3 ms·

> The tendency to valorize Native Americans as somehow above material trends, not prone to waste, etc. etc. is a cultural invention of the latter 20th century a

by wahern 3y ago

> The tendency to valorize Native Americans as somehow above material trends, not prone to waste, etc. etc. is a cultural invention of the latter 20th century and the counterculture movement. Perceiving peoples living outside industrialized society (or whatever is perceived as locally modern) this way is definitely not an invention of the latter 20th century. The flip side to being "less civilized" is having access to ancient concepts and norms that are more "natural" and "wholistic", and Native Americans and others were absolutely described in this ostensibly positive light just as much as they were in a negative, derogatory light. All peoples have done this throughout time; pick any cultural group anywhere and at any time and you'll also find another group who were the objective of such perceptions and ideas. If latter 20th century and 21st century leftist thinkers wonder how or why such reductive, dehumanizing thinking could become ingrained in a culture, or if they wonder if the people who promoted these reductive identities had ill or good intentions, they need only reflect upon their own narratives.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
smcl 3y ago
I feel like the issue of whether he left are the real racists (as you seem to be implying) or whether they infantilise indigineous people is a separate one
- wahern 3y ago
  I didn't say the left are the real racists. Racism comes in many shapes and forms, some more obvious than others. (FWIW, I grew up one town away from an infamous "sundown town", where people didn't feel the need to use dog whistles, innuendo, or even bother justifying facially racist ideas and behaviors. I've seen what that sort of racism looks like, watched it morph, and haven't lost track of its whereabouts.) Contemporary criticisms by the left have many salient and important things to say. Separating the constructive criticisms from the intrinsic infirmities isn't easy, however. (Some people, like Tucker Carlson, are better at it than others, and use their skill to loathsome ends.) But one way to start is to identify the problematic threads which their proposed solutions actually share with the harmful dynamics they claim to address. The left ultimately embraced identity politics because identities can be empowering, culturally and of course politically. But identities are fundamentally and necessarily reductive, from which derives both its empowering capacity, but also derives the ability to readily label people and easily attach presumptions about how certain groups of people behave or should be treated, and to do so systematically and comprehensively. Such labels may seem positive one day, but can easily--perhaps even invariably--evolve into negative stereotypes as culture shifts. Moreover, identities invite one group to project their beliefs about themselves onto other groups, so they can be just as if not more empowering to entrenched powers as they are to the disenfranchised. Thus, for example, the classic example of the Noble Savage, where Europeans projected their own criticisms about their rapidly changing, industrializing societies onto native peoples in what at face value was often a positive light (and often sincerely intended by some as positive), but which nonetheless furthered deeply harmful stereotypes and presumptions about the cultural, political, and moral capacity of those groups and individuals. The parallels between Noble Savage narratives and today are crystal clear, IMO. It's how you get leftist defenses of "colored people's time" and similar stereotypes (e.g. as in the infamous Smithsonian Poster[1]) as testifying to a true and inherent trait of some racial groups; it can be understood as a positive trait by upper middle class professionals who bemoan the stressful demands of their occupations and wish for a more "relaxed" culture, but that positively bent characterization is fleeting, and its fundamentally controlled by the professional class and subject to their whims, not the disenfranchised to whom it may be intended to defend. [1] See "Future Orientation" and "Time" at https://web.archive.org/web/20200715192955im_/https://nmaahc.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_caption/public/images/captioned/whiteculture_info_1.png https://web.archive.org/web/20200715192955im_/https://nmaahc..., via http://web.archive.org/web/20200716005515/https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness http://web.archive.org/web/20200716005515/https://nmaahc.si....

by wahern 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

smcl 3y ago

I feel like the issue of whether he left are the real racists (as you seem to be implying) or whether they infantilise indigineous people is a separate one

wahern 3y ago
I didn't say the left are the real racists. Racism comes in many shapes and forms, some more obvious than others. (FWIW, I grew up one town away from an infamous "sundown town", where people didn't feel the need to use dog whistles, innuendo, or even bother justifying facially racist ideas and behaviors. I've seen what that sort of racism looks like, watched it morph, and haven't lost track of its whereabouts.) Contemporary criticisms by the left have many salient and important things to say. Separating the constructive criticisms from the intrinsic infirmities isn't easy, however. (Some people, like Tucker Carlson, are better at it than others, and use their skill to loathsome ends.) But one way to start is to identify the problematic threads which their proposed solutions actually share with the harmful dynamics they claim to address. The left ultimately embraced identity politics because identities can be empowering, culturally and of course politically. But identities are fundamentally and necessarily reductive, from which derives both its empowering capacity, but also derives the ability to readily label people and easily attach presumptions about how certain groups of people behave or should be treated, and to do so systematically and comprehensively. Such labels may seem positive one day, but can easily--perhaps even invariably--evolve into negative stereotypes as culture shifts. Moreover, identities invite one group to project their beliefs about themselves onto other groups, so they can be just as if not more empowering to entrenched powers as they are to the disenfranchised. Thus, for example, the classic example of the Noble Savage, where Europeans projected their own criticisms about their rapidly changing, industrializing societies onto native peoples in what at face value was often a positive light (and often sincerely intended by some as positive), but which nonetheless furthered deeply harmful stereotypes and presumptions about the cultural, political, and moral capacity of those groups and individuals. The parallels between Noble Savage narratives and today are crystal clear, IMO. It's how you get leftist defenses of "colored people's time" and similar stereotypes (e.g. as in the infamous Smithsonian Poster[1]) as testifying to a true and inherent trait of some racial groups; it can be understood as a positive trait by upper middle class professionals who bemoan the stressful demands of their occupations and wish for a more "relaxed" culture, but that positively bent characterization is fleeting, and its fundamentally controlled by the professional class and subject to their whims, not the disenfranchised to whom it may be intended to defend. [1] See "Future Orientation" and "Time" at https://web.archive.org/web/20200715192955im_/https://nmaahc.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/image_caption/public/images/captioned/whiteculture_info_1.png https://web.archive.org/web/20200715192955im_/https://nmaahc..., via http://web.archive.org/web/20200716005515/https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness http://web.archive.org/web/20200716005515/https://nmaahc.si....