Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
America: A coast-to-coast mall (plus lots more)
The Shanghai mall on that list is not even in the top ten in Shanghai. The biggest mall in Shanghai, the Zheng Da (Superbrand Mall),is not really in the same league as the likes of West Edmonton. I’ve been to West Ed, it’s mind blowing - or should I say brain sucking.
Ward Churchill. The fact that his detractors think that questioning his ‘race’ has some connection to the points he makes in speech and action shows what a f**ked-up, hateful, racist view of the world they have.
The ‘stick to your own kind’ line makes me want to double over and be sick.
Talking of which. I never fail to alienate seemingly like minded people with my view that the Lord of the Rings novels are an extension of Tolkien’s belief in the racial world order set out by the empire.
When a group of us watched the movies as they came out, even one of the hardest deniers in this area blurted out ‘Rourke’s Drift’ (main battle in “Zulu") during the Battle of Helm’s Deep.
But it’s no suprise to those of us who researched it a bit deeper. Tolkien and his contemporaries, like Lewis with the Narnia books, sat around - at facism sympathy sessions - and set out how they wanted to write books that prepared children for the world as they saw it. That meant ‘Christian values’ and patriotism, for starters.
Why is it that ‘normal’ people get so offended at these observations? Perhaps exposing the sick undercurrent in our societies is just too hard to face?
Any ideas?
Posted by Andy on from Shanghai 04/04 at 05:41 AM-
Andy, one possible explanation comes to mind. The supposed neutrality of entertainment is an even more sacred cow than the objectivity of the media. Workmates will challenge my observations about the agenda behind some TV show or other (CSI is a favourite*) with an exasperated “But surely you end up not enjoying anything!” The right to denial - escapism - don’t underestimate it.
* Actually I do enjoy CSI. David Caruso is hilarious.
Posted by Mew on from london 04/04 at 06:18 AM hello mew and andy and everyone.
picture for the day…
Posted by michael on from scotland 04/04 at 07:06 AMThe question of Ward Churchill’s racial identity is a tricky one for me. As I understood the article that posted here, Prof. Churchill was asked to apply for membership of the tribe.
A couple of years ago, an Aboriginal elder came up to me while I was out selling the party newspaper, and said that I was Aboriginal. I was stunned by this.
Up until that moment, I never considered to be anything else than a white Irish-Autralian. I had grown up white, lived white, and thought white. My birth certificate had stated that I was born of white parents.
I had thought the elder might have been joking about this but the issue of racial identity is a deadly serious one. And to doubt an elder is an insult.
When I had spoken to other Aboriginals, they had called me, “brother”. I had thought they were being polite. Now I am not so sure. They could have been subtly suggesting that they knew my true identity.
Even if I could find my clan, I would have several decades of whiteness separating me from them. I have not really come to terms with this at all.
Being classified as white gave me life. For if I had grown up black, I would be dead by now. The colour of my skin allowed me to lived.
That is a chilling thought.
Posted by Douglas on from Sydney, Australia 04/04 at 07:20 AMMew,
Yeah, it is a sacred cow. Another biggie is Gone With The Wind. All kinds of people get hugely upset around me if we ever get onto that one.
“It’s the greatest love story”, I hear. Or the usual suspects, “you’re reading too much into it”.
So when I say it’s mythmaking that glosses over slavery, the usual reply is something that conveys this meaning - ‘you take yourself too seriously’.
The other thing is that they needn’t go to the agenda or ideology of those books (LOTR from my other post) because they both have easily spotted direct racism in there too.
Don’t forget though - Edward Said wrote that such books are entertainment too. They are both. Books are their ideology, and their technical apsects and their entertainment value, all existing together.
I say: I don’t find racist propaganda that entertaining.
Here’s one for the Gone With The Wind defenders: a new work of high romance - “Franco, the highschool sweetheart.”
Posted by Andy on from Shanghai 04/04 at 08:29 AMI guess its like telling someone they’ve just eaten (and enjoyed) a cat turd.
That Marvin Gaye clip is amazing. Turning something as ugly as a national anthem into a beautiful noise is quite a feat. May have been done before though…
I wish someone would attempt to redeem the British National Dirge, if only for the comedy value of their inevitable failure.Posted by Mew on from london 04/04 at 09:03 AMMew, how does this fall in line with this talk of entertainment’s double meaning (and the first movie of a few years ago):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463854/Or do you count this a documentary?
Posted by James on from work 04/04 at 09:18 AMMalls are shitty places. Marketplaces and bazaars, on the other hand, can be incredible. I once spent an entire afternoon haggling with a single shopkeeper in the huge bazaar in Instanbul. We both had a fine time. There’s never much fun or personality at the mall.
Andy: I don’t want to get too deep into this, and your point is well taken about critically taking in books and films. But I do know that you’re wrong about Tolkien. It’s necessary to distinguish between the films (which I believe he would have been mortified by) and his writing. Yes he was a Christian but he was not a fascist (though I’ll grant he supported monarchy as a concept). I did some in depth work on Tolkien during my undergrad days in another millenium so I could go on and on. But I’ll leave it for now with these lines (from his poem Mythopoiea) which I like to place in the context of Derrick Jensen’s work...
I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends--
if by God’s mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.Posted by Keir on from the hague 04/04 at 09:19 AMWhat would Tolkien’s biggest problem with the movies have been? I don’t remember the books well enough to tell, but my brother like both books and movies about equally.
And of course, on mall culture, there’s always:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077402/Posted by James on from work 04/04 at 09:43 AMGreat youtube link, Zen...caught it last night in my email, thanks for that.
I love waking up gay...I mean, happy.
Mew, David Caruso is the best comedian on TV...I hardly ever watch the show, but when I do I get a huge kick out of the way he stands sideways with his hands on his hips and whispers his lines.
Here’s an interesting link:
http://wdthu.blogspot.com/2007/04/us-supports-al-qaeda.html
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 04/04 at 10:31 AMJames: that they were made at all. Those fantasy movies, when compared to the books, are an affront to imagination. (I gatther this from his letters and his book Tree and Leaf.) And the music is just shite.
But the movie you linked to rules!
Posted by Keir on from the hague 04/04 at 10:31 AMHi Keir, James, Mew, Andy, and Douglas
Mickey...thanks for the WC update. I always thought that questions about his “ethnicity” were bogus.
michael...quite a photo!
I had planned to drop a comment about this but JOS beat me to it. That’s one news story that will never make the msm.
http://tinyurl.com/2zu9ruPosted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 04/04 at 11:17 AMThe other day in response to the Liberal/Left fantasy issue, Michael wrote:
* consuming/watching/doing the same things as all supposed non-revolutionaries but doing it in an ironic manner changes things and has quantifiable value.
Well as far as movie adaptations go, I’ll just say I’m no ashamed of how much I’m looking forward to Spider-Man 3. In fact I’m going to take my mom to go see it for Mother’s Day. In fact I went to the 7-11 on 42nd Street off of 9th Ave. and bought all three hologram collector’s Slurpee cups. And I’m not ashamed of what a part of the war machine this makes me.
I’m not kidding-- I’m taking her to see Spider-Man, then dinner at Kate’s or Caravan of Dreams. My mom’s the best (I know, everyone’s is...).
Posted by James on from work 04/04 at 11:32 AMI remember loving the black Spiderman alien plot twist of the comic books back when that came out, James.
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 04/04 at 12:10 PMYeah, they really ran it into the ground over the years, but it was cool for awhile… I’m hoping for an enjoyable situation btn him, Sandman, and the new Goblin… or else the terrorists have won!
Posted by James on from work 04/04 at 12:25 PMand in case you didnt see this when it happened…
Posted by michael on from scotland 04/04 at 01:43 PMHello Expendables...from a damp, wet NYC. Yet again, I see I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 04/04 at 01:48 PM-
Posted by mew on from LONDON BOROUGH OF LAMBETH 04/04 at 01:51 PM
The most gratifying part, for me at any rate, and I am rather removed from it all, of popular entertainment and “culture” is the deciphering of it. Most entertainment isn’t even entertaining any more, but it is seriously full of codes, signs and the like. All you need is to do is place close attention and it will begin to reveal itself. Commercials are the most transparent, obviously, but the sitcoms and dramas are ripe, too. I’ve been meaning to do an on-going series about a program I absolutely detest, “ According To Jim.” The tentative title is “(Dis)Cording To Jim” and I will use my small set of post-modern tools to dissect, deconstruct and decode that banal exercise in family values propaganda.
Slightly off topic: Mickey, my employers are going to have such a resentment of you when I return to work (off this week) next week. The Graphic Design gold mine you link to is...is nothing short of miraculous. That’s all the stuff I revamp and recondition for my own nefarious purposes. It’s going to take weeks just to sort through all the gems in there...my productivity which is marginal already will now nosedive. Bless you, my son.
Posted by The CultureGhost on from Concord CA 04/04 at 02:40 PMMy pleasure, Ghost.
My line of the day: The colour of my skin allowed me to lived. Anyone agree?
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 04/04 at 03:51 PMFunny letter from Kurt Nimmo to O’Reilly:
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 04/04 at 04:12 PMKeir
I find the Tolkien books to be the clear example of what I was talking about before and needn’t get into the movies at all.
The books, as a genre that he set down, reflect a world of nations built on ‘races’ with a heirarchy. Fair skinned at the top and going on to describe the orcs as “hideous black men with slanted eyes ...”
Tolkien and his peers held the racial world view and in the LOTR books he simply gets around the fallacy of racial theory by having actual races in the depiction. Even casual research into his personal background shows him to be both an empire supporter and a facism sympathiser.
There’s nothing new or suprising in this. Practically every novel ever written in the British tradition has elements of it. It used to seem strange to me that this stuff was never touched in school or even by a lot of Uni lit courses until I read Edward Said’s books.
Posted by Andy on from Shanghai 04/04 at 05:49 PMFor those a bit detached from what I’, posting about, here’s a link that sums it up quite well:
http://whiteprivilege.com/2002/12/07/racism-and-lord-of-the-rings/
It has a lengthy discussion in the comments too. LOTR is a massive sacred cow, you see.
Posted by Andy on from Shanghai 04/04 at 05:57 PMAndy though I still don’t fully agree---not to say I don’t see what you’re getting at very clearly---I’m willing to grant your point at least somewhat on Tolkien’s work and leave it for now.
Although I will say this, and I think it’s related: a lot has been made recently about the film 300, because of how openly racist it is. But (having read much about it, but admittedly not having seen the movie itself) I think it may, in this case, take one (racist) to know one. As I understand it from what I’ve read, that movie is about a small army of heroic (European) men defending their territory against a massive, barbaric, and cowardly (because effeminate) swarthy intruder. The small heroic army is white, the barbarians are black. People---even “left” people---have immediately drawn comparisons between the “white” and ostensibly heroic army of the US and the black, “other” army of whoever the West is at war with. People immediately go for the symbols and not the meanings. To me, the immediate comparison is to an enormous invading army of cowards (unquestionably the US) vs. a much smaller army of (unquestionably) brave freedom fighters (corporate media still calls them insurgents). That the colors are off reveals a lot about lingering racism in our culture, even among apparent leftists. I hope the relationship to the Tolkien thing makes sense, as it’s late here.
Posted by Keir on from the hague 04/04 at 07:05 PMHaving never read Tolkien or seen any of the movies, I can’t comment on that particular example. However, I will concur with Andy, re: Edward Said’s books. He’ll change the way you view writers like Camus, Conrad, etc.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 04/04 at 07:26 PMI don’t remember that description of the orcs, Andy. But I don’t think that the fact that they were dark has anything to do with race. It’s simply the age-old archetype, good vs. evil.
As for the story involving different races and a heirarchy, I don’t regard that as reflecting any sense of racism. It’s a fantasy. You’ve got your elves, dwarves, men, hobbits, and then you’ve got your monsters, the orcs, trolls, dragons, etc. I find nothing inherently racist about having different races and different monsters and bad guys in a story.
I loved the Tolkien books growing up and read them multiple times. I also loved the movies. The only part I found to have an element of racism was the portrayal of the men from the south who joined with Sauron as looking keenly Arab.
About the article, Light vs. Dark is an age old metaphor for Good vs. Evil and I don’t think is an inherently racist conceptualization. The bad guys are dark and dress in black. So what? I don’t think there’s any hidden meaning there so far as race is concerned.
It’s like saying God was racist for making the day bright and the night dark. Frankly, it’s a bit ridiculous and definately reading too much into it.
Posted by Jeremy R. Hammond on from Taipei, Taiwan 04/04 at 08:50 PMI find it interesting that people would prefer to discuss racism in a fictional world (e.g. LOTR) rather in their own.
From the comments made so far, I would have to assume that everyone here (including me) is white because the issue of racism is an academic one not a daily one.
Or are our lives so segregated that non-whites do not enter our daily lives. I see them on the streets, on public transport, and in my workplace.
I find it difficult to talk to other white people about racism because they only see the privileges and benefits conferred upon the undeserving natives and foreigners by an overtaxing government while the more deserving (ourselves) have to do everything by ourselves ("All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the [Government] ever done for us?” - Life of Brian, Scene 9).
Posted by Douglas on from Sydney, Australia 04/04 at 08:56 PMThanks for the link, Mr. Z. I’m hoping this one gets out there, it being the most virulently racist portion of the media’s lynching of Ward Churchill.
We’ve got several takedowns of other portions of the Churchill smear in a section of the blog called—unimaginatively—The Churchill Smear (http://tinyurl.com/yqrx2s). More are coming as time permits.
Rumor has it the big guy himself even once referred to us as “the only reputable news source in Denver.”
Posted by Benjamin on from 04/04 at 08:58 PM“I find it interesting that people would prefer to discuss racism in a fictional world (e.g. LOTR) rather in their own.”
The fictional world we speak of is a part of our own real world. I also don’t think it’s a choice as you’ve presented it. The issue of racism in the entertainment industry, in our books, in our movies, on our television is a very real issue and deserving of discussion.
Posted by Jeremy R. Hammond on from Taipei, Taiwan 04/04 at 09:50 PMOne learns something new every day, Mickey! Here I was thinking that at least one of the nine largest shopping malls would be in the US of A. Thanks for another enlightening post, Cool Observer.
And a warm ‘hello’ to all my fellow expendables from a relatively cool Daylesford, Australia.
Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 04/04 at 11:14 PM@Keir
I haven’t seen 300 yet, or read the Miller’s comic book . But the story of the Battle of Thermopylae is a big one in ‘Western Civilisation’ theory and ripe for such tellings.
By the way,I do respect you having another view on LOTR and would be happy if you posted up some of your own interpretations.
@Douglas
I brought in LOTR and Gone With The Wind as an aside. The blog and part of my original answer was about Ward Churchill and the smears against him.
I think you judge us harshly, but Jeremy has the point. Racism and culture are together. If you define culture as the products of human interaction then it’s fairly clear.
If you read through previous posts and blogs at this site you will find many discussions of day today racism including, recently, my own ‘story’ of being the immigrant next door here in China.
Posted by Andy on from Shanghai 04/04 at 11:20 PMI must say, Douglas’ comment that the discussion of racism by a is “academic” warrants a further response.
Like Andy, I myself am a minority on account of my place of residence. If there is racism around me, then I am its target. I can’t go out without drawing stares and, oftentimes, comments. My wife is Taiwanese and we draw a lot of stares when we’re out together, as inter-racial marriages do elsewhere.
Most of the time, I don’t particularly think it has anything to do with racism, though. It’s normal for people to be curious about others who are very different.
There are certainly times you feel resented or you feel that people have a prejudice, but mostly it doesn’t bother me.
The talk is often of racism from the white supremacist p.o.v., but, as Andy observes, if one goes out and travels a bit, us whiteys can be discriminated against, too.
So, re Douglas’s comment, the racism he speaks of in his life isn’t the same as the racism I experience in my life. For one, again, I’m a minority.
Furthermore, I grew up in a small town. I never noticed much racism. I went to a two-room schoolhouse, six kids in my grade. I think my graduating HS class was 63 kids. We had two black kids in my High School. I never saw any prejudice towards them because they had a different skin color.
I went to university in Grand Rapids, MI. I can’t recall a single incident where I thought racism was an issue, except perhaps for the time I overheard the group of black guys who always sat together in the cafeteria bashing whites, talking about how racist all whites are. That was probably the worst incident of racism I ever witnessed.
Where I see most racism is on TV, in films, on the news, etc. That’s where I see it. That’s my experience with it.
People talk of their experiences, and people have different experiences. Just because not everyone shares the same experience with a thing doesn’t mean that a discussion of the thing becomes “academic”, which moniker would seem to suggest a trivialization of the subject. I know nobody here trivializes the subject, and I know people here take it very seriously, and, frankly, I personally resent the suggestion that it is otherwise.
Posted by Jeremy R. Hammond on from Taipei, Taiwan 04/05 at 01:41 AMOh, yeah. Then there was the time a buddy and I did a paid internship to produce a promotional video for this company called Inroads, which was a minority job-placement company. Basically, they help anybody but whites to find jobs.
Our boss there was a black guy named Steve. Steve was an idiot. Long story, so I’ll give just one example.
We were supposed to go to Grand Haven to interview a guy from Whirlpool. GH is an hour west of GR, on Lake MI. We were supposed to follow Steve there. He gets on the highway and starts heading East.
Vinny and I didn’t know what he was doing. So we drove up alongside of him and held up a piece of paper upon which we had written, “96 East?” with a huge question mark. He just nodded and pointed for us to follow him. Okay, we thought, change of plans, then.
He pulls off the highway after driving for an hour towards Lansing. “Guys, I fucked up,” he says. We were supposed to go West on the highway. Vinny and I just looked at each other, trying not to smile. “We know,” Vinny said. “We tried to tell you we were going the wrong way.”
So Steve says he’ll get on the phone and try to reschedule for later in the day. After he gets off the phone, he comes over to us and says with a smile, “Okay, I rescheduled the meeting for half an hour from now.”
“Um, Steve,” I said. Grand Haven is an hour west of Grand Rapids. We just drove an hour east. It’ll take us two hours to get there. We can’t be there in a half an hour.”
Steve finally acceded that we’d have to cancel the appointment for that day.
So, after week upon week of stuff like that, Vinny and I finally turned in the finished video we’d shot and edited. Only thing was, Steve called us and told us we would not be paid. Uppermost of his reasons? The Whirlpool guy, who was supposed to be the most important guy in the video, wasn’t in the video, and so he didn’t feel that it was complete.
“But Steve,” I pointed out. “It’s your fault that he isn’t in the video, and you fucking know it. You fucked that up, not us.”
He hemmed and hawed and kept trying to justify himself until I told him I was calling my dad to get his lawyer involved.
“I bet if we were a couple of black college kids,” I added, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. I wonder what people would think of your company if they knew how you tried to stiff a couple of white kids because of your own ####-up. I wonder what kind of promotion it would be for your company if it were to get out that you discriminate against whites.”
We received our checks shortly thereafter.
Posted by Jeremy R. Hammond on from Taipei, Taiwan 04/05 at 02:48 AMHey, Mickey ... in light of some recent stuff around and after the Tillma post, here and on other sites, I thought this quote would be good:
“At a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell, UK writer.Posted by Andy on from Shanghai 04/05 at 03:09 AMNow I can well understand why Malcolm X preferred to talk to Southern Crackers instead of Northern Liberals!
In comment #4, I made the claim that “The colour of my skin allowed me to lived (sic).” This was picked up by Mickey, in comment #20, who asked if anyone agreed.
In the fourteen (14) comments since then, no one has responded to Mickey’s question. From that, I concluded (in comment #27) that we were all white here because such a statement has no meaning to a white person. I should have excluded Mickey from that generalisation because he picked the statement up. My apologies.
I noted that comments #22 to #26 included all referred to one or both of LOTR and the move “300”. In comment #27, I made the statement that “I find it interesting that people would prefer to discuss racism in a fictional world (e.g. LOTR) rather in their own.” This lead to responses by Jeremy (#29, #32, and #33) and by Andy (#31).
From these latter comments vy Jeremy and Andy, I gather that whites experience racism as well from non-white people. From the examples given, I understand that the consequences of this anti-white racism is that of stares, unfavourable comments, being blamed by the boss for his mistakes. This would prove that some whites have no understanding that skin colour can be a life or death issue.
As for the characterisation of academic discussions being trivial, I would this would be a reflection of the commentator’s culture rather than oriental cultures in which the scholar is held in high esteem. My own experience of racism has been academic in that I have read books, blogs, and articles about racism, and reflected about these in my own life. I do not directly experience racism.
Posted by Douglas on from Sydney, Australia 04/05 at 04:09 AMDouglas
Again you make generalisations. We were just giving some examples. Many ‘foreigners’ here that I know personally have been attacked here. Others have been ignored in emergency rooms of hospitals - which happened to my friend only two weeks ago in front of my own eyes.
The orignal questions that you repsonded to were on culture. I also know (know of and personally know) of non-caucasians who take it seriously and dedicate large portions of there lives to writing about it. Edward Said himself is Egypt born Palestinian. And I will never forget the first person to introduce me to the idea that English language cultural products of the ast 300 years or more were full of programming for the racist world order - Oga Aba, our visiting lecturer from Lagos on my Drama course. How about the movies of Spike Lee?
I think that ‘whites’ views on racism are the same as ‘non-whites’ - a mixture of their experiences on the matter and their conciousness on it.
‘Whites’ can also experience racism from other ‘whites’. For example the perceived su-races in the UK and geographical rivalries.
Also, I had a clear idea of the stakes of racism well before I had such experiences myself in Asia. My native UK frequently experiences brutal racist attacks and murders and we even have a politcal party dedicated to ridding the country of ‘non-whites’ ...whatever that means, of course.
Posted by Andy on from Shanghai 04/05 at 06:28 AMI’m sure it’s been worked out but the typo there i “sub-races”.
Posted by Andy on from Shanghai 04/05 at 06:30 AMAs for race...I see both sides of the discussion that has been going on here since yesterday or so...by the way, this is a great topic. In my opinion there is no way a white person in the US can fully understand how it feels to be a black person in the US. I grew up in NYC going to a school where I was one of the only white kids, later moved to Singapore, where I was one of the only white kids, ended up hanging out in Harlem at night in my late teens and early twenties where I was the ONLY white person...and yet still, I do not have a full understanding of what it would be like to have black skin in America.
But to say that white people can only talk academically about racism is a blanket statement that I completely disagree with…we all better be able to talk about racism in real life. I have had my life threatened many times for having white skin...in Harlem, Singapore, Jamaica, Puerto Rico…many places. To me, the more important part of racism is that which is routine…the every day fact that because someone is black they won’t get the same education, the same jobs, the same health care…they will most likely grow up in a rough neighborhood…they will be watched when they enter a store…they will be pulled over by the police….they will be shot by the police…will end up in prison…etc., etc. One line from a movie I watched once summed up the situation well, “It ain’t easy being a black man in America. The hunt is on…and you’re the prey!”
Posted by JOS on from Chicago 04/05 at 09:43 AMIn comment #27, I made the following statement which has elicted a strong reaction:
“From the comments made so far, I would have to assume that everyone here (including me) is white because the issue of racism is an academic one not a daily one.”I am surprised that no one has called that statement racist because I ascribe a negative attribute based on race. Therefore I am a racist. I agree.
The two (2) main objections to the top statement appear to be:
(1) whites do experience racism on a daily basis; and
(2) racism is not academic to whites.The second objection seems to be the most strident because the word, “academic”, is a perjorative in white culture. (See Jeremy’s characterisation in the last paragraph of comment #32 for an example of this.) Because of this impediment in white culture, I think is pointless to pursue this objection further.
Back to objection #1, it is instructive to compare the summary I gave in paragraph #5 of comment #35 with the list given by JOS in paragraph #2 of comment #38. I would like to point out that the institutional racism is directed against the non-whites. However, Andy’s experiences in paragraph #2 of comment #36 is a counter-example to this claim. A stronger claim could be made that institutional racism is directed against outsiders (however defined).
The examples given in comments #31, #32, #33, #36, and #38 also highlight that the racism experienced by whites is mainly a personal one: non-whites insulting, threatening or harming whites.
In summary, of the four (4) white people (Andy, Jeremy, JOS, and myself) involved in this discussion, only one (1) experiences daily personal, and frequent institutional racism. In light of this, I would have to amend my original statement to say “most” instead of “all”.
Posted by Douglas on from Sydney, Australia 04/05 at 05:51 PMDouglas,
In your last comment, you correctly observe that your characterization of our discussion of racism as being “academic” had elicited a response. However, you incorrectly conclude from this that the objection was that “whites do experience racism on a daily basis” and “racism is not academic to whites”.
I saw neither of these objections to the comment coming from anybody.
My own objection to the comment had nothing to do with either of those “conclusions”, which you falsely attribute to us. My objection was that saying that the discussion is always “academic” when whites discuss racism insinuates that a trivialization of a serious issue is taking place and that it is itself a racist statement.
I’d observe further that even though you just acknowledged that it was a racist statement, you then, incredibly, gloss over that to attribute the above two ridiculous “conclusions” upon those of us who were participating in that discussion.
I think useful conclusions may be drawn from that about your own participation in this discussion, but I’ll let others draw there own from it.
It’s more academic that way.
Posted by Jeremy R. Hammond on from Taipei, Taiwan 04/05 at 11:41 PMI don’t have much more to add past #36. It may be my defunct sense of logic, but Douglas’s reply to it doesn’t seem to actually reply to it at all.
I’ll give it another shot after a coffee.
Posted by Andy on from Shanghai 04/07 at 08:23 AM
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