cancel culture IV

[sologdin]

no idea where y'all left off in the last thread.  am however resuming my colloquy with OGE from two threads ago--

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DiAngelo takes a heavily Foucauldian outlook on knowledge production and power (only when it convenient do so of course) and damns anybody who doesn't view things the way she does. 

okay.  i read white fragility over the weekend. it has weight, and i recommend it to all persons herein.  it is not foucauldian; the only reference to foucault is oblique, in the author's bio, where she self-describes as someone who uses discourse analysis--but that form of argument is not used in the WF text, which is actually a fairly straightforward recitation of basic race privilege arguments in the beginning followed by an expansive definition of racism and white supremacy, which premise her argument about white fragility itself. all of it is exemplified by colloquies drawn from her experience as a consultant for capitalists.

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Now we have people like Robin DiAngelo running around sorting people into two kinds. Those accept everything she says and those who don’t. And the only way to be anti-racist according to DiAngelo is to accept all her premises. There is no dissent, whatsoever. You either accept everything she says or you are racists with a white fragility problem.

WF notes that this objection dodges the thesis. it is something of an ad hominem argument, going at the unwarranted imputation of a mental state of an author, inferred hastily from the text, while ignoring the text's argument. why would it be persuasive of any point under contention to state the author tolerates no dissent? i can't particularly think of anyone who makes an argument with the intention of proclaiming that the argument is wrong after all.  we can discuss whether the author is an asshole, but that discussion doesn't make the white fragility thesis false.

i'm also pretty sure that the text does not proclaim that its antiracism is the only one; on the contrary, it approaches the subject with quite a bit of humility, admitting that it is a constant process in  which white persons must engage and wherein racist errors are inevitable; persons of color can provide invaluable feedback but have no obligation to do so, as white fragility normally penalizes such feedback. in part, the work her method recommends is to place oneself in a position of trust to receive significant feedback on racism and then act on it appropriately to repair racism. this may or may not be correct--but it is hardly prickish in the way described.  this is not an accusation--but we also need to avoid the appearance of impropriety whereby an apparent imputation of misogynist figures of thought is used to disrupt a rigorously argued position through interpretation thereof as shrill and unreasonable solely because it arises from a purported female author.

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DiAngelo writes:
“Individualism posits that Whites are first and foremost individuals who have earned their place in society on their own merit”. “Universalism posits that White interests and perspectives are objective and representative of all groups.”

While I believe individualism exist, I'd never claim a person's socio-economic status is only the result of their own personal efforts. And I don't need Robin DiAngelo to tell me so.

these things come up in WF. the assumption of the recitation is not that the reader needs to know that pure extremist individualism is false; that is a bit of a strawperson.  the argument is specifically that meritocracy is a doctrine of white supremacy as deployed in the US.

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I have proof that such a thing is not the case, using the empirical and objective methodology that DiAngelo and her ilk claim is the tool of white male oppressors. Raj Chetty's large study on race and income decisively shows that a person’s income as an adult is highly conditional on their parent's income. Chetty of course is not of European heritage, but of Indian heritage, but somehow, which would evidently confuse DiAnglo, recieved his PHD at 23. His contributions to making economics more empirical and somewhat less theoretical must really chap DiAngelo's ass.

WF would not regard this as a locus of disagreement--as the economic numbers are exactly what the text cites--they are part of the broad background of the argument. (WF incidentally does not argue that empiricism and objectivity are tools of white male oppressors). i'm not sure what the shot at the author is about in the last sentence there?the cherry picked example of a person of color with an advanced degree would not confuse the WF argument, which is premised on the notion that the most dangerous racism now is created by progressive white persons who think that they have overcome racism because they do not believe in herrenvolk doctrine. they trot out items such as this example to disprove the existence of white supremacy, which is a system, not a conscious politics--this is why the primary engines are not the NSDAP or the KKK, but persons who are genuinely, viscerally horrified by intentional racist discrimination. to them, it is an act of individualized moral evil to act in a racist way--rather than an inexorable, foundational system in the US that has little to do with intentional evil acts.

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DiAngelo's belief, borrowing from Critical Race Theory, that things like math and statistics are just tools of Western oppression

this is not in WF. and i would appreciate a citation to a CRT text that actually argues it.

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If I make the statement, which I believe to be true,"that all people have a set of fundamental rights, that cannot be taken away from them, to include being free from discrimination", how does exactly that universal statement serve white interest? DiAngelos entire world view can't get off the ground without making some universal claims. As such her theory contradicts itself.

WF does make universal claims, though i do not detect a contradictory anti-universalism. from what you had quoted previously, however, the notion is that white persons deploy their experience as universal, whereas diangelo's argument is that it is not.  for white persons, racism as a system is experienced differently than by persons of color.  the experience can't be universalized in either direction.

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I have never been one to accept all the premises of any political philosophy in its entirety. I'm extremely reluctant to do so as all have their flaws. If DiAngelo means to ensnare me, along with others, to agreeing with everything she says, without the slightest bit of dissent, she can go and fuck off. And so can the rest of the left if it insist to ram this stuff down everyone's throat.

i don't think this is what's going on. it is definitely an argument that rests on radical premises and targets some liberal sacred cows--but it is not about trapping anyone, no more than any other argument attempts to persuade. i have my disagreements with some of the items in the argument--but that is a confrontation worth having.  part of the white fragility argument is that feedback by persons of color or by other white persons that suggests a white person has engaged in a racist act (i.e., one that has a discriminatory effect even without intention, even with good intention) generates a visceral, emotional response in the white person, who then becomes the center of attention, arrogating the discussion, and eventually claiming victim status ("How dare you accuse me of racism! I marched with Dr King!").  one of the best chapters lays out the 'rules of engagement' (somewhat tongue in cheek), a catalog of triggers to avoid; another great chapters concerns 'white women's tears,' a surefire way to derail a corporate diversity training session. (there is absolutely no irrumatory effect in the rhetoric, either, NB.)

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DiAngelo also writes, "I can get through law school without talking about racism". Well, DiAngelo must have never read Powell v. Alabama. Though lack of due process in that case probably would please some on the left, if their attitude towards campus sexual assault cases are any indication.

a similar statement shows up in WF. this is part of the argument about how white fragility is to  be protected by white supremacist society, that all externalities of racism are unloaded on persons of color, including a discussion of the effects of racism currently. i am fairly sure that 14th amendment law can be diminished in law school; i took the class, for instance--but it was an elective. maybe she did, or did not read powell--does it matter? she's not an attorney. (am not sure about the snipe about campus sexual assault--it seems to try to contaminate the text under discussion with an inapplicable collective responsibility doctrine?)

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If I am going to get called racist because I have some different ideas about the nature of the individuals relationship to society, different views about knowledge production, different views about the nature of knowledge, and  gripes about historical arguments, we are going to have some problems. 

this is the real locus of debate. i'd prefer an engagement with her actual argument on why there is a generalized responsibility for ongoing white supremacism when white persons who are not intentionally racist nevertheless continue to be beneficiaries of race privilege and persons of color continue to be afflicted by social structures. her definition of racism is broad. that might be a place to challenge her.  she also says plainly in WF: if your definition of racism is limited to intentional, discriminatory acts and herrenvolk doctrine, and you oppose those things, then you are consequently not racist.  that is not very interesting, however, and is a political failure, considering the ongoing racial difficulties this many decades after the passage of the civil rights act--that act was the culmination of the liberal doctrine--passage of a statute that outlaws race discrimination--and it is manifestly an abject failure.  ergo, the radical doctrine may be worthy of everyone's attention.

[Fury Resurrected]

Where’d the guy who thinks Christians are being cancelled go?

[TheMightyKC]

I'm still here.  Just queitly listening for a bit after that last debacle.  I should have Listened To My Wife.

[Derfel Cadarn]

4 minutes ago, TheMightyKC said:

I'm still here.  Just queitly listening for a bit after that last debacle.  I should have Listened To My Wife.

Is she still mad that you implied to your kids that she’s crap in bed?

[Altherion]

22 hours ago, sologdin said:

this is part of the argument about how white fragility is to  be protected by white supremacist society, that all externalities of racism are unloaded on persons of color, including a discussion of the effects of racism currently.

I think this belief is quite likely the reason for the visceral response you mention above. It has absolutely nothing to do with our world because even before the most recent wave of protests (but certainly more so after it), anyone who reads or watches the mainstream media cannot avoid constant discussions of racism (I can provide links if you like, but really just look at CNN or Time or whatever). The problem with these discussions is that they almost uniformly reiterate the same talking points over and over and over again, but they do it with the air stating something wholly original and undoubtedly true (they don't want a debate of these points). At best, there is some novel incident in light of which the talking points are brought up again, but it's mostly a matter of repetition.

In short, if the same flawed sermon is constantly being preached and part of that sermon is that the material therein has not been spoken of enough, then, at some point, a lot of people will develop a visceral response to it.

[sologdin]

althy--

no doubt there's quite a bit of public discussion about it. i think diangelo's argument is that the visceral response that some white persons display occurs within a saturation of racial discussion, but which is usually moralized in a way that equates racism with an intentional evil act, rather than the structural aggregate of now unintentional effects of the disparate impact variety, morally neutral each in themselves potentially, but cumulatively part of a pattern arising inexorably out of segregation and chattel slavery.

for instance, when confronted with something as simple as "excuse me, but what you just said is a tad insulting" (direct quotation of a person of color to me recently), white fragility produces an emotional, defensive response, rather than one that seeks to understand the grievance--converting the encounter into one where the white person alleges victim status for being unfairly accused of an intentional evil act.  diangelo says that she has the emotional response personally, but tries to focus up in hearing the grievance and working through it. there's a cool stoic/skeptic/buddhist/marxist discipline that i appreciate in that--though she does not argue from any of those four positions (except that 'false consciousness' is mentioned a couple times, once approvingly, even, in the text).

i get that some people have visceral responses of the type you describe--that's a bit different than diangelo's point. her original essay is from 2011, and the monograph that i read is 2018.  so it may be that certain points are OBE.  but, then again, it reminds me of foucault's famous opening to the history of sexuality, volume I, which argued against the old idea that sexual liberty was destroyed by “the monotonous nights of the Victorian bourgeoisie” (3), wherein “silence became the rule,” and “proper demeanor avoided contact with other bodies and verbal decency sanitized one’s speech” (id.). a system of “taboo, nonexistence, and silence” (5), transferred “pleasures that are unspoken into the order of things that are counted” (4). foucault doubted the old ‘repressive hypothesis,’ and instead posited a "regime of power-knowledge-pleasure that sustains the discourse on human sexuality” (11).  in order for the bourgeois to “gain mastery over [sex], in reality, it had first been necessary to subjugate it at the level of language, control its free circulation in speech, expunge it from the things that were said, and extinguish the words that rendered it too visibly present” (17):  “when one looks back over these last three centuries with their continual transformation […] one sees a veritable discursive explosion” regarding sex (id.). his model of the “proliferation of discourses” (18) is the “nakedness of the questions formulated by the confession manuals of the Middle Ages” (id.), wherein the detail “believed indispensable for the confession” included: “description of the respective positions of the partners, the postures assumed, gestures, places touched, caresses, the precise moment of pleasure” (19). 

we can see an analogy to the confessional style for which diangelo advocates--and it does involve a proliferation of discourse on race and racism, even while seeking to control and restrain. am curious to see how it works out.

[AntonKA]

[TheMightyKC]

On 8/6/2020 at 7:39 AM, Derfel Cadarn said:

Is she still mad that you implied to your kids that she’s crap in bed?

Not really, but the kids sure do like to remind me about it.  And I don't think I said the word crap.

[sologdin]

a good example of cancellation in action: makes well-intentioned proclamation but unintentionally offends a third party regarding an essential characteristic of the third party's self image and sense of self worth-->becomes involuntarily celibate.

[Soylent Brown]

Were you talking out loud that your fingernails needed trimming?

[Mosi Mynn]

The Guardian has an article on Nick Cave's views on cancel culture

[TrackerNeil]

16 hours ago, Mosi Mynn said:

The Guardian has an article on Nick Cave's views on cancel culture

From the Guardian piece:

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“Political correctness has grown to become the unhappiest religion in the world,” he wrote. “Its once honourable attempt to reimagine our society in a more equitable way now embodies all the worst aspects that religion has to offer (and none of the beauty) – moral certainty and self-righteousness shorn even of the capacity for redemption.”

This is dead-on. I find that extreme wokeness is almost like a cult. It's got a strong set of doctrines, a specialized language for talking about those doctrines, a method of punishment for those who stray, and zero sense of humor about the whole business.

 

[mcbigski]

4 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

From the Guardian piece:

This is dead-on. I find that extreme wokeness is almost like a cult. It's got a strong set of doctrines, a specialized language for talking about those doctrines, a method of punishment for those who stray, and zero sense of humor about the whole business.

 

See you at the Gulag.  Hope they give us a disc.

[Heartofice]

It also believes in original sin.. for some members of society anyway.

[sologdin]

whatever. try asking what the US did to earn 9/11 and you hit the rightwing cult head-on.  

[JGP]

Have any of you actually run afoul of this though? 

I once got piled on [not here] for saying that I didn't think Bissonnette, the Quebec City Mosque shooter, was a terrorist.

That turned into a few hour back and forth [including several former boarders] where I had to defend my position, about how I'd generally equated terrorism to be more of an organization and that Bissonnette was instead a disenfranchised type who was self radicalized online -and- that I imagined most ideological terrorists recruited by an organization likely start out that way so perhaps society should look at addressing the inequities [real or perceived] to curtail said radicalization/recruitment.  

My thinking has evolved since then, due initially to that discussion [Bissonnette is definitely a terrorist] but that's the closest I've ever come to being on the 'wrong side,' like some of you are eluding to inthread. 

It really wasn't that bad.       

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Have any of you actually run afoul of this though? 

I once got piled on [not here] for saying that I didn't think Bissonnette, the Quebec City Mosque shooter, was a terrorist.

That turned into a few hour back and forth [including several former boarders] where I had to defend my position, about how I'd generally equated terrorism to be more of an organization and that Bissonnette was instead a disenfranchised type who was self radicalized online -and- that I imagined most ideological terrorists recruited by an organization likely start out that way so perhaps society should look at addressing the inequities [real or perceived] to curtail said radicalization/recruitment.  

My thinking has evolved since then, due initially to that discussion [Bissonnette is definitely a terrorist] but that's the closest I've ever come to being on the 'wrong side,' like some of you are eluding to inthread. 

It really wasn't that bad.       

It's mostly a bogeyman.

[JGP]

Agreed, I think it might be.

[JGP]

The wheel of time turns something something. If you don't have lots to live for in this one, maybe you will in the Afterthing?

Just spitballing.

I'm out of clicks on the NYT, cancelled my sub years ago thanks to Haberman's access asslicking. Turned out to be a good call.

I'll google though.

[Larry of the Lawn]

8 hours ago, Triskele said:

This guy got cancelled (NYT, limited clicks, the Adolph Reed story).  

This has been a heartbreaking experience for me watching this board devolve (I see that Raja-the-Canceler checked in just above, disgusting).  Might commit board suicide soon and almost curious to see what kinds of "do it" responses I get.  

Many of you have lost your minds.  

 

 

Seems like a stupid move by DSA.  I largely agree with Reed that policy should be class-first.  That being said I'm not sure this is someone being cancelled, it's a political group deciding they don't want this particular speaker at an event.  Their loss.  

We saw this during the primary as well with a lot of liberals seeing Sanders as bad on race, not because of any actual policies, but because he wasn't talking about racism enough for them.

 

 

Kind of jealous Raja is getting a "Canceller" title.  Guess I'll just have to work harder at cancelling folks.