BF2S Forums Race relations thread

uziq wrote:

i'm not a linguist. linguistics is a completely separate discipline to literature and is much more related to logic, cognitive science, semantics, semiotics, etc.

what you're asking are political questions, in any case, and trying to deflect it onto a matter of 'expert opinions' and 'expert debate' seems disingenuous, to me. language qua social tool for communication doesn't belong to linguists; they don't have some special privileged view or ability to adjudicate on the matter.

'deconstruction' is a literary theory from the 1960s and came from structuralism and poststructuralism. i could go into this at length but what people discuss when they mention 'deconstruction' nowadays is just surface-level culture war stuff, in the same breath as 'postmodern cultural marxism' and whatever gets mentioned. it's a weird phantom construction from the polemic far-right, yoking together all sorts of stuff that has never had a particularly smooth or uncomplicated reception in american culture. the idea that there's a thing called 'french theory' or 'the frankfurt school' that has infiltrated american academia with its culturally destructive 'deconstructionist' methods is just commentary-section polemic. it would take me about 15 paragraphs to unpick the influence of 'continental' theory on anglophone academia, and, trust me, for most of its history it has been rejected and debated to hell even in the arcane and esoteric backwaters of humanities faculties.

deconstruction was a revolution in textual interpretation; as a revolutionary praxis or some sort of 'weapon' being used in culture wars, not so much. there's very little in derrida or lacan or any other abstruse french thinker from the 1960s that would make a cultural conservative lose sleep. of course, they're not actually reading them (nor the 'franklin school', evidently).

It seems to me that we're also painting a picture where the wrong words/phrases are perceived to be part of a hidden structural, if not almost conspiratorial, form of oppression of one group vs another.

this is an extremely adulterated and bowdlerized account of what deconstruction is. it's not about finding 'wrong' words/phrases at all. this sort of language policing is a feature of the 'id-pol' centre-left, or liberal-progressive, if you like, toolkit. it has very little to do with linguistics, with literary theory, or with deconstruction specifically. it's about a current in liberal thought that has grown increasingly to focus on group identity as a locus for political struggle and representation; in a similar way, the continuum of social sciences from anthropology thru sociology to psychology have had their own vogues for studies focussing on 'bodies' and, more recently, disembodied 'voices'. these are interesting ways of thinking that don't necessarily need to be pressed or plied to an explicitly political end. the stuff you're raising, again, is just liberal identity politics. it's relationships to the academic 'core' is tendentious at best.

Yes of course they're political questions and no I don't think it's disingenuous at all to try and retrace the thinking behind these frames of thought. It's not as if the current wave of left politics emerged from a vacuum in space, there have been waves of academic publications and popular interpretations preceding it and informing it. While deconstructionism might be reaching too far back in time, it felt like a logical starting point to figure out how we got from there to here. Maybe it's been too long since I've done my postmodern reading, but when I see how the identitarian left is waging its political fight today, I can't help but feel there's some distant if not fundamental connection to the postmodern philosophy I read some years ago and the shifts in thinking that they proposed, which was hugely influential to the start of multiple waves of feminism and wider sociology disciplines etc.

Not at all from an intent to lay blame, I believe I've stated a few times how among others foucault was influential to me personally and how his & many other ideas in the postmodernist movement (if you can group them,in any case this includes derrida) were incredibly useful. They've contributed much to fields I ended up studying later on. Would be a bit of a weird turnaround to then fall in line with the nonsensical idiots who are now up in arms about CRT or something. I don't give a fuck about the far right, stop trying to lump me in with them because I happen to sometimes disagree. I never once agreed with them or voted for any.

Anyway, I'm sure there's a marked divergence from the academic core, but what the initial ideas were and how this may have been selectively misinterpreted into what you see today is I think worth looking into.

w/r/t the 'n-word', lots of groups have coded language and their own systems of signs. lots of black people are not okay with rappers or public figures using the word; even at best, it's still a term of opprobrium or a taboo term, even if rappers do use it as part of their 'discourse'. it has clearly had its own history, for e.g. with NWA, as a shock-factor and a wake-up call to speakers of the language as a whole. this is less, again, about linguistics per se and more about how social groups regulate themselves and have limits on 'acceptable' speech. this isn't really a different phenemonon from, say, church groups taking a hard line on blaspheming language or swearing. you can say 'fuck' and 'shit' with your college friends but not on sunday when you're at service. what's the big deal?

why are you so vexed and upset that you can't drop the n-bomb, anyway?

Look at the top music charts, for the last 10-20 years I swear there've been more and more artists in what people popularly listen to who n-bomb every second sentence in a song. I don't ever care to use it; I'm only interested in it precisely because it is politicised speech and used as a delineating marker between identity groups. And these types of markers have increased in their political importance. far left and right, they're both in their own ways feeding strongly into ethnic/racial/national and coupled cultural identitarianism as their chosen battleground. From symbolisms, to discussions on culture, to expressions of culture, to their internal organisation and into language etc.

it doesn't strike me as a particularly interesting observation or discussion to say 'why can black people use the n-word in their music when it's taboo for non-blacks to say it?' all of the explanations for this, to me, seem quite simple and sufficient. if a black person wants to take an (aggressive) form of ownership over a word that had previously been deployed to mark their servitude and inferiority, then so be it. it hardly seems to be a source and cause of so much social strife and polarization. a symptom, perhaps, but not a cause.

as for postmodernism laying the groundwork for the political debates of today: i would say no. postmodernism, insofar as it had any political affiliations, was pretty ardently to the marxist left, and was tightly involved in the student protest movements of mai '68 and so on. that is a long, long cry from the sort of debates going on at american college campuses or in street protests today. it is decisively a centrist-liberal form of protest, asking for better rights and identity representation within a centrist democracy, not revolutionary marxism. most marxists today disagree with id-pol about as much as the right-wing do. zizek and jordan peterson famously agreed on this very point.

there's a sort of slipperiness and vagueness with terms nowadays. 'postmodernism' and 'cultural marxism' come in for a lot of stick, but to me it sounds the same hollow note as the reactionary right moaning about 'degenerate art' or 'jewish internationalism' in the 1930s. it's so imprecise and so obviously mobilized towards a political end. the seminal texts of postmodernism have very little to do with identity politics or even subaltern studies.

Let's not play a game where we see how many rappers we can Google since we both don't listen to it as our first choice.

I would just like to know if anyone can find a recent equivalent to something like this song
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_Killer_(song)

SJW wrote:

Let's not play a game where we see how many rappers we can Google since we both don't listen to it as our first choice.

I would just like to know if anyone can find a recent equivalent to something like this song
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_Killer_(song)

wasn't familiar with that. though wouldn't you agree that the use of the n-word has transitioned from it's 'gangsta rap' taboo association to more mainstream artists that are now hitting the top 50 spotify list pretty regularly.

Last edited by Larssen (2022-01-03 10:10:01)

uziq wrote:

identity politics came out of liberal discourse. it is an obvious logical extension of 'legal rights' talk, a form of group-based advocacy. why would you suspect it is related to a bunch of abstruse literary theory or works published about ontology/epistemology in the 1960s?

id-pol in my reading is what happened in the space formerly occupied by left-wing politics and genuine 'opposition' theories of government after the end of the cold war. id-pol is what was left for 'activism' or progressivism in the interstices of an almost global neoliberal consensus. the political terrain of possibility had shifted away from revolutionary thought and talk of widespread economic/political change, and instead the only practical gains could be made in these incremental, group-based liberal forms of activism. identity politics is what happens in the vacuum left behind by marxism, not because of a shadowy cabal of continental philosophers promoting 'deconstruction'.

ok now we're getting somewhere. But perhaps it had already been bubbling under the surface with the decolonisation of the globe and the promise made at a nation-state level of equal citizenship and equal rights?

uziq wrote:

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Let's not play a game where we see how many rappers we can Google since we both don't listen to it as our first choice.

I would just like to know if anyone can find a recent equivalent to something like this song
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cop_Killer_(song)

rap is still transgressive, in its way, and still has the ability to shock. the gangsta rap/"fuck tha' police" era has just shifted away to other concerns. still, people like kendrick lamar, or even childish gambino, have picked up on the post-BLM energy in the same way that LA-based groups picked up on the race riots and police racism in the 1990s.

lil nas x making songs about being out-and-out gay and invoking the sinfulness of male romance, etc, is every bit as transgressive, really.

I guess what is transgressive is different for everyone. I was watching the NBC New Years show and at least half or more of the acts were rap/RnB. There was a black guy in a big flamboyant dress. I am sure the Nashville NBC show was much more country but anything that pearl clutchers see as transgressive in modern rap is banal to me. Maybe that is a matter of age and location. A country song about overthrowing the government I guess could be scandalous to a NYC white liberal whose teen daughter is going through an open bisexual phase.

Pop stars are also doing songs about being bisexual or gay too. They even made up a new term for it: queer baiting.

uziq wrote:

id-pol is thoroughly liberal in its framework. everything has to be understood as the fight for liberal rights/representation within a liberal democracy. only the fringe groups and vanguards are seriously discussing socialism in the revolutionary mould, that is, of changing the basis of society in a structural way. 90% of id-pol stuff on american college campuses is middle-class well-educated elites discussing how to make the liberal society with which they are participating and complicit more socially inclusive.

Reminds me of the Democratic primaries the last two times Bernie ran. Bernie's "political revolution" gave establishment Clinton and Biden a good run until the primaries hit the black belt. Clinton and Biden were able to trounce Bernie in those states with a plain "we aren't racist, we can win, and we will protect you from racism." message. Biden hasn't delivered on structural reforms to help minorities but also hasn't gone backwards or hugely reformed anything for anyone. But the Democratic party seems to be pretty unafraid of changing holidays and names, small policy changes to how things are distributed, appointing people to executive branches (where most of what the government does happens) and other stuff id-pol stuff.

And it is easy for people to brush that aside but things are very different from how they were 2 or 3 decades ago in America in regards to race. In a good way despite the apocalyptic narrative of some people on both sides.

We definitely need to course correct and do a lot more to help the average person in our societies. But I also wonder if some left wing people are out of touch or can never be placated.

Hierarchies are natural and difficult to break. Economic hierarchies are inevitable. We haven't reached the tech point where we have robots do everything for us. Some people someplace need to make our cheap things and do the dirty work. We should strive to make sure our domestic underclass is well taken care of but to reach that we might need to viciously economically exploit foreigners. And that's probably the best we will get in our lifetimes.

I think most people in our society would begrudgingly accept that if they had genuine opportunities to reach the higher echelons of the hierarchy through hard work. I don't think the vast majority of people in first world countries want a radical reorganization of the global economy if there is even a slight risk of decreasing their standard of living.

Taking that back to identity politics, I think most American minorities would also be happy to live under such a system where genuine opportunities and a strong safety net exist but the suffering is outsourced someplace else. Preferably outside the country but especially out of sight. Would you rather be the girl boss of what hardcore leftist would call "an imperialist system" or would you rather roll the dice on Bernie's "political revolution"?

So the leftist decrying the supplanting of far left ideas by identity politics might just be very out of touch with what people actually want. Therefore they "don't get" identity politics. This dovetails with many far leftist having out of mainstream diets and lifestyle choices. Reorganize the global economy, ban soda, change the dictionary, and force everyone to use the same bathroom? I think Tyrone rather be affirmative actioned into being a bank manager and keep almost all else just as is. Identity politics can be aspirational.

objectively yes we do live in a much better world in terms of equality, but recently we've seen worsening manifestations of far-right counterculture and an increasing sense of political tribalism in many parts of society. In several multiparty democracies, the traditional left has been falling apart for a while now but notably along identitarian lines, the right already mentioned. Both seem less interested in convergence and more set on biting into perceived societal failures and differences with enemy-centric narratives abound.

I don't think that the past succesful trajectory necessarily impliies that in the future we'll reach this consensus on matters of identity equality as in the case of neoliberal democratic-capitalism and its near global acceptance. All the more because of what uziq also already mentioned, that the id-pol obsession with representation in an ever smaller circle of elites will do little to actually help many identity-mobilised groups out of the rut they find themselves in. It's then the question whether or not we can be refocused on socioeconomic debates, or if the middle class being pressed down will only further entrench and explode the identity rifts which are eagerly being crafted today.

Larssen wrote:

objectively yes we do live in a much better world in terms of equality, but recently we've seen worsening manifestations of far-right counterculture and an increasing sense of political tribalism in many parts of society. In several multiparty democracies, the traditional left has been falling apart for a while now but notably along identitarian lines, the right already mentioned. Both seem less interested in convergence and more set on biting into perceived societal failures and differences with enemy-centric narratives abound.

I don't think that the past succesful trajectory necessarily impliies that in the future we'll reach this consensus on matters of identity equality as in the case of neoliberal democratic-capitalism and its near global acceptance. All the more because of what uziq also already mentioned, that the id-pol obsession with representation in an ever smaller circle of elites will do little to actually help many identity-mobilised groups out of the rut they find themselves in. It's then the question whether or not we can be refocused on socioeconomic debates, or if the middle class being pressed down will only further entrench and explode the identity rifts which are eagerly being crafted today.

It is very thoughtful of you to want to help the needy. How does getting to say nigger while singing along at a concert get you there?

Larssen wrote:

If I could slap you rn I would

uziq wrote:

identity politics has made concrete gains. liberal societies are better now in many regards than they were 30-40 years ago, yes.

Who defines 'better'? Many things have gone backwards creating weakness.

BLACKS are now on a pedestal and can't be touched, all the other minorities are still marginalised, maybe more so.

And of course everything in the history of white males is now BAD.

we do know what the chinese middle-class thinks, they’ve been polled on it time and time again. the newly minted, wealthy, upwardly mobile, aspirational middle-class especially.

the idea we can’t trust anything they say about their own political system, as if they’re crouching in fear of the secret police, is basically a meme in western intelligence thinking. it has been debunked by sinologists any number of times. yes, believe it or not, liberal westerners, the majority of chinese really do like and approve of the CCP.

the idea that the chinese have no way to express dissent or vent about their dissatisfactions, by the way, is laughable. believe it or not, it’s not north korea. young chinese especially use their social media in very inventive ways, inventing a whole language to express discontent or complain in creative ways that get around the CCP’s boomer-level web filters. middle-class chinese filter their money out of the system, should they wish, through macau (and formerly HK). these escape valves exist in chinese society and everyone knows about them. you really don’t need to be an intelligence expert to log onto chinese social media and take the temperature of national feeling. people bitch and moan on there all the time. but it’s low level in comparison to the near-universal support for the direction china is going in generally.

in recent years the schooling system, military service, post-school examination system for public service jobs, etc, have all become much more aggressively political. learning english and going abroad for university as a rite of passage is fading out; learning the principles of xi’s new brand of communism are in. children are literally drilled on this stuff in chinese schools now. indoctrination? yes. but you better believe that they believe in it. you've only got to look at chinese international students' responses - some rehearsed and orchestrated, it's true; but many not -- to protests about the CCP's actions on western university campuses to see the passions and genuine feelings of support they have for it.

they’re not a people suddenly waiting for that explosive moment when they can throw off the oppressive shackles of the regime. this is again a projection of a specifically western liberal imagination; our fantasy, not theirs (because if anything in the long history of the last century has taught us wise enlightened westerners, it’s that regime change just works and democracies just burst into bloom like the gardens of babylon). nevermind that the chinese political imagination, according to their own recent as well as long history, values stability over all else. the country has already experienced civil wars with deaths beyond almost any conflict in human history.

how many chinese mainlanders stood by or expressed sympathy with HK whilst it was being absorbed and stripmined of its democratic institutions? you think the educated bourgeois of shanghai or beijing couldn’t see what was happening there? of course they saw it for what it was: and they approve of it! mainstream, unreflective chinese support for, say, what’s happening in xinjiang province or HK is really no different from the unreflecting, knee jerk support that your average brit or american gave to the iraq-afghan wars. ‘good, they deserve it’ thinks your average chinese.

Last edited by uziq (2022-01-04 02:06:20)