Down with the patriarchy and whiteness?
Recently at work, we had an all-staff meeting where the second half was a surprise diversity talk on behalf of management featuring a conference call with two diversity trainers who gave an overview of the upcoming workshop on racism and trauma, and then answered questions. Things got rather contentious in the room after that. One person spoke to all the white people, explaining how it's difficult to acknowledge that their existence as a white person was harmful to others, but this was an important issue to deal with.
The two presenters spoke of causing harm during the workshop. Someone mentioned how we need to be careful not to create a safe space for the oppressors. The goal of the presenters in doing these workshops is to demolish white supremacy, the patriarchy and any other social structures that create inequality. By "white supremacy", they mean whiteness.
So the ethical question here is whether it's a good thing for society to abolish social categories that are rooted in causing harm tho those not belonging to the category. A secondary question is whether this is something a workplace should tackle, even if it does cause "harm" to some.
The two presenters spoke of causing harm during the workshop. Someone mentioned how we need to be careful not to create a safe space for the oppressors. The goal of the presenters in doing these workshops is to demolish white supremacy, the patriarchy and any other social structures that create inequality. By "white supremacy", they mean whiteness.
So the ethical question here is whether it's a good thing for society to abolish social categories that are rooted in causing harm tho those not belonging to the category. A secondary question is whether this is something a workplace should tackle, even if it does cause "harm" to some.
Comments (106)
Why do I doubt that this is what was actually said?
I don't think you made it up, but I'm suspicious that although that may have been the message you took away, it was not the one that was intended, or the only (or best) interpretation of whatever literal words the speakers used.
At least I hope so.
The person said that as a white person — that their existence was harmful to others, and this was a hard realization to deal with, but it was important in order to get rid of those bad things about oneself. I also know that this person is a big proponent of this sort of thing (whiteness being a bad thing).
This was said in the context of several people addressing the white members of the meeting, and the fear over creating an "unsafe" environment. Also, the White Fragility book is being circulated, which may have some insightful things to say about race, but it also does kind of state things in a way that being white is harmful, or at least the review summaries I've read give that impression. But "whiteness" here means a social construction, which is another question this sort of diversity workshop brings up.
I would hope not.
:yikes:
However, I have witnessed otherwise professional minority women, profess much the same view. "Anyone other than another old white male"... <--------------that was one opinion about the possibility of electing Bernie Sanders as president.
:yikes:
This is obviously problematic. But can't we view it as a pendulum type shift? Surely, we can admit that white males have had a massive impact on world history for the last couple hundred years. If society is a mess, who else to blame but those in power (yes, this is rather limited thinking)? While the quote above is BS, it is better than what many women and minorities had to deal with until very recently (or still deal with - and I say "better" because there was still a room full of white employees)...so I just take the hit for now and hope rational minds win out after the persecuted get to persecute for a while.
That's too bad. I've quite a large number of black friends, loved ones, and family members who find it rather odd when white people act more offended by white privilege and racism than they themselves do. Of course, there need to be some major changes... and things change slowly. But...
"Whiteness as a bad thing" is a horribly racist sentiment. One need not blame all white people for the fact that being white had - unbeknownst to many until recently - certain accumulated advantages in American and world society/history, as a direct result of many many racists being in power for a very long time.. Most... certainly at one time. That is not unique to white people. There are still plenty more racists to be rooted out, including white ones.
However, if one frames the situation as such that all white people are being punished, in a certain sense, for things that only the racist white people have done and do, then any and all well intended attempts to affect the right kinds of change will fail, because the attempt ostracizes and vilifies the white people who are not racist. In addition, it pours gasoline on the fire of paranoid white racists who already think that many minorities are out to get them... that all the minorities are racists just like they are!
Guess what?
Many non white people are racist too!
But... NOT ALL.
How about we 'persecute' the right people... and those, like myself, will be glad to join in. Persecute me for things that other whites have done and/or are doing... and you too(whoever 'you' may be) are guilty of the exact same fallacious thoughts as other racists.
Not all blacks are the same aside from being black. The same holds good for all ethnicities.
It would be better to not have persecution. That won't remedy the injustices of the past, or make current injustices any better.
Indeed. Misguided to say the least...
Some minorities in the meeting were expressing concern that they were going to be subjected to this discussion because white management decided that it needed to happen. I don't know who all was consulted or pushing for this, but if it's just some of the white people, and they form the large majority in an organization, then you are putting the minority employees in an uncomfortable position as well as all the other white people who didn't ask for it. It's real easy to see how this turns into an us versus them.
It does very much sound like that, but to be fair to that position, what is being argued is that the social construction of whiteness as a category is what's been historically racist, and people born into majority white societies implicitly absorb those views when adopting that category. It actually applies to everyone in the society in a way, since the terms white, black, red, yellow, people of color, minority, etc. can all be understood as part of the racial hierarchy society tries to place everyone into.
What's not being said is that people of European descent are harmful simply from having ancestors from that continent. It's similar to the argument that gender is constructed around males getting preferential treatment, while sex is a biological reality, not the gender roles society assigns.
There is a very very real argument to be made about such white people who take it on themselves to express what they view to be the problem and what they view to be the solution to the historical affects/effects of systemic racism... including white privilege. In fact, to do such a thing, without careful consultation from those you purport to be speaking on behalf of, especially when they are there - in the room - ... well... that's just taking white privilege a bit farther. It is to employ it... in the face of attempting to resolve it.
:brow:
I would be willing to wager that those people do not have many black friends, loved ones, and/or family members with whom they have meaningful substantive discussions about the issue itself... for if they did, they would know better than to approach it without careful consultation, and they would know better than to frame the discussion as they did.
That's horrible HR... fucking horrible.
I don't buy that reasoning at all. It's akin to saying that simply because one talks in terms of different races, that one absorbs racist tendencies, thoughts, and/or beliefs. It can be true... but I am living proof that it is not always so, despite having a number of self-professed racists in my outer family circle to this very day...
And I've not gone against those views as a rebellious cause at all...
I just simply always knew that they were wrong, probably as a direct result of having close friends and loved ones throughout my life that were/are black.
Only for those folk who already think in fallacious ways... all white people... all black people... etc.
The beginning of ending racism must include acknowledging individual differences between people of the same race.
Have you consulted any of your black friends/coworkers about the uneasiness of the meeting? Like... What the fuck was that?
Well no, but management went into crisis mode after the meeting and had an intense meeting, followed by drinking, so I heard.
Yeah...
Hopefully, they will take a few months or more to actually do a bit of research and consultation with the right sorts of people, and perhaps hire someone in a better more well informed position to help the morale at your place of employment.
Prove that one is not part of the problem, by not being a part of the problem. That, of course, requires knowing what the problem is. Walking in another's shoes requires careful deliberate consultation with another about another's life.
I agree. But having no persecution seems impossible (won't many people feel persecuted no matter what?). Isn't Nelson Mandela like the only example in human history of the persecuted simply asking for no persecution? Don't get me wrong, his behavior was incredibly admirable and that is definitely how we should all view these situations...but historically, we all suck at it.
Quoting creativesoul
You are right that lumping all white people is the same type of problem as lumping all black people (or women or whatever). But I will also point out that being told I am responsible for all of mankind's suffering, isn't nearly as bad as being denied employment, education, or rights. I think you fear that these ideas will come to dominate society (and then could become a problem - whether de facto or de jure) . Wouldn't that be an incredible historical precedent? If a country that is mostly white voted to limit the rights of white people...I am not saying it is impossible, but I am not worried.
That's not a worry of mine. My worry is that the root problems underlying racism will continue unabated if we approach this with the same fallacious thinking that constitutes the problem. All racism needs to be corrected. One cannot correct it if one uses it.
Wait, won't the root problems always exist? If we don't tribalize over race, won't it just be something else? Religion, nationality, gender, politics, and sports teams all have the potential to foster this mentality. Heck, I used to know a Navy seal that told stories of picking fights with those "jarheads" (Marines).
Life has NOT convinced me that most people care put in the effort to do the reasoning you are referring to. So we often have to take roundabout routes instead of a straight line.
Quoting creativesoul
This makes me think of, "violence can stop violence, but violence can never create lasting peace". This seems absolutely true and seems the same type of statement that you are making (do you agree or is it different for some reason?). However, does this really teach us to never stop violence with violence? Notice it does not, as immediate violence must often be met with immediate violence for short term well-being. One will not consider long term well-being when they do not even have it in the short term.
I will not go as far as saying "we should use racism to combat racism"...but since I have not seen any great examples as to how to end racism, I am not immediately offended by the attempt.
Will people always devalue other humans based upon insufficient evidence and irrational reasoning?
Probably.
That doesn't mean that we ought not do everything we can do to eliminate such.
Right?
:brow:
I think the irony here is that their insistence that their “whiteness” is harmful is itself a form of white supremacy. They see themselves and their “whiteness” as a force supreme and primary to other similar qualia. So it’s taking white supremacy and attempting to run with it in another direction.
I think in a way it was good that this was put out in this form, rather than simply being implicit. Because then it can be dealt with. I have sympathy for that feeling and if I'd been black, I'd probably feel that way at times. But if that is a position. IOW considered a factual statement, in its universal, general form, then there is no discussion.
There is no reason to have a discussion with someone whose existence is pernicious.
That means it was better they did not exist.
Improving that person's behavior does not change the fact that they exist.
So, it doesn't fit with teambuilding/development.
Anyone who assumes that and considers it a fact and a basis for a meeting is confused, about themselves, because the only thing a white person can do with that is feel permanent guilt and shame or end their existence. It is not a basis for improving things.
I tend to think the focus here to ‘combat’ or even ‘end’ racism is misguided. The theoretical aim of the workshop is to increase ‘awareness’ of minority experience - it’s just poorly executed, or poorly understood by the facilitators.
What I mean by ‘minority experience’ is basically an experience of humility, or devalued conceptual identity that is common to minorities. The resistance to it is normal, but the capacity to experience this kind of humility is important to understanding the subjective experience of racial disadvantage, even when active discrimination does not occur.
What if the participants decided, rather than resist and deflect by blaming managers or the decision-makers, to ‘take the hit’ and experience the humility and sense of persecution that comes with their conceptual identity being devalued. “I am harmful to minorities for no other reason than that I am white.” Forget the question of whether or not this is accurate, and just go with the affective experience of humility and guilt that comes from attributing significance to the thought itself, and the impact of cognitive dissonance it creates in relation to how you see yourself.
Now, let’s change the conceptual identities: “I am harmful to whites for no other reason than that I am black.” What I understand from the expressed experiences of minorities (particularly here in Australia) is that this fairly closely matches the information they receive from the sum of their everyday interactions with our shared conceptual systems.
It’s not anything one can isolate as active or conscious discrimination - rather it’s the little things that add up: the flash of body language, sideways glance or facial expression that we hardly realise we’re even doing, that we may suddenly be conscious of and chastise ourselves for, then dismiss as too small to be noticed. These little interactions are felt more than consciously noticed, but they all inform our shared conceptual systems, in particular the affective response we have to our conceptual identity: the value and significance we attribute to who we are.
So the behaviour we understand to be ‘racism’ or ‘injustice’ is not what the workshop would be trying to address, in my view. Perhaps people shouldn’t get so defensive.
This reminds me of the author of the webcomic Sinfest, who since 2011 has turned it into an author tract for his particular bizarre form of SWERF 'n' TERF radical feminism, one aspect of which appears to be the belief that there is no such thing as a male ally. Which then raises the question of what the author thinks he himself is? He seems to be riddled with shame and guilt, from what we've seen of his literal author avatar in the comic, so maybe he thinks that he really isn't a male ally, because as a male he cannot be, but he's nevertheless trying anyway? (And rather poorly, as he dismisses the views of women who disagree with him as just them being brainwashed by the patriarchy, rather than honestly listening to what they have to say about their own lived experience as the type of person he claims to be defending).
I sort of think of it this way.
Let's say there's a woman who has been sexually abused by men. She distrusts men. She feels like there is something wrong with them in general.
Well, shit, who wouldn't have those feelings and there are, of course, certain aspects of truth in there.
I haven't the slightest issue with her feelings and attitudes. I hope they can evolve over time and her emotions can begin de-universalizing. But I have no schedule for her and if her abuse was long term or extremely violent, jeez, I just hope she takes care of herself and if hating men gets her through the day in part, well, go for it.
But I can't have a meeting with her based on my existence is damaging. And really, why would she want to have a meeting with me. There is no point to that meeting. We can't rationally discuss a solution to my no longer existing. If I think so, then I should quit that job and if I can't isolate myself from women entirely, I should commit suicide. If she thinks so, then there is no point in discussing it with me. That would be doing harm to her.
So any meeting where the assumption is one party should not exist is a ridiculous meeting. Or where one party is considered damaging to life, per se.
Someone should also have offered the white person who thinks that their whiteness is harmful to others a cyanide pill and advised them to "do the right thing".
I thought that this kind of nonsense was quarantined in institutions of "higher learning". Sadly, it appears that the disease has followed graduates out into their places of employment. (I gather that you work at a NGO or a non-profit. Most capitalists, a cursed lot, wouldn't waste company time on this crap.).
This is an interesting point, and there was an incident in the meeting where one minority person had to wait a bit to be able to have their say, so another minority called out the white people for that as a point of hypocrisy. But my interpretation was that it was because he was on the other side of the room. And there was a white woman who had to wait as well, but for some reason that didn't count.
So then all the white people started immediately pointing out whenever a minority had something to say right way. Which prompted a third minority person to say that the whole thing was silly, and to realize that minorities have a conditioned response to interpreting things that way.
Who knows the truth of that. There was a separate meeting where the female manager got angry because the males on the phone didn't let her interrupt them, but they did let another male interrupt. So was that sexism, did they not hear her (his voice was deeper and a bit louder), were they not ready to be interrupted? Who the fuck knows. My problem is the automatic assumption of sexism or racism in these situations where you really don't know someone's intention.
Another thing that bothers me with this is so what if strangers glance at you sideways or move a little out of the way? It's not entirely unique to minorities. I've had women cross the street when they saw me. Maybe it was because I was male. Maybe it was because they needed to be on the other side. Who knows. Should it be something to get upset about? Certainly random strangers have given me weird or grumpy looks or turned away when I tried to say hi on occasion. Again who knows why. Does it matter?
There's a clear difference between someone spitting on you and calling you a racist, sexist, homophobic word, and someone moving out of their way or looking at you wrong. It's just a fact of life that not everyone is going to be pleased to see you, for whatever reason, which could be many. So should we be that sensitive about everything?
I could be missing out on the bigger picture, if all the little things daily add up to a clear pattern that I don't experience. But part of me is like what the fuck can you really expect of people?
A quintessential bitter crank comment. Love it.
That is correct, but it was only one person, they're not upper management. And the two diversity trainers didn't say that. What they said is we all have our own lived experiences, and if you don't have the lived experience of whatever marginalized group, then you don't know what that's like to be that group.
Your workplace is imperfect, and your boss's mind is imperfect.
http://www.reddyworks.com/the-conduit-metaphor/original-conduit-metaphor-article
The idea being that we conceive of language as containing information. We put ideas in language, send the language like a container for language to the other person and they unpack it (hence conduit). That this model underlies a lot of our metaphors and hence assumptions about language and at best this is limiting, at worst misleading.
You are suggesting that the workers take the idea about white people as eliciting truth or information rather than containing, and move forward in a charitable outlook, using this experience as part of their own growth.
Lovely.
And since they are forced to participate, most likely, I think this is a good suggestion.
My disagreement comes in for a couple of reasons: 1) the idea that white people per se do harm, iow by existing they do harm, is coming from employers. The employers have power over those employees and already are enacting something that parallels what minorities go through. It would be one thing if in an early part of a confrontation or dialogue with a black person, say, this idea came up. Here the white person has the option to leave and can also take the statement as expressive, as eliciting, much more easily. Well, this guy is talking to me, so let's see where there goes. The context can have an implicit, there is more going on here, and since I am talking to you, having a discussion, I likely also have other ideas - such as that this need not be permanent. Workplaces passing memes is both a situation of power imbalance and a context where things are to be taken literally. IOW they function along the lines of what Reddy is saying is a limited view of communication. It would be confused to take them as eliciting experiences. And what they are doing is wrong, even if they have good intentions, if they have them. A lot of people confuse guilt with good intentions. 2) a couple of reactions can take place at once. One reaction can be to the meme as it is presented and as presented by a not fully competent place of employment. The other reaction can be a making the best of it and following what you are suggesting. IOW the person can both react extremely negatively to what an employer is doing AND also participate in the mandatory dialogue considering the information as a useful trigger. It's not either or, but kudos to you for coming up with a way to, I think, add in an extra way to learn from the experience.
I think the contexts of these ideas are very important. See my post at the end of page 1 and then the one just before your post to see some of my thinking on this.
I was once in a position where I was at a workshop as part of staff development. There was a workshop leader who was teaching us about the symptoms and experience of those who had undergone sexual abuse as children. She was a radical feminist (as were many on the faculty, that is my peers, and said she was going to use gender specific pronouns. Perps would be referred to as he, victims as she. She knew as a professional in the field that either of those pronouns could well not be the case, and in fact my personal experience was the precise opposite, my own childhood experience. I knew there was one more person in the room who the presented form was not correct for. I came very close to confronting her because, of course, she kept asking people what they were feeling (lol). But I think I rightly sussed out that there really was only so deep emotional feedback would be welcomed - I confirmed this later when I spoke to her and my supervisor privately.
If attendance was optional, she can go ahead and decide to run her workshops however she likes and it was clear there was a political bent to her approach, and yes, I am aware that males are much more likely to be perpetrators and females are more likely to be the victims. But since we had to attend these meetings, and really it is not their business what we have personally experienced - iow I chose to explain the problem by referring to my own case rather than simply in the abstract - she needed to respect our possible situations and use non-gender specific language.
I went one to take what I could from the workshop and set aside the rest. But I also found working at the institution impossible in the long run, partly around issues like this, and despite my considering myself pretty damn feminist and not just 'for a guy'. And heck, I even consider that more or less ok. The amount of professional places of work where women get treated as second class citizens vastly outweighs the opposite. I don't really begrudge them having the few exceptions they have. I don't think it's ideal, but things do not even out all of a sudden everywhere at once.
But it was never a real dialogue with me. It looked like a real dialogue, but it wasn't.
(and just to add to the problems, the faculty and the workshop leader interpreted politically active 'problem' students as showing signs of having been abused. Hence their objections to this or that policy or staff person started being classed as symptoms. This I attacked openly in the meetings. But that's a tangent. Imagine a workshop designed to help teachers deal with students who are sexually abused ending up making the faculty treat valid political positions as symptoms! And even if they were right, in some cases, I couldn't see how being nice and condescending (inside) helped the students. A rational discussion of their complaints, reform demands and suggestions seems vastly better than secretly seeing them as sick. ah, well.)
But anyway, despite the bulk of my reaction being on my disagreement, I thought you made an excellent point in a clear way.
*edit - just found out the situation was not as polarized as I understood it to be from the OP. But I think the issue was still worth diving into under my misunderstanding of the specific case.
Does supremacy = majority? Were they aware that there are simply more whites than blacks and that it would be logical that more whites would be in positions of power than blacks? There is simply a larger pool of potential workers that are white and trying to hire an equal number of blacks would be difficult and misrepresenting the local population. What exactly are they advocating? Genocide?
I wonder if China and African countries hold these types of meetings in their workplaces. Americans are so stupid.
Guaranteed that no one who is part of a diversity training program said this
I didn't say they were, did I now? I said one person in the room said it. A white employee. A lot of contentious things were said by different employees. The two diversity trainers were just stating what the focus of the worksop would be and their experience as trainers, and then were open to questions, and that's when things got interesting.
Pretty much that was laid out in the intro, and majority means any group that has power over other groups. So you could be in the majority in some cases, and the minority for others. The stated goal is to move toward an equal society with no groups in power.
But our focus is to be race.
That's not what majority means; nor supremacy.
To be more precise, the explanation was that majority populations for things like race, gender and orientation have had the power to oppress the other groups, and setup society to benefit the majority more so than others. However, the majority tends to not recognize how things continue to be that way, so it can be uncomfortable for the majority to confront the accounts of lived experience of discrimination form the groups not in power.
Although majority more applies to race than it does patriarchy, since roughly same number of men and women. However, for a trans person ...
This ‘permission to be offended’ situation is damaging to unleash onto a work environment. It sounds like they were trying to do too many things at once, and their approach seemed to demonstrate fear on the part of the facilitators more than anything. It’s sounds like an opportunity to create a more inclusive work environment has gone begging here.
On the other hand, this reminds me of those ‘marriage counselling’ sessions you see in movies, where the counsellor has clearly decided who’s the victim and who’s the villain, and effectively facilitates a full-scale, one-sided attack. It’s a scene portrayed specifically from the POV of the villainised hero/heroine, to engage the viewer’s sympathy and support. People tend to see only their own pain, loss and humiliation, particularly in emotionally-charged situations that are facilitated by deliberately disconnected, impartial parties. Your frustration is valid, but I tend to take a one-sided account of such an emotionally-charged situation with a pinch of salt. I’d be interested to hear how minority participants felt about the sessions, particularly if they corroborate your evaluation of certain discussions.
Quoting Marchesk
I think the fact that you don’t have a clear prediction of motivation for their response to you is at least part of the difference. When it happened, you clearly noticed - it was unusual enough to warrant your attention. Can you imagine if it wasn’t so unusual? If it was such a commonplace occurrence that it no longer deserved your conscious attention? And if you’d worked out the most likely reason common to all of these occurrences - even if it was simply the fact people think you look hideous (hypothetically speaking)? Then should it be something to get upset about? Would you get upset anyway?
What about if your workplace gave you permission to be offended by it? Would it matter then if all, most or even ANY of those occurrences happened at work? To be honest, probably not. Something that has been niggling away at your subconscious, quietly frustrating your efforts to feel like you matter, building tiny, insignificant experiences on top of each other - that something is suddenly validated as ‘worth being offended at’ by those in your life who appear to have the most power - your employer. Does that matter? How do you think you would you read your ‘majority’ coworkers’ frustration at this news?
Quoting Marchesk
If someone being spat on or called racist words was occurring in your workplace, that would warrant a different response by management than a diversity workshop, don’t you think?
Quoting Marchesk
It sucks that you felt villainised. It’s a crap feeling, but it’s one that some people experience every time they walk out the door. Be thankful that you can post your frustration here and almost guarantee sympathy and support - that your experience won’t be trivialised as being overly sensitive about something that isn’t that big of a deal.
I'm questioning where the line is between clear discrimination, and inferred discrimination because of all the little things. As I said, one minority person in the meeting did say regarding the being ignored incident that people with those experiences are conditioned to interpret things that way, and the white response to immediately try and recognize them after that was the wrong way to go about this whole thing. Probably for several reasons, one being that the white people are acting too anxious not to appear racist, which doesn't accomplish anything.
But I'm mostly annoyed with the white people who spoke up during that meeting. This was the only minority statement (the one about the person being ignored being hypocritical on the white people's part). But I think perhaps this person was annoyed with the meeting in general, and just was expressing their frustration, and were using that as an example.
Quoting Possibility
Yeah, I don't think they were quite prepared for the employee response. But maybe next time.
A different kettle of fish.
Don't think that that counts as racism. Fairly common in the military. They all have nicknames for one another. Terms of endearment. Trust me on that. Those guys are bands of brothers. Brothers in arms. That's bestowing impressive amounts of trust upon another human being.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
A bit more nuanced in some ways, perhaps... Very similar to what followed, as copied below...
Quoting ZhouBoTong
In certain situations this holds good. I would agree.
The above seems somehow amiss. As if all well-being is thought of in both long and sort term, as if there is always a difference between the two. As if one cannot think of long term stability while in times of strife.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Ending racism is the goal. We can use racism without being racist. We can use racism without succumbing to the same types of irrational thinking. We can use racism without being guilty of devaluing an entire group of people based upon the color of their skin alone. Being racist is judging an entire group of people based upon the racial category in a very specific way; the devaluation of the group and all individuals within it simply because they are part of the group.
We can use racism to show it's failings and unnecessary harm and long term damage that ensues from it... all the while... not being racist.
Like Mandela, and alluding to what you mentioned earlier regarding using violence to stop violence...
I too find that there are situations and circumstances where violence is necessary. I do not find that it is necessary to end racism by being racist or by further perpetuating that sort of thought and belief about others and/or the subsequent following resultant racist behaviour...
Violence is not necessary here and now...
We are all directly and indirectly influenced by virtue of being born into a society. We all adopt our first ideology and/or basic world-view. This is true of everyone. Everyone deserves a certain modicum of respect and value simply because they are human, and we are all interdependent social creatures by our very nature. We all live in a community where each of us can have some degree of affect/effect upon others within that community, whatever it's scope.
One who does not genuinely care about another's life, well-being, happiness, and/or general livelihood cannot be granted tremendous power over that person, for they cannot be trusted to act on their behalf by keeping their best interest in mind.
You'd be surprised. Woke capitalism is good money.
I also came away with the same impression as Maw and that was the source of my suspicion earlier. I’m glad to hear that wasn’t the official message of the meeting but just someone’s interpretation of it, and thank you for clarifying that.
Straight majorities and masculine majorities exist.
this is simply untrue, and by coincidence is racist, it would be like pulling aside a group of black people and telling them that their existence, as black people was naturally harmful to white people. For something to be racist it does not have to be doe against a minority, just against a person based only on their skin color, racism can affect white people and sexism can affect men. And even beside that point a white person is not naturally racist and only causes harm to black people by accident, coincidence or a mere mistake, assuming that this person is not racist.
I probably phrased it in a more provocative way that sounded like that.
Anyway, I'm not sold on everything the actual diversity trainers said, but they were certainly respectful, and said we all have our own lived experiences, we need to be aware that people have different ones.
I don't agree with her obviously, but to be charitable, maybe she meant that the racial category of being white is founded on racism, and those implicit biases of that categorization influence people in society to think in biased ways. therefore all the subtle discrimination another poster brought up, that white people aren't even aware of doing. So she, identifying as a white person, embodies those racist assumptions.
Of course it's society that created and maintained the racial categories, and we're all just born into it, so it's not like you can just call yourself ex-white or pinkish and have anyone else accept that. I think that's what the criticism of whiteness is about, not the amount of pigmentation in your skin, or what continent your ancestors came from.
Well that would be grouping someone by the color of their skin and telling them they are bad for something they didn't do and have no effect over, so it's pretty racist.
We don’t like the implication that we’re being ‘racist’ - as I said, it sounds like the concept of ‘racism’ as we collectively understand it was not being addressed in the workshop, but rather an attempt to understand the subjective experience of minorities. I think there’s something about the experience of humiliation and guilt that we’re unwilling to openly express it, too - particularly in a litigious society, or in a workplace where admitting to ‘feeling bad about it’ could compromise one’s strategic political position within the company. To ‘be seen’ as NOT doing what is implied as ‘bad’ seems like a natural response, given the circumstances. I think the most difficult thing about doing this in the workplace is that, even though the managers are not facilitating it, the fact that they’re present doesn’t eliminate the work politics - I think perhaps that’s more what was going on here than a general response to this kind of intervention.
Quoting Marchesk
I don’t know - I think as ‘white people’ that expressing this feeling of humility is important. I see humility as simply a recognition that where we are is not where we believe we could be. It’s part of life, like pain and loss, and more of a sign that we’re making progress than you might think. Experiences like pain, loss and humiliation are shared experiences of human beings - regardless of whether we’re rich or poor, black or white, minority or majority, we ALL have these experiences. What gets our attention is seeing these experiences in the lives of people we’ve been led to believe DON’T suffer like we do: celebrities, the rich and powerful, the majority, etc. The sense of schadenfraude this realisation elicits is just mis-conceptualised - it’s actually compassion: ‘suffering with’. It’s quite normal to feel a sense of ‘joy’ that we’re not the only ones who feel humiliated by the cognitive dissonance between our perception of the ‘racial situation’ and the experienced reality. I don’t want to make assumptions, but I think perhaps this might be the main reason the minorities were mostly silent - and the one comment you mention may have simply been someone conscious of an imbalance in contributors and trying to make sense of it.
I think when it’s done properly, reaching this point of shared humility allows us to see the problem as one of shared conceptual systems that we can effectively rewrite by listening to each other with our defences down.
I am questioning what that would look like?
Is the person that said (something like) "all white people are harmful just for being white" thinking right? Shouldn't they be killing themselves if they actually believe that? And yet the type of person to spew that garbage would always see themselves as part of the solution, not the problem (despite using words that define themselves as THE problem). What are the chances of straightening out that type of thinking? Can someone like that be convinced to think something else? Probably. But will they actually be thinking better? Understanding better? Or are they just blindly believing the "right" thing now?
Well said.
I fear your reaction here is exactly that they were describing.
Usually, a very literal account is in play with these sort of statements. What does it mean for a white person to harm other racial minorities? How does the particular social construction of “whiteness” manifest? In the existence of white people, that’s to say, their particular existence in a social context of white supremacy is how these particular harms are occurring to non-white minorities. Who are actors of harm in these situations? Existing white people (amongst many other too, but here we are speaking of harms formed by a presence of white people and the social context of their supremacy).
White people have difficult recognising what their own existence involves, which I suspect the diversity training is talking about here. Can one recognise the harms committed by the existence (or rather presence if you prefer) of white people under a white supremacy? Even if it might be no particular fault of their own.
Economic inequality, for example, is a harm towards a racial minority. It is present in the existence of white people in the given white supremacy. Yet, it was never the fault of the white baby born into wealth. It’s not really even the fault of a given white man, certain conditions excepting. But it is nevertheless a harm formed in the existence of the social order and its people. It does not have to be intentional. In some cases, it doesn’t have to any specific action you took. We are born into a social context, our existence has a significance beyond what intend or even do ourselves. A person might not be morally blame worthy in these situations (e.g. a white person born into a rich white family), but it is still an existence with significance .
The more personal level of harm, in which a white person might be morally blameworthy, also tends to run concurrently. In our society it is highly likely an individual has engaged in some instance of racial harm on an individual level, some feeling of disgust or disrupt there, a dismissal there, an off colour joke there, some sort of assumed expectation of “whiteness” at some point. To insist one couldn’t have been anything of those things, that their existence they did not ever engage in any of those harms seems extremely unlikely to say the least. The idea seems to be to put one (the existence of a white person), beyond any possibility of engaging in those harms.
It’s ever unsettling truth in the context of these race issues: “whiteness” is the villain. On some level recognising issues of white supremacy means taking issue with many aspects of how white people exist, including some base assumptions they make about their own identity. It means understanding one’s group, oneself, to be villainous on one level or another. Particularly difficult because it's running headfirst into some of the most basic assumptions about individuals we make in our culture. We tell ourselves everyone is a free blank slate, without relations or impacts upon others unless we choose it.
That seems fair.
Quoting Possibility
I like this bit, but unfortunately, I don't see humility being particularly valued by society (we don't even demand the appearance of humility from our leaders anymore). Humility is just taken as a lack of confidence. So, while I get your point (and agree), I would expect to see some humility in pop culture before I see it becoming a norm. Heck, if we look at anyone who considers themselves to be "woke" - even those who do somewhat understand the minority experience have no idea what humility is.
Quoting Possibility
I don't quite get this part? For me "take the hit" was just accepting that things have been favoring white males for a long time so we should accept that the pendulum may have to swing the other way before we get to the right place. I don't need to "learn" through an affective experience that black people have been given a hard time in America/Australia...that's what history books are for (I entirely understand that most people need to "feel" something before they "understand" it...I have found that I do not experience emotions with the same intensity as most, so maybe that explains my confusion here).
Quoting Possibility
Yep. Sounds crappy. But I feel that I can understand this without doing the thought experiment you described above...but maybe it is more important for other people.
Quoting Possibility
That was pretty much my whole point. I wasn't really disagreeing with the people that said the diversity training was messed up, just suggesting that being called bad names is nothing compared to actual persecution.
I agree, this is a problem. Why do we have to wait to be shown the value of humility in pop culture before we can see the value for ourselves? It’s a task for philosophers, I would think.
Not everyone can understand the effect of humility at this level of awareness, so I think it does certainly help for people to experience it in order to relate, not just to the fact that black people have been given a ‘hard time’ (which they can certainly get from history books), but understand that this continues to impact on their conceptual identity, even when there is no active or conscious discrimination taking place.
It's also because calling anyone a villain and saying their identity is villainous puts them on the defensive and sounds like an attack. It could be framed differently than an identity issues. Saying there's institutional racism many white people aren't aware of, and here's the minority experience of that doesn't make it personal identity crisis thing for white people. Rather it's something that needs to be reformed in society.
But I understand your point.
That all depends on how we group, or categorize, people. What do blacks want that would be different than what whites want? Don't we all want freedom and happiness? If we all want the same thing then why are we separating ourselves into different groups as if we want different things? It shouldn't matter what color the other person's skin is. It would only matter what our goals as human beings are.
Sure. But let's say for sake of argument, since I don't know what to think about all this, that black people feel like the white people want them to act white and lose their identity in order to be accepted. That the white notion of equality is a homogenization of race that conforms to whatever norms whites already have.
If that's so, then it's a legitimate concern and impediment to the goals we all agree on as humans. We're just not agreeing on how to get there. Diversity might be the better road than conformity.
The majority doesnt necessarily oppress the minority. A constitutional republic, like in the U.S., is designed to protect the minority from majority oppression, unlike a full-blown democracy. There are plenty of blacks in positions of power (police officers, judges, etc.,) that could change my life for the worse they wanted to.
Minority groups can have power over the majority.
Power has nothing to do with majority vs minority. It simply has to do with the resources and skills you have at your disposal vs what others may or may not have.
We can already see how the minorities of both race and gender have the power to frame whites as evil oppressors. The minorities are dictating the grounds of these conversations. When you have the majority walking on eggshells in order to not appear as bigots, then the minority has successfully gained power over the majority. The minority has Supremacy over the majority's free speech.
But that is what I'm saying. What does it mean to act white or black when there is already diversity of actions and needs and wants within those groups themselves?
This exactly. When I see black people criticize each other for “acting white”, it looks like they’re being racially prejudiced against their own kind. Any way a black person chooses to act is “acting black”, and criticizing them for not conforming to some stereotype of “blackness” is almost as bad as a white person criticizing another white person for “acting black” because they, I dunno, listen to rap and sag their pants and wear gold chains? I don’t even know what the current stereotype is.
Or like how the movie In And Out determined that its protagonist is gay because he meets a bunch of gay stereotypes, without ever asking if he’s attracted to men.
It would look exactly like the right kind of effort. It would result in less people being suspicious of everyone. It would make it virtually impossible for people to be taken advantage of. It would result in much happier, healthier community of interdependent social creatures.
You should try it sometime.
It would be everyone agreeing that one who does not care about the people over whom they wield tremendous power - have absolutely(I do not just throw such words around carelessly either) no business wielding such power.
Only an elected official ought be writing laws in a true representative form of government(purportedly self-directing people).
Power over people is gotten in only one of two ways. It is either usurped or granted by consent. That is me paraphrasing the admirable revolutionary type thinker Thomas Paine.
When the people know that those making the decisions have taken deliberate actions resulting in clear apparent negative consequences for the people, and those same people will not use the power that they have to adress, overturn, redress, and/or otherwise correct the harm, then the people have learned that that power has been usurped.
It would look like exactly the right kind of effort.
You knew I was off base earlier... that I had not correctly understood the work situation. I had thought all along that that someone who said the contentious remark actually was a part of the diversity training team.
That led to things based upon misunderstanding.
My apologies for my part. Reading too much into it. You really never specified. Did you realize that that was unbeknownst to me - to even be a problem - because your replies never objected?
I take back what I said about the quality of the diversity training team. It was based upon my own misunderstanding of the actual situation. My apologies to the team.
I just re-read, and either we cross-posted and you edited to add more to the OP or I have no clue why I was on about...
End racism.
What on earth could be wrong with that as a goal?
Quoting Possibility
So, rather than end racism, you are advocating making everyone suffer from it?
'Misguided', you say? Hmm.
Surely there's a much better way to improve the racial relations in the US aside from glorifying and further perpetuating it's(racism) existence.
Yeah, I should have reread it and changed how it was worded. It kind of makes a difference to how people discuss the issue. There are some things the presenters said that could be controversial, but they didn't say that simply being a white person, or male, or straight, or of one gender was harmful. And I could be misunderstanding what the one employee meant by that.
But mainly I just wanted to discuss the notion of whether there should be an attempt to abolish an identity of a group that has discriminated against other groups. If we say we want to end sexism and create an equal world, thus demolishing the patriarchy, does that entail that males should no longer think of themselves as male? Or that white people should no longer identify as "white"? And if that's so, should "black" and other racial categories also go away?
I did listen to a podcast fairly recently where a feminist was saying the goal of feminism (or a goal of some feminists anyway), was to abolish gender. An ideal world is one in which people don't identify as a certain gender. Yes, the biological reality of sexual differences still exists, but the identity and roles around gender no longer would.
I think that's a pretty controversial and rather strong claim, but it is interesting.
Sounds great.
Quoting creativesoul
Try what? Their are no behavioral instructions above...just results of some behaviors you have not described.
Quoting creativesoul
Sounds good, what would cause this great agreement?
Quoting creativesoul
Good stuff...I might add maintained/inherited...but it still had to be usurped or given in the first place.
Quoting creativesoul
So everyone just needs to act right? I am still questioning how and why that will occur?
Wow - if you really think I’m glorifying racism by what I’m suggesting, then either you haven’t been paying attention, or you’re misunderstanding me.
I’m not advocating making anyone do anything, least of all suffer. We all experience humility, pain and loss anyway - there’s no avoiding that in general. It’s when we have the courage to acknowledge this suffering alongside the suffering of others, without trying to deflect it, attack it or retaliate for it, that we can collaborate on dismantling the social and conceptual structures that perpetuate and contribute to it.
Trying to ‘end racism’ by broadening the concept is not a solution. This is why it’s called a ‘diversity’ workshop, not an ‘anti-racism’ workshop. It doesn’t help to label what they’re trying to reduce with this kind of intervention as ‘racism’. We have to question and critically examine the underlying conceptual structures - the thoughts, beliefs and feelings - that enable these experiences to persist. To do that, everyone should be roughly on the same page:
1. These experiences (whether or not we label them ‘racism’) devalue one’s conceptual identity;
2. We should reduce experiences for each other that devalue one’s conceptual identity.
If they had simply stood up and said, ‘racism is bad’, then everyone would have said ‘they’re not talking to me because I’m not racist’. Likewise, if they had drawn a line in the sand and stated ‘this is racist behaviour, so stop it’, then there would have been plenty of argument against the definition. What they did was create an environment where ‘white people’ could show compassion for their ‘minority’ co-workers by expressing an experience of humility in recognition of the humility that minorities experience every day - regardless of whether or not this humility was caused by the actions of their co-workers.
The implication of ‘racism’ as such seems to have come from responses by several ‘white people’ in the sessions, which led to interpretations that they were overreacting to experiences which shouldn’t be labelled as ‘racism’. I agree that they shouldn’t be labelled as such, but I also disagree with comments that they shouldn’t have expressed their experience of humility as a ‘white person’. It may not have been well-received by their ‘white’ co-workers who may have felt discomfort or resistance at the thought of identifying with that humility, but I’d be willing to bet this expression of compassion would have been felt by their minority co-workers.
For all the animosity it appears to have caused, I think it did establish an environment that made it particularly uncomfortable for people to perpetuate an ‘us vs them’ environment (identifying either as minority or majority), and did so without defining ‘racism’ or singling out specific behaviour to attack or label as ‘racist’. I think those who participated should all be spending some time asking themselves honestly why they were uncomfortable with what was said, as @Marchesk is clearly doing here.
That's the interesting part. People are willing to say all kinds of absurd things in the name of social theory, but seem unwilling to follow those statements to their logical conclusion.
Of course, if you rationalize enough, you can make this sort of thing sound reasonable - that works on anything. Better to just ignore it, though.
Abolishing the identity of a group... whatever that means... does nothing at all to help end male chauvinism, racism, sexism, ageism, etc.
Quoting Marchesk
Abolishing all gender is to impose one's own belief(gender nihilism, if you will) upon everyone else in society. It is an authoritarian style attempt to force everyone to hold the same belief. No different in kind than the oppressive problem it's meant to be correcting.
Different people have different beliefs concerning what's acceptable/unacceptable regarding everyone's behavior. Different people are going to have their own unique reasoning, moral underpinnings, and/or guiding principles for believing whatever they believe, and they will all have shared belief as well. There is so much overlap. We agree on much more than we disagree. Those agreements provide solid footing for substantive communication and/or discussion about how we ought treat others.
That's what underwrites this conversation, no? Racism is about that. Sexism. Ageism. Feminism.
When regarding one's thought and belief about how men and/or women ought act, what duties they ought have, etc., that is their own personal right to believe whatever they want; providing that their right to exercise those freedoms do not knowingly cause unnecessary and demonstrable harm to someone else by doing so.
Not just behaviour... belief. Discussion is how it's started, about universal morality. Universally held/shared moral beliefs... regardless of that which is subject to individual particular circumstances. Common sense agreement upon who ought wield power over people.
You're just not making any sense at all to me. Clearly stating that a goal to end racism is misguided is itself quite the contentious claim. It's false on it's face, no matter what method one employs to meet that goal... diversity training notwithstanding.
Some people do not need diversity training, for they've already had a diverse group of loved ones, friends, and family members for long periods of time. Some of these people find it all rather telling...
Do you have black, asian, latino, and/or an otherwise diverse group of loved ones, family members, and friends? Just curious.
Sounds great...reminds me of Anakin Skywalker's solution to government:
"We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problems, agree what's in the best interests of all the people, and then do it."
What happens when people disagree? I am not convinced that most people will be willing to give up much of their belief systems to focus on what is shared. Jesus, Allah, the Buddha, etc are not shared beliefs. Is it just going to be that easy for people to give them up? Do republicans and democrats in America FEEL like they have anything in common? (I get they are actually rather similar in their governance, but good luck getting either side to admit that).
In a system that is clearly broken in some important respects, it takes more than politicians. Afterall, we already have a bunch of politicians sitting down and discussing the problems, and regardless of who did what and when... regardless of blameworthiness... it is not working.
Particularly in a representative form of government in which the elected officials have voluntarily entered into the duty to act in the best interest of all Americans. When that is just simply not the case, the people themselves must have a say, must be privy to the conversation, must be the oversight committee. The people must be knowledgable about what's really going on, otherwise they are misinformed.
Properly implemented representative governments end up increasing the overall well-being and quality of life of the overwhelming majority of the people. That is clearly not happening to the degree and in the ways that it can and ought be.
The beauty of it all is that there is no need to give up all individual belief. As a matter of fact, there is no need to give up any belief at all in order to rightly assess the commonality, the shared belief that we all have.
Intersectional feminist theory draws from the post-modern idea of "deconstructionism" (see: social constructs). It aims to "deconstruct" the harmful systems (of oppression) that have presumably been responsible for all of forms inequality perpetuation.
Within the informal systems analysis that this perspective generates, demographic identities (abstractly) receive labels like "victim" and "oppressor", and things like "the progressive stack" and "the problem of whiteness" naturally and casually emerge. The problem in this approach, like with most of post-modernism, is that it eschews any idea of objective truth or reality, replacing it with a self-referential spiral that can take people wherever they wish to go. The opening premise that all injustice is the result of social constructs (and the ensuing premises that state races/genders monolithically maintain these constructs) can always be used as a circular appeal to hypothesize about why X person or Y group or Z idea is bad because it has strong emotional and moralistic appeal (and where it becomes a sign of guilt to question the premise).
Ironically, in setting out to eliminate inequality and inter-group prejudice, they foment confusion, anger, and the reciprocation of apparent prejudice (see: why the alt right exists). If it wasn't so insidious and tragic, this would all make for excellent laughing stock...
Not true, the claims at stake are of objective truth, a specific social relation and power. The philosphies grouped as post modernism have never claimed there is no objective truth.
The argument isn't "social constructs" are some instance of a casual force which institutes one specific event over another (such as pressing a button causing a door to open), but referencing the fact our social organisation is formed in a certain way (we have built our society this way, in how we have socially organised), constructed out of the behaviours we do, rather than being an afterthought of some initial state.
I understand your emotional response to the statement in isolation, but you misunderstand why I said it. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t ‘end racism’ as such. My opinion is that declaring the goal of anything to be to ‘end racism’ in an environment that already generally accepts the negative connotations of ‘racism’, establishes a dichotomy of ‘racist/non-racist’ that does nothing to change the situation.
I’m saying that assuming this is the immediate goal of a ‘diversity training’ session - especially by those involved in the session - is misguided, and contributes to an unproductive environment of defensiveness on the part of those who object to the implication that someone here is being ‘racist’. These sessions are about creating opportunities to be aware of, question and challenge any damaging correlations we may still make as a community (not necessarily as individuals) between diversity and value.
Some, as you say, have value systems inclusive of this diversity, while others need such experiences to be sensitively ‘set up’ for them - in diversity training, for instance. Unless you’ve been brought up in an exclusive environment or without a diverse group of loved ones, then it can be difficult to understand what experiences might facilitate some people to challenge their own existing correlations between diversity and value. Stating ‘combating racism’ as a goal would NOT achieve this. Most people with ‘racist’ attitudes have elaborate ‘logical’ arguments to support their beliefs that they conceptualise as ‘non-racist’.
Quoting creativesoul
I’m not American, so these diversity concepts you refer to (and their perceived correlations of value) are not quite the same in my experience. But my mother’s family were minority ‘Eurasian’ in Singapore before moving to Australia to join the minority ‘asian’ population, and my husband’s family moved over as minority southern European ‘migrants’.
So I understand what it’s like to consider myself to have a ‘diverse’ group of loved ones, family members and friends, and yet still recognise the need to challenge my own conceptual correlations between diversity and value that can manifest as ‘racist’ attitudes or behaviour. Humility is a significant part of that process, and in a politicised work environment I imagine that can be a difficult experience.
If you want diversity training to be effective in changing the culture or shared conceptual structures of the group, then your approach needs to ‘normalise’ an experience of humility, and also be inclusive of those who find even the suggestion of value difference to be offensive, as well as those who have quietly or even subconscious ‘racist’ attitudes towards their co-workers.
I've been following this discussion and I'm basically in agreement with you. I just approach the topic from the disability side as opposed to the racial side. I think it could very well be therapeutic for POC/the disabled or who ever is on that panel to share their lived experience in a reasonable, honest way. There are just so few outlets for this type of thing in actual civil life. When it works it can work very well, but I can see how things can get out of hand when you basically have one "teacher" group sharing their lived experience with an outsider group who needs to adopt an attitude of humility.
But I do really like the approach that we're not looking to "end racism" or "end ableism" through this panels or whatnot; the goal is understanding.
You sound like you've been a part of a few of these panels on the racial side, how have they gone in your experience? Do you find that they're achieving their objective? Are there ways that they could be improved?
I am not convinced of this. Historically, it would be difficult to provide evidence. Industrialization has been shown to increase the quality of life for the overwhelming majority, but that is about it. China never "properly implemented representative government" and yet if we compare their lives to one hundred years ago (or even just 50 in China's case), they have improved the quality of life massively for hundreds of millions of people.
Why are the happiest and "most representative" countries typically small, wealthy, and have homogeneous populations? How much does representative government matter when everyone in the country wants the same things?
Why is Russia a corrupt mess no matter what form of government they attempt to enact?
Don't get me wrong...I don't have any ideas for a better government than a representative one...but I don't think the system of government matters as much as the attitudes and desires of the people.
And here is a thought...what if the "beta" type personalities want representation? If I want an extremely humble person who is somewhat uncomfortable in their own skin, because I think this is a useful perspective that should be part of our political process..then I AM OUT OF LUCK. Everyone (ok, maybe 99.8%) running for office has a huge ego. They know the problems and they are the best one to fix them. For example, I like Bernie, but the dude is old as dirt (along with most of the viable candidates and trump). Surely, he could find some 55-60 year old protege that he could back as the next President? Bernie could put in the exact same amount of effort campaigning for that person. If his goal is to change things, then that would seem the best way to accomplish it. But HE is the ONLY one to understand the problems and have the RIGHT solutions...:roll:
What do you mean by "a specific social relation and power"?
If you mean something like "the power of whites", then you're not being specific at all. That said, my point about the post modern rejection of objectivity is meant to convey my criticism that intersectional feminist ideas are entirely bound up in their own starting assumptions, and the untested interpretations people choose to make of them.
For instance, if you would say that it's objectively true that only white people can be racist, and that all white people benefit from white supremacy....
How can I disagree? The way you define racism might make it tautologically true that all white people are racist; and you might get there purely by statistical generalization.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Yes, the goings-on in and of society emerge from the collective sum of the actions that individuals take. But this doesn't amount to anything specific. In fact, it's stupendously vague.
It's like racism, inequality,and suffering are merely abstract artful concepts that get casually bandied into pleasing or evocative statements. There are indeed "constructed systems" in our midst that are related to the statistical disparities we both rebuke, but you need to coherently point them out for us to do anything about them. "Down with patriarchy/whiteness" campaigns don't come with useful or coherent suggestions, and they mostly serve to incite feelings of guilt or anger from those who buy into them, and confusion or resentment from those who reject them.
I understand where you're coming from here. However, if you were to apply this type of thinking within a disability rights perspective the conclusion would be that the existence or presence of able-bodied people are essentially the problem. There's a certain truth to this thinking, but to actually hold it is just toxic. It's toxic psychologically.
"Whiteness" isn't referencing the existence of a person with white skin, but the existence within the social context of white idenity and its relation to opression. The equivalent in disability context is the able-bodied identity and bias.
I also don't think the it's physcholgically toxic to recognise oneself as the villain. All that's being spoken about here is regonising the harm the presence of the oppressive social context has done, and perhaps a specific role they might have played in that. To recognise harm which has been done to someone is not toxic, it just honest.
Toxicity lies in in thinking one cannot have engaged in such harms, the place in which on takes an implict assumption these said harms are something they could not be involved or related to, for they couldn't possibly be commiting or have relation to such terrible harm. This is why, as others have pointed out, approaching this in terms of "ending" all oppression is a bad idea.
Aside from issues of oppession being vast and complex, certainly not endable by a group of people coming to understand the harms which occur, it attracts the oppressor side to notion of being those who never, ever engage or relate to those harms. The result is likely a lot of white people who cannot recognise harms because they are desperate to be people without any connection to such harms.
What on earth?
It's purely a matter of sensible definition, and rightly so.
If it is not the case that a representative form of government, say... like the US... consists entirely of people who willfully, consciously, and/or intentionally take deliberate action to increase the over-all well-being of those over whom they have such power(the citizens)...
...if that is not the case...
...then that is not a representative form of government. Insisting otherwise is nonsense. Calling a government that does not have that distinct character about it, only pays lip-service to it's sole reason for existence as a representative form of government. If it fails to represent the best interest of the overwhelming majority of the people... it is not representative. To say otherwise is nonsense.
All representative forms of government consist entirely of people who are representing the best interests of the overwhelming majority of people(citizens). If a government consists of individuals who are looking out for the best interest of some faceless corporate entity and the decision being weighed ends up being a situation where there is a conflict of interest between the citizens(the overwhelming majority, in this case) and the aforementioned corporate entity, then they must always err on the side of the people.
If it is also the case that their own best interest aligns better with corporate entities, and we can always know that by looking at the relevant 'financial picture'(evidence), then it is also the case that their best interest conflicts with the very people over whom they have been granted power over.
They must err against their own interests(financial, in this case).
This could be said to be a problem, the solution of which is prevention, and it's already built in to the American Constitution. Unfortunately, that language has been ignored for so long now that the sheer number of guilty parties who've knowingly aligned their own interests against the overwhelming majority of Americans is so numerous that it makes it all too easy to keep getting away with it.
I've never claimed that a representative form of government is the only kind that can be accompanied by an increase in the over-all well-being of the society. I'm saying that those results are necessary in order to sensibly say that we have one. It takes a bit more than just an overall improvement in the quality of life of the citizens to count as being a properly implemented representative form of government. That sort of general improvement is true of many different kinds of governments.
Wow, I would think it would be terrible (and possibly impossible) to view oneself as the villain. Aren't we all the protagonists of our story?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Oh, you don't mean the villain. You mean the protagonist must admit that they have flaws. I am good with that.
The word "villain" brings a lot of emotion to a discussion that already has plenty. Won't it be easier for people to admit they have caused harm (which many{most?} are still wholly unwilling to do), than it will be to get people to admit they are "the villain"? Hitler was "the villain" of WW2. Thanos was "the villain" of Avengers. Biff was "the villain" in Back to the Future. That does not mean everyone else involved in those stories was perfect, or that no one else caused harm...but they were not "the villain".
Not impossible, particularly if and/or when 'we' revel in knowingly harming others for no good reason at all. Some folk like to think of themselves as the villain.
Regarding the racism link...
I do not think that everyone who exhibits beliefs and/or behaviours that originally stemmed from racist belief is equal in any other 'racist' way. Sometimes. Sure. Not always though.
Not all sneers are racially motivated. Not all muttering under one's breath is accompanied by racist overtones or has racial undertones. Such charges can be quite misplaced if all one has to go on is muttering and sneering. It could be all about the person's character and very well may have nothing at all to do with race or the color of skin.
We must be very careful who we charge with being racist. Such charges need to be made when it is the case, but sometimes people seem a bit trigger happy, so to speak.
It is not at all uncommon for an adult to learn something new about where a certain phrase originated, and sometimes those origens are questionable. One who finds themselves in such a situation may or may not also have a habit of negatively judging an entire population of people based upon the color of their skin alone. They will however have learned that something they say/do is offensive.
Not all these people are villains, even if they are prima facie evidence of the residual effects/affects of institutionalized racism.
I actually 100% agree with that. I even typed something along those lines, then wasn't sure it fit the points I was making. If we admire villains, then we could see ourselves as such. I like to think that is a very small percent of the population, but I could be way off??
Quoting creativesoul
My thoughts exactly. I think we have gone as far as we can. Thanks for the time.
I don't think there is any difference between the two.
In the stories in which we harm others with our flaws, we are the villains of the piece. We were the one who, in one sense or another, did something were not supposed to or a part of something doing the harm. We never get a pass because "We are not as bad as Hitler, Biff or Thanos" because the harm of another does not take away our own. There are no comparisons to be made, no excuses that we didn't cause as much damage as someone else. I do mean the villain. That's what it is to be flawed in a way which harms others.
You are, for course, right. People don't want to think of themselves as the villain... but they must to recognise the harms committed, otherwise we are just pretending they don't exist.
In race issues, for example, trying to insist racism is just those intentionally racist villains, rather than any of the structural "whiteness" which is no-one's direct action or intention in particular.
No. The context of the harm is also those structural impacts. Sometimes they might even do more damage than someone who is intentionally racist (consider someone born into a structure of poverty vs someone shouting a racist slur). Those structural impacts, with threads interlaced with white identity, are also a villain. If we cannot recognise this, the harm and it ethical significance, that something is there which ought not be or have been done, something not redeemable, not undoable, we are only engaging in a pretence about a problem.
Hmm...
I expected you to at least address what I said...
Ok...
I guess???
Be well. Oh...
And thank you!
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Surely, you are not making such a broad brush stroke here?
"Whiteness" being invoked in racial sensitivity discussions?
First if all it's completely wrong to think, believe, suppose, and/or otherwise imply that all racists are white. Secondly, "whiteness" is the amount of white that something possesses and/or exhibits. The more white something is the brighter the whiteness of the thing.
The whiteness within racism is not a villain when the oppressed is white.
So...
You're not making much sense to me here Willow.
Who said anything about a pass? We are just acknowledging that there are degrees of harm and badness? If I view myself in a light anywhere near to how I view Hitler...I should immediately kill myself. No question about it. Look at the impact he had on the world. If there is any chance of me being that, I should die to eliminate the possibility. What am I missing?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Why can't we say that racism includes those "intentionally racist villains", but it also includes a lot of people who think they are doing good (or acting neutrally) when they are actually causing harm?
Seems more objective and less inflammatory?
If you just replace "villain" with "bad thing", your point is made more clearly.
Definitions of Villain:
1. a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel.
2. a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot.
It's always a person, so structural impacts and identities cannot be villains. Now I get a story could use metaphor to create a character out of an identity or structural element, but that is not what people think when they hear the word.
If you were him you would not view yourself as the villain, so if you were that, you would have no reason - in your own mind, that is - to flip your own off switch.
If "villain" applies to both Hitler and some otherwise well intended all inclusive white person, it's language being misused and/or otherwise abused at best, and intentionally misleading language at worst. Seems to be a textbook example of equivocation. That always indicates self-contradiction somewhere along the logical spectrum.
Rhetorically useful. Moving to some. Convincing to others. Unacceptable to one who demands consistent... and thus clear meaningful terminological use.
Well, Ok, since you asked :smile: . But I think you will find my responses starting to sound repetitive...
And I will have to run after this, so I will respond tomorrow.
Quoting creativesoul
I am not sure you ever gave this definition. I only know that, for you, one indicator of a well functioning representative government is an increase in well being for most people. I would say that is one indicator of ANY well functioning government.
Quoting creativesoul
We can't just say there are levels of representation? I hope we can because otherwise there is no such thing as a representative government because there is no perfectly representative government. Like I said, humility is never represented. Uncertainty is never represented. The idea that there are few "right" answers and that the world is not black and white is rarely represented. Not to mention standard stuff like every single religion, race, or creed that exists in the country.
Sorry, I have to run. I am happy to keep going, but worry we are about to start repeating ourselves and wondering why the other person doesn't get it :grimace: Feel free to zero in on anything specific if you think it can prevent us from doing that.
What else could it sensibly mean? As I argued already...
Quoting ZhouBoTong
For me?
Not all increases in general overall wellbeing are the result of well-functioning government. An increase in well being for most people can also happen when there is an oppressed minority.
So...
I am not saying that an overall increase in general welfare always indicates a properly implemented - or well functioning - representative form of government. That increase alone is utterly inadequate.
Representing an others best interest(s) is taking deliberate action aimed at increasing, protecting, and/or preserving(at a bare minimum) their quality of life. I am saying that we can know that that is not the case when the results can be shown to have unnecessarily caused harm to very large numbers of citizens while others reaped previously unimaginable financial rewards as a direct consequence of causing such harm. Those are some of the extremes.
I'm saying that when very large swathes of the general overall population can be shown to be much worse off than they were before certain pieces of legislation were enacted and it is undoubtedly a result of those pieces of legislation, then we have all the evidence we need to show that that government has failed the people.
It's no big secret how it came to be like this... in the states anyway.
Are you saying that a well functioning(properly implemented) representative form of government results in circumstances/situations where unacceptably high numbers of people are unnecessarily harmed, so long as more people are not?
:brow:
Surely this would be a mistake, and so if it were the case that actions had unforeseeable negative consequences upon too many people, such acts would be reversed, corrected, and/or otherwise redressed.
Right?
An increase in well being for most people can also happen when there is an oppressed minority. So... just because there is an over all increase in well being for most people, it does not mean that that government is an acceptable one or a well functioning one unless it's aim was to do as little as possible while still being able to point out some improvements in quality of life. But...
It takes more than just that to be a properly implemented representative form of government, such as the US has, or is supposed to have anyway. I hope we agree here...
Tomorrow.
:smile:
Do you agree with the following?
The best possible results are clearly not happening to the degree and in the ways that it can and ought be in a representative form of government. I'm speaking about the United States, in particular, by the way.
:brow:
And I believe that's what we may be seeing in action, especially among the more fanatical of these groups. Self-hate often manifests as hate for the other. It is they themselves who identify very strongly with a specific group in society and have come to regard it as inferior. That's why "radical" feminists want women to be more like men. They admire men and their achievements, and regard women and women's achievements as inferior.
Why did an activist group like Nation of Islam seek to revise history to give black people a more prominent role? Because their perception was that black people's role in history was inferior to that of other societies. They were fighting themselves. Their own perception.
As you see there are two dimensions to this:
1. The subject identifies very strongly with a specific group, like male, female, black, or white.
2. The subject perceives the group they identify with to be inferior.
Notice, both are undertaken by the subject, and in both cases one can ask what exactly it entails and why it takes place.
Of course, the mind is masterful in playing tricks on itself. The last thing it wants to do is admit its own faults and would much rather project those on someone else. Thus, our present situation is born.
I get a little tripped up when you mention "social context of white identity." I understand the whole social context part, trust me, but when you mention "identity" in a more abstract way you tend to lose me. Would you mind clarifying a little more concretely?
I would like to add that disability has a strong social component and I'd say there's a little more to it than what you described, and I'm happy to explain but I don't feel like getting side tracked (I could explain if you're interested.) Again, with your point on disability you lose me with the "able-bodied identity" part. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just don't quite understand the lexicon.
In terms of psychological toxicity I'm more referring to the oppressed rather than the oppressor. I'm not too worried about the privileged class here.
Just for the sake of clarity here, I am white-passing or white depending how you define "whiteness." I'm an ashkenazi Jew so depending on who you ask I am either white or I'm not and I've never really attempted to delve deeper into the question because I just don't see it as particularly meaningful to me personally. In other words, there is no real answer as to whether I am "actually" or "really" white even though my skin is white. But no, for all intents and purposes I do not understand what is it like to be a person of color in the US.
I am however disabled so I experience disability-related issues daily and I'd be far more aware of them than the average person. I just feel like there might be analogies to racial issues we're discussing here so I'd be interested in exploring that.
This first response is tied more to the conversation with TheWillowofDarkness than our specific back and forth.
Quoting creativesoul
That seems fair. I was responding to the idea that we should admit when we are villains. I agree that, most likely, we would not see ourselves as villains, but if we did, we would have to destroy the villain by any means necessary. Villains are rarely (almost never?) reformed in stories, so it seems a poor metaphor if we are hoping for white people to change their behavior. It is a good metaphor if we are thinking that white people need to be removed from the equation for the good of everyone else...but I don't think that is what @TheWillowOfDarkness was getting at.
Quoting creativesoul
I actually don't think we are too far apart. I agree with you on where we would like society to be (or end up). However, I keep arguing because I don't see any description of how to get there. Above the word "unnecessary" is an example of the type of things that are confusing me. For example, I believe that capitalism has caused "unnecessary" harm in its efforts to increase people's access to resources (probably because it does not have a goal of increasing access to resources, but instead the only goal is profit). However, I don't KNOW it has caused "unnecessary" harm because we have not seen a society industrialize and modernize without some significant growing pains. I think the US should look at countries that have universal healthcare and better availability of education for all, and feel inferior. However, almost every country that I would say seems to have a significantly better government, is a relatively small country with a very homogeneous population. I don't know how important those factors are? What I do know, is that there is not another America out there that we can compare to. This does not mean we should not try some new shit ("new" for America anyway) in an attempt to emulate those other countries. But we are more experimenting using trial and error than "knowing" the better way. I do think it is safe to say that any political ideology that does not have the goal of increasing the well-being of everyone should be eliminated easily....and yet this is not so easy...even libertarians THINK they have the well-being of everyone in mind (as incredible as that seems).
Quoting creativesoul
I feel like my history knowledge is not terrible, but I am struggling to discern what is obvious to you here...? Are you talking specific policies like undoing Glass-Steagal? or more general ideas like the Reagan/Thatcher dogma that trained half the country to believe that government is bad and taxes should always be lower...and that we should worship our capitalist overlords that make life possible?
But notice the big problem...how can we solve this when half the country still believes Reagan? (ok, maybe only 40%, but they vote at higher rates than is typical)
Quoting creativesoul
I don't think so.
Quoting creativesoul
Any time it is clear and obvious, I agree. I think we are arguing because I think it is rarely clear and obvious.
Quoting creativesoul
I think this is important for our disagreement. This is a VERY modern idea. I very much agree with it, but I don't think there has ever been a country where no one felt oppressed? (have you heard the billionaires respond to Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax - the "oppression" is almost unbearable, haha) Do you have a few successful oppression free governments in mind?
So until very recently, a government would be deemed successful if it improved the quality of life for most of its citizens. We are right to demand more. But we should not assume it is just that easy.
Quoting creativesoul
I agree, but I am less focused on the "representative government" part. I am leaning toward a constitutional democratic dictatorship these days. Historically, when there is a "good" emperor, things are good for the people. However, history also shows that one bad emperor can ruin hundreds of years of progress. So, the constitution protects human rights and limits the power of the leader. Democracy further limits the dictator's power and allows the people to choose the direction of the country for the next decade. It would also leave a "recall" option.
How do you think the US should fix itself? This is the cause of my entire argument. I agree with where you want to be. I have not seen your way of achieving that other than everyone agreeing with you...which I have some serious doubts about.