danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
We've managed thus far without memes. Can we keep it that way? Cheers.
Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.
- Thread starter danny la rouge
- Start date
The inclusion of this witless piece of unneccessary info, has, in my eyes at least, diminished a piece about prejudice into a kind of aspirational lifestylee thing. Soz Idris, I know this is actually the point you are making (regarding how we place ourselves in a complex hierarchy of overt and covert stratifications)...and my feeling is one of intense annoyance rather than dismissal of the essential point of the article...but really?
Is this a referral to my comment Danny? Not entirely sure what is meant by a meme (always thought it was a snappy cartoon) and yep, I suppose it is a derail from the wider topic...but truly enraging nonetheless (and has the effect of nullifying other messages when it appears that an important point seems distilled down to lifestyle fluff. Head of model-worthy hair ffs!
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
No, the pics of Leo.
Ah OK. I am feeling a bit weepy, prickly and defensive as daughter has fallen out with me. Probably best to go off to the allotment for the afternoon.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Sorry to hear that. Families are tough. Look after yourself.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Beat it, Gromit.
AllEternalsHeck
Active Member
History graduate student.
Latest development is that the uni are supporting her anyway. Nice to see the faculty also believe that progressive stacking is an 'innovative pedagogical method', white male students are always the least marginalised, and anybody who disagrees must be a nazi. When these views are institutionalised is it any wonder than new generations of grad students are adopting these politics.
andysays
Love and solidarity
Interesting (or maybe not) that the tutor/teacher's original claim was that prog.stack is a "well established technique", whereas the Penn History statement describes it as "innovative", which is rather different.
Can you point out where the statement says, or even hints, that "white male students are always the least marginalised, and anybody who disagrees must be a nazi", because it seems to me there is plenty to critcise about prog.stack (and IDpols in general), without resorting to silly hyperbollocks.
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
I want mod privileges for this thread and red cards. You're all on a warning.
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
AllEternalsHeck
Active Member
Fair enough I may have got a little carried away there.
The teacher did describe her use of the technique as 'calling on black students more readily than white men'. So that implies that she is stacking based on race rather than other attributes, with whites assumed to be least marginalised.
If I were to comment on twitter that I think it's a stupid technique, they'd absolutely group me in with the nazis. There doesn't seem to be any insight whatsoever that some of the negative response might be from the left or just ordinary people. You either fully support it or you're the enemy.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
'marginalized students'
They're graduates, so early 20s or older, have completed a first degree and done pretty well in order to gain admittance to grad school, and have secured some kind of funding for that grad school. Yet they're being judged on a scale of relative marginalisation that requires special treatment by their race and sex.
All I see here is a really fucking shite teacher. The teacher no doubt needs to reflect on their unconscious biases (we all do), but to resort to a prescriptive conscious bias as a matter of ideology among adults of a certain level of achievement and ability is insulting to them, all of them, wherever they may lie in the stack.
They're graduates, so early 20s or older, have completed a first degree and done pretty well in order to gain admittance to grad school, and have secured some kind of funding for that grad school. Yet they're being judged on a scale of relative marginalisation that requires special treatment by their race and sex.
All I see here is a really fucking shite teacher. The teacher no doubt needs to reflect on their unconscious biases (we all do), but to resort to a prescriptive conscious bias as a matter of ideology among adults of a certain level of achievement and ability is insulting to them, all of them, wherever they may lie in the stack.
AllEternalsHeck
Active Member
She doesn't teach grad students she is a grad student. Most likely teaches some undergrads as part of her grad school duties. Your point still stands though. I'd also question why an early career education who isn't even a doctor or professor wants to introduce these novel methods: just go in and teach the material surely.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Ah, ok, I got that wrong. In that case, she's also brand new to teaching. I'm willing to cut a bit more slack in that case - my point may still stand, but in a slightly more wobbly way. I'd question her supervisor and the advice she was given, though.
ManchesterBeth
Well-Known Member
I did say in the post you quoted why I'm starting to wear thin with the concept people of colour...
Then you come out with that unfounded nazis shite essentially accusing her of .. reverse white supremacy and I think to myself, not this again. Whether she's economically privileged or not thats a cuntish low blow and i hardly think that you can just chalk it down to this recent wave of ID politics.
Your problem, Artichoke, is expecting too much from university politics without criticising the fetishised vacuum said politics exist in - unless it's socialism via the occult powers of the professors mindset? I can think of someone who is at least half honest about that...
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AllEternalsHeck
Active Member
I only quoted you to answer your question about what she teaches. The rest of the post wasn't aimed at you specifically.
I'm not accusing her of reverse white supremacy I just think she's a typical misguided liberal.
ManchesterBeth
Well-Known Member
yeh cos race doesn't striate class.
Of course it would be shit if this was based on skin pigmentation. But that is the liberal conception of race with the attendant mess of white passing privilege.
I still don't know what progressive stacking is. I'm giving this history lecturer the benefit of the doubt here not assuming its just a crude approximation of the wheel of oppression in the classroom. If it in fact is, then she's not a very good historian, irrespective of skin colour.
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BigTom
Well-Known Member
Afaik progressive stacking means that you decide who speaks based on their oppression/privilege rankings. More oppressed speak in preference to more privileged.
The idea is that more privileged people feel more confident, able and entitled to speak than more oppressed people, and that if you simply call people to speak your discussions will be dominated by the most privileged people.
It's been around in some form in socialist meetings but i'd only seen it used as a proto form in meetings that would enforce male/female speakers in turn. Came across it by name and more oppressions in USA occupy demos however many years ago that was now.
In practice it seems to become very much about the visible oppressions (race, sex/gender, visible disabilities) and not so much the invisible ones (sexuality, invisible disabilities, class). So basically consciously calling poc/women to speak and telling white men not to.
Which is sort of fine, in that there's clearly issues around the dominance of white men in political discussions (and everywhere else) that needs to be addressed, except it claims to be much wider than that but tends to fall into the whitecishetmale issue of those aren't the only factors but they are consistently privileged in a way that is not helpful even within idpol stuff.
It either needs to be explicit about being about particular identities, like the male/female alternation was, or it has to go into such detail that it can only work with an abacus of oppression, which can't exist in reality, same issue as utilitarianism. So being liberals they say each person must decide for themselves, an i more or less oppressed than others in this meeting, and choose to speak or not based on that answer. Which might work if we were all the liberal's wet dream of pure rational, moral, actors.
So it necessarily fails imo, and along the way alienates many people by excluding them from a process that claims to include them, as well as the people it aims to exclude.
As a teaching tool, teachers should know which students are not contributing and try to bring them into discussions. If a poc student contributes a lot they shouldn't be called ahead of a white student who doesn't. A teacher (perhaps more difficult for a grad student teacher, not sure what kind of teaching they do) should be able to learn which students need help or defined space or whatever for them to contribute without making crude assumptions based on race or sex.
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ManchesterBeth
Well-Known Member
So it is oppression wheel semantics then. sounds really dumb, just that right amount of quantity of X shit which i hate, irrespective of content.
And let's not get into a discussion about white male dominance in the socialist movement, man, we could be here for ages.
And let's not get into a discussion about white male dominance in the socialist movement, man, we could be here for ages.
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andysays
Love and solidarity
From what I've read, and maybe I've missed some detail, she has been attacked specifically for calling on black students more readily than white ones, so perhaps it's understandable that her defence has focussed on why she is doing that, specifically. A better defence (assuming we accept there's any validity whatever in what she's attempting to do) might involve explaining that it's not just black students who she's encouraging, but also those who are "less privileged" in various other ways.
And an even better approach might be to focus on individuals who are less confident/eloquent/whatever, based on their actual behaviour as individuals rather than focussing on assumed membership of supposed oppressed minority groups, which as others have already pointed out, is what good teachers will be doing anyway.
And I agree with the tendency for extreme you're-either-100%-with-us-or-100%-part-of-the-oppressors polarisation within much of the IDpol camp. which is why I wouldn't dream of getting involved with any of this business on twitter and am slightly wary about weighing in even here.
seventh bullet
sovietwave
I know. He's insecure around those who toil with their hands.
As you should!
He's still resentful because I didn't take too kindly to being patronisingly treated like a rough diamond that needs a good polish.
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
I'm sorry you feel that way, but that's not how it was.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
brixtonscot
Well-Known Member
Very interesting thread , though I do not have time to read it all , so will add this link ( from USA )
apologies if already posted
"The original Rainbow Coalition, which was set up by the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party in response to this oversight, offers an inspiring example of how identity politics can result in cross-class and interracial solidarity rather than fragmentation of the Left. Because many members of the Rainbow Coalition were also youth organizers and leaders of Martin Luther King’s Chicago Freedom Movement, the civil rights leader would eventually adopt a class-based ideology. It is for this reason that the Rainbow Coalition’s idealism and identity politics resonated with all the groups that merged to form the collective. The broad appeal of the Rainbow Coalition’s rhetoric and idealism went on to be exploited by numerous political candidates from the Democratic Party, blinding activists on the left into supporting a party that has failed continuously to live up to its stated ideals."
The Original Rainbow Coalition: An Example of Universal Identity Politics
apologies if already posted
"The original Rainbow Coalition, which was set up by the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party in response to this oversight, offers an inspiring example of how identity politics can result in cross-class and interracial solidarity rather than fragmentation of the Left. Because many members of the Rainbow Coalition were also youth organizers and leaders of Martin Luther King’s Chicago Freedom Movement, the civil rights leader would eventually adopt a class-based ideology. It is for this reason that the Rainbow Coalition’s idealism and identity politics resonated with all the groups that merged to form the collective. The broad appeal of the Rainbow Coalition’s rhetoric and idealism went on to be exploited by numerous political candidates from the Democratic Party, blinding activists on the left into supporting a party that has failed continuously to live up to its stated ideals."
The Original Rainbow Coalition: An Example of Universal Identity Politics
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
If anybody wants an illustration of how toxic identity politics can be, here is an illustration of an exchange I just had in an intersectional Facebook page (incidentally I think intersectional theory has many valid incites into how discrimination and oppression works, but many of its supposed adhrents have a crude grasp on these).
So the OP (a white woman) posted up a discussion she had with an East European man in which he was defending some racially insensitive comments made by another person. He said that he didn’t think the comments were racist, merely poorly phrased. The OP said ‘as a white man you don’t get to say what is and isn’t racist’ and he replied ‘as an Eastern European man living in Germany, believe me I have experienced racism myself’. The OP then told him it he could never experience racism and blocked him.
In the subsequent discussion somebody said that while he thought the east-European was wrong to defend the racist comments, the OP was also wrong to reject the notion that east Europeans could experience racism and he posted up a bunch of links about the discrimination and violence many EEs experience in Western Europe. The OP and others respond that this is ‘xenophobia not racism’.
I then argue that the discrimiantion and prejudice that east Europeans experience cannot simply be described as xenophobia in all cases, I point to the history of anti-slavism in Europe and the ways in which Slavic people have been racialised and regarded as inferior, in much the way Irish people, Jews and the Roma have been. I posted a link to a short Wikipedia entry on the subject.
She responds instantly with *sigh*. When I pressed her to explain her response she said she didn’t need to read the link to know it is not racism, and said that she didn’t owe any ‘emotional labour’ to me as a white man. Others then jump in accusing me of derailing the conversation and decentering the racism black people experince. The OP says she ‘is so done with white people’.
And then it goes full circle. Another non-white poster has a go at the OP for calling out white people as if she is not white herself. He says she can’t do that because it de-centres her own whiteness and of course she starts apologising and what not.
I generally don’t bother engaging in this group but every few months I have a go and then remember why I don’t bother.
So the OP (a white woman) posted up a discussion she had with an East European man in which he was defending some racially insensitive comments made by another person. He said that he didn’t think the comments were racist, merely poorly phrased. The OP said ‘as a white man you don’t get to say what is and isn’t racist’ and he replied ‘as an Eastern European man living in Germany, believe me I have experienced racism myself’. The OP then told him it he could never experience racism and blocked him.
In the subsequent discussion somebody said that while he thought the east-European was wrong to defend the racist comments, the OP was also wrong to reject the notion that east Europeans could experience racism and he posted up a bunch of links about the discrimination and violence many EEs experience in Western Europe. The OP and others respond that this is ‘xenophobia not racism’.
I then argue that the discrimiantion and prejudice that east Europeans experience cannot simply be described as xenophobia in all cases, I point to the history of anti-slavism in Europe and the ways in which Slavic people have been racialised and regarded as inferior, in much the way Irish people, Jews and the Roma have been. I posted a link to a short Wikipedia entry on the subject.
She responds instantly with *sigh*. When I pressed her to explain her response she said she didn’t need to read the link to know it is not racism, and said that she didn’t owe any ‘emotional labour’ to me as a white man. Others then jump in accusing me of derailing the conversation and decentering the racism black people experince. The OP says she ‘is so done with white people’.
And then it goes full circle. Another non-white poster has a go at the OP for calling out white people as if she is not white herself. He says she can’t do that because it de-centres her own whiteness and of course she starts apologising and what not.
I generally don’t bother engaging in this group but every few months I have a go and then remember why I don’t bother.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Good post.
This is worth quoting. The problem is that the crude grasp has become the mainstream of its presentation.
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