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I mostly hear feminists and anti-racism/anti-oppression activists argue very much the opposite. Your job is to progress toward being less racist and less sexist

by lkbm 12y ago

I mostly hear feminists and anti-racism/anti-oppression activists argue very much the opposite. Your job is to progress toward being less racist and less sexist. It's about rejecting the view that people are intentionally racist or good people, but rather that we all have countless implicit biases and a system that promotes inequality, and we have to actively move toward _less_ bias. The idea that some of us just aren't racist/sexist/classist/etc. is very much what is being argued against by "most people who want to talk about *isms". Obviously, I can't provide a full survey of all thought on this matter, but here's the most recent racism article I've read: http://www.salon.com/2015/04/10/white_americas_racial_illiteracy_why_our_national_conversation_is_poisoned_from_the_start_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2015/04/10/white_americas_racial_illite... I think it does a decent idea of expressing that it's not a binary.

moron4hire 12y ago
I just think the binary approach is an incredibly naive, fruitless way of looking at an issue, one that suggests that resolution isn't the goal, but rather the clash between ideologies themselves is. When you treat the negative spaces of non-activity as equally evil to the positive spaces of activity, you shove people who are straddling the middle away from your side and towards your opposition. That keeps the middle ground right where it has always been, and nothing ever gets better. Mechanically, that's just incredibly stupid. What's the message of this Salon article? "White people, you're always going to be a part of the problem, and nothing you can do will be considered part of the solution, because your desire to be involved is part of the problem. You are always wrong." Do articles like this make it more or less likely to convert people who have started to think about it? To me, "you're always going to be wrong" is just driving people away. It is too easy to turn that into "then why even try?" If that's not the message, then someone in one of the sociology departments of universities across America needs to come up with a much better way of talking about the issue, because that's how I and a lot of people take it. Outside of the recent spat of police shootings, the white-privilege topic is the only one I've personally been seeing coming out of academic circles and into the public. I guess that's part of my privilege that I get to live in a world not surrounded by concern about race. But I'm not a social worker or community organizer or politician or sociologist. I'm a software engineer. I'm busy making a living for myself. That doesn't make me a part of the problem or the solution. That just makes me a person. I'm not asking to be held up and congratulated for not being actively racist. I'm just asking to also not be vilified for keeping my nose in my own business. That's my point of the issue not being binary. "You're either for us or against us" is a totalitarian rhetoric, one that is not compatible with healthy democracies (though I belabor under no illusion that we live in a healthy democracy).
deleted 12y ago
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by lkbm 12y ago

moron4hire 12y ago

I just think the binary approach is an incredibly naive, fruitless way of looking at an issue, one that suggests that resolution isn't the goal, but rather the clash between ideologies themselves is. When you treat the negative spaces of non-activity as equally evil to the positive spaces of activity, you shove people who are straddling the middle away from your side and towards your opposition. That keeps the middle ground right where it has always been, and nothing ever gets better. Mechanically, that's just incredibly stupid. What's the message of this Salon article? "White people, you're always going to be a part of the problem, and nothing you can do will be considered part of the solution, because your desire to be involved is part of the problem. You are always wrong." Do articles like this make it more or less likely to convert people who have started to think about it? To me, "you're always going to be wrong" is just driving people away. It is too easy to turn that into "then why even try?" If that's not the message, then someone in one of the sociology departments of universities across America needs to come up with a much better way of talking about the issue, because that's how I and a lot of people take it. Outside of the recent spat of police shootings, the white-privilege topic is the only one I've personally been seeing coming out of academic circles and into the public. I guess that's part of my privilege that I get to live in a world not surrounded by concern about race. But I'm not a social worker or community organizer or politician or sociologist. I'm a software engineer. I'm busy making a living for myself. That doesn't make me a part of the problem or the solution. That just makes me a person. I'm not asking to be held up and congratulated for not being actively racist. I'm just asking to also not be vilified for keeping my nose in my own business. That's my point of the issue not being binary. "You're either for us or against us" is a totalitarian rhetoric, one that is not compatible with healthy democracies (though I belabor under no illusion that we live in a healthy democracy).

deleted 12y ago

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