Magdelin Laundry

[Despanan]

I've seen that before, it's heart wrenching.

However, you mistake me. I know that we can't know certain things viscerally until we've experienced it. However, It's still a useless point to bring up in this sort of a situation because once again, you're taking an individual experience and making it into a monolith.

Versus, you have not had the exact same experience as another person of color. I have not had the same experience as a white male that Kontan has, nor have I had the same experience as Gothicus or JCC or any other white male on the planet.

To extrapolate this and make a blanket statement that white people cannot understand the minority experience on any level other than intellectually presupposes a uniformity to both the white and PoC experience that simply doesn't exist. The best we can posit is that white people as a general rule have often not had the experiences of people of color and thus generally have difficulty understanding how it feels to be marginalized in that manner.

Taking it any further than that however, gets us into dangerous waters, as the number of unfounded presumptions increases exponentially.

It would not be appropriate, for instance for Versus to say that he, as a black American Soldier stationed in Afganistan understands Alan's situation as a Mexican in Juarez. He can draw parallels but so can anyone. Generally the parallels will be stronger, than say the parallels I could draw from my own experience, but this isn't something that you can make into a hard and fast rule.

The point is that you can't presume someone else's life experience beyond the general, based solely on their ethnicity. You need more information after that because it's hard enough knowing what's going on in our own heads, let alone someone else's.

[Versus]

To extrapolate this and make a blanket statement that white people cannot understand the minority experience on any level other than intellectually presupposes a uniformity to both the white and PoC experience that simply doesn't exist.

Living in a white supremacist country is a uniform experience of white and PoC [In America]. I know there are differences, but that total life experience and the way it interacts with everything is the 100% incommunicable part. I need to get to bed though, but I'll come back in the morning.

[Versus]

However, you mistake me. I know that we can't know certain things viscerally until we've experienced it

Also, I think we're saying the same thing, now. I'll come back to what I said I was going to say a while ago in the morning.

[Solumina]

Okay I'm trying my best to figure out just how to word this because I feel like I, and others, have already said it multiple times and that isn't meant as a shot at you Desp, just that if this seems like I'm just repeating myself then well I kind of am a little.

The thing is I will never know Saya's life, I will never know what it is like to grow up in Canada or go to her school or be involved in the organizations she gives so much of her time and effort but we do have a shared set of experiences. We both know on an almost instinctual level that elevators are scary places. We both understand how catcalling can make you feel. We both know what it feels like to have to shout in hopes that maybe then people will listen.

To go back to depression, it is the same. No two people experience depression in exactly the same way but we can understand eachother's experiences so much more deeply than anyone who has not been there.

[Acharis]

-_-


Subjectivity and lived experience is fine, but people seem to be thinking in absolutes where calling out one kind of oppression means you must be dismissing another.
And saying it's being done deliberately or carelessly here.

People are saying an accurate description must be racialised in every instance of use, and as such it's not ok for some people to use.


I don't agree with this logic. That does not make sense.



I'm saying it's not ok to detain people against their will, steal their children, force them to work, or give them derogatory labels.

That does not mean it's suddenly an issue when it happens to white people or Gnetters care more. It's seeing an instance surface again in in our lifetime, and saying "Shit. Not again!"


Not an act of aggression or erasure.

[Versus]

Originally Posted by Acharis

-_-


Subjectivity and lived experience is fine, but people seem to be thinking in absolutes where calling out one kind of oppression means you must be dismissing another.
And saying it's being done deliberately or carelessly here.

People are saying an accurate description must be racialised in every instance of use, and as such it's not ok for some people to use.


I don't agree with this logic. That does not make sense.



I'm saying it's not ok to detain people against their will, steal their children, force them to work, or give them derogatory labels.

That does not mean it's suddenly an issue when it happens to white people or Gnetters care more. It's seeing an instance surface again in in our lifetime, and saying "Shit. Not again!"


Not an act of aggression or erasure.

Have you read the last couple pages? Have you seen the multiple posts where I have said that that, specifically, is not what I was getting at? Could you please let me articulate what I want to say so that you understand before you give any feedback? I am having a very difficult time being polite to you as I type this and you are not helping.

[Acharis]

I read back a few pages just now - and read in one go it all just looks like one big argument where everyone's screaming at one another and the points wrangle and blur.


You can be so angry with me over this you find it hard to be polite if you like, but I also found it really insensitive when you gave Fruitbat a hard time involving rrape. That was upsetting.
(Back when I joined or shortly before. I don't remember the specifics or the thread, but she was triggered by something and you were talking to her pretty harshly.)


Ok. You find the use problematic. I can accept that. I'm sorry.

Originally Posted by Solumina

I wouldn't say soviet but yeah everything here is so volatile, tempers flair at the drop of a hat and if people butt heads once you may as well be mortal enemies. A lot of the fun went away and I think a lot of people have no idea why the whole place seems so much more serious.

This is true, it always had a low tolerance but now the bantering seems to have disappeared in favour of grudge matches.


Well, I'm going to finish my tasks and check back later. Maybe read through again, but I think continuing to reply would only aggravate.

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Solumina

Okay I'm trying my best to figure out just how to word this because I feel like I, and others, have already said it multiple times and that isn't meant as a shot at you Desp, just that if this seems like I'm just repeating myself then well I kind of am a little.

The thing is I will never know Saya's life, I will never know what it is like to grow up in Canada or go to her school or be involved in the organizations she gives so much of her time and effort but we do have a shared set of experiences. We both know on an almost instinctual level that elevators are scary places. We both understand how catcalling can make you feel. We both know what it feels like to have to shout in hopes that maybe then people will listen.

To go back to depression, it is the same. No two people experience depression in exactly the same way but we can understand each other's experiences so much more deeply than anyone who has not been there.

No offense taken.

However, I'm compelled to point something out, as someone who has been diagnosed with and treated for major depression:

We do not KNOW that we can understand each other's experience more deeply than someone who's never been depressed, we FEEL that we understand each other's experience more deeply than anyone who has not been there. We FEEL that we have a deeper bond due to this experience, but there is absolutely no way to quantitatively measure this.

Depression manifests itself in a variety of different ways, for instance, it often manifests as sadness in women and anger in men. Is this because men tend to have a different mix of chemicals in our brainpans? Probably, but also society is more receptive to male anger and less receptive to our tears, so we also feel more comfortable expressing these feelings in a rage.

I'm not going to begrudge you the commonality of the mutually oppressed, but again, you're dealing with internal feelings. The only way to confirm that you share a special bond with someone else who's been de/oppressed is to feel it emotionally when you communicate with them and our emotions lie to us constantly.

There are more kinds of bias that must be accounted for than simply the bias created by white priviledge. Humans deal with conscious and unconcscious bias constantly, in every aspect of our thoughts and interactions. This is why I compared what I was seeing earlier in this thread to religious though - not just because it's one of my pet issues, but because there is a direct correlation between the two thought processes.

Kontan and I actually differ somewhat on our approach to anti-theism - Kontan viscerally hates religion in a way that I do not. I hate it, deeply, but mine is a cooler, more analytical hatred, not just for the explicite effects of religion, but the implicite effects that magical thinking plays on our non-religious interactions. The results are, if anything, more horrifying because they are so subtle.

I don't mean to pick on Saya here, but I took note when she described her feelings of realizing and struggling against her white priviledge as a spiritual experience.

The fact of the matter is that we're dealing with a huge number of unproveable emotionally-driven suppositions when we approach the sensitive subject of race relations. Both society, and our own minds are constantly twisting the world around us, and we cannot afford to make hard and fast rules without knowing beyond a reasonable doubt that all of our biases have been accounted for and corrected. Unfortunate implications aside, this is too important of an issue to let ourselves behave otherwise.

[Alan]

I declare this thread on hiatus until I finish my homework, so everyone STFU.

[Versus]

Fuck. I was really hoping for a big ass list of Jonathan's "now you see it, now you don't" racism and a point by point critical analysis for the ages.

[Jonathan]

Because it doesn't fucking exist without doing absurd mental gymnastics.
I too cannot wait for the other guy shouting "Whitey" to finish his list.

[Versus]

Abstract liberalism – Abstract liberalism uses ideas associated with political liberalism. This frame is based in liberal ideas such as equal opportunity, individualism, and choice. It uses these ideas as a basis to explain inequality.

Selective enforcement is no good - the laws are supposed to apply to everyone equally. If the sentencing guide says to add or subtract penalties based on ethnicity it would be very clearly a systemic issue. Maybe this is semantics... Police officers picking who to search, judges handing out harsher sentences... I see those as the actions of individual assholes and not policy. They can and should be replaced at a minimum. This can happen with better and more rigid oversight, but that comes with a cost.

Here you say that race is not clearly a defined criteria in any policy, therefore the judicial system is overall equal for everybody except in the individual instances of racists in order to explain away the gross disproportionate effect it has on PoC.

This took me all of 30 seconds. I can't imagine how awesome Alan's post is going to be if he's taking hours.

[Jonathan]

So pointing at the individual actors in cases of social injustices is racist.

[Versus]

When I told you some of the sheer numbers pertaining to the judicial system that were controlled for factors as such as location, class, education, and you dismissed that nationwide trend as an insignificant number of individual actors? Yes.

It also falls into this frame of the ideology very well.

Minimization of racism – Minimization of racism attempts to minimize the factor of race as a major influence in affecting the life chances of minorities

"It's better now then in the past," "there is discrimination, but there are plenty of protections against that", things that YOU have said. You have also regarded discrimination as the exclusive racist behavior and eliminated the majority of racially motivated actions of individuals by fiat.

[Jonathan]

I did say those things.

Are you objecting to the idea that the Civil Rights movement accomplished anything? Are things better, worse, or exactly the same?

Do you disagree that there are protections against racism? In your opinion they have no positive affect whatsoever?

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

I did say those things.

Are you objecting to the idea that the Civil Rights movement accomplished anything? Are things better, worse, or exactly the same?

Do you disagree that there are protections against racism? In your opinion they have no positive affect whatsoever?

He's not saying that the Civil right's movement didn't accomplish anything. It did. It pushed the worst cases of obvious racism (segregation, lynching, etc.) out of the realms of public acceptability, (and in the case of segregation, legality).

However, that didn't solve the problem, it just made the racism inherent in the system harder to see, rather than eliminating it...Which in some cases is almost worse.

Take for instance Stop-and-frisk. By law it's supposed to be colorblind, but the cops only stop black and latino men. I can walk down the street carrying a fake gun (which is illegal btw) for a play I'm doing and I don't even get a second glance. A black kid can get stopped and abused over and over again just for glancing behind him.

The racism's no longer on paper, but it's still there and it's still horrifying.

[Versus]

First,

Are you objecting to the idea that the Civil Rights movement accomplished anything? Are things better, worse, or exactly the same?

I'm not objecting. Things are better in some ways, and worse in others.

Do you disagree that there are protections against racism? In your opinion they have no positive affect whatsoever?

I do not disagree that there are protections. I do believe they have a positive impact.

Originally Posted by Jonathan

I did say those things.

Yes. You did. In fact, you specifically said them as evidence that racism is not a significant factor anymore. This is why I called your racism the "Now you see it, now you don't." In one instance, you defended the unequal race structure by marginalizing it's impact on minorities, (without any actual numbers, insight, or evidence - literally, you made up this numerical value in your head), and in another, you frame your same words in a different context as to not address what I have said to you.

So I will say it again: You have said these things as evidence that race is not a significant factor.

[Jonathan]

And I'm not saying that problem is completely solved, but I'm saying it's better than it was in the past. Did our society have anything like ttp://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html in say... 1950?

Saying that "I think this problem is bigger than that problem" is not minimizing the other one. You can have two (or more!) big problems and still try to take a look which one is more likely to fuck a person over sooner. They're reading bias in where it doesn't exist in the hopes of assigning guilt by superficial association with odious viewpoints.

There is a goddamn difference between "Not _A_ Significant Factor" and "Maybe Not _The Most_ Significant Factor".

[Versus]

I'm sorry Despanan, I know I owe you a post. I'm working on how I want to articulate it, but it's becoming more and more trivial as time passes. I made a mountain out of an ant hill and I feel like I should prioritize Jonathan's roadrunner attitude.

[Despanan]

One of the problems here, Johnathan, is that you seem to be under the impression that laws matter to the people in power. In many ways, they don't. Here in NYC Mayor Bloomberg does whatever he wants, because fuck the law, I'm Mayor and I'm a Billionaire.

So he buys himself an illegal 3rd term, and uses the NYPD like his own personal army, and ignores the court orders he can, and pays to overturn the ones he can't.

I know that sounds like hyperbole but it's not.

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Versus

I'm sorry Despanan, I know I owe you a post. I'm working on how I want to articulate it, but it's becoming more and more trivial as time passes. I made a mountain out of an ant hill and I feel like I should prioritize Jonathan's roadrunner attitude.

That's cool.

[Jonathan]

OK - I agree it's horrible. And I have doubts that he'd be able to have bought himself a third term, or implement such terrible practices with apparent impunity, without the power his economic standing grants him. He's able to do horrible things because of his membership in an elite financial class. Other people are suffering because of the disparity.

[Saya]

Originally Posted by Despanan

No offense taken.

However, I'm compelled to point something out, as someone who has been diagnosed with and treated for major depression:

We do not KNOW that we can understand each other's experience more deeply than someone who's never been depressed, we FEEL that we understand each other's experience more deeply than anyone who has not been there. We FEEL that we have a deeper bond due to this experience, but there is absolutely no way to quantitatively measure this.

Depression manifests itself in a variety of different ways, for instance, it often manifests as sadness in women and anger in men. Is this because men tend to have a different mix of chemicals in our brainpans? Probably, but also society is more receptive to male anger and less receptive to our tears, so we also feel more comfortable expressing these feelings in a rage.

I'm not going to begrudge you the commonality of the mutually oppressed, but again, you're dealing with internal feelings. The only way to confirm that you share a special bond with someone else who's been de/oppressed is to feel it emotionally when you communicate with them and our emotions lie to us constantly.

There are more kinds of bias that must be accounted for than simply the bias created by white priviledge. Humans deal with conscious and unconcscious bias constantly, in every aspect of our thoughts and interactions. This is why I compared what I was seeing earlier in this thread to religious though - not just because it's one of my pet issues, but because there is a direct correlation between the two thought processes.

Kontan and I actually differ somewhat on our approach to anti-theism - Kontan viscerally hates religion in a way that I do not. I hate it, deeply, but mine is a cooler, more analytical hatred, not just for the explicite effects of religion, but the implicite effects that magical thinking plays on our non-religious interactions. The results are, if anything, more horrifying because they are so subtle.

I don't mean to pick on Saya here, but I took note when she described her feelings of realizing and struggling against her white priviledge as a spiritual experience.

The fact of the matter is that we're dealing with a huge number of unproveable emotionally-driven suppositions when we approach the sensitive subject of race relations. Both society, and our own minds are constantly twisting the world around us, and we cannot afford to make hard and fast rules without knowing beyond a reasonable doubt that all of our biases have been accounted for and corrected. Unfortunate implications aside, this is too important of an issue to let ourselves behave otherwise.

Its not right to say you know what its like to be rraped because you communicated with a rrape victim. Its not right to say you kjnow what its like to be racially discriminated against if you're white in a white supremist society, because someone communicated an experience of racism to you. Its not right to say you know what its like to be a woman because I've communicated a few instances to you.

We can communicate! I never said we couldn't. However, the totality of experiences and emotions cannot often be articulated, and even if they can, there's a good chance you won't absorb it all or appreciate it all. It cannot be reduced to a math equation. Not everything can be reduced to an objective science, especially when it comes to experiences.

A rrape victim deals with trauma and shame. Objectively, intellectually, we know that. But we don't know how exactly they feel or how it affects them, especially since everyone deals with it differently. I know people who were assaulted who get along fine now and I know people who were assaulted years ago and still have panic attacks thinking about it. Its not possible to grapple what its like. Its not science because its not repeatable, its individual and personal.

Likewise, not all PoC deal with racism the same way or see it the same way. My grandmother dealt with it by accepting assimilation, and now passes as a very racist white woman. Others very much defend their ethnic identity and resist. There's a whole lot of people in between. I felt like a jackass after I realized FistsOfFury wasn't white because I had no right to tell him how to feel and think about racism.

I can talk to Versus quite well about feminism because he's open to it and for the most part he understands what I say. He still has blindspots and he doesn't "get" the totality of it. I don't expect him to, and I like that he is respectful and defers to my experience when I tell him something. He never asks me to prove or write an essay on why elevators are scary. Likewise no matter how much we talk and communicate I'm not going to totally understand what its like to be a black man. I'm never going to come close to understanding what its like to be in combat, no matter what he's able to tell me. I'm always going to see his experiences differently than he does, as an outsider with my own biases and prejudices, but also as someone who has never had to deal with it and has no experience.

Experiences aren't math, its not science. Its not repeatable, there are no controls. When people disclose their assaults to me, they trust me not to use them for my own gain. They trust me, and in return I always give them the benefit of the doubt. I don't ask them to prove shit about their experiences and feelings. I would be thrown out on my ass so fast if I ever did. We take statistical information from them at is anonymous to prove the centre is needed and here's how many people have reported sexual assault this year, let's put that against how many were reported to the police, and we figure out 1 out of 20 are reported. In those statistics though there's no trauma or emotion or experience, its jut a report on how often it happens, the mechanics of it. It sure as shit doesn't get people listening or stop joking or interrupting or justifying their behavior. Even if you spill out personal experiences, they're likely to defend their privilege and discount it out of hand.

There's also the problem when allies take our experiences for their own agendas. This case has everything feminists and atheists hate? Nope, not enough evil Muslims. Not enough Others. Feminists are just as guilty, white feminists take the experiences of women of colour to use against men of colour. We don't care how the women of colour feel about men. All men oppress women, right? We don't care that men of colour disproportionately just can't get away with oppressing us even if they try. Male privilege doesn't exist between white women and men of colour. Atheists likewise are particularly bad for colonialist feminism and only caring when they can use it as leverage against the church. Its not objective, it feeds a bias and a basic assumption about how the world works that isn't actually true.

[Versus]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

And I'm not saying that problem is completely solved, but I'm saying it's better than it was in the past.

OK, so grandpa had it easy. The playing field is a lot different now.

Saying that "I think this problem is bigger than that problem" is not minimizing the other one. You can have two (or more!) big problems and still try to take a look which one is more likely to fuck a person over sooner. They're reading bias in where it doesn't exist in the hopes of assigning guilt by superficial association with odious viewpoints.

There is a goddamn difference between "Not _A_ Significant Factor" and "Maybe Not _The Most_ Significant Factor".

I understand there there is a difference between "This is not important" and "This is not as important."

What I am saying is that how things WERE has absolutely nothing to do with how things ARE. It is not ANY kind of evidence that a CURRENT problem is worse then ANOTHER CURRENT problem. Literally, your entire argument is "This is BETTER then it used to be, and therefor it is less of a problem then THIS."

Jonathan, what the flying fuck does racism's improvement have to do with racism's current impact?

Because I'm pretty sure you mentioned racism's improvement in your opening argument in the "white people are hilarious thread" in order to marginalize and ignore it's current impact, rather then actually dispute it or disprove it.

[Despanan]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

OK - I agree it's horrible. And I have doubts that he'd be able to have bought himself a third term, or implement such terrible practices with apparent impunity, without the power his economic standing grants him. He's able to do horrible things because of his membership in an elite financial class. Other people are suffering because of the disparity.

Absolutely, but that's just on the macro level. It's the same on the micro level. largely wealth is distributed in America on racial lines. When you don't have wealth everything gets harder, so on average People of Color have less access to education, less access to housing, less access to credit, and then when they get stopped by a racist cop for being "fucking mutts" they sometimes can't articulate what's wrong with the situation, or maybe they're so frustrated they get mad, or maybe the cop is just a total dick. Then they go to court and can't afford a good lawyer, the jury is looking at them sideways because they look like criminals they've seen in TV and movies and this subconsciously informs their decision. The judge treats them more harshly, either for the same reason, or maybe because they aren't well-spoken and educated, or maybe he's just racist and suddenly they're in prison for a bag of weed they're carrying (or maybe the cop planted it on them, they're known to do that in NYC)

So now you have a ton of black and latino men locked up in a private for-profit prison (yes we have those, they're taking over the system actually) serving out their sentences by doing free labor.

What does that sound like to you?