My real ethnicity views
I am racially and ethnically color blind, I don't see race or ethnicity. I do acknowledge that woke SJWs see racially and ethnically colorblindness as neoliberal indoctrination for Dennis Prager cultists and Constitutional patriotist chuds, so that is why I am racially and ethnically colorblind in a non neoliberal way.
I am Anti Neoliberal and thus I criticize the neoliberal type of racial and ethnical colorblindness
I believe that Transracial (identity) is a real concept and I support Transracial rights
This book makes a case that some racial and ethnic voluntarist acts might highlight the artificial and constructed nature of race and ethnicity (i.e challenging assumptions about the stability and categorical organization of race and ethnicity itself). and that such racial ethnic voluntarism may celebrate, not simply appropriate, “black culture”; and, may embody a self-conscious critique of being white
According to Afro Pessimissm, as I outline here, blackness , anti blackness and non blackness are the result of performance that go back many centuries. Some Afro Pessimists write that blackness, in particular, are produced through mechanisms of domination and subjection that have yoked, harnessed, and infiltrated the apparatus of rights.
There is no qualitative difference between races/ethnicities. There is no global paradigms which permit racialism
However I also recognize and affirm at least some differences between races/ethnicities (which I admit in the above paragraphs) .
This is good because by recognizing and affirming at least some differences it means we are being inclusive and are accepting others as they are despite their differences no matter how small those differences are (in the here and now), instead of ignoring those differences or downplaying them
The irreducible plurality of humans constitute a veritable treasure. No two leaves are alike yet there is no antagonism between them or the branches on which they grow. I am a Latte Liberal (the only good Latte Liberal). I agree with Dr Cornel West on his take in Jacobin on the similar notion of Liberal 2.0 intelligentsias
What makes us different makes us the same. We are all equal in the fact that we’re different. It is good to say that all of us are equal as that was the way we were all made
So I balance the views in the above eight paragraphs and that balance can be seen throughout this blog
According to Afro Pessimism professor Frank Wilder III ,however such balancing as above is off base or needs a better or more varied approach:
“Black categories are defined against the Blackness they are not, this relation of race indirectly (and directly, e.g., white teens’ racist snapchats) sustains anti-Blackness by producing and sustaining racialized categories. Stated otherwise, “the violence of anti- blackness produces black existence; there is no prior positive blackness that could be potentially appropriated.
Black existence is simultaneously produced and negated by racial domination, both as presupposition and consequence. Affirmation of blackness proves to be impossible without simultaneously affirming the violence that structures black subjectivity itself.”
“If, as Afro-pessimism shows, it is not possible to affirm Blackness itself without at the same time affirming anti-Black violence, then the attempts at recognition and inclusion in society will only ever result in further social and real death.
Individuals can of course achieve some status in society through “structural adjustment” (i.e., a kind of “whitening” effect), as has been superficially confirmed, but Blackness as a racialized category remains the object of gratuitous, constituent violence—as demonstrated by police murders, mass incarceration, urban planning, and surveillance (from cointelpro to special security codes at stores to indicate when Black customers enter). As Blackness is negated by the relations and structures of society, Afro-pessimism posits that the only way out is to negate that negation”
More from here “The challenges Afro-pessimism poses to the affirmation of Blackness extend to other identities as well and problematize identity-based politics.
The efforts, on the part of such around identities politics, to produce a coherent subject (and movement), and the reduction of antagonisms to a representable position, is not only the total circumscription of liberatory potential, but it is an extinguishment of rage with reform—which is to stake a claim in the state and society, and thus anti-Blackness. “. (This doesn’t altogether eliminate the possibilities for organizing There are very real reasons why this is often necessary and groups are experimenting with ways of building autonomy that are also anti-essentialist and recognize the heterogeneity of supposedly static categories. One example is a negative affirmation of identity in order to prevent any positive affirmation of another)
“ With this understanding of slavery and Blackness, Afro-pessimism makes a critical shift in focus by moving away from the Black/ white binary and reframing it as Black/non-Black, in order to deemphasize the status of whiteness and to center analysis, rather, on the anti-Black foundations of race and modern society.
In other words, “it is racial blackness as a necessary condition for enslavement that matters most, rather than whiteness as a sufficient condition for freedom.”
As a result, it is Blackness, and more specifically anti-Blackness, that gives coherence to categories of non-Black—white, worker, gay, i.e., “human.” Categories of non-Black must establish their boundaries for inclusion in a group (humanity) by having a recognizable self within. According Frank Wilderson III “Blacks do not function as political subjects; instead, our flesh and energies are instrumentalized for postcolonial, immigrant, LGBT, and workers' agendas."
I expand on the ‘flesh and energies are instrumentalized for postcolonial, immigrant, LGBT, and workers' agendas’ argument in this post in my blog and also here and this book chapter I repost here
But minor nitpick, Jacobin does counter the above anti intersectionality argument here pretty base "But what is particularly troubling about this schema is the fact that Afro-pessimists reserve much of their ire not for the overwhelmingly white bourgeoisie who lord over Western societies, and they remain largely silent around the sexism as well as the homo-/transphobia facing black women and queers, because anti-blackness is believed to be uniquely worse than other forms of identity-based discrimination."
I wonder in which ways that "anti-blackness" might be used as a template for conceptualizing all kinds of oppression. Many people make the argument that since we have to be pc careful when talking about poc, we should also be pc careful when talking about mentally handicapped people in terms of language usage
This is more compelling and more relevant to intersectional idpol than just exceptionalism, which I believe is something that has existed for a long while and isn't that remarkable in itself.
There must also, consequently, be an outside to each group, and, as with the concept of humanity, it is Blackness that is without; it is Blackness that is the dark matter surrounding and holding together the categories of non-Black.
Experientially, subjects, even Black ones, can obviously find themselves with any myriad identities, but ontologically Blackness is still violently excluded from even the meager scraps given when recognized.”
Counterpoint to the Afro Pessimism point above
If the "anti-blackness" served or will serve as a template for other marginalized groups, it could become a nightmare where every individual discrimination morphs into supreme for different marginalized groups only and thus no solidarity can ever be had outside each tiny group.
Afro Pessimism should incorporate some concept of unity/textbook black unity to not be so anti solidaritiac
My own take of this is that wokeness has a hierarchy. Only a small amount of people will be familiar with these academics and their positions yet those small amount of people will influence a far larger number of people who simply want to virtue signal and repeat slogans without ever realizing what it is that they're repeating.
In her more recent book Toward a Global Idea of Race, Denise Ferreira Silva further claims that we can’t comprehend the ‘present global configuration’ unless we ‘unpack how the racial, the cultural and the nation institute the modern subject’ and analyze the context in which the modern subject emerged and was produced.
"In Ontological Terror Calvin L. Warren intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the “Negro question” is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. Warren uses the figure of the antebellum free black as a philosophical paradigm for thinking through the tensions between blackness and Being. He illustrates how blacks embody a metaphysical nothing. This nothingness serves as a destabilizing presence and force as well as that which whiteness defines itself against."
and
"Thus, the function of blackness as giving form to nothing presents a terrifying problem for whites: they need blacks to affirm their existence, even as they despise the nothingness they represent. By pointing out how all humanism is based on investing blackness with nonbeing—a logic which reproduces antiblack violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks—Warren urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of ways of existing that are not predicated on a grounding in being." So take that into consideration too
We need socioeconomic egalitarianism, especially in Wages, Healthcare and Education that will help all people, including BIPOC+ and especially African Americans
These type of methods are better than race reductionist methods and are slightly more inclusive than regular class reductionist method socialistic type policies .
See this, this and this for more. I also support using Multi racial working class solidarity, like Down Home North Carolina is doing, as mentioned here (though I will settle for regular class solidarity as I also support regular class solidarity too, just not as much as I support Multi racial working class solidarity which I prefer more) We have to realize that culture war is class warfare. We have to attract multiracial working-class voters to out cause.
This post shows that class reductionism has benefits and may be viable. Class reductionism is more useful for criticizing welfare chauvinist and paternalistic conservative tendencies hijacking social democrats and democratic socialists.
I agree with this article by the Atlantic. I also agree with the analysis of that article in this thread here.
I especially agree with this reddit reply to that article here: "Very refreshing. It is always obnoxious how the authors feel the need to label this kind of critique as an attack on the left from the right. The interviewee clearly recognizes that discussions of racial privilege entirely obscure class relations. This is a left wing position, fundamentally." That is my left wing position on this too and that interviewee shares many of my views on socioeconomic issues
“During the Ronald Reagan neoliberal revolution, union power was dealt a blow from which it has never recovered, and wages have stagnated for decades. Under this pressure, the Left itself has undergone a transformation. In the absence of a powerful workers’ movement, it has remained radical in the sphere of culture and individual freedom, but can offer little more than toothless protests and appeals to noblesse oblige in the sphere of economics.” Andrea Nagle A Left Case Against Open borders
Minority rights and people's individual identities are important, but that shouldn’t be the main focus, Power should go to the people at large, in particular the working people
Capitalism makes people lonely and isolates them. A better system would give people more social opportunities and greater social integration, which would lead to more fulfilling personal lives.
The Aristocrat class/PMC in the US sadly is mostly made up of whites. In the French Revolution the left abolished the Aristocracy, when we abolish all classes and create a classless society, we will luckily abolish the Aristocrat class/PMC and as a consequence with that, all classes removing this aristocracy/PMC of mostly whites
But according to Afro Pessimism (as I mention here) we may need more the above changes to truly emancipate blacks and give them and BIPOC in general true equality. Because according to Afro Pessimism argue that the master/slave relation cannot be analogized with the capitalist/worker relation. Also see here for the intersection of Black Nihilism (a related concept to Afro Pessimism) and Neoliberalism
I agree with this article . It shows how "racist scaremongering was fundamental to justifying the project of neoliberalism, and venerating the Black capitalist class is fundamental to maintaining it" It shows we have a lot of work to do in defeating neoliberalism and bring true equality for all
.So why not balance between focusing on class first in our socialist activism at times and using a Afro Pessimist approach (like focusing on defeating whiteness) in our socialist activism at other times . Maybe this can be done in a way that fuses Afro Pessimism with the above views ? I try to find a balance between the two which isn’t hard since they are both anti idpol . I touch on this concept in this post
I never said that lefitsts like me being oppositional to racism and sexism amounts to us ignoring the class struggle. In fact, us Marxists have very specific analyses of racism and sexism, and we are generally involved in opposing them. That is something very different from what is called woke politics
We have to fight against the palimpsests of ongoing oppression
We have to understand that in order to win over the masses, special consideration has to be made to workers who face super exploitation such as African American workers/BIPOC workers, women workers ,LGBTQ workers etc
In his book Toward Soviet America, William Z Foster writes, “The capitalist class not only robs the workers as a whole, but it visits special exploitation upon those sections of the working class — Negroes, foreign-born, women, youth, the aged, etc. — who, for one reason or another, are the least able to defend themselves in the class struggle.” From the early days of left wing socioeconomic history, our leaders understood the relationship between class and special oppression."
I support the right of self determination for these groups of the US: African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics-Latinos, Hawaiians, Asians, Arabs and Pacific Islanders
I am against Asian students being discriminated against in admissions by colleges such as Yale. Colleges should stop discriminating against Asian students. I support Donald Trump's lawsuit against Yale.
This provides a good idea for admissions that is based on class which would yield diversity
But to play devil’s advocate, if Asians are now considered white because of their success how come woke SJWs are known for liking K-Pop or Xiran Jay Zhao or for their outrage over hate crime attacks by whites against Asians?
But to counter this musing, non white Asian countries are still recognized by woke SJWs as non white, which goes in line with their diversity fetishism .
But if we are specifically referring to some Asians within US, as seen with the woke SJWs only labeling Asians in the US as white (CRT/in college admissions) or non white (when whites commit hate crimes against Asians) at the drop of a dime when it suits woke SJW’s narrative , I believe Schrodinger's whites would a be a more accurate description of how woke SJWs view Asians . See this for more
I support empowering the BIPOC/African American community
It would be good if African Americans or BIPOC in the US etc as a whole switched places /Traded places (but permanently or at the very least for the forseeable future) with whites in terms of number, power level and hierarchy (where blacks or bipoc as a whole were the majority and anti blackness structures were replaced by anti whiteness structures). See here for more
So until then positive action like in Europe could help get us to that point. So yeah, it would be good if African Americans or BIPOC as a whole (via more migration) made up the majority race-ethnicity in the US (with whites becoming the minority) and or we abolished our white ethnocentric structures in the US etc. But these changes would have to be made in a NON woke and NON Liberalism 2.0 way
With any of these changes, it would be the most effective and guaranteed way to break down cultural differences ‘forcefully’ to make everyone feel more equal and it would have the added bonus of liberating racists from their racism toward BIPOC/African Americans.
This is because white anti black racists, would either be the non dominant majority or would be in the minority race and ethnicity wise or there would be no white ethnocentrism as a weapon for them so they would have to stop being racists and would rightfully have to be pro black/pro BIPOC as a survival mechanism to fit in in such a world (since being white would be seen as different)
It would basically be a super world where whiteness would be dismantled and over and those words wouldn’t have the meanings and perceived ‘power’ dynamics attached to them that a few people think they have now (but ONLY in a non woke and non Liberal 2.0 way). A true post racist society.
According to Afro Pessimism, power is a structure not a performance
African Americans or BIPOC as a whole would no longer feel second rate (everyone of all races-ethnicities is first class equally) since they would be either the dominant minority or dominant race ethnicity with these changes above
According to Afro pessimism our country wrongly likely won’t make the above changes .This reddit post, , this link, this article, this link ,and this exert further expands on Afro pessimism (though that would be a radical direct way to abolish white ethnocentricity as a literal nuclear option). This post kind of offers a unique perspective to Afro Pessimism after you read it
Even Afro Pessimism's pragmatic and realistic solutions have issues and might not be workable as pointed out by Jacobin here
According to Afro Pessimism, Anti-Black Racism is the material conditions of Anti-Blackness like Police Brutality and Income Inequality. On the other hand, according to Afro Pessimism , Anti-Blackness is the condition of non-being that Black bodies are locked into within Civil Society
I agree with Afro pessimism in some ways which balances my BIPOC views as can be seen throughout this blog and in particular above and below. Afro Pessimism is about white history in that it shows how for over 300 years whites have wrongly held down blacks.
I do think that anti-African racism is uniquely widespread, and that African people are still excluded from non-African society in ways which represent direct continuations of the colonial hierarchies that came before it.
African struggles are coopted by other groups without adding beneficial to Africans.
I also agree with this book on Race and Neutrality in the Queer Theory
According to Afro Pessimism professor Frank Wilder III, “Instead of slavery being defined as a relation of (forced) labor, it is more accurately thought of as a relation of property. The slave is objectified in such a way that they are legally made an object (a commodity) to be used and exchanged. It is not just their labor-power that is commodified—as with the worker—but their very being.
As such, they are not recognized as a social subject and are thus precluded from the category of “human”—inclusion in humanity being predicated on social recognition, volition, subjecthood, and the valuation of life.
The slave, as an object, is socially dead, which means they are: 1) open to gratuitous violence, as opposed to violence contingent upon some transgression or crime; 2) natally alienated, their ties of birth not recognized and familial structures intentionally broken apart; and 3) generally dishonored, or disgraced before any thought or action is considered.
The social death of the slave goes to the very level of their being, defining their ontology. Thus, according to Afro-pessimism, the slave experiences their “slaveness” ontologically, as a “being for the captor,”3 not as an oppressed subject, who experiences exploitation and alienation, but as an object of accumulation and fungibility (exchangeability).
After the “nonevent of emancipation,”slavery did not simply give way to freedom. Instead, the legal disavowal of ownership reorganized domination and the former slave became the racialized Black “subject,” whose position was marked epidermally, per Frantz Fanon. What followed was a profound entrenchment of the concept of race, both psychically and juridically.
Formally, the Black subject was no longer a slave, but the same formative relation of structural violence that maintained slavery remained—upheld explicitly by the police (former slave catchers and or social/labor control) and white supremacy generally—hence preserving the equation that Black equals socially dead. Just as wanton violence was a constituent element of slavery, so it is to Blackness.
Given the ongoing accumulation of Black death at the hands of the police—even despite increased visibility in recent years—it becomes apparent that a Black person on the street today faces open vulnerability to violence just as the slave did on the plantation.
That there has recently been such an increase in media coverage and yet little decrease in murder reveals the ease with which anti-Black violence can be ignored by white society; at the same time this reveals that when one is Black one needn’t do anything to be targeted, as Blackness itself is criminalized (this balances my views that the police issue is a class and mentally disabled person issue)
With this understanding of slavery and Blackness, Afro-pessimism makes a critical shift in focus by moving away from the Black/ white binary and reframing it as Black/non-Black, in order to deemphasize the status of whiteness and to center analysis, rather, on the anti-Black foundations of race and modern society.
In other words according to Wilder III, “it is racial blackness as a necessary condition for enslavement that matters most, rather than whiteness as a sufficient condition for freedom.”As a result, it is Blackness, and more specifically anti-Blackness, that gives coherence to categories of non-Black—white, worker, gay, i.e., “human.” Categories of non-Black must establish their boundaries for inclusion in a group (humanity) by having a recognizable self within.
There must also, consequently, be an outside to each group, and, as with the concept of humanity, it is Blackness that is without; it is Blackness that is the dark matter surrounding and holding together the categories of non-Black.
Experientially, subjects, even Black ones, can obviously find themselves with any myriad identities, but ontologically Blackness is still violently excluded from even the meager scraps given when recognized.”
Moreover “ The task of the following chapters is to discern the ways in which emancipatory discourses of rights, liberty, and equality instigate, transmit, and effect forms of racial domination and liberal narratives of individuality idealize mechanisms of domination and discipline.
It is not simply that rights are inseparable from the entitlements of whiteness or that blacks should be recognized as legitimate rights bearers; rather, the issue at hand is the way in which the stipulation of abstract equality produces white entitlement and black subjection in its promulgation of formal equality.
The fragile “as if equal” of liberal discourse inadequately contends with the history of racial subjection and enslavement, since the texture of freedom is laden with the vestiges of slavery, and abstract equality is utterly enmeshed in the narrative of black subjection, given that slavery undergirded the rhetoric of the republic and equality defined so as to sanction subordination and segregation.
Ultimately, I am trying to grapple with the changes wrought in the social fabric after the abolition of slavery and with the nonevent of emancipation insinuated by the perpetuation of the plantation system and the refiguration of subjection.”
“Afro-pessimism, understands Black liberation as a negative dialectic, a politics of refusal, and a refusal to affirm; as an embrace of disorder and incoherence; and as an act of political apostasy.
This is not to categorically reject every project of reform—for decreased suffering will surely make life momentarily easier—but rather to take to task any movement invested in the preservation of society. Were they not to decry every action that didn’t fit within their rigid framework, then they might not fortify anti-Blackness as fully as they do.
It is in the effort to garner legitimacy (an appeal to whiteness) that reformism requires a representable identity and code of actions, which excludes, and actually endangers, those who would reject such pandering.
This also places undo faith in politicians and police to do something other than maintain, as they always have and will, the institutions—schools, courts, prisons, projects, voting booths, neighborhood associations—sustaining anti-Blackness.”
Afro-pessimism used to mean being aware of the compromising position Africans have been placed in by European colonization and enslavement.
Frank Wilderson's definition is a tad off (always slaves is a touch of a weird reading) but Wilderson, a prominent afro pessimist, has this conception of social death whereby black persons are excluded fully from society on some level
Though this article makes good counter arguments to Afro Pessimism
Also Orlando Patterson and this article makes some good counter arguments to Afro pessimism that downplay that theory.
I echo what the person who sent the letter in this article wrote: https://medium.com/@soumynona_/anonymous-letter-from-uc-berkeley-professor-in-response-to-black-lives-matter-protests-24a66a6f1ca7
My views on Affirmative Action and related diversity are in part militantly moderate and also match some of the Mediations of a Moderate’s views on Affirmative Action https://books.google.com/books?id=VMZHuyK5NTsC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA16#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Affirmative Action like we currently have can be seen in a positive light in that it shows the state is serious about making society equal instead of pretending to want to make society equal through bureaucratic empty and hollow gestures
Affirmative Action is at its best when instead of merely acting on non-discrimination passively (like.saying "this job is open to any applicant," but making no real efforts to find minority applicants), or using quota like systems, jobs instead actively take definite actions to find applicants from minorities without delving into quota territory.
We need to end workplace discrimination, then we need to create worker co-ops and to get rid of bosses and allow workers to be their own bosses. Then we would have solved the problems that Affirmative Action tries to solve
However, diversity at work=good.This is because a broader pool of talent opens to an employer a greater the probability of finding the optimum person for jobs. Innovation and agility are perceived as the great benefits of diversity, and there’s an increasing awareness of what has come to be known as the power of difference.(good only if done without wokeness)
If anti racial bias training can lead to the abolishment of Affirmative Action due to Affirmative Action not being needed anymore, I am fine with anti racial bias training. If it does not do those things, then I don't support anti racial bias training. Some people feel anti racial bias training is superficial
I am more than fine with whites prioritizing blacks over our own race (as long as its in a non woke way otherwise no). When we get rid of classes, hierarchies , there will be no excuse to prioritize anymore .
We need to support treating each person regardless of identity strictly on their merits as a person, giving them no more and no less than they show himself/herself worthy to have. This is much better than indifference.
As non-Black, Afro pessimism says that I am structurally positioned against Blackness. I do feel a world that is built completely against you (built on anti blackness) is something that is ultimately incomprehensible to me (it is not easy to be a poc/ bipoc in such a world, but that does not mean they should be ashamed)
I am not an empathetic ally of blacks as that position only reinforces the racial hierarchy. Instead I am an enemy of ‘ whiteness’ (and I lovingly fight alongside friends).
Through Afro-pessimism I makes a critical shift in focus by me moving away from the Black/ white binary and reframing it as Black/non-Black, in order to deemphasize the status of whiteness and to center analysis, rather, on the anti-Black foundations of race and modern society.
I see Afro-pessimism offering a framework for me to not only understand anti-Blackness but for me to also better comprehend whiteness. Racial categories exist relative to each other— in grossly obvious asymmetrical ways—and so for me understanding whiteness entails me understanding anti-Blackness.
Afro Pessimism says that it is important to recognize that whiteness is more than just an identity that one can simply abandon. The idea of being a traitor to one’s race is important when non-Black but it’s not enough.
In Afro Pessimism ,whiteness is in the mortar that has constructed this world—which is supplemented by settler colonialism, patriarchy, heterosexuality, etc.
Afro Pessimism says that the world’s foundations and structures that we live in are inherently anti-Black; it is not just individuals and old fashioned racists that perpetuate anti-Blackness. Thus to maintain and reform the systems around us is to uphold whiteness, and to uphold or positively identify with whiteness which will always be anti-Black.
I touch on this a bit here , and here and throughout my blog.
I also support Black Anarchism because Black culture is oppositional and always about finding creative ways to resist oppression. Black Anarchism is not so tied to the color of their skin but who they are as people, as people who can resist, who see things differently when they are stuck and thus live differently, hence my reasons for supporting Black Anarchism
As great as Black Anarchism is, Patricia Hill Collin's Black Feminist standpoint theory , which is used to extend Black Anarchism into intersectional coalitions by using black women's "oppositional consciousness” at the center of such coalitional politics has limits. Afro Pessimism provides a better way to solve those shortcomings of the Black Feminist standpoint theory and its inability to go trajectory beyond intersectional identity ,as mentioned here
We have to become a direct and participatory democracy so the electorate decides on policy initiatives without elected representatives as proxies and which citizens participate individually and directly in political decisions and policies that affect their lives.
This will make the need or desire to protest almost non existent as people will cause most of their political needs and wants implemented through direct and participatory democracy
I agree with this snipet from Jacobin by Dr Cornel West:
DANIEL DENVIR
What do we do with this coalition being led by a Democratic establishment that has proven itself utterly incapable of decisively defeating this ever more radically right-wing Republic Party? Is this a sign of liberal weakness? The bankruptcy of neoliberalism? Conservative strength? Or all of the above? Or something else entirely?
CORNEL WEST
You see the rot at the core of the system’s embracing of the neofascist wing of the ruling class, which is Donald Trump and company. And the neoliberal wing of the ruling class, which is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The reason some of us argue against Trump, in the form of a vote for a milquetoast, mediocre, centrist Biden — who’s head of a rotten Democratic establishment — is because we’re trying to stop the American march toward fascism. So that was part of the anti-fascist coalition.
Fascism, as you know, calls into question the very possibility of any kind of radical Democratic politics, across the board. But there is still a difference between a neofascist catastrophe and a neoliberal disaster. Now, it looks as if we’ll be wrestling with a neoliberal disaster. That’s another way of saying that the rot is there, it’s just that with Biden, the rot proceeds much more slowly.
The rot is there, it’s just that with Joe Biden, the rot proceeds much more slowly.
And so we still have to have mass mobilization, we still have to have serious social movement, motion and momentum. Streets, jails, pressures on Democrats in the House. Certain kinds of alliances with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. But I think we can conclude that the Democratic Party is simply unable to serve as an institutional vehicle for serious struggles for truth and justice. That’s the conclusion right now I think we have to draw.
That’s why I’m spending a lot of time with Brother Nick Brana and Sister Nina Turner and with Marianne Williamson and the others with the People’s Party. But I think the crucial point here is that we’ve got to be able to have a politics of solidarity. What I mean by that is that all the talk about identity, racial identity, gender identity, sexual orientation identity, is crucial, it is indispensable, but in the end, it must be connected to a moral integrity and deep political solidarity that hones in on a financialized form of predatory capitalism. A capitalism that is killing the planet, poor people, working people here and abroad.
The neoliberal versions of identity politics are exactly what Brother Adolph Reed has taught us for the last thirty years; it’s a form of class politics. And if we don’t understand that, we fall right in the trap of what we underwent with Barack Obama. And we can’t fall in that trap again.
Every life has value, and all people have equal value.
I advocate for the abolishment of policing as we know instead of the CNN endorsed flavor of BLM and having a queer African Americans as HR reps
“One unfortunate thing about [the slogan] Black Power is that it gives priority to race precisely at a time when the impact of automation and other forces have made the economic question fundamental for blacks and whites alike. In this context a slogan ‘Power for Poor People’ would be much more appropriate than the slogan ‘Black Power.’" MLK Jr
I support the rights of BLM to protest (as long as they peacefully protest), and I condemn any violence or calls for violence against BLM by anyone.
I am glad that BLM is Afro Pessimist essentialist and puts the focus on African American victims of anti blackness and I commend them for using that essentialism model
I am glad that BLM broke lockdown requirements in mid 2020 to protest since it shows they are passionate and bold. It’s good to see them rebel against the state like that
I support BLM protesting against pandemic related mandates and I am glad they protested them. I am sensitive to BLM’s concerns that mandates might be systematically/institutionally racist (or have an element of something just short of that or that while isn’t systematically/institutionally racist, could appear that way). I am fine with BLM’s take on this issue as I love diversity of opinions
I feel that BLM should focus also on protesting against Globalization, Globalism, Israel’s occupation of Palestine ,Liberalism 2.0, our corrupt banking industries, etc
I also feel that BLM should focus on bringing in the socialistic revolution (big picture) instead of just settling for short term ambience gains in this bourgeois, hierarchal system.
It is admirable for BLM to try to force change via destroying statues, rioting, digital activism, Black Twitter ,being elected as politicians (to force change from within i.e Cori Bush).
I echo Elizabeth Warren’s comment on Democrat Presidential candidates pandering to African Americans around election time each election cycle
BIPOC+ should not be discouraged from being the change they seek and I am glad that all the rights they have gotten were through boldly getting their rights. That is a good way to do so (not that there is a bad way even black self reliance has advantages for them as Frederick Douglas supported )
I support blacks teaching their children racial loyalty (to their own race-ethnicity). Every other group of people can teach their children racial-ethnic loyalty except blacks, so why shouldn't they be allowed to do so too?
I am fine with the NAACP. It is good that they have helped advance the rights of POC over the years and the methods they have used (in general). I like how the NAACP creates (advances) the change they seek instead of relying on white petty bourgeois bureaucrats to ‘evolve’ on racial justice and POC rights
I enjoy reading bulletins from NAACP and using that info from those bulletins to create a better world for everyone.
Two of my favorite NAACP leaders was Web Dubois and Benjamin Hooks
I am a fan of Booker T Washington ,Burgess Owens, Dr Thomas Sowell, Harriet Tubman, MLK Jr , Malcolm X and Frederick Douglas
I would have said I am a fan of Louis Farrakhan but he seems to be a hard right reactionary whom the ADL , WJC and SPLC have identified as Anti Jewish. I feel there are better poc role models with better track records who I am a fan of like Malcolm X
I am a cautious somewhat supporter of the Black Hammer Party . But I would strongly prefer to push for Black Hammer to get help from the BDS, Rashida Tlaib, Betty McCollum, Joe Biden, William J Burns, Justice Democrats to make them become more mainstream and less out there.
I am a fair whether Black Liberation Army apologist
I am more than fine with the modern day Black Panthers (many of whom are Marxist Leninists) and the NBPP (New Black Panther Party)
I would be ok with Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) brainwashing me to help their black liberation cause like they brainwashed Patty Hearst . I would not put up the slightest bit of resistance if they tried to do so to me.
The time they spent brainwashing me is time they could never get back and it would be a fun and unique way for me to fight for racial justice for BIPOC people /African Americans
I am an affiliate of A.N.S.W.E.R . I am ok with A.N.S.W.E.R's antiracist activism even though I am not an antiracist myself . I support them fighting for Palestinian rights. If I was a migrant or illegal I'd believe their fight for migrant rights is great
I am accepting Indigenous protestors and am fine with African American protestors rebelling and going against the Neoliberal state since I also am Anti Neoliberal too
Say what you will about BIPOC+ (including BLM) protesting but there is a silver lining in that in that it shows that protesting is still an effective way to influence the government and corporations to do their bidding.
Moreover, with groups like BLM protesting, it creates chaos, and according to Lord Baelish from Game of Thrones “chaos is a political ladder” to shift the paradigm from Liberalism 2.0 to the left. Finally, BIPOC+ protestors (including BLM) are against some of the SJW, PC things we are against, so them rioting sort of fights those battles for us
The people who are oppressed and targeted need a voice. I am more than fine with African Americans and BIPOC as a whole fighting for African Americans liberation/BIPOC liberation (that’s their thing).
I am against Larry Hogan using the National Guard on BIPOC+ protestors in Baltimore years ago. I was between radically center leftist and intuitively pretty somewhat sympathetic of the 'we the people' message from those those protests and those BLM Baltimore protestors themselves
I am glad that BLM riots/zealously (ymmv) protests against the 'police state' because doing so makes our path to a socialist communal ,classless, heiarchyless , egalitarian society for people of all races and ethnicities less bumpy
I feel that racial freedom for poc/bipoc demands vigilance:
On racial justice protests according to Afro Pessimism “ Afro-pessimism can also be used to critique prevalent liberal discourses around community, accountability, innocence, and justice. Such notions sit upon anti-Black foundations and only go so far as to reconfigure, rather than abolish, the institutions that produce, control, and murder Black subjects.
Take for example the appeal to innocence and demand for accountability, too frequently launched when someone Black is killed by police. The discourse of innocence operates within a binary of innocent/ guilty, which is founded on the belief that there is an ultimate fairness to the system and presumes the state to be the protector of all.
This fails to understand the state’s fundamental investment in self-preservation, which is indivisible from white supremacy and the interests of capital. The discourse goes that if someone innocent is killed, an individual (the villainous cop) must be held accountable as a solution to this so-called injustice. The structural reality of anti-Black violence is completely obfuscated and justice is mistook as a concept independent from anti-Blackness.
Discrimination is indeed tragic, but systematic dispossession and murder is designedly more—it is the justice system—and no amount of imprisoned cops, body cameras or citizen review boards will eliminate this.”
During the summer of 2020, DSA set up a march in Vermont that was explicitly racial . The DSA tried an outside the box technique which was more inclusive and organic than other BLM protest techniques that BLM gets heat for from both sides
This outside the box technique was where non African American protestors were required to march with a “African American ally”. and to carry a sign with the name of a black person killed by police. It is almost like these DSA organizers were saying “Everyone, you need to bring an African American person to use as a prop in order to attend our march"
This in a state that is unfortunately mostly white, has more Asians than African Americans and most of the black people there are foreign born/refugees.
This in a town where a mentally handicapped white man was murdered by police less than a year earlier. So some people are thus wary about BLM.
It's almost like the DSA and BLM are acting as a containment mechanism, and one of the reasons is to prevent cross racial solidarity
Police violence is way up in Vermont in the last decade but pretty much all the victims have been white. Not to mention nationwide, the sheer number of whites killed dwarfs black people even though whites are the majority so context and a grain of salt is needed.
Yes, African American people suffer disproportionately as I point out from an Afro Pessimism perspective in this blog. But there should be mention of the fact that police violence is a class issue, as well as a POOR people issue. Obviously the Liberal 2.0ers took this movement and reduced it. What happened to the original BLM organizers again? Imagine thinking it's good political strategy to LIMIT ATTENDANCE at a protest or march.
What drives this type of DSA BLM politics is exclusivity and purity politics. Being the only one correct enough to attend must make you a naturally better ally !
It is probably better to get involved in social justice causes and movements by going through groups like Alpha Phi Alpha or other groups organized by their own communities as opposed to going through the DSA.
As with any left-wing movement, idpol is a buzzsaw, it kneecaps anything regardless of the underlying issues
BLM never had any real on the ground leadership scheme, more ideal accountability. This is what happens when you give up all your leverage to the Democrats and Wall Street. Though they do gave peak idpol at the top
Maybe they're finally realizing that BLM Corporate did nothing productive with the shitloads of donated money it accumulated during Trump's reign.
For Rayshaud Brooks, all he did was steal a taser. Just put a warrant out for his arrest
He probably wouldn’t have hurt anyone but himself because he was so wasted. The bigger picture is, the fact that the first instinct for cops is to shoot people as they run away, even if they aren’t that immediately dangerous, is really troubling and scary
Of course if he used that taser to steal the officers weapon, who knows how far he or anyone in his position would have taken it, or what he or anyone else in his position would do to evade arrest after that point
A few people even thing there is a mob mentality within BLM
The false rumors riot ended pretty much as soon as it became evident that it was a false rumor and that he had committed suicide.
There had been some ongoing violence in downtown that evening because, while the story was still coming out, the police started pushing on the angry crowd and a fight broke out.
So, there was a round of violence that night as people let out the still simmering anger that they felt after the Uprising (including hostility) was still in the air, not only over the police killing G.F but over the brutal collective punishment campaigns that the cops ran in Twin Cities neighborhoods in the final days of the riots following his murder, and also over the ways that the cops had been gassing, beating, and bulldozing homeless camps in the park. These cops were pulling the blue flu on actual violent crime in the city, and generally acting vindictive and vengeful towards the BIPOC community.
There was sporadic looting downtown, and the cops pushed that looting crowd out of downtown into a somewhat working class (largely African American and in particular Somali African American) neighborhood, which they then enabled that crowd do what they would to- during the riots, the M.P.D just protects the rich neighborhoods, as a consistent pattern.
Most of the crowd left and didn't touch the neighborhood. A few angry youth (probably from another part of the city who didn't realize they had been pushed out of the gentrified area) kept smashing stuff until the locals- most of whom are supporters of the broader movement- came out and told them to stop doing so.
The day after the false rumors riot, there was ongoing passionate concern over the long standing grievances, but nobody felt like coming out to march over the shooting the day before. People generally accepted that it had been a suicide.
They didn't listen to the materialistic need of the minorities. See this for example
There were no problems with BLM until ANTIFA and the modern incarnation BLM showed up. The general population does not support disgruntled youth that want conflict because of their ideology. American youth bring nothing but unchecked energy and problems, not the solutions that can be implemented through compromised consensus.
Some good background on BLM can be found here
BLM or at least BLM’s big National front, was co-opted in some ways early on. "Donate to BLM, protest in fiery passionate ways (sure whatever )/burn down the homes and businesses of the poor (at worst, by the fringe of the fringe of BLM) and associate doing those two actions as the sole forms of ‘leftist’ (but really Liberal 2.0) activism in existence, thereby discouraging people from joining/forming an actual Leftism movement that does not pose a threat to the status quo.
Btw I am not far off from believing that a case can be made that BLM and ANTIFA members looting was justified or at worst somewhat defensible, per this rationale
During one particular large BLM march in some city, after a few days into the protests, a 13 year old autistic boy was shot ( https://youtu.be/GEfJrwHMTMY ) by our ‘brave boys in blue’. But there were no protests for that particular shooting of the 13 year old autistic boy
So it is easy to see why some people don’t take the BLM movement very serious.
Such a blatant example of police abuse, but that police abuse did not fit a narrow race interpretation and was therefore ignored. It is more about woke points than winning to too many people who are wary of BLM. BLM is myopically directed just towards African American lives, as if being poor or suffering from mental illness doesn't also predispose one to abuse at the hands of police.
*Joe Biden is a warmongering Neocon segregationist who sucked off a , albeit reformed Robert Byrd (Byrd helped expose the evil warmongering imperialism of the Iraq war and redeemed himself in my eyes but Biden sucked off of Byrd because Byrd was something Biden was then and still is an ignorant person ) at his funeral and who militarized the cops.
Biden’s militarization of the cops heavily contributed to the police state and thus police brutality crimes by cops, including the 2020 police brutality incidents that BLM protested against. So BLM figured “Joe Biden got us into this mess with militarizing the cops now he has to get us out of this mess”
The fact that Biden has a (D) by his name made this rationalization by BLM to support him even clearer
BLM spread in 2020 , a lot exactly like BLM spread 4 years earlier.
Even though African Americans fare just a poorly under Democrats as they do under Republicans, the BLM movement was kept afloat by Trumps reactionary response to the protests/riots.
Once “the adults were back in the room” and January 6 2021 protests happened, the DNC found their new talking point. The DNC found this new talking point because they never want to ACTUALLY do anything to stop police brutality (including abolishing the state and by extension the police) .
This was made clear once the Democrats came to power in 2021, and the forcefulness with which the BLM movement had earlier been wielded was subsided.
* Voluntary busing is seen by some African Americans to be just a way by whites of buying them off so Joe Biden being anti busing could have been for those reasons back then (not that I am defending Joe Biden, I am not)
Jacob Blake was story was according to some people, media astroturfing. The initial story was so severely off from the truth and presented him as some innocent bystander trying to break up a fight when in reality Blake was trying to drive away in a car with a child belonging to his ex girlfriend who had a restraining order on him for repeated alleged abuse.
There was even news of a knife girl.
The media told everyone that Jacob Blake that he died and they never really retracted it.
He is alive so the media was wrong. Some people feel that BLM made money off of him and didn't give him anything which they should have, not just for him but his children who really need that money
Also why didn't anyone care about the lives of the child and the child's mother? They were fucking terrified of this dude, had a restraining order and called the cops. Their lives don't matter? See this post by me on Kyle Rittenhouse
BLM has dried up since BLM served its mission, a Democrat is in the White House and Derek Chauvin was convicted.
The media no longer needs BLM and they discarded BLM like an old toy.
The grassroots bits of BLM have been completely overshadowed by the corporate BLM.
I mean, I read the website and heard about the two ladies who founded it and got very rich. But I don't think that's a fair summation of the reality of BLM to 99% of people who got involved locally.
The true BLM is probably rightfully decentralized where most people who are concerned about the issues BLM are concerned with and got involved would have encountered.
Some individual chapters of BLM actually do good work. These grassroots organizations are the ones actually doing what needs to be done to fix their communities.
Some of them have attended and supported union drives, set up food pantries, just generally good stuff. Many of the countless local BLMs were products of their local area and often do great work in identifying specific problems with specific police forces.
Local BLM groups, like the one in Detroit were happy to be inclusive and focusing on ending police violence for everyone.
There are effectively two BLMs, the big national organization with a new "race based" view of Karl Marx, and countless grassroots local BLMs.
The big national BLM is the one with the page describing themselves as Anti-Racist, disruptors of the nuclear family (BUT their anti nuclear family plans and views are not as practical or family friendly as my anti nuclear family plans and views)
The big national BLM sadly has defined roles for African American men unless they were victims of police brutality. While that big national BLM organization receives a lot of money in donations.
It's just too bad the national BLM organization took all of the high profile donation money from CEOs of large corporations so they could hang a tag on their website that reads "We Stand With Black Lives" . The CEO of BLM is buying a million dollar ranch in California.
BLM was originally about police violence and abuse more broadly, not racially exclusive
I think Black Trans Lives Matter movement is unneeded and deludes BLM’s goals by being niche and takes away from BLM’s goals.
Affluent white liberals put black trans lives matter in their twitter bio to get twice as many woke brownie points as the usual BLM or trans rights
BLM are likely vulnerable to the same phenomenon Center left movements are prone to, where any organization eventually gets taken over by well spoken, well educated bourgeois white people at the expense of their target demographic. The target demographic end up being told what they are supposed to want out of their struggle.
One organized BLM march in DC in summer 2020 was mostly young bourgeois white women , then white men, then African American women, but almost no African American men
It was telling that the victims that the DC rally was mostly advocating for were not there. Well, duh. it’s the police’s fault. Who has time for a rally, police are hounding you
BLM wasn't so much coopted by Liberal 2.0ers, as it was a movement that had ideological diversity from the beginning- hence why people can look at that same movement and either see cringey allyship-obsessed Liberal 2.0ers who'll cry "peaceful protest" at anyone trying to shield their face from a cop's boot, or on the other hand see the movement as a sea of BIPOC youth and black-bloc'd Anarchists smashing every police camera on sight. These represent conflicting visions within the broader movement against police brutality.
Liberal 2.0ers used BLM to sow division (and or to gain the upperhand) instead of class warfare, class conscious and a 1930s Spain type of Popular front
There were always different camps- the national BLM, local nonprofit-driven activists who tried to control and contain the BLM movement, local grassroots activists from the families of the murdered victims, Left Wingers trying to turn the movement into a front group for themselves, Anarchists seeing in the BLM movement another potential partner in their long held abolitionist politics (which is a commendable goal), Black nationalists quarelling with the younger and more queer African American generation, etc
As the BLM movement got really popular again in 2020, in many places, the most Liberal 2.0 allyship stuff was outfront.
But in many places where the BLM movement had been running hot for years, its longest veterans recognize that the framework of allyship to be anti-solidaristic and to basically reinforce state power
I dont necessarily believe BLM itself got hijacked by Liberal 2.0s per say, but in they really don’t offer any evidence to why it wasnt hijacked other than then saying it wasnt.
If BLM’s national organization (or even movement itself) wasn’t hijacked by Liberal 2.0ers, then Liberal 2.0ers are at the steering wheel of basically everything.
Liberal 2.0ers don’t need to hijack movements when Liberal 2.0ers can just shoot movements down instead. What really happened was that American Socialists failed to hijack BLM and just surrendered to the various bourgeois positions, denying the primacy of the class struggle, just like they always do
I think a better answer is that BLM got hijacked by the systems that it used to gain popularity (i.e social media). In the social media realm to gain to most support, users must say things that are highly emotionally charged and agripop. BLM being run by Liberal 2.0ers was problematic because Liberal 2.0ers didn't listen to the materialistic need of the minorities when they should have fixed those materialistic needs
Saying something that baits your opponent into saying something even stupider is one of the best strategies in order to gain traction.
When success is based off of what gets the most traction from social media, the core of your movment is gonna get stuck in the same narrative (or rhetoric ymmv) and strategies in the real world
For example, labor unions are primarily about addressing issues with your workplace. Big picture politics is part of it, but it's a teeny tiny part. Good ones also host social events and, in the old days, they also used to directly administer workman's comp and insurance plans and publish newspapers (not just a newsletter for the membership)
It wasn't right that there was protests of George Floyd's death in 60 countries (even though the vast vast majority of protesters in other countries outside of the Americas were either using Floyd's death to protest injustices in their own countries like involving indigenous people and similar cases or were American ex pats protesting , 95 percent of people outside of the Americas ignored or didn't hear about the George Floyd story)
The media exagerrated the number of people who protested George Floyd's death outside of the Americas. We don't even have proof if the majority of those protests outside of the Americas were due to George Floyd's death.
This article gives good insight into this. Not a single one of them wants to hear about the white guy who died in Dallas in 2016 by the same neither the back of the neck maneuver. Therefore it is not about police brutality.
I am against Dollywood naming one of their areas after BLM and that BLM moral that used to be in Afghanistan . I do not support streets, buildings etc being named after BLM. That is exploitative, divisive to name things after BLM and it trivializes BLM.
I support some of Assata Shakur's views she had in 1970s. Her views being implemented then would have made our country less divisive now. She was innocent of her murder and got treated unfairly. She should be pardoned
Every race-ethnicity, nation, people, and human on Earth are equal to each other and have their own unique strengths and weaknesses, and possesses the sovereign right to live wherever they want. Race-ethnicity and sex have nothing to do with who or what we are we’re all created equal
I am not an antiracist, the whole ‘antiracist’ movement is a Neoliberal front and I am anti Neoliberal. Also see this, and this
This article by the Atlantic, including Vincent Lloyd's view on anti racism that he mentioned in the article and this stupidpol thread which replied to said article pretty much sums up my meta thoughts on the whole 'anti racist' movement. I think Vincent Lloyd's brand of anti racism is better than most forms of anti racism and might have some use and it is sad what happened to him by the woke mob.
Race and the Limits of Law was a fair and pretty decent seminar and it did not perpetrate anti black 'violence', no students were actually harmed by that seminar (wtf?), there was no microaggressions committed etc. The reactions those woke extremist snowflakes had to that seminar are an example of everything I hate about our society, wokeness and our culture.
Some particular snipets of Vincent Lloyd's views on politics I agree with
"In our lives, we all encounter a deeply human problem: domination. Some have the capacity to arbitrarily assert their will over others. We find this in our families, with bosses at work, with politicians, and systemically: Patriarchy, racism, and colonialism are all systems of domination. Anti-Black racism is the closest we get to a paradigm of domination. Even a century and a half after slavery, the master-slave dynamic, dominator and dominated, fuels anti-Black racism, which is now incorporated into laws and institutions as well as personal vices.
I want a world free of domination. I think we all do. That requires working together to root out systems of domination, some on the surface but many deeply ingrained in our world. Black studies aims to root out domination, in the university and in the world. It grew out of Black-student struggles in the late 1960s and early 1970s, themselves born of the civil-rights movement and anti-war protests. It aims to draw attention to the forms of anti-Black racism that infect each of us and the institutions we inhabit, and to catalyze justice movements today.
Behind the “woke” label are powerful new visions of justice, new ways of imagining a world free of domination. Instead of politely requesting incorporation into unjust institutions, today’s justice movements rightly demand new institutions that are more responsive to human needs."
Lloyd: The students and I agreed about political principles. We disagreed about political judgment and political strategy. How do we get from our world, full of anti-Black racism, full of interlocking systems of domination, to a world free of domination? We need to feel the urgency of this question, but we also need to develop the sensibilities and virtues that can allow us to suitably respond.
The seminar is a training ground. It requires patience, enduring frustration, attending carefully to others, making distinctions, drawing on personal experience and applying it to the world of ideas. The seminar is not a pure space; there are no pure spaces. But, in contrast to the lecture, the seminar demonstrates to students that they already have knowledge and that, collectively, they can produce knowledge."
"Even in its updated format, a seminar requires risk. People, and especially institutions, don’t like risk. Presumably to reduce that risk, the Telluride Association inserted teachers’ assistants into seminars in what was effectively a layer of anti-racist managers between teachers and students. But that destroys the political potential of the seminar: It can no longer cultivate the sensibilities and virtues needed to combat systems of domination."
"One factor contributing to toxicity on the left today is a failure to recognize that different modes of engagement are appropriate to different sorts of spaces. Some spaces, like seminars and reading groups, are training grounds. Others are sites of political action which require deferring to authority and exercising discipline. Still others are sites of storytelling and imagination."
"Even if, today, we could come up with a list of wrongs needing attention, we would certainly be missing some and misperceiving others; more generally, there are systems of domination affecting us that we haven’t even noticed yet. In the mid-20th century, there was little awareness of homophobia, for example. Who knows what new forms of domination we will have identified a few decades in the future."
"There are forms of anti-Black racism of which we are not aware circulating around people and institutions. That is why we need to cultivate humility, but we need active humility, not the sort that allows us to wallow.
"institutions know they have bigoted (anti blackness) habits but they are very awkward in formulating responses—and they are always looking for shortcuts.." tweaked a little by me to mesh w Afro Pessimism
"but we also need to put particular emphasis on attending to the diversity and complexity of Black experience."
"The seminar I wrote about was attempting to do just this: leverage the students’ interest in questions of racial justice to examine how different racial categories change over time and how they are inhabited differently by different people—and how the law struggles to make sense of this complexity. Each week we read one court decision, one literary text (a novel, memoir, or short-story collection), and three pieces of historical and cultural analysis, with each genre adding new layers and complications to our understanding of race in general, and Blackness in particular."
I also generally agree with this AskALiberal thread on the Vincent Lloyd antiracism article in The Atlantic
The antiracist movement is collectivist moralism and I am not a fan of collectivism (I find collectivism problematic) and I support going beyond morality.
I agree with what Professor Adolph Reed said in his article on the limits on antiracism here
Here is that article by Professor Reed I agree with :
“The contemporary discourse of “antiracism” is focused much more on taxonomy than politics. It emphasizes the name by which we should call some strains of inequality—whether they should be broadly recognized as evidence of “racism”— over specifying the mechanisms that produce them or even the steps that can be taken to combat them. And, no, neither “overcoming racism” or “ending whiteness” qualifies as such a step any more than does waiting for the “revolution” or urging God’s heavenly intervention. If organizing a rally against racism seems at present to be a more substantive political act than attending a prayer vigil for world peace, that’s only because contemporary antiracist activists understand themselves to be employing the same tactics and pursuing the same ends as their predecessors in the period of high insurgency in the struggle against racial segregation”.
“This view, however, is mistaken. The postwar activism that reached its crescendo in the South as the “civil rights movement” wasn’t a movement against a generic “racism;” it was specifically and explicitly directed toward full citizenship rights for black Americans and against the system of racial segregation that defined a specific regime of explicitly racial subordination in the South.
The 1940s March on Washington Movement was also directed against specific targets, like employment discrimination in defense production. Black Power era and post-Black Power era struggles similarly focused on combating specific inequalities and pursuing specific goals like the effective exercise of voting rights and specific programs of redistribution.
Clarity lost
Whether or not one considers those goals correct or appropriate, they were clear and strategic in a way that “antiracism” simply is not. Sure, those earlier struggles relied on a discourse of racial justice, but their targets were concrete and strategic. It is only in a period of political demobilization that the historical specificities of those struggles have become smoothed out of sight in a romantic idealism that homogenizes them into timeless abstractions like “the black liberation movement”—an entity that, like Brigadoon, sporadically appears and returns impelled by its own logic.
Ironically, as the basis for a politics, antiracism seems to reflect, several generations downstream, the victory of the postwar psychologists in depoliticizing the critique of racial injustice by shifting its focus from the social structures that generate and reproduce racial inequality to an ultimately individual, and ahistorical, domain of “prejudice” or “intolerance.” (No doubt this shift was partly aided by political imperatives associated with the Cold War and domestic anticommunism.)
Beryl Satter’s recent book on the racialized political economy of “contract buying” in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, is a good illustration of how these processes worked; Robert Self’s book on Oakland since the 1930s, American Babylon, is another. Both make abundantly clear the role of the real estate industry in creating and recreating housing segregation and ghettoization.
Tasty bunny
All too often, “racism” is the subject of sentences that imply intentional activity or is characterized as an autonomous “force.” In this kind of formulation, “racism,” a conceptual abstraction, is imagined as a material entity. Abstractions can be useful, but they shouldn’t be given independent life.
I can appreciate such formulations as transient political rhetoric; hyperbolic claims made in order to draw attention and galvanize opinion against some particular injustice. But as the basis for social interpretation, and particularly interpretation directed toward strategic political action, they are useless. Their principal function is to feel good and tastily righteous in the mouths of those who propound them. People do things that reproduce patterns of racialized inequality, sometimes with self-consciously bigoted motives, sometimes not. Properly speaking, however, “racism” itself doesn’t do anything more than the Easter Bunny does.
Yes, racism exists, as a conceptual condensation of practices and ideas that reproduce, or seek to reproduce, hierarchy along lines defined by race. Apostles of antiracism frequently can’t hear this sort of statement, because in their exceedingly simplistic version of the nexus of race and injustice there can be only the Manichean dichotomy of those who admit racism’s existence and those who deny it. There can be only Todd Gitlin (the sociologist and former SDS leader who has become, both fairly and as caricature, the symbol of a “class-first” line) and their own heroic, truth-telling selves, and whoever is not the latter must be the former. Thus the logic of straining to assign guilt by association substitutes for argument.
My position is—and I can’t count the number of times I’ve said this bluntly, yet to no avail, in response to those in blissful thrall of the comforting Manicheanism—that of course racism persists, in all the disparate, often unrelated kinds of social relations and “attitudes” that are characteristically lumped together under that rubric, but from the standpoint of trying to figure out how to combat even what most of us would agree is racial inequality and injustice, that acknowledgement and $2.25 will get me a ride on the subway. It doesn’t lend itself to any particular action except more taxonomic argument about what counts as racism.
Do what now?
And here’s a practical catch-22. In the logic of antiracism, exposure of the racial element of an instance of wrongdoing will lead to recognition of injustice, which in turn will lead to remedial action—though not much attention seems ever given to how this part is supposed to work. I suspect this is because the exposure part, which feels so righteously yet undemandingly good, is the real focus. But this exposure convinces only those who are already disposed to recognize.
Those who aren’t so disposed have multiple layers of obfuscating ideology, mainly forms of victim-blaming, through which to deny that a given disparity stems from racism or for that matter is even unjust. The Simi Valley jury’s reaction to the Rodney King tape, which saw King as perp and the cops as victims, is a classic illustration. So is “underclass” discourse. Victimization by subprime mortgage scams can be, and frequently is, dismissed as the fault of irresponsible poor folks aspiring beyond their means. And there is no shortage of black people in the public eye—Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey are two prime examples, as is Barack Obama—who embrace and recycle those narratives of poor black Americans’ wayward behavior and self-destructive habits.”
Traditional antiracism casts the racist working class as foolish, and conclusively incorrect; they misplace their resentment and anti establishment propensities toward fellow members of their own class, immobilizing their own class's outlet for the improvement of its conditions; or to put it another way, they screw themselves over by adopting a false consciousness, and thus are negatively affected by fooling for a racist narrative.
Modern quasi-antiracism paints a completely opposing narrative; in accordance with this narrative, because the white working class benefit from 'white supremacy', and 'white privilege', racism is no longer cast as a type of false consciousness.
Instead, it is cast as a type of authentic, real, racial consciousness.
The white working class's conditions are authentically improved by systemic racism, and so racism is seen as in the rational self interest of white people.
This is commendable if the sole intention behind antiracist movements is bringing about guilt in the white working class, however this does nothing in terms of creating a true and righteous perspective on racism, and conversely, actively distorts the most powerful feature of traditional racism (that is that whites don’t benefit from racism, but are instead fooled by and eventually handicapped by it), and replaces it with a counter-productive narrative that stirs up whites to view racism as legitimately in their self interest, if only to then lead to more division between the working class, and cast the eventual oppression mechanism to be internal, instead of external to, the working class.
Modern intersectionalist 'antiracists' actively push a narrative that is premised on racial essentialism and race-based conflict. The most productive action to do to get the type of people that this ideology appeals to reassess their viewpoints, is to fight it on their own terms, and label it as the racism that it actually, genuinely is. It's anti-racism
Moreover, The antiracist term being hijacked by Liberal 2.0s (such as Neoliberals) means I will never call myself an antiracist ever (though I do support a few political groups that have Anti-Racism as a core value)
I feel systematically antiracist scholars have misconstrued the enemy as white supremacy. A true anti-racist critique should go deeper and engage the legacy of modernity itself. (I support the Fourth Political Theory which does just that, critique modernity)
Like how modernity defined human subjectivity through its constitutive exclusion of black people--(understood and ontologized as slaves).
Though slavery existed at several historical periods and in different geographical locations, the paradigmatic slave for Europeans came to be identified exclusively with blacks.
The Middle Passage ontologically changed African lives in a way that even exceeded the existential imprints left by the Shoah: Jews went into Auschwitz and came out as Jews, Africans went into the ships and came out as Blacks. The latter is a Human and a metaphysical holo caust.
According to an Afro Pessimism scholar "That is why it makes little sense to attempt analogy: the Jews have the Dead (the Muselmann) among them; the Dead have the Blacks among them" . Though this post a good counter to that
I am a non racist. Racism is contrary to my views. It is believed that racism is a liberal Eurocentric and imperialist ideology so naturally racism is wrong and evil. Racism is an erroneous ideology.
“In combating racism we do not make progress if we combat the people themselves. We have to combat the causes of racism.... Many people lose energy and effort combating shadows. We have to combat the material reality that produces the shadow” Amilcar Cabral
This blog post titled ‘American Thoughts’ has very good takes on racism, antiracism, whiteness and oppression
I am not sold on the idea that racism equals prejudice plus power is the correct way to be thinking about the concept, but even if it is I have always been annoyed at how the Liberal 2.0ers have interpreted it.
My point of contention is on how “power” is defined. The Liberal 2.0ers tend to believe that “power” means “the sum of all relative political, social, and economic power structures between whites and non-whites,” which is a unique conception of power to say the least.
The boss has power over his or her employees. The professor has power over his or her students.
The armed gunman/gunwoman in your drug store has a vastly actual and physical power over the cowering store patrons. Even in the realm of the purely social sphere, people very commonly have power over other people. For example, a blue-check Twitter user has obvious power to ruin someone’s social life and career by using his or her followers as a weapon to cancel him or her.
However, for one reason or another none of these forms of power count. Racism for one reason or another can only exist when the sum total of every power relation on Earth are tilted, at the most abstract level, towards a particular race.
And I mean on Earth also too, I have seen some people claim that there is no real thing as anti-White racism in South Africa because they say that Whites on a global scale have ‘power’ over Black people.
Let’s imagine that we could wave a magic wand and correct the entire balance of power to true equality.
Would the fact that Black people all of a sudden having fair representation in Congress and the same economic outlook as whites somehow change the power dynamic between a gun wielding Lord's Resistance Army member and the victims of his Christian crusade rampage?
Nope! It’s misguided to say that the Lord's Resistance Army member‘s possession of power in this situation is fully dependent on Representative John Doe/Jane Doe being sworn into office, or on the amount of Black Billionaires in the US, but this is exactly what woke people tend to believe.
The defining principle of Liberalism 2.0, (including Leftism left of Liberalism 2.0 with Liberalism 2.0 traits), when it comes to the topic of race and racism, is in their minds racism is autonomous, that it has no antecedant causes. That to them it just springs randomly from nature without cause. So Ta-Nehisi Coates likening racism to an earthquake.
It is actually impossible to believe that and to be a Libertarian Marxist, Marxist Leninist, Marxist or a Marxian Leftist because the entire point of being a Libertarian Marxist, Marxist Leninist, Marxist or a Marxian Leftist is historical materialism, and the entire point of materialism is that originary causes must be found in material processes. If you treat racism as autonomous, you’re an idealist.
It is not just that class analysis is not in the conversation, class analysis is actively suppressed, because Capitalism (if it even is a problem at all) is just a component of the actual issue: racism (or "white supremacy"). Any person who attempts to locate the problem in class is to them, distracting from this.
Obviously this why the corporations and brands are so on board with it: it doesn’t threaten them. If anything, it actually increases their cultural capital and thus, their actual capital.
Radical action only occurs on the symbolic level. You cannot do anything about the material forces that are truly responsible for police brutality (anti blackness, classism and abelism), but hey, you can paint "BLM" on a street or change the name of a town square. Take that, prison-state! And any attempts at formulating a real material demand are almost ridiculous in how naive and not thought out they are (like the defund the police movement)
But here's the true problem: it is not only not an anti-capitalist project; if you believe that racism is autonomous and "like an earthquake", well it is inevitable. It cannot be defeated (Afro Pessimism offers similar pessimist conclusions as this but offers radical solutions).
As wokies usually say, "abolishing capitalism won’t abolish racism" - notice that they never follow this up with a suggestion of what would abolish racism. If the end of capitalism and the whole history of class oppression will not bring the end of racism, what possibly could? (Afro Pessimism offers a radical solutions which do not seem practical to say the very least)
So, it is not an anti-racist project either. If it is anything, it’s just some type of pseudo ethno-nationalism.
They may not be calling for a black ethno-nation-state, however is there any question that they would not be calling for that if that was realistically calledcfor? (Note the fetishization of Africa in modern times).
But they are seeking their own carved-out space within the class system which currently exists: reparations, tokenism ,representation, the open calls for whites to transfer their wealth to black people or BIPOC as a whole. They've strangely come full circle to a "separate yet equal" system of racial harmony.
Despite it being a quasi black-ethononationalist movement, when I write "they" I am not even referring to black people or even BIPOC as a whole; I am referring to Liberal 2.0ers, black or otherwise (though who more often than not, happen to be white), who have just appointed themselves to the role of spokesman/spokeswoman for all African Americans. Dissident blacks? Well , they're just politically black (different than the Afro Pessimism type of blackbess)
#jobsnotracism
I morally (as in moral victory) feel this site, this site and this site makes good arguments for (and against) repartitions for African Americans in the US receiving reparations for slavery. As does this thread (JP Morgan has connections to slavery see here so that nullifies one argument against reparations in said thread)
Other articles on repartitions include : Handout: discussion led by Monica Moorehead, How real reparations can be won, by Makasi Motema, Roots of the Kashmir conflict, by Siddika Degia, Bussing and Self-Determination: The NAACP Rally (1975) by Sam Marcy, Reparations and Black Liberation, by Monica Moorehead, WWP Statement: Why we support the Jackson campaign (1983) and Overview of San Rafael and Attica Prison Uprisings/ Black August, 1970-71.
Reparations would represent the repayment of wealth stolen from African American people by the white ruling class, reparations would and should reflect the ongoing oppression African Americans have experienced through modern times, and that imperialism fuels national oppression through Capitalist wealth extraction on an international scale.
I am morally feel this way because with repartitions because giving African Americans repartitions is like the US government symbolically going back in time and undoing the injustices African Americans were subjected to under the dehumanizing bondage of 17th century through 19th century Capitalism and Capitalism's bourgeois ruling class proto Fascism/Fascism.
Supporting paying African Americans reparations for 120 years of colonialist aggression and trauma is more than a legit political view to have
This gives African Americans in the US a fresh and equal reboot (due to that symbolic gesture of repartitions). They should have had a fresh and equal start from the get go in the US like whites did from the get go in the US
Capitalism has always wrongfully treated humans as property in order for the bourgeois ruling class fascists to make a profit at the expense of their workers.
Above we see that extreme laissez faire early form Capitalism and its senseless indefensible actions mentioned which has since transformed into newer, more subtle but still totally condemnable forms of dehumanizing bondage and treating humans as property which still permeates through our society today and has led to Recessions, Depressions, wars and similar social ills.
Capitalism and the bourgeois (and all classism and fascism) needs to be abolished (or if a better system can't be found heavily reformed via Social Democracy) for all people in all countries to be truly free and live in a truly equal world.
Capitalism is generally a bad system because it is easy to abuse and it is anti worker (as mentioned above). Marxist scholarship has ‘raced’ the history of capitalism and developed a nuanced analysis of the relationship between New World Slavery and capitalist accumulation on a global scale.
Robin Blackburn and other radical of slavery draw on Cedric Robinson’s concept of ‘racial capitalism’, which can be used to balance or provide nuance and context to the Afro Pessimism claim that slaveness and Africanness are one and the same.
In Black Marxism, Cedric Robinson writes that racism was already present in Western civilization prior to the flourishing of Capitalism. So, capitalism and racism grew together from the old order to produce the ‘racial capitalism’ characteristic of the modern world. This new world system relied on slavery, violence, imperialism and genocide for its continued expansion.
The value of Cedric Robinson’s work lies in Robinson’s ability to uncover the contingent relationship between slavery and Blackness: he argues that early European proletarians were racialised subjects from oppressed groups, such as the Jews, Irish, Roma or Slavs, who were all victims of dispossession, colonialism and slavery within Europe.
With the dawn of the transatlantic slave trade, new notions of difference came about, based on more aggressively racialised conceptions, that were used to justify the political economy of slavery. For Robinson, white supremacy masked itself as an economic rationale, which lead to organized racial hierarchies, with the production of cotton at its core.
The colonial and racial genealogy of European capitalism’ were according to some historians ‘encoded directly into the economic “base” through an ongoing history of racial violence which […] binds surplus populations to capitalist markets. “
So Black populations were and are racialised and displaced in no small part due to the political economy (and particularly of imperialism) along with ontological anti blackness. Robin Blackburn said that New World slavery was a central product of the rise of Capitalism. See this for a related concept
Capitalist imperialism out of Europe is built upon an inherently racially (white) supremacist foundation. I believe that it could have burst out of Africa as well, but with the foundation of black supremacy instead.
Europeans are not inherently more evil than other people, and had capitalist imperialism started elsewhere, it would've been just as brutal
Though I believe Colonial period Capitalism was more like National Capitalism than mid to late 20th century Capitalism
Ponder for a second about the process that would be required to decide who is and isn’t eligible enough to get reparation payments. How would this work, step by step?
What test would be used to decide who’s eligible enough by their standards? Do they build a state genealogical database, like the NDSAP did? Do they got to prove that African Americans’ ancestors were slaves to get reparations? Or do they just have to prove that some of African Americans’ ancestors were classified as by the racist standards of the time?
Or do they genetically test everyone who claims that they are eligible, and have an official set of eligibility markers that denote “eligible” with an authenic cut off point for the match percentage that is required? Keep in mind that this is an arbitrary decision, and moreover that the anthropology academy has been taken over by people who think doing population genetics is reactionary.
Or do they just go by a self-ID system, where anyone who’s willing to say they’re eligible can get some free money? The Rachel Dolezal option. If you apply for a black scholarship, you must spend years passing, instead this is just a one off process for free money, so why not give it a chance? Poor whites will apply en masse, egged on by social media trolls.
Keep in mind that a lot of people who don’t seem eligible have significant African American ancestry, and that a lot of people who do seem eligible will have no slave ancestors whatsoever, so whatever system that you choose, the media will be full of edge cases in order to whip up public anger.
How come Native Americans don’t deserve payments also? What about Chinese Americans whose ancestors worked to build the railroads? Just think of the legislative process of attempting to pass laws about how to racially classify every citizen.
Imagine the overhead of administering these payments. The entire idea is unpractical culture war fodder.
However, according to Afro Pessimism, as outlined here, feel that reparations miss the point since they refute the racial capitalism theory above , and see slavery in the US rooted in anti blackness instead of intertwined with capitalism.
Afro Pessimists instead see ‘slavery’ as ongoing but in reimagined forms (including the prison system, police state etc) instead of something that ended a century and a half ago so they call for true emancipation from what they see as modern ‘slavery’ which would make the need for reparations moot:
“ Frank Wilder III: “I do believe that there is a way out (of our current system and structures of anti blackness) . But I believe that the way out is a kind of violence so magnificent and so comprehensive that it scares the hell out of even radical revolutionaries.
So, in other words, the trajectory of violence that Black slave revolts suggest, whether it be in the 21st century or the 19th century, is a violence against the generic categories of life, agency being one of them. That’s what I meant by an epistemological catastrophe. Marx posits an epistemological crisis, which is to say moving from one system of human arrangements and relations to another system of human relations and arrangement”
From S Hartman “ The question persists as to whether it is possible to unleash freedom from the history of property that secured it, for the security of property that undergirded the abstract equality of rights bearers was achieved, in large measure, through black bondage.
As a consequence of emancipation, blacks were incorporated into the narrative of the rights of man and citizen; by virtue of the gift of freedom and wage labor, the formerly enslaved were granted entry into the hallowed halls of humanity, and, at the same time, the unyielding and implacable fabrication of blackness as subordination continued under the aegis of formal equality.
This is not to deny the achievements made possible by the formal stipulation of equality but simply to highlight the fractures and limits of emancipation and the necessity of thinking about these limits in terms that do not simply traffic in the obviousness of common sense—the denial of basic rights, privileges, and entitlements to the formerly enslaved—and yet leave the framework of liberalism unexamined. In short, the matter to be considered is how the formerly enslaved navigated between a travestied emancipation and an illusory freedom.”
However some alternate views (mainly on the right) say that Afro Pessimism does not realize that African Americans (i.e blacks) may still be able to truly get emancipation and abolish the anti blackness of our society without Afro Pessimism measures , but only by African Americans (i.e blacks) in droves leaving the Democrat party, and in their words ‘getting off of the Democrat plantation’.
Those people who share this perspective (mainly on the right) claim that since the Great Society, and party switch African Americans are heavily influenced by the Democratic Party to be Democrat. Joe Biden’s “You ain’t black if you don’t vote for me” as mentioned here, also alludes to this according to some people
See this, this, this, this for of these type of views. I don’t necessarily believe that to be the case but it sdds a unique perspective after you read about Afro Pessimism
I am against this type of stuff being taught in k-12 schools, or at least k-8 schools. That is counterproductive and wrong. Young people shouldn’t feel guilty about something they have no control over. That type of teaching is teaching kids lies and I will not allow kids in Scotland to be taught that
I do not support the CRT being taught in k-12 schools .But at the same time I feel it wouldn't hurt for schools to find and implement ideas from the views expressed in this reddit thread as alternatives to the CRT. That reddit thread has some base and unique ideas that do a fairish job at improving stuff I guess.
One reason for my anti crt thoughts is because of the pandemic (and thus not for the common reasons people are against it being taught in schools for).
The pandemic left such a mark on our schools with mandates, distant learning etc to have another news story (the 2020 racial unrest stories) have a mark on our schools also is just too much for me.
The CRT is divisive, controversial and too extreme.
The CRT is contrary to Marxism, because the CRT is contrary to historical-dialectical materialism (historical-dialectical materialism is a core tenant of Marxism)
The CRT is not rationally inquiring and it goes for narrative, uses stories mostly fictional anecdotal etc which goes against reasoned argumentation and may reinforce stereotypes about BIPOC.
The CRT like legal liberalism examines issues of race, racism, and equality by focusing on the exclusion and marginalization of those subjects and bodies marked as different and/or inferior. The disadvantage of this approach is that the proposed remedies and correctives to the problem like inclusion, protection, and greater access of opportunity—don’t ultimately challenge the economy of racial production or its truth claims or interrogate the exclusions constitutive of the norm but instead seek to gain equality, liberation, and redress within its confines.
Afro-Pessimism seeks to stage a metacritique of the current discourse that is identified as “critical theory” by excavating an antagonism that exceeds it. This means to recognize this antagonism forces a mode of death that expels subjecthood and forces objecthood (upon Blacks)
Young people shouldn’t be learning college level race theories. This is because the liberal bourgeois historians tell them what to believe and so you get things like the CRT in the process. The CRT is revisionist
If teachers want to teach the CRT let them teach it to students on non school hours.
But I won’t stop the CRT from being taught in schools (not that I can if I wanted to) since I am Libertarian and I am against censorship. Moreover, keep in mind by trying to censor the CRT it might cause people who wouldn't normally read it to want to read it (Streisand effect; people love reading things that are censored).
I feel teaching about the history of prejudice in Social Studies classes, with specific examples about the fascists in 1930s and 1940s Germany (including Diary of Anne Franke) and the slavery in the Old South along with contrasting that with modern examples of prejudice students see in their every day lives personally would be far more effective than teaching the CRT
if this is true, it shows we need to teach more slavery in schools (just not via CRT or 1619 project)
At minimum black history needs to be incorporated into US education. In history classes for example students should be taught about Pedro Alonzo Nino who was a poc who sailed with Christopher Columbus as a navigator on Columbus's voyage to the Americas.
History classes should teach students about Chrispus Attucks who was a poc and fought for the US in the American Revolution. Attucks was the first poc soldier to die in a war. Peter Salem is another poc who should be taught in history classes in schools, he was a poc who was a war hero at Bunker Hill
Other poc historical figures who should be taught in school history classes include Dr Daniel Hale Williams poc who performed the first open heart surgery in the US) and the poc person helped discover the North Pole
If poc didn't read history books from white perspective they would never have dug further to find black history in other places to push for those changes in school curriculums
School is not perfect but students should salvage and use whatever good they learn from school for good
Parents who are anti CRT should try to get jobs on school boards if they want to try to stop the CRT from being taught in schools (change from within which is the best way to do so) or to find a book that is critical of the CRT and try to get that book taught in k-12 schools alongside the CRT (as long as that book is vetted and approved) as that is less bad for them than protesting at school board meetings since many teachers and school board members are anti parent
Parents should also homeschool their children or put them in charter schools if they are worried about their children learning about the CRT
Parents who harass, argue or go after teachers at school board meetings are NOT domestic terrorists or terrorists. Shame on the FBI for demonizing concerned parents by falsely smearing them as domestic terrorists or terrorists.
Not only was doing so rude, dehumanizing , low and evil but it was also divisive and only serves to enflames things
I am ok with a CRT inspired African Americans 'antiracist' council being created to fight 'racism'.(or at minimum bringing back the Civil Rights Congress). I feel that is the most effective and uplifting way that African Americans can further make our country more pro African American, since that is changing things from within (instead of through overkill SJWism, cancel culture, counter productive boycotts, etc).
Of course the best way is for more African Americans to fight to get on the Supreme Court to better fight against and overcome anti blackness, disproportionate injustices, bigotry and to thus help everyone
So doing those things from within through the CRT inspired African Americans antiracist council (as opposed through being elected to the house where they are targets for lobbying and woke NGOs) would be the least offensive way for them to do that.
It would be less offensive to me for them to make our country more woke through the antiracist council than through SJWism, cancel culture, boycotts etc, ie lesser of two evils)
I have no issues with the CRT housing policies at the VA or at colleges like Williams College
Nor do I have issues with the African American only graduations (though I don't like the concept of graduation ceremonies in the first place . I skipped my high school graduation because I hate graduations)
Sometimes African Americans want these type of policies to maintain a networks of communalism through these sorts of CRT policies at the VA, graduations or colleges and schools which promote acculturation and help African Americans feel solidarity with each other in these times they perceive as less than ideal. See here for more
I also have no issues with specific woke things like the Families of Color Playground Night in Colorado or at schools like Mary Linn and the woke NYC schools, but ONLY if it is done for the reasons that the school said
The school said that sometimes with things like the Families of Color Playground night, African Americans families push for things like that in order to feel more included in their school communities. Many African Americans families at said types of schools don't often get to see each other except drop off and pick up so these type of events would nourish those relationships between them which would lift up those communities.
It's important to hear the concerns of African Americans in such matters. Whites were also not excluded from that playground night do there is that
The ultimate reason that I am ok with the above CRT policies at the VA, colleges, African American graduations, and the Family of playground night/schools is because freedom of association is based and those CRT type of policies are a part of freedom of association. As long as it isn't enforced I see no problem with those type of things.
I get that some Liberal 2.0ers see anti CRT talk from conservatives cultural warriors and leftists as "casting frank discussions about race as divisive and anti white". And to be honest saying that "casting frank discussions about race as divisive and anti white" is among the more reasonable takes by CRT defenders about their views of anti CRTers that I have heard.
But the fact it is divisive if so many people (even if mostly right wingers) are against it and are offended by it (even if it is not 'anti' white') then there is a major problem with the CRT and thus even the 'reasonable' Liberal 2.0ers miss the point
I am against the 1619 Project being taught in schools. Many mainstream historians (and even at least one NYT writer themselves) have criticized the 1619 Project . The 1619 project is historic revisionism
“ Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.” George Orwell
The 1619 Project is distorted soft propaganda created by the NYT who should stick to their day jobs (reporting the news). If I cared about the 1619 project I would put up more of a fight about the 1619 project taught in schools but whatever. Though whites making anyone who questions are country’s founding as social outcasts is bad in its own right. See here for more (Left case against the 1619 project). This post also challenges the whole ‘America was founded to protect slavery’ rhetoric
HOWEVER, since whites run the education system, it is harder to get a diversified view and lense of American history. So abolishing hierarchies, classes and white ethnocentricity can help diversify the education system which naturally will lead to a more diversified teaching and lense of American history n schools .
I am not an advocate for relief based on idpol equity for natural disasters or like mentioned here , though this view is not set in stone and some common sense distribution of relief should always guide this process
That can be seen as reverse welfare chauvinism. Some people who do not know better even say it is reverse systematic ‘racism’. I obviously don’t agree with that false equivalency but it is not hard to see why people jump to ignorant or naive conclusions on things like this
It's kind of hard for Liberal 2.0ers to compete with the promise of bribing people by paying off student loans.
When Joe Biden and other Liberal 2.0ers wrongfully moved the All Star game out of Atlanta they didn’t give a fuck about the African American small business owners . These Liberal 2.0ers use BIPOC when it advances their twisted agenda
I applaud Joe Biden for dropping his idpol equity relief recently , as mentioned here.
Whites kind of had a negative impact on the African American family unit by forcing greedy collective moralism onto African Americans which negatively impacted African Americans. This in turn led to the breakdown of the African American family unit
My views on the topic of systematic racism can be found in this post
I am anti racial guilt
Whites aren’t being persecuted because in Western countries the vast majority of heads of states, *CEOS and members of parliament/Congress are white. So until that isn’t the case whites should shut up about their faux persecution claims. *Though there shouldn’t be CEOs since there shouldn’t be hierarchies or classes or rich people
Whites have continued to see significant improvements in standard of living. Real income has approximately doubled since the early 1970s. Houses are more than 60% bigger, for instance, and have vastly better construction, more amenities, etc.
Despite me being an enemy of whiteness (though see here and here, also through Afro-pessimism I make a critical shift in focus by me moving away from the Black/ white binary and reframing it as Black/non-Black, in order to deemphasize the status of whiteness and to center analysis, rather, on the anti-Black foundations of race and modern society).
I fully believe that being white and whiteness are NOT terrorism and being white and whiteness itself is NOT evil. I can agree with some things from Afro Pessimism and still not believe that whiteness or being white is terrorism or evil.
I am against whites criticizing whiteness as I feel they are being racist for doing so.
I downplay whiteness by emphasizing anti blackness which is what Afro Pessimism does. As seen in my takes on the Smithsonian's controversial 2020 whiteness flyer below, I use whiteness more as a buzzword for tangible concepts like bourgeois, vulgar Libertarianism,Neoliberalism, WASPs, Classic Conservatism, Capitalism than the way wokies use the term.
The fact that racism against Latinos (or Italians, Swedes, Poles etc.) has unfortunately happened in the pasts tells you a lot about 'Whiteness' as a concept.
White women should NOT have abortions to ‘end racism’. We have to counter such hateful bigotry no matter who is the source of it is
My thoughts on the Smithsonian's controversial 2020 whiteness flyer can be found here
No there is nothing ‘racist’ about robots bring white . Shame on CNN for their woke drivel
I have never and I will never apologize for being white. There is nothing wrong with being any race or ethnicity. It is equally fine to be any race or ethnicity
One creative idea to make the Right wing racists become non racist against BIPOC+ would be to reprogram right wing racists to become woke , CRT type of antiracist and to embrace the CRT.
This way those right wing racists can shift their hate target from BIPOC to racist WHITES.
Even if they end up believing and saying things like "BIPOC are equal to Whites but BIPOC+ are more equal than Whites", I would be fine with that, because I feel it is better for Right wing racists to be like that than to be like those Right wing racists are now
This way those Right wing racists can channel their racism toward an acceptable target (right wing racists) while holding on to their other Right wing/Conservative views.
Realistically, we need to confront and counter hate against any race-ethnicity wherever and whenever we see it in a conscious way, without fighting hate with hate.
When we confront these haters we should tell those haters to Give Peace a Chance, we should help liberate those haters from their fear and hate by our presence, we should help those bigots see good in others instead of judging them (by their willingness to do so it will subconsciously bring it forth), we should let our light shine to unconsciously give haters permission to do the same
I am glad that AOC wants to deprogram white supremacists as she mentioned here since I want to deprogram such people too and its good she wants to help rather than trash those right wing extremists. But using she wants to use state funding or the state to do it? holy fascism man
AOC wanting to "de-program" white supremacists using state funding and the state concerns me
Deprogramming is good because it helps white supremacists to leave their white supremacy cults by gradually making them question what they've held true (instead of something more sinister), so it doesn't scare me so much in the end, as long as it is not done via state funding/the state
The actually racial victimization, not superiority that leads people to be radicalized to become racist/white indentarian, neofascist and Racial superiority
I won't argue with the view that the system of white supremacy is a cross class alliance between rich whites and working class whites. I am pretty much believe that is true. We need to end this alliance and abolish those classes
However, I believe there are significant differences between humans (of all races-ethnicities) and extinct species or subspecies of humans from Earth like Denisovan, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo habilis, Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus boisei, Australopithecus sediba, Homo ergaster, and Paranthropus robustus (in the same exact way that Racialists falsely believe that there are significant differences between Whites and Blacks, Asians, Hispanic, and Indigenous peoples).
I believe that Denisovan, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo habilis, Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus boisei, Australopithecus sediba, Homo ergaster, and Paranthropus robustus were of a difference race than the human race (of all races-ethnicities)
I am 'racialist' toward Denisovan, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo habilis, Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus boisei, Australopithecus sediba, Homo ergaster, and Paranthropus robustus in terms of me recognizing these significant differences
The souls of all people of all race-ethnicities from Earth look as similar to each other as people of the same family look similar to each other
My views on race-ethnicity align 100 percent with BJG (Briahna Joy Gray) views on race-ethnicity. So if there are any view of mine on race-ethnicity in this blog sphere that is to the right of BJG on said issue, please contact leave me a Twitter like community note pointing that out with info about how BJG is to the left of me on said race-ethnicity view and I will then change said race-ethnicity view in this blog sphere to move it leftward to where BJG are on said race-ethnicity issue
I am against the National Anthem and all anthems being played at sporting events. Sports and patriotism should not mix except in the Olympics and in World cups of different sports
The kneeling in 2020 in the NFL, NBA, WNBA etc was older than you think, athletes were kneeling due to police being militaristic and gung ho since 2016 when my former 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick started the trend. So it was part of a wider protest since the mid 2010s against the police and related/intertwined issues
I fully agree with this video by Jacobin titled "The Absurdity of “White Supremacy Culture”
I react to a viral 2020 woke anti white tweet from a white Liberal 2.0 SJW in this link
I react to a racist meme by PCM trolls, in this link
My views on skin whiteners etc can be found here
My views on Facebook prioritizing anti BIPOC hate speech over anti white hate speech can be found here
As a kid in my past life, I use to spend time at my dad’s friend’s family’s home in the projects (they were POC). So I felt solidarity with them then that continues through this day. This can be seen throughout this section, the fiscal section etc of this blog
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