Society/Culture Woke. Can you tell real from parody? - Part 2 -

[Chief]

So regardless of whether it's correct, just because you believe it minimises the focus on racism against marginalised people, we should be selective in our principles and ethics to achieve the desired effect? Very Machiavellian.

Regardless of whether it's correct, because you believe it doesn't minimise the focus on racism against marginalised people, we should be selective in our ethics and principles to achieve the desired effect?

Thorpe is the racist for lashing out with at white men surrounding black women in the middle of the night?

Kerr is the racist for lashing out at a white cop, including a racial element?

Met cops don't get to cry racism over being called a "stupid white cop". It's not a thing.

Met police found to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic | Metropolitan police | The Guardian

Author of landmark report says Met can ‘no longer presume that it has the permission of the people of London to police them’

amp.theguardian.com

 

[ShanDog]

This is my point - it's origins are in colonialism and slavery.

It places the "white" European at the centre of the world, with "white" changing over time to include Italians and others.

The redefinition happened later. "Reverse racism" became a thing (anyone remember that controversial episode of Diff'rent Strokes?) and now it's just racism, apparently, for Lidia Thrope to tell off Aboriginal men for joining in with white men surrounding and harassing women in the middle of the night outside a bar.

Having watched the change over decades, yes, the definition is a lot broader now than it ever was.

I completely disagree about its origin. Racism did not originate with white colonialism. It's a description of a phenomenon, not what brought the phenomenon into being. There are myriad examples of racism around the world now and throughout all of history, and many don't involve Anglo-Saxon/Caucasian/White (whatever you want to call them) people in the slightest.

The modern idea of capital-R Racism is a product of that description being laundered through postcolonial and other postmodern academic fields that pull it apart, redefine it (racism = power + oppression etc) and produce papers on it aimed at influencing people and policymakers.

 

[Chief]

what we currently view as racism

Which is the point. Current view.

 

[Chief]

Racism did not originate with white colonialism. It's a description of a phenomenon, not what brought the phenomenon into being.

"Bigotry" is the phenomenon.

 

[ShanDog]

Thorpe is the racist for lashing out with at white men surrounding black women in the middle of the night?

Kerr is the racist for lashing out at a white cop, including a racial element?

Not sure what the Thorpe situation is, but ultimately, if words or actions from someone are intended to be derogatory based on the other's ethnic group, then yes! Of course it should be considered racist! I genuinely can't believe how this doesn't compute for some.

But as I said, the context of the situation matters - not all racism has the same impact or can be as hurtful. We scale all other crimes as such and hand out sentences based on influential factors. It's the same principle.

 

[ShanDog]

"Bigotry" is the phenomenon.

Semantics at best, just wrong at worst. Bigotry has never just been about race, but being steadfast against people or ideas you dislike without ever entertaining ideas to the contrary.

So, BigFooty

 

[sr36]

Which is the point. Current view.

It's a flawed approach. By making it only outcome related in terms of advantage vs disadvantage we're not focussed on the attitudes and behaviours that are the issue - we're just trying to treat the symptoms rather than the disease and it is a contagious disease that crosses over from one community into another.

 

[ShanDog]

It's a flawed approach. By making it only outcome related in terms of advantage vs disadvantage we're not focussed on the attitudes and behaviours that are the issue - we're just trying to treat the symptoms rather than the disease and it is a contagious disease that crosses over from one community into another.

Principles matter. That's why they are principles!

 

[ShanDog]

It's a shame Edward Said didn't get the chance to write a seminal piece of Westernism to counter Orientalism. It would be about the mythical, deified status of Western history as the harbinger of all evils into an otherwise rainbow utopia.

 

[TheGoatBaron]

This whole woke / cooker shit always does my head in and is the main reason why I’m disinterested in politics these days.

 

[Father Jack]

This whole woke / cooker s**t always does my head in and is the main reason why I’m disinterested in politics these days.

That's by design, it's how you get the likes of Abbott, Morrison, Trump and the Brexiteers voted in.

 

[Chief]

Semantics at best, just wrong at worst. Bigotry has never just been about race, but being steadfast against people or ideas you dislike without ever entertaining ideas to the contrary.

So, BigFooty

OK let's go back. I'll be more specific seeing as the dots aren't being joined. Understandable. It's a forum and we all post on mobile nowadays. I'm not even going to do it justice in this post:

Racism has it's roots as a justification for the systems and practices of colonialism and slavery. This is just historical fact from what I can see.

"Race" is literally about artificial separation of people into a hierarchy of species. Italians and the Irish, among others, were considered separate races. Most people studied this at some point in high school biology. I did more on it in law, over a decade ago. I don't know what your studies have been. But this history is not controversial. Or at least it wasn't until relatively recently. Conservative media and all that.

When I was growing up, anyone taking anything like "white bastard" or "white cop" as racist would have been told to HTFU. It's not "people of different colours sometimes being mean to each other" - that definition is a recent conservative project from Bolt et al. They have pushed that definition as the "proper" definition for a while now.

It's leaking into English law. This way even a white Met copper is a victim of racism and eventually we get to ... "O! The tragedy! Let Gina mine Aboriginal land unimpeded and untaxed, you racist!" The ultimate goal.

It's a fake hard science extrapolated by rapacious aristocracies and nouveau riche from loose observations of a continuum of skin colour and environment, used to explain why it was OK for Europeans to colonise and enslave dark skinned people.

I don't want to be condescending, and I have no doubt you're aware of the basic history.

Linnaeus and Race

Explore the wealth of content available within The Linnean Society of London's website.

www.linnean.org

So "racism" is application of the ideas of "race". Pretending that this fake science is valid. Or even just founding modern work on the models and classifications of the time.

Maybe this is more subtle for everyone. I don't know:

Race and History: Comments from an Epistemological Point of View - PMC

The historiography of race is usually framed by two discontinuities: The invention of race by European naturalists and anthropologists, marked by Carl Linnaeus’s Systema naturae (1735); and the demise of racial typologies after WWII in favor of ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

You'll like the abstract:

“Race” is placed outside of rational discourse as a residue of outdated essentialist and hierarchical thinking. I will throw doubt on this underlying assumption, not in order to re-legitimate race, but in order to understand better why race has been, and continues to be, such a politically powerful and explosive concept.​

I'm going back over a few of these maybe today as I haven't read much on this in ages, only taken in other people's interpretations and applications. As I said, I'm no expert and I am going off other people's shorter summaries.

Probably already spent more time on this than I really have spare.

"Race" doesn't fit anything. Linnaeus didn't mean it as a set of hard rules. That came later.

"Racism" as a concept (or phenomenon if you like):

The history of race is thus mostly told as the history of a false idea. To tell the history of a concept, however, one also needs to tell the history of the object or phenomenon that the concept encompasses and that shapes the concept in turn. And a concept that is based on a false idea does not have an object, it is empty, as philosophers would put it.​

Then goes on to talk about the difficulties of building a rational model from an irrational idea, and about race as a tool rather than a representation.


Calling what Sam Kerr did "racism" in the unsubtle popular sense seems ludicrous when you look at it outside the modern tabloid media emphasis of "anyone saying a mean thing based on skin colour". A tool to punish and excuse in different measures, depending on who needs to be excused and who needs to be punished by the rich and the conservatives.

Which is the way just about everyone uses the word at the moment. A tool to steal the wealth under the feet of non-white people is now used by Bolt, Carlson, even Braverman, as... a tool to hold non-white people down, or at least favour white Europeans.

The concept (phenomenon) applied through politics to exert power over the powerless. Nothing changes.

They got that grubby job done.


So, my whole summary:

It was rude and she should apologise. If she damaged property she should make restitution. It did have a "racial" element. It sounds like a bigoted thing to say if you believe the cop's side of the story.

But, unless you ally with the conservative project, it's so far removed from racism it's not funny.

 

[sr36]

OK let's go back. I'll be more specific seeing as the dots aren't being joined. Understandable. It's a forum and we all post on mobile nowadays. I'm not even going to do it justice in this post:

Racism has it's roots as a justification for the systems and practices of colonialism and slavery. This is just historical fact from what I can see.

"Race" is literally about artificial separation of people into a hierarchy of species. Italians and the Irish, among others, were considered separate races. Most people studied this at some point in high school biology. I did more on it in law, over a decade ago. I don't know what your studies have been. But this history is not controversial. Or at least it wasn't until relatively recently. Conservative media and all that.

When I was growing up, anyone taking anything like "white bastard" or "white cop" as racist would have been told to HTFU. It's not "people of different colours sometimes being mean to each other" - that definition is a recent conservative project from Bolt et al. They have pushed that definition as the "proper" definition for a while now.

It's leaking into English law. This way even a white Met copper is a victim of racism and eventually we get to ... "O! The tragedy! Let Gina mine Aboriginal land unimpeded and untaxed, you racist!" The ultimate goal.

It's a fake hard science extrapolated by rapacious aristocracies and nouveau riche from loose observations of a continuum of skin colour and environment, used to explain why it was OK for Europeans to colonise and enslave dark skinned people.

I don't want to be condescending, and I have no doubt you're aware of the basic history.

Linnaeus and Race

Explore the wealth of content available within The Linnean Society of London's website.

www.linnean.org

So "racism" is application of the ideas of "race". Pretending that this fake science is valid. Or even just founding modern work on the models and classifications of the time.

Maybe this is more subtle for everyone. I don't know:

Race and History: Comments from an Epistemological Point of View - PMC

The historiography of race is usually framed by two discontinuities: The invention of race by European naturalists and anthropologists, marked by Carl Linnaeus’s Systema naturae (1735); and the demise of racial typologies after WWII in favor of ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

You'll like the abstract:

“Race” is placed outside of rational discourse as a residue of outdated essentialist and hierarchical thinking. I will throw doubt on this underlying assumption, not in order to re-legitimate race, but in order to understand better why race has been, and continues to be, such a politically powerful and explosive concept.​

I'm going back over a few of these maybe today as I haven't read much on this in ages, only taken in other people's interpretations and applications. As I said, I'm no expert and I am going off other people's shorter summaries.

Probably already spent more time on this than I really have spare.

"Race" doesn't fit anything. Linnaeus didn't mean it as a set of hard rules. That came later.

"Racism" as a concept (or phenomenon if you like):

The history of race is thus mostly told as the history of a false idea. To tell the history of a concept, however, one also needs to tell the history of the object or phenomenon that the concept encompasses and that shapes the concept in turn. And a concept that is based on a false idea does not have an object, it is empty, as philosophers would put it.​

Then goes on to talk about the difficulties of building a rational model from an irrational idea, and about race as a tool rather than a representation.


Calling what Sam Kerr did "racism" in the unsubtle popular sense seems ludicrous when you look at it outside the modern tabloid media emphasis of "anyone saying a mean thing based on skin colour". A tool to punish and excuse in different measures, depending on who needs to be excused and who needs to be punished by the rich and the conservatives.

Which is the way just about everyone uses the word at the moment. A tool to steal the wealth under the feet of non-white people is now used by Bolt, Carlson, even Braverman, as... a tool to hold non-white people down, or at least favour white Europeans.

The concept (phenomenon) applied through politics to exert power over the powerless. Nothing changes.

They got that grubby job done.


So, my whole summary:

It was rude and she should apologise. If she damaged property she should make restitution. It did have a "racial" element. It sounds like a bigoted thing to say if you believe the cop's side of the story.

But, unless you ally with the conservative project, it's so far removed from racism it's not funny.

That'd be all very well if that was the case, and racism only referred to the psuedo-science gentic based rubbish of the colonial period- but it's much broader than that - it's just as often cultural based discrimination rather than genetic based discrimination when we're talking about modern racism.

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

Another example of these idiots not being able to define wokeness. How haven’t they agreed on some stock standard answer?




Sent from my iPhone using BigFooty.com

 

[Chief]

That'd be all very well if that was the case, and racism only referred to the psuedo-science gentic based rubbish of the colonial period- but it's much broader than that - it's just as often cultural based discrimination rather than genetic based discrimination when we're talking about modern racism.

"Cultural based discrimination" = discrimination. Prejudice. Bigotry. Maybe based on racism - the application of observation of physical distinctions solidified into hierarchies. Maybe not.

How do you define "modern racism"? That was kind of the point of my post. Slipping "racism" into any negative interaction between people of different colours with any sort of racial element to use it as a weapon against the people whose historical and current mistreatment it actually describes, so eventually rich people can carry on colonising.

As I see it, anyway.

 

[sr36]

"Cultural based discrimination" = discrimination. Prejudice. Bigotry. Maybe based on racism - the application of observation of physical distinctions solidified into hierarchies. Maybe not.

How do you define "modern racism"? That was kind of the point of my post. Slipping "racism" into any negative interaction between people of different colours with any sort of racial element to use it as a weapon against the people whose historical and current mistreatment it actually describes, so eventually rich people can carry on colonising.

As I see it, anyway.

Islamophobia and Anti-semitism are viewed as forms of racism. If someone is discriminated against for their accent - it's racism - likewise with any other cultural marker. Racism is far broader than just being attitudes towards genetic hierarchies.

 

[ShanDog]

Racism has it's roots as a justification for the systems and practices of colonialism and slavery. This is just historical fact from what I can see.

Not roots (i.e. where the phenomenon originated) - its roots are in standard in group / out group recognition inherent to our species. However, yes, it became codified in a way to justify exerting control and dehumanising people.

"Race" is literally about artificial separation of people into a hierarchy of species. Italians and the Irish, among others, were considered separate races. Most people studied this at some point in high school biology. I did more on it in law, over a decade ago. I don't know what your studies have been. But this history is not controversial. Or at least it wasn't until relatively recently. Conservative media and all that.

Completely agree. Race has no scientific basis in biology. It does have a significant "soft science" basis in sociology, which is where all these modern analyses come from (for better or worse).

It's leaking into English law. This way even a white Met copper is a victim of racism and eventually we get to ... "O! The tragedy! Let Gina mine Aboriginal land unimpeded and untaxed, you racist!" The ultimate goal.

Hardly surprising that the law would recognise racism against a white person. The law is supposed to treat everyone equally under it, and while we continue to segregate people in the abstract into different racial identity groups, of course it would apply to all of them. The surprising thing is why people see it as unexpected, unless you were hoping for laws to only apply to certain groups, which means advocating for actual segregation (ironically what some of the progressive extremists want).

Dunno about the huge leap you made to the supposed ultimate goal though. That's a big stretch.

Calling what Sam Kerr did "racism" in the unsubtle popular sense seems ludicrous when you look at it outside the modern tabloid media emphasis of "anyone saying a mean thing based on skin colour".

This is where we deviate in opinion - I think that in a liberal society that values equality and fairness, and abhors division or denigration based on inherent and unchangeable characteristics such as ethnicity and sexuality etc, we SHOULD treat all examples of such as wrong. There's no excusing it when it comes from a person of one identity group or another. We either uphold that principle or deligitimise it by being selective or hypocritical in pursuit of political/ ideological ends.

So, my whole summary:

It was rude and she should apologise. If she damaged property she should make restitution. It did have a "racial" element. It sounds like a bigoted thing to say if you believe the cop's side of the story.

We fundamentally agree.

 

[the_interloper]

OK let's go back. I'll be more specific seeing as the dots aren't being joined. Understandable. It's a forum and we all post on mobile nowadays. I'm not even going to do it justice in this post:

Racism has it's roots as a justification for the systems and practices of colonialism and slavery. This is just historical fact from what I can see.

"Race" is literally about artificial separation of people into a hierarchy of species. Italians and the Irish, among others, were considered separate races. Most people studied this at some point in high school biology. I did more on it in law, over a decade ago. I don't know what your studies have been. But this history is not controversial. Or at least it wasn't until relatively recently. Conservative media and all that.

When I was growing up, anyone taking anything like "white bastard" or "white cop" as racist would have been told to HTFU. It's not "people of different colours sometimes being mean to each other" - that definition is a recent conservative project from Bolt et al. They have pushed that definition as the "proper" definition for a while now.

It's leaking into English law. This way even a white Met copper is a victim of racism and eventually we get to ... "O! The tragedy! Let Gina mine Aboriginal land unimpeded and untaxed, you racist!" The ultimate goal.

It's a fake hard science extrapolated by rapacious aristocracies and nouveau riche from loose observations of a continuum of skin colour and environment, used to explain why it was OK for Europeans to colonise and enslave dark skinned people.

I don't want to be condescending, and I have no doubt you're aware of the basic history.

Linnaeus and Race

Explore the wealth of content available within The Linnean Society of London's website.

www.linnean.org

So "racism" is application of the ideas of "race". Pretending that this fake science is valid. Or even just founding modern work on the models and classifications of the time.

Maybe this is more subtle for everyone. I don't know:

Race and History: Comments from an Epistemological Point of View - PMC

The historiography of race is usually framed by two discontinuities: The invention of race by European naturalists and anthropologists, marked by Carl Linnaeus’s Systema naturae (1735); and the demise of racial typologies after WWII in favor of ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

You'll like the abstract:

“Race” is placed outside of rational discourse as a residue of outdated essentialist and hierarchical thinking. I will throw doubt on this underlying assumption, not in order to re-legitimate race, but in order to understand better why race has been, and continues to be, such a politically powerful and explosive concept.​

I'm going back over a few of these maybe today as I haven't read much on this in ages, only taken in other people's interpretations and applications. As I said, I'm no expert and I am going off other people's shorter summaries.

Probably already spent more time on this than I really have spare.

"Race" doesn't fit anything. Linnaeus didn't mean it as a set of hard rules. That came later.

"Racism" as a concept (or phenomenon if you like):

The history of race is thus mostly told as the history of a false idea. To tell the history of a concept, however, one also needs to tell the history of the object or phenomenon that the concept encompasses and that shapes the concept in turn. And a concept that is based on a false idea does not have an object, it is empty, as philosophers would put it.​

Then goes on to talk about the difficulties of building a rational model from an irrational idea, and about race as a tool rather than a representation.


Calling what Sam Kerr did "racism" in the unsubtle popular sense seems ludicrous when you look at it outside the modern tabloid media emphasis of "anyone saying a mean thing based on skin colour". A tool to punish and excuse in different measures, depending on who needs to be excused and who needs to be punished by the rich and the conservatives.

Which is the way just about everyone uses the word at the moment. A tool to steal the wealth under the feet of non-white people is now used by Bolt, Carlson, even Braverman, as... a tool to hold non-white people down, or at least favour white Europeans.

The concept (phenomenon) applied through politics to exert power over the powerless. Nothing changes.

They got that grubby job done.


So, my whole summary:

It was rude and she should apologise. If she damaged property she should make restitution. It did have a "racial" element. It sounds like a bigoted thing to say if you believe the cop's side of the story.

But, unless you ally with the conservative project, it's so far removed from racism it's not funny.

So it had a "racial element" but is so far removed from racism it's not funny?

 

[Chief]

So it had a "racial element" but is so far removed from racism it's not funny?

Yes. It's all in that post.

 

[Jazny]

Hardly surprising that the law would recognise racism against a white person. The law is supposed to treat everyone equally under it, and while we continue to segregate people in the abstract into different racial identity groups, of course it would apply to all of them. The surprising thing is why people see it as unexpected, unless you were hoping for laws to only apply to certain groups, which means advocating for actual segregation

This is actually an extremely good point. I also can't think of a better way of legitimising racist behavior than to say its acceptable for one group of people based on their race but not another. I can't believe anyone thinks defining racism in such a way would be even a remotely good idea.

Racism and racially abusing people is always bad, it has never lead to anything good and never will. So if you don't want to be called a racist, don't act like one.

 

[Chief]

Not roots (i.e. where the phenomenon originated) - its roots are in standard in group / out group recognition inherent to our species. However, yes, it became codified in a way to justify exerting control and dehumanising people.

Completely agree. Race has no scientific basis in biology. It does have a significant "soft science" basis in sociology, which is where all these modern analyses come from (for better or worse).
Hardly surprising that the law would recognise racism against a white person. The law is supposed to treat everyone equally under it, and while we continue to segregate people in the abstract into different racial identity groups, of course it would apply to all of them. The surprising thing is why people see it as unexpected, unless you were hoping for laws to only apply to certain groups, which means advocating for actual segregation (ironically what some of the progressive extremists want).

Dunno about the huge leap you made to the supposed ultimate goal though. That's a big stretch.
This is where we deviate in opinion - I think that in a liberal society that values equality and fairness, and abhors division or denigration based on inherent and unchangeable characteristics such as ethnicity and sexuality etc, we SHOULD treat all examples of such as wrong. There's no excusing it when it comes from a person of one identity group or another. We either uphold that principle or deligitimise it by being selective or hypocritical in pursuit of political/ ideological ends.

We fundamentally agree.

Quickly:

1. If you want to go back to common roots of my land, your land, my kids get to eat my fish and game on my side of the river, your kids eat don't as the ultimate roots of prejudice? My genes survive in preference to yours? Sure. Same roots for nationalism. But that's far from skin colour and some other outward characteristics as an arbitrary point specifically chosen by European colonisers to suit their purpose of taking over other lands half a world away, enslaving the population and carting the loot away.

The two sides of the river could join together, trade and share fairly. Colonisers didn't want that. They wanted to take and build palaces and plantations.

2. It's not "racism" against a white person. That's the point. That's the dissolution of the history and ongoing effects by conservative/rich people into a generic term to feed to everyone else and further their own goals.

3. The law - procedural and substantive justice are not always the same. All you have to look at is the NT three strikes laws that were designed to hit the crimes mostly committed by young, poor black people. "Equality under the law," but racism in practice. The laws do apply separately to separate groups. Calling the Kerr/cop thing "racism" is an attempt to deny reality by hiding it in a new definition that is supposed to frame the cop as a specific type of victim that they just are not.

4. Ultimate goal - That's the ultimate goal of racism. Take stuff for white people. If you want to be pedantic with the "Gina and mining", no need to be. It's just an example of it happening in practice. Draw non-white people as inferior and unworthy of controlling stuff so you can justify taking that stuff*. Make theft and murder moral instead of immoral.

5. No I don't think we diverge in opinion. There's no excusing Kerr if she indeed did what the cop said she did. But I can see where it came from, given the massive body of evidence of the Met's racism - if indeed she said "white bastard", "colonial bastard" might have been a more accurate term? Call it bigotry? Prejudice? Whatever. But it doesn't have the same power structure and history behind it. An e-bike isn't a B-Double. This isn't racism and shouldn't be prosecuted as such. UK law is dodgy on this point.



Turned out not to be so quick...



* "Stuff" being land, humans, gold, coal, labour, whatever.

 

[Chief]

if you don't want to be called a racist, don't act like one

Good summary. Kerr was acting in the manner a racist might act.

But it wasn't racism. The conservative and the rich nowadays want you to believe it's the same thing so they can keep nicking stuff.

 

[the_interloper]

Good summary. Kerr was acting in the manner a racist might act.

But it wasn't racism. The conservative and the rich nowadays want you to believe it's the same thing so they can keep nicking stuff.

C'mon man

 

[Chief]

Lopes I am sure Joe Rogan has an episode on this. Just reverse everything he says to get closer to the truth

 

[Chief]

This is actually an extremely good point. I also can't think of a better way of legitimising racist behavior than to say its acceptable for one group of people based on their race but not another. I can't believe anyone thinks defining racism in such a way would be even a remotely good idea.

Why do we have the term "anti-semitism"?

Does it need it's own term? Couldn't we just put it in with the supposed modern usage of "racism" and forget the rest?