3421

God, I wish it was only 10% - 15%.

Also, I would take the NYTimes with a grain of salt these days (I’m not clicking on it), after the whole Cotton thing.

Does anyone have some non NYTimes links on this.

3422

The issue with the deplorables comment was walking it back instead of doubling down. What are the zealots going to do, not vote for Biden twice as hard now?

3423

Fuck yes. Biden better not back down on this one.

3424

Maybe, but I wish Clinton would have focused more sharply and directly on Trump (when he had his snorting* issues and was wandering around the stage in the background) during some of the debates instead of ignoring him and speaking to the audience/host.

/* cocaine?

3425

I agree that Clinton’s error with the deplorables comment was walking it back.

She totally should have doubled down, and said, “yeah, Trump supporters are pieces of shit. You don’t want to be a piece of shit, do you?”

3426

(11 days later) I think it’s very telling that, as much as Fox etc. wanted to make a stink over this, non-awful people pretty just nodded their heads, said “Probably lowballing it,” and moved on.

What a difference four years makes. Four endless, excruciating years of the awful people being as awful as they possibly can.

3427

I don’t even remember what it was like to not have Trump president.

3428

Yeah, if I had to pick modern Republican administrations, “stupid surrounded by evil” sounds a hell of a lot better than “dangerous sociopath surrounded by evil” right now.

3429

I’m going to nominate this linguistic tidbit because the irony is too strong:

But over time, miles-hercules says, the term “people of color” lost its political force. “It then became a way to just kind of group all nonwhite people together in ways that weren’t necessarily productive,” they say. “In my own work as a linguist, and from my own perspective as a linguist, I see this as an erasure, which I consider a linguistic violence.”

from:

3430

As much as I understand where it comes from, language policing among certain segments has gone so far past the realm of the reasonable that I can’t take it even a tiny bit seriously.

3431

Oh. BIPOC is “Black, Indigenous, and People Of Color”. I’m pretty deep I this stuff, and I’ve never used that particular term.

On the one hand, POC is clearly a political coalition, and it only makes sense to maintain that coalition for as long as it’s useful. I can see contexts where it may not be useful, and smaller, more focused identities is more important.

On the other hand, the quote is from a linguist who apparently deliberately lowercases their names for what I’m sure are Very Good Reasons, so fuck that.

3432

I thought it was a term meant to mean “non-white”.

3433

Sure, but the determination that all non-white people have similar/shared challenges and goals was a deliberate one. One could just as easily imagine a world where Asian Americans and African Americans are at odds with one another.

Like, throughout the BLM protests, there have been a lot of deliberate, explicit calls for solidarity with the protesters from Asian American activists. They didn’t need to make those requests, they could easily have decided that Black problems are for black people, and that Asians should focus on violence against Asians only. The choice to declare solidarity is a choice to adopt the combined People of Color framework.

For instance: are Jews considered People of Color? Not generally, in my experience, although they face a lot of similar discrimination. But a lot of Jewish groups focus on the Jewish experience rather than coalition building with other identities.

3434

I don’t think it was.
I mean, who would make such a determination? There’s no secret grand council governing such things.

Yeah… that actually happens. Like… that’s the current state of things.

I dunno, I admit I honestly don’t understand a lot of this stuff when it comes to identity politics. I never tend to make decisions about things based on how it affects me as a white person. While I understand that my whiteness grants me privileges as a matter of fact, I don’t tend to base my actions and goals upon some notion that I’m a member of a racial “team”. Like, I don’t see any kind of camaraderie with another white person based on their being white.

3435

The thing that’s annoying about language policing, as you put it, is that not only does it sometimes feel necessary but also sometimes feel like missing the forest from the trees, but like a lot of postmodern philosophical children there’s always the dangerous temptation of running off into a corner and end up talking only to itself and calling that activity progress.

A lot of thought about this sort of stuff is not using language to describe reality, but how language effects our perception of reality. That’s fine but there are basically infinite gradations of difference, and if you’re not careful a person ends up mistaking each gradation as having as much or more importance than the gradation that came before, or excitedly discovering a new gradation and now wandering off trying to convince everyone how important this subtle distinction is.

3436

Decided by activists, collectively. The term initially probably gained traction in some small groups, who then convinced other activists that it was a good strategy. At some point, large organizations like the NAACP would get on board and it becomes a defacto standard.

I have marginally more familiarity with the Asian American movement than other identities, but that is unquestionably a constructed identity used for political purposes post WWII.

Random link.

The current TERF-wars is a good example of some groups being unwilling/unable to build such a coalition.

3437

Have you ever travelled to a foreign country and then found some other ex-pats and hit it off with them because you’re all kind of isolated from everyone else by culture, language, etc? Do you think that Thai people make explicit decisions to hang with other Thai people over-against tourists out of a sense of Thai-camaraderie?

Would you feel more comfortable attending a mostly white church or a mostly black church? Would you feel more comfortable shopping at a store where the checkout people speak Spanish or English? Would you be more comfortable sending your kids to a majority black school or a mostly white school? I have to confess that with all three, my comfort zone is with whiteness. It takes effort and is uncomfortable to seek out public areas where I’m not the majority.

3438

I think those are all good questions, worthy of considering introspectively.

I think that in this case, we’re talking about camaraderie among people who share some cultural heritage, and I think that there’s definitely something there. Even in the states, I tend to have that kind of feeling regarding people from Philly, or PA. For instance, when I was out in San Diego a few trips past, I was sitting in a bar and some dude with an Eagles jersey was there, and we talked while drinking. But he was black.

I guess I don’t see my race as the same kind of thing. I don’t look at a white person and feel that I have anything in common with them, just based on that factor. I’d probably feel more camaraderie with the black guy from Philly than the some random white dude from down south, or from another country.

I can’t really speak to the church thing or sending my kids to school, but in terms of shopping at a store where they don’t speak english? I don’t really mind that. I mean, if they literally don’t speak english at all then it can be a problem, but if they are simply speaking spanish to each other? That doesn’t bother me, or throw me off at all.

You’re in San Diego, right? Every time I’ve been down there, which is a few times every year, I encounter folks speaking spanish to each other all the time. The same for when I go to Austin or San Antonio. It doesn’t bother me at all. There are a lot of Mexican immigrants there, I kind of expect that they’d speak spanish to each other.

I think that part of it is that when I travel, I always like to find good food that I can’t get back home, and that often ends up taking me to backwater local places. I’ve found that sometimes folks might give me a weird look when I’m the only white guy in a place full of migrant workers eating tacos, but that’s where the good tacos are, and as long as I don’t act like I own the place, folks are cool enough with me being there.

3439

Well I know why you say this, but there is things that go a shade deeper. Shared cultural underpinnings and all.

Just think about the stories, myths, legends that are shared. In the US there is a largely Germanic/ Norse/ Celtic/ Medditerranean/ Anglo Saxon set of stories we all share. People in the US are broadly going to know King Arthur, or Hansel and Gretel. You could travel to many parts of Europe and at least know some of the baseline culture.

Ever been to Italy? The Roman dieties and stories are familiar. You know, basically, the idea of Roman history. In England you would know many of the fairy tales and fables. Norway you know Odin, Thor, and have probably heard at least some of the history of the vikings.

Now go to Mali. If you are well read you may know some about Mansa Musa, or have heard of Timbuktu and the Songhai empire. Maybe. But you wouldn’t be as familiar with their art as some random French gallery. You wouldn’t have studied their styles and history the same way you did Renaissance artists.

Indonesia? Maybe you have heard of Majapahit, if you are very well read. How about the Persians? Aboriginal Australians? Polynesians?

Lets face it, even for the most well read and historically broad of us in the west/ US (which I absolutely consider myself among) there is a much better chance that the culture is more familiar with ‘white’ countries than not. I would be more familiar with Nuremburg than Nairobi. And thats because we spend more time learning those histories and cultures. Our stories and songs are largely based on them. You may not identify ‘white’ as a specific culture, because it isn’t, but those cultures that are used to define white culture? You are still going to be more familiar/ comfortable with them.

We spend a lot of effort to understand diverse cultures at work. I am a white dude working for an Indian company with mostly Indian colleagues. Believe me, there are cultural assumptions baked in everywhere in how things are approached.

3440

Sure, but black people in America are also going to generally know who king Arthur is, because they grew up here.

Although, in reality, i actually like reading about mythology from other cultures as a hobby. I realize that’s not typical though.

But still, i think that such differences are only a barrier if you care about it. I mean, if someone doesn’t know who king Arthur is, and you for some reason need that cultural reference, then it’s something to talk about.

I don’t doubt it, but I tend to think those differences are interesting.