Criticism of identity and lived experience
Just read this article and wanted to know what others thought.
"It’s essentially a turf war. Only Latino authors can write novels about Latinos. Only Holocaust survivors can convey the truth of the Holocaust. Only disabled people can portray disabled people. Everyone else is out.
Culture is a conversation, not a monologue."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/opinion/lived-experience-empathy-culture.html
"It’s essentially a turf war. Only Latino authors can write novels about Latinos. Only Holocaust survivors can convey the truth of the Holocaust. Only disabled people can portray disabled people. Everyone else is out.
Culture is a conversation, not a monologue."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/opinion/lived-experience-empathy-culture.html
Comments (106)
Does being a white male mean you have white male experience? I have no idea what that means.
Do you know what it feels like not to be a white male?
I do not know what it feels like to be a white male.
Are you a white male?
Yes.
Then your assertion rings disingenuous, silly, tendentious. It's clear you have an agenda. Enjoy.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
You should not be on a philosophy forum.
I think you were saying that you don't consider your life different because of race or gender?
I'll keep that in mind. Many thanks.
Where did I say that?
"Did Dana Schutz, a white artist, have the right to paint Emmett Till? Was it fair that a white historian, David Blight, won a Pulitzer for his biography of Frederick Douglass? Should Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner be the ones to update “West Side Story,” a musical conceived by four Jewish men but fundamentally about Puerto Rican lives?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/opinion/lived-experience-empathy-culture.html
I wonder if you know what it feels like to be a person.
Well, its obvious you know how it feels to be a self righteous twat. So theres that.
I'm not sure the evidence points to that conclusion. Can you set it out?
You were doing fine until you said, "I do not know what it feels like to be a white male." and further said you were a white male.
Your are a white male; you have experiences; they are, of necessity, the experiences of a white male. It's not more complicated than that. I too am a white male--a gay, working class, upper-midwestern white male, to be specific. My experiences are those of a gay, working class, upper-midwestern white male.
You don't have to think of yourself as the archetypal "white male"--you are, in all likelihood, not.
American black men, Japanese women, South African white men, British Indian women, and so on all have unique sets of experiences, but they are not all the same. We can generalize some, but only so far.
The trouble with identity is projecting "sameness" on everyone who shares the identity. Gay men, for example, even gay white upper midwestern working class men, are likely to be be very different as individuals.
I have the experience of being a biped, too.
Your judgement of Jackson. Jumped to conclusions about his character. He doesnt know how to be a person? He has an agenda?
All because his question didnt suit your own position, your own agenda.
Every post you’ve made so far reveals your self righteousness. The twat part comes from your dismissive attitude towards a mere question. Positions so easily threatened are seldom solid ones.
So ya, self righteous twat seems appropriate based on the evidence.
Good. You concede you "have the experience of being a biped." Biped - that's one quality you possess. You have other qualities too: maleness and whiteness.
The burden is on you to explain how you manage to "have the experience of being a biped" while not having the experience of being white and male. All three are qualities you possess.
What is white male experience?
I was thinking more of a philosophical argument. For example:
1. Dingo has decided I'm a self-righteous twat with very little supporting evidence.
2. Folks who jump to judgmental conclusions based on very little supporting evidence should be called judgmental.
3. Dingo should be called judgmental.
You're not addressing my argument.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
It becomes philosophical cuz you put the points in numerical order?
And yes, im making a judgement. Being judgemental. So?
I didnt judge you for being judgmental, you might say i was judging you for being self a righteous twat. In fact, i did.
This is misworded. I asked if he knows what it feels like to be a person. This isn't a judgment. It's a step in a philosophical argument. His answer will be yes or no. And on we go from there.
Quoting DingoJones
I see an agenda.
He wants to assert that there is no such thing as white experience or male experience. That's all he wants to do here. That's an agenda.
Read on to see if this is his agenda. :smile:
So to your view being judgmental is in some sense superior to being a self-righteous twat. Good.
Is it possible you misinterpreted my words and drew an erroneous conclusion?
Or are you infallible AND judgmental?
:up:
:smirk:
Horse shit, of course.
An incompetent Latino writer will do a much worse job writing novels about the Latino experience than a competent writer from some other cultural group. The same goes for novels about the white--or any other--cultural experience. The first requirement is that the author be a good observer and a competent reporter. There are additional requirements, of course, like writing ability, imagination, control of plot and characters, discipline (to get the thing done) and so on.
What a survivor can bring to an account of the Holocaust is personal experience. Personal experience alone is insufficient. One must also have the capacity to tell the story. Having personal experiences of any kind and being able to communicate what that experience was like just isn't that easy to do well.
I am quite familiar with the Dana Schutz controversy. The museum stood by her:
“The 2017 Whitney Biennial brings to light many facets of the human experience, including conditions that are painful or difficult to confront such as violence, racism, and death. Many artists in the exhibition push in on these issues, seeking empathetic connections in an especially divisive time. Dana Schutz’s painting, Open Casket (2016), is an unsettling image that speaks to the long-standing violence that has been inflicted upon African Americans. For many African Americans in particular, this image has tremendous emotional resonance. By exhibiting the painting, we wanted to acknowledge the importance of this extremely consequential and solemn image in American and African American history and the history of race relations in this country. As curators of this exhibition we believe in providing a museum platform for artists to explore these critical issues.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/03/23/dana-schutz-responds-to-outcry-over-her-controversial-emmett-till-painting/
The irony is that to identify with group identities is to misidentify, to find affinity with some ideal or stereotypical identity in order to disguise one’s real identity, which can be described in greater detail with any state I.D. card.
"Group solipsism" is a contradiction in terms.
Solipsism is the philosophical position that only one mind exists.
Yes of course its possible.
Quoting Jackson
What is bipedal experience?
Of course you do, and it's a significant part of 'who you are'. There are many significant parts of who you are.
I generally dislike identity politics (whether the identity is black, hispanic, native, male, female, gay, straight--whatever) because it tends to be possessive, defensive, and adversarial. And it can be very lame.
"Identity" is first and foremost a personal attribute, arrived at or achieved over time. The noun, "identity", applied to millions of people who are supposedly alike is the wrong word. A better term for what very large groups of people share (numbering in the millions) is "culture".
So, individuals who have a unique "identity" belong to one, maybe several cultures.
What the article is referring for is the spread of culture depending your ethnic. Have I to be a Japanese to write haiku? Clearly not...
Inside culture, there should not be any kind of limitations. For this reason I reject all of those books which are only about "identities" and then, you can only understand it if you are one of them. Sorry, but that's flawed... something such important as literature should be universal.
I am a completely obsessed man with Japanse literature but I am from slum in Madrid... not from Tokio.
That article only reflects what some people are always seeking for: "minorities culture and avoid the so called cultural appropriation"
:100: :fire:
It is a completely paradox since it starts. They seek for attention in their own identity while they mistreat the others ones
Am I supposed to identify with every White Male? Is Donald Trump my identity group?! I have contempt for him. There is a deeper problem here with the very concept of identity.
What snippet?
It is not nonsense. But if you don't have time then respond when you do.
Okay, until then.
There is a kernel of justified complaint when the white industrial complex ignores black musicians but exploits black music as with Elvis for example. Or when companies try and patent traditional medicines like neem. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4333627.stm
I don't know where the cultural lines should be drawn, but somewhere around exploitation and oppression.
It is obvious to me that people have plenty to offer on subjects they are not experienced in. It is daft to suggest that men cannot talk about women’s rights or that non-jews cannot comment about the holocaust.
If the article addresses why these idea have grown more of late (if they have) then what does it say?
James Baldwin’s “Giovanni's Room” was replete with white people, his protagonist a blonde-haired, white man. “Who cares,” in my opinion—we ought to be able to relate to and empathize with people who do not look like us—but as I recall it caused a bit of controversy among identity politicians, which is by now to be expected, and in my encouraged. The culture lines should be erased, not drawn.
According to which culture?
According to me.
Well, we’re all of a certain species, is basically what I’m saying.
It's your bullet dude; bite it or spit out. This is what the Chinese say, that Tibetans, Uighurs, Kazakhs, and others need re-educating. Your turn will no doubt come. We're all of a certain species, but we sure ain't all of a certain culture.
That’s the necessary result in that kind of thinking, and yours. One can say with more confidence that that is not what the Chinese say, but what communists say.
Alas it is the result of your thinking, not mine. I do not think cultural differences should be erased - you do.
and The Chinese communist Party agrees with you. :rofl:
But you said it is something the Chinese say, when one can go out and ask Chinese people if this is true and find various opinions. At any rate, Methodological collectivism is no more than the application of hasty generalizations.
Some complained that a white, female artist has no right to depict a Black male, Emmett Till. This is not good logic.
Maybe that is the problem, absolute boundary of a culture.
Quoting Jackson
I agree. But that there are silly claims, does not entail that there are no sensible ones.
Quoting Jackson
Of course there are no absolutes, but on the contrary, cultures interpenetrate. There are mixed race people and mixed culture people and life is complicated. But sometimes there is justice in claims of cultural exploitation and expropriation too.
Are you saying what I think you’re saying?! :grimace:
Agree. Not trying to be silly here, but didn't Christians 'steal' Jesus from the Jews?
What do you think I’m saying?
I think the word is homogenization, or maybe more accurately, colonialization.
No, that’s not what I’m saying. A figurative statement is not to be taken literally.
Figurative with the belief that it ought to be literal?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/opinion/lived-experience-empathy-culture.html
Exactly. As if every white male has the same experiences, and as if every black man has the same experiences and needs that are different than white males. ZzzoneiroCosm is a racist and sexist - stereotyping people based on their skin color and sex.
If black actors can be cast as white characters, then why not the reverse? It seems that shared experience only works in one direction.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Well, yeah the group mind, as in group-think.
Its why anti-free-speech snowflakes are leaving Twitter in droves. They cannot cope with opposing viewpoints. Their viewpoint can be the only viewpoint, and any others must be "misinformation" :scream:
"Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
Thomas Jefferson
Everyone should be able to say what they want as long as reason is free to filter it. A competition of ideas with reason being the judge is how progress is made, not by silencing any opposing viewpoint. Why do you think science has progressed as rapidly as it has compared to religions? Religions only seem to progress when science forces them to.
Quoting unenlightened
Not really. When we see each other simply as fellow humans, instead of focusing on our differences of race and sex where it isn't appropriate (category error), it becomes very simple. Why can't we all be like dogs? Dog breeds exhibit the diversity of the gene pool. Dogs of different breeds breed with no quarrels. The don't seem to notice the differences amongst themselves.
Quoting unenlightened
Then tearing down statues of a particular culture isn't trying to erase a particular culture?
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/502492-list-statues-toppled-vandalized-removed-protests/
Does this mean that Nazi and Communist cultures should be free to express themselves?
No, cultural difference should not be erased, nor should they be the focus of your identity. People change religions, adopt the customs of other cultures, so the culture you grew up in and your ancestry does not necessarily define you. You are a human-being first, not a black man, or an white woman. Those are only PARTS of what it means to be a human-being, not the entirety of what it is to be a human-being. By focusing on those parts you only end up diminishing yourself.
No, really!
Quoting Harry Hindu
No it isn't. One does not wish to erase the memory of slavers or colonial exploiters, or of Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot or whoever. But one wishes to change a culture that lauds them as heroes and role-models. It is fairly clear that a culture that is defined by its oppression of others such as nazism or slavery, cannot coexist with one that defines itself as fair and open. so we object to graffiti swastikas and statues that celebrate slavers.
When we see each other through the lens of a well-intentioned but disingenuous ideological lens there is a danger of dehumanizing them. Our differences is what makes us individuals. Problems arise with how one regards and treats others in ways that are harmful on the basis of race or sex.
As to the OP, I think it is misguided and all too easily drifts to the absurd. If "lived experience" or "personal experience" is the determining criteria, then all representation must be limited to autobiography.
My point was that it was not complicated, not that there are not mixed race and mixed culture people. I thought that would be obvious had you read the rest of my post.
Quoting unenlightened
That's a fair point. But we should also take into account people are products of their time, and the progress that was made since could not have been made if we didn't start somewhere, and that there are other places on the planet that are far more oppressive than the U.S. I also don't think that having a statue of George Washington causes people to be racist, nor do I think that taking it down stops racism.
Quoting Fooloso4
True, but then we'd be focusing on our differences again. We have both differences and similarities. There must be a reason to focus on one or the other.
It is not that the difference should be ignored but rather that such differences should not be regarded as exclusionary factors for what it means to be human.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It has been said that extreme views on opposite ends of the spectrum come close to each other. Rather than a straight line with two poles they are more like the Greek letter Omega:?. Both extremes come close together in excluding what is regarded as 'other', even though they do so for very different reasons.
Also, relationship is important. I am something different to my brother than I am to myself, something else again to my wife, something else again to my pet, to my boss, to my food animals, and so on. You might argue that we are largely relational, not really being anything in ourselves.
A man doesn't generally know what it is to be encountered as a woman. A woman must tell him. There is something to be said about men that is for women to tell. There are things about women that men can see well that women have a hard time seeing, and vice versa.
I have recently spent some time overseas and am getting ready to move there to live with my wife. As I learn more about this foreign culture, integrating some of it, inhabiting it to some small degree, I become better able to see what it is to be American, what American values are, and so on. Also, I am able to see many things about my wife's culture that she doesn't readily see.
Things are revealed by comparison, by relation, by difference.
What we constantly are is the background we cannot see, like the water the fish swims in that the fish is unaware of.
It makes perfect sense for someone of one identity to make portraits of another.
Personally, I like asking others what they see in me. I get insights into myself otherwise unavailable to me.
We have inadequate models of ourseleves. We don't actually really deeply know ourselves. We cannot contain ourselves. It isn't necessarily the case that we are in the best position to explain ourselves.
In my experience, it seems hard for people to psychoanalyze themselves. We are too embedded in our own shit, too invested in our own defense mechanisms, and so on. Everyone knows the good psychologist who can't solve or even see her own problems.
Observations made from the inside and from the outside are both useful and interesting.
Your whole comment was very good, thank you.
Hume's critique of identity is that everything is relational. A hand is five fingers but we call it one thing, a hand. We are many different things to different people and even to ourselves.
Thank you!
Quoting Jackson
Yes! Even in QM, as Rovelli points out, basically what it means to have a property is to be measured, which means to be interacted with, to be encountered. Or, as in Madhyamaka philosophy, nothing has "own-being". All things instead co-arise interdependently.
Exactly - to be human. For us to understand that black men and white men can have the same experiences is to understand them both as being human, not black men and white men. We do not have black man and white man experiences. We have human experiences. All humans have different experiences when they are in a place where a majority/minority of of one skin color exists. The fact that there is a majority/minority of skin color in a particular corner of the world is just a basic unavoidable fact. What we can avoid is using those distinctions against someone, which starts with ignoring those distinctions in situations where they do not matter as in hiring someone vs being diagnosed with a disease.
There must be a reason to focus on one or the other.
— Harry Hindu
Quoting Fooloso4
If the reasons are different, then what is it that is shared by the extremes to say that they are close to each other?
That is not always the case. You are conflating an ideal with reality. The fact of the matter is that prejudice has not been eliminated. A white man in the US will not experience this discrimination when buying a house or applying for a loan or applying for a job or being stopped for a motor vehicle check.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The banning of books is a topical example. "Cancelling" is another. Restrictions on speech.
Yes, but I don't think that is what "experience" means.
I don't follow. How is being on the receiving end of such discrimination not an experience of discrimination?
I don't experience myself that way, it is just an event. I know this seems to trivialize discrimination, but there is a distinction to be made between things that happen and my experience of the world.
I would make the distinction between what is experienced, in the sense of what happens to someone, and how it is experienced, in the sense of how one responds or is affected you what happens. Both the what and the how are part of experience.
As a social being I understand that others see me as a type. I know others may see me as a type. But I do not experience the world as a type. I am not really disagreeing with you, but I think experience is mostly how I see the world, not just how I am treated as a type.
I agree. My brother and I may experience the same event differently.
Quoting Jackson
And yet, how I am treated will influence how I see the world.
Yes, not disagreeing. But just because others treat me as type 'white male' does not mean I must treat myself that way.
Understood.
Quoting Jackson
Bringing this back to your OP, the assumption addressed in the article is that we can only see things according to our 'type'. It strikes me as stereotyping in an attempt to overcome stereotyping.
Yes. Imagine being in a philosophy class and constantly hearing, why are we studying dead white European males?
But that's not a black man or white man experience per se. It is a human experience of finding yourself in an environment that is hostile to you based on the differences of skin color. I'm sure a white man's experience will be like a black man's experience depending on where they are. Any human is capable of feeling discriminated against. It just depends on your skin color and the environment you find yourself in.
Quoting Fooloso4
You said,
Quoting Fooloso4
I asked what was different about the reasons and you give me the ways in which the extremes exclude others, not the reasons they do so. Both extremes are the same in their reasons and in how they implement them. Hate and ignorance are the reasons of both extremes. They implement their hate and ignorance by banning books, canceling each other and restricting each other's speech.
To go back to your original point, which is a good point, say I am a white male. Then I can say that I have the epistemological experience of a white male with sample size n=1. If I am 100% white, then that means I have no epistemological experience of a black male (sample size n=0). In other words, in my case, I wouldn't claim to know what it is like to have the "experience" of a black male. However,
how can any person claim to speak/have the authority to speak for "white males" even if they are white, because as far as I know, nobody has memories of multiple lives? Now, this gets tricky. Say someone is a half white and half black male. Can they claim to have a white male experience and a black male experience? Or is the usual white experience also defined in terms of the exclusion of the experiences of other groups.
I think the idea of someone/something having an "X perspective" is tricky and fuzzy. Perhaps a better, more precise statement is "I am/identify X. I also believe Y." In order to claim that X's have "Y" experience, you have to first create or agree upon a category of X. Then you have to show that a randomly selected sample of them have "Y" experience (or enough of them do to make the statement compelling).
This is why I do not understand things like California's board diversity law (which I guess was just ruled unconstitutional). California tried to pass a law saying that boards of companies in California must have underrepresented minorities on it. Is the assumption that there simply needs to be more underrepresented minorities on boards (why?), or that the underrepresented minorities bring a different perspective (what would this be? Is this on average or overall?)
How about someone on the board who is not a capitalist! That's diversity.
I have no idea what that meant.
Brain fart when typing :)
Got it, thanks!
LOL, now that’s a good point
It’s interesting, because in some ways I think the progressive left would actually consider (Neo)-Nazis to be an oppressed group and an underrepresented minority. Based on the theory, they are so socially stigmatized that they are unable to advocate for themselves politically or even be recognized as a group that needs political or social action taken on their behalf. They are marginalized, face discrimination in hiring, all the usual social justice buzzwords. However, unlike race or sex, they are an unprotected class by the law, so they are also institutionally marginalized as well.
Now, whether or not this is a good thing is a separate issue. But I’ve heard some liberal people say that, for instance, child molesters are an oppressed group.
It makes you wonder if the groups who are able to claim they are marginalized/underrepresented and be taken seriously aren’t quite as marginalized/underrepresented as those who do not have or cannot have a voice…
No one on the left would say such a foolish thing.
You concede you have the experience of being a biped. When you look down you see two legs.
By the same token, though you do not concede it, you have the experience of being a male. When you look down you see testicles and penis.
Again, by the same token, though you do not concede it, you have the experience of being a white person. When you look in the mirror you see a white face, and a white body.
To understand what white, male experience is (supposing your inquiry is in some sense sincere), ask yourself the following questions:
(I don't know where on Earth you live. I can make these questions better if you tell me where you live.)
1. When I look at the political leaders of my country do I see preponderantly bipeds who are white and male? Or do I see preponderantly quadrupeds who are black and female?
2. When I turn on the nightly news to listen to pundits preach and teach, do I see preponderantly bipeds who are white and male? Or do I see preponderantly quadrupeds who are black and female?
3...
I do not see your point.
Good.
Imagine: Tomorrow when you wake up you look at the political leaders of your country and it's all quadrupeds. Tomorrow when you wake up you turn on the nightly news to listen to pundits preach and teach and it's all quadrupeds.
Has your experience of being a biped changed?
The fallacy is that my experience is determined by the way others see me.
I asked a yes-or-no question. Is the answer yes or no?
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
no