Segregation: A Modest Proposal

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Re: Segregation: A Modest Proposal

Postby Elvis » Tue Oct 20, 2015 12:19 am

Let me add in seriousness: I'm a white European mélange infused at an early age with middle class assumptions, White Guilt and 1960s TV morals, and 'preference'-wise I'm probably the most vanilla person I know. I grew up in a sunny American suburb where where we were lucky if there was one black family in the neighborhood. I'm a lifetime liberal>progressive>radical who still occasionally says Stupid Things White People Say.

So I'm just not gonna attempt to judge whether or not these traditionally oppressed groups should have meetings closed to Stupid White People.
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Re: Segregation: A Modest Proposal

Postby FourthBase » Tue Oct 20, 2015 12:38 am

Elvis » 19 Oct 2015 23:19 wrote:Let me add in seriousness: I'm a white European mélange infused at an early age with middle class assumptions, White Guilt and 1960s TV morals, and 'preference'-wise I'm probably the most vanilla person I know. I grew up in a sunny American suburb where where we were lucky if there was one black family in the neighborhood. I'm a lifetime liberal>progressive>radical who still occasionally says Stupid Things White People Say.

So I'm just not gonna attempt to judge whether or not these traditionally oppressed groups should have meetings closed to Stupid White People.


I know that's the fashionable stance, but: Not judging racism is ethically derelict. The fact that your dereliction is itself motivated by a racist "anti-racist" tenet which racially segregates the validity of judgments only compounds the ethical shitshow.

(Waiting for somebody captive to the orthodox "anti-racist" newspeak to remind me that racism has been redefined as solely a structural phenomenon and so only white people can ever be racist, etc.)
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Re: Segregation: A Modest Proposal

Postby SonicG » Tue Oct 20, 2015 2:01 am

FourthBase » Tue Oct 20, 2015 11:38 am wrote:
(Waiting for somebody captive to the orthodox "anti-racist" newspeak to remind me that racism has been redefined as solely a structural phenomenon and so only white people can ever be racist, etc.)


I really don't think it is spurious or inconsequential to define racism as a systematic (codified) and hierarchical structure, where as, prejudicial treatment in interpersonal relations should be considered as different. No doubt, the two blend into each other at certain points, but there is an important difference. Similarly, you could say that Japanese, Chinese, Thais, etc. are "racist", but the histories, cultures and modern societies are such that manifestation of such racism is not neatly compared as wholly similar.

Certainly, there are no riots or shouts of "kill the pigs" when immigrants die in custody in Japan...

Immigrant detention centers under scrutiny in Japan after fourth death
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/ ... 0Z20141202

It is racism in that "outsiders" are considered a low priority, but really, is "Japanese" a race?
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Re: Segregation: A Modest Proposal

Postby FourthBase » Tue Oct 20, 2015 4:37 am

SonicG » 20 Oct 2015 01:01 wrote:
FourthBase » Tue Oct 20, 2015 11:38 am wrote:
(Waiting for somebody captive to the orthodox "anti-racist" newspeak to remind me that racism has been redefined as solely a structural phenomenon and so only white people can ever be racist, etc.)


I really don't think it is spurious or inconsequential to define racism as a systematic (codified) and hierarchical structure, where as, prejudicial treatment in interpersonal relations should be considered as different. No doubt, the two blend into each other at certain points, but there is an important difference. Similarly, you could say that Japanese, Chinese, Thais, etc. are "racist", but the histories, cultures and modern societies are such that manifestation of such racism is not neatly compared as wholly similar.

Certainly, there are no riots or shouts of "kill the pigs" when immigrants die in custody in Japan...

Immigrant detention centers under scrutiny in Japan after fourth death
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/ ... 0Z20141202

It is racism in that "outsiders" are considered a low priority, but really, is "Japanese" a race?


Okay, so, in America, only Uncolored People are racist, and everyone else can only ever be "prejudiced", right? And, somehow, that in itself is not racist, despite the fact that ethical standards are being segregated and hierarchized according to race?
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Re: Segregation: A Modest Proposal

Postby kool maudit » Tue Oct 20, 2015 5:35 am

The great fear is that we are led into strange systems by our worst instincts. More often, we are led by our best. The systems described here began as an effort to recognise and define systemic inequalities and the structures that create them, but in the end they appear poised to merely invert the previous caste system (obviously they are far from doing so in a systemic manner, but what internal checks and balances are there in the philosophy?).

In the West, we have come to focus on the privileges of European-descended peoples. In Asia, of course, it becomes quite obvious that there exist blocs of Han privilege and Japanese privilege as well. Elsewhere are others. All ethnic groups (or religious groups, or whatever was used to underpin indentity as the moment of civilisational ascension) who have presided over comparatively wealthy and advanced empires/great nations have this in common, and the scale is proportionate to the nation's supremacy over its neighbours close and distant. I would imagine that it was more difficult to rise and succeed in Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon as a Hittite than as an Akkadian.

Your fiance's Borsippan dad would have been a tough dinner guest I bet.

In the sense, anti-racist theory is in a sense parochial. But it was formed as a reactionary Western measure against the late-19th century hierarchies of race that were used to justify colonialism, segregation and the like, and as such can be excused a certain narrowness of focus – to a point.

History cannot really be atoned for, particularly by people who did not live it. Lives lived in an effort to counterbalance other, previous lives are lives distorted, and the goal will remain elusive anyway. It is best to live humanely and to treat people well. Both racism and anti-racism prioritise group identities over individuals, and I have never met an individual who appreciates being treated as a group-member before a person. All lives are singular to those who live them.

I believe we will look back at this as a strange period in our attempt to deal with the issue of human difference. A lot of the most avant-garde linguistic re-shapings and theories are class-markers as much as anything (use of terms like "PoC", for instance, betrays a familiarity with liberal post-secondary education that not all share, and it is easy for people without malice to be tripped up or "called out" for their failure to employ concepts that they simply have not heard of) and they have a nervous, brittle tone and tenor that in my experience is somewhat distinct from the ease of a simpler commitment to mutual respect.
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Re: Segregation: A Modest Proposal

Postby Luther Blissett » Tue Oct 20, 2015 9:50 am

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Re: Segregation: A Modest Proposal

Postby Luther Blissett » Tue Oct 20, 2015 10:12 am

I want to add again that, other than in this one case of a yoga class (which happens to still be open to whites), this isn't actually happening anywhere in reality. Other than where it's forced upon us by the 1% as it has been for centuries, which isn't exactly the same as an exercise of power coming up at us from people with less privilege, somehow wielded against innocent people.

We arguably live under one of the most powerful and wealthy oligarchies in human history, and I don't doubt their capabilities to oppress and suppress lower classes of all races. I also can't conceive any imaginable way for a non-white person or group to oppress us in the same way that the global hegemony already currently does to all of us together (some worse than others!).
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Re: Segregation: A good idea making a comeback

Postby NeonLX » Tue Oct 20, 2015 10:33 am

Elvis » Fri Oct 16, 2015 3:08 pm wrote:
Luther Blissett wrote:But I didn't believe in any people-powered desire to desegregate from the bottom up.


Did you mean 'resegregate'?

Anyway, this will all get even more interesting when "whites" in the U.S. become a minority; I've read that Hispanics, together with other darker-skinned people, are expected to outnumber white Europeans in the foreseeable future.


Now I just know this is gonna get me in trouble, so maybe I won't post it. But let's see when I get done writing it.

Around here, a college town with lots of international students, there are still loads of people who don't see it as lowering their standards to shop at WalMart. That includes me. Whenever I'm at a WalMart, I see many interracial families, generally African American/cracker couples. It's been my observation that from the white trash perspective (including me), there isn't as much racism as is made out to be. Yeah, you've got yer stupid racists within the ranks, but hell's bells, I know plenty of middle class white people who have moved far out of the city so they can send their kids to a school with mainly white students (Although Asians tend to be OK because they are good at math, you know).
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Re: Segregation: A Modest Proposal

Postby General Patton » Tue Oct 20, 2015 10:49 am

Luther Blissett » Tue Oct 20, 2015 9:12 am wrote:I want to add again that, other than in this one case of a yoga class (which happens to still be open to whites), this isn't actually happening anywhere in reality.


As I said in the OP, I can always dig up more. It is correct to say that this is on the fringes but that doesn't mean the yoga studio is an isolated incident.

https://twitter.com/BLM_Boston/status/581932997944958976

UPDATE: tomorrow's community meeting will be a People of Color ONLY space. Thank you for respecting wishes of community & Angelo's family


https://archive.is/ogKs1#selection-395.0-399.74
“During the demonstration we will hold a ‘die-in’ in the student center. We are asking that only people of color be the ones to do so,” event organizers stated in an email obtained by The College Fix. “We are asking non-people of color to stand holding hands in solidarity.”


http://oberlinbicyclecoop.tumblr.com/safespaces
Multicultural Night (Tuesdays 7-10):
A Safe Space for People of Color (POC) entirely staffed by mechanics who identify as POC.
Volunteer if: you identify as POC.
Come in for help if: you identify as POC or are committed to working towards ally-ship with POCs. Any violations of the Safe Space (unwelcoming and disrespectful behaviors) will not be tolerated.

Women and Trans* Night (Wednesdays 7-10):
A Safe Space for women and trans* people entirely staffed by mechanics who identify as women and/or as trans*.
Volunteer if: you identify as a woman and/or as trans*.
Come in for help if: you identify as a woman and/or as trans*.


http://theangryblackwoman.com/2011/05/2 ... crosspost/
The Safer Space for POC at WisCon 35 is a room set aside for con attendees of color to have in-group discussions about issues surrounding speculative fiction, feminism, fandom, and convention-going. By issues I do not mean “problems” (just to be clear). There are some conversations that need to happen within a group that only concern the group, and for the second year in a row WisCon is officially acknowledging this need and providing official space for it.

The Safer Space for POC is located in the Solitaire Room — just off the lobby behind the restaurant. The location is marked in the Program Book.

Con attendees of color are free to use this room as a lounge/chill space, just as with last year. Come hang out when you’re not attending a panel, between panels, during lunch, whenever. This year the hotel is providing coffee and tea service throughout the day.
- See more at: http://theangryblackwoman.com/2011/05/2 ... uJtad.dpuf


http://www.xyonline.net/content/why-i-w ... rape-march
On Friday evening the Sexual Assault Crisis Centre in my community will be holding its annual “Take Back the Night” march designed to bring attention to the issue of violence against women, and to loudly make the statement that women should be able to walk safely – anywhere and anytime!

But I will not be walking with them. Men are not invited to march. And some men (and some women) have a problem with this. But I don’t.


Identity politics pricing, hue hue hue:
Image

Some polemic:
https://www.michigandaily.com/opinion/0 ... e-spaces01
We ought to question two assumptions here. First, that white people should be part of safe spaces for people of color, and without them, these spaces are somehow lacking, and, second, that white people’s comfort and interest should be a prioritized focus of anti-racism/diversity work.

These messages presume that exclusive spaces for people of color are threatening in some way, or, at least, deficient.

They are not. Safe spaces for people of color are inherently valuable. They need not be dictated by or include white voices to be valid. Along the same lines, anti-racism and diversity work are inherently valuable and need not focus on white students to be successful. Those who take on this difficult work shouldn’t feel they have to go out of their way to “sell” it to people who don’t want their conscience bothered.



Other than where it's forced upon us by the 1% as it has been for centuries, which isn't exactly the same as an exercise of power coming up at us from people with less privilege, somehow wielded against innocent people.


I think you're robbing racists and discriminators of their agency here just a tad.

Also of note is that the yoga studio may of (I'm not a lawyer, kek) opened themselves to legal action had they chosen to enforce the PoC only rule openly.
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Re: Segregation: A Modest Proposal

Postby Luther Blissett » Tue Oct 20, 2015 11:56 am

It's interesting that most of those examples circle around activism. There are some good, established reasons why safe spaces had to be established in broader activist communities. Coming from a white person who has done in anti-racist activist work for 20 years, it's been pretty hard to even get to hear the voices of non-white people on issues of race even in activist spaces up until pretty recently. Even now it's not perfect - it's difficult to get anyone other than white males out to a meeting. That phrase has been said to me dozens, maybe hundreds of times.

Obviously it's ideal to work together in a Lilla Watson manner; that's what I would prefer. But I have to accept that when I want to help get a toxic waste site halted from being put into a black town or for tenants to unionize against problematic landlords, maybe they're going to have issues that they're going to want to work out on their own. It might only affect me tangentially even if our liberation is wrapped up in one another's lives - they're the ones whose children are going to get sick more immediately than anything that's going to affect me at some point in the future.

I guess my question is: what exactly is the fear here?
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Re: Segregation: A Modest Proposal

Postby Elvis » Tue Oct 20, 2015 12:13 pm

kool maudit » Tue Oct 20, 2015 2:35 am wrote:History cannot really be atoned for, particularly by people who did not live it. Lives lived in an effort to counterbalance other, previous lives are lives distorted, and the goal will remain elusive anyway. It is best to live humanely and to treat people well. Both racism and anti-racism prioritise group identities over individuals, and I have never met an individual who appreciates being treated as a group-member before a person. All lives are singular to those who live them.

I believe we will look back at this as a strange period in our attempt to deal with the issue of human difference. A lot of the most avant-garde linguistic re-shapings and theories are class-markers as much as anything (use of terms like "PoC", for instance, betrays a familiarity with liberal post-secondary education that not all share, and it is easy for people without malice to be tripped up or "called out" for their failure to employ concepts that they simply have not heard of) and they have a nervous, brittle tone and tenor that in my experience is somewhat distinct from the ease of a simpler commitment to mutual respect.



Excellent points and I agree. At the same time, from my spoiled, white brat perspective, I don't think I have much business telling "PoC" groups what they should call themselves or who not to exclude from a meeting.


And who could blame them? In the U.S., straight white people, besides being Stupid, are Boring. In college I worked awhile at a convenience store. One morning, a regular customer, a black logger (aka lumberjack) getting his coffee on his way to saw down the forest, came in and called out:

"What's the difference between a white owl and a black owl?!"

Me: "I give up..."

Him: "The white owl says, 'who. who. who.' The black owl says, 'WHO IS IT, BABY??!!'"

So true. We both cracked up.
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Re: Segregation: A Modest Proposal

Postby tapitsbo » Tue Oct 20, 2015 12:51 pm

I'm a white person and I know I'm not afraid of the examples General Patton listed! His point about altruism stands, though. The protestant-derived self-hatred of whites is like nothing else on the planet that I am aware of. I'm waiting for the Russian and Chinese establishments to open their borders to unrestricted immigration and start projects to ensure greater-than-proportional representation of all minorities in their territories. In fact, I'm not convinced this would be a bad thing.

It's inevitable that whites will be politicized though, their group status is determined by others at this point. I know I never identified strongly with white people or thought about these issues much until "kill all whites" memes became a day-to-day thing a little while ago. They seem to be dying down in fact as people clue into the backlash. Maybe I'm wrong about this.

Other groups should take note of what the "1%" has done to us, though, the social engineering seems to have been especially intense in European countries like Sweden.
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Re: Segregation: A Modest Proposal

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Tue Oct 20, 2015 1:46 pm

Just stopping through with, well...some kindling, I suppose:
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/ ... says_it_co

University of California at Berkeley’s law dean is explaining his school’s “critical mass” policy that left some of its first-year sections without any black students.

Berkeley Law Dean Sujit Choudhry sent an email to the law school community explaining that the policy is intended to create a more positive experience for underrepresented minorities by grouping them together to create a critical mass, the Daily Californian reports. His email comes after a critical post at Above the Law Redline, which said the policy appeared to be segregating black students.

Redline explains how the policy worked: Berkeley divides its law classes into nine sections, called “mods,” in which students take most of their mandatory classes together. Each mod feeds into one of three “super mods.”

Four of the mods have a critical mass of black law students and some have none, though all of the mods have students of color, including Hispanics and Asian-Americans, Choudhry told Redline. That has left one “super mod” without any African-American students, according to Redline and the Daily Californian.

Choudhry says the school adopted the policy after some minorities complained last year that they felt isolated when they were the only members of their racial group in a class. In his email to the law school community, Choudhry said the critical mass system “can help dispel stereotypes that others may hold because people see that not everyone from a particular group is alike.”

The UC Berkeley chapter of La Raza Law Students Association supports the critical mass policy, according to the Daily Californian. The group cites studies finding that being the only member of a racial or ethnic group places pressure on that person to perform well as the representative of their group and creates fear that poor performance will confirm negative stereotypes. The group calls for greater diversity and inclusion at the law school.

Redline author Elie Mystal wrote that he has been in many classrooms where he has been the only black kid. “You feel like you are unfairly tasked with speaking ‘for your race,’ when you really just want to zone out and play spider solitaire like everyone else,” he writes.


1. I think this is a useful social experiment and should probably be replicated. I say that knowing it will happen, but in the worst way, supervised by suits in cooked controlled trials for results that point towards their sponsors product/solution. But still, it's an interesting question: how much does racial balance become a distraction in that context? From there you can work on how to mitigate and defuse that. The problem is you can also work on...a lot of other things. Jeff Bezos has questions.

2. I think it is telling that the closing complaint I quoted is about being able to ignore the substance of their education in peace.

3. Howard appears to be proof that ethnically homogeneous meritocracy works. Then again, Yale.

4. Strange how the article frames the problem as "classes without black students" -- which implies the problem is not racial quota formulas per se, just their particular composition -- a bias towards quantitative equality at the expense of all else.
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Re: Segregation: A Modest Proposal

Postby SonicG » Tue Oct 20, 2015 9:28 pm

FourthBase wrote:Okay, so, in America, only Uncolored People are racist, and everyone else can only ever be "prejudiced", right? And, somehow, that in itself is not racist, despite the fact that ethical standards are being segregated and hierarchized according to race?


I suppose I'd say that ethical standards being "segregated and hierarchized according to race" is indeed simply one definition of prejudice. I don't want to endlessly split hairs about definitions...It is n't about standards - it is about systemic codification of such prejudice. It seems that some are trying to make the argument that a few outliers of behavior are equal to, say, the "war on drugs" that has been waged heavily against African-Americans for the past 40 years. No doubt, the creation of a lumpen-prole in the US by these and other means ("homeless") has certainly caught a great number of white persons also, and should also be examined from a purely economical perspective, but it is fairly well-proven that laws were put on the books to specifically give African-Americans harsher sentences (crack cocaine mandatory minimums)....Yeah, I don't know why I am rehashing what should be well known here... :shrug:
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Re: Segregation: A Modest Proposal

Postby General Patton » Tue Oct 20, 2015 11:28 pm

SonicG » Tue Oct 20, 2015 8:28 pm wrote:
FourthBase wrote:Okay, so, in America, only Uncolored People are racist, and everyone else can only ever be "prejudiced", right? And, somehow, that in itself is not racist, despite the fact that ethical standards are being segregated and hierarchized according to race?


I suppose I'd say that ethical standards being "segregated and hierarchized according to race" is indeed simply one definition of prejudice. I don't want to endlessly split hairs about definitions...It is n't about standards - it is about systemic codification of such prejudice. It seems that some are trying to make the argument that a few outliers of behavior are equal to, say, the "war on drugs" that has been waged heavily against African-Americans for the past 40 years. No doubt, the creation of a lumpen-prole in the US by these and other means ("homeless") has certainly caught a great number of white persons also, and should also be examined from a purely economical perspective, but it is fairly well-proven that laws were put on the books to specifically give African-Americans harsher sentences (crack cocaine mandatory minimums)....Yeah, I don't know why I am rehashing what should be well known here... :shrug:


The laws were initially supported by black communities and congresscritters. That is to say, if it is systematic codification of prejudice they helped it be written and signed into law. Laws, once passed, can be rather hard to get rid of.

http://prisontime.org/2013/08/12/timeli ... -on-drugs/

Regardless, the real point, as in the OP, is that the ideological foundations underpinning progressiveness are faltering in an ironic way.

And again, Tim Wise lectures people about white privilege while living in a 93%+ white neighborhood. A larger study may be needed to see just how diverse the average rich white liberal's neighborhood really is.
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