„Woke Culture“ is a child of Neo-liberal capitalism

[DanteGabriel]

 

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

I have now edited the post to save any further distress caused.

However I do think your response to the post illustrates very well the point the article was trying to make. 

Through all of your posts on any kind of social justice topic runs a heavy undercurrent of "Things would be fine if minorities would just stop complaining."

Even the way you worded this small concession to Fury, you're not acknowledging any problem with the term itself, you're making a snide comment about "distress caused" -- as if it's her fault that term is a problem.

And then of course you'll point to this as another example of this nebulous "problem" that you are trying to peddle, which as far as I can tell is "something something out of touch progressives something something.,"

If "political correctness" -- by which I mean using the words for a community that they prefer -- is such a problem, what, exactly, is the harm caused?  And what is your solution?

[Varysblackfyre321]

12 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

Quite. It’s amazing how often arguments get sidetracked by an attempt to match someone’s intended meaning to a dictionary definition. We mean to say things, and we put the best label on those meanings that we have to hand. If I were talking to you about how much I love apples, and you agreed, then it turned out that’s actually what you called pears, then what good is continuing to use the word? We obviously don’t agree on what it means, and we’d need to find a new word. “Woke” has clearly become an insult in many circles, as much as we might appeal to any original meaning. So it seems useless to talk about without qualifying what we mean.

Relevant Dawkins quote: “Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use. The mere presence in the dictionary of a word (...) does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world.”

Eh. I actually don’t know if just giving up the word because the far-right and the right are currently trying to tie its meanings with their prejudices against anything socially liberal or progressive in a cringe way.
You know like they’ve tried to do with the concept of virtue signaling, social-justice, or politically correct. 

Hey a million right-wing reactionaries may cry “woke bad!” In response to seeing systemic sexism discussed in a video game or a trans character. My response maybe should be “woke good.” and not allow them to dictate the use of language to make their arguments appear stronger.

I’ve been accused of being pedantic when I press someone crying about identity politics to acknowledge their own.

You know not start off ceding their base assumptions like “only woke white people are against x bigoted thing I enjoy.”  instead of just going into how x thing is bigoted. The inference of identity gives a bedrock to simply shrug off any argumentation as ultimately being immaterial because they’re still under the impression only woke white people have a problem with the thing they’re doing.

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

54 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

 

Through all of your posts on any kind of social justice topic runs a heavy undercurrent of "Things would be fine if minorities would just stop complaining."

Even the way you worded this small concession to Fury, you're not acknowledging any problem with the term itself, you're making a snide comment about "distress caused" -- as if it's her fault that term is a problem.

And then of course you'll point to this as another example of this nebulous "problem" that you are trying to peddle, which as far as I can tell is "something something out of touch progressives something something.,"

If "political correctness" -- by which I mean using the words for a community that they prefer -- is such a problem, what, exactly, is the harm caused?  And what is your solution?

True if we all sing the nationalist tune we’d be fine!

Don’t talk about systemic racism or sexism in a country. Just talk about how awesome your country is comparison to the rest of the world for the sake of national unity.

This approach typically doesn’t work.

Its a faucet that helps drives many groups of people who feel marginalized into the arms of more left-wing parties. Because they tend to be willing to acknowledge and work on their specific grievances.

Instead of changing their conduct or at least acknowledging the trends of discrimination as real more nationalist groups tend to just frame the groups as easily duped idiots lead on by a more sophisticated outside group. 

7 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I think you’ve chosen the wrong target.

 I’m an anarchist, and I sort of recognize where you’re coming from. Neo-liberalism can absolutely co-opt intersectionality, such as by corporations going “woke” because they’ve calculated that it’s better for their bottom line, or “More.Intersectional.Dictators!”, or that godawful woke CIA ad.

But as good anarchist and communist comrades, we should be pointing out that this sort of neo-liberal co-opting is just a facade for inequality and we should NOT be telling marginalized comrades that their intersectionality is somehow bad for the cause. We can’t get to where we want to be without them, and they’re not going to trust us if we’re not willing to acknowledge that white leftists have left our POC, LGBTQ, women, and disabled comrades out to dry in the past in order to accept marginal gains for white workers.

Neo-liberalism is the philosophy that attempts to divide people down to the individual level, to exploit racism and misogyny to set people against each other for profit. Intersectionality is understanding how each person’s individuality relates to the collective and understanding it is just good praxis.

True. White unions in the US for instance often excluded black Americans in their trades as much as possible. It didn’t strengthen their positions it just alienated a potential ally at behest white-leftists bigotry.

Also it’s not a new thing for powerful groups to code their imperialism on under the guise of being needed to institute social progress.

You know for good PR.

George Bush instituted literacy programs for girls when he invaded Iraq.

[Rippounet]

7 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I think you’ve chosen the wrong target.

 I’m an anarchist, and I sort of recognize where you’re coming from. Neo-liberalism can absolutely co-opt intersectionality, such as by corporations going “woke” because they’ve calculated that it’s better for their bottom line, or “More.Intersectional.Dictators!”, or that godawful woke CIA ad.

But as good anarchist and communist comrades, we should be pointing out that this sort of neo-liberal co-opting is just a facade for inequality and we should NOT be telling marginalized comrades that their intersectionality is somehow bad for the cause. We can’t get to where we want to be without them, and they’re not going to trust us if we’re not willing to acknowledge that white leftists have left our POC, LGBTQ, women, and disabled comrades out to dry in the past in order to accept marginal gains for white workers.

Neo-liberalism is the philosophy that attempts to divide people down to the individual level, to exploit racism and misogyny to set people against each other for profit. Intersectionality is understanding how each person’s individuality relates to the collective and understanding it is just good praxis.

I just wanted to say amen and thank you.

[DaveSumm]

2 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

You are doing a terrible job of checking your sources for bias. Any study that would refer to an indigenous American as an “American Indian” has an explicit agenda against any sort of racial sensitivity because that is the equivalent to calling African Americans “n*gro”.

For what it’s worth, I don’t know if it’s a nationality thing (or even what nationality you are) but I’m from the UK and have never heard of this being offensive. Googling the term provides a list of groups at the top using this term explicitly, then the Wikipedia entry which pulls out the quote “Native Americans, also known as (the term in question)”, then we have the ‘People also ask’ section, under the question “Is this term correct” it pulls out a quote from a website named after the term; “In the United States, Native American has been widely used but is falling out of favour with some groups, and the terms (The Term In Question) or Indigenous American are preferred by many Native people”.

If you find it offensive that totally fine and I won’t use it, but from the google search (and I understand that googling a term might lean toward sites that use it openly, kinda by definition, but it’s on the Wikipedia page) it’s hard to back up that anyone using it in a paper must have an ‘explicit agenda’ against racial sensitivity. Harder still that it can be directly compared to ‘n*gro’, at least as the wider community understands it.  

[DaveSumm]

1 hour ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Eh. I actually don’t know if just giving up the word because the far-right and the right are currently trying to tie its meanings with their prejudices against anything socially liberal or progressive in a cringe way.
You know like they’ve tried to do with the concept of virtue signaling, social-justice, or politically correct. 

Well, this will always be difficult to measure, but from my own experience, it seems the fight is over. The use of the term exploded when it was commandeered as an insult and now it seems to me to be much more prevalent. I’d be interested in the recent history of the usage, but I have no idea how to check that (especially when it already had a meaning before: “I woke that morning...”) Kinda like how Global Warming was rebranded as Climate Change to sound less threatening, it’s lamentable, but it seems from my perspective to have already happened with ‘woke’.

[Heartofice]

Its difficult to fail to see the irony that the main reaction to an article that talks about the discomfort people feel from the negative social consequences from using the wrong word, is to call out that someone in it used the wrong word.

The other irony being that it’s a bunch of social progressives trying to argue that political correctness isn’t a problem after seeing an article that says social progressives don’t think political correctness is a problem but everyone else does.

2 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

 

Through all of your posts on any kind of social justice topic runs a heavy undercurrent of "Things would be fine if minorities would just stop complaining."

Nope sorry thats not my point at all, and maybe the problem is that you keep running conversations through that lens.

The whole reason I posted that link was to demonstrate that its often not minorities themselves who view themselves as social progressives or woke, it really is more likely to be rich white people. Claiming to be able to speak for an entire group is pretty insulting to that group actually, as everyone has their own opinion. Its why you often have black conservatives called race traitors or worse, because they do not have the 'correct' opinions based on the colour of their skin. 

Fury was personally offended by the word, so I removed it. But one of the key points of the article is that people are fearful of using the wrong term, because it can have very negative social consequences, and the correct terminology is changed increasingly rapidly. 

28 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Well, this will always be difficult to measure, but from my own experience, it seems the fight is over. The use of the term exploded when it was commandeered as an insult and now it seems to me to be much more prevalent. I’d be interested in the recent history of the usage, but I have no idea how to check that (especially when it already had a meaning before: “I woke that morning...”) Kinda like how Global Warming was rebranded as Climate Change to sound less threatening, it’s lamentable, but it seems from my perspective to have already happened with ‘woke’.

Agree. The meaning of Woke has changed in the vernacular. Sure the original meaning might be one thing but that is no longer the case. I think you'd need to be living in a pretty tight bubble to not have spotted that and be trying to cling onto its original meaning. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

Well, this will always be difficult to measure, but from my own experience, it seems the fight is over. The use of the term exploded when it was commandeered as an insult and now it seems to me to be much more prevalent. I’d be interested in the recent history of the usage, but I have no idea how to check that (especially when it already had a meaning before: “I woke that morning...”) Kinda like how Global Warming was rebranded as Climate Change to sound less threatening, it’s lamentable, but it seems from my perspective to have already happened with ‘woke’.

Eh I wouldn’t say that.

The public perception of certain words do change.

Like take the basic word of socialism. The word itself conjured up images of roving gulags far more prominently just a few decades ago than it does is now. The right especially in recent years fixated on calling any economic policy including broadly popular ones socialist so the term has been pretty diluted to the general public.

I see little benefit in just handing the term woke over to right-wing reactionaries to cudgel every position they dislike as an extremist irrational one that only a member of a fringe group could hold.

Hey you believe systemic sexism against women and sythemic racism is a thing and are talking about it? You’re a wokest!

Feminism does not mean to hate all men for penis. Many right-wing reactionaries would like the public to believe that. For now at least the majority of Americans, and a strong majority of women do not believe that. But should people cede the word over in hopes in not offending some sensibilities for the sake of discussion.  Eh I don’t think so.

Though global warming being morphed into climate-change; it can be justified with the fact the basic vernacular gives the impression that certain places would just get hotter and not the other extreme conditions like extreme cold, storms or flooding.

[Week]

3 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

 

Through all of your posts on any kind of social justice topic runs a heavy undercurrent of "Things would be fine if minorities would just stop complaining."

Even the way you worded this small concession to Fury, you're not acknowledging any problem with the term itself, you're making a snide comment about "distress caused" -- as if it's her fault that term is a problem.

And then of course you'll point to this as another example of this nebulous "problem" that you are trying to peddle, which as far as I can tell is "something something out of touch progressives something something.,"

If "political correctness" -- by which I mean using the words for a community that they prefer -- is such a problem, what, exactly, is the harm caused?  And what is your solution?

The solution seems to be primarily victim blaming and licking wounds in grievance. It could be so much easier - listen to people, don't be an a**hole, and don't rely on google (or get better at it, I dunno). Pretty much the MO for any of these social discussions.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

8 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

And for the international readers of this thread they need to apply this to the context of living in an absolute wasteland.

Get that tornado insurance! 

Well my post was a macro, not micro comment, but in this context I think a lot of people bring up environmental concerns and think they're including the concerns of indigenous people without really taking into account the numerous other issues at play, most of which are not things people outside of said communities really have to grapple with. And not to sound patronizing but it must be frustrating for you because you have so much more information on these issues than most people and yet a majority of people in our country don't care, hence like you get that piece of shit Santorum saying indigenous people didn't contribute anything to our current society and he's so far still kept his job. 

This isn’t really a response to your post but more of an additional thought.  Sometime last year I had an epiphany, thanks in large part to @Fury Resurrected’s patient education efforts:  When Neil Effing GORSUCH* is more sensitive and thoughtful about an issue than I am, I need to check myself, educate myself, and strive to be better.

This is to say, we all live in bubbles to a greater or lesser extent where our own prejudices are reaffirmed by like minded people.  You can choose to stay in your bubble or seek out alternative bubbles and learn about them.  Maybe your mind is changed, maybe not, but the process of trying to understand builds empathy.  And, if another bubble is very different from your own, have a mind for context and whether you should be listening or talking more.  

*This is in no way an endorsement of Neil Gorsuch’s overall jurisprudence or worldview.  

[Varysblackfyre321]

Hmm I found this article rather interesting; 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/a-sneak-peek-at-new-survey-data-on-free-speech/542028/

Quote

a majority of Americans and a supermajority of African Americans believe that “society can prohibit hate speech and still protect free speech.” (To complicate matters, a quarter of Americans, 38 percent of African Americans, and 45 percent of Latinos erroneously believe it is already illegal to make a racist statement in public.)

Quote

Yet a majority of Americans and a supermajority of African Americans believe that “society can prohibit hate speech and still protect free speech.” (To complicate matters, a quarter of Americans, 38 percent of African Americans, and 45 percent of Latinos erroneously believe it is already illegal to make a racist statement in public.)

Who should get protection against hate speech? Forty-six percent would support a law making it illegal to say offensive things about African Americans; there is less support for banning insults against other groups (41 percent for Jews, 40 percent for immigrants and military-service members, 39 percent for Hispanics, 37 percent for Muslims, 36 percent for gays, lesbians, and transgender people, 35 percent for Christians).

To be clear I as black man bisexual man am not in favor of any hate speech laws. I just find it interesting on how so many say they’re against political correctness yet hold such positions like this. 
 

And something I’m fairly certain would be derided as positions the dreaded “woke” could hold.

Quote

What Ought to Get People Fired?

On the whole, Americans were averse to firing people from their jobs for holding an offensive belief. Should a business executive be fired if he believes African Americans are genetically inferior? Fifty-three percent of Americans, and 51 percent of African Americans, said no. And that was the belief mostlikely to be seen as termination-worthy (except among Republicans: More Republicans were inclined to fire an NFL player who refused to stand for the national anthem than a racist executive).

This was also interesting; my initial thought perhaps people read belief as a private thing rather than a spoken word prosthelitizng about it.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Fuck CNN for that shit. POC commentators on CNN get their contracts cancelled for the dumbest crap, but Rick Santorum farts his way through some horrific genocide denying bullshit and CNN bottles that shit for sale like the canned air in Spaceballs.

Yeah, if I was the CEO of CNN I think it would have taken less than five minutes from hearing that comment to having his desk cleaned out, and every A bloc the next day would have led with a repudiation of his comments followed by inviting guests to explain why his comments were so terrible for educational purposes.

5 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

I mean, the last president said plenty of shit like that too, and a democratic contender for president pretended to be one of us so that’s entirely par for the course. I can’t prioritize the verbal diarrhea from Rick Santorum that will come out someplace whether he’s on CNN or not, I gotta worry about White Earth and Line 3 and further legal erosion of the few paltry tribal rights we got in exchange for millions of lives and our homelands lost.

That's a bit unfair. Like Warren, I'm a white person from middle America who was told they had a distant ancestor who was Native American. She embraced it without really understanding it, but it's not like she was doing it in some nefarious way. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Yeah, if I was the CEO of CNN I think it would have taken less than five minutes from hearing that comment to having his desk cleaned out, and every A bloc the next day would have led with a repudiation of his comments followed by inviting guests to explain why his comments were so terrible for educational purposes.

That's a bit unfair. Like Warren, I'm a white person from middle America who was told they had a distant ancestor who was Native American. She embraced it without really understanding it, but it's not like she was doing it in some nefarious way. 

Who said pretending is "nefarious"?  She did claim to be Native American and let Harvard play that up.  What's unfair about the statement you quoted?  Being told you have had a native ancestor doesn't make it ok to co-opt a culture you don't belong to for your career or because you think it's trendy.  No one forced her to do that.

[mormont]

2 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

For what it’s worth, I don’t know if it’s a nationality thing (or even what nationality you are) but I’m from the UK and have never heard of this being offensive.

I mean, I'm also from the UK and absolutely knew that it was offensive. Clearly you and I have less day-to-day exposure to situations in which the matter might arise, though, so we should probably not assert that our experience means much in this conversation.

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Agree. The meaning of Woke has changed in the vernacular. Sure the original meaning might be one thing but that is no longer the case. I think you'd need to be living in a pretty tight bubble to not have spotted that and be trying to cling onto its original meaning. 

And by 'its original meaning' you mean like 'I woke at 6:30 this morning?'

The meaning hasn't really changed, by the way. Both sides of the discussion agree that the term means something along the lines of 'being alert to systemic biases'. The actual difference is that one side of the debate views that as a bad thing, a thing that should be mocked and scapegoated and hyped up as a threat. The meaning is the same: the connotations are different.

[karaddin]

7 minutes ago, mormont said:

I mean, I'm also from the UK and absolutely knew that it was offensive. Clearly you and I have less day-to-day exposure to situations in which the matter might arise, though, so we should probably not assert that our experience means much in this conversation.

And by 'its original meaning' you mean like 'I woke at 6:30 this morning?'

The meaning hasn't really changed, by the way. Both sides of the discussion agree that the term means something along the lines of 'being alert to systemic biases'. The actual difference is that one side of the debate views that as a bad thing, a thing that should be mocked and scapegoated and hyped up as a threat. The meaning is the same: the connotations are different.

1st bolded - yeah I was about to reply commenting that the UK not having an indigenous population which has been subject to invasion and colonization in the last few centuries, with that indigenous population being people of color who have faced continued discrimination, dispossession and at times acts of genocide, probably results in less widespread awareness of and engagement with this issue. That said Australia does very much share that similar treatment of our Indigenous Australian population and while I'm aware of that phrase being a slur, there's certainly plenty of Australians that wouldn't. Plenty probably don't even know the respectful way to refer to Indigenous Australians though which is very much on them at this point.

2nd bolded - you've hit the nail on the head, that's exactly the difference. 

[polishgenius]

If you've never heard that the term might be offensive then you don't know enough about the situation to be commenting on it. I mean, I know shit all and I knew that.

[DaveSumm]

23 minutes ago, mormont said:

I mean, I'm also from the UK and absolutely knew that it was offensive. Clearly you and I have less day-to-day exposure to situations in which the matter might arise, though, so we should probably not assert that our experience means much in this conversation.

Oh totally, I have zero exposure to those situations. But it’s still difficult to reconcile with my google search, it appears that the term is not unanimously agreed upon to be offensive. Far from it.

23 minutes ago, mormont said:

And by 'its original meaning' you mean like 'I woke at 6:30 this morning?'

The meaning hasn't really changed, by the way. Both sides of the discussion agree that the term means something along the lines of 'being alert to systemic biases'. The actual difference is that one side of the debate views that as a bad thing, a thing that should be mocked and scapegoated and hyped up as a threat. The meaning is the same: the connotations are different.

I kinda agree, although I think the right’s definition would really need some mention of virtue signalling to be accurate. Also a lot of people would reject the systemic biases to begin with, so maybe ‘alert to perceived systemic biases’ might cover it.

11 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

If you've never heard that the term might be offensive then you don't know enough about the situation to be commenting on it. I mean, I know shit all and I knew that.

Can you comment on my experience of googling it? That the museum in DC is named after that term, that the Wikipedia entry uses it openly?

[Zorral]

46 minutes ago, karaddin said:

the UK not having an indigenous population which has been subject to invasion and colonization in the last few centuries, with that indigenous population being people of color who have faced continued discrimination, dispossession and at times acts of genocide,

There are people in Wales and Ireland people may disagree with this, even today, as well as those you pointed out in the former Empire's other colonies.

 

[Ran]

The late Russell Means cofounded the American Indian Movement, and to his dying day (2012) he called himself an American Indian, not a Native American. AIM still exists.

The National Council of American Indians still uses it (and led the charge against the Washington Redskins).

Usage within indigenous communities varies widely, but American Indian is still quite common. The American Indian is a award-winning quarterly magazine (it's twice won awards from the Native American Journalists Association)  from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (opened 2004).

While it's clear that some indigenous people find the term offensive, others use it and find instead alternative terms like Native American offensive instead.

Basically, the actual populace of people it applies to have varied views on it. Regardless, I think it's pretty silly to see it being claimed that it's incontrovertible that anyone uses the term -- a term still in common usage by actual live people who identify as American Indians, and their organizations! -- has some kind of agenda.

The generous takeaway is that the people claiming this are misinformed about the usage of the term.

[Varysblackfyre321]

8 minutes ago, Ran said:

The late Russell Means cofounded the American Indian Movement, and to his dying day (2012) he called himself an American Indian, not a Native American. The National Council of American Indians still uses it (and led the charge against the Washington Redskins). Usage within indigenous communities varies widely, but American Indian is still quite common. The American Indian is a award-winning quarterly magazine (it's twice won awards from the Native American Journalists Association)  from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (opened 2004).

While it's clear that some indigenous people find the time offensive, others use it and find instead alternative terms like Native American offensive instead. Basically, the actual populace of people it applies to have varied views on it. Regardless, I think it's pretty absurd to see it being incontrovertible that anyone uses the term -- a term still in common usage by actual live people who identify as American Indians, and their organizations! -- has some kind of agenda.

The generous takeaway is that the people claiming this are misinformed about the usage of the term.

 

 

Eh this is fair. These terms can be used differently and seen as differently by the context even amongst the group.

I’m black. Don’t particularly like any iteration of the n word(don’t actually calling it the n-word either), but many black people are fine with in regards to address each other.