[stone monkey]

I think we're probably overextending the metaphor to breaking point, however, these are customers encouraging a shop not to sell particular products - maybe they're harmful, maybe they're exploitative - not competitors. If the shop wants to continue to get their custom, they won't sell those things.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Article by a Cambridge PhD candidate with an undergraduate degree in psychology from Yale:

'Recently, I was interviewed for a video for the Dutch media outlet NU.nl, a popular news website in the Netherlands. The topic was cancel culture, which refers to the social trend of ending (or attempting to end) an individual’s career or prominence to hold them to account for violating moral norms. The video was about the uses and abuses of this new trend, including how cancel culture has rightly jettisoned reprehensible individuals like Harvey Weinstein from polite society. On the other hand, it also discussed its excesses, such as the recent social media mobbing of J.K. Rowling. During my segment, I described how individuals use cancel culture to elevate their own social position.

Three days after it was published, the video was taken down. I contacted the journalist who interviewed me, asking what happened. He replied that although the video gathered over 176,000 views and was positively received by viewers, his employer determined that it “didn’t meet their profile.” He then revealed that his supervisors believed the video was too sympathetic to the targets of cancel culture. In other words, a video about cancel culture was cancelled.

This social phenomenon is spreading beyond our shores. It is the latest American cultural export. Referring to the cancelled video, the Dutch sociologist Dr. Eric C. Hendriks has told me, “This would have been unthinkable in the Netherlands a year ago. Over time, American influence has spread cancel culture here.” The political scientist Joseph Nye advanced the idea of “soft power,” or the ability to influence societies through seduction, persuasion, and pop culture rather than military power. Because America still has reputational prestige across the globe, other societies adopt the views of our credentialed class. These individuals have been manipulating language and norms for personal gain.

[...] “So much of political and economic debate is about which groups and individuals deserve higher or lower status… Lowering another group’s social status is the most powerful message of all. It is more powerful than raising the status of those who one likes.”

[...] in their forthcoming book Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk, the philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke refer to this as “ramping up.” They observe that, “Moral talk often devolves into a moral arms race, where people make increasingly strong claims… trying to outdo one another… to be the most morally impressive… to signal that they are more attuned to matters of justice.” This creates a spiral such that each person competes in a moral grandstanding contest. At first, people cancel Harvey Weinstein for real offenses. Then then ramp up, change their standards for cancellable offenses, and go after J.K. Rowling for tweets. Still, sometimes doubters remain. And these non-believers do not want to be ostracized from polite society. Thus, they either remain silent or publicly express a belief they do not privately hold.

[...] The US used to export Coca-Cola, television shows, and music. Today, we export outrage, deplatforming, and social mobbing. The fact that cancel culture has seeped into other countries is evidence that American soft power is alive and well.'

https://quillette.co...e-to-the-world/

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

stone monkey, on 08 July 2020 - 06:45 PM, said:

I think we're probably overextending the metaphor to breaking point, however, these are customers encouraging a shop not to sell particular products - maybe they're harmful, maybe they're exploitative - not competitors. If the shop wants to continue to get their custom, they won't sell those things.

But the 'customers' are also themselves trying to 'sell' the idea in the 'marketplace of ideas'. So more like 'multi-level marketing'....

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 08 July 2020 - 06:55 PM

[stone monkey]

For many of us, to reverse the order of the well known phrase, the political is personal. Quite a number of deplatforming efforts are made against individuals who are actually encouraging, or have even attempted to commit, harm against members of various groups. I have zero problems with this. If someone is using their perch (whatever kind of perch it is) to preach that I'm less than human because of the colour of my skin, or my gender, or my sexuality, or whatever, damn right I want them knocked off that perch.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 08 July 2020 - 09:27 PM

[Lady Bliss]

stone monkey, on 08 July 2020 - 07:01 PM, said:

For many of us, to reverse the order of the well known phrase, the political is personal. Quite a number of deplatforming efforts are made against individuals who are actually encouraging, or have even attempted to commit, harm against members of various groups. I have zero problems with this. If someone is using their perch (whatever kind of perch it is) to preach that I'm less than human because of the colour of my skin, or my gender, or my sexuality, damn right I want them knocked off that perch.

Damn skippy. I am happy to see those people taken down a notch too. Imagine that THEY should have to feel discrimination for a change?! I feel like deplatforming can level the playing field, and force some change where needed. Some people won’t change without the fear of consequences.

[stone monkey]

What's interesting is that the supposedly pejorative label of Identity Politics seems to only get applied to the politics of people who aren't straight, white, cis, hetero, men. If Identity Politics is attempting to use politics to further the ends of groups you actually belong to, aren't those guys doing it even more than the rest of us?

The real irony is that they've had, and still enjoy, the liberty of indulging in their own Identity Politics for much longer, and much more effectively, than the rest of us. Because they run and own most of everything in the Western World, and because they've managed to convince themselves, and until recently us, that their version of Identity Politics is simply the neutral, and natural, political default.

tl;dr All politics is identity politics. Even, and especially, yours.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 08 July 2020 - 09:23 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

stone monkey, on 08 July 2020 - 09:22 PM, said:

What's interesting is that the supposedly pejorative label of Identity Politics seems to only get applied to the politics of people who aren't straight, white, cis, hetero, men. If Identity Politics is attempting to use politics to further the ends of groups you actually belong to, aren't those guys doing it even more than the rest of us?

The real irony is that they've had, and still enjoy, the liberty of indulging in their own Identity Politics for much longer, and much more effectively, than the rest of us. Because they run and own most of everything in the Western World, and because they've managed to convince themselves, and until recently us, that their version of Identity Politics is simply the neutral, and natural, political default.

tl;dr All politics is identity politics. Even, and especially, yours.

The term was first introduced in 'A Black Feminist Statement':

'We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work.

This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else's oppression.'

https://medium.com/@...cs-d1cb37b39311

Of course, there have been many expressly identitarian movements in the United States---for example, US 'Nativism', white supremacists, various religious, ethnic, regional identity movements, etc.

The claim that 'If Identity Politics is attempting to use politics to further the ends of groups you actually belong to [...] All politics is identity politics' seems to preclude attempting to use politics to sacrifice your own group's power to further the ends of groups you do not belong to---because it seems morally right. (Granted, one could argue that a wider group identity is being asserted: the good of the nation, or humanity, or the world.)

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 08 July 2020 - 09:51 PM

[stone monkey]

Azath Vitr (D, on 08 July 2020 - 09:51 PM, said:

The term was first introduced in 'A Black Feminist Statement':

And like many terms coined by left movements, it got appropriated and weaponised by the right.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

stone monkey, on 08 July 2020 - 10:04 PM, said:

Azath Vitr (D, on 08 July 2020 - 09:51 PM, said:

The term was first introduced in 'A Black Feminist Statement':

And like many terms coined by left movements, it got appropriated and weaponised by the right.

And also criticized by the left, at the very least as an ineffective political strategy so long as white cis hetero people are in the majority.

According to projections, the United States isn't expected to become majority minority until around 2045.

(Majority PTQ by 2145?)

https://www.pbs.org/...the-next-decade

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 08 July 2020 - 10:53 PM

[stone monkey]

The left has never been as ideologically monolithic as those on the right would have it. Arguably, for people on the left, their worst and most outspoken enemies are others on the left. And it's probably the left's "purer than thou" infighting that has got us into the mess we're in now.

Although moderates bear equal blame - do we really need to pander to the racists, misogynists and homophobes? That doesn't help their targets, does it?

[amphibian]

QuickTidal, on 08 July 2020 - 05:18 PM, said:

Amph, he's talking about comedy and saying things that are not to people's taste and getting a bad reaction, he is most certainly not referring to something as tragic as what you've brought up. Fucks sake man.

Quote

that tweet is a tunnel vision'ed comedian's and it doesn't map well to the real world.

No, you've just chosen to apply it to something tragic that makes it not really work and then ripped down the comedian for the broader notion. Bravo, but it doesn't make you right.

The point of "Say whatever you want, but don't expect people to like it" is valid, and taking it to some nth degree to prove our your weird point is pretty rank.

Free speech absolutism always benefits those already in power. Gervais got little to no pushback beyond "please don't say these things" for the transphobic jokes he made. He's still gotten big jobs, hosted ceremonies, still makes big money etc.

Not much is going to happen to him. Just like not much is going to happen to Rowling despite her much worse and non joke statements about transphobic things.

Pretending that power dynamics and institutions with bias aren't there, even when talking about a comedian's view is worse than me pointing out that jokes aren't just jokes and often involve some seriously awful things like the Colorado police with Elijah McClain.

Being able to recognize that what Rowling is saying ("oh that's a nice picture this kid drew, nice picture, trans women aren't women, nice picture, nice picture, down with trans people and don't notice that my male pen name is the guy who developed conversion therapy") rises to low level hate speech is pretty crucial.

Looping this back to Gervais, he regularly does the "oh are you offended now?" line of pushing for a reaction after he says something kinda or very over the lines. Beyond it being dumb, it shows that he himself isn't taking the "some people will tell you they don't like it" part well.

Guy's a niblick and seriously talking about him in a conversation about identity politics, deplatforming, and figuring out why we enable/embolden the 'phobes of all kinds isn't the right move.

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 09 July 2020 - 02:12 PM, said:

Free speech absolutism always benefits those already in power. Gervais got little to no pushback beyond "please don't say these things" for the transphobic jokes he made. He's still gotten big jobs, hosted ceremonies, still makes big money etc.

Indeed. If people had enough of a problem with him, they would have put him in his place about it and by his own statements, he would decide if he could live with continuing to make those jokes or not. I feel like that's a self-healing cycle.

amphibian, on 09 July 2020 - 02:12 PM, said:

Just like not much is going to happen to Rowling despite her much worse and non joke statements about transphobic things.

She's like the second richest woman on the planet. She can spend the rest of her life saying controversial or mean things and nothing will happen to her.

amphibian, on 09 July 2020 - 02:12 PM, said:

Pretending that power dynamics and institutions with bias aren't there, even when talking about a comedian's view is worse than me pointing out that jokes aren't just jokes and often involve some seriously awful things like the Colorado police with Elijah McClain.

You conflated those two things, not I. I don't think they come close to one another. One is a sick and disgusting thing, the other is some words on twitter or whatever that offended someones personal outlook on life. People don't have to listen or read Gervais. And if enough people do that because the things he says upsets them...then he would not have a following. This is how these things work and will always work. There's no paradigm shift on the horizon.

amphibian, on 09 July 2020 - 02:12 PM, said:

Looping this back to Gervais, he regularly does the "oh are you offended now?" line of pushing for a reaction after he says something kinda or very over the lines. Beyond it being dumb, it shows that he himself isn't taking the "some people will tell you they don't like it" part well.

I think he's hilarious, and his constant pushing of buttons is doing society a service. He's also one of the most heartfelt and genuinely talented writers that's come out of Britain. Also, you realize that Gervais saying "Oh are you offended?" is him doing exactly what he's talking about. He just doesn't care. The end of his tweet is "And then you need to decide if you give a fuck about that"....he's choosing not to do anything, because he doesn't give a fuck about if people don't like him or find him problematic. If the world cancels him for that, then he could change his tune, but he won't and they won't.

amphibian, on 09 July 2020 - 02:12 PM, said:

Guy's a niblick and seriously talking about him in a conversation about identity politics, deplatforming, and figuring out why we enable/embolden the 'phobes of all kinds isn't the right move.

That's your opinion, but if I felt his tweet was relevant to the conversation, I'll post it. You can ignore that if you don't like it.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'A respected data scientist, David Shor, tweeted a link to Princeton Professor Omar Wasow’s recently published academic paper concluding that violent protests diminish the electoral prospects of the Democratic coalition. As a result, he was banned from a listserv of left-of-center data analysts and appears to have been fired from his job at Civis Analytics. (Emerson Collective, the majority owner of The Atlantic, is a minority investor in Civis Analytics.) “For those of you who don’t realize what makes the tweet problematic,” one member of the listserv wrote, “try not to overanalyze the statistical validity of the research paper and think about the broader impact it will have if people perceive it to be true.” That standard demands that people self-censor the truth.'

'The range of institutions affected by recent excesses is remarkable. Here I can note only a small sample of what’s been reported. The University of Chicago economist Harald Uhlig tweeted that Black Lives Matter “torpedoed itself” by supporting calls to defund the police. “Time for sensible adults to enter back into the room and have serious, earnest, respectful conversations about it all,” he wrote. “We need more police, we need to pay them more, we need to train them better.” In response, other academics organized a campaign to remove him from the editorship of a scholarly journal; and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, a quasi-governmental institution, cut ties with him, asserting that his views are incompatible with its “commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.” Yet the beliefs that defunding the police is a bad idea, and that protesters who advocate for it will lose political support, are common. Many at the Fed surely hold them. All political litmus tests in public institutions are fraught. That litmus test is farcical.

[...] In Vermont, a public-school principal posted her thoughts about Black Lives Matter on Facebook:

I firmly believe that Black Lives Matter, but I DO NOT agree with the coercive measures taken to get to this point across... While I want to get behind BLM, I do not think people should be made to feel they have to choose black race over human race. While I understand the urgency to feel compelled to advocate for black lives, what about our fellow law enforcement? What about all others who advocate for and demand equity for all?

Her school board quickly announced that despite the principal’s “meaningful and positive impact,” her “glaring miscomprehension” of Black Lives Matter would damage the school and its students if she remained in charge. They removed her for speech that is clearly protected by the First Amendment, engaging in viewpoint discrimination. That is an unlawful violation of her civil rights.'

https://www.theatlan...utm_source=feed

[stone monkey]

Azath Vitr (D, on 09 July 2020 - 10:14 PM, said:

I do not think people should be made to feel they have to choose black race over human race.

If they feel that, they've completely misunderstood BLM. The point of BLM is that you should be choosing human race over white race.

An analogy: you break your right leg and the doctor looks at your left leg and says that they see nothing wrong. Your right leg is in a great deal of pain, the bone's sticking out. You say "But Doctor, can't you see that it's my right leg that's broken?". And the doctor replies "All Legs Matter."

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

stone monkey, on 10 July 2020 - 03:17 PM, said:

Azath Vitr (D, on 09 July 2020 - 10:14 PM, said:

I do not think people should be made to feel they have to choose black race over human race.

If they feel that, they've completely misunderstood BLM. The point of BLM is that you should be choosing human race over white race.

An analogy: you break your right leg and the doctor looks at your left leg and says that they see nothing wrong. Your right leg is in a great deal of pain, the bone's sticking out. You say "But Doctor, can't you see that it's my right leg that's broken?". And the doctor replies "All Legs Matter."

Yes, it seems they should have done more research before stating that in the context of BLM. (There are some Black supremacists and 'white people are inherently evil' whackadoodles but they're a tiny percentage of BLM activists. The concept of centering Black voices is very different.)

But the slogan almost dares people to point out the logical-seeming objection.

Unfortunately, Black Lives Also Matter would be 'BLAM'....

And Black Lives Matter Too---BLMT---seems too close to 'BLT'. Black Lives Matter Equally---'BLME'---looks like Blame.

Their misconception should be criticized, but firing them for it is excessive and censorial. While a school principal should be held to a higher standard, it does appear to fall under viewpoint discrimination, which is illegal in US public schools.

More generally, if people are afraid of voicing what they see as obvious, well-intentioned logical criticisms, then instead of having their misconceptions corrected, they will fester, and activists will seem as if they're opposed to critical thinking and good faith rational questioning.

[QuickTidal]

No, all of that is white equivocating bullshit.

BLACK LIVES MATTER.

Full stop.

It doesn't need to be anything else.

The implied "too" is evident in that White lives aren't under threat. This isn't fucking hard.

My gods, the talking people will do to try to avoid the simple notion that black lives matter.

Lastly, it's not up to POC to explain or help white people understand BLM as a concept or an Initialism (abbreviation). It's up to white people to fucking step up, and educate themselves on what's happening, and do something about it. Why should the people suffering the inequality be the ones to explain privilege to white people?

[stone monkey]

In my experience it's usually easier and more effective to find a white person who actually gets it, and then get them to explain it to them. They may actually listen to them.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

QuickTidal, on 10 July 2020 - 06:50 PM, said:

No, all of that is white equivocating bullshit.

BLACK LIVES MATTER.

Full stop.

It doesn't need to be anything else.

The implied "too" is evident in that White lives aren't under threat. This isn't fucking hard.

Some context:

'Mortality rates seldom rise unless a society is subjected to something disastrous, like a major economic crisis, an infectious disease epidemic or war. But there has been an increase in working-age mortality rates for just one group in the United States since 1999, and that's non-Hispanic whites.

"This is a startling finding," said Arjumand Siddiqi, lead author of the study.
Siddiqi, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, went on to say this could be the first time that a widespread population health phenomenon cannot be explained by social or economic status disadvantage, and instead has been driven by "a perceived threat to status."

"The anxiety of whites is coming from a misperception that their dominant status in society is being threatened, which is manifesting in multiple forms of psychological and physiological stress," said Siddiqi.'

https://www.newsweek...-status-1474038

A large part of Trump's appeal to whites (in 'flyover country', in rural areas, in areas that had depended for a long time on factory or mining jobs and are now impoverished, and among the non-college educated) was that they felt like they didn't matter to Washington politicians or the educated elite---a feeling exacerbated by the longstanding scapegoating of POC benefiting from government assistance and from affirmative action.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 10 July 2020 - 08:34 PM

[stone monkey]

I suspect I would probably not be far wrong in hazarding a guess that the mortality rates for working class non-Hispanic whites are still lower than that for working class Blacks or Latinx...

That's a bit like blaming women for the fact that that there aren't enough domestic violence facilities for men.

But then I guess no one really wants those people to actually gain meaningful access to "The American Dream." They might get ideas above their station, after all.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 10 July 2020 - 08:55 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

stone monkey, on 10 July 2020 - 08:48 PM, said:

I suspect I would probably not be far wrong in hazarding a guess that the mortality rates for working class non-Hispanic whites are still lower than that for working class Blacks or Latinx...

That's a bit like blaming women for the fact that that there aren't enough domestic violence facilities for men.

But then I guess no one really wants those people to actually gain meaningful access to "The American Dream." They might get ideas above their station, after all.

Hispanics and Latinx people have a lower mortality rate (and higher life expectancy) than non-Hispanic whites:

'The Hispanic paradox, or Latino paradox, also known as the "epidemiologic paradox," refers to the epidemiological finding that Hispanic and Latino Americans tend to have health outcomes that "paradoxically" are comparable to, or in some cases better than, those of their U.S. non-Hispanic White counterparts, even though Hispanics have lower average income and education. (Low socioeconomic status is almost universally associated with worse population health and higher death rates everywhere in the world.)[1] The paradox usually refers in particular to low mortality among Latinos in the United States relative to non-Hispanic Whites.'

https://en.wikipedia...20even%20though

'Nearly 20 years ago, the mortality rate for high-school-educated white Americans ages 50 to 54 was 30 percent lower than the rate for all black Americans in the same age group. As of 2015, the rate was 30 percent higher.'

https://www.theatlan...g-class/520815/

However, the comparison should be between white people without a college degree and black people without a college degree. I'm having a harder time finding that. You can see it for people age 50-54 in figure 2 of this paper:

https://www.dartmout...n-mortality.pdf

While that, surprisingly, shows higher mortality rate among whites, that's excluding the many Black people who die before age 50.

Asian-Americans have the highest life expectancy of any race, though I'm having difficulty finding recent mortality rate figures that include Asian-Americans.

Suicide rates for Native American / Indigenous peoples have gone up even higher than for whites. However, it seems likely that suicides among Black people are being classified as drug overdoses rather than suicides. I haven't found statistics directly comparing the mortality rate for Native American / Indigenous peoples without a college degree with whites without a college degree, but it's probably higher.

[Edit: I found the 2017 life expectancy at age 25 for people with low education. For Black men it's 71.26; for white men, 73.47. If we included deaths before age 25 the life expectancy for Black men would almost certainly go down significantly more.]

https://jamanetwork....article/2748794

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 11 July 2020 - 09:43 PM