There’s been a bit of turmoil at the 5Cs about some videos put up by Rachael Ballard, SC ’11, about an incident at an Office of Black Student Affairs Kwanzaa celebration. In short, it appears some white and Asian students went to a Kwanzaa celebration. Apparently, these students acted somewhat disrespectfully, but their presence at the celebration was itself seen as disrespectful by some or all of the black students there. For more, see Charles Johnson’s blog on the topic. Ms. Ballard posted on Facebook a video of her complaining about the presence of the non-black students at the Kwanzaa celebration.
These videos have been perceived as bigoted, racist and have even been reported as Bias Related Incidents. However, with a more careful explication of the philosophical roots of black nationalist movements and leftism in general, we can understand why Ms. Ballard felt violated by the events at the Kwanzaa celebration and thereby understand her anger.
I don’t intend to specifically defend or attack anyone’s actions. I believe I may be correct in describing why Ms. Ballard was offended, but I may not be. If not, then, Ms. Ballard, I apologize in advance for ascribing my thoughts to you. Even if I’m incorrect about Ms. Ballard’s thoughts, I think my analysis will stand on its own.
I offer this analysis not because it’s how I view the world (it’s not) and certainly not because I want to convince you to believe in it. I neither oppose nor endorse this worldview. I want to explain my analysis because it will, I think, shed light on some of the rhetoric and actions of Leftist ideologies in general. This ideology and understanding of events and actions certainly has its flaws; yours probably does too, as does mine. However, it is an ideology that exists and that is very poorly understood, so I’ll do my best to explicate it. I simply want you to understand this particular way of looking at the world so you can better understand how other people act. You don’t need to embrace it, just understand it.
Modern leftism has its roots in many continental philosophers; most importantly to this explication, in Hegel and Marx (whom we’ll get to later). Hegel is famous for the Hegelian dialectic, which you probably learned about in high school English: thesis, antithesis and synthesis. A thesis can really be anything, or merely the current state of all things. The antithesis is what it sounds like, the negation or contradiction of the thesis. The synthesis is what occurs when the tension between the two is resolved, leading to some sort of change. Importantly, the synthesis is bound to occur by the very existence of the thesis and antithesis.
Because the Left traces its historical roots to Marx (and not necessarily his political economy – i.e. Communism – but more his pure philosophy), who himself embraced the Hegelian dialectic (after making his own changes which are philosophically significant but not very significant for our purposes), the idea of the dialectic is fundamentally important to the Left. This manifests itself in the idea of creating a separate “space” to oppose whatever oppressive institution is currently being opposed. Here are a few examples to get your mind thinking like a Leftist:
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Communists (among others) oppose capitalism because they see it as oppressive and exploitative. However, capitalism is the current state of things, thus capitalism is the thesis. They seek to create a space apart from capitalism, that is, an antithesis. This antithesis takes the form of the the “dictatorship of the proletariat”; in this “space,” the proletariat are no longer oppressed by capitalists but instead are subject to the production dictates of the state. Contrary to popular belief, this system, probably not too inaccurately referred to Soviet Communism or Stalinism, is not Communism’s end state. The idea is that, in the future, the dictatorship of the proletariat and capitalism (i.e. the dictatorship of the bougeousie) would become synthesized into a communist utopia in which decisions are made by workers or small communities, not the state. (Obviously, that didn’t work out so well.)
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Anarchists talk about “liberated” spaces, from the size of occupied buildings (like we’ve seen recently at UCLA, SFSU, NYU, etc.) to the parts of the Mexican state of Chiapas. These Leftists perceive capitalist society and government, and police and corporations in particular, to be oppressive occupiers. Thus, everyday capitalist society is (again) the thesis, and these liberated spaces are the antithesis, free of that oppression, from which “the revolution” will grow to create a synthesis, an anarchist utopia (see a theme here?) perceived as more just.
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Feminists see “patriarchy” or “oppressive male power structures” which they see throughout society as a problem: thesis. They create spaces, like womyn’s lands (at least in the 1960s/1970s) or the Motley, that are supposed to be free from male domination: antithesis. Some of these spaces, like lesbian communities (“womyn’s land”) like Alapine (which combines withdrawal from male domination with withdrawal from heteronormativity.), are meant to be entirely or mostly free of men. Others, like the Motley, are meant to put women in positions of power and, in so doing, prevent oppressive male power structures from forming. Feminists (by and large) aren’t seeking to eliminate men from power as an end goal. They are seeking to destroy male power structures that automatically put men above women. After that, as synthesis, they would be happy to have men in power structures, as long as there is no oppression by sexist institutions against women.
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The first issue of the Claremont Progressive [not online] had an article “Privilege and Pomona” by Nick Gerber which mentioned wanting Pomona to become an “institution of liberation,” as opposed to an institution of privilege and oppression. The Progressive sees the current Pomona College as a thesis which ought to be changed to be more accepting of less affluent, non-white, non-male, non-able-bodied and non-straight students. This utopian “institution of liberation” is the synthesis, because, presumably, it and its members would not make any distinctions based on race, gender, sexual orientation/preference, able-bodied-ness, or class. However, the means of achieving that synthesis is: antithesis. This antithesis would explicitly engage in policies to destroy the oppressive institutions through (presumably) affirmative action, through education about “problematic” language and micro-aggressions, and through refusing to fire workers who are perceived as less than full members of the Pomona community.
Hopefully, at this point, you’re getting to recognize the idea here. Think of a Leftist group or some demand of some 1960s radicals, and you’ll probably be able to recognize this thesis -> antithesis -> synthesis idea, the Hegelian dialectic.
Now, let’s see how that applies to the Kwanzaa incident. The thesis that many black nationalist groups, such as the Black Panthers, and other black, non-nationalist groups oppose is, of course, what they see as racist, oppressive institutions. They feel that black people are oppressed by unfair drug laws, unfair police attention and discrimination, standards of beauty that don’t include many black people, perceived class and education differences between white and black people, etc. To someone who feels oppressed by these “institutions,” then everyday activities take place in an oppressive environment. (Whether this is true or not, or even if there’s a meaningful, objective answer to that question is not the point.) Thus, to black activists who rose to prominence in the leftist culture of the 1960s and who trace their political roots through leftism (For instance, the Black Panthers, whose founder Bobby Seale wrote that his fight “is a class struggle between the massive proletarian working class and the small, minority ruling class.” The Marxist rhetoric is rather prominent), they must find some sort of antithesis.
This antithesis takes the form of a space – physical or not – apart from perceived racist, oppressive institutions. I argue that this negative space (negative in that it is without oppression) is twofold in this specific incident: the OBSA is one such space, and the institution of Kwanzaa is another. Kwanzaa is more obvious: Ron Karenga, Kwanzaa’s founder, was a black nationalist in the 1960s who wanted to create a Black alternative to Christmas and Christianity, which he (at the time) perceived as white, dominant and oppressive. Kwanzaa was created de novo and purposely free of white religious influence.
The OBSA is similar. Like many African-American student resources and academic departments around the country, the OBSA was founded in a time of turmoil (sometimes violent) at the Claremont Colleges in the late 1960s. [For more commentary – from a certain political viewpoint, of course – see Ward Elliott's history of CMC or Harry Jaffa's “The Reichstag is Still Burning” 1989 valedictory address{See note below}]. Part of the Black student radicals’ demands during this period included acknowledging that Pomona was, at that particular time, “a white college that gave a white education.” Of course, therefore, the OBSA was created to be a place where the Claremont Colleges could be examined critically and where non-white students could escape perceived white oppression.
Now, here’s the reason I think that the Kwanzaa incident was particularly offensive or angering. The Kwanzaa celebration at the OBSA was dually a “separate space.” However, it’s separation (and thus, antithetical nature) was eliminated when white and Asian students came, apparently uninvited, and acted in disruptive, disrespectful or “oppressive” ways. It doesn’t particularly matter that the students didn’t intend to be disruptive, disrespectful or oppressive, the perception of their presence was that it was disruptive and that therefore destroyed the essence of the event as a “separate space.” Thus, the Kwanzaa event was ruined by the white and Asian students behavior or presence. I don’t mean to affix blame: I hope that the OBSA could find a way to be welcoming to non-black students at a Kwanzaa event or at some other event. Ms. Ballard’s anger is far more understandable if we understand that, at least from one perspective, her event was to some extent ruined by the very institution it was meant to oppose.
Implicitly, at least, in this ideology is the idea that a non-racist synthesis – a non-racist, non-oppressive Claremont Colleges – can be created. Martin Luther King put it explicitly: he dreams for a nation where his children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. According to the Hegelian paradigm inherent in leftism, this synthesis will be reached. However, it is only reached through antithetical, separate spaces like the OBSA or Kwanzaa. Since it’s clear that we do not have a race-blind society, to someone who endorses this thought process, the OBSA and Kwanzaa are still necessary and Ms. Ballard’s angry reaction is quite understandable. Likewise, we can see that Ms. Ballard’s actions weren’t racist in any meaningful sense, although quite possibly presumptive and oversensitive.
A few related thoughts:
I don’t have any problem with my student activities funds being used to fund events at which I am not welcome by their nature. My funds are probably used to pay for communion wafers, which I cannot eat, since I cannot receive Communion as a Jew. Your funds are probably used to pay for volunteer activities open to fluent Spanish speakers; you may not be able to attend since you don’t speak Spanish. Jim Nauls’ funds are often used to pay for small friend-group events at which you or I might not be welcome, since we aren’t members of a given friend group. You’re more than welcome to join me for Shabbat services — and I’m probably welcome to join you at Sunday services or Jumua’a or most other events–, but that’s because those events are not defined by the absence of something in particular. Hopefully the OBSA will come up with a way for non-black students to learn about Kwanzaa in a way that is not perceived as oppressive by the community who celebrates Kwanzaa. This incident is not very welcoming and doesn’t build much goodwill.
Racism is best understood in the “power + prejudice” paradigm. Prejudice without power is still bad, but less so, because it is powerless. Who cares if some Native American guy doesn’t like white people? But when someone with power – a college admissions officer, a CEO, a government official – harbors prejudice and acts on it, he has literally oppressed a group of people by taking away opportunities they would have otherwise had. You have no right to tell other people to think; you do have some right to tell others how to act with regards to you. (So, yes, being unwelcoming to non-black people at Kwanzaa was a little bit racist. However, the oppression felt by the students was probably fairly small, at least relative to the constant oppression felt by many non-white students.)
I have no idea why the black students at the Kwanzaa celebration felt oppressed by the presence of the non-black students. Maybe they felt that they were being judged. Maybe they felt that their meaningful personal rituals were being watched as if they were an exhibit. Maybe they felt they couldn’t be themselves. I don’t know. But it seems that some of the black students felt oppressed. There isn’t any objective measure (that I know of…) that measures whether an action is oppressive; we’ll have to take the students at their word that they felt oppressed.
The Bias Related Incident system at the 5Cs is stupid. It’s a source of humor and it doesn’t serve to deter racist/sexist/heteronormative/etc. behavior or, I’d assume, show much of a sense of institutional “solidarity” with the victims of such behavior. Responses to extremely serious events might merit an all-campus email, but someone getting tortillas thrown at them by a drunk person probably doesn’t. Feel free to oppose what you see as oppressive on your own, but demanding institutional realization of your views on oppression is a little much.
I tried to link to many of my sources for important quotes. I referred to Wikipedia for a lot of the refresher information I used in writing this article. If I’m incorrect about anything, please point it out. My apologies in advance. (I’ll try to track down a copy of “The Reichstag is Still Burning: The Failure of Higher Education and the Decline of the West” by former CMC prof Harry Jaffa. Until then, the Claremont Independent has an editorial featuring generous quotes from the document. Edit 12/15, 11:17am : I got a copy of “The Reichstag is Still Burning: The Failure of Higher Education and the Decline of the West” by former CMC prof Harry Jaffa. It’s a really interesting history of the late 1960s in Claremont, and while it takes a position diametrically opposed to mine in this article, it’s still quite elucidating. Send me an email if you want a copy: jmerrill12 at cmc dot edu)
UPDATE: Looks like the white and Asian students were invited. That doesn’t really change the equation. They were seen as “oppressive” and therefore disruptive. I can’t very well say that they were not oppressive, since that’s something neither I nor they have much say in. All I can say is that I reiterate my point that the OBSA should not only invite non-black students but also welcome them at events. And that maybe Ms. Ballard ought to see this through other people’s viewpoints too and understand why no one meant to be offensive, oppressive or disruptive. And finally, that the rest of us ought to see why she was offended.
The problem with this whole ideology is that it is centered in the basis that you need Power+prejudice to be a racist. You do not. That is just an excuse to be able to be racist without calling it what it is. Racism is a way of thinking and treating others. Being ignorant or intolerant of other cultures–and that can be anyone, of any race. Oppression does not always correlate to racism.
Ballard’s problem is that she needs to learn that this is AMERICA. And whether she likes it or not, those students had every free right to attend that Kwanzaa celebration to learn more about it. Whether she liked it or not.
It’s not about them thinking they had privelidge or some unspoken right to it. Anyone should be able to–because our country has laws against separating someone from an event simply because of their skin color, beliefs, etc. It’s why one can invite friends to a Church for Christmas no matter what their beliefs or race.
And to the author, your claim is absurd to say those students caused “oppression, disrespectful, disruptive”. Do tell what those ways were. You seem to be grasping at straws here.
Hello. Thanks for your comments.
First, on racism. There are certainly two ways to look at the issue. As I didn’t say in the article, there are two distinct worldviews here. There’s the one that most white (straight, male) people have, one that focuses on tolerance, etc. The other is one that many members of minority groups may have. I can see through both. So on one level, I agree. Prejudice is racism, period. However, I also see two kinds of it. As I told my friend a minute ago, you’re welcome to call them “powerless racism” and “powered racism” (to coin the two terms). I just want you to acknowledge that there’s a difference between mere prejudice and prejudice + power/actions, and that the latter is worse. Once you acknowledge the distinction, I think you can see how minority groups feel oppressed.
Next, I think that the white and asian students may have been oppressive. I didn’t make it clear enough that if that’s so, they’re completely blameless. Completely. Consider the perspective of a minority person who feels that the culture as a whole is oppressive. You feel that culture as a whole represents values that are not yours and rewards people who are not like you. You probably feel not totally welcome. This feeling psychologically weighs down on you; you can’t fully be yourself in the “outside world”; you feel, in short, oppressed. The purpose of this “negative space” like the OBSA, Kwanzaa, the Queer Resource Center, etc., is to provide a space where you can feel totally welcome. The presence of someone who reminds you that your negative space is not the whole world brings the oppression into your negative space that is supposed to be oppression-free. That is, it destroys your space.
Consider for instance two distinct hypotheticals: First, you are you and you see graffiti saying “F*ck you, whitey.” You’d probably laugh and think it was ridiculous. You wouldn’t feel any less welcome or comfortable at the 5Cs; you wouldn’t be “oppressed”. Second, suppose you’re gay and you see “F*ck you, f****t”. You probably would feel threatened and much less comfortable.; you would feel oppressed. Same with any minority group, by sexual orientation, gender, etc. That’s why minority groups want a separate space. Reminding them of the existence of an oppressive external power structure destroys that space’s separateness. Thereby, the non-minority (or the not-accepted non-minority: allies are accepted in queer groups, etc.) is oppressive, though probably entirely unintentionally.
“There are certainly two ways to look at the issue.”
You elucidated this more in your post, but that’s really the gist of it. All the histrionics are fairly pointless — learn what the other side has to say, realize that it’s not a moral issue and that your personal scheme are biasing you, engage in constructive debate and/or activism if you really believe you’re objectively right, move forward.
Arguing about semantics isn’t going to erase bigotry.
Ms. Ballard was angry at these people because they came and were not Black. If she wants to host meetings in her own private space like her own room, she can invite whomever she pleases. But this was a gathering open to the public, and for her to be upset that people of another race showed up is wrong.
Your article tries to excuse her actions and essentially says that she can do no wrong, because of the evil white people. Ms. Ballard should apologize for what she did, step down from her leadership position, and work with the OBSA to communicate her feelings about non-blacks celebrating Kwanzaa better. Maybe OBSA and Scripps can even hold a discussion on the topic (we are still waiting for Pomona to hold their discussion on abortion after the Planned Parenthood debacle last year).
These issues are ripe for discussion, but lets not explain away the racist, inappropriate, and intolerable attitude of Ms. Ballard.
If you listened to the video, she did not say that she was “
If you listened to the video, she did not say that she was “angry at these people because they came and were not Black.” Rather, her reaction was to multiple other issues. These students said that they came to the event to learn something, but did not interact with anyone would could have given them the information that they allegedly wanted to receive. Additionally, they left before any speeches or presentations were given that would provide them with such information.
Aside from the apparent issues related to race, coming to an event held by an organization or group on campus of which you are not apart and then to avoid contact with anyone in that group is obviously disrespectful of the members and of the group, itself.
I’d love to see the video. Alas, I can’t.
And shouldn’t the organizers of an event welcome strangers? Shouldn’t they embrace them and engage them, rather than wait for them to wade in to a sea of people they do not know? I think the burden is on the OBSA to take guests and make them feel at home, and not vice versa. If you want to talk power dynamics, it was Ms. Ballard who had the power.
Mari — if that’s even your real name… haha — you’ve missed the point; you’ve missed the distinction in the nature of Kwanzaa as opposed to other events. This goes towards Ashley’s point, too.
Organizers of a Hanukkah event ought to welcome strangers. Organizers of an Easter event ought to welcome strangers. However, a Kwanzaa event is different because it demarcates difference and separation. It necessitates the wholesale removal of (perceived) oppression and conventional power dynamics. The presence of “unknown quantities” whose views are not known can import external power dynamics and remind Kwanzaa/OBSA participants of external oppression. This defeats the purpose of the event entirely.
Welcoming the visitors might not work, either. The participants felt, as Rachael Ballard describes in a comment below, uncomfortable and as if they were being observed. This isn’t the fault of the visitors, but merely a fact of the psychological nature of (perceived) oppression. Even if they were “welcomed,” they’d still be seen as outsiders and unknown quantities because, well, they were. This creates a dynamic where the event participants feel like they are being watched and as if they are performing, and thus that they have to adjust their actions and behavior to the cultural norms of the visitors. This recreates external power dynamics (where minority groups feel that they have to adjust their behavior and actions to fit the cultural norms of the dominant group) and destroys the purpose of the event, which is to escape those dynamics.
For that reason, the nature of the event precludes being “welcoming” in the way that y’all, Mari and Ashley, suggest.
“The participants felt, as Rachael Ballard describes in a comment below, uncomfortable and as if they were being observed. This isn’t the fault of the visitors, but merely a fact of the psychological nature of (perceived) oppression. Even if they were “welcomed,” they’d still be seen as outsiders and unknown quantities because, well, they were. This creates a dynamic where the event participants feel like they are being watched and as if they are performing, and thus that they have to adjust their actions and behavior to the cultural norms of the visitors. “
Or, it could just mean that certain people within that room have a childish and sadly warped view of the society in which they live. And when unable to hide away and play Secret-Club-and-Rituals-R-Us or No-Whites-or-Asians-Need-Apply with their race-based group of self-anointed victims foist their deep-seated issues with insecurity and life in general on a small group of fellow human beings who were merely trying to reach out to them in harmony and understanding.
You seem like a very intelligent and sensitive fellow, Jeremy. But you are twisting your self in intellectual knots here trying to find a contortion (or corruption) of reality that might justify something which cannot be justified.
Well.. why didn’t the members of the organization try to be more welcoming and interact with the people who were the target of Rachael’s criticism? I doubt that white and asian students would have ignored the people that “belonged there”. It’s much more difficult to introduce yourself when you’re new to a group than it is for a member to introduce him/herself to an outsider; those who are older members of groups such as sports teams and churches usually initiate the introductions to break the ice and show the newcomers that they are welcome.
Well, she still had no reason to be upset. Why didn’t the members of the organization try to be more welcoming and interact with the people who were the target of Rachael’s criticism? I doubt that white and asian students would have ignored the people that “belonged there”. It’s much more difficult to introduce yourself when you’re new to a group than it is for a member to introduce him/herself to an outsider; those who are older members of groups such as sports teams and churches usually initiate the introductions to break the ice and show the newcomers that they are welcome. Although some groups have been disproportionately targetted in regards to racism, hostility will only escalate tensions.
To Mr. Merrill:
I am nearly at a loss for words to express how impressed I am with your explication of Black Liberal/Radicalist thought, and with this piece overall. I have never in ALL my time here at Claremont seen such an attempt to understand the historical context and philosophical underpinnings of my positions as a black leftist (and it’s especially significant that this comes from an individual who doesn’t necessarily claim in invest in these positions himself). This is just good journalism/commentary, whatever position one takes.
To whomever it may concern:
I will be posting another video…or two…or three very soon. You cannot currently see the original videos because I’ve deactivated my facebook in order to focus on my finals. However, it will be back up in a matter of hours.
To Ashley:
Once my facebook is reactivated, I encourage you to read the comments on the video made by students–black students, students of color, white students, students who identify as queer–I think you’ll find that, among those students in attendance, MOST of them felt as I did and were very uncomfortable with being observed. And among those who are aware of the salience of marginalization, they agree with my position & that of other black students in attendance. So before you write off my feelings with “Well, she still had no reason to be upset.” please recognize that while you may not -agree- with my reason, there obviously was one…and I wasn’t the only person that felt that way.
Glad I was accurate! Thanks for the compliments.
Having read both this and Charles Johnson’s blog post on the matter, I can see how and why this incident happened, but I still find myself troubled by it.
From what I can tell, the key problem here was different understandings of the openness of the event. Some, such as Ms. Ballard and presumably others, were under the impression that the event was in effect a private event with a small guest list, and that the students in question were simply uninvited jerks crashing a party for food and that they didn’t care about the significance of the event. (This was particularly and unfortunately reenforced by the fact that all of those students left at the same time.) Those students, however, were under the distinct impression that this was an open and all inclusive event and that they were directly invited. Given that many of them had work and other commitments to attend to, they had to leave early, and the tension in the room over this misunderstanding about the event’s openness probably contributed to these students feeling uneasy and feeling the need to all leave at once. Could they have made more of an effort to try to integrate themselves into the event? Sure. Could the larger group have made more of an effort to include these outsiders? Sure. But no one was acting with malicious intent.
So it was a misunderstanding. Someone asked those students as they left why exactly they showed up and it became clear from their answer that there was some ambiguity about invitations. So now the “offending” students realize that the tension in the room stemmed from people thinking they were crashers, and the main group of students can see that these students at least thought they were invited which is why they showed up. No hard feelings, right?
Notice this entire debacle can be summed up without any need to reference the race of anyone involved. The story stands on its own as a legitimate misunderstanding that can be resolved now that everyone knows what assumptions everyone else was working with. My concern is that this was made to be about race and prejudice when there was no need.
White people are not the only people capable of racism, just like black people are not the only people capable of criminal activity. More importantly, not every white person (in fact, very few of them) is a racist, just like not every black person (in fact, very few of them) is a criminal (duh). Although these are well-known stereotypes, to assume that either of those things is true is, simply put, stupidity at the highest level, and I’d like to think that we’re all beyond that and can at least try to resolve this as human beings.
It’s also too bad that you’re looking at this through a leftist lens, in a non-leftist country…
In America, people are allowed to think however they want. We don’t have Thoughtcrime yet.
Clearly, a significant number of people in this country think in this “Leftist” manner: feminists, black radicals, communists, socialists, queer radicals, pacifists, some unionists, environmentalists, anarchists and hippies. Whether or not you think in this way, you can learn to understand the arguments these people make by understanding their premises. [Then, you can critique their arguments based on their premises and actually have an elucidating discussion.]
Or you can say that their arguments don’t make sense given your premises and assume that these other people must be irrational and stupid. It’s your choice.
Well said, Amanda ’09. It’s a shame that one can cover up racism by saying they need power to implement it. Racism is a way of thinking, showing your intolerance for other races, if you will. Don’t try and cover it up by saying because you’re a minority, you can’t be racist. It works from all sides of the racial spectrum, and one would do good to remember that.
Experiencing racism doesn’t justify racist actions such as what was exhibited by the Black student affairs group. To exclude people in what should be a “universal” celebration is racist indeed – unless Kwanzaa was intended to be separatist.
I’m an author of a newly published eBook (to be released this week online) titled “The Truth About Kwanzaa.” What happened with this group is an example of some of the things I write about in my book. Kwanzaa WAS created to be exclusive for Black people only and what happened in this group is this first bit of evidence I’ve come across that Kwanzaa is still being treated likewise.
I am also Black and I want to get the message out that just because we are Black and have (and is some cases still do) experienced oppression through racism never justifies us to treat others oppressively. I’ts bigoted to send the message “you don’t belong here” and that’s apparently the message that was sent by the OBSA. I would need to see the videos and see comments from the participants of this event.
Anyways, this is all very very interesting to me as my research continues on the whole of Kwanzaa.
Carlotta Morrow
Writer/Researcher
Blogger (Christocentric)
(I’m from San Diego and my Kwanzaa Google alerts just sent this blog piece to my email in case anyone is wondering how I even found this blog here.)
“Martin Luther King put it explicitly: he dreams for a nation where his children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. According to the Hegelian paradigm inherent in leftism, this synthesis will be reached. However, it is only reached through antithetical, separate spaces like the OBSA or Kwanzaa.”
Hegel, schmegel.
I’m sorry, Mr. Merrill. Despite your earnest attempt to let the nasty Ms. Ballard off the hook for her egregious behaviour, there is no “synthesis” to be achieved either from Hegelian dialectic or at the end of your well-intentioned but illogical stream of thought. Your suggestion that building a physical and psychological firewall between two groups of human beings from each other will ultimately unite them is sheer sophistry – incredible on its face and a pathetic excuse for the isolationist rhetoric, exclusionary behaviour and overt neo-tribalism that prevails in the consortium and on college campuses nationwide. It is also, I might add, either the main cause or the toxic accelerant of every devastating war and most, if not all, strife throughout the ages.
We can clearly see from Ms. Ballard’s actions and thought patterns what happens when a group of people decide that something as superficial as skin colour will define their membership and then unleash the hounds of racial purity to guard the entrance door. Any sentient person understands that this is not helpful to the cause of community or racial harmony, and that constructing a hostile, self-serving and extremely negative ongoing narrative for “the other” (of any stripe) is not a means by which to understand and engage them. Nor is continually picking at the almost-healed scab of distant history in search of inequities or injustices unrelated to present reality or the community in which they live, in the hopes of dredging up a grievance with which to soundly beat them. How disingenuous you sound here, trying to defend the indefensible and excuse yourself from the moral imperative of having to make any judgement on the matter:
“UPDATE: Looks like the white and Asian students were invited. That doesn’t really change the equation. They were seen as “oppressive” and therefore disruptive. I can’t very well say that they were not oppressive, since that’s something neither I nor they have much say in.”
As for Ms. Ballard’s glowing review in the comments of your lengthy and unconvincing exercise in moral equivalence, every miscreant loves an apologist. None more than the one who thinks she can find her salvation by hiding behind scattershot pseudo-intellectual tripe that merely serves to obfuscate and confuse the issue, rather than shed a bright and honest light on it.
Amanda is correct. There was no need to introduce the highly charged issue of race into this event and the petty misunderstanding that seems to have occurred. But it happened because it was pre-ordained by ignorant and nonsensical policies and philosophies that separate us from each other. The problem is this: the way in which the Black Studies (or any “… Studies” grad) folks tend to view the world is myopic at best, replete with self-fulfilling prophecy and a never-ending series of non-existent or grossly exaggerated slights to their increasingly fragile self-worth. After all, when you find that all that is required to satisfy your deep-seated insecurity is to carry around is a big hammer (the race victim card) you tend to justify it by searching desperately for a (racist incident!) nail.
First off, you seem to have missed a major portion of the article. You mention “isolationism” and the “almost-healed scab of distant history.” You appear to not get that certain minorities feel oppressed by our culture as a whole. To them, they are not “decid[ing] that something as superficial as skin colour” defines their in-group: society/culture/oppressive white power structures have already defined them — against their will — as an out-group by their skin color and culture. To them, they aren’t picking at the “scab of history”, but rather escaping constant assaults.
If you believe that racism — “oppression” — is a thing of the past, you are looking at life through some very rose-colored lenses, Alan. Studies have been done showing that job applicants with “black” names like Tyrone are less likely to be hired than equally qualified applicants with “white” names like Cody. That’s directly indicative of structural racism and discrimination: the “oppression” claimed does exist.
In an environment perceived as toxic and oppressive, who can blame oppressed groups from wanting to seek a space away from that?
I’m sorry, Jeremy. Feeling oppressed and being oppressed are not the same thing.
I’m not sure where these “constant assaults” take place, however I’m quite sure they’re not taking place on the privileged, affirmative action-soaked campus of one of the most expensive private schools in the world. Or anywhere else I know of, for that matter.
Many of those “oppressed” people moaning and groaning about “systemic racism” owe their places and their yearly financial aid at “toxic and oppressive” Pomona and other excellent top tier schools to a large extent BECAUSE of their race and not their accomplishments.
As for Cody vs. Tyrone, I’m quite certain Cody or Billy Bob might have an equally tough time competing for a job on Wall Street against a fellow named Winston or Thaddeus.
Boo hoo.
I’m a victim.
It’s everyone else’s fault.
The world owes me a living.
You say that feeling oppressed and being oppressed are not the same thing. I don’t mean to be snarky, but how do you distinguish them? Do you have an “oppression test” that tests if someone is “really” or “justifiably” oppressed? I think you don’t. People can be oppressed by anything, I guess. (But, just because something is oppressive doesn’t mean it’s “bad” or needs to stop. It might, but it might not.)
And I think you’ve missed what I mean about “constant assaults.” I don’t mean physical or verbal assaults, but rather psychological assaults, for instance in media portrayals of black people (or other minorities) as poorer, stupider, more violent than white people. Or, in our “standards of beauty” that exclude many black women. While these aren’t conscious assaults, they are nevertheless felt as oppressive. Getting money or affirmative action [which may be harmful because they create the -- oppressive -- attitude that no minority person was accepted on their merits] doesn’t erase these systemic psychological assaults.
And I don’t entirely get what you mean with Winston and Thaddeus. Explain further?
I think you’re begging the question here, Jeremy.
The psychological “assaults” you mention are not examples of systemic racism or oppression, they have basis in fact. In some areas of the country, certain minorities ARE poorer, less accomplished academically, and even more violent. We can discuss the many reasons for this unfortunate circumstance, but we cannot deny its veridicality. Therefore these are not “constant assaults”, they are statements of plain fact. Are you suggesting we should ignore the truth and pretend otherwise? Who are we helping if we do so?
The standards of beauty complaint became a dead issue long ago. Today’s youth longs to look exotic like Black, Asian and Latino stars of stage and screen. Does anyone think Beyoncé is not up to par? Shakira? Halle Berry? Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi? Blair Underwood? Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and on and on and on.
You are right about the negative effects of affirmative action, though.
Finally, I threw Thaddeus and Winston into the mix because you had attempted to equate the name Tyrone with (undesirable) Black and Cody with (privileged) white. It’s true that names bring with them some level of meaning beyond their letterform but I would imagine that the uppercrust East Coast Wall Street crowd would have an equally difficult time with Billy Bob, Cody AND/or Tyrone. That proves to me it could be less a race issue than a socioeconomic one.
Your statement that certain minorities may be poorer or less accomplished academically as indicating that they are “stupider” shows your worldview. You seem to believe that “people get what they deserve” or that people’s self-determination determines their success. This is the “canonical” American worldview. [I'm not one to say it's false: it certainly has true aspects, just like this Leftist worldview does. Neither is "correct"; both has correct elements, and I embrace neither.] You think that Bill Gates succeeded because he worked hard; someone embracing the Leftist worldview would say that Bill Gates succeeded because he worked hard AND because of his “privilege.” This leftist would point out a gay man, a woman, or a black person who worked as hard or harder than BG and has nothing to show for it. However, your worldview precludes you from internalizing that this minority worked harder than BG, *because* you believe that hard workers get rewarded, so, since this minority hasn’t been awarded, he or she logically must not have worked hard. The leftist sees the person punished by their lack of privilege.
Is either one right? Yes and no. Each is right in some circumstances. However, neither worldview can easily adjust to examples of activities outside of its Master Narrative. It’s possible any given less-successful minority really didn’t work hard; it’s possible he or she worked hard but was deprived of benefits you and I receive. Examples of each surely abound — that’s why it’s important not to get stuck in your own worldview.
Next, you claim that “certain minorities ARE more violent” in some regions of the country. I’m going to ignore for now disparities in the laws and assume that violent crime statistics map perfectly to actual disposition to violence. The “oppression” is not in the fact itself — that the median black man in, say, Chicago is more likely to be violent is not oppressive — it’s the fact that the random black man at TNC (a campus party) is treated as if he’s a more likely to be violent. That shows that the observer is seeing this random black man not as a (almost certainly non-violent) 5C student or a potential friend, but as an archetypal black person.
The standards of beauty issue has been addressed in the comments, see the stuff about canonical skin color in crayons and bandages, which shows little minority children that they’re different. But you also point that out: in your words, Black, Asian and Latino/a stars look “exotic.” They don’t look “normal.” They’re “different.” That’s my point exactly.
Finally, regarding class. Yes, you’re right, there are class effects. Lower-income status is marked, just like race. Imagine your “average” American: He is probably male, Christian-ish, lives in the ‘burbs, has a few-year-old SUV and isn’t poor. Poor kids, yup, they grow up learning they’re not “normal” too. That said, if you think that there exist class effects, it’s not hard to see race effects too.
Honestly, Jeremy, it’s time for you to get off the ideological fence. Your efforts to be equivocal in all matters are admirable, and your articulate defence of all sides of the philosophical polyhedron a joy to read and debate, but you can’t live your life perched safely up there in the middle without eventually engendering some form of intellectual schizophrenia.
I have already agreed with you that it is critically important to consider and make allowances for the origins and manifestations of another’s viewpoint when judging their acts or attempting to reach consensus on any given issue. The truth is sometimes elusive. But that doesn’t mean the end result of that consideration will necessarily be a concession, let alone a volte face in one’s own position.
If, after sincerely going over the facts you feel the other person’s actions are egregious, and that they have clearly violated basic human decencies or an accepted societal norm, you are under no obligation to consider their reasons for having done so as exculpatory.
As for your comments about hard work and effort, even giving you the benefit of the doubt in employing perhaps the most extreme analogy to prove your point, I find it amazing that you would argue that if a minority achiever in the US invented a groundbreaking product with the potential to change the world in some way they would not reap any benefit for having done so. That, in your words, they would have “nothing to show for it”. Nothing. … Really?
“You think that Bill Gates succeeded because he worked hard; someone embracing the Leftist worldview would say that Bill Gates succeeded because he worked hard AND because of his “privilege.” This leftist would point out a gay man, a woman, or a black person who worked as hard or harder than BG and has nothing to show for it.”
“… the Leftist worldview WOULD SAY that Bill Gates succeeded because he worked hard AND because of his “privilege.”
“The leftist SEES the person punished by their lack of privilege.”
I understand all too well what leftists “see, feel and say”, Jeremy. I just don’t happen to agree with them because there is no empirical data whatsoever to support their many emotionally based, yet no doubt sincerely held feelings and resultant sayings. It’s true that everyone constructs his or her own worldview based on myriad contributing factors, and the building blocks can be environmental, psychological, sociological, physiological, even metaphysical. But the course of human history and evolution has proven beyond a doubt that some worldviews are rooted in objective reality and some are not.
A quote from a source whose name escapes me at the moment sums this up quite nicely: “The value of an idea has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man proposing it.”
Leftists believe they are right because they believe they are right, despite the fact objective reality and the material world have proven time and time again that it does not support their viewpoint. And your suggestion that an impoverished or “oppressed” minority who works hard to the best of his abilities throughout his life will have nothing to show for it in the end ignores and diminishes the incredible accomplishments of the millions of downtrodden immigrants of Chinese, Irish, German, Polish, Vietnamese, Black, Italian, and Japanese descent (to name but a few) who built the foundations of this country and whose descendants enjoy social station and a standard of living beyond their ancestors’ wildest dreams. That’s not something I “feel” to be true, or something arising ex nihilo from my specific worldview, it is an indisputable fact.
On the issue of crime and violence, it is indeed unfortunate that there is a high incidence of Black (usually on Black) crime in certain areas of this country. And that Blacks are proportionally overrepresented in state prisons. We can lament the underlying factors that led to this sorry state of affairs, but we cannot ignore hard core facts arising from them. I’m not sure who feels random black men at campus parties are more prone to violence, and who are treating them as such, but I suggest that sometimes a person’s insecurities in social situations can lead to misleading impressions. Witness the behaviour of the students who attended the recent Kwanzaa event. Not knowing anyone there, they thought they were being respectful by staying within their group and respectfully watching things unfold. This was perceived by certain black students as oppressive, exclusionary and disrespectful behaviour. In other words, they were unfairly treated by the black majority in attendance as “archetypal white people”.
So who did the “oppressing”? Were the black students treated unjustly, or were the whites? You can’t have it both ways and suggest that “whites” (I hate that term) are the only ones making fallacious assumptions about their fellow humans.
Your response to my comments about crayons, skin colour and beauty seems more than a bit desperate. If something or someone is in the minority in any grouping it is, by virtue of its relative scarcity, exotic, or rare. If that was by definition a bad thing, there would be no value in diamonds, gold, talent, or anything else that is underrepresented or in short supply. My point is that these folks are regularly celebrated for their unique beauty – not denigrated or marginalized as you suggest …crayon colours notwithstanding.
Finally – class effects, race effects, bad luck effects, cosmic injustice effects, bad hair day effects,… and on and on and on and on. Who cares? I have said this before and I will say it again. LIFE IS UNFAIR, and unless you want us all to be perfect clones of each other, born of the same parents, living in a tightly controlled world where everyone experiences exactly the same stimuli at exactly the same time and thinks exactly the same thoughts, you and the leftist side of the philosophical spectrum better get used to it.
One clarification I neglected to make in my last post:
I never suggested in any way that minorities were “stupider” than the general population, so please don’t put words in my mouth and then make unfair and unfounded judgements about my worldview.
I was responding to your assertion about, quote: “media portrayals of black people (or other minorities) as poorer, stupider, more violent than white people.”
My exact response: “In some areas of the country, certain minorities ARE poorer, less accomplished academically, and even more violent. We can discuss the many reasons for this unfortunate circumstance, but we cannot deny its veridicality.”
For what it’s worth…
First off, thanks for the compliments and the good debate. It’s nice to have someone invested in the debate to talk to, even if they’re not from Claremont.
I don’t think you’re correct at all when you say that the leftist viewpoint does not fit with the empirical facts. I’m not going to go into examples because you’re missing the point, as usual. If this viewpoint was really irrational and truly didn’t comport with objective reality (whatever that might mean), then it would have died off long ago. The only reason the leftist viewpoint survives (as one of the main viewpoints in modern Western society) is because it does comport with reality.
Your inability to present concrete examples of the leftist viewpoint deviating from reality proves my point. Both your viewpoint and the leftist viewpoint are congruent with objective reality.
Regarding effort, I didn’t ever say that no minority could ever succeed. My point is that, on a macro scale, the average minority exerting a given amount of effort is going to achieve less than the average person of unmarked attributes (white, male, straight, Christian, etc.) will achieve. That’s not to say that minorities can’t achieve anything, but rather that they must work harder to achieve the same amount.
Regarding “stupider,” you substituted “less academic achievement” into my list where “stupider” once was. You clearly correlate the two. And, as I’ve said, there exist systematic bias against minority children in the school systems. They likely achieve less because they are given fewer tools to succeed; or they must work much harder to achieve the same things as people of unmarked attributes.
Regarding “clones,” you do have a valid point. In our quest for equality, will we eliminate all difference? Kurt Vonnegut’s story “Harrison Bergeron” presents a good fictional exploration of such a world — check it out. But: I am often anti-sexist, anti-racist, anti-heteronormative, etc, but I am very rarely anti-ableist or anti-ageist. There are differences between people and, as the dystopian Vonnegut story shows, these differences aren’t a bad thing. However, discrimination and oppression based on these differences isn’t good: I’ll never call for handicapping the pretty and strong and I’ll never call for having African-American actors play, for instance, George Washington. However, I do seek the elimination of unnecessary oppression.
There’s that term again…unnecessary oppression. How about we define it? The only definition of oppression we have on here so far is that it is undefined, everywhere, yet nowhere, basically.
So, Jeremy, in this day and age, what forms of unnecessary oppression are you seeking to eliminate that haven’t been dealt with or are being let run rampant today?
More than the flesh colored bandages argument, I hope.
You’ve been presented a plethora of examples. You simply can’t see any of them; many other people can.
I think there’s nothing I can do to show you these examples of oppression, just like I could never describe a rainbow to a blind person.
Maybe one day you’ll see them, maybe you never will.
There’s also no way Jeremy can describe a unicorn or leprechaun to someone who doesn’t believe in them.
That doesn’t make unicorns real, though.
I must say I find it intriguing that the very people who are constantly ragging on Christians or people of faith to “stop blindly believing”, “stick to reality”, and “restore science to its rightful place” believe blindly in unproven anthropogenic global warming and never like to discuss facts when they are inconvenient to their narrative.
And the same people who say that Darwin’s evolution of the species has been the way of the world since its beginning refuse to accept its foundational premise: The survival of the fittest.
Well, then we’re left with an epistemological question, aren’t we, Alan?
I can’t explain a rainbow to a blind person, but I also can’t explain a leprechaun to you. But we agree that rainbows exist but that leprechauns do not.
This proves my main point that there’s no way to prove or disprove someone’s viewpoint! You can’t say with certainty that oppression doesn’t exist; just as the blind man can’t say with certainty that rainbows don’t exist.
Now, even if you don’t see oppression, understand that other people do and are going to act on that. That’s the whole point of writing this article.
What examples, Jeremy? What examples. I haven’t seen any here.
I haven’t seen ANY examples that have any basis in fact or prove a point.
What, that blacks make up 15% of the nations drug users and 50 % are arrested for possession?
98% of statistics are made up on the spot, and 100% of them used for one sides personal advantage. You can easily possess with intent to sell and not be a user.
Some hard facts here.
But see, Jeremy, what you’re doing is not looking at unbiased, objective fact. To justify this, you have to look at it “from a leftist viewpoint”.
Enough Obi-Wan-Kenobi-ing and looking at things from a certain point of view. I’m sure Hitler thought that his mistreatment of the Jews was justified, even righteous. Didn’t make it right.
More facts then that it “Exists in our subconscious”. That doesn’t work in this day and age anymore. You need hard evidence.
But please, explain these “plethora” of examples”. You said there were so many, but you failed to list them.
You’re missing the crucial difference in that analogy, Jeremy.
We are not blind.
I do agree with you that there is no way to disprove a person’s viewpoint. People are free to believe whatever they wish to believe. Whatever makes them feel better about themselves.
What they are not free to do is force me, or society at large, to accept their views as gospel, or to change my behaviour so that is in accordance with their version of reality. If I feel they are trying to do so, I have every right to condemn those attempts at false-premise indoctrination and self-serving moral equivalence, judge them and their fellow travellers harshly and vigorously refute their arguments wherever and whenever I can.
There is no need to constantly point out that “we need to understand why these people feel the way they do” or that “even if [I] don’t see oppression, understand that other people do and are going to act on that.”
I have said without qualification many times that I understand well that obvious, common sense proposition. But the point I am trying to make, and that you do not seem to be absorbing, is that the end results of specific human behaviour arising from fallacious or competing personal worldviews have real world impact which transcends emotionally distant and clinically academic epistemological evaluation.
For example, it solves nothing to suggest we need to comprehend the worldview that informs the actions of a murderous dictatorial thug like Robert Mugabe. It is not difficult to understand what makes him and people like him tick. It seems you would like us all to stop at that epiphany and not judge the consequences of his behaviour, his worldview. Oh well, different strokes for different folks, you say. He has his reasons and we must not judge him on the consequences of his actions. After all, there is no right, and no wrong in this world. Only context.
You say the same holds for the recent actions of Rachael Ballard. I disagree, and maintain that what she did was dead wrong, full stop.
Your morally equivalent stance is easy to adopt, and absolves you of any obligation to possess concrete (or even semi-solid) values and to render judgement, but I’m afraid it’s a coward’s way out that only takes us halfway to the truth.
That is why the Socratic form of dialectic is superior to your mystical and constricted Hegelian dialectic. A conflict of opposing positions, wherein proving that a given hypothesis leads to a contradiction that forces the withdrawal of the hypothesis as a candidate for truth. Its true that reductio ad absurdum does not have to be proven and that both sides may ultimately agree upon a healthy synthesis of their competing positions, but in either case simply understanding why someone believes their position to be true is not the truncation or resolution point of the argument. If the common truth is to be found, both sides are required – not to petulantly withdraw and alienate themselves, but to engage the opposing side and and objectively support their positions with real world FACTS, not feelings.
You say:
“The only reason the leftist viewpoint survives (as one of the main viewpoints in modern Western society) is because it does comport with reality.
Your inability to present concrete examples of the leftist viewpoint deviating from reality proves my point.”
I say:
Do I really have to go in to the myriad ways in which the leftist worldview does not match up with reality? Time and time again through the last 100 years alone those who care to park their ideology at look with a critical eye have seen its bitter fruit.
Here’s just a few quicky examples which you can feel free to refute:
– Nazi Germany
– Communist Russia and the failed Eastern European proxy states of the USSR
– Communist China
– North Korea
– pre-WW2 Italy
– modern-day Britain
– modern-day France
– hell, modern-day Europe in general
Closer to home:
– Detroit and Michigan State
– Philadelphia
– New York and New York State
– California
- -New Orleans
– Chicago
– in fact, virtually every city or state in the country where Democrats have been in power for more than 10 years is a failure by any metric you care to name.
That enough concrete examples for you to start with? I’ve got more if you like…
On the topic of effort, you know you can’t possibly prove this statement, Jeremy:
“Regarding effort, I didn’t ever say that no minority could ever succeed. My point is that, on a macro scale, the average minority exerting a given amount of effort is going to achieve less than the average person of unmarked attributes (white, male, straight, Christian, etc.) will achieve. That’s not to say that minorities can’t achieve anything, but rather that they must work harder to achieve the same amount.”
You sound like just another leftist confusing your beliefs with the facts. Perhaps you should tell your interesting theories on the vagaries of socioeconomic advancement to the millions of “white, male, straight, Christian, etc.” people in the country who don’t have jobs at the moment and find it just as difficult to survive as their minority compadres. By the way, I say that only in response –– I still don’t accept the leftist premise that people are monolithically “white”.
I find this next comment of yours the most interesting and revealing of all:
“Regarding “stupider,” you substituted “less academic achievement” into my list where “stupider” once was. You clearly correlate the two. “
Wow. It appears to me that, of the two of us, you are the one trying to suggest that minorities are, as you put it, “stupider” than their societal peers. I neither liked nor agreed with your use of the term “stupid” the first time you posted it, so I substituted a term which was more appropriate “less academic achievement” in my response. That appears to me to be a more accurate way of describing the occasional disparity in test scores that exists between minorities and societal averages. Your continual harping on the word “stupid”, however, and your suggestion that my replacement of your inaccurate and disparaging term with a more useful and evidential one is clearly “correlating” the two says less about me than it does your own estimation of minority intelligence and obvious inability to argue the facts on their merit. Don’t feel too bad, though. The soft bigotry of low expectations is a common Left/Liberal trait.
To your last point:
I read Harrison Bergeron some time ago, so I am very familiar with its dystopian message. In fact, I am so familiar with it that when you say “There are differences between people and, as the dystopian Vonnegut story shows, these differences aren’t a bad thing. However, discrimination and oppression based on these differences isn’t good:…” , and: “In our quest for equality, will we eliminate all difference?”, I see clearly that you have missed the entire point of it.
Difference creates inequality by it’s very nature.
If you accept that we cannot and should not have the same DNA and be forced to lead the same lives, then some people will always be smarter, stronger, faster, better-looking, taller, better built, healthier, will choose to work harder and perhaps most importantly – as a result will enjoy better life circumstances than others.
Is it therefore logical to say that those less fortunately endowed or in less favourable circumstances are being discriminated against or oppressed by the mere presence and success of those other people?
I see no causality there, just parallel and contemporaneous real world occurrences.
Unlike you, I am not on a utopian “quest for equality” – for none can exist without resorting to the tactics employed in Beregeron. What I fear, though, is that the policies of the last century have taken us to a place where we are well on our way to that dystopian world, most recently evidenced by the installation of our very own “Handicapper General”, Mr. Barack Obama.
I also want to address your fallacious comment that all minorities lack the tools to succeed:
“And, as I’ve said, there exist systematic bias against minority children in the school systems. They likely achieve less because they are given fewer tools to succeed; or they must work much harder to achieve the same things as people of unmarked attributes.”
Perhaps you’d like to explain, then, why Asian kids consistently outscore all their peers on standardized tests at all levels of their education? Even those that have English as a second language. And so much so that, despite their achievements, they are regularly and transparently discriminated against by elite college admissions officers throughout the country.
Perhaps you’re not too far gone to note the irony of the systemic bias and “oppression” in that calculus.
The fact that you conflate Communist China and the Democratic Party with the leftist viewpoint shows that you really don’t understand it. Your supposed examples are totally irrelevant except that they are examples of the “left”, not of the leftist viewpoint rooted in Hegel and Marx that is the discussion here.
I’ve acknowledged that difference, which is good, creates inequality, and that that inequality isn’t bad. There will always be faster, stronger, prettier people. However, we institutionalize differences that don’t confer any specific advantage into oppressive institutions: Surely you’d agree that there is no superiority inherent to being white. However, non-white people are often made to feel inferior by the many examples that have been cited here. This imposition of (feelings of) non-inherent inferiority is what I oppose.
The fact that Asian children are often more academically successful doesn’t detract from the fact that other minorities (in terms of race, sexual orientation, etc.) are often much less academically successful.
Merrill, Your talk about Asian’s achieving more proves that you’re thinking is very limited.
I have friends who are Asian, and you know what? I don’t hear them once complaining and moaning. You know what I see them do? I see them working HARD. Day in, day out, being raised to do rediculous (maybe even unfairly so) amounts of work, and raised with high degrees of expectations.
So again, what prevents this achievement standard from being cultural?
I have African-American friends who have been raised in strict households, and they’ve gone to some of the top universities in the country. Needless to say, with their majors they’ll probably be making more then I will.
And some who haven’t been raised as well.
Who would say that if they were a majority, there wouldn’t be that same ratio of people who succeed and people who do badly as caucasian populations?
Maybe since they are a minority, it’s only more apparent when there are people who don’t succeed?
“The fact that you conflate Communist China and the Democratic Party with the leftist viewpoint shows that you really don’t understand it. Your supposed examples are totally irrelevant except that they are examples of the “left”, not of the leftist viewpoint rooted in Hegel and Marx that is the discussion here.”
Really? You’re suggesting that Mao’s vision for Communist China does not spring from Marxist-Leninist theory? Or that leftist Black Liberation theology is not thinly disguised Marxist claptrap? If so, I think you’re the one who may be in need of some remedial reading…
As far as the US Democratic Party is concerned, I agree wholeheartedly with the contention that socialists and communists are just “liberals in a hurry.” There is very little difference in their worldviews, some forms are just more aggressive than the others. That’s why a self-proclaimed communist like Van Jones ended up working in Obama’s White House along with all the other not-so-crypto socialists and communists.
You say we “we institutionalize differences that don’t confer any specific advantage into oppressive institutions.” I don’t agree. Our institutions are nothing more than natural manifestations a constantly evolving status quo. It is expected and reasonable for the majority (of anything) in any group to dominate discussion by virtue of their majority. The most loud people or smart people or talented people or aggressive people or eloquent people, etc… Ever joined a club? The fact that someone’s feelings might be hurt as a result of not being heard as often as they would like or not being catered to in the way they wish within the larger group is not representative of any systemic bias, it is merely a by-product of an imbalance in numbers and natural group dynamics.
Your question to me “Surely you’d agree that there is no superiority inherent to being white?” is a little creepy. I have never suggested anything of the sort and find your segue from there to more hurt feelings in “non-whites” caused by the generic and unlisted actions to be another example of sophistry and begging the question.
Your final comment:
“The fact that Asian children are often more academically successful doesn’t detract from the fact that other minorities (in terms of race, sexual orientation, etc.) are often much less academically successful.”
I never claimed it did, but wouldn’t you agree that it demolishes the very foundation of your argument that “minorities” and “non-whites” are unable to succeed in life because in your words “there exists systematic bias against minority children in the school systems. They likely achieve less because they are given fewer tools to succeed; or they must work much harder to achieve the same things as people of unmarked attributes.”
If that is the case, how do you explain their success?
Well said, Two Sides…
Jeremy can’t explain the success of Asian students and other people who have decided to work hard in life and overcome whatever obstacles they face because it would mean admitting that it is CHARACTER, EFFORT and ATTITUDE that determine success – not skin colour or socioeconomic status.
Those concerned with endlessly dealing race cards, promoting victimology and endowing hurt feelings with deductive validity will never accept that, nor do they understand that encouraging the ongoing inculcation of those negative and self-destructive qualities hurts the very people they are trying to help.
^ Would love to see arguments against comment above. That essentially shuts down Merrill’s argument process right there.
If I witnessed a “stupid” event, and was asked to put on “stupid” lenses to view things in the context of the philosophical and historical roots of “stupid”, I might just come away with a better understanding of “stupidity”. It would, however, still be a “stupid” event.
Why would viewing things from any sort of “lens” be desirable at all? Especially the lens of an artificial, abstract ideology? Hasn’t dogmatic ideology been proven to be pernicious? Hasn’t it been discredited? There is no need to attempt explain why Ms. Ballard acted or felt in such and such a manner: let her words and actions speak for themselves. You ask me to “understand this particular way of looking at the world so you can better understand how other people act.” OK… I now understand the mechanisms behind all this. Doesn’t make it any less disgraceful.
You ask “Why would viewing things from any sort of “lens” be desirable at all?” My response is that doing so is unavoidable. Everyone’s view of the world is colored by their experiences, their beliefs and what they’ve been taught. As cognitive scientists say, our perception isn’t “veridical,” we shape what we see into coherent objects, tropes and narratives. Without such “constructive cognition,” the world would be an undefined blur.
These narratives cannot coherently be said to be either “true” or “false” because they consist of a person’s reaction to a series of events. There cannot be an objective narrative, at least not in any non-trivial sense. The canonical (i.e. white, male, able-bodied, whatever) worldview in America tends to form narratives based on self-determination: someone, like Bill Gates, is successful because of his hard work, determination and, to a much lesser extent, luck. This is “true” to someone who sees the world in this way, but it certainly does not ring true to someone with a different worldview. Someone else might see Gates as successful because he’s been specially chosen and helped by God. A third person might see Gates as having benefited from institutions and systems that reward him undeservedly for the color of his skin, his nationality, his parents’ economic status, his sexual orientation, etc. None of these worldviews is objectively false and none is objectively true. They’re true for those who believe in them, but not true for those who don’t.
The idea that leftist ideology is “artificial, abstract” doesn’t make sense to me. It’s probably very artificial to you and it’s a little bit artificial to me, but it’s totally concrete and natural to someone who sees the world in this way. Just like your worldview (I’ll call canonical, for lack of a better term) is natural to you, your canonical worldview seems artificial, abstract and even obviously false to someone who sees the world through, for instance, a leftist lens. And no, leftist ideology has by no means been discredited: Leninist Communism as a political ideology has been, but disregarding all forms of leftist ideology because a single political strain failed is unwarranted.
You say that you’d like Ms. Ballard’s words and actions to speak for themselves. This implies that symbols have inherent meanings. Ask a linguist or a semiotician: they don’t. Meaning is constructed in a dialogue between the symbol and the viewer. Ms. Ballard’s words and actions may be obviously racist from your viewpoint, but from Ms. Ballard’s and from the generalized leftist viewpoint I try to provide, they are not racist and completely understandable.
Racism is racism. You can try and mask it, obscure it through niceties and phrases such as looking through it through some leftist ideology, but it is what it is.
Racism is an intolerance or hatred of other races and cultures. While it might be okay from her viewpoint, in the general understanding, and from an objective standpoint, it’s racist.
Where do you get your “objective standpoint”? I don’t think such a thing could exist.
The standpoint that being intolerant of another culture, is racist. The idea that you must have some authority to be racist is rediculous–it is a mask to say “Oh, because I’m a minority, and I’ve had hardship in past generations, boo hoo–I can hate on other races because of that”.
Think about it. Where does that leave us, at the end of all things? Blacks can hate Whites, Whites can’t hate blacks, because it’s racist, but it’s okay the other way around? Take away the rediculous ideologies and viewing things through “leftist lenses”, and it is what it is. Racism. Let’s call a spade a spade, here.
First, I don’t think racism including power has anything to do with _past_ hardship. It’s based on modern-day, unintentional and probably unnoticed oppression.
Second, I don’t have a problem calling black hatred of white people racism. The name is irrelevant. I want you to see a distinction — to see two different kinds of racism — between omnipresent oppression by means of a subconsciously oppressive general culture and mere hatred. If someone hates you, you can just ignore them; if the culture feels oppressive to you, there’s very little you can do. (Besides creating a negative space where you can escape that oppression. Like the OBSA or Kwanzaa. Which is why bringing that oppression — subconscious and unintentional though it was — was angering.)
Well, then there is no one at fault. “Subconciously oppressive” is a dangerous term, Jeremy.
You need to see that the way this is being talked about leaves dangerous pathways for the future. When one says “subconcious oppression”, what does one do to make amends? Oh sorry if there’s some oppression that no one can do anything about?
There’s no culture oppressing anyone. If you feel that way, then you’re viewing the world in a rather hateful and bitter viewpoint. (not you, Jeremy, that’s a broad comment)
In essence, it’s an unjustified sort of racism–they are viewing those students as oppressive because it’s much easier to label a group as oppressive and get angry at them for it.
But the point stands. Where does this end? Will black people forever and ever be oppressed until there are no more white people, and the symbol of past oppression is vanquished? Because that’s what it’s sounding like to me.
In layman’s terms, it’s called Getting. Over. It. What these people are doing are nitpicking at irrelevant details in order to create the illusion of some sort of oppressive culture. You want oppressive culture? Go back to the 1960s. Okay, then I’ll agree.
But in a culture where SO much is done to incorporate minorities, one way or the other, it’s stupid to argue that. If there was no such thing as affirmative action, they’d argue that they were even more oppressed, and they argue now that such things are even greater examples of “white privilege”.
Anyways, the primary question is this. We are supposed to be an all-inclusive culture. Everyone is equal, and many of us are raised that way. When you are raised believing an entire culture is oppressive, it’s racism. Whether it’s one kind, or the other you suggested, it’s still blatant ignorance at it’s finest.
“There’s no culture oppressing anyone.”
Yes, there is. And if there isn’t (wouldn’t it be nice), there was, in extremely significant ways that have lasted to this day.
“Will black people forever and ever be oppressed …it’s called Getting. Over. It. What these people are doing are nitpicking at irrelevant details in order to create the illusion of some sort of oppressive culture. You want oppressive culture? Go back to the 1960s.”
WHOA. IRRELEVANT DETAILS? Really now, you would actually call hundreds of years of injustice irrelevant? I don’t think 40 years can fix that, nor should anyone just “Get over it” in that amount of time.
I believe it’s blatantly ignorant to think that a people can just get over the fact that although blacks make up only about 15% of the nation’s drug users, they are close to 50% of those arrested on drug charges, mainly for possession.
Wait! You said everyone these days is equal…
Oh wait! Possession does not always = Using! How about selling, intent to sell? There you go. Stats are flawed.
Your argument seems to be that you don’t see oppression, so it must not exist. I’d remind you that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The first step towards making “amends” (or really, just fixing the problem) for subconscious and unintentional racist oppression is recognizing that exists. Just try to be conscious of racial norms and actions that may be perceived as oppressive.
No, Jeremy. If you’d look a little harder, you’d see my point, instead of trying to make a witty quip.
One cannot say that there is just “SOMETHING” out there that is oppressive, that is undefined, and subconcious. Instead of saying that, and that therefore, society is oppressive, they need to actually STATE what is oppressive.
THAT is my point.
I have seen no data, none whatsoever that factually proves any sort of oppression. Just smaller incidents that can happen to any person of a varying cultures, (i.e racist events like what Bridget described), that happen to anyone.
The crime stats? Don’t work. That there are more blacks arrested for possession than doing drugs? It just means that more blacks could be dealers or have the drugs on them when they are arrested.
There’s no correlation.
But once people start putting up ACTUAL, non-biased facts that show that there’s some sort of oppression, then I’ll believe them.
Anon is right.
No lens or filter – left-wing, right-wing, Hegelian or otherwise, is necessary to pass judgement on a disgraceful act such as this. The truth is self-evident, and no amount of ideological mascara, pancake makeup or rouge will turn this ugly incident into socially acceptable behaviour.
Hegel was wrong.
Although thesis and antithesis do exist in the pursuit of absolute truth, the truth is NOT ultimately found through a process of bi-polar hard-edged separation and then idyllic synthesis. It is arrived at when one side or the other, or the philosophy that created or facilitated the separation, is proven evidentially false. That is the basis of the scientific method, our legal system, and the means by which the human race has achieved its greatest accomplishments over the years.
Here’s a case in point:
Let’s say two groups within a community are arguing over the building of a bridge over a river. One faction considers the bridge absolutely necessary regardless of cost. The other group doesn’t want to build the bridge under any circumstance, wishing instead to use the money for other purposes.
If one were to follow Hegelian methodology, we would increase the physical and psychological divide between the groups as much as possible, then accept and even celebrate the inevitable alienation when it occurred. Keep them completely away from each other and encourage an extreme hardening of their respective positions. Encourage denigration and dehumanization of each opposing group, if possible, as a way in which to undermine their argument.
Does anyone believe these groups will ultimately have some sort of epiphany, then get together and peacefully resolve their differences under those circumstances? So when does the magical Hegelian/left wing synthesis occur? What form does it take? A bridge built halfway across the river to satisfy both sides? Synthesis, baby! In fact, that’s what the biblical judge Solomon suggested when confronted with two mothers claiming a baby as their own… just cut the baby in half and both will be happy, right?
Wrong. Any fool knows that the best way to get people to work together toward a common goal and arrive at the best solution for their community AS A WHOLE is to minimize or remove any potential barriers to their collaboration – not find, exaggerate, or outright invent myriad ways in which to divide them.
You say Hegel is wrong. Fine. As I said repeatedly, the Hegelian/Marxian leftist worldview is flawed (just like every other ideology). If you accept the leftist worldview, however, then Ms. Ballard’s anger is understandable. That’s all I really hoped to prove. As I said, I don’t ascribe to this leftist worldview, nor do I care if you do. I want you to understand it, that’s all.
Your critique of Hegel, though, shows a complete misunderstanding of the Hegelian dialectic. Now, I may share some of the blame for that, but oh well. The dialectic is not a conflict resolution mechanism, but rather a mechanism that occurs as a matter of fact. Your examples really don’t apply, therefore.
Let’s not quibble over the meaning of the term Hegelian dialectic, Jeremy, let’s go straight to the dictionary:
“An interpretive method, originally used to relate specific entities or events to the absolute idea, in which some assertible proposition (thesis) is necessarily opposed by an equally assertible and apparently contradictory proposition (antithesis), the mutual contradiction being reconciled on a higher level of truth by a third proposition (synthesis).”
The problem here is not that you didn’t do a very good job of explaining it – you did. It’s that I don’t agree with it, either in this application or any manifestation. It’s just a philosophical cop out for people who are unable or unwilling to make value judgements. Typically found on the left side of the political spectrum, these folks believe nothing is absolute, and everything is up for interpretation and contextualization. Moral equivalence is the order of the day in this worldview.
There is no good, no evil. Just context.
There is no knowledge, only opinion. (in fact, feelings count more than facts)
Everyone is special, therefore no one is special.
There is no black, or white. Just endless shades of meaning.
Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others.
Racism bad! (except when it’s practiced by certain groups)
This warped and completely unrestrictive philosophy allows its practitioners to engage in the worst sorts of circular viewpoints and nasty behaviours, all the while excusing themselves from judgement by invoking the inviolable “context” of their misdeeds. (another recent example: the Berkeley rioters)
No one is arguing that one needn’t be sensitive to the idiosyncrasies and viewpoints of others – that’s a matter of common sense and should go without saying in any civilized discourse. But to argue that as a society or an individual we must compromise our principles or tie ourselves into knots trying to address each and every unreasonable and emotional demand that someone or some group arbitrarily places upon us is nonsense. Opinion must end where the facts begin.
Finally, I never suggested that Hegelian dialectic was merely a “conflict resolution system”. The point I made was that the reconciliation of the so-called “higher level of truth” to be found in the third proposition does not mystically occur “as a matter of fact” or Deus ex Machina from bald presentation of thesis and antithesis – especially if accompanied by naked hostility on the part of the respective proponents.
If you wish to bring Hegel in as a rationale for societally destructive tribalism, bad behaviour and left wing lunacy across the board, I’m afraid you’re going to have to put the textbook down and square that inconvenient circle.
By the way, I neglected to thank you kindly for your reply.
Unlike most “port-side” commentators, you have the moxie to engage your reader/commenters in a respectful, articulate and intelligent way.
Much appreciated.
OK, I get where you’re coming from. You’re rejecting the viewpoint as invalid. That’s fine. Reasonable people can disagree about the validity of different viewpoints.
I’m not asking you to accept this viewpoint, but merely understand what someone else who does accept the viewpoint would think. There are certainly flaws to this viewpoint, but there are also flaws to yours. (For instance, it tends to deduce what ought to be from what is. That’s fallacious.)
At any rate, you seem to understand the viewpoint. I don’t want to get in to a fight of dueling worldviews, since, as I’ve said, I don’t accept the leftist viewpoint I present here. (At least, not as a/the uniquely correct worldview; I do accept it as a worldview that sometimes presents answers.)
Thanks for the well considered reply, Jeremy.
I understand that you’re calling attention to the fact that certain people do hold that worldview, and that it informs their actions.
And we can – as you say – agree to disagree as to its validity, but I’m curious as to why you would believe it worthy of consideration. For example, I understand perfectly why a child might throw a temper tantrum, but that doesn’t make it acceptable, intelligent or logical behaviour.
Perhaps Browning had it right when he said: “There are those who believe something, and therefore will tolerate nothing; and on the other hand, those who tolerate everything, because they believe nothing”
With respect to my “fallacious” viewpoint that deduces “what ought to be from what is”, I shall leave you with another Browning quote: “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a heaven for?”
I’d say I accept the Leftist viewpoint to be worthy of consideration — and that I consider your viewpoint, what I’m calling “canonical”, to be likewise worthy– because I haven’t found a non-flawed viewpoint yet.
Just like the Leftist viewpoint has flaws, yours does too. (For instance, as I mention above, it ascribes success or failure to hard work, while removing the possibility of outside interference. Or its desire to see everything as having a right answer.)
Thanks for the response, Jeremy.
You’re obviously a very clever and well-read fellow, but your curious posture vis-a-vis the leftist worldview reminds me of an Orwellian quote: “They are ideas so stupid on on intellectual could believe in them.”
I’ve got news for you: Success IS dependent upon, to the largest extent possible – one’s desire to work hard at achieving it. Save sheer blind luck, there is no other way to get from here to there, and it happens every day in this country and around the world. It’s true there is no guarantee you will not ultimately fail despite having put in what you or anyone considers to be the requisite effort, but in the end you will have been the master of your own destiny and developed the independence and character to lift yourself up from any undue hardship.
What’s the alternative? Shrivel up and die?
Finally, there is a right answer for everything, my friend. You just have to look for it in the right places.
Sorry, fatigue typo.
“They are ideas so stupid on AN intellectual could believe in them.”
It’s amazing to me how so little of the true facts about this incident are known. First of all, I am of African descent and I attended the Kwanzaa celebration last Thursday. I also work at OBSA and am there almost every single day. I am very close to the directors of OBSA and have been informed about the non-black students that came to the dinner as well as the opinions of many of the black students in regards to their attendance. Let me tell you what they told me.
The non-black students that attended were HMC students that were curious about Kwanzaa. These students were formally invited by OBSA to attend the Kwanzaa celebration. They arrived on time and one of the students even helped set up. This proves that they were invited and did not just show up to eat the food. These students left after two hours but it must be known that other students left after two hours as well. These students did interact with other people and to say that they did not is a blatant lie.
Furthermore, I would like to say that most OBSA programs and meetings are open to the public including the Kwanzaa celebration. All that was required to attend was an rsvp on facebook and many students that did not rsvp attended anyway.
I just want to put out there that the presence of the non-black students at the Kwanzaa celebration did not bother me at all. I encourage anyone who is curious about the traditions of another culture to seek ways to learn about them. That’s exactly what the non-black students from HMC did and did so properly by contacting their dean and getting formally invited to the celebration. I think an apology to these students is definitely in order because they did nothing wrong.
Ah…the truth comes out! Well, so much for Jeremy’s suppositions about there being some oppression going on. That’s what happens with shoddy journalism and you try and argue without knowing what happened…so if some OBSA members were fine with them being there, guess that just proves that some of them are a little less tolerant than others, eh?
So much for an entire group being oppressed. Way to let the truth be known, Kassandra.
Well Jeremy? Now it just looks like there was just alot of hateful ranting and raving over nothing–and a lot of twisting of words and actions in order to call people “cockroaches”.
Shades of Rwanda, anyone?
Obviously I didn’t FABRICATE that the students did not engage with Black students. I know that everyone genuinely wants to believe I hate white people… or Asian-Americans? or just non-Black people? (i.e. my adoptive parents, my biological mother, my siblings…) However, if I had seen the students engaging with Black students, I would have just focused on their attendance of a pan-African event.
Kassandra did YOU have a conversation with the RAs? When did you see them engaging with other?–While they were in line to eat?
I think that it’s notable that you (K.P.) felt the need to list your OBSA credentials, because it helps to further highlight the distinction between MY feelings, the feelings of other students and the policies/official stance of OBSA. OBSA is an institutional office beholden to the colleges–it does not represent a monolithic (or correct) Black stance.
To ‘Anon’ …I love how because Kassandra refutes me and her statements support your stance, she’s obviously the one who’s being truthful (but not necessarily critical). You’re already working from the opinion that I have deeply seeded prejudices, therefore I MUST have a motive for lying.
Works both ways, right?
So, R Ballard, do you believe that Kwanzaa should be celebrated by Blacks only or open to all? I get the distinctive feeling by the context of your words that you were uncomfortable because of those non-blacks that showed up. Apparently, they didn’t do anything wrong according to Kassandra.
What would you have preferred?
I had two issues with the presence of non-Black students. In my study of Kwanzaa, I have come to understand that it is a holiday created for the express purpose of giving Black Americans & those of the Pan-African community an alternative (& self-affirming) option outside the celebrations of hegemonic culture.
Furthermore, because the students themselves claim to have merely been curious about Kwanzaa & wanting to understand it, I found it off-putting that they (in my witnessing) did not engage with Black students nor did they stay for the substantive portion of the celebration. Even if I’m entirely off-base about Karenga’s intention for Kwanzaa & that these students are warranted to celebrate it–I do not think that’s what they were doing. They were observing and studying….and I’m not an exhibit. If, in fact, their behavior was appropriate, then I will most certainly be avoiding any institution-sponsored events where I may be put on display for the education of others.
Well, Ballard, according to the apology of the students, and other witness accounts, it sounds like these students had no intention of observing your actions the way you are describing it. You are trivializing a misunderstanding and ranting about it.
A monolithic (and correct) Black stance? A black stance, eh? I didn’t realize there was one stance that all blacks were beholden to.
We’ve determined that there were A) Other people that left early, and B) In their apologies, there was a misunderstanding about the time and length of celebration.
So your claims on what was off-putting are rather moot.
Ms. Ballard:
You need to grow up and get over yourself.
You have made yourself an exhibit, through your pettiness, insecurity and childish inability to understand why someone else might want to extend a hand across the racial divide you seem intent on perpetuating.
Shed a few of those “issues” of which you have so many, and you might find the world looks a heck of a lot better.
By the way…There is no such thing as a “Pan-African community”. Are you referring to the cultural similarities the Moroccans share with the Kenyans? The Egyptians with the Nigerians? The Hutus with the Tutsis?
Kassandra, glad to hear your side of the story as well.
Don’t you think you are exaggerating the dialectic’s influence of modern liberalism? Surely Marx had great influence, but utopian idealism concerning the end of history and opposition to consumerism and corporations are not ideas to be solely accredited to Marx nor are they the foundation of the modern liberal movement. Your application of the dialectic to Black Nationalism is artificial at best; by characterizing this Kwanzaa party’s (antithesis) purpose as rejecting the 5 C’s incredibly oppressive institutions (thesis), you are putting words in the mouths of the organizers of an event that appeared to be an open celebration. Perhaps a better Marxist theory to use, if you feel it is necessary to limit liberal analysis of this event to his lens, is conflict theory. The girl was really hungry and didn’t want to give up her group’s Kwanzaa food, so she was angered by the competition of intruders and the structural inequality of the dining hall in which the outgroup was closer to the buffet table.
Or maybe she was of the opinion minorities on campus should have events in which they can relax and celebrate in the company of those that understand their experiences. But that would be too simple, wouldn’t it?
Well said.
Ballard, I actually appreciate your bravery in celebrating Kwanzaa the way it was intended – for Blacks only! The whole reason Karenga created Kwanzaa was to give Blacks something they called their own.
I detest the sneakiness by Karenga to disguise this celebration for all when he knows good and well his intents were for inclusivenss. He’s trying very hard to make this a celebration for all since he’s seen so many Christians adopt this celebration.
As a Black Christian I strongly disagree with the whole premise of Kwanzaa as it is extremely offensive to our Christian faith. Not only that, but politically it is divisive in only achieves separatism of the different racial groups rather than unity. The unity Karenga created in Kwanzaa is strictly for the Black community with the exclusion of everyone else.
At least you have the guts to admit what Karenga won’t!
Alex, I might be. [First off, leftism does not equal liberalism. Liberalism is either the mainstream Democratic Party (which isn't leftist) or a type of laissez-faire, libertarian capitalism, which isn't leftist either.]
I think Marx played an important role in forming the left, even the non-Marxist left, and has implanted the materialist dialectic deeply in the leftist psyche/worldview. So, no, I don’t think I’m exaggerating the dialectic’s role. I openly admit to exaggerating Marx’s role by skipping much of the dialectic’s pre-Marx history (Kant, Fichte; about whom I know very little) and it’s post-Marx history (Engels, Lenin, Lukacs, et al., with all of whom I’m completely unfamiliar). That’s mostly because I spent enough time talking about abstract philosophy and felt people wanted to hear more about concrete stuff on campus.
I don’t think my application of dialectical thinking to Black Nationalism is by any means artificial. Founders of Black Nationalism, such as Bobby Seale and Ron Karenga, embraced Marxism and the Leftist zeitgeist of the 1960s explicitly. I think this provides at least a preponderance of evidence that black nationalist thought is intertwined with leftist thought, making the dialectical analysis appropriate.
And your last line is my argument, stripped down. The only thing to add is that she sees her experience as having been shaped by her race, and her desire to have those events is shaped by black nationalist thought’s roots in leftist thought.
Anon–
My point was to say that there isn’t a monolithic nor correct Black stance & therefore OBSA can’t represent one. UH OH! Sorry you agree with me this time!
Alan–
No such thing as a Pan-African community? . . .Please inform Professor Lemelle that he should cease & desist teaching his course on the subject.
Fyi: the Pan-African community is based on shared descent from African ancestry, not a shared regional/continental/national culture. The shared culture of the diaspora is based on a shared history of Africa ancestry and the experience of subjugation across barriers of time & space.
My error for reading it wrong. However, it would do you good to drop the snarky attitude. You’ve dug a pretty big hole in the community already, Ballard.
And your remark that Professor Lemelle teaches this class, doesn’t mean that there aren’t arguments for or against the fact that a Pan-African community exists. Stop trying to hold some high ground simply because you are majoring in Black studies, or whatever it is you’re majoring in.
“The experience of subjugation across barriers of time and space?” Jesus. You make it sound like people of African descent EVERYWHERE are some sort of victims.
The fact is this–you can be racist. Minority or not, racism is a viewpoint, a way of thinking. Just because you are black, or any minority, doesn’t mean you cannot be hateful. Quit trying to mask it underneath the context of privelige or some feeling of superiority.
The fact of the matter is, you are accusing students who merely wished to learn more about Kwanzaa of being oppressive, even calling them cockroaches (which sounds more like oppressive propaganda on your part). They already stated why they left early, and members of your own group have stated that they were NOT oppressive, and even helped set up at the beginning. Do you deny that?
But I digress. I suppose one can view it through any sort of viewpoint, much like Alex’s above.
I’m not beholden to you to avoid sarcasm or facetiousness. While you claim I’ve “dug a pretty big hole” in the community, I’m of the opinion that I’ve exposed a pretty big hole in the community–that would be unaddressed hegemony and privilege. I’ve received dozens of messages from students thanking me for spurring this discussion, and for espousing my views on a public forum despite the fact that the majority of people are severely hampered in engaging with my stance due to their disagreement with, or non-exposure to the underpinnings of black leftist thought.
I’m unaware if you’ve viewed my actual videos or merely read Charles Johnson’s transcript, but I did NOT call the RAs cockroaches. However, I posted another video specifically addressing that interpretation and apologizing for not anticipating that my words might construed in such a manner.
Regardless of what definition of racism one uses, my opinion that non-Black students are not at liberty to attend ONE, SPECIFIC holiday celebration does not make me a racist–it’s defending the purpose of Kwanzaa. If you’d like to cite Kwanzaa itself as racist (based on your own definition), feel free.
Furthermore, as I’ve repeated time and time again, I realize the the conscious intentions of the RAs were probably far removed from conducting an ethnographic study–yet this does not change the fact that MANY students in attendance felt that the integrity of their celebration was compromised and that they were on display. [see comments on the videos] It’s good to know that these students didn’t MEAN to be hurtful, just like I hope it helps them to know that I didn’t MEAN for my words to be misconstrued as calling them cockroaches…but that doesn’t mean that our intentions define the work our actions/words may do.
Is it actually fair to place all of the blame on the RAs? Despite the sense of “entitlement” you cite all “light-skinned” people as having, they did, in fact, ask permission of the OBSA administrators before attending. It is acceptable to be upset and confused initially, since you did not have this information during your first posting, but that is not the case anymore. While it is fully within your rights to be upset at the rudeness you perceived by their leaving early and failing to integrate with the rest of the attendees, it’s not their fault that the OBSA admins did not ask the community if their attendance would be problematic. Maybe it’s time to spread the blame around a little bit.
Rosie–
I largely agree with you…please see posts below.
Oh I forgot:
“The experience of subjugation across barriers of time and space?” Jesus. You make it sound like people of African descent EVERYWHERE are some sort of victims.
Yuuup. Take it up with Blyden and DuBois–I didn’t define the concept.
Rachael, I likely have next to nothing in common with your upbringing and life, as a white male who came from Montana (where not a single black student attended my school, in fact I struggle to think of a circumstance where I ever came in contact with a black [or African-American? I struggle with PC labelings of ethnic groups] person prior to coming to college). Jeremy is my suitemate and I’ve discussed this matter with him as a whole. I know nothing about Kwanzaa, aside from research done since this issue has arisen at the Claremont Colleges.
I am struggling on a personal level with the ideology that has been presented both in your videos (which I have only read the transcripts of) and in Mr. Merrill’s defense of your words. First and foremost, I am a “white” member of “macrosociety,” and that is something I cannot change, no more than you can change your “blackness.” The students who attended your Kwanzaa meeting can also do nothing to change their racial identity. Yet under Mr. Merrill’s argument, and your own words, students such as myself and those who attended the meeting are perceived as a threat of oppression for the reason that they are not black. Perhaps, as Jeremy said, that is because they are members of the white dominant culture. But both you and Jeremy have argued that it is therefore acceptable to categorize them as “not-black,” and therefore a symbol of oppression. As a member of this “macrosociety,” I feel that you have labeled myself and these poor Mudders as racists, purely because of the color of our skin. I have made efforts to understand your view, I hope you can see the reasoning behind my own.
Additionally, I have one other question, a question I raise based off of my experience with Native American reservations in Montana. There are obviously immense social issues at hand within these reservations, perhaps in the same manner there are social issues within inner-city black neighborhoods in major cities. Yet, to my understanding, part of your ideology comes from self-labeling both yourself, and your ethnic group, as ‘victimized’ by society. While there certainly are reasons for you to think this, I ask what the benefit of “self-vicitimization’ is to the Black [see previous brackets] community by perpetually embracing a self-pitying view? Surely over the last 50 years progress has been made in inter-racial relations in the United States. While racism will sadly never vanish, are you not furthering racism within American society by holding to this belief?
Dan, I think you’re misrepresenting; perhaps I was unclear. Someone can be oppressive (or a symbol of oppression) unintentionally. That doesn’t make them (read: you, I and the Mudders) a racist. It means that we are seen as representing oppression or racism, probably through none/verylittle of our actions.
Jeremy:
Well according to this argument, I certainly am only representing oppression because I am white. And regardless of my actions I am a “symbol of oppression?” I am sure you see the problem with such an ideology. How can a “repressed” group simultaneously wish to be seen as more than the color of their skin while also typecasting members of “macrosociety” as “symbols of oppression?” That is a hypocrisy that is allowed or at least “less-bad” under this leftist lens you speak of.
Dan is right.
Under the rigged rules of the leftist/race baiting scheme feelings rule and facts simply don’t matter. Whites are bad because these people say they’re bad. Even if there is absolutely no evidence to prove whites, or society at large, is bad, they’re still bad. Get it?
Who are the winners in this mug’s game? In fact, why bother playing?
Dan:
First, I think your actions do matter. My guess is that I’m not seen as a symbol of oppression, even though I’m white.
Second, I think that seeing white people as symbols of oppression is a (psychological?) symptom of feeling oppressed by other things. That’s the point of negative spaces: to create a space where that oppression can be escaped, so that later, no one is (seen as) oppressive.
“My guess is that I’m not seen as a symbol of oppression, even though I’m white.”
My guess is that the non-black students who showed up for the Kwanzaa event didn’t see themselves as symbols of oppression either, and yet their mere presence there was supposedly oppressive and disruptive.
Whoops.
Ms. Ballard:
With all due respect to you and the teachings of Professor Lemelle, do you honestly imagine that the African people are the only ones who have undergone a difficult diaspora?
From the ancient Jews in 6thC BCE through the Germanic and Slavic tribes in 300-500 AD, the Turks and Slavs in 500-900 AD, the Hungarian Magyars and Vikings in the middle ages, the Irish famine diaspora of the 1870′s and the the Indian, Chinese and Nepalese diasporas from the 19th C to the late 40s, this has been the way of the world, even to the present day. The last century alone saw Stalin’s forced migrations of millions into Eastern Russia, Central Asia and Siberia. Post-war VIetnam sent tens of thousands of Vietnamese boat people and refugees to America, France and beyond. Six million people left Afghanistan after the Russian invasion in 1979. The Communist Chinese invasion of Tibet saw hundreds of thousands of Tibetans displaced from their homeland. A million refugees have left Columbia in the wake of its devastating drug wars and violence. Hundreds of thousands fled the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Millions have left Mexico to escape corruption and violence and despair in the hope of finding prosperity in the US. Thousands of refugees have been forced to leave the basket case country now known as Zimbabwe. Thousands left Iran after the fall of the Shah and Iraq during the recent period of war there.
So what’s so special about you and your group? Do you really believe in the history of the world you are the only ones who felt “subjugation across time and space”? Every group named has been through horrific upheaval, forced to begin again at rock bottom, deal with an existing “power structure”– and yet few, if any, are prone to the whining and moaning we hear from perpetual grievance mongers in the Black Studies crowd. Those other groups? They just work hard, get on with it and make something of themselves.
Instead of living in the past, wallowing in the culture of diaspora long gone, and self-segregating with the Pan-African crowd, why not share your life potential with people here in your own college? In other words, live in the now. Stop casting yourself and your race in the dead-end role of the victim, the martyr, the oppressed. It’s lazy, it’s inappropriate and it’s ultimately self-destructive. Why not find a way to empower yourself that comes from within, and doesn’t involve hiding in a minority group and blaming someone else for your shortcomings?
In my opinion, the only minority anyone should be concerned about is the minority of one — the individual. It is the smallest minority, as well as the most pure and valid one. Each and every one of us is unique and special, because of our intellect, abilities and distinct life experience– not because we belong to any particular group.
People and institutions that worship at the false altar of “diversity” insist on dividing everyone up into arbitrary groups and subgroups based on skin colour, ethnicity, sexual orientation, geographic origin, or any other one of the many inaccurate and divisive categories. By doing so, they do no one any favors. All they do is encourage a new form of segregation; a toxic mix of victimhood and post-modern tribalism that divides and destroys the community or society they hope to “improve”.
I find it sad, and more than a little disconcerting, that almost 60 years after Martin Luther King’s powerful and inspirational “I Have a Dream” speech, we are trying harder than ever to find ways in which we are different, rather than to find and share the common bonds of humanity. And the very people who insist upon doing this are those that profess to admire and follow King’s example. Remember these words?…
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”… “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
The sooner we leave the inappropriate labels behind and start thinking and judging each other as individuals rather than groups the better off we’ll be as a society. Wallowing in and/or “celebrating” tribalism, no matter how well-intentioned, is not the path to happiness or enlightenment.
Think of yourself as an individual, at Pomona or anywhere else, and the world starts looking a whole lot better.
I understand that it is human nature to take comfort by assembling into homogeneous groups. Everyone wants to “belong” somewhere. But the point I am trying to make is that I believe the diversity game everyone is playing these days has socially negative rather than positive overtones. In fact, very often this forced exclusivity and neo-tribalism encourages an “us against them” mentality and/or fosters feelings of victimhood and isolation.There is little to be gained — and much to be lost — when institutions promote the segregation of students into groups based on the parameters I mentioned earlier, or when groups of students on campuses across the nation can sequester themselves in separate dorms taking myopic and self-indulgent courses and wallowing in overcooked or stale-dated grievances that have little or no relevance in today’s world. Unfortunately, the net result of that practice in the main is not the establishment of a new society of independent, broad-minded, freely associating individuals — it is the creation of self-perpetuating societal subgroups with self-serving and one-dimensional perspectives.
Close to half of the students at Pomona (in that year, anyway) are either visible minorities or foreign students. Consider that the remaining half are most probably an eclectic (and interesting) mix of North Easterners, Texans, Floridians, New Yorkers, Pacific Northwesters, Alaskans, Hawaiians, Mid-Westerners, Californians and assorted and sundry others. Far from being a homogeneous group of “white people”, or in your view “not-Black people”, they could be first-generation or 8th generation descendants of Greek, Italian, Czech, British, French, Scandinavian, Spanish roots. They can express their spirituality (or not) as Jews, Christians, Muslims, Zoroastrians, atheists, agnostics, whatever. They could be from the poor part of town, from the country club set, or from anywhere in between. They can be male, female, hetero, gay, lesbian, bi, whatever. They can enjoy listening to classical, alternative, rap, hip hop, metal, synth, dance, folk, R&B, country, or all of the above. Shall I go on subdividing them, or do you get the picture?
What do they have in common with each other? The answer: Perhaps nothing. Perhaps no more, or less, than they may potentially share with you. What exactly do you think makes your experience at college in a new town or part of the country any different from theirs? They had to leave their homes. They had to make new friends. They could feel lonely from time to time, couldn’t they? So who’s being exclusionary or oppressive here… them, or you? Who’s prejudging, based on skin colour and false assumptions? Most importantly, who is missing an opportunity to look beyond that crap, reach out and get to know another human being?
Listen, everyone is insecure on some level. Some more than others. But that’s no reason to run off in search of the first person that has the same skin color as you, or has eyes shaped like yours. When you do that, you limit yourself by defining yourself in the most narrow and superficial of ways. You are first and foremost an individual human being with whatever net worth you wish to live up to; with a variety of personal assets and liabilities like everyone else. Everything else is just decoration… window dressing… embellishment. Yes, you are subject to nature/nurture influences like the rest of us, and your background (wealthy, poor, ethnic, religious) can add to the rich complexity of your personal voyage through life.
Just don’t turn it into a club, or an anchor.
Apologies for the lengthy, and at times rambling, comment. It just drives me crazy to see people become their own worst enemies…
Amen.
Oh and one more thing, just to anyone and everyone–
I at no point claimed that OBSA-Sponsored events are “Black only.” I’ve argued, or rather cited, that KWANZAA was constructed specifically for the Pan-African community (based on its definition, principles, and the historical context in which it was created).
Rachel, before I pass judgement, can I get a few facts straight.
1) Were the students invited?
2) Did they interact with others who attended the event?
3) Since 1 and 2 have already been answered by many others and since you posted your video assuming that they weren’t invited and that they didn’t interact with others and came to steal your food, are you simply covering up your initial false assumptions by pulling the race card?
If some students came uninvited to an event just so they could grab a quick meal, that’d be rude. And while I disagree with the banning of all people not of African descent from an event, I can see where your anger is coming from. But it seems as if your initial assumptions were dead wrong, and instead of issuing a simple “my bad”, you’re continuing on with this insipid and puerile argument that people not of african descent shouldn’t attend a public event. Your beef should be with the OBSA for inviting non members to the event, not with the members who chose to try and broaden their minds. But of course, you blame the students with innocent intentions, who were invited to an event and took time out of their studying to try and understand “pan-african” culture.
I know you’re not a bigot. I see this for what it is, someone too stubborn to admit they made a mistake. Now look at all the drama you started. Look at all of this extra work the OBSA has to do to try and contain your damage. Look at all the negative press you’re bringing onto your beloved OBSA. All because you’re too stubborn to admit your initial assumptions were wrong.
Good luck with finals and please, before you graduate, learn that being right doesn’t always win you battles. It takes a real leader to admit when they’re wrong.
1) The students/their deans asked if they could attend the event (with the intention of obtaining information that would assist them in the creation of their own event) & were granted permission by OBSA. [Please note: that the decision of OBSA does not determine how myself or other Black students will react to it.]
2) From what I witnessed, no. I saw them sitting at their own table in the back of the room, closest to the door. They were present for opening ceremonies, dinner & a brief portion of presentations. However, Kassandra P. claims they did interact with students at some point–she hasn’t specified when/with whom.
3) My qualm with this is and HAS ALWAYS BEEN that Kwanzaa is an event specifically meant for Black people to celebrate, and that there is something insidious in a non-Black individual believing they have the right to insert themselves into this space simply to assuage curiosity or to gain a cultural lesson. While I never claimed that the students simply came to steal food, their early exit simply added insult to injury (although they have explained why since the original video). *Please critically examine your use of the phrase “race card.”
—I think a few things are being discussed simultaneously—
*The nature of Kwanzaa
*Whether or not OBSA events are public or private
*What were the intentions of the students & why it matters
—>I’m going to try & hash out the nuances: Due to OBSA’s obligation to leave events open to all students, OBSA’S Kwanzaa was public. This, however, does not align itself with the original Black-specific focus of Kwanzaa and is deficient in that way. OBSA’s approval (not invitation) means the students were allowed to attend, it does not however mean that I (and many others) cannot react negatively to their presence at an event which we understand to be in the service of Black communities. While OBSA states that any individual may attend their events to obtain cultural knowledge, I do not agree with this position if it means I am to be merely observed. Likewise, regardless of whether or not the students intended to inflict harm/how benevolent their intentions, I can still take issue with their presence and the idea that I am to be put into the position of being an educator without my prior knowledge nor consent, when I’m expecting to share libations with familiar faces and friends. While I understand now that these students were not purposefully evoking privilege in order to insert themselves into the space, it IS a privileged position to be the one learning about the marginal culture via observance. (google works too)
I think you’re stating that my false assumptions are that the students weren’t invited & that they didn’t interact & from this I’d like to say that…
Since the formal advertising (or “invitations”) for OBSA events are directed at Black students but the events are technically open to all, I would have been more off-base if I thought they HAD received an invitation (the kind that I receive anyway). Kassandra says she saw them interact & I say I didn’t. Since I was acutely aware of their presence during the celebration, I’m unsure of when they could have been engaging with students…I don’t know if K.P. is considering speaking with the directors beforehand to be interaction. Regardless of either of these “assumptions”, I can take issue with being observed & if this is in accordance with a new precedent then I will cease attending events where I feel objectified.
Regarding all the “drama” I’ve caused…
-The OBSA directors get paid to engage with these sorts of discussions and conflicts.
-OBSA has in no way attempted to clean up after my mess–they publicly admonished my videos.
-My “Beloved” OBSA? According to…? It’s OBSA’s purpose to advocate for myself and other Black students, it’s not my job to make sure I never have a divergent opinion from them. I have respect for each of the directors, consider them to be my mentors & friends, but we do not always have to agree.
-As I pointed out in my 2nd video, this has been a productive & not merely disruptive (or “drama” as you would put it) discussion. [Or at least I consider it to be so because it forces people to explain where they're coming from/what their views are based on rather than relying on assumption or precedence.]
You -interpret- this as stubbornness. Please don’t presume to know how it IS when, in actuality, we have very different world views. But thank you for not simply writing me off as a bigot.
I actually forgot to address one of your most salient points…
You state that I should be upset with OBSA & not the students. If you look at my second & third videos, it becomes apparent that I’ve for the most part done just that. In fact, I even apologize for some of my statements. Primarily I’ve been combating charges of racism & bigotry & discussing the nature of Kwanzaa on these forums because that’s what people have chosen to engage with. I think this has always been bigger than those few students, and had I had all relevant information before posting my first video (…not for lack of trying…) I would have directed most of that anger at institutional policies. My videos have never really been about accusing specific students of racism (which the response to the videos has largely been focused on), rather they were always about addressing privilege and the ways that hegemony has led people to take for granted the spaces they can enter and the demands they can make.
http://www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org/faq.shtml#5
This site (which happens to be Karenga’s site, BTW) seems to indicate that Kwanzaa is open to celebration by all kinds of people.
Just saying.
Let me know where your apology comes up in the videos because at no point in any of the second two did I hear the words “sorry,” “apology,” “maybe I should be quiet and stop being so stubborn over nothing,” or anything like that. I agree that you have a lot of valid points, but it’s time for this to end.
Please return to the third video and count the number of times I say “I sincerely apologize.” You seem to be misunderstanding what I’m sorry for.
I’m not sorry for being offended.
I’m not sorry for posting the videos.
I’m not sorry for getting angry.
I’m not sorry I have a black leftist world view.
I’m not sorry for causing “drama”
I’m sorry that a specific phrase which came out of my mouth had the potential to dehumanize these students.
It’s regrettable that their presence evoked such an emotional response from myself and others before I could realize that my anger may be better directed at larger institutions…but I didn’t DO anything to them to be sorry for…unlike the comments directed at me which not only label me as “racist” & “bigoted” but have extended to “cunt” “twat” “bitch” “pseudo-intellectual” “stupid”…I never accused the students of racism nor did I call them out of their names. (Despite what C. Johnson is propagating).
What should I be sorry for? Harsh language such as “fuck you”? Because I’d have no problem saying sorry for directing that statement at them rather than institution, if that’s where the problem lies.
“maybe I should be quiet and stop being so stubborn over nothing,”
If you really wanted this discussion to stop, that’s the last statement you should have made. Way to open up a whole other can of worms…
But Rachael, what demands were these students making? If they were invited to the event (which they were), how is their attending a matter of “privilege?” Is it some sort of arrogance on their part? These students had a legitimate interest in Kwanzaa and wished to learn more, and at the end of this misunderstanding you say “fuck you” and “It shows how much privilege you have to think that you could walk into that room and sit down and eat dinner with us.” Its pretty presumptuous to think they came purely because they are “privileged’ white kids with no respect for the OBSA. That’s an assumption made based off of race.
Exactly, Dan. For all Rachel knows, these “privileged” white kids had to struggle hard to get here. To assume that white=privileged is very wrong. I, for one, know African-Americans who have had easier lives or more privilege than some white kids.
While you can’t change how someone thinks, it’s wrong to assume something about a race. And that works for anyone, of any racial background.
White people do have white privilege. This is not an assumption, it’s a race theory. You can choose to disagree or not.
I didn’t assume that they were privileged in the sense of being wealthy or “having it easy” because they were white/asian-american…I was making a proclamation (above) that is the foundation of race theory.
Semantics, Rachel. A theory is an assumption on how something works–and they can be easily rendered invalid.
If this theory’s only basis is that you “can choose to believe in it or not”, it doesn’t sound like a very substantial theory to me. Just one to propagate racism.
My primary question is this–when does it end? Will you, now and forever, spout this idea that white always equals privileged?
In this day and age, define “White privilege”. Because to me, this rhetoric makes it sound like you’re living in the days of Malcolm X.
Amen. This is quite possibly the most intelligent comment I’ve read on this thread. I think it’s time for Rachael to just admit that she was wrong and for Charles and others to just let this incident disappear as a misunderstanding that boiled over. The Mudders have apologized and I think everyone is ready to move past this, especially OBSA who now has to deal with all this negative publicity. Rachael, although I disagree with many of your beliefs, I am in no way saying that your beliefs are wrong. I just think you were unwise to pursue such a non-issue and be so stubborn as to not back down after seeing the divisions in the school created by your video.
Come on guys. Rachael’s already enjoyed her 15 minutes of fame, and try as she may to keep this debate – and all the attention – alive, I think it’s time for this to end so we can go back to using this website for substantive discussion.
Taken from a post at the Claremont Conservative. This is a fantastic translation, in my opinion.
OK everyone,
One of my friends threw a big party in the dorm lounge over the weekend. All of us were wasted and having a great time when four sober kids walked through. They had a drink, but they did not know my friend as well as I did, and they may not have even known that it was his birthday. But they just stared at us partying, then walked out.
This is not directed at everyone, but just the sober kids: Fuck you. Don’t think that I didn’t see you coming in to see what was going on and then trying sneak out. You don’t see me walking over to Stark like, “Oh, I wonder what Friday night is like for sober kids,” and knocking on your goddamn door and saying “you better have a seat at the poker table for me.” What makes you so entitled and privileged to think that you’re allowed to come and hang out in the dorm lounges while I’m getting intoxicated and having a good time?
I don’t care if you want to get to know me or get to see how we do things in North Quad, or even if the event was on Facebook and open to the public.
because drunk people are systemically oppressed/marginalized….
It all depends on the lens you view it through, right? Around CMS, one could easily make the suggestion that sober kids might feel oppressed by drinkers in this environment. Oh, how easily we miss that analogy.
Rachael,
My family is Jewish and we encountered a lot of racism when we first arrived in America. I have relatives who were rejected from colleges where they were more than qualified just because of their religion. My grandparents struggled to get jobs in positions where they knew that they were more qualified than the other candidates, but they were refused interviews for no reason other than being Jewish.
Today, my family is doing well and they can afford to send me to college because my grandparents and parents were able to overcome barriers and work their asses off for years. I understand your frustrations, but don’t call me privileged just because I’m white. Don’t assume that I’m entitled, don’t assume I’ve never been told there’s nothing I can’t do, and don’t assume that white people have all had it easy. Many of us have struggled just as much as everyone else to get where we are today.
I’m afraid Rachael doesn’t realize how privileged she is just to attend Pomona and have the right to take the kind of courses that clearly feed her deep well of inner rage and insecurity and foster societal division.
And she’s not the only “Junior-Black-Panther-in-training” around here, just the most vocal. I find it both intriguing and disconcerting that the very people who wish to be judged on their merits over their skin colour are the first to make harsh and derogatory spot judgements based solely on the latter.
As Dan says, making petty assumptions based on a person’s race is not cool. To justify them with self-satisfied blanket proclamations of “race theory” and “white privilege” is sad, indeed.
She is a Scripps student, btw.
Oops, indeed. That could explain everything…
CMC student: well said.
It’s time to stop the toxic and divisive generalizations, get out of the 60s timewarp and get on with it.
It’s interesting, in Steffen’s email on Charles blog, he discusses “a lifetime of black stereotypes” while we’ve been growing up. What is that, exactly? Where I’m from, we were taught equality, and about civil rights. Sounds like some people are stuck in the 1960s.
“Kwanzaa is clearly an African Holiday created for African peoples. But other people can and do celebrate it, just like other people participate in Cinco de Mayo besides Mexicans; Chinese New Year besides Chinese; Native American pow wows besides Native Americans.” p. 110, Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture
I’m just saying maybe we should all just try to get along instead of harping on all of our differences. Everyone has had their own struggles, everyone has had to overcome their own adversities. Maybe it is time we stop trying to trump one another when it comes to who is the most disadvantaged and focus on what is more important: (and I know this sounds super cheesy) making the world a better place to live in. The fact that we as a community, a multi-cultural community, cannot move past the racist acts of our ancestors is what continues to perpetuate racism and hatred in this modern age. I hope that everyone understands that Ms. Ballard does not speak for everyone in the African-American community here at the 5Cs.
ACA-AS:
One of the most intelligent and insightful posts I have read on this unfortunate subject. Thank you!
All I can say is I’m looking forward to the day that Rachael’s future employer/(/employers) come across this page.
Wow, I never thought I’d say this, but thank goodness for Charles Johnson for bringing this nut to our attention.
Not very nice to call him a troll when you’ve clearly got a racialist view of things.
First of all, calling someone a nut is a rude statement considering that you are basing your opinions on her freedom of speech and personal right to express what she chooses to express.
Second of all, Charles Johnson is and always will be a troll.
Thirdly, combatting supposed generalizations with more generalizations is a very ignorant way to engage in debate. So I’ll direct my comments to those of you who seem to be quite unwilling to accept any of the points that she (RB) and the author were trying to make.
With that said, have any of you read “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness” by George Lipsitz? Because perhaps you need to read something written by a white person expressing what white privilege is and means in this day and age for you to simply acknowledge that it exists.
“Whiteness is everywhere in U.S. culture, but it is very hard to see. It secures its dominance by seeming not to be anything in particular. As the unmarked category which difference is constructed, whiteness never has to speak its name, never has to acknowledge its role as an organizing principle in social and cultural relations.”
I find it interesting that there are Jewish arguments that are coming into play. When did Jews and other ethnic whites start being mainstream (white)? The answer is when they begin to invest and participate in mainstream white actions such as vile discrimination against blacks, participation in lynchings, and any other actions that would keep them from being on the wrong side of the color line.
As stated by David Roediger, “The historical drama through which European immigrants and their children gained inclusion into the United States as whites and as participants in a process of excluding other races is thoroughly muddied when historical references to race are replaced with the language of ethnicity. The answer to conservative uses of white ethnic immigration narratives lies not in flattering the story of race and immigration but in examinig the material and state sponsored underpinnings of categories of the past and carefully analyzing how the new immigrant experience was different by probing where and how racially stigmatized European immigrants could claim white rights, as well as measuring the extent to which gaining fuller humanity could require the participation in inhumanity.”
White privilege doesn’t exist? Did you ever think about something as small as Nude colored bras, makeup, stockings and flesh colored crayons which assume that whiteness is normal (aka hegemony)? The idea of hegemony and the pervasiveness of our whiteness is rooted in our culture, from the stockings that I have the option to buy, to the easier access to the home purchasing market, to the fashion show runways, to the Hollywood movie industry. You can name a few, but it is still such a small number that white heternormativity is still what it means to be an American. One of you had the audacity to say that some black kids are more privileged than white kids? Sir, you do realize that this is an extremely small percentage in relation to the amounts of black children who are living in poverty or even abject poverty within these United States? And even then, you would think that the system would better support these “poor black kids” because the face of whiteness in this country will never associate itself with poverty or lower classes. Or how about looking at our prison industrial complex and its foundations? Rooted in slavery, perpetuated by the Black Codes of the South, and turning into a full blown industry, this institution is also rooted in the systemic racism that some of you claim not to see.
The sarcasm in the title that you are an unintentional oppressor is duly noted, but should also be further examined. Because you and I, the both of us, as white people, have a direct investment in whiteness that we sometimes choose not to see. And one does not have to be a black radicalist or a leftist to notice it or even speak about it. Look at the institutions we dominate? Do we feel better because we allowed a few ones in? That we elected Obama to office, does that make us feel good?
Hey guys! There’s no more racism, see? We evened the playing field and you can get back picking yourselves up by bootstraps again because with hard work and determination, you can get anywhere! Oh yes, your children will have access to healthcare, access to decent schooling, and access to an overall better life without you having to move in our suburbs or without us having to move into your cities and gentrify to “make them better.” Oh and those three or four blacks that won the Oscar, and that one with the TV show, oh and the channel that you have that is owned by a major WHITE corporation, and those good ol’ “racist” scholarships-yes, those that attempt to attack the system of meritocracy as it is coupled with hegemony-that give you all money to come to our white dominated institutions that walk the thin line between tokenization and exclusion, well, you guys are getting the goods!
Quit being ridiculous.
Whether you like it or not, you, as a person who is living in a country whose ideals where founded on the backs of slaves while touting equality as our main goal, as a person living in a country who accepts and actively promotes white supremacist patriarchal heteronormativity through its media outlets, laws, and otherwise, should be able to step back and take a critical stance on the issues that are way bigger than a video on Facebook.
And by the way, none of us can be sure 1) the whole group of black people in that room were offended. It may have just been the friends of the video author so making that generalization would be unintelligent and 2) how many people do you know actually celebrate Kwanzaa, anyway? This video had to have been about the negotiation and appropriation of spaces within a dominant white culture at these colleges and less about the ACTUAL holiday.
Amy
*A Owner and proud Acknowledger of the existence of white privilege*
don’t worry, i’ve been called names like ****** lover, traitor, and I could care less.
You don’t have to be black to think about these kinds of issues.
Oh, so white privilege exists, because it is “everywhere by seeming to be everywhere in particular, yet nowhere?” Sounds like a crock of crap to me.
You’re generalizing, Mary. You’re grouping privilege with skin color. And like CMC Student said, not all people who aren’t black have privilege.
You have just made a complete fool of yourself. And yes, I’m calling you out.
I DO know some African Americans who have been more privileged growing up in their childhoods than some kids I’ve known of non-african background.
So yes, I do have the audacity to say that, because I’ve experienced it and know that some people have different childhoods and experiences than others–its not just due to skin color.
So where’s your argument now?
Are you seriously denying white privilege?!
Where is your social perspective? Do you know what you’re denying?
Yes, some people have different experiences than others, there’s no denying that.
But I DO know many African Americans who have been much less privileged growing up in their childhoods than many kids I’ve known of non-african background.
I guess I have the audacity to say that experiences have a lot to do with skin color.
Yes, I am seriously denying “white privilege” until you people who are arguing FOR it decide to actually state what this so called privilege is. You keep spouting that rhetoric, yet up above, someone stated that it is “Something that is everywhere, yet nowhere, it has not definable form”.
So forgive me if I’m a little sarcastic when it comes to believing in something you can use to forever justify some supposed injustice, even when it no longer exists, by saying that this privilege still exists.
You need to define it. It’s annoying hearing the other side say “white privilege! white privilege!” when I doubt even THEY know what it entails.
So tell me…what does it mean exactly?
There you go.
Wow. Nothing like hiding behind anonymous email chains to get people’s true feelings. Thanks to those brave enough to at least share a name.
It’s harder to measure racism now that the water-fountains are desegregated. But that is no excuse for the argument put forth subtly by many of you – “racism is dead.” Couch it in Hegelian artifice or poly-syllabic words, or just say it plain. White supremacy has a measurable negative impact on people of color and benefit to white people.
Jeremy referenced a study by the University of Chicago and MIT, conducted 6 years ago (and repeated with the same results just this year). European-American names (the ten most popular by birth records) were called in for interviews 50% more often than African-American names (again, birth records), with all other information being equal, across many different career fields.
That’s a tangible benefit of white privilege. You get interviewed because your name sounds white. And a tangible cost to African-Americans. Are the hiring directors explicit racists? They don’t have to be. They might just think Cody will fit in around the water cooler better, and not want to subject Tyrone to the racism of the office. Intention can go out the window, structural racism still has an impact.
That’s one example, there are countless others, yet at the end of the day, they won’t be enough for you alan, or for the countless other white posters on here who will go to such great lengths to avoid any responsibility for this system. And not responsibility for causing it (nope, you didn’t) but responsibility for benefiting from it (yep, you do) and remaining silent or explaining it away. That’s another white privilege right there. You can close this thread today and never think about race or racism again. And still succeed just fine, get that interview, get that job, start that family, and move to that suburb.
The only thing that gives me hope is that you’re here, you’re engaging in (mostly) respectful dialogue. So some part of you knows that there is a cost to racism – to you. Else why would you be fighting tooth and nail to deny it. It still takes a piece of my soul, and I still have to find the courage and insight every day to work on it, and to have empathy for myself. I hope y’all will continue to think, process, and engage with this issue.
First of all, you don’t even know if I am “white”, Christopher. Not that it ever bothered you to ask before flinging out a judgement or two. Who’s prejudging now?
I’m not sure why you conclude there are people here trying to “deny racism”, so there must be a cost to it. There is no connection between having a discussion on race in America and “knowing there is a cost to it” whatever that means.
Anyway, in spite of evidence to the contrary, if you wish to wear a racial hair shirt for the rest of your life, you are certainly free to do so. Just don’t ask me to do it.
p.s. I signed the last post as Amy, which stands for
A Messenger for You.
In addition, you are guilty of race-baiting. “We have to look at a book written by a white author for it to be the truth?”
Nice try.
Some of us don’t have to care about the color of someone’s skin. AT ALL. But rather on the content of what they’re saying/preaching versus what we’ve seen or experienced in reality.
Keep bringing up social divisions, and these barriers, but stop acting like Blacks are the only race in history that have dealt with some sort of hardship. If anyone, Jews should be the ones that cry out for fairness…they were the ones that dealt with slavery, massacre, etc.
The “wah wah wah, I’m a victim” complaint has to end. Sure, there was unfair treatment in the past. It was terrible, and injust. MANY steps have been made to rectify those errors. Get over it.
Again, Mr. Commenter, the idea of white privilege and oppression of minorities is not based on past injustice, but rather persistent present injustice. Tons of examples have been given on this thread (which you’ve probably read) of those present factors which are perceived as oppressive: unjust policing, normative skin color judgments, etc.
Jews right now face very little to no oppression in modern American society. And I can adjudge that, since I am Jewish.
But like I’m saying on my posts, what is the oppression that Blacks face? Do tell. This oppression needs to be exemplified, rather than the crap that it is “everywhere, omnipresent, but has no definable nature”. That doesn’t cut it.
Like me, Hmm, you seem to be missing the “tons of examples” to which Jeremy is referring.
Are we simply too dumb, too obtuse to see that which is “everywhere” – but invisible; cruel and hurtful – regardless of sincerity, innocence and the best of intentions; unfair and unequal – in a country of equality, affirmative action and hyperactive diversity practitioners; powerful and devastatingly oppressive – yet discernible only to the ones who claim to be its victims?
Could it be that we haven’t bought bras or crayons lately?
If you’re seriously interested, you should look at literature that looks at price discrimination in employment (take almost identical resumes, give one a stereotypical white name and the other a stereotypical black name and see which one gets called back). Or, look at discrimination in the final price people pay for their cars. Or look at housing patterns. Or read up on the origins of suburbs and some of the especially fun ways they kept families of color out for a long time (or, actually, still do). You could even look at patterns of where highways are placed and how they create physical barriers between low-income minority communities and high-income white communities (see: the I-10 about 10 blocks south of the Claremont Colleges). You could also look at evidence about medical care and the differences between how doctors treat white and black patients and how willing the doctors are to listen to what the patient says.
Now, of course, you can say that there are plenty of other factors that go into all of those things. You could also say that all of those unrelated things don’t prove a pattern of discrimination. I guess those would be semi-valid points (though all of this is interconnected through things like: discrimination in housing makes blacks live farther from centers of commerce and therefore have longer commutes, higher prices on cars for blacks mean that more of them have to use public transportation, which is unreliable, so more are late to work when public transportation isnt perfect, and then they take longer getting home so they have less time with their kids to be the role models in the home that is so strongly correlated to taking education seriously, etc, etc. And I wasn’t really trying very hard there). But if you seriously think there aren’t examples of societal discrimination along racial lines, you’re either willingly ignoring evidence to the contrary or making statements without, say, a Google search for some of those studies–and I only cited literature from economists because I’m not familiar enough with other disciplines. Others who actually know what they’re talking about should feel free to list some less trivial examples.
Meant racial discrimination, not price discrimination in employment.
I’ve seen most of the literature that purports to demonstrate systemic prejudice against blacks and minorities, Lurker.
If I understand the premise correctly, we are all supposed to believe that:
- city planning departments (with a significant number of minority employees) intentionally build highways to segregate minorities;
– every car dealer, or most, is “white”, and spends his or her days trying to rip off blacks and minorities; (who are somehow unable to determine on their own whether they are paying the lowest possible price for what they are buying)
– blacks and minorities with money to purchase homes in specific neighborhoods are prevented from doing so, and;
– every doctor, or most, underwent a minimum of 8 years of difficult and specialized higher education, took the Hippocratic oath and embarked on a life of altruistic service to society so they could avoid giving treatment to black people and minorities.
Really? Do you believe that? Couldn’t the answer be that these are self-fulfilling prophecies? That is:
– minority neighborhoods are separated by freeways from more affluent neighborhoods for the simple reason that freeways, whether they were intended as such or not, tend over time to become natural and effective barriers for delineating socioeconomic zones.
– people who have less education or sophistication when it comes to shopping for big ticket items may pay more for those items. (although I find this assertion particularly difficult to believe, having dealt with minority groups of all stripes and been impressed by their innate economic wisdom and ability to negotiate the very best deal for themselves.)
- minorities don’t move to the suburbs because they can’t afford to live in the suburbs for a variety of reasons unrelated to their skin colour or place of origin. House prices, distance from their jobs or families, the need for a car; there could be any number of valid reasons…
– I can’t address your last claim about asymmetrical medical care because it’s anecdotal at best.
Regardless of whether you do or you don’t believe in the notion that there are “examples of societal discrimination along racial lines” as you put it, you are ignoring the elephant in the room.
The major cause of Black and other minority economic inequity and cultural degradation was the installation and expansion of the welfare state started by Democrat Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. That one move obliterated the family unit, particularly the black family – and we can see, and are living with, the longer term results of its “caring and enlightened intentions” in the form of black crime, drugs addictions, homelessness, millions of uneducated and unmotivated youths with multiple “baby mamas” on welfare and generation after generation offered nothing but cyclical poverty and despair.
Any discussion of failed minority status or advancement in present day society that ignores the transformational shift brought about by the replacement of responsibilities of a biological father (and mother) by the US government is inaccurate and/or disingenuous.
One more thing: last time I checked about 70% of black children in the US are born to single mothers, ie: without a father.
Forget about “systemic bias” and “hegemonic white heteronormativity”. What would you like to bet on the long-term prospects for any society or racial/ethnic subgroup that has to deal with the short- and long-term socioeconomic ramifications that kind of generational tragedy?
You take an overly rosy view of things, Alan. Either that, or you’re systematically blinding yourself to evidence of prejudice and oppression. It’s out there, and it’s hard to see at first, but if you let yourself see it, you’ll start seeing it.
Since I’m a white guy who’s new at this, I can’t offer too many examples beyond what Lurker offered. However, I can point out a concrete example of highway construction used to oppress minorities: In my hometown of Durham, NC, a highway was built straight through Hayti, the old center of black life that used to have been called “Black Wall Street” for the number of black-owned businesses there. It’s virtually undisputed that highway 147 was built there to destroy it: http://www.duke.edu/~cde8/polisci/index.html
“You take an overly rosy view of things, Alan.”
I that the best you can do, Jeremy?
What if I said that you take an overly pessimistic, racially skewed and paranoid view? That you’re systematically blinding yourself to evidence of complete emancipation, equality of opportunity, and if anything, reverse discrimination.
You admit you’re a “white guy” and “new at this”, which puts you in the esteemed company of hundreds of thousands of college students these days who are discovering that, unbeknownst to them, they are inveterate racists – despite their warm and fuzzy kumbaya K-12 educations and the distinct lack of personal experience with racism or feelings of prejudice of any kind toward anyone.
My advice: don’t buy into it. It’s a trumped-up premise and a mug’s game that you will never win.
I recall reading somewhere on this site that you are Jewish. If that is true, or even if it isn’t, I suggest to you that the constant cries of systemic racial discrimination and victimhood due to white heteronormativity are exactly the same as Arab and Palestinian cries of racism against the state of Israel. It doesn’t matter how many Arabs presently live in Israel in peace, or how many times the belligerent Palestinians unilaterally start wars and yet afterward are left alone by the Israelis in the hope they will begin to live their own lives. Palestinians and their Arab enablers have no intention of living in peace with Israel. Their goal is its destruction and no level of appeasement will change that. And their cries of perpetual victimhood are nothing more than self-serving excuses – a convenient mask for their virulent anti-Semitism and their inability to get beyond the dysfunction of their failed ideology and get on with their lives.
The Jews are among the most persecuted people in history of humankind. They have survived vicious pogroms, Holocausts and cultural devastation that blacks and minorities in this country could not even begin to understand or appreciate. Yet somehow in every case – no matter what the “existing power structure, systemic bias, heteronormativity or oppression” in which they found themselves, they were able to survive and thrive.
Does this put the so-called “systemic oppression” evinced by limited crayon colours and a few (invited) students showing up at a Kwanzaa event in perspective for you?
As for your single personal example of systemic racism, did it escape your notice that the date of that particular urban renewal was the 1950s – Sixty years ago? The 1950s was a time of much urban renewal, an effort to counterbalance the prevailing movement to suburban life and lifestyles in the hopes of revitalizing inner cities. Did the city planners knock down and rebuild impoverished ghettos or minority neighborhoods? Of course. Those areas held the cheapest land, and were the downtrodden areas most in need of revitalization. But these freeways and urban improvements didn’t only go through black neighborhoods. In a lot of cases they went through Irish, Italian, Greek, Asian, Ukrainian, Jewish, and Polish ones as well – to name a few. Did urban renewal succeed in every case? No. Was it the right thing to do? Who knows? But its historical revisionism to contend that it only happened to blacks or “non-white” minorities.
I believe you’re grasping at straws if you are justifying your philosophy in support of extant systemic racism in America with that one example.
Hello Claremont Colleges community:
The Kwanzaa incident was mentioned on the email list maintained by the White Anti-Racist Community Action Network (http://www.wacan.org/). Consider subscribing. It’s a fantastic resource.
I graduated from an elite, private, mostly white liberal arts college a few years ago (I am now a graduate student at a private East Coast university), and every so often our community would be thrown into turmoil over a non-white student expressing discomfort/anger/outrage over an event perceived as racist (e.g. a statement by a white person at a campus event joking about the privileged financial position held by minority students because they can receive Diversity Scholarships; or an incident at a fraternity where individuals showed up in blackface). This would be followed by a chorus of (generally white) students explaining that racism against anyone is intolerable, the perceived racism of racial minorities against white people is intolerable, and that none of the (white) students involved in the racist incident are racist. They are all good people. In short, the initial aggrieved minority party was ridiculed and derided for being overly sensitive, and told in no uncertain terms that that kind of sensitivity is what’s detrimental to race relations.
I feel compelled to write because the dynamics of this situation closely mirror the dynamics of my college experience, and the experience I have had since graduating have given me new perspectives. I am a white person. To my white brothers and sisters: it doesn’t matter if you grew up poor, or in an urban area, or in a mixed-race family. If you are white, understand that you cannot and will never know the experience of being non-white in America. When racial minorities in your tight-knit college community risk social alienation and the cruel, seething, vitriol I’ve seen shown on this comments board, what do you risk as a white person by giving those racial minorities the benefit of a doubt?
Keep in mind that racial discrimination at elite private colleges is rarely experienced in any kind of overt manner. Rather, minority students must contend with an aggregation of stares, of hostile or insensitive comments, of tokenization (e.g. being called on in class to proffer the “Black perspective”), of questions or statements suggesting inferior worth, intelligence, or humanity. On this comments board, it’s been said that all Claremont minority students are affirmative action admits, with admission given to them not because of their talents but because of their skin color. This demonstrates my point about the kind of hostile peer environment with which minority students must contend–some of their peers resent their presence on an ‘a priori’ level.
Rachel Ballard, I applaud you for taking–and continuing to defend–your right to express your discomfort with the negotiation of what to you is supposed to be a racially safe space. It is exhausting to have to always be expected to teach or explain yourself. We all need a break from that. The very fact that non-Black students feel so entitled to defend the right of non-Black students to attend Kwanzaa (given it’s history as a Black safe space) is interesting to me. Non-Black students: do you feel equally compelled to defend the rights of Black students to participate in traditionally white spaces (e.g. the elite, private college?) Statistics indicate that minority representation at such colleges does not match the demographics of the United States. Are you willing to identify and find ways to correct the structural racism that leads to the under-enrollment of minority students at elite colleges? Are you willing to do so, even if it means giving up some of your own white privilege?
I would HIGHLY encourage white people who want to explore the contours of white privilege to attend the following conference in LA this summer (scholarships available for the registration fee): http://www.awarela.org/projects/2010-unmaking-whiteness/
To read about the tangible, detrimental health impacts of racism in America: http://www.miller-mccune.com/health/racisms-hidden-toll-1268?article_page=1
Again, think about how this conversation would shift if the white people recognize that they hold the power in America. Economically, politically, and culturally. What would happen if a racial minority’s discomfort or anger is met with humility or a genuinely open mind, rather than derision? You are NOT a racist by admitting you said or did something that someone considered offensive or insensitive. On the contrary, that’s the way to becoming a participant in the anti-racist movement, and a true ally of non-white people.
In solidarity,
Bridget
Bridget, your statements have no real substance.
You ask “would we defend the rights of Black students to participate in traditionally white space”.
You are the one who is limiting, not us. For a majority of us, we view the college as not a Black, nor White space, but a place where someone who has earned the right to go to, attends, through their efforts and hard work.
I would go on, but suffice it to say, your argument that there is some underlying structural racism on admittance is a lie. People are accepted based on their credentials. If you don’t want there to be any judgement based on race at all, then take away affirmative action.
Oh, but wait. If you do that, you’ll have minorities crying out that there aren’t enough of them enrolled in the colleges. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t eh?
Please don’t come back until you have a more substantial argument, Bridget. While the events you experienced at your campus ARE racist actions, the argument here is that racist actions can be undertaken by ANYONE–regardless of race.
Getting angry at an open, public event for Kwanzaa because several non-African American students attended, and calling them cockroaches, even going asofar as to publicly demeaning them, and getting so outraged over it, saying that their mere presence, just wanting to know about Kwanzaa, offended her and caused some people (NOT ALL) to feel so uncomfortable?
That’s racism. Intolerance or hatred of anothers culture or race. That fits intolerance. It’s racism.
“If you are white, understand that you cannot and will never know the experience of being non-white in America”
Boo-fricken-hoo. So at what point does that go away? Is it going to become this neverending idea that Blacks have suffered in the past, therefore, there can never be equality? That there is no healing, just fostering hate and anger and resentment?
Damn. Better let Jewish people know, then. Since in the world’s history, they’ve suffered much more persecution than African Americans.
Hmm is right on.
Bridget’s argument has no merit, particularly this line:
“Statistics indicate that minority representation at such colleges does not match the demographics of the United States. Are you willing to identify and find ways to correct the structural racism that leads to the under-enrollment of minority students at elite colleges? Are you willing to do so, even if it means giving up some of your own white privilege?”
Nonsense.
From the Pomona website:
“Pomona students come from 48 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and 24 foreign countries. In a voluntary self-report, 8.7 percent of the class of 2012 identified themselves as Black, 11.5 percent as Latino, and 21.2 percent as Asian. Roughly 6 percent are foreign students.”
While these figures do not correspond exactly to the last US population census, I encourage you to confirm that they are in fact extremely close to it and represent an earnest attempt on the part of the administration to be inclusive and representative. Whether one agrees that quota rather than merit-based admission policy is fair or even desirable is an argument for another day.
From other easily obtainable Pomona documents:
“Under an extensive financial aid program, approximately $28 million from funds administered by the College will be available to assist Pomona students during 2008-09. These funds are derived from endowments, individual, corporate and foundation gifts, federal sources and Pomona College’s Annual Fund. In addition, Pomona students who are California residents are eligible for Cal Grants, which can range from $700 to $9,708 each; 80 Cal Grant recipients were in residence during 2007-08. The purpose of the aid program is to reduce the importance of college cost as a factor in college choice. The financial aid award is designed to close any gap that may exist between the family’s reasonable ability to contribute and the actual cost of attending Pomona.”
In other words, scratch deep enough, and you’ll discover that contrary to Bridget’s inaccurate and ungenerous assertion, the make-up of todays elite colleges closely mirrors society at large, and a good portion of the stereotypical “affluent, white Pomona students” are neither affluent nor white. They, and their families, are desperately dependent on annual grants in order to attend the college, just like their “oppressed visible minority” counterparts.
But those inconvenient facts don’t support the Black-as-eternal-victim narrative does it? Bridget asks with no apparent sarcasm: “What would happen if a racial minority’s discomfort or anger is met with humility or a genuinely open mind, rather than derision?” Well what if it was, but it was never, ever enough?
I’ve got an idea: Instead of “Black-safe spaces” and “racially safe” zones, instead of breeding and coddling insecurity and a victim mentality by fostering division through segregation, why don’t we declare a “logic safe” space where we can all agree to stick to the facts and leave the manufactured white guilt, oh-so-easily-hurt feelings and emotion-based rhetoric at home?
Race discussion of this nature always seems to be really masturbatory. Once you get far enough to the extremes in any of the left leaning minority movements there comes this idea that WASP males are always going to oppress everyone, there’s nothing they can do it even if they tried. (Apparently the Jewish freedom riders were just filthy paternalists who wanted to take care of their inferior black brethren.)
I’m white. I’m male. What the hell do you want me do? Do you want me to create a business that only sells flesh toned products to 12% of the population? If I do so I’ll get in trouble for choosing a stereotypical shade or engaging in some kind extra-black-community profiteering. But honestly, show a market exists, and I’m all gold. Show me there’s a big enough market to make economically viable and worth my time, help me find a factory, and give me a few people that know the tools of the trade, and I’ll open a shop tomorrow.
I have hard time victimizing myself. I’m white. I’m straight. I’m heterosexual. I came from an upper-middle class background. I can’t change that. Yet, everything around me says that those qualities inherently make me racist, bigoted, and evil. How the hell can I make the situation better? Do I have to subvert my own will, my own social instutitions completely, pride in my own background and love for my own family and community?
When it comes down to it:
The majority of the population is NOT black.
The majority of the population is NOT gay/genderqueer/bisexual/transexual/intersex/whateveristhenewschictermtoaddontothelist
I’m not saying it’s time to go gay-bashing. I’m not saying it’s okay to be intolerant. But it’s weird to me when people say: “Man, the media is being unfair to gay people, all those advertisements for products are designed to attract a straight demographic.” Look, I agree the media presentation of homosexuals is, for the most part, not exactly flattering, accurate, or mature. BUT not because an advertisement I see on TV has a straight couple kissing.
Are we are all expected to yield totally to groups that are 12% and 20% (that’s a high estimate) of the population in totality.
Look. I honestly want equality. I don’t want to have to destroy myself to make it happen.
This feels to me like you’re saying “Straight people BY THE ACT OF BEING STRAIGHT” oppress gay people. White people by BEING WHITE project their whiteness and oppress black people.
I’d like to find a solution that doesn’t involve me kevorking myself or forcing my identity to yield to another. I don’t think Pan-Africanism should be the sole defining element or normative element in American culture.
(As a side note: The validity of Pan Africansim and Palestinian Nationalism is a little bit questionable to me either way. Much like many forms identity and nationalism they seem to be somewhat artificial and created by outside forces. When you have an identity that’s meant to exclude rather than include, and people are unsure of that identity, a lot of ugliness comes out. I sincerely believe it’s possible to be gay/black/a woman/ without defining yourself with an us/them mentality, oppressed/oppressor mentality. That only goes to help prop up the systemic victimization. If the only that is making you any flavor of black (Dinka, African American, Maasai, Tutsi, Hutu, Bantu, Zulu, etc.) is your oppression, if you did not share or claim the cultural institutions other than suffering, then I’m not sure how valid your claim to that group is. Everyone suffers. Most groups face subjugation in one arena or other. It makes you human. )
Honestly: I’m not a pan- anything but a Pan-Humanist. There’s something vital about the human experience, and we can share that. And that belief leads to me to believe the pseudo-sepratism that’s been expressed here is inherently wrong. That and the fact that if it’s right, I have no solution.
I’d rather be wrong and have solution and be wrong than be right and be damned.
Unless someone can enlighten me on what a straight WASP man like me can do not be the oppressor?
@Rachel, @ Mary
Thanks for the forthright and beautifully written response to Mary’s unhinged and sadly self-loathing rant. You saved me the trouble.
I think it’s safe to say that anyone who uses the term “white supremacist patriarchal heteronormativity” in a sentence may be too far gone to help. I particularly loved this quote: “Whiteness is everywhere in U.S. culture, but it is very hard to see. It secures its dominance by seeming not to be anything in particular.”
Wow.
In Mary’s B+W world, there is no possibility of redemption, healing or harmony. Only festering anger, naked resentment and the mantle of perpetual victimhood.
Alan. Mocking Mary for using too many long words in a row – despite their capturing her worldview accurately – seems ironic given this gem from you earlier: “Your suggestion that building a physical and psychological firewall between two groups of human beings from each other will ultimately unite them is sheer sophistry – incredible on its face and a pathetic excuse for the isolationist rhetoric, exclusionary behaviour and overt neo-tribalism that prevails in the consortium and on college campuses nationwide.”
I’m pretty sure all the readers here get that you’re intelligent. The snarkiness doesn’t help your case.
Christopher:
Apologies if my response to Mary came off as snarkiness. Perhaps I was (over)reacting to the aggressive, nasty and petulant way in which she framed her argument. Examples:
“Charles Johnson is and always will be a troll.”
“…combatting supposed generalizations with more generalizations is a very ignorant way to engage in debate”
“When did Jews and other ethnic whites start being mainstream (white)? The answer is when they begin to invest and participate in mainstream white actions such as vile discrimination against blacks, participation in lynchings, and any other actions that would keep them from being on the wrong side of the color line.”
“…the face of whiteness in this country will never associate itself with poverty or lower classes”
“and those good ol’ “racist” scholarships-yes, those that attempt to attack the system of meritocracy as it is coupled with hegemony-that give you all money to come to our white dominated institutions that walk the thin line between tokenization and exclusion, well, you guys are getting the goods!”
“…Quit being ridiculous.”
“*A Owner and proud Acknowledger of the existence of white privilege* don’t worry, i’ve been called names like ****** lover, traitor, and I could care less. ..”
You consider her to be “expressing her worldview accurately”. Clearly, she is doing just that. But, I’m sorry, to me she sounds like the product of one too many “(fill in the blank) Studies” courses, steeped in overcooked Lipsitz-ian anti-white race theory and buzzwords, yet lacking in solid real world evidential support for her invisible but all-encompassing accusations of oppression.
I wasn’t castigating Mary for using “too many long words in a row” as you put it. I was calling attention to the cheap gloss of manufactured pseudo-academic terminology and the intellectual hollowness behind the words themselves.
Thank you for speaking up and injecting some reason into this conversation
First off, I don’t see why Mary’s rant was labeled self-loathing. It wasn’t self loathing, she was simply trying to get her point across. She never said she hated herself or white people in general. Loathing implies a deep dislike of yourself. What she simply said was that she thought that there were some deep issues in the fact that no one seems to want to acknowledge the existence of white privilege or otherwise. That doesn’t sound like someone who hates herself; it sounds like someone who is trying to understand how race functions in this society.
To the writer of this:
I’m white. I’m male. What the hell do you want me do? Do you want me to create a business that only sells flesh toned products to 12% of the population? If I do so I’ll get in trouble for choosing a stereotypical shade or engaging in some kind extra-black-community profiteering. But honestly, show a market exists, and I’m all gold. Show me there’s a big enough market to make economically viable and worth my time, help me find a factory, and give me a few people that know the tools of the trade, and I’ll open a shop tomorrow.
:The point isn’t to have you sell the products to 12% of the population. I think Mary’s point was that the implication of the word “nude” or “flesh” matching those simply of a majority population exclude those of darker skin tones who when nude cannot have those options to buy. Is that making sense? You don’t have to re-market any product, but those words are exclusive in their marketability based solely on the fact that it implies that the natural color of flesh is that shade which fits whites the best. It’s not people complaining, “Oh give us our shade”, it seems to be more of “Why is white skin the natural default color for crayons and stockings to begin with?” Why call those stockings Nude and not something more creative that would speak to the beautiful shades of Caucasian women as well.
I have hard time victimizing myself. I’m white. I’m straight. I’m heterosexual. I came from an upper-middle class background. I can’t change that. Yet, everything around me says that those qualities inherently make me racist, bigoted, and evil. How the hell can I make the situation better? Do I have to subvert my own will, my own social instutitions completely, pride in my own background and love for my own family and community?
None of us can change the conditions that we were born into, but we can actively discuss (without shutting down or shutting out or mislabeling arguments) issues such as these and talk about why we are so quick to label anybody racist or why we are so quick to shy away from anything that causes whites to acknowledge the power structures that are in place in this country. I don’t completely agree with all of Mary’s standpoints but I don’t think she was implying that whiteness automatically makes you bigoted, racist, or evil. I think she was saying the whiteness as it oppresses others in this country through structural institutions that you and I may not personally be apart of is racist. The fact that we are white and live in this country and continue to reap certain benefits without ever having to seriously think about our race is interesting.
1) The ability to enter a country club and have no one question your presence
2) The ability to matriculate into a higher institution and have no one assume that 1) quotas helped or 2) you were on scholarship. And by the way, you all did know that since Bakke, affirmative action was illegal in the state of California right? I.E. Proposition 209. So any one of who try to argue anything about AA as it applies to this state, your argument is null and void.
etc.
Anyway, I’m tired. Mary may have spoken in black-white terms for this particular argument, but there’s a lot of standard privileges to be looked at. Able-bodied, Judeo-Christian, Male, Heterosexual, etc. Maybe the fear is of the use of the word “privilege.” Which assumes that you have power without doing anything but existing within the power structures in place in this country. I have grappled with that, too. But I haven’t labeled anybody who tried to bring it up as being “self-loathing.” I actually thought it was a great way to do research and to attempt to understand her viewpoints. And there is nothing outdated about anything she said.
@hmm, Creepily enough, I went to Rachael’s page and saw that same comment. I didn’t think that girl was a black radical because of her language, but someone who was trying to use an interesting metaphor to discuss what seems to be an escalating war of words. Not a war of racism. It’s a shame she took it down. I wouldn’t want to be labeled or generalized by a bunch of people sitting behind their computer screens either.
Colleges have been routinely violating the law when it comes to Prop 209. Jerry Brown, as AG, said he wasn’t even going to enforce it and there has never been a case brought forth since 209.
You don’t like self-loathing, Sara?
You could replace it with any number of viable alternatives, including but not limited to: self-flagellating, insecure, needlessly obsessive, racked with unnecessary white guilt, race-baiting, racialist, faux enlightened, etc., etc.
Honestly, though, why do you folks insist on wearing a cultural hair shirt around and continually harping about “power structures”, the “oppression of “structural institutions, and “white privilege”?
Are you trying to prove that, despite the fact you’re white, you’re one of the “good whites”… that you’re “down with the struggle”?
If the best you can do is point to the scarcity of nude bras in a certain colour or a lack of crayons in your favourite shade as examples of white suppression, you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren’t you?
The country has had major and minor Black (and other visible minority) political figures for decades. Mayors, governors, congressmen and women, major cabinet members, Secretary of States, Dept of Justice head, Supreme Court judges, and on and on. Heads of major corporations like American Express, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac to name just a few. Entertainment, sports and pop culture are dominated by multi-millionaire Black celebrities, stars and athletes. Affirmative action and reverse racism has been a default position for decades, filling colleges with students, professors and administrators “of colour”. There’s a half-Black man who self-identifies as Black in the White House for God’s sake.
What the hell more do you want?
Oh yeah… bras and crayons in the right colours.
To conclude, if you think people have nothing better to worry about than whether someone else obtained a scholarship or was admitted on quota to Pomona or elsewhere you need to get over yourself. That is only ever mentioned as an appropriate defensive response to continual hysterical (and unfounded) accusations of systemic racism and exclusion in higher education. As for walking into a country club without being a guest or member, try doing that regardless of your skin shade.
One of Ballard’s supporters on her facebook:
“Just as long as people don’t start waging a war against all of the black women at the Claremont Colleges/black women in America or find themselves picking the “good and the bad black people” apart, I’m going to stay cool and let my frontline soldiers do the stepping.
But should a line get ultimately crossed to the point of no return, then you call in the intellectual thug headknockers aka backup.”
Soldiers? We’ve got some scary ass radicals on campus if they feel there is the need to refer to themselves as “Soldiers” in some war.
Black radicalism, in this day and age, should be dead. These students are living in the 1960s.
Essentially, @ Rachel, @ Mary’s reply above. This is the problem with such thinking.
Jeremy Merrill is practicing moral relativism of the worst kind. Sure, if I look at the world through Hitler’s world view, I could ‘understand’ his actions. But I will not understand it, because it should be condoned.
Sorry, but this post by Mr. Merrill is ridiculous.
He is giving her a free pass by intellectualizing her argument. Shes simply a racist. She hasn’t thought about Hegel for God’s sake.
You bring up an interesting point with Hitler and the Nazis. Were all the Germans just “evil people” from 1932 until 1945? Or did they think that what they were doing was good?
If we choose the first answer, we’re stuck going down Hannah Arendt’s rather depressing pathway, discussing the banality of evil.
If we choose the second answer, we’re left with a question for ourselves: Are we doing things that we think are good, but are, from someone else’s standpoint, pure evil?
I’d choose the second. The German people were not “evil” to themselves — to them, killing my coreligionists was a “good” thing to do, just as clearly as we think it was evil. Just like them, you (or I) could be doing something evil (either objectively, if objective evil exists, or in someone else’s conception) that we think is good.
Or, they could have been following the orders of a fascist anti-Semitic/pro-Aryan dictator and his attack dogs in the SS for fear of losing their own lives.
Don’t kid yourself. Few thought it was “a good thing to do”. But by the time Hitler and the Nazis had consolidated their hold over the country the average German – whether they agreed with the policy or not – was helpless to do anything about it. If they were guilty of anything, it was the relative ease with which they turned a blind eye to the horrors unfolding in the dark corners of their lives.
This is not about good vs evil in the hearts of men, Jeremy. At least not in the way you wish it to be. Anyone in Germany not blinded by the National Socialist ideology knew what they were doing was wrong.
I know you’re always trying to jump up on the fence, but surely you have a soul. Do you honestly believe you would not, or cannot, in any given situation and especially in one as extreme as the Holocaust, recognize the difference between good and evil?
Precisely my point. One’s ideology shapes one’s morals. The Nazi ideology shaped its believers’ moral code so that they believed that killing Jews, gypsies, et al. was good, while most of the rest of us believe it is bad. How is any of us to be sure that we don’t have a similar situation in our ideology, where we believe that a certain action a is good, while everyone else sees a as bad? And then, who is correct? I would say we can’t answer either question, which is why it’s important to see things from different perspectives.
I certainly hope I would see the evil inherent in the Holocaust or a similar scenario, but I have no way to be sure. An environmentalist, animal-rights activist or a pro-life/anti-choice extremist would probably argue that I’m contributing to a similar-scaled disaster since I drive a car, eat meat and support reproductive freedom. If I’m wrong and any of these three groups is correct, then I (and almost certainly you too) have failed to recognize the difference between good and evil.
Once again, you have missed my point.
I said that they did NOT believe what they were doing was right. The left-wing socialist Nazi ideology was rooted in violence, force and thuggery. While not all Germans “believed that killing Jews, gypsies, et al.” was bad, I would suggest most did not and were forced out of fear, impotence and inertia to ignore what was going on around them. Most people convinced themselves it was either not happening or overstated.
I’m sorry to hear that you feel unsure about making a value judgement on something as horrific as the Holocaust. And that you equate eating meat and driving a car with the cold-blooded murder of more than 6 million people. That truly says a lot about your state of advanced moral confusion, and explains why you have trouble mustering up the cerebral cojones to criticize Rachael Ballard.
I hope you never confronted with making a life and death choice between good and evil, Jeremy, because I fear you are the epitome of a liberal, as Robert Frost says, “Someone too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel.”
If you think that the Nazis knew what they were doing was wrong, but did it anyways, then I’d say that you, sir, are incorrect.
The ones who were able to ignore what was happening, perhaps, knew it was wrong but couldn’t find the “cojones” to stop it, but they weren’t the ones engaged in the genocide in the first place. The machinery of death that was the death camps, etc required the assistance of thousands of people, who surely didn’t think what they were doing was wrong (that is, rationalized it to the point where they did not believe they were doing wrong). Otherwise, they wouldn’t have done it.
The fact that you ignore the abortion example shows your failure to confront my point. To an anti-choice activist, legalized abortion is precisely like the Holocaust: it’s the systematic murder of hundreds of millions of completely innocent people. However, to me, it is no such thing; abortion is the exercise of a woman’s right to choose what happens in her body, including ending the development of a not-yet-human fetus. Is either one of us wrong in the objective sense? Surely the anti-choice activist would say that I’m wrong. The president of NARAL would say that the anti-choice activist is wrong. However, I’d say that neither is wrong or right, but that each has different first premises, and therefore reaches a different conclusion about the same situation.
I am quite confident, from purely my perspective, saying that the Holocaust was wrong. Likewise, I’m quite confident, from my perspective, saying that abortion is perfectly fine, that meat is not murder and that driving a car is OK. However, I can also see how reasonable people can disagree.
That’s the crux of my point. Reasonable people disagree about how to see the world and none of them is objectively right or wrong.
Likewise, different reasonable people reach different reasonable conclusions about the state of the world. You’re welcome to think that self-determination is the main determiner of success; others are welcome to think that systematic oppression can and does limit the success and psychological well-being of minorities. Meanwhile, I’ll set here and understand all of y’all.
Look, in response to your comments about the Nazis, people can rationalize anything if they set their minds to it. Despite, and perhaps even because of, the fact they know intuitively what they are doing is wrong. It’s the only way to avoid the inevitable cognitive dissonance. After all, you and the left side of the political equation seem to have no difficulty rationalizing all manner of indecent behaviour.
I am glad to hear you can at least concede that the Holocaust was “wrong”, but you realize in doing so you are actually making… yes, a value judgement. Not exactly going out on a limb with that softball I threw you, but it’s a good start for someone as philosophically constipated as you tend to be.
As for the crux of your point: “Reasonable people disagree about how to SEE the world and none of them is objectively right or wrong.” Once again, I have to remind you that when discussing what people SEE or FEEL, that is true. But it is only true when dealing in the realm of opinion. Opinion must end where the facts begin, or it is no longer a “reasonable” discussion, or a rational person with which you are dealing. You cannot disregard the facts of any matter in favour of your feelings.
Which brings me to abortion. The only reason I left that topic untouched was that I had neither the time or the energy to pursue it in that last post. Now that you’ve wakened the sleeping beast, however, let me begin by saying that you were factually correct in only one aspect of your abortion-related comments: “…legalized abortion is precisely like the Holocaust: it’s the systematic murder of hundreds of millions of completely innocent people.”
That is a fact that cannot be denied. Killing unborn children for any reason you care to mention is materially no different than the murder of millions of helpless Jews and there is no rational or defensible argument to refute that. Yes, people can FEEL differently about abortion, they can rationalize that the fetuses being destroyed are somehow “not-yet-human” as you conveniently put it, but they cannot deny the scientific evidence that proves their arguments hollow and chilling.
Your easy contention that “neither [NARAL vs anti-abortionist] is wrong or right, but that each has different first premises, and therefore reaches a different conclusion about the same situation.” is nothing but smoke-and-mirrors sophistry. Playing with words.
You say “abortion is the exercise of a woman’s right to choose what happens in her body”. Fine. But defining it as such does not excuse or mitigate her actions. Let’s call a spade a spade here. Whatever you want to call it, and whatever reason you may wish to proffer for doing it does not make what she is doing to the life form within her body morally or ethically right. There are no “different first premises” here to consider, only the horrible facts surrounding what is taking place.
Now as I have said before in respect of extant racial inequalities in crime, drugs, unwed mothers, etc. we can bemoan the circumstances or prevailing factors which lead to the statistical differences, but we cannot ignore the hard and fast results. Similarly, we can talk all we want about the root causes of abortion; a woman’s right to choose; the personal, societal and economic costs of abortion, but we are only arguing details at that point. The murder of viable human life forms takes place unabated whatever the excuse or rationale, it is a tragedy, and anyone engaging in it should at least have the guts and intellectual honesty to admit what they are doing is wrong notwithstanding the fact they are legally able to do it.
If they did so, and society added some measure of shame to this abhorrent act, we might see far less of it.
To conclude, I think you are having trouble distinguishing between what people feel and see, which is certainly open to interpretation and idiosyncrasy, and the factual underpinnings of their existence. One is open for fantasy and conjecture, the other absolute and unyielding.
You seem to have the notion that people’s moral intuitions — what they “feel” is moral or immoral — is “opinion”, while there is some sort of “moral fact”, where, regardless of individuals’ intuitions, an action’s morality can be objectively determined.
I’d say that’s horseshit. The amount of debate about the morality of different actions, whether regarding Kwanzaa, abortion [or the facts of abortion. Abortion, in my view of the facts, does not end a human life, since human life, as a matter of fact (in my view of the facts) begins at birth], or even the Holocaust shows that people’s moral intuitions differ greatly. Saying that your moral intuitions are uniquely “moral fact” while others’ are mere opinion is simply arrogance.
It’s hardly arrogance to point out the inconvenient fact that abortion is the act of killing a living human being, Jeremy.
Biological human life is defined by examining the scientific facts of human development. This is an empirically based field wherein there is no controversy, no disagreement. There is only one set of facts, an identical course of embryology studied in medical schools worldwide. The more scientific knowledge we obtain regarding fetal development, the more science has confirmed that the beginning of any one human individual’s life, biologically speaking, begins at the completion of the union of his father’s sperm and his mother’s ovum, a process called “conception”, or “fertilization. From fertilization, the human embryo is alive, human, sexed, complete and growing.
That is not simply my “belief” or intuition, nor is it a philosophic theory or “moral fact”, as you put it. It is not debatable, not questioned. It is a universally accepted scientific fact. Now you can decide not to abide by the facts when forming your OPINION, but that doesn’t change the concrete and irrefutable scientific facts, and it makes your opinion valuable only to you, and anyone who chooses to agree with you. At that point, however, you are no longer dealing with the real world, you have entered your own fantasy world, where feelings take precedence over the facts. Sorry, you just can’t have your own unique “view of the facts”.
Of course, whatever you or anyone else wants to say to rationalize your support of the practice of abortion and make yourselves feel better is up to you. I have already said that we can decry or lament the underlying causes and debate the justifications for abortion. But I would suggest while we do so that one half of the “great deal of debate” you refer to is a simply that – rationalization. It is possible that people might say at the end of the day that they support abortion despite the cost in human life because that is a moral balance they are willing to live with. I have no problem with those people because at least they acknowledge the gravity of their beliefs and/or actions. It’s people who try to pretend that the taking of human life is not happening, or justify their actions by attempting to diminish and de-humanize a growing human fetus or pre-born human that I have no respect for.
I am not aware of anyone worthy of consideration who would confess to moral intuitions justifying the Holocaust, so I can’t respond to your assertion they exist. As for the Ballard/Kwanzaa debacle, I’m already on record saying that unstable, racially based and toxic individual “intuitions” are no excuse for egregious social behaviour under any circumstances.
Our disagreement is rather fundamental. You seem to believe that your beliefs are correct and that all beliefs incongruent with yours are simply incorrect. I hold that it’s possible for two different people to believe different things and for neither to be incorrect in an objective sense.
This seems arrogant to me: you hold yourself above all other people as having unique access to the truth.
For instance, I have good moral, religious, cultural and scientific reasons to believe that abortion is acceptable and that human life begins at birth. You can either say that you disagree and that therefore I’m factually incorrect, or instead, that reasonable people can disagree. You seem to want to pick the first; I’d pick the second and accept the consequence that there are differing, equally acceptable moral and ethical standards and differing, equally “true” ways of seeing the world.
At the risk of beating this subject to death and possibly alienating your good self, I must respectfully disagree with your summation, Jeremy.
I do not BELIEVE that my BELIEFS are correct and that anyone who disagrees is wrong. I have never said that, or even implied it. I am free to BELIEVE whatever I wish, as are you. And in order to keep the gyro of my own worldview spinning in equilibrium I can believe I am right about something if I wish – without even once referencing the facts. However, that set of internal self-referencing beliefs does not in any way qualify me, or you, to make externally directed pronouncements in discussions on moral or ethical issues without regard to, or in direct contravention of, the FACTS underpinning whatever it is we are discussing. At least I can’t without the risk of being slagged mercilessly for it.
FACTS, where they exist, are not malleable. They cannot be ignored or subjugated to feelings or beliefs. If you must put a label on it, what I am describing here is essentially the Randian concept of Objectivism:
1. Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
2. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.
You say:
“I hold that it’s possible for two different people to believe different things and for neither to be incorrect in an objective sense.”
I could not disagree more. If one person’s beliefs does not accord with reality and the facts that form the basis of that objective reality, then that person cannot possibly be objectively correct. They can feel good about themselves, they can be in sync with their own worldview, they can even have a group of like-minded acolytes or companions that hold the same worldview as they do and best of all they can rationalize any sort of behaviour by saying it is congruent with their worldview.
But they cannot be objectively correct.
I am sorry you consider me arrogant. It was not my intention to create that persona. But if insisting on nothing less than adherence to facts and reason when attempting to get to the heart of any delicate or politically charged matter is arrogance, I plead guilty as charged.
I have absolutely no doubt you are a good person. If you think you have moral and religious reasons to condone abortion that make you happy who am I to argue? I may disagree, and wonder to what religion you may be referring, but at the end of the day what you wish to believe is your business. Make no mistake, though: no matter what you say or believe in your quiet moments, you do NOT have good scientific reasons to publicly justify the morality of those beliefs and cannot use science as an argumentative crutch in that discussion. The scientific facts in this matter, as horrible as they may be, cannot be ignored and it is intellectually dishonest to suggest otherwise.
Thanks for the spirited discussion about all manner of things, Jeremy. I know it tends to get a bit tense from time to time when jousting in search of the elusive truth, but you’re a brave warrior and I appreciate you taking the time from what is surely a busy week to have at it.
I wish you all the best over the holidays, and though it’s a bit late to wish you a happy Chanukah, I hope you find lots of time to relax and recharge with friends and family over the school break.
http://www.alternet.org/story/71290/
I thought this was a pretty good article. I’d like those of you who obviously have internet and time to waste to read it and then come back and re-engage in this discussion.
Sorry, My Asian Perspective: Minorities selling out their white liberal “friends” by labelling them as racists still doesn’t make it right. In fact, it just inflames the matter.
Jung’s piece was coherent and well written, but at its root just another chip-on-the-shoulder whine-a-thon masquerading as a cogent argument. My favourite parts:
“White people not only need to acknowledge their individual advantages, but also build a resistant collective consciousness that privileges marginalized peoples.”
I see. So the way for us to reach perfect equilibrium as a society is to privilege certain groups. Funny, I thought we were already doing that. Or;
“White supremacy gives white individuals a special racial privilege, be it through economic policies, law enforcement, schooling or magazine covers…”
The first three examples are nonsense, but we’d better tell Oprah about those covers.
Finally, in desperate defence of the murderous practice of suttee because those nasty white British folks banned it:
“(For example, on the issue of colonial Britain’s attempt to illegalize “suttee,” or widow-burning in India, scholar Gayatri Spivak called it an example of “white men saving brown women from brown men.”
We just can’t seem to do anything right, can we?
Kidding aside, the real issue I have with this piece and others like it is that there is no such thing as a generic “white” person. To imply otherwise immediately undercuts your argument and brands you as a racialist grievance monger looking for white bogeymen under the bed to beat upon. North American society and even Europe is not populated by some monolithic, pure white supremacist Aryan race who stomp all over the sensibilities of those who do not look like them. That was Hitler, remember? Rather, it is filled with people of all races and colours, a chromatic continuum that stretches from the whitest white to the darkest dark. As I have said in an earlier post they come from many countries and are representative of many distinct cultures and religions working to live in harmony as best they can.
Are Iranians white? How about Arabs? Italians? Swedes? Poles? Russians? Greeks? Turks? Libyans? Afghanis? What about inter-racial offspring? In which of your hard edged boxes would you like to place them? How do they fit into the “white supremacist patriarchal heteronormativity”?
Where exactly do you draw the anthropological dividing lines between Middle east and Europe? Between the ME and Asia? Between Asia and Africa? North and South America? SE Asia and Asia? How do the Ainu in Japan fit in?
The fact is, we are all genealogically descendant from a few small group of people who began in Africa millions of years ago, so whatever your insecurities at making your way in the real world, deal with it. Stop making excuses. Stop whining. Stop the arbitrary and destructive division. Get a life.
Haha exactly. So to get rid of some sense of privilege, that has “no form, yet is everywhere”, we should give one culture more privilege than another, even though we have no idea what this idea entails.
Sounds like whining and an excuse to give someone more privilege to me.
In this day and age, privilege is earned. You are who you are based on YOUR conscious decisions, how you act, and what you’ve worked for.
I can’t say it much better than Alan above me. There are so many different races. To lump them all together and classify them as “white” is rather offensive. Talk about a “one or the other viewpoint”. Who’s generalizing now?
“White supremacy gives white individuals a special racial privilege, be it through economic policies, law enforcement, schooling or magazine covers…”
–> What sort of crap-talk is that? There’s no white supremacy in power. In fact, there was an article on Yahoo! News today about how “whites” will be a minority in the near future. Goes to say something about diversity,eh?
There’s no “special” racial privilege. If anything, African-Americans are given MORE privilege when it comes to topics like affirmative action.
But you want to talk fairness? Take away Affirmative Action policies. Oh wait, but that would be racist?
People who talk like that are stuck in the 60s. Where were these clowns when we were growing up in primary and secondary school, emphasizing (at least in my case) the importance of equality?
In all reality, they just sound bitter and malevolent. If they can explain to WHAT ends they are trying to meet, I’d be interested in learning. But at the moment, it just sounds like some bitter “Wah wah wah, I’m the eternal victim, pity me” act that will get tiresome.
I wish peace upon all of you. My title doesn’t accurately describe me, I just thought I’d be a little funny. I won’t be an apologist and I won’t take any sides. I will say that I sincerely hope that those of you who say you don’t believe in race, don’t take all of these comments and cosign them to every woman who happens to be black or of any color on this campus. Please take individual comments for what they are, individual opinions. I will pray for you all and wish upon you many blessings this holiday season.
With love, peace, and hope,
RBW
Interesting that Ballard put up the response by Bridget on her facebook, as flawed and incorrect as it is, and has nothing to do with her argument. It looks like she only spouts rhetoric that furthers her Black Radicalist-in-training agenda.
There’s really no getting through to some people, if they are so dead set in their anger and ways.
You know, Hmm, I think you may have hit the nail on the head.
I read beautiful and humanistic posts by good people like “Radical Black Woman…” and it reminds me that at the heart of this long winded, emotionally charged and sometimes circular discussion lies the core decision we all face in our lives: Do we wish to approach our life and the limited time we have on this earth as a sacred opportunity to realize our innate potential despite the inevitable obstacles we will face, or do we take the easy road and resign ourselves to being nothing more than bitter and hapless victims of fate and circumstance?
I wish I was taller, shorter, smarter, cooler, thinner, more muscular, better looking, more artistic, whiter, browner, less religious, more religious, more friends, had richer parents, better grades, more money, a car, parents/a girlfriend/boyfriend/lover/wife/husband/significant other that understood me intuitively and loved me unconditionally. Who hasn’t wished for perfection in this imperfect world or lamented the hand they were dealt in this life? But self improvement doesn’t come easy…
Casting yourself in the role of the victim or martyr, however, takes no effort whatsoever. It demands nothing of the practitioner save self-pity and like-minded enablers, and it is by far the easiest attitude to adopt if one hopes to avoid confronting one’s own shortcomings by finding a convenient scapegoat or two. But in order to assume that posture, a person must become self-centered and shallow, for it means ignoring the plight and struggle of countless others on this planet who face the same obstacles – or more onerous ones – and yet somehow strive and succeed in overcoming them. In the end, victimhood leads to self-destructive behaviour and alienation.
Life’s the sh–ts and then you die, and along the way everyone, regardless of race, creed or colour, encounters a host of difficulties and unforeseen disappointments they wish had not befallen them. No one escapes these challenges, it is only the nature and timing of their hardships that separate them. Some wounds are self-inflicted, others arise from bad luck or out of the blue. Nevertheless, as fallible and imperfect human beings we are in the end the sum total of our disappointments and our triumphs, both large and small.
The only thing that matters is character – the integrity and spiritual strength with which we face our challenges and handle ourselves and treat others along the way. And if we’re really fortunate, we’ll come to the early realization that we are the masters of our own fate, and that our individual happiness and self worth are not dependent upon someone else’s judgement, whether a group or an external “power structure” of any kind – they are daily decisions that are ours alone, and well within our power to make.
Hear, hear, Alan. I couldn’t have phrased it any better myself.
So, who, may I ask is “taking the easy road and resigning themselves to being nothing more than a bitter and hapless victim of fate and circumstance?”
Self improvement does not come easy, correct, especially when certain groups of people have so much working against them. Racial leftist ideology is not taking the easy way out, it’s combating the problems and impediments in self improvement for the historically oppressed.
“So, who, may I ask is “taking the easy road and resigning themselves to being nothing more than a bitter and hapless victim of fate and circumstance?”
- Anyone who obsesses over someone else’s opinion or life-status with the intent to create a “privilege” benchmark for themselves
- Anyone who hides behind the convenient veil of victimhood and blames everyone but themselves for their shortcomings or failure to succeed at the game of life.
You’re right: self-improvement doesn’t come easy. That’s why it builds character and inevitably leads to greater levels of success and happiness.
Finally, racial leftist ideology IS the easy way out, and does absolutely nothing to help the people who practice it. The just spin faster and faster in tighter circles, until they eventually disappear up the fundamental orifice of their own toxic brand of bitter, self-destructive emotional, social and cultural alienation.
Well said, TSTES.
Question is correct in asking why there are no real world examples of a “modern day racialist movement that was successful in achieving long term peaceful relations, or integration, with the “other” culture. “
Because there aren’t any.
There is never peace without sincerely attempted coexistence and eventual assimilation into a larger, ultimately less homogenous but much more harmonic community. That is why racialist movements like the Black students Association and others will never achieve what Mr. Merrill refers to as the “Hegelian synthesis” or third proposition in race relations. This is where they intentionally self-segregate themselves from mainstream society into militant “rights” groups but expect that the two bipolar and severely hardened positions that result from that forced alienation and exclusion will magically resolve themselves at some point in the future into a utopian filled with unicorns and rainbows.
Look to history for the lessons of religious or racial tribalism. Serbia. Rwanda. Iran/Iraq. Israeli/Arab. Nazi Germany. India/Pakistan. China/Japan. South Africa. These are but a few of the countless places in the so-called civilized world where tribal pride and intentional segregation has allowed ancient feuds to fester (sometimes for centuries) before erupting in violence and devastation.
Aggressively dividing people on the basis of race – promoting militant tribalism – in the name of getting them to live together in harmony is a hideous, absurd, and morally bankrupt concept.
Oops. That last one was another fatigue post.. Should have been further down!
I don’t know who comes off worse after this whole thread, Ms. Ballard or “leftist ideology” in general.
Just saying…
Hundreds of years of oppression doesn’t just go away once people realize “woops, that wasn’t okay.” Say society got to the point when that realization actually happened. Say from that point on everything became open and friendly and completely equal.
Well those hundreds of years didn’t cause nothing. And because of this everything would not be fine and dandy once things became open and friendly and completely equal, nor should people expect it to be.
I first want to admit that I completely disagree with racialist movements. However I did have a question someone more well versed in the subject than I am may be able to answer. I’ll try and phrase my question to not be leading.
Regardless of the philosophical legitimacy of a movement, I tend to gauge them on results via a utilitarian judgement. My question is, what good has any racialist movement ever done for a minority group in modern times? Granted I am limited to knowledge of only race relations in America, but there was a time when the Irish, the Polish, the Greeks, the Jews, the Italians, the Germans, and other more eurocentric groups were considered the outsiders. Then of course there were the Jews, the Catholics, the Mormons, the Hindus, and other religious groups which were all considered outsiders. And in modern times I feel that the Arabs and Latinos aren’t even considered outsiders by a majority of Americans, though they still face rampant discrimination by a sizeable proportion of Americans. And of course there are the Japanese who were openly discriminated and judged based on their outward appearance in WW2.
The one common thing linking all of these groups together is that they all integrated into American culture without giving up their ethnic heritage and without using an us vs. them leftist and racialist mentality. Even the Japanese who faced rampant oppression in the 40′s and the Chinese who faced rampant oppression earlier in the 20th century have integrated into the “insider” group. The above groups represent a broad range of skin colors, religions, shared oppression, genes, and many other factors.
The only three significant leftist racialist movements I am somewhat versed in are that of the Jews in Israel, the Palestinians in Palestine, and Black Americans in America. That’s not to say that all Israelis, Palestinians, and Black Americans support this racialist ideology, but that it plays a significant role in their cultures. Yet these three groups have lagged behind in achieving integration or peaceful relations with the “other” culture, at least relative to the groups mentioned above. Though I don’t think the Israeli Palestinian conflict is a good comparison group for obvious reasons.
After all that, can anyone name a modern day racialist movement that was successful in achieving long term peaceful relations, or integration, with the “other” culture? Because I am stumped and we can argue philosophy all day (and great job Jeremy, it was a very interesting article), but I think most Claremont students give a lot of weight to results.
You’ve got a good point, Question. And I don’t have an answer.
As I’ve said many times, I don’t adopt this ideology, I just understand it. It may succeed in its goals, and it may not.
Neither the Chican@/Latin@ Student Affairs Office nor the Chican@ and Latin@ studies departments would exist here at the Claremont Colleges if it weren’t for racialist movements such as the Chican@ Movement of the 1960s. I am not knowledgeable enough to answer this question to the fullest extent, but that’s an example for you. It’s lasted to this day and integrates Chican@ and Latin@ culture and history through classes here at the 5Cs.
Depending on what you consider a racialist movement… The Civil Rights Movement went pretty well.
It is true that there’ve been many ethnicities or races that have been the outsiders. But I don’t know that they’ve integrated without giving up their ethnic heritage nor do I agree that all of them have moved into the insider group.
This can come down to the issue of whiteness. For instance, in 1950s America, when it came down to segregation, you were black, or you were white. Jews, Irish, Italians, Polish, Germans, Eastern Europeans and others that I’m sure I’ve missed moved into the white side of the racial binary that existed through, but not exclusively within, segregation. With this whiteness came privilege (as in they weren’t segregated as where blacks), and at least some loss of their ethnic heritage.
One’s whiteness is clearly a debatable subject. But when you step back and look at American culture, Asians and Latinos (living in the U.S. before it was U.S.) at least, are not considered white by much of the population despite theirtime here in the U.S.
Well said, TSTES.
Question is correct in asking why there are no real world examples of a “modern day racialist movement that was successful in achieving long term peaceful relations, or integration, with the “other” culture. ”
Because there aren’t any.
There is never peace without sincerely attempted coexistence and eventual assimilation into a larger, ultimately less homogenous but much more harmonic community. That is why racialist movements like the Black students Association and others will never achieve what Mr. Merrill refers to as the “Hegelian synthesis” or third proposition in race relations. This is where they intentionally self-segregate themselves from mainstream society into militant “rights” groups but expect that the two bipolar and severely hardened positions that result from that forced alienation and exclusion will magically resolve themselves at some point in the future into a utopian filled with unicorns and rainbows.
Look to history for the lessons of religious or racial tribalism. Serbia. Rwanda. Iran/Iraq. Israeli/Arab. Nazi Germany. India/Pakistan. China/Japan. South Africa. These are but a few of the countless places in the so-called civilized world where tribal pride and intentional segregation has allowed ancient feuds to fester (sometimes for centuries) before erupting in violence and devastation.
Aggressively dividing people on the basis of race – promoting militant tribalism – in the name of getting them to live together in harmony is a hideous, absurd, and morally bankrupt concept.
Assumptions of white privilege theory have come under criticism. In discussing unequal test scores between public school students, opinion columnist Matt Rosenberg laments the Seattle Public Schools’ emphasis on “institutional racism” and “white privilege”:
“The disparity is not simply a matter of color: School District data indicate income, English-language proficiency and home stability are also important correlates to achievement…By promoting the “white privilege” canard and by designing a student indoctrination plan, the Seattle School District is putting retrograde, leftist politics ahead of academics, while the perpetrators of “white privilege” are minimizing the capabilities of minorities.”[58]
Low impact of white privilege
Conservative scholar and opponent of affirmative action programs, Shelby Steele at the Hoover Institution, believes that the effects of white privilege are exaggerated. Steele argues that irresponsibility is a larger problem for blacks, who may incorrectly blame their personal failures on white oppression. He also argues that there are many “minority privileges”: “If I’m a black high school student today… there are white American institutions, universities, hovering over me to offer me opportunities: Almost every institution has a diversity committee… There is a hunger in this society to do right racially, to not be racist.”[59]
Taken from Wikipedia. See? That’s all I had to do to prove that some points are debated on “White privilege”.
Don’t ruin the victim narrative with facts, TSTES…
Nobody here seems to want to trade in them.
That some points are in debate was never disputed, TSES. It’s obvious there’s a debate, otherwise there wouldn’t be 150 comments on my article
This debate does raise an interesting epistemological question: When one person asserts that he perceives something (e.g. white privilege, God) and another denies it, how is the question to be resolved? Particularly when both sides interprets all evidence presented as evidence supporting his/her own side. I would argue that the question is unanswerable and any answer “yes” or “no” is incoherent.
(And the fact that Alan sees quotes from an opinion columnist and from the Hoover Institution as “facts” proves my point. Each side suffers confirmation bias.)
Funny, I thought TSTES’s inclusion of this nugget “School District data indicate income, English-language proficiency and home stability are also important correlates to achievement…” constituted a fact. Am I mistaken? Would you like me to dig up the data and bring it to you? …Didn’t think so.
As for black Hoover fellow and author Shelby Steele’s assertion: “If I’m a black high school student today… there are white American institutions, universities, hovering over me to offer me opportunities: Almost every institution has a diversity committee… There is a hunger in this society to do right racially, to not be racist.”
Please tell me why that statement falls short of being factual evidence. Would you like to dispute any part of it? Would you like me to dredge up the most recent facts and figures that you know very well support unequivocally his contention that black high school students are being offered opportunities by American institutions, universities and “almost every institution has a diversity committee”?
C’mon, Jeremy. Just because you can’t come up with any facts to prove your case doesn’t mean we can’t to prove ours.
And please stop retreating behind the academic and semantic curtain to attempt to make this an exercise in epistemology. We’re well past that point in the discussion. We’re no longer talking about whether someone can BELIEVE systemic racism in America exists, we’re talking about whether it actually does.
If you’re talking about whether systematic racism exists in America, then that’s not really a discussion I care to have. As I said days and days ago, I’m not interested in a battle of the worldviews. I don’t want to try to prove to you why one worldview is successful. So, I’m not gonna.
I’ll take the brevity of your last comment though as an admission that contrary to your previous assertion otherwise, TSTES had presented facts and I had referred to them correctly, but is this really your “no mas”moment?
Because that’s OK, you don’t have to continue defending the leftist worldview – no one can. Given enough time and a willingness on the part of the defender to continue the discussion and accept basic facts, every leftist argument inevitably dissolves into a soapy melange of hurt or unresolved feelings, revisionary or ahistorical references, and utopian dreamscapes. Because I have truly enjoyed our discussion thus far, and you’ve been so tenacious up until this point, I always thought you’d go down swinging.
I have said before that you are obviously an intelligent and articulate fellow, Jeremy. That’s why it is so frustrating to see you sit on the fence and refuse to get into the fray. Tell me, when you’re driving, do you have trouble deciding between left and right turns? I ask that only partly in jest, because in order to get through life you need to pick an intellectual road, chart your course and follow it, not stand at the bifurcation point and congratulate everyone else on making whatever choice suits them.
Choosing the right road means finding and following a moral compass. Without one, you’re just another wanderer in the philosophical desert.
I don’t appreciate your condescension, but Christopher appears willing to take on the battle of the ideologies above. Though, he’s quite correct that, no matter how much evidence is presented, you’ll never accept the existence of white privilege because your worldview does not countenance it. [Just like how a (stereotypical) evangelical Christian would never accept evolution despite being presented with mounds of evidence, or like how an atheist would never accept the existence of God or of miracles, despite being presented with evidence.]
Actually, it would be the other way around. We are the ones that expect the hardcore evidence, and you are the “stereotypical evangelical Christian” that is spouting that something exists without looking for direct causation.
You’re basically saying what they do–”Because animals are so complex, God must exist”. And trust me, I’ve studied evolution. Those of us who want proof, however, are the scientists here. By all means, show direct, empirical evidence that shows the existence of white privilege across this country, that is undeniable and cannot be argued to any extent.
There’s been plenty of evidence offered, both of the anecdotal sort (bandages, etc.) and of the statistical, peer-reviewed sort (Chicago name/resume study). You just refuse to accept it as legitimate.
The bandages example, Jeremy, is just plain silly, and you know it. For most of us, bandages are not the color of our flesh. At least, they’ve never, ever blended in with my skin. If the companies made bandages for every single skin color out there, how marketable would that be for them? Economics, my friend. People will buy bandages no matter what color they are, so they make them mostly the plain light brown color they always have.
In addition, the bandages don’t have any correlation to “white privilege”. Nice try, though.
And I would accept that Chicago name/resume study as legitimate. But I ask you this–I want to know A) Like I said, the races of the employers hiring. Were they all white? Unlikely.
And B)This is one area, in Chicago. Can it be replicated all over the country?
Once you answer that, then I accept it.
TSTES is right.
The bandage example is more than a bit desperate.
As for the Chicago study, it was done 8-9 years ago in Boston and Chicago only – two US cities with severe and societally debilitating racial problems.
One would expect in such racially charged atmospheres, amid daily media reports of aggressive crime, drug addiction, gang banging, etc., divisions between the race groups will harden and fear or reluctance to mix become the unfortunate result. I would also be interested in seeing if that localized phenomenon holds true across the country.
While we’re on the subject of studies, though, here’s another one you might wish to consider:
Dec. 2008:
A few months ago, Radio One, the largest radio broadcasting company in the U.S. primarily targeting African Americans, released the results of a comprehensive study called “Black America Today.” About 3,400 African Americans, ranging in age from 13 to 74, were quizzed on a broad range of topics from what type of media they use to their plans for the future. Radio One’s Barry Mayo says it was the biggest and most comprehensive study ever used for segmentation of the country’s 39 million African Americans.
Some of the study’s findings:
*Six in 10 African-Americans believe many of the problems within the black community can be solved by blacks themselves.
*Although most of the respondents believe in solidarity, 84 percent say “Blacks need to be more responsible for themselves as individuals.”
*Sixty percent agree with the statement, “things are getting better for me,” and more than half are positive about the future.
*Only three in 10 prefer being around people of the same race.
In an interview, Mayo said it was important for its viewers, listeners and advertisers to understand that the black community is complex and diverse.
This is a recent national study that demonstrates my point that blacks and whites (and pinks and greens and blues etc.!), are not monolithic, and that the Black Studies/OBSA crowd represents a small minority of radicalized malcontents who wish to huddle together in self-segregating tribal solidarity and blame the world for their individual and collective failings.
The key metric:
84 percent say “Blacks need to be more responsible for themselves as individuals.”
I would expand that to every race and say: “Hear, hear!”
The sooner we stop dividing into silly groups and start multiplying our opportunities to come together the better off we will be as individuals and as a society.
I’m sorry you don’t think the bandages example is convincing. Many other people feel otherwise. I don’t think I’ll ever convince you that different people see the world differently than you do, so I’m done trying.
Regarding the Chicago study, go and find it yourself. I don’t know the answers to your questions, but I bet the study itself addresses them. You’re a CMC student, you have access to all the resources at Honnold…
Lol. That’s a huge cop-out answer. Maybe if you’re arguing so strongly for this topic, you should do a little research? I hear when you’re doing an argumentative topic, you should research both sides of the argument before making a conclusion…
As I’ve said quite a number of times, my goal is not — and never was — to prove to you the existence of “white privilege”. The purpose of this article was to show you that other people believe it exists, and that this influences their actions.
My main purpose with providing examples, though other people did the majority of that, was also to show you what is seen as oppressive and as evidence of white privilege. You’re unwilling to accept this — and that’s fine — but I’m likewise unwilling to keep bashing my head against a brick wall trying to prove it.
You say:
“…my goal is not — and never was — to prove to you the existence of “white privilege”. The purpose of this article was to show you that other people believe it exists, and that this influences their actions.”
With all due respect, no one needs to write or read an article on the Portside to discover that someone’s beliefs influence their actions. Or that there are people who believe “white privilege” exists.
Those two concepts are logical and self-evident.
What you don’t realize is that by assuming a neutral posture in your original article and attempting to use moral equivalence to justify Rachael B’s nasty Kwanzaa behaviour you opened up a can of worms and blew the top off the subject of race relations on campus and in the country at large.
Your continued insistence that “some people think A and they’re right” and “some people think the polar opposite B and they’re right, too”, forced those of us who disagree with that questionable logic to demand objective proof.
The “proof” which some tried to provide was weak at best and didn’t stand up to dialectic scrutiny.
Now you say you’re tired of trying to convince us. Fine. That is your prerogative.
But please remember next time you write a similar column that just “saying something is so” doesn’t make it so. And there are many people who are awfully tired of being expected to roll over, salute, and to unquestioningly put on a racial hair shirt to make other people feel better about themselves.
1.) The idea that I could objectively proof the non-existence of objective/absolute truth is absurd. Cf. Godel, I cannot prove the viability of my worldview from within that worldview or from within your worldview.
2.) I don’t think I have the power to “blow the top off the subject of race relations” in Claremont, let alone in the nation at large. Though I’ll take it as a compliment that you think I’m that widely read.
3.) I hope you learned why Ms. Ballard felt particularly violated and whence her anger came. If you didn’t, then I failed. If you did, then I succeeded in my goal.
1. Godel also said:
“I like Islam: it is a consistent [or consequential] idea of religion and open-minded.”
So perhaps we should take his pronouncements with a grain of salt.
I have said many times before that if you wish to hide away in your wishy washy nether world of absolute equivalence you are most welcome to do so. While you’re busy trying to understand everybody on the plane – up to and including Adolf Hitler — for thew purpose of excusing their moral and ethical transgressions, perhaps you will spend a moment or two understanding that people like me refuse to have the new age sewage of that psycho-social yoke thrust upon us.
2. I have no idea how widely read you are, nor do I care. But even if one person reads the many related discussions emanating from your original column and thinks twice or changes their mind entirely about the toxic, deceitful and societally destructive construct of “white privilege”, I will consider it time well spent.
3. Fathoming what goes on in the inner recesses of the mind of someone as insecure, angry, fully indoctrinated in Black Leftist theory and obviously unstable as Ms. Ballard is not hard to do. As I have said before, it’s not difficult to determine why a child throws a tantrum.
What’s difficult to imagine is why any adult in the room would attempt to justify and condone it.
No condescension intended, Jeremy. I apologize if you took it that way. It was just meant as advice.
I will accept the idea of white privilege when it is proven – not implied or felt or wished or hoped or suggested. Until then, I cannot.