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Utopia Talk / Politics / Nim
Seb
Member
Mon Jun 08 12:10:35
Nim:

Ok, so you are going on with dictionary definitions, and you are saying grievance movements are just movements that stem from some kind of Grievance, but you still haven't answered my question.

Why did you describe it as such? There must be some common characteristic that you are seeking to draw attention to other than the trivial fact that there simply exist other movements motivated by grievance.

"So despite giving you the distinction made in the dictionary for grievance"

No, the distinction without a difference is "grievance movement" vs "grievance culture". You appear to be using the term movement in precisely the way that those who use the term "grievance culture" use it.


"You can have experiences and still draw the wrong conclusions,"

Again, that's not the point. It is a different thing to suggest that someone has an experience, and that they draw the wrong conclusions from it.

The global BLM assert, with strong foundation, that this is a single phenomenon: the over-policing and discriminatory behaviour that is driven by associates blacks across western societies with violence, savagery and criminality which has a common root.

Your assertion is that these experiences cannot be shared experiences, that these must be isolated and different phenomenon. But you've not really explained why you think they must be so.

"You would agree on that, so you should really not be that baffled by the concept."
I'm not, but you are addressing a very different point: that someone can draw the wrong conclusions from their experience, which is not to say that the phenomenon of the particular racism that afflicts blacks can transcend Sweden, USA and UK because despite contextual nuances, they do share a common cause, which is a common perception of blacks.

Even if you dismiss the roots of those prejudices - so exhaustively documented by others that I really don't intend to rehash any more than why the world is round but would simply encourage you to use google instead - I would just note that racists are as capable of "appropriating" cultural memes and experiences as the BLM protesters, so that even if you genuinely believe that the particular associations that white racists in the US draw on are specific to the context of slavery in the US; those attitudes can and do shape prejudices elsewhere. See for example the radicalisation of white supremacists in Europe through absorption of ideals of US based groups (and vice versa).

"So this idea, that what I am saying comes from a lack of experience or empathy"
I did not suggest that it did. I would say it probably comes from a wilful blinkerdness because it conflicts with your world view.

"but it comes from more experience than you."
And yet you, of Iranian descent in Sweden, are suggesting that I should discount the claims of a black man in Britain or Sweden - that their experience of policy discrimination is from the same root cause as those experienced by blacks in America. Against from the obvious logic of their position, and the reasoned arguments put forward for it, you so far have offered little, yet you go so far as to call it "retardation" and "cultural appropriation".

Hardly persuasive.

"No. That you are ignoring the history and extent of slavery to make this about white people."
LOL! So, your argument is what then? That BLM movements in Europe are both simultaneously engaging in cultural appropriation because their experiences are distinct and fundamentally different from those in the US and the racism they experience is a wholly distinct phenomenon because slavery is a universal phenomenon?

That's a fantastic paradox.

Allow me to clarify for you.

The racism and prejudices experienced by Africans in Europe and the US and other associated societies that share the same cultural heritage is the same because it shares the same root (heavily bound up with justifying the salve trade).

This is NOT to say that this is a universal phenomenon with all salvery. It is not to say that the forms of slavery that existed in Asia as perpetrated by Imperial Japan, or ancient rome, are all the same phenomenon either.

I'm saying specifically that the prejudices and racial attitudes towards blacks within European cultures share a single common cause: the Atlantic slave trade and what was required of Europeans to believe about Africans in order to justify slavery, them having already previously determined largely that slavery in general was a moral abomination.

"I am just curious if you actually believe the European justification for slavery was different from the ones Arabs used?"

Firstly, I wasn't aware that the cultural attitudes of Europeans and America were heavily influenced by Arab thought on this matter.

Secondly, if I recall correctly, Arabs had no particular problem with slavery, and therefor had no particular need to create elaborate racial grading systems to explain why they could enslave Africans, but not Europeans or Asians. They quite happily did so. But in any case, I'm not sure how the Arab slave trade is pertinent to a discussion about perceptions of Africans in non-Arab countries.

However, were there a BLM movement active in Saudi Arabia, I would not be arguing that the experiences of Blacks in Iraq was a wholly distinct issues and that any affinity that the two movements felt for each other was "retardation" and cultural appropriation. Obviously, the attitudes to Blacks in Saudi Arabia and Iraq would very likely share a common cause both culturally and historically.

Seb
Member
Mon Jun 08 12:11:50
*You appear to be using the term movement in precisely the way that those who use the term "grievance culture" use the term culture.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Mon Jun 08 14:15:03
>>Why did you describe it as such? There must be some common characteristic that you are seeking to draw attention to other than the trivial fact that there simply exist other movements motivated by grievance.<<

Because it is a neutral word, like "rebels". I already explained this. What made you feel I was using it in some insidious way? Especially given I have already several times explained that grievances can be real or imaginary. The first time I heard "grievance narrative" was from Majid Nawaz talking about the grievances narratives of muslims living in the west. He talked about imaginary and real grievances. I never actually looked it up until you asked. Turns out some paki british immigrant, was using Oxford english. It's a good word, I think we should also take in the first example from the oxford dictionary, "especially unfair treatment".

>>You appear to be using the term movement in precisely the way that those who use the term "grievance culture" use it.<<

I don't know who these people are and I am not even sure I have ever heard of "grievance culture". Regardless of what word we put in front of "movement" or not, we seem to agree it is about "grievances". I think we can move on?

>>that this is a single phenomenon<<

It is based in half truths and exaggerations. You can have experiences of "unfair treatment" and draw bad conclusions about the world (system) and how it works. Many people can do that and soon you can organize around your shared experience. People have been doing that with various degrees of alignment with reality.

>>Your assertion is that these experiences cannot be shared experiences<<

No. As far as experiences go I explained my experience is different. Are you trying to invalidate my experience and connection to african-american culture? The assertion is that the common denominator is so generic that it is facile. People, they are racist.

>>But you've not really explained why you think they must be so.<<

I have actually. Different histories and systematically different societies and origins.

>>which is a common perception of blacks.<<

The perception varies among blacks. Apparently they have different opinions. I know, I was just as surprised.

>>I would say it probably comes from a wilful blinkerdness because it conflicts with your world view.<<

The perception is mutual.

>>are suggesting that I should discount the claims of a black man in Britain or Sweden<<

I have always suggested to listen to more and differing views and experiences than those that only validate your world view. Are you discounting my claims? Because I claim I have seen my entire life black and brown kids milk this sweet ”racism” titty laughing at naive white people like you. That is a shared experience behind your back.

>>yet you go so far as to call it "retardation”<<

I think it’s a good word for people who think Swedish cops should die because an American cop murdered someone, regardless of how deep your emotional connection goes. Perhaps it is some other kind of cognitive implosion, psychosis?

>>Hardly persuasive.<<

I’m sorry you feel you have to be persuaded, but figuring out the truth isn't necessarily in peoples best interest. Sometimes it's more beneficial to believe a lie, I concede that.

 >>slavery is a universal phenomenon?<<

It is virtually universal in all major cultures in that is has existed in some shape or form at some time. What isn’t universal is the who, why and how. Both in qualitative and quantitative terms slavery has been practiced very different from time and place as well as the degree to which is was, if ever, institutionalized.

>>European cultures share a single common cause: the Atlantic slave trade and what was required of Europeans to believe about Africans in order to justify slavery<<

Very, very few people were ever involved in the slave trade in the UK and Sweden even less. The USA has without a doubt the most intimate relationship with it and it fucking imploded, it turned out that when white people actually institutionalized slavery and had it in their actual homes, ideas started to emerge of how morally repugnant the entire concept was. The idea that ”involvement” of feudal Europe in the slave trade required ”Europeans” to _believe_ anything is laughable. The people involved were generally pirates and other criminal scumbags, it required nothing of them.

>>Firstly, I wasn't aware that the cultural attitudes of Europeans and America were heavily influenced by Arab thought on this matter.<<

No, I said ”justification”, because you brought up justifications. You have the god of Abraham in common, yes there are definitely similarities on some moral issues.

>>But in any case, I'm not sure how the Arab slave trade is pertinent to a discussion about perceptions of Africans in non-Arab countries.<<

Well, I’m not sure what American slavery has to do with the fact that some fraction more than zero of the Swedish population were ”involved” in transporting slaves to America. You told me these were all united by experiences of racism and a common justification and I said, ok but so is most forms of slavery, for instance Arab slavery.

>>Obviously, the attitudes to Blacks in Saudi Arabia and Iraq would very likely share a common cause both culturally and historically.<<

I think it would have a lot in common with other societies that had institutionalized slavery as part of their recent history.

This isn’t difficult. A society that had institutionalized slavery until 150 years ago, one that never had slavery and one that had slavery until 50 years ago. Black people will on average have very different experiences in those countries. The cultural attitudes towards black people would be very different. Other important things, did you country fight a war to end slavery or did you do it to get an arms deal? Those are also significant markers of cultural attitudes.

This isn’t as black and white as you think seb.
jergul
large member
Mon Jun 08 17:52:06
I am quite enthralled by this discussion :D.
jergul
large member
Tue Jun 09 02:42:39
Well, since nobody is going to remark on my clever insertion of another word for slave, I will move on.

The problem here is that neutral terms are not always neutral. Good folks on both sides is not a neutral remark when one of the sides is ultra-right nationalists.

Talking about Israel's greivance culture is also not a neutral commentary on the impact of genocide on modern Israeli life.

The same goes for describing civil rights movements as greivance culture expressions.

A neutral stance is not appropriate when something is fundamentally wrong.
Seb
Member
Tue Jun 09 05:33:13
Nim:

Ok, I'm happy to let the whole "grievance" thing slide, but you ought to be aware that you are using a politically loaded ("grievance culture", "grievance movement", "Grievance studies") term that unfortunately has a meaning beyond the OED definition of the three component words, normally used by those that are opposed to social justice etc. that happens to exactly apply to this subject. The hall mark feature being that protestors are being oversensitive and the grievance is imagined or projected.

e.g. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3638468/To-the-grievance-community-its-always-someone-elses-fault.html

https://quillette.com/2018/05/17/understanding-victimhood-culture-interview-bradley-campbell-jason-manning/

"The combination of high sensitivity with dependence on others encourages people to emphasize or exaggerate the severity of offenses"

I'm surprised you have never come across it as you have used a similar term in the past (clearly loaded) as an attempt to undermine gender studies:

http://ftp...&thread=84016&showdeleted=true

" think you need to realize, at some point, a critical thing about grievance studies conspiracy theories in general. A good conspiracy theory besides evoking strong negative emotions, has a kernel of truth in it. You know, Jews ARE overrepresented in media and finance, the USA HAS conducted false flag operations to start wars. Minorities DO suffer racism. All of these things are true, but it doesn't follow that Jews control the world, that 9/11 was an false flag to attack Iraq, or that the intersectionality is a meaningful explanatory theory for anything."

The term grievance studies was popularised as way to de-legitimise not only the poor review quality of certain journals (which of course is not limited to those fields, see ongoing uncovering of paper mills in medical literature for example), but also the entire field of study.

Anyway, I accept your claim that you meant nothing more than that the BLM movement was merely animated by a legiatimate complaint about police brutality.

"It is based in half truths and exaggerations. You can have experiences of "unfair treatment" and draw bad conclusions about the world (system) and how it works. Many people can do that and soon you can organize around your shared experience. People have been doing that with various degrees of alignment with reality."

So, are you arguing that there isn't, objectively, unfair treatment of Blacks, particularly in police contexts?

"The assertion is that the common denominator is so generic that it is facile. People, they are racist."

This does not mean that the nature and degree of prejudices are universal.

"As far as experiences go I explained my experience is different."
Are you a black person of African descent? If so, I might suggest that the racism you experience comes from a different place. After all, Europeans did enslave Persians or Arabs, and in the 18th and 19th century, the elaborate racial hierarchies created in European culture placed Persians and Arabs well above Africans.

"Because I claim I have seen my entire life black and brown kids milk this sweet ”racism” titty laughing at naive white people like you."

Oh I see, so, when we see blacks being disproportionately subject to police violence and intrusion, they are actually secretly wanting it?

"I think it’s a good word for people who think Swedish cops should die"
I had a quick google to try and find how many Swedish cops have died, but the only results I can find is about police there killing a (white) downs syndrome.

But lets take a step up to the big picture which is this:

"I have actually. Different histories and systematically different societies and origins."

This is the fundamental point: America and Europe have a shared society, substantially shared culture, and the discrimination of Blacks in these societies has a shared origin: The atlantic slave trade.

The fact that only a few individuals were involved in the slave trade is irrelevant: society as a whole condoned it, and elaborate racial theories were created and popularised in order to justify an institution that had been deemed inhumane. It required that blacks be seen as *deserving* of slavery, by being less human, less civilised, less capable of civilised, savages, criminal, dangerous, violent etc.

These attitudes were not confined merely to those trading in slaves, or owning them, they were widely popularised and a source of heated debate as the abolition moved on. And these attitudes persist.

"The idea that ”involvement” of feudal Europe in the slave trade"

Feudalism ended in Europe long before the discovery of America, let alone the atlantic slave trade. Indeed, the very *need* for elaborate racial theories is precisely because following the end of feudalism, the prevailing view in Europe was that slavery was inhumane. Therefore, to enslave Blacks it was necessary to believe they must be less human.

And these ideas did not just sit within those participating in the trade, or indeed countries that participated in the slave trade themselves. They became woven through the fabric of European society as "scientific" fact and common-knowledge.

Seb
Member
Tue Jun 09 05:34:27
". After all, Europeans did *not* enslave Persians or Arabs en mass, and in the 18th and 19th century, the elaborate racial hierarchies created in European culture placed Persians and Arabs well above Africans.
Seb
Member
Tue Jun 09 05:34:28
". After all, Europeans did *not* enslave Persians or Arabs en mass, and in the 18th and 19th century, the elaborate racial hierarchies created in European culture placed Persians and Arabs well above Africans.
Seb
Member
Tue Jun 09 05:40:35
"This isn’t as black and white as you think seb."

Seems to me that you are the one imposing a sharp binary here; insisting there can be no legitimate affinity between blacks living in Sweden, UK, and USA because of what in the scheme of things are subtle nuances.

Attitudes associating blacks with violence, criminality and lack of civilisation did not emerge independently in our three countries. They emerged and spread during the 17th to 19th centuries - and not just because of the "natural" racism (we did not necessarily believe the same things about *other* races that were not white Christians); but specifically in relation to blacks to justify slavery and because they then became part of the common understanding of the world within European cultures.

This does not matter whether you had slaves in what is your current territory or not; or participated in the slave trade or not. Ideas spread.
McKobb
Member
Tue Jun 09 06:26:52
There are helot of words for that.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Tue Jun 09 15:32:14
>>Ok, I'm happy to let the whole "grievance" thing slide<<

I would die, before I let you let anything slide. We can spend more time on it if you want.

I have of course heard of ”grievance studies” and ”victimhood culture”, never heard ”grievance culture”, but I understand from the context what it means. I guess you could view cultures and sub-cultures from the lens of their shared grievances and collective victimization. I can’t deny this conceptually. At any rate, all of these words are inserted by you, I said ”grievance movement” and have explained what I mean. Aa for grievances studies, yes it is a good description of a field of academic study that is inflated with grievances where the authors/victims have drawn a lot of poorly thought out conclusions about the world as a system.

>>legiatimate complaint<<

I do not know that *BLM* specifically has a legitimate complaint about the death of George Floyd. I don’t know that George Floyd was killed because he was black. None of that matters though, that was one of the worst videos of police brutality I have seen. Murica got some soul searching to do and ask themselves what the fuck is going on with the jack booted thugs they hire as police. The police in question had multiple incidents and complaints, two of them did. Dirtbags like that do not have such long careers without systematic flaws. If four police all either participate or do nothing then that is a group norm. But that BLM has a real grievance to settle here. I don’t know that.

>>So, are you arguing that there isn't, objectively, unfair treatment of Blacks, particularly in police contexts?<<

In some ways they are treated unfairly and in other ways they are not. Specifically when it comes to people who are killed by police, it seems once you factor in for violent crime, there is no overrepresentation of black people in these incidents. Black men are about 50% of all victims and perpetrators of violent crimes. The way that black people are over-policed and treated unfairly is related to drug crimes, they are actually under-policed when it comes to violence. America has decided which moral battle it is going to fight, weed.

I also know from other studies that military veterans (who make up 19% of the US police force, despite only 6 % of the population being veterans) are over-represented in shootings and killings and formal complaints. I mention this because veterans are usually ”drafted” specifically for gang or narc duty.

There are systematic issues alright, but racism does not register as one of them. Racism as a systematic effect is not a hurdle in the lives of black people. And, this is important, most black people, the overwhelming majority, agree with that last sentence.

>>This does not mean that the nature and degree of prejudices are universal.<<

That’s actually what I said as a reason for why importing other peoples grievances because of superficial similarities is not a wise move, or retarded.

>>Are you a black person of African descent?<<

No I just learned these African descendants’ language called ”English” and I listened to what they said and they convinced me. It sounds like you are saying all black people think the same about this issue?

>>I had a quick google to try and find how many Swedish cops have died,<<

Very few. Is your positions now that people can not express retarded ideas? I do not agree with the metric ”dead cops in sweden”, it is irrelevant to people saying and expressing retarded ideas.

>>but the only results I can find is about police there killing a (white) downs syndrome.<<

I am very familiar with that story. Lack of senior leadership, a part-time cope, 2 rookie cops, when I read their testimonies it was obvious 2 of the them did not have the necessary mental resilience to be cops.

>>The fact that only a few individuals were involved in the slave trade is irrelevant: society as a whole condoned it<<

It actually matters a great deal, because the idea is that European cultures were all compatible with slavery. This is not the case. The idea that feudal societies, where 90% of people were peasant were asked to condoned anything about anything, let alone slavery is a really goofy theory you have. The one time a modern (as in not ancient) European culture tried slavery as part of their society, that society imploded.

>>It required that blacks be seen as *deserving* of slavery, by being less human, less civilised, less capable of civilised, savages, criminal, dangerous, violent etc.<<

Sure, but I think geographic proximity to European, actually being shored against the Atlantic, Africans ability to work in hot and humid weather and the fact that African tribes had a habit of selling other tribes/enemies or their own criminals as slaves, probably had a lot more to do with it. You can make up whatever story after the fact to justify who is deserving of what. None of these issues are in principle or throughout history unique to Africans or the Atlantic slave trade.

>>These attitudes were not confined merely to those trading in slaves, or owning them, they were widely popularised and a source of heated debate as the abolition moved on. And these attitudes persist.<<

It is a very simple proposition. The more a society has been in contact with slavery, either through trade or actually using slavery as a labor force, the more influenced it will have been by those events. Segregation in the US was a legacy of slavery, likewise in South Africa, apartheid was the legacy of slavery in the cape colony.

>>Feudalism ended in Europe long before the discovery<<

You are correct, but I think it is obvious from the context I mean societies where 90% of the population are not participating in some grand process to reach a consensus over anything. I should have called them despotic, dictatorial, i.e not liberal democracies. Judging people from 200-300 years ago from this lens has limited usefulness, but yes, these were savage times compared to now.

>>Seems to me that you are the one imposing a sharp binary here; insisting there can be no legitimate affinity between blacks living in Sweden, UK, and USA because of what in the scheme of things are subtle nuances.<<

I meant racism in general and in American specifically, the ”affinity” thing is quite a black and white affair. Going full retarded implies one has trampled all sense of subtlety and nuance.

>>Attitudes associating blacks with violence<<

It is not an ”attitude” that black men are mire than 50% of victims and perpetrators of violent crimes. It is a statistic that needs to be taken seriously. Because there is the form of ”racism” or racial profiling that is the product of a heuristics model of sense making every human has in order to survive. That stat and the reality of that stat as reported by media and the impact the violence in those stats have in keeping those communities shattered. Those things all make it into the heuristic problem solving algorithm and will make people act ”racist”, not because they dislike black people, but because a lot of cognitive functions they don’t understand are telling them this is a fight or flight scenario. That is not an easy riddle to solve but it obviously, for many reasons start with solving the violence problem in black communities. The first step is to end the war on drugs.

>>This does not matter whether you had slaves in what is your current territory or not; or participated in the slave trade or not. Ideas spread.<<

Clearly, proximity to things and stuff have an influence on the quantity and quality of ideas. Which society do you think currently suffering more from its’ legacy of mass murder and mayhem, Germany or Mongolia? It’s a novel but confusing way of making sense of the world. If someone slaps me, that is a different experience than hearing someone explain how it feels getting slapped. Your assertion makes no sense as it is obvious the influence is not the same, it objectively can not be the same experience to do a genealogy of your family tree and find you ancestors was a slave in Georgia and them being an electrician in Lagos who moved to Lund Sweden in 1973.

Remember a significant majority (60%, in younger demographics even higher) of black people agree with me, racism is not a hurdle in their lives or careers. Were are those voices? How many black people have you listened to who are part of this majority? Why is it always the BLM people whose voices are heard? Because those voices are in harmony with the grievance narrative.
TJ
Member
Tue Jun 09 16:51:43
Excuse my intrusion on the history of racism. The world isn't upside down it is inside out.

Floyd may not have died simply because he was black or for that matter even because he was black. It seems it took a black victim to get the necessary exposure of bad policing. Hopefully something good will come from the grotesque action at the hands of police. We all know that plenty of bad has already.

Did anyone see the following clip in international or even in national news? If it had gotten as much attention as Floyd's death he might be alive today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c-E_i8Q5G0
jergul
large member
Wed Jun 10 02:34:14
One point worth mentioning is that any system founded in societies based on racist fundaments will have profound issues with systemic racism.

Purging systems of underlying values and assumptions is extremely difficult.

So that would mean almost every system is racist to some degree.
jergul
large member
Wed Jun 10 02:37:15
Nimi
That 40% find racism to be a hurdle in their lives is a huge number. Also ghettofication. If the way people avoid racism is by insulating themselves from it, then the problem remains profound, even when pogroms and lynchings remain uncommon (though heavy and disproportionate policing by security forces would be the issue on the table now)
Seb
Member
Wed Jun 10 09:29:32
Nim, Nim, I don't even know where to begin with that.

I think I'm just going to let it lie to be honest.

It just gets more absurd as it goes until you start banging on about feudalism and proximity, ignoring the fact that mass enslavement of blacks happened during the enlightenment at a time of prosperity and liberalism; and proximity is an odd word to use for a trade that involved a round trip of which only one leg was about 5000 miles.

Europe simply wasn't a feudal society with a free lords and millions of peasants, it was an industrialising society with an increasingly urban population and a growing professional class and increasingly widespread literacy and education.

It's simply bullshit to claim that somehow the vast bulk of European culture was somehow insulated from awareness of the ideas about racial stratification.

Indeed, it was the culture and ideas of the fraction of of the educated part of the population at the time that shaped modern European cultures, so even if your idea somehow held up, while it might work to exculpate the "peasants" from culpability for the slave trade, it doesn't address the point at all: that modern attitudes to Africans are still shaped by lingering prejudices developed during that point in time.
Seb
Member
Wed Jun 10 09:32:11
The final statistic ought to make you sit up and stare.

Only 60% of black Europeans think their lives are free from the burden of racism. It would be 100%.

If it's only 60%, how can that be anything other than evidence for enormous levels of racism in society?
Rugian
Member
Wed Jun 10 09:33:09
"If it's only 60%, how can that be anything other than evidence for enormous levels of racism in society?"

Distorted perception.
Rugian
Member
Wed Jun 10 09:34:43
The same type of distorted perception that makes Americans believe that police-on-black violence is a more pressing issue than black-on-black violence, for example.

Society functions on narratives, not objective reality.
Seb
Member
Wed Jun 10 09:58:04
"police brutality is ok because blacks to it to themselves"

Doesn't really matter. Police brutality against blacks is only one aspect of fairly widespread and entrenched discrimination and racism inequality persisting from unaddressed issues.

Maybe black on black violence is a result of a desire to keep police out, knowing that the police are as likely to arrest and brutalise the victim as the perpetrator?





Rugian
Member
Wed Jun 10 10:24:15
If you're going to insert racism into everything it's no surprise that you end up finding it everywhere.

You cant have it both ways Seb. If a majority black neighborhood is suffering from high violent crime, you blame it on racist police failing to uphold their duty to serve and protect. If the police do step in, you cite the resulting rise in encounters with black suspects as an example of racial disparity and police being racist.

Theres no winning here.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Thu Jun 11 11:05:42
I think you should let lie seb, because you are not listening. A good example is this recent accusation that I put undue emphasis on "proximity". Relative proximity was _one_ of the things I counted up as relevant to why AFRICAN slaves where sold in the ATLANTIC slave trade.

And yet again with the word "feudal", I said YES SEB YOU ARE CORRECT. And then explained from the context it should be obvious (I thought) I meant the anti-thesis of a liberal decmocracy and used a bunch of other better terms for what I meant. Did you read that? Can you explain why you are still talking about the chronology of feudal society? Do you think my argument is hinged on literal feudal rule? Now you counter Europe 1600-1800 was a liberal place. Relative to what, actual feudal societies? It is true that a lot of serious ideological work was done during this time (abolition among them), but dissemination of information was not very quick, it seems you think everyone had smartphones like now and had the time and ability to get triggered by slavery on twitter.

>>It's simply bullshit to claim that somehow the vast bulk of European culture was somehow insulated from awareness of the ideas about racial stratification.<<

This isn't that difficult. Let's go with your insularity, obviously the different societies had wildly different insulation and actual contact with slavery. It is as easy as, getting punched in the face is not the same experience as hearing someone talk about getting punched in the face. Having slavery as part of your culture will have effects on that society and racial attitudes, longer after slavery ended. In a way that does not makes sense to even talk about regarding another nation that had a few pirates involved in the atlantic slave trade.

 >>It would be 100%.<<

That should be the goal, someone with an open mind should study it and figure out why it isn’t and what we can do to get there.

>>If it's only 60%, how can that be anything other than evidence for enormous levels of racism in society?<<

Your question is invalid. The question is an empirical one and your conclusion precludes any real process for figuring out the truth that doesn’t already validate the conclusion. Like, ”How can you look at the world and its’ beauty and not realize god created everything? HOW CAN THAT NOT BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN EVIDENCE FOR GOD?” It is even worse seb, because your conclusion actually means we can never falsify or find out exactly the effect racism has on society because we already have the answer, any difference is due to racism. Just like everything that happens is gods will.

And also there is the phenomena.

Nimatzo: so and and so about ”Grievance movement”
Seb: what do you mean with ”grievance culture” it makes you sounds like other people I dislike?
Nimatzo: I didn't say that nor have I ever heard of the term.
seb: Ok I will let it slide, but here you are saying "grievance studies". *link*

Does that leg of our conversation sound sane to you?

There is a difference between thinking grievances are imaginary and not taking them seriously. Grievances whether real or imagined, are rooted in some very real discontent. Such things fester and that is probably the biggest failure on ”Racism”, while in practice it has been virtually destroyed both politically and empirically, it remains largely unresolved.

Of all major cultures, europeans and western/northern europeans specifically stand out, only in the regard that they are the only major culture to have actually dealt with their savage past. At times they seem like the only culture consistently interested in dealing with it, at all. If more countries were like the USA, UK or Sweden, the world would be a better place. And while things have consistently gotten better decade after decade the _sense_ of injustice has only grown. So the introspection and critical view on one’s own biases and nation’s history has turned into self-flagellation and collective self-harm. These groups in the street are behaving as if they are living in the 1950’s USA and as if all of the progress made in last 70 years (SEVENTY) does not matter. The reactions stands out in proportion to my perception of what I thought was our shared reality, and worse it seems our mechanisms for shared sense making have completely broken down.

However the most egregious thing you did was you did what other people did to you on the Iranian airplane at the start of the year. You saw a black man get killed by the police and assumed Black Live matter had a legitimate cause, that it was due to racism.

Jergul
>>One point worth mentioning is that any system founded in societies based on racist fundaments will have profound issues with systemic racism.<<
Without any specification that describes virtually all societies.

>>Purging systems of underlying values and assumptions is extremely difficult.<<

My claim is that there was not an equal amount of stuff to purge to begin with.

>>That 40% find racism to be a hurdle in their lives is a huge number<<

It is, but the number of black people who believe god is listening to their prayer, is even higher. I am not ridiculing their beliefs Christian or BLM, but simply pointing out that people can be believe many things, organize themselves around those ideas, wear special hats and construct enormous expensive buildings and a lot more, not because those beliefs say meaningful things about the world, but because believing them provides meaning and direction in the world.

>>If the way people avoid racism is by insulating themselves from it<<

Or if a lot of it is self-imposed segregation. It is not some act of defiance against society, but a predictably ”lazy” way in which we humans live. You die fairly close to where you are born/raised.
sam adams
Member
Thu Jun 11 11:22:32
"Maybe black on black violence is a result of a desire to keep police out"

4
sam adams
Member
Thu Jun 11 11:23:16
"If it's only 60%, how can that be anything other than evidence for enormous levels of racism in society?"


Because what the mob thinks is always real?

5
sam adams
Member
Thu Jun 11 11:24:41
"60% of spanish conquistadors thought jesus was on their side, therefore enslavement of the meso Americans was justied"

-seb
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Thu Jun 11 12:09:54
And you both missed the importance of the 60%. It is important because virtually 0% of those people get to talk on the media about their experience, 100% of those people are readily dismissed by seb and jergul and at times made suspect. Have you guys heard the names
Larry Elder, Coleman Hughes, Gleen Loury, John Mcworther or Thomas Sowell? These are intelligent and accomplished black people, 2 of them professors in economy (i.e social science). I have no idea, but I know you have now both heard ”Candace Owens”. It sorta says something about the machinery that feeds us information.

It all got very clear to me, the state of racism in the USA, when these gentleman pointed me to the natural experiments of Caribbean blacks who migrate to the USA. They all ”look the same”, they are descendants of slaves, they have the same names, often living in the same neighborhoods, _no one_ in the American racist system can tell the difference between one kind of black and another. Yet Caribbean blacks in America outperform ”native” blacks by every metric, 58% of earnings (true for all black immigrants, they earn more than the pop average) is one such number I remember. What does that mean? Once you delve deeper you realize there are many significant of behavioral and cultural differences between black immigrants and native blacks, proxies like being raised in a two parent household, educational attainment, that they are often more conservative and stricter in raising children etc. there are huge differences between them, but not when it comes to skin color or slave lineage. Racism and slavery simply can not explain this difference.

^I stole that from Coleman.

But I have made this exact observation about my own skin tone and Sweden. How come Iranians are doing so much better than Arabs in Sweden? We came here roughly the same time, we all look the same to Swedes, our names all sound strange and unpronounceable, yet every academically educated Swede has concluded many positive things about Iranians and their culturally indoctrinated academia complex. It is about behavior and unfortunately skin color and average appearance on a group level lends itself too readily for misapplication when our cognitive functions try to read the world. The positive note is that despite this evolutionary engrained sense making algorithm, in 2020 the overwhelming majority of Swedish/British/America people, once they realize you are ”like them” just with a funny name and black hair/skin, they invite you their homes and befriend you.
jergul
large member
Thu Jun 11 14:30:50
Nimi
Persians were doing algebra while my forebears were rubbing rocks together to keep warm and arab forebears were hiding beneath rocks to stay cold.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Thu Jun 11 15:54:52
Jergul
Yes, so I came to Sweden with a plausible story that I am (in a sense) better that the racist white trash. It made it that much easier for me to dismiss them. Everyone don't have that story to tell themselves to make whatever burden they are carrying easier, I get that. I also understand how a horrible things like the American slavery has a long lasting impact on the greater culture, but also on the emerging culture of black people rising from all that pain. It is not surprising that this process is tumultuous and that the pain leaves a big mark on that culture. I also get how all of that can take a life of its' own and run well past the date it is useful.

There is this example.

Imagine you are crossing the street at the pedestrian crossing and you get hit by a drunk driver (with a history of crime and violence it turns out) and become paralyzed.

You did nothing wrong, we all agree you are the victim. You sue the guy, he goes to jail and you get millions of dollar. This is by all accounts a very real grievance, no one would fault you for your anger and sense of bitterness. Yet none of this matters as far as the rest of your life goes. Your victimizer can not go through the months and years of physical therapy, excruciating pain and suffering just so you can *maybe* walk again. That is only in your hands.

It sounds glib, but when your feeling sorry for yourself becomes the main hurdle in you getting anywhere you have to ask, do you want to walk again, or whinge about what happened to you *pointing* back there?

Do you know how many times growing up I heard ”stop acting like a Swede” or ”Nima, he thinks he is a swede”? Quite retarded people with few exceptions, but they understood at least a very important thing, it is in the behavior not the skin color. You ain’t fooling us ”swede” you act like them you are like them. We made our choices and all these people are all 110% ”legit”, legit loser still to this day. This isn’t that surprising to me, people from the ME do not look wildly different, yet over the millennia we have not missed a beat in finding creative and new ways of killing, enslaving and hating each other. It is a more refined form of hatred we could all learn from ;-)
Seb
Member
Thu Jun 11 17:10:10
Nim:

Look, you are not getting your point across - I simply don't see where you've agreed with me that feudal wasn't the term, and tried to explain what you mean at all and repeatedly missing the point yourself. In any case it seems a massive distraction.

Of course 17th century attitudes to Africans affect how we see Africans today, however enlightened we may have become.

And while being in a society that actually had mass slavery vs one that merely adopted a widespread mindset about Africans makes a difference in degree, the root cause and effects are still similar.

When you talk once more about all the pragmatic reasons why Africans were chosen to be enslaved, well I addressed that way earlier on (possibly in the last thread now) - but still fundamentally misses the point.

I am not saying that Europeans attitudes to Africans caused them to enslave Africans. I'm saying European's decision to enslave Africans (driven by pragmatic reasons), at a time when Europeans had largely decided that enslavement was immoral, *required* them to create a rationale for why it was ok to enslave Africans. This is where the the concepts of blacks and racial theories come from, were popularised, and remain in Europe today, even if many European countries did not have slavery domestically to the degree the US did. Elaborate racial hierarchies were produced to explain why Arabs, while lesser than Europeans, were not enslaved. This has fuck all to do with them being more closely aligned to Christianity, or indeed their race. It is was because at that time they were too powerful to easily do so. But like good enlightenment era men of letters they were, a sound philosophical rationalisation to put the world into order and explain it all was needed.

And this is all extremely well documented.

So yes, the discrimination of blacks in Europe and the US shares the same cause, they are different expressions of the same problem, with that problem being "the universalism of racism". It is specifically the prejudices lingering from the conceptualisation of Africa and blacks in European culture generated to justify slavery.

Americans today do not thing blacks are inferior because they ought to be slaves. They do not thing them inferior because their ancestors were slaves. They think them inferior because they believe them to be stupid, lazy, violent, uncivilised and less capable of civilisation.

And the reason they think that is because that is how they have always been thought of by many in the US for a long time, and the reason that they have been thought of that way in the US for a long time is because that is what European colonists and Europeans decided must be the case, otherwise they would just be enslaving people who were morally equal to them but in poorer material condition simply because they could get away with it. Which, were it to be true, would be fundamentally immoral by the prevailing moral framework in Europe at the time.

And there are many people in Europe to this day that also continue to think that blacks are lazy, violent, uncivilised, and stupid. And the reason they think that is for precisely the same reason that some Americans do.

And those Europeans and Americans will point to flawed examples of so called "evidence" to support these beliefs, because thanks to centuries of ongoing discrimination, blacks in America and the US are more likely to be poor, more likely to not get as good education, and more likely to be harassed by police.

This is not fucking rocket science.
Seb
Member
Thu Jun 11 17:23:24
Nim:

"100% of those people are readily dismissed by seb and jergul and at times made suspec"

Local news reports of a tiger escape at the zoo are roundly contradicted by 40% of people in the zoo that claim they did not see the tiger.

Spot the logical fallacy yet?

"Racism and slavery simply can not explain this difference."
Jesus christ you cannot be this stupid. Do you really think the socio economic conditions that US blacks find themselves in are not a consequence of racism? I mean, do we even need to start talking about why education levels are lower in black areas of the south, about segregation, about white flight etc even after civil rights movement?

Race, class and nationality intersect all over the place here.

Who is responsible for the shape and form of Black americans culture? What forces were likely to shape it? And what happened when liberated blacks started to develop their own, black dominated middle class bourgeoise or political classes?
I'm sure you know about the Tulsa bombing, Wilmington insurrection etc?

"as if all of the progress made in last 70 years (SEVENTY) does not matter"

Perhaps the progress you think has been made hasn't remotely begun to address the long term structural impact in the US.

And as for Europe, where the disparities are far less, but you still see quite significant overpolicing of blacks it is less than you think.

Arguing that because 60% in some survey say they don't think racism plays an important role affecting their life, that the other 40% could well simply be wrong, ignores all the demonstrable photographic evidence of discriminatory behaviour.

Seb
Member
Thu Jun 11 17:26:36
*with that problem NOT being "the universalism of racism".
Seb
Member
Thu Jun 11 17:34:50
I mean, tolerance of Blacks and other non-white ethnicity in Europe is in a great part a consequence of importing and internalising America's anti-racism movement; coupled with the fact that our black and other populations arrived in the 50's to 70's with better education and wealth than freed slaves had, were never local majorities greatly feared by whites, and when racial prejudices felt uncomfortably fascist, imperialism was on the decline, and the American civil rights movements were kicking off.

In terms of the degree of what Europe's blacks experience, they start from a better place.

But the fact they experience racial prejudice none-the-less regardless of the differing degree and extent at an aggregate level, is because European attitudes to blacks, in aggregate, are still influenced by prejudices introduced long long ago, as part of a worldview constructed to rationalise enslavement of blacks, even if the enslavement wasn't done in Europe predominantly, and few people directly participated in the trade.

Pillz
Member
Thu Jun 11 17:44:38
There's the Seb we love, going in about and decrying colonialism and slavery and imperialism and racism and the unfair hand everyone's been dealt by the white man.

While his wife keeps busy in the bedroom, telling him she's 'making up' for his innate cis sins.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Thu Jun 11 17:58:54
Seb

If you do a ctrl+f for "You are correct" you will now with this post find 4 entries of me saying it.

">>Feudalism ended in Europe long before the discovery<<

You are correct, but I think it is obvious from the context I mean societies where 90% of the population are not participating in some grand process to reach a consensus over anything. I should have called them despotic, dictatorial, i.e not liberal democracies. Judging people from 200-300 years ago from this lens has limited usefulness, but yes, these were savage times compared to now."

I had miscalculated exactly when the slave trade started and when the feudal era ended, one basically ends where the other one starts. So as far as social progression I think this is not relevant for my point that the chronology was wrong.

These walls of text contain a lot of words, but this is a serious subject for me, so your initial accusation of ”glibness” and ”willful blinkeredness” did not sit well with me. The points are not coming across, because you are obviously not reading a lot of the things I am writing to avoid or remedy any confusion, misunderstanding or poor expression. Why this keeps happening only you know, but it’s basically the same thing as when we first disagreed about Islam, but this time at least, we managed to get through it without too much vitriol, which is progress!

It would help for the future that you consider, that I have put a lot of thought into this issue as it has been a subject I have, for obvious reasons, been entangled with my entire life. That I now have a son for whom I have to try and make sense of all of this. Doesn't mean I am right in my conclusions, but it is neither shallow or insincere.

I’m gonna do what you proposed and let this rest, generally things to not get better past this point. Just remember, we both want the same thing, we want people to thrive and do better.
Seb
Member
Thu Jun 11 19:04:51
Nim:

Like I said, it's disingenuous to pretend that from the 17th century onwards there wasn't an intellectual class creating the world view we inherited today.

Arguing an elite were culpable for slavery doesn't remotely mean that the rest of the population didn't adopt a world view that embraced the idea of the inferiority of blacks.

In any case the height of the Atlantic slave trade was late 1700s and really 1800s. Right slap bang in the noodles of the enlightenment, which fully embraced these ideas as a rationalist argument for slavery.

This whole discussion about elites just completely misses the point. It matters not one jot whether the then elites drove it, they nevertheless shaped the world view.
Seb
Member
Thu Jun 11 19:05:29
Middle of the enlightenment.

jergul
large member
Fri Jun 12 03:33:25
Seb
Nimi's point was clear enough to me. Self-victimization is not constructive even if justified.

From my perspective, truth and reconciliation programmes are virtually mainstream. One of the purposes of such programmes is to move beyond the victim-oppressor roles and turn a new leaf so to speak.

But systematic recognition of historical wrongs is a key element of these programmes, so there is that.
Seb
Member
Fri Jun 12 04:59:43
jergul:

You can't get truth and reconciliation when people dismiss complaints out of hand as "retardation" by insisting they are improperly motivated by self-victimisation.

And weaselling to a default of inaction by holding up ones hands and saying "well they could be real or could be imagined, I don't know, but lets admit the possibility that these are made up" amounts to the same thing.

Bottom line, I think there are very strong grounds for BLM protests in Europe. There is ample evidence of police discrimination and the root cause is fundamentally the same, while still being more specific than "people are racist", even if the contexts vary.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Fri Jun 12 05:05:14
Jergul
Yes and it includes the admission of wrong, which I believe both the US congress and senate did under Obama. I think there is a small, but vocal minority on the US right, that have more of a Turkish stance on the whole thing. They choose denial, either because the are nostalgic about it or more often they are bleeding heart patriots that have a hard time dealing with a national sense of shame. They are insignificant as a constituency and slowly dying.

Seb
Black Caribbean slave ancestors who migrate to the USA (indeed this applies to all black immigrants) are despite sharing the exact same superficial characteristics outperforming native blacks in every way. Many times they are living in the same neighborhood when they move to America.

This can not be explained by either racism or slavery.

Seb,

How many of these names had you heard of before I mentioned them? You don't need to answer me, but it is probably zero and that is an indication of the scope of your understanding of "blacks" as some monolith not only in American, but across the world.

Larry Elder, Coleman Hughes, Gleen Loury, John Mcworther or Thomas Sowell.

Go listen to them and think about what they are saying and let it simmer. Racism will pop up again in some near future for us to talk about, I am certain of it.

Have a nice week end.


jergul
large member
Fri Jun 12 05:38:25
Seb
I was unclear. I mean mainstream in sense that it is generally recognized that truth and reconciliation works, not that the programmes are commonplace.

Nimi
The difference can in full be explained by microdosing Mary Sue.
Seb
Member
Fri Jun 12 07:02:58
Nim:

I just gave you an explanation.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Fri Jun 12 07:16:13
I had to look up the Mary sue reference, but yes, I tried to list it when I first mentioned the example. there are huge cultural and behavioral differences between native blacks and caribbeans. Still it is not the result you expect of a society with a deep systemic racism. Once we cross the, we look different barrier we judge each other on behavior.

This has been studied in sweden with regards to immigrants and education level, once you factor that, they do just as well or better than Swedish born people.

This is not a perfect experiment by any stretch of the imagination, but it is indicative of a truth and trend in these societies and to me it also signals that whatever systemic racism there is, must be negligable. And when I contrast that with, the war on drugs and systamatic issues of over and under policing blacks and the general socioeconomic disparity increasing everywhere. I walk away thinking there are much bigger fish to fry so that black communities can thrive.

Basically I am saying we are much better served by an old school social democratic class analysis than an intersectional one that deals with superficial attributes we (in my view) obviously do not have a hard time bridging. And once we do that we still have to deal with the same social problems, disenfrachisement and increasing wealth gap that *IS* a threat to democracy. And those things are much more difficult to bridge and they feed the individual heuristical racism you, me and seb all carry. We are not dealing with the past like this, we are integrating historic suffering into our present and ultimately our future in a way that is not productive.
jergul
large member
Fri Jun 12 07:23:57
Truth and reconciliation is pretty much AA 12 step programmes for racist/sectarian individuals, groups, government and state actors.

Its sort of important to get all the steps right :).

Truth is, we would all hit a glass ceiling in Sweden. With the possible exception of Seb.

There is a pretty rigid, though understated class hiearchy in that country.

Its hard to VENN diagram intolerance and privilege.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Fri Jun 12 07:30:01
Seb
I am not going to continue this with you now or ever again until you take two people from my list and listen to what they are saying. I am VERY familiar with Assata Shakur (mother of Tupac), Ta-Nehisi Coates and others of the same ideological framework. I was NOT exaggerating about a deep connection to Black American culture (I grew up seeing all the parallels between myself and them). Immersed in it you could say.

Larry Elder (rep.)
Coleman Hughes (lifetime dem voter)
Glenn Loury, (dem. professor in economy)
John Mcworther (dem.)
Thomas Sowell (rep. professor in economy)

I can recommend Glenn Loury and Coleman Hughes, but obviously Thomas Sowell (basically a Trumpican) is a very interesting listen, but the other two are probably more in tune with my own (and your) world view in general.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Fri Jun 12 07:42:10
Jergul
There are alternatives to AA, as per your example. People come with different baggage and the truth is that while AA can help, most addicts never go through any program or flunk out of them, they die as addicts. We could argue about the need to follow every step and walk the line or be pragmatic and interested in getting the right results.
jergul
large member
Fri Jun 12 07:59:32
Truth and reconciliation is a method to let bygones be bygones. I don't think there are any shortcuts.

But everything is always degrees of imperfection. Privilege and oppression walk hand in hand.

Its not a 0-sum game, but the quest for equity ultimately does clash with established privileges.
TJ
Member
Fri Jun 12 08:29:09
Shelby Steele (born January 1, 1946) is an American conservative author, columnist, documentary film maker, and a Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He specializes in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action.
Seb
Member
Fri Jun 12 13:04:54
Nim:

Thank you for your reading list, but I'm not sure what you think it would contribute at this point to the central point of dispute here: why would it support the argument that BLM movement outside the US were "retarded" and "appropriation"?
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Fri Jun 12 13:31:38
Seb
Because those characters, like me, believe that "systemic" racism in 2020 (actually for much longer) USA is a "retarded" idea, they just use less triggering words. From my POV then, what people do half way across the world in solidarity with other retards can not be less retarded. Or you could just to do it to get out of the bubble and listen to some black men lay down some real talk.

It is not really my business the effort you put in to actually understand complex issues, but you like the people in the streets have presumed things yet to be established about George Floyds death. Something I defended you over during the Iranian airplane shoot down.

So when I see people do this shit time and time again a pattern emerges and I have to ask myself, why would you have be correct the other 1000's of times you did this and concluded "systemic racism".

People are predictable in their irrationality as the book is named. Just set up the conditions and incentives the right way and watch people do the wrong thing for the right reasons (or vice versa) over and over again.


Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Fri Jun 12 13:46:31
Thanks TJ. There you go seb, another black American conservative for you to get connected with. Either you are serious about the desire to get rid of racism (real or imaginary) or you are not, let it be known where you stand.

TJ
Member
Fri Jun 12 14:14:23
You are welcome Nim. Steele has written some informative books all of which are worth the read.
jergul
large member
Fri Jun 12 14:50:39
Endemic may be a better word than systemic. Prejudical may be a better word than racism.

Endemic prejudice at individual, private and public spheres.

^That is the problem.
jergul
large member
Fri Jun 12 15:36:27
Endemic prejudice at individual and organizational level within private and public spheres.

Fixed!
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Fri Jun 12 15:43:17
Jergul
I like it, how about prejudice is endemic to human ecology.
TJ
Member
Fri Jun 12 16:58:21
"how about prejudice is endemic to human ecology."

I like it better.
jergul
large member
Fri Jun 12 17:14:55
Prejudice is endemic in all societies.

=============

Its better because it allows people, governments, and organizations to identify as part of the problem.

This is step 1 in truth and reconciliation.
Seb
Member
Sat Jun 13 06:15:22
Nim:

It seems somewhat self-defeating that you are arguing that black Americans can support the idea that blacks in Sweden and Europe claiming affinity with BLM is retarded cultural appropriation; given your whole argument is that context is king and that because the contexts are different, any affinity claimed is retarded. If black American writers can tell us meaningful things about the experience of being black in Europe, surely that tells us that there are commonalities?

I am content to listen to the arguments of the protestors here, rather than elaborated attempts to justify dismissing them is somehow the true path to tackling racism.

Their arguments stack up and self evidently so. It isn't really that complex: ideas about blacks in both Europe and America share a common root and in any case synch in both ways: from subtle influences on how we see the world through to white nationalsits in Europe and America. And as we are talking about attitudes, the argument that such affinities are retarded becomes a hollow normative plea in the face of the reality we actually live in. If we want to use crude language, I'd say "you are pissing in the wind" to your "retardation". Ideas spread, and racism is as much about ideas and attitude.

In America, the condition of blacks has been greatly exacerbated by the social context blacks have lived in since liberation (also the greater violence of American society); so it is not at all surprising that Caribbean immigrants have a different experience; because the impact of structural racism isn't simply from a bunch of people quietly hating or thinking black people inferior. It's conflated to where you live, your economic status, in complex ways that can persist for generations. Again, this is not surprising. Look at how the socio-economic status of Jews persisted for centuries after specific edicts limiting the kinds of roles they could play in society were lifted (e.g. the linkage between jews, finance and money stemming from prohibition on Christians partaking in usury during the middle ages, which still leads to a general association of Jews as being "good with money" - an idea exported globally - and endemic in bits of Latin America I have lived in, where such laws never applied at all. So much for the idea of differing contexts.

You might also say that the problem in America is the impunity and heavy militarisation of the police, but if you dig into *why* the police in America have a culture so different from much of Europe, the reason is often to do with an idea that they are there to protect society from the undesirables; which have historically been heavily conflated with whites and blacks.

As Jergul says, you can't untangle all of this without some degree of acceptance of the truth of it before you can move on to reconciliation.

Prejudice of some sort or another may be endemic in all societies, but it does not follow that all prejudice is the same and can be resolved.

Accepting and embracing Jews doesn't mean there is no prejudice of blacks. And vice versa (see UK Labour parties recent woes).

Insisting it all be lumped in together amounts to trying to skip to an indistinct "lets all hold hands and sing kumbayah" without ever tackling the fundamental specific dynamics in society that lead to very specific wrongs. I.e. the dominant forces in society get to skip the painful, uncomfortable bit and having to do anything; and instead saying "well that is all in the past, so lets let it go" without actually changing anything about the present that has its roots in that past. Sure, we might throw the odd cop in prison when we can see he's really acting out of overt racial hate. But hey, lets not look at why there are police crawling all over the poor part of town, stopping cars, and arresting people with marijuana, convicting them, and removing their right to vote; but the police are not all over the white areas of town, stopping nice white middle class kids, searching their cars and throwing them in jail (or soccer moms with prescription pills) . That's all totally justified: there is more crime in black areas (because it's policed more, detected more, and treated more harshly because they don't have the means to make it a long drawn out bureaucratic process) - so not really a race problem.
Nor, indeed, do we want to look at why Nixon started the war on drugs (a policy the US roped many other parts of the western world into - hey - ideas spread!)

http://qz....-people-and-the-anti-war-left/

Is that racism? Well, nah, they didn't hate the blacks, they just needed to stop them voting with democratcs. Why did they vote with democrats? Because they are more likely to be poor. Why are so? Because they are more likely to be ill educated and lack economic opportunities. Why so? Because they tend to live in the same area meaning the poverty is concentrated, robbing funds from schools, limiting the pool of potential good teachers, and the available demand for businesses. Why so? well lets talk about white flight, property prices....

This is what people mean by systemic racism and intersectionality. And you can't tackle it by simply looking at it from the view of the motivations of particular agents.

The police man that stops only cars driven by black men does not think himself racist. He just thinks that drug dealers are black. The impact of that though, is that on his beat, the black people are harassed relentlessly going about their day and the whites are not, in a way that, were it applied uniformly to all people - would lead to calls for the whether such intrusion was really beneficial for society as a whole.

Now the specifics of this malaise will be different in the US and America in some ways. The particular path it came to be that American blacks ended up where they are may be different to the way European blacks did. But the fact they ended up in the same place is heavily linked to racial attitudes that allowed European and American societies to be utterly blinded to the obvious systemic effects of what was going on, and instead attribute it to the innate qualities of black people.

Simply reassessing the innate qualities of black people (even if we didn't have the likes of Sam using shit statistics to try and prove the opposite) will not resolve this problem. This is a fact I have reluctantly come to accept in my life, despite starting off as a far more classic liberal that would love the world to via purely individual mechanics. Sadly, complex systems are emergent and some emergent patterns can be self-perpetuating even when interactions of the underlying individuals change to remove unjust behaviours.
Seb
Member
Sat Jun 13 06:21:34
We are quite happy to accept policies that tackle such systemic problems in other areas (scholarships for the poor is a no brainer).

But once we talk about blacks, it's "reverse racism".

Why? Could it be because at some level, we see "the poor" as "us", but once we talk about race, it is "them" and it becomes bound up with lose aversity pscyhology?
jergul
large member
Sat Jun 13 06:37:28
Seb
Reframing the question is actually quite powerful.

The police officer in your example may not recognize that he is being racist, but should be able to see that racial profiling is textbook prejudicial.
Seb
Member
Sat Jun 13 09:49:18
It might help, but honestly I'm skeptical.

It's another concession to the brittle ego of those who don't face disadvantage.

And once it is widely understood to mean racism, it'll provoke the same reaction.

jergul
large member
Sat Jun 13 10:24:56
Seb
Frankly, covid-19 liberated the word endemic. We can now use it with some assurance that people know what it means.

Prejudice covers far more than racism. Which is a problem or an advantage depending on perspective.

Endemic prejudice.
sam adams
Member
Sat Jun 13 10:46:38
"and some emergent patterns can be self-perpetuating"

Uh oh. Seb with a moment of clarity?
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Sat Jun 13 11:01:36
Seb

To some people it is foreign to hold victimhood as any significant part of their identity for any significant amount of time. Your privilege here is that you do not understand that your specific brand of bullshit is an imposition on the majority of black people (and immigrants like myself). Did you listen to any of the guys I mentioned, no. Your ”willful blinkeredness” and ”glib” attitude towards the issue has now rationalized it all with ”brittle ego”. Classic.

Impose and project all you like, but these little passive aggressive outburst you keep having, does not reflect well on your ability to argue your case.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Sat Jun 13 11:03:37
"Seb with a moment of clarity?"

Don't worry, a fart linger for longer than sebs moments of clarity.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Sat Jun 13 11:14:39
seb
Against better judgment I started to read your previous post. It’s still too hot to do yard work anyway.

”you are arguing that black Americans can support the idea that blacks in Sweden and Europe claiming affinity with BLM is retarded cultural appropriation;”

What I actually wrote.

”Because those characters, like me, believe that "systemic" racism in 2020 (actually for much longer) USA is a "retarded" idea, they just use less triggering words. From my POV then, what people do half way across the world in solidarity with other retards can not be less retarded.”

As in they opine about racism in the USA not black people in Europe. Only you can explain why these kinds of low hanging mistakes in parsing 2 sentences keep happening. You seem nominally intelligent and educated, english is your mother language. What is going on?

Anyway I stopped reading there, even a heat stroke must be better than reading the rest of the posts.
sam adams
Member
Sat Jun 13 11:42:22
British left wing hypocrisy of the day.


http://twi...tatus/1271821942501195779?s=20
Seb
Member
Sat Jun 13 18:50:33
Nim:

Indeed. You have called two things retarded. Firstly, the idea that anyone in Europe could associate the same issues in Europe.
http://www...hread=85828&time=1591548990965
The second (later) that systemic racism exists. The fact you seem to have forgotten what we are talking about is concerning. I am still talking about the first.

I'm saying that producing a bunch of authorities that assert systemic racism exists in America is an odd way to argue that protests in Europe about police or other prejudice in harmony with the US is retardation because the contexts are different. Because that refutation relies on extrapolating the context of your authorities to a European context: the very thing you said is retardation.

Circular logic is a thing I know you do indulge in from time to time, but your ontologically disproving of racism isn't really landing.
Seb
Member
Sat Jun 13 18:52:32
Nim:

Again with the victimhood framing. Hammer harder, I'm sure you can get the square peg into the hole if you use just a little bit more elbow grease.

Seb
Member
Sat Jun 13 18:53:21
*doesn't exist.

Time for a new screen protector I think.
Renzo Marquez
Member
Sat Jun 13 18:58:08
Seb does his part to combat systemic racism by taking his wife's son out for falafel while the entire United Nations runs a train on his wife.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Sat Jun 13 20:56:40
"Minorities DO suffer racism"
-Nimatzo grievance study thread (you linked to) from a few years ago.

"People, they are racist"
-Nimatzo a few days ago

"heuristical racism you, me and seb all carry."
-Nimatzo a few days ago

"You can experience things and draw the wrong conclusions about the world as a system."
-Nimatzo a few days ago

"So you're saying racism does not exist?"
-Seb, PhDerp
sam adams
Member
Sat Jun 13 21:11:13
Lol 6
Seb
Member
Sun Jun 14 06:54:05
Nim:

You are staying systemic racism isn't a significant dynamic in the West. The fact you acknowledge racism, but only in the most reductionist way, doesn't refute my point.

I mean, you are basically pulling a Sam now, with the false quotes. That's sad.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Sun Jun 14 13:58:58
Seb

”Ontologically” speaking I have been saying racism exists since at least the grievance study thread. The paraphrasing is a fair representation albeit with a Cathy Newman interviewing Jordan Peterson style. I could take the sentence verbatim and it would not make a difference, you are claiming something I have clearly not said.

Maybe I could have been more charitable and assumed that you were not saying something patently false like "disproving racism exists", but that you mean I am saying systemic racism doesn’t exist. It didn’t happen for 3 reason:

1. Your passive aggressive jabs have increased the size of the chip on my shoulder.
2. Much bad faith in you I sense.
3. Finally you have a history of exactly this kind of Cathy Newman ”so you are saying <things you did not say or mean>" I declared early on I was going to be very anal about it.

”the most reductionist way”

A most fundamental way: Inherent to human nature and triggered by noise or data and incentives, in one word, the ”environment”. It’s a straightforward (socio)biological framework for understanding humans and their ecology.

^That is not the same as when I tell you, you have a reductionist view on everything, because you think the entire world can be reduced and understood from what British people experienced.

Such hubris is no doubt a legacy of your very successful colonial past.

Being ”British” includes an environment, culture and historical progression unique to Brits (as with Iranians, Arabs or Nigerians) - Unlike inherent human qualities which (you guessed it) systematically apply to all humans.

I can abstract from our shared human nature things that you simply can not from ”British” and their conflict with the ”Irish” because we do not share the qualities inherent to Britishness and Irishness. On top of that there are the specific cultural and environmental factors that allows for a full understanding of the provincial state of affairs.

Let’s now view 2 key assertions I have made over the past days, in light of these last paragraphs.

1. People, they are racist. (nature)
2. A society that had black people as slaves vs one that did not, will have wildly different ”racial” attitudes (culture)




Oh and btw seb, we still do not know that George Floyd was killed because he was black. This is not somehow insignificant to thinking ”solidarity” atm is stupid. I would think it is less retarded if that had been established. Though I have to admit I can’t really put ”ACAB”, ”(literally) De-fund the police” or ”White silence is violence” in any other compartment, regardless of the reasons behind George Floyd death. Those are all conclusions far beyond what the circumstances allow for.
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