BF2S Forums Race relations thread

1. that elite is precisely accommodated for in the neo-colonial diagnosis he is outlining (or was outlining, this book was way ahead of its time, really). that a local class of bureaucrats, businessmen, a political elite, etc, forms it not a dispelling of the metropole or former colonial centres' influence: it's a ratification of it. this was a key part of benedict anderson's seminal work on nationalism, particularly in his analysis of post-colonial states and their own road to nationhood. what so often happens was that the new political/economic elites to step into the vacuum, after colonialism, had been educated and socialized in the colonial centre. it was entirely in the interest, for example, of the french empire to train and retain a class of bureaucrats and leaders in indo-china. 'natives', yes, but natives created in the image of the far-distant metropole.

1.5. the idea that commodity prices are still governed solely by supply & demand is pretty LOLZ. in any case, the economies of scale and buying power of the 'demand' side far outstrips the considerations and bargaining power of the 'supply' side in that equation. this is no different to supermarkets sorely undercutting and underpaying english farmers for their produce; nevermind what happens when an industrialized western nation wants to set the price on a crop commodity. if this wasn't a conscious process of exploitation, there should surely never be a need for all those 'fair trade' movements in, say, coffee or cocoa. it is self-evidently exploitative.

2. yes, precisely, that's exactly what he's saying. but people like dilbert love to proclaim 'we are past imperialism now, get over it and pull up your bootstraps, lazy indigent blacks', etc, etc. but the world is still shaped in our image and the entire world system mostly hums along for our benefit. acknowledging that isn't exactly a huge price to pay, considering the deal that the majority of the world's population are born into.

the entire book is about 'the country and the city', by the way, this stuff about imperial-era global implications is basically an epilogue. the relationship between the country/city has been an incredibly supple topos throughout history. certainly never a simple or binary relation. the point of his book, really, is that the vast majority of people throughout history who have dutifully marched (or more often been forced, by enclosure or engrossment or rent-shacking, etc) 'from country to city' with the tide of 'development' have basically been overlooked - as workers in the global south are today, made invisible - and that images of the 'rural glades' have mostly been made in the fanciful interests of an elite, previously feudal and aristocratic, latterly bourgeios and mercantile. he also gets a lot into some really interesting stuff like how workers have variously been divided between their rural/urban factions, at other times variously united in common cause; and how most of the radical, progressive, collectivist notions came out of the city, etc, as it allowed us forms of group-consciousness and collective thinking which were never quite attained in the parcelled out, ruled-and-divided feudal/squirearchical model.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-04 02:21:11)

metropole-educated elite at the head of anticolonial struggles ... well, sometimes. some really were bottom-up, 'agrarian' style revolutions. and i would add a minor cavil, here, that during the postcolonial era they were most importantly influenced by an internationalist, anti-imperial ideology called 'socialism' (if not explicitly influenced and directed by communists as part of the cold war). so it's not like the spread of anticolonialism was a logical or organic growth of colonial development; there were competing ideologies and spheres of influence there, propitiously for them. you're almost making out like revolutionary thought was a gift of the imperial centres. errm, it's a bit more complicated than that.

don't agree that every postcolonial society would have 'descended into chaos' or been incapable of organizing itself if it wasn't for the neat-o western oil companies, rubber corporations, etc, lending their patrician sense of social cohesion. the hell are you saying? most civil conflicts that erupted in these regions precisely erupted because of the tension over private ownership and conflicting (external, importantly, as well as internal) interests. it was in just as many of those companies' interests to keep a political regime destabilized or delegitimized so that they could continue their operations without, say, fear of state takeover. 'a binding force' *shaking my head*.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-04 02:38:53)

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 … on-statute

watershed ruling (that’s a pun: colston was tipped into the harbour next to an old watershed). flies right in the face of everything the home office under priti patel’s direction of the police are trying to impose in britain.

there is no way japanese internment was 'justified' by any standards or procedures of regular democratic law. emergency war-time measures, perhaps, but even then some very shaky legal grounds to throw an entire group of your own citizens into camps because of their, er, ethnicity. to say nothing of the fact that a large proportion of japanese-americans had left japan precisely because of their ideological disagreement or expulsion from the empire.

but, yes, obviously comparing the fucking holocaust to temporary internment is utterly mad.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-06 05:08:35)

"Even if it was justified" requires a significantly alternate timeline.

Good a president has done does not cancel out the bad. We're not balancing karma, these were Americans' lives and livelihoods. Being able to talk about the bad as well as the good is rather important, don't you think? Learning to live with a little healthy dirt digging about US history without freaking the heck out is something Americans need to be able to do.

So yes, a stain on the record. It's not as if there wasn't even opposition at the time, either.

e: How much time does US history at your school even bother spending on social security? How many students could describe it in detail or what they can expect from it?

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2022-01-06 06:08:24)

"Don't be a pigman" is pretty rich coming from the guy sweeping Japanese internment under the rug because it wasn't as bad as the holocaust. I'm aware you're playing devil's advocate half the time, but that last bit doesn't even bear address.

Canada did it too. Imagine getting a paltry $21,000 settlement for having your life uprooted, over 40 years after the fact. Gee, thanks.

The U.S. did reparations for the internment too. After that, racism against Japanese was officially declared over in America.

There is little evidence that FDR's signature on the executive order is real. All of the internment was handled by leaders of the army anyway. The protocols of the internment were hashed out at the Wisconsin Conference. FDR, Truman, and many other top leaders of the Democrat party did not even attend.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

There is little evidence that FDR's signature on the executive order is real. All of the internment was handled by leaders of the army anyway. The protocols of the internment were hashed out at the Wisconsin Conference. FDR, Truman, and many other top leaders of the Democrat party did not even attend.

Citation needed.

WW2 ended in 1945. It took until halfway into 1946 to cancel 9066 with Truman's Executive Order. Calling them 'internment camps' is being nice about it. The term in use in the day was 'concentration camp.' FDR historians candidly acknowledge the internment of American citizens in concentration camps as a huge black mark on his presidency, and are frank about his "right sort of blood" stuff.

I've heard arguments that prop him as having "saved" the Japanese-Americans from violent riots, securing American war support! But that doesn't strike me as very sincere excuse just considering camp conditions, loss of property, and treatment after the war.

http://nyer.cm/klegtpY

why would a racist, insular monoculture do this???

Two of my Jewish cousins married black girls.

Heat was one of the greatest movies of the post-Cold War period. Fight me on this topic.