rolling thread for the dismantling of white supremacy

so that this is not just some cause du jour that gets cast aside, some space to discuss anti-racism work. we can post articles and talk about them since that is most political threads, or we can talk about some important anti-racism work that interests you.

right now my high school newspaper staff is working on a several part feature on the case for mexican-american studies. since we dont have a class and this is a love-for-the-game after school thing right now, it is progressing in fits and starts.

In an interesting move, Portland Comm College is doing a Whiteness History Month:

https://www.pcc.edu/about/diversity/cascade/whiteness-history-month/

The Project

Whiteness History Month: Context, Consequences and Change is a multidisciplinary, district-wide, educational project examining race and racism through an exploration of the construction of whiteness, its origins and heritage. Scheduled for the month of April 2016, the project seeks to inspire innovative and practical solutions to community issues and social problems that stem from racism.

For a bit of related amusement, note the frowny stock photos that douchebags are using in the posts announcing(denouncing?) this:

http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=7174

I proposed that my school might look into anti-racism curriculum for this age group and a few days later I was severely chastened for having accused the school and teachers of being racist. Or at least that's what I think the veiled threats were about.

I remember this every time a community member says something deeply racist and/or xenophobic.

Any thoughts on this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qffCO1b-7Js

Discussing my own 'white privilege' would be so weird. Because Denmark is SO white. Deray tweeted today: 'White privilege is, at its core, an understanding of the benefits resulting from whiteness functioning as normative, as standard.' But when, like, 95% of the population is white, it sorta IS the standard. My privileges are more like, a global nationalized privilege. Or a Christian privilege. I don't know. I don't think I have the tools to really think about it, I should probably get on that.

I haven't watched the clip yet but I liked Jezebel's take on it - http://jezebel.com/civil-rights-activist-deray-mckesson-gives-stephen-colb-1753762738

When the topic moves onto white privilege, Mckesson and host Stephen Colbert switch seats, a move more symbolic (and, cynically, shallow) than it was radical. (Imagine! A long-running network late night show where the host was permanently a person of color!)

“If I have white privilege, I want to be able to identify it,” Colbert states. “Give me a hint as to my white privilege.”

“You have a lot of privilege. You have a show, you have money, a lot of access,” replies Mckesson, then adding, “You know, it’s about role, it’s about access, and what you can do is extend that privilege so that you can dismantle it. You can create opportunity for people, you can amplify issues in a way that other people can’t, and you can use your resources to create space for people.”

I really try to resemble the latter remarks from that quote. At one point I remember reading in some Michael Moore book a bit about "only hire black people" and thinking that was ridiculous, but now that I am in a position to give people good middle class jobs with my magic boss wand, I genuinely seek to try and offset the white-dudeness of the rest of my workplace by hiring women and minorities whenever I have an opening. I can accurately state that the only white dudes on my team are veterans.

Also, black moms, do not name your sons Jared, because I might accidentally throw their resume out without looking.

also to m bison's points from the presidential race thread, about the proportions of racist white folks, to performative-ally white folks, to actually-doing-something-that-qualifies-for-this-thread white folks, it seems like the proportion of the latter two categories are increasing significantly, and for the third category, the tools that people have to help dismantle white supremacy are both more powerful and more available than in previous generations. So I still say TNC's prognostication that nothing's going to change in our lifetime or our kids' lifetimes is kind of ridiculous.

That's not what he wrote, but whatever.

http://www.youtube.com/v/qffCO1b-7Js&fs=1&hl=en

Discussing my own 'white privilege' would be so weird. Because Denmark is SO white. Deray tweeted today: 'White privilege is, at its core, an understanding of the benefits resulting from whiteness functioning as normative, as standard.' But when, like, 95% of the population is white, it sorta IS the standard. My privileges are more like, a global nationalized privilege. Or a Christian privilege. I don't know. I don't think I have the tools to really think about it, I should probably get on that.

― Frederik B

I come from an ultra-white place. 1 in 10 people who live in Glasgow belong to a visible minority, was less when I was younger, and I grew up in the suburbs, which were and are even whiter. It's not overly hard to discern "white privilege" even there tho. For instance: I take a wee perambulation through the city and look at the fine and grand buildings - they were almost all built with the money from the trade (to colonies of the british empire) of slave-grown crops: sugar, tobacco, cotton i.e. slavery. This is the basis of our ongoing economic prosperity: violence and plunder based on white supremacy and racism. not that being cognizant of that is some key anti-racism youre doing but it's a baseline way of thinking.

Also white privilege, same as male privilege, is actually really easily recognized and challenged in an environment where everyone belongs to the privileged group: I imagine youre privy to racist, and, especially in the current European situation, xenophobic comments? it's important, though at times challenging, and not without some risks, to forcefully counter this.

Also, black moms, do not name your sons Jared, because I might accidentally throw their resume out without looking.

― service desk hardman (El Tomboto), Wednesday, January 20, 2016 6:46 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whaaaaa

#beingaboss

Extensive damage done to the brand by Mr. Fogle.

thing is I mumble, and I used to say "like the subway guy" at starbucks and sandwich establishments

@jim in glasgow: Well, we definitely has stuff like that in Denmark as well. Loads of building boom financed by slavery. But I don't know if I'd call that 'white privilege'. I don't enjoy that because I'm white, but because I'm Danish. It's what I mean by feeling some sort of national or religious privilege is easier to talk about. But I'm guessing there's been research done on racial categorization in Northern Europe as well, and I should seek that out.

wow you really do not get it

No, I'm wrangling with it. Also, you're being extremely unhelpful.

but because I'm Danish.

remind me again how many non-white Danes there are

Right. But it isn't 'white privilege' just because I'm white. 'White privilege' is about 'whiteness' as a social construct, and how that's been used to exclude non-whites from getting the same benefits as me. But precisely because 'white' and 'Danish' overlaps so well, 'whiteness' doesn't play into it in the same way. There's been no need to create 'white' as a category of exclusion, because there were other, better ways to exclude the different.

No, I'm wrangling with it. Also, you're being extremely unhelpful.

― Frederik B, Wednesday, January 20, 2016 4:27 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

could you maybe wrangle with it on your own or irl with friends neighbors and family and save us the trouble of having to scroll past your banal social justice tourism. i'm sure that would be much more helpful.

if a black person lives in your country, can they become Danish?

Yeah, they can. The nationalisation process is pretty arduous, though, for everyone. And most new road-blocks put in the way is aimed at muslims.

And most new road-blocks put in the way is aimed at muslims.

remind me how many of them are white, again?

Yes, of course*, but again, then why call it 'white privilege'? There are black Christians who won't get hit by it. 'Christian privilege' is more precise, so why not talk about that?

* Though a bunch used to be from Bosnia.

Jared is my ha-ha exemplar of stereotypically white guy name, therefore, I would theoretically be less interested in hiring a person with that name, because plenty-plenty of white dudes in my office, thanks

also inverting the paradigm where other bosses specifically discount resumes with "Black" names as has been proven in numerous peer-reviewed studies! really though nobody should go by the name Jared. Old Lunch OTM

one of my favorite coworkers is named Jared but I forgive him daily

Frederik - sounds like you may be wrangling towards (re)discovering intersectionality?

xxp whatever keeps you from being my boss, el proudbossman

Tombot is going to end up like a bond villain: sitting at a large desk in the centre of his office, surrounded by a hand-picked females team drawn from many cultures and ethnicities to attend to his every working need, stroking a white cat - whilst boasting about doing his bit to dismantle white supremacy,

Frederik - sounds like you may be wrangling towards (re)discovering intersectionality?

― Half-baked profundities. Self-referential smirkiness (Bob Six), 21. januar 2016 08:49 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, definitely, that's the way it should go. I'm just trying to figure out how best to talk about it.

could you maybe wrangle with it on your own or irl with friends neighbors and family and save us the trouble of having to scroll past your banal social justice tourism. i'm sure that would be much more helpful.

― trigger warning: your mom (mattresslessness), Wednesday, January 20, 2016 6:34 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dismantling white supremacy by trash-talking white folks on the internet for not being anti-racist enough

dismantling white supremacy by trash-talking white folks on the internet for not being anti-racist enough

Soon to be its own Nobel Prize category.

Tombot is going to end up like a bond villain: sitting at a large desk in the centre of his office, surrounded by a hand-picked females team drawn from many cultures and ethnicities to attend to his every working need, stroking a white cat - whilst boasting about doing his bit to dismantle white supremacy

I guess I'm okay with this

ilx could do w a non-US race thread

it would still be 50% myopic caucasoids blathering half-formed thoughts as they try to justify their position in society and 50% clever people zinging the troglodytes for amusement

That's fairly clearly not what Frederik's doing on this thread (nor is mattresslessness looking too clever).

The real question I wrestle with is: could I make my team 100% minority, or even 100% black + brown? I suppose it's possible but would require a lot more time to find the right candidates, as in years, because government. My compromise has been that I want my team to track with the general population - but I also need to try and offset the fact that a couple of my peers run shops that have almost no women or black folks at all.

tbf to matt, he can and does go in 40x harder esp when this topic is at play, freddy got off about as lightly as he ought to have imo

it never hurts to reconsider your own position in an argument, which is why i'm checking back out now

post before last was supposed to be ironical

ilx could do w a non-US race thread

you don't wanna open that bottle mate

;)

ILX basic training, side A

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/macklemores-problem-is-that-macklemore-is-bad-1754519310

I would argue that 5:00-6:30 of Macklermore's incredible trainwreck of a new song is actually the best rap I've heard him perform and a step in the direction that article wants him to go.

Unfortunately for Macklemore, that is a minute and a half out of 8 minutes of confused, ill-considered music that has its heart in the right place but not its editing apparatus

on a macromore level tho, that article is totally an ILM/ILE obstacle course

It is a bad song.

But this years-long siege of acknowledgement and apology falls flat, because the conceit upon which it is built is false. Macklemore hears the critics and haters saying that it is tragic and/or enraging that he, a white man, has a successful career within a black space. This is wrong.

This was and still is an outrage (so far as anything that happens at an awards show can be an outrage), because all those rappers, others nominated but not mentioned, and still others who weren’t nominated at all were and are all nigh-objectively better rappers than Macklemore, who was and is bad.

It was easy to draw a line between the makeup of an old group of largely white record-industry insiders utterly disinterested in rap music and the safe, bland records that appealed to fans utterly disinterested in rap music and conclude that even though Macklemore was a bad rapper, he was successful because he was a white man making music that appealed to white people.

When he makes these songs attributing the criticism of his success to his race or his sexuality, he is insinuating that he is a good rapper who, all else equal, would be embraced if he were black, when he is actually bad, and would be laughed at if he were black.

There is no greater avatar of the power of white privilege in all of music than Macklemore.

These are all earnest songs in which Macklemore takes laudable if performative steps towards making the world a better place by acknowledging that he, as someone who actively benefits from being a white, heterosexual male at the expense of other people, is part of the problem.

He is apologizing. On its own terms, this is quite good shit.

In 2012, Macklemore dropped “Same Love,” acknowledging he was heterosexual while aligning himself with the the LGBTQ community.

There’s a stark self-consciousness to his music that has led him to acknowledge the various privileges he enjoys.

Macklemore’s career is tragic and/or enraging not because he is a white man, but because he is a bad rapper who makes bad songs and yet has, because he’s white, achieved more success than black rappers who make better songs.

At the end, a man in a smokey the bear hat shouts many things at you so close to your face that you can smell the menthol tobacco and bad coffee on his breath, the main thrust of which is that you are still a loser, because you have spent so much time thinking and writing about Macklemore, you missed breakfast, and now you get to do it all over again.

we going to talk about reparations up in this piece or what

we should, but first I have to say: "hatlemore"

As someone pointed out on the 2016 primary thread part the second, cash payments to descendants of slaves is 3 points less popular than legalizing heroin.
So other ideas:

- federal income tax breaks for descendants of slaves; unfortunately, since a lot of the harm we're trying to redress has resulted in many of the victims having little or no taxable income, this wouldn't really cut it, would it.
- special FHA terms for "", to redress some of the issues specifically raised in the TNC article; a homestead act for the 21st century. This would probably be exactly as popular as legalizing heroin, at least if it were introduced today.
- a bevy of specific federal preferences for "" for everything from small business loans to scholarships to defense contracts to mortgage assistance and whatever else, possibly coupled to similar benefits for descendants of native americans, rolled up in a single bill pitched as a step towards addressing the gross human rights violations of our national history.

what do people make of adolph reed

on the one hand his anti-identity politics stance is challenging and gratifyingly marxist but on the other i wonder if it feels attractive to white dudes like me because of some subconscious lizard-brain desire to 'not have to think about' race

he's good but yeh the people i see praising him the most are the types of marxists who looooove not having to think about race

so i acknowledge my privilege and i acknowledge deeply entrenched systemic racism and i got nothing in the way of answers. i'm not even talking about the public will to address it, i'm just wondering what we can possibly do that will work. and all these ideas, reparations, affirmative action, as far as i'm concerned they're guilt payments. which may or may not be appropriate, but i'm less concerned with spending money to justify systemic entrenched racism than i am in... what's the thread title again?... dismantling white supremacy. and i don't think the data supports the idea that affirmative action is effective in dismantling white supremacy.

dude

affirmative action has been a pretty effective path to the middle class for lots of people who would have otherwise been denied one - i think you'll find plenty of data to support that

Right, and many have made it to the middle class, where their kids can still be shot by police for no reason.

http://variety.com/2016/film/news/directors-guild-oscars-diversity-1201688080/

“Statements, statistics, pleas and calls for action have done little to move the needle,” he said Monday. “It is time to be clear – structural changes are needed. Those who control the pipeline and entryway to jobs must move beyond the ‘old boy’ network and word-of-mouth hiring. They must commit to industry-wide efforts to find available diverse talent that is out there in abundance, or to train and create opportunities for new voices entering our industry. Rules must be implemented to open up the hiring process and rethink the idea of ‘approved lists.'”

Of note, the Variety homepage currently has Nate Parker's "Birth of a Nation" front and center.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/01/26/remember-the-name-nate-parker-youre-going-to-hear-it-a-lot-when-birth-of-a-nation-premieres/

Yeah, I think it's pretty clear already that he will be nominated for all the oscars, if no one else next year. They don't want to deal with this ridicule again next year.

I think it's been made pretty clear that giving Best Picture to a movie about Nat Turner is a little insufficient? The silver lining of this year's Oscars shit is that you have union leaders calling for structural change from the industry. Maybe we'll get a Rooney Rule for franchise executive-producer jobs.

Oh yes, it's def insufficient. That doesn't mean they won't do it, and that voters won't think it's enough.

tnc was right re: reparations/bernie, thats my hot take

(contd from twitter thread)

hmmm. well, smashing white supremacy is not best achieved by haggling over interpretation of statistics, so sure, i'll grant the argument that affirmative action is, to a degree, effective in its stated goals. i do, however, believe that this policy is at best a symptomatic response, when what we really need is to identify and address the root causes.

and i believe that we have, in the past, implemented policies that do address the root causes. busing, for instance. and busing lasted for about 3.5 seconds in america, in part because it was inconvenient, but mostly because it was socially disruptive. which was, as far as i'm concerned, the entire fucking point.

addressing things on a systemic level is difficult because it's trying to hit a moving target. american society, and global society, is changing and it's changing fast. remediating the current injustices is probably not enough, but it's a decent enough starting point, i guess.

declaration of biases. existential bias: middle-aged white person. experiential bias: live in major american city, graduated from community college there, work at white-collar job.

capitalism has superseded democracy. capitalist america has no use for black men. capitalist america has no use for a lot of people, these days. any blue-collar worker, or person who would in the past have been a blue-collar worker, is being told in no uncertain terms to go fuck themselves and that their job will henceforth be done by a machine. the president's solution has always been to tell people to go to school, which is difficult enough advice for white people. the education system has failed black americans from day one, and an ongoing trend in education is to formulate methods for segregation which do not rely on explicit racial bias (big data is a very powerful thing).

fixing the racial bias in the education system would only make it possible for your statistically average black man to succeed. i guess since all we're trying to do is smash white supremacy we can stop here, though practically speaking there are more things we need to do here.

law enforcement. big problem here, obviously. right now the push is for technological solutions, body cams and all that, but i'm deeply skeptical of technological solutions to cultural problems. the big issue with law enforcement is a matter of allegiance. right now, the police owe their primary allegiance to their professional fraternity. this is grossly misplaced. the police need to owe their primary allegiance to the people they serve. i am reading "london labour and the london poor", and it seems as though the people's attitude towards the police is unchanged since the 1840s, when the concept of an urban police force was in its infancy. this is unacceptable.

police need to be more than enforcers, they need to be everyday presences on the streets they walk. they also need to be financially incentivized by the people of that community somehow, because money rules everything these days.

i'm not suggesting the mayor immediately move into cabrini-green. in fact the job of a police officer these days is flatly impossible, because they are expected to control drugs and guns and on a macro level our policies on both are complete failures. drugs and guns need to be regulated in the same way, because they are two sides of the same issue. first establish the preconditions necessary for success, then implement the policies that lead to success.

they also need to be financially incentivized by the people of that community somehow, because money rules everything these days.

This is only a good idea if you _want_ sharply different level of policing in different economic areas.

AMPAS gave its awards to the Steve McQueen slavery movie just a couple years ago, that changed nothing. (The Nat Turner film is by a first-time filmmaker and some reputable critics say it's closer to "halfway decent" than 12 Years.) El Tomboto otm, the effect on production in the industry is what counts.

McQueen is doing a Paul Robeson bio next, which means unless it's shunned, we get to discuss race AND Communism in a couple Oscar seasons.

'The Birth of a Nation' seems like a cheap film done incredibly fast, I would be surprised if it's more than 'halfway decent'. But imagine the uproar if it isn't nominated next year - unless something even more nominatable with black director, writer, lead comes along.

Also, I'm not saying it should be nominated just because of 'political correctness' or some such nonsense. 'Halfway decent' is better than a lot of oscar films. It just sounds like an oscar film.

It's cool that stories about important historical black Americans, especially those who aren't normally discussed or mentioned in casual discussion of American history, can be dismissed with "it just sounds like an Oscar film" by white people without even seeing it, particularly on a thread about dismantling white supremacy.

Yeah. Sorry. It sounds like Oscar should be. I did not mean to sound dismissive at all, Oscar would be a cool thing if it went to The Birth of the Nation, Tangerine, instead of Revenant, Brooklyn.

"they also need to be financially incentivized by the people of that community somehow, because money rules everything these days.

This is only a good idea if you _want_ sharply different level of policing in different economic areas."

i don't mean that the police should get paid directly by the people they're policing, i just mean that members of the community and not a disinterested bureaucracy should be in control of the disbursement of financial incentives. obviously there's plenty of room for corruption in that schema, but any system can be exploited. honestly i feel like we're still at a very primitive stage when it comes to planning the dismantling of de facto white supremacy.

another thing i thought of today was that a felony conviction in america will basically ensure that you never get hired to do meaningful work again. the criminal justice system is right now stacked in the favor of the police, because police who were tired of having their judgment overruled by the courts had this big push for mandatory minimums in the '80s, and mandatory minimums are just a terrible idea that does a lot to ensure de facto racism. because the police have basically unlimited discretion as to who to arrest or kill, face no meaningful accountability for those decisions, and on top of that are operating constantly in crisis mode, which greatly diminishes their ability to make good decisions. combined with the financial ruination that is an inevitable result of a felony conviction, split-second life-or-death decisions have the power to ruin (largely) black lives. american law enforcement really is super, super fucked.

honestly i feel like we're still at a very primitive stage when it comes to planning the dismantling of de facto white supremacy.

another thing i thought of today

Okay, just checking are you stoned now y/n?

lol

i agree w the sentiment ie there is a long ways to go. but putting it that way seems like dismissing many historical figures and movements. the struggle has been real from before people could put it into words.

... what the hell does "before people could put it into words" mean

glyphs, grunts, figures drawn in the dirt with a stick

de facto, people. de facto. historically, most actions directed against white supremacy are directed against de jure white supremacy, whether it be slavery or jim crow laws.

no, i'm not stoned or drunk, i just tend to talk like i am.

OK so I don't know where to put this really but my wife decided we should do the ancestry.com DNA thing and my results came back 97% various bits of western Europe (duh) and 2% Mali.

def think my body is 2% molly at this point

so last night i got to listen to a group of white liberal boomers talk about race. oof. their hearts are in the right place, but oof. they've spent most of their lives being taught the ideal of a color-blind society and have internalized it, which is directly at odds with valuing diversity. so they keep up this elaborate kayfabe where they pretend not to see people's skin color. they all know colbert's bit about "not seeing race" and they think it's very funny but don't think it applies to them.

what party was this

yes we need more detail around this event

is anyone in this thread NOT from the us? i think the money incentive for less white dominance of creative industries is not just about there being a market to capitalise on, but also to do with cultural power. hence why the process is so slow. there were two 'diversity' execs from ch4 and the bbc on radio 4 yesterday but theyve been there for a decade or so! that said, im seeing more black and brown faces in recent hollywood movies than i expected (big short, and joy).