cross paths again.
@Abagond
This site is one in a million, man. I LOVE it. It’s in my favorites.
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Abagond,
How many times is Thad going to change people’s names without their consent before you put your foot down?
Thad,
Go choke on a chicken bone. Trust you won’t get through my moderation, and I won’t give you yet another platform to jump on since your blog is filled with tumbleweeds. (Yes, it’s blatantly obvious that’s your primary motivation for writing novels here–sorry you still haven’t convinced anyone to give a f*ck what you think.)
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Jas0n,
Congrats on your new “fan”. ‘Cause when the personal research begins, you know you’ve officially captured drapto attention.
Jasmin,
Tumbleweeds, you say? Personally, I’ve never step foot there, and never will, but the tumbleweeds make a lot of sense.
Abagond,
I’m with Jasmin. The foot is overdue, and on a lot of things concerning “it”.
Like, Lawd knows I can insult with the rest of them, (after all, according to a, ahem, “man” who writes back to back volumes on here, I apparently can’t even keep my mouth shut in a theater), but if its insults get to stay posted, then so should mine and everyone else’s when it feels the need take post and make all about our marriages, our finances, our educations, and our social lives…most likely because it clearly lacks one of its own.
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How many times is Thad going to change people’s names without their consent before you put your foot down?
This from the woman who’s constantly insulting me?
Please…
I called you “Jaslita” not to be insulting, but just as an aside, the same way I call “Jason” Jase or Ank Mie Ank Mie. Why that would even BE insulting is beyond me. If you think that nick is horrifying, however, just tell me and I won’t use it again.
Meanwhile, every single post you’ve made here refering to me has contained insults, attacks and ad hominems, so why are you suddenly so prickly about nettiquette? Practice politeness and you may get some in return.
As for your blog, trust me Jas, no matter how much you insult me and say “I dare you!” I’m not likely to go on there. You’re simply not talking about anything that interests me and I can get your opinions on topics which do concern me here.
Nice try at pushing up your “comments” count, though. 😉
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Thad:
You many shorten names but please do not otherwise alter them. Your diminutive forms – Chuckie, Jaslita, etc – come off as insulting and patronizing, at least coming from you they do. Whether you mean to or not, you come off as arrogant to many commenters, so a diminutive form is not well received. It is not seen as a term of affection or friendliness.
For the same reason, do not call anyone “son” or “cousin” or “pops” or whatever.
Shortened forms are all right: Jas, Ank, E.S., Aba, Thad, etc.
I will delete any comments do not comply.
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OK, no prob.
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Btw, I have never called anyone “son” or “pops”. I have said “cousin”, which I have NEVER heard was insulting, anywhere.
I also call people “friend” occasionally. Is that OK?
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No, do not use “friend”.
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You’re serious? I can’t use “friend”? how in the hell can “friend” be seen as insulting? 😀
This is seriously nuts, Abagond.
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Can I use “you” or is that now going to be understood as an insult as well?
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“You” is fine. If others think I am going overboard on “friend”, they are free to comment. I am capable of changing my mind.
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how about friend-o
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If that’s the case, then I would like to have an end to the insulting use of terms like “professor” and “doctor” and what not by other posters.
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To Thad:
Btw, I have never called anyone “son” or “pops”. I have said “cousin”, which I have NEVER heard was insulting, anywhere.
Weren’t you were using “cousin” with the poster who can no longer be named… hey it possible she was your distant cousin. Dick Cheney and Obama are 8th cousins. And George Bush and Barack are 11th cousins:
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/are_barack_obama_and_dick_cheney_cousins.html
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It’s so funny how this thread derailed so far off yet managed to come back full circle to the topic of ad hominems.
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It provided great examples of them though!
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That was indeed the point, Milton. For a white boy to call a black person “brother” or “sister” would be patronizing and insulting. To call one “cousin” is a simple statement of truth
(presuming they were both born in the same country) and is, at most, ironic.
The Poster Who Must Not Be Named was insulted by a term with no pejorative content which simply stated a fact: all things considered, there’s a very, very good chance that we are cousins.
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Moi,
Never been there, but it seems logical that anyone with a populated blog of his/her own wouldn’t be interested in trying to take over someone else’s.
Thad,
No I’m serious. Given that you are the King of Weird/ “Hey so-and-so a sock puppet”/”Oh wait, I sock puppet on other people’s blogs”, you can stay far far away. After all, it’s not like you add anything interesting to the conversation. Abagond is a nice guy (too nice, IMO), but it’s his blog, so I’ll go back to ignoring you (and laughing at your desperate attempts to get attention).
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Please do so, Jas.
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[…] race or history or both. It’s good writing and it’s very interesting. Her piece on ad hominem argument is one of the best explanations I have […]
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[…] love ad hominies! A blog: https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/ad-hominem-argument/ I frequently peruse, I came upon a post about them. The responses were interesting to say the […]
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[…] is ad hominem negative campaigning where one is personally attacked to invalidate his or her argument, mostly […]
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@Abagond
Excellent page Abagond. You’ve performed a public service here.
(And I love the geese).
Best regards,
Tom Jenkins.
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Thank you.
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Tom Jenkins posted the following in the Oriana Farrell thread:
“One might of course argue that mischaracterising a person who has the temerity to disagree with one as a “troll” (let alone banning them, ostensibly on that basis) is a singularly extreme (and indeed desperate) form of ad hominem argument . . . (except of course that it isn’t even an argument . . . of any kind).”
One might even argue that in a thread about ad hominem arguments unless they are in fact “trolling” in an attempt to steer a tread into an off-topic discussion.
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@ Open Minded Observer
Excellent point. Just want to add that Sharina has already told Jenkins to take the ad hominem argument off the original Oriana Farrell thread and move it here, yet he’s back at it over at the new one. It’s like he’s willfully misunderstanding what “off-topic” means.
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