Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.

[krtek a houby]

Hmmnn. Socialism in one country. I'm surprised no-one ever suggested that before.

All countries eventually, of course

 

[PTK]

All countries eventually, of course

There were right-wing Tories in the 1970s who claimed to believe that the Provisional IRA aimed to create "a Cuba", and thereby pose a threat to all things good in Britain.

 

[danny la rouge]

There were right-wing Tories in the 1970s who claimed to believe that the Provisional IRA aimed to create "a Cuba", and thereby pose a threat to all things good in Britain.

Even brown sauce? If a United Ireland threatens brown sauce, it can do one.

 

[JimW]

It was an Irish bloke did the famous Che poster, maybe they were on to something.

 

[A380]

I could go a Country Cork cigar and rum made from the sunny sugar cane fields aroundl Coleraine.

 

[BillRiver]

There were right-wing Tories in the 1970s who claimed to believe that the Provisional IRA aimed to create "a Cuba", and thereby pose a threat to all things good in Britain.

There was a large group of political prisoners (IRA members) on H wing who were educating each other about international socialism, communism, feminism, etc. around that time.

 

[butchersapron]

If you believe that you are too on the glue. That IRA broke with the OIRA precisely because they were getting filled in on that 'stuff'. The right-wing background of the provos - up till right now . This greenwash is bad bad bad.

 

[PTK]

There was a large group of political prisoners (IRA members) on H wing who were educating each other about international socialism, communism, feminism, etc. around that time.

Actually, the claim of which I am thinking was made before the H Blocks came into being.

 

[krtek a houby]

It was an Irish bloke did the famous Che poster, maybe they were on to something.

Jim Fitzpatrick, also did the classic Thin Lizzy album art.

 

[krtek a houby]

Even brown sauce? If a United Ireland threatens brown sauce, it can do one.

You're grand, we've got Chef

 

[JimW]

Jim Fitzpatrick, also did the classic Thin Lizzy album art.

I had his Lebor Gabala

 

[Threshers_Flail]

Has anyone here read What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition by Emma Dabiri?

It's good, although a lot of what she covers has already been done to death on here tbh! She critiques allyship, performative/individualized nature of a lot of ID politics (especially in regards to online activism) and calls for a more coalitional approach to organising around shared interests.

It's quite a frustrating read in that it's getting a lot of traction amongst people (anecdotally) who would've balked at some of the critiques/concerns being raised last summer. I find myself being reminded of debates I had in the past year around these topics, and get frustrated that I couldn't express myself as well as ED does! I guess a lot of people are now coming round to the debates on the limits of ID politics and are in a position to talk about them more openly.

 

[ska invita]

Has anyone here read What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition by Emma Dabiri?

It's good, although a lot of what she covers has already been done to death on here tbh! She critiques allyship, performative/individualized nature of a lot of ID politics (especially in regards to online activism) and calls for a more coalitional approach to organising around shared interests.

It's quite a frustrating read in that it's getting a lot of traction amongst people (anecdotally) who would've balked at some of the critiques/concerns being raised last summer. I find myself being reminded of debates I had in the past year around these topics, and get frustrated that I couldn't express myself as well as ED does! I guess a lot of people are now coming round to the debates on the limits of ID politics and are in a position to talk about them more openly.

Yes I mentioned on the Bell Hooka thread - repeating here in case it is useful and will link the talk:

-------------
ive been thinking if i have any critical thoughts towards Aint I A Woman specifically and the only issue that comes to mind is her talking in absolute groups of "black men", "white women" etc. This is totally justified in the text and given solid historical context as these groupings are created BY slavery-racism, and she shows how the dynamics repeat and remain throughout US history.

ive just heard a talk by Irish-Nigerian author Emma Dibiri - her new book is called "What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition ".


In the talk she went to lengths to distance herself from the title, saying the use of "White People" as a category is a "provocation", and often a successful one at that. But she wanted to make clear how it can be problematic to talk about "white people", "black women" etc etc, as if these categories have solid boundaries, and she despairs when people fall into that thinking. She said she challenges this kind of essentialising-a-group in her book, and also when encountering it in real life, and her politics seemed sound to me - strong class and anti-capitalist groundings.

Overall I dont personally have a problem with this talking about colour-gender-groups, if done properly. There are times its useful to talk about "white men" etc, and as long as it is underpinned in a more nuanced and critical context - though it definitely can carry a danger of being understood crudely and perpetuating colour-gender stereotyping.

To me this boils down to the point that to talk about racism you have to use the language of racism, and theres a degree of vicious circle in doing that. Scientifically there's no such thing as race, but racism is real, and inevitably talking about racist social dynamics adds at least some energy to racialising terms <though ideally in the spirit of destroying racism, not perpetuating it.

Supposedly bell hooks has addressed this elsewhere, I think in All About Love...would be interested to read precisely what she says

-------------

 

[ska invita]

I guess a lot of people are now coming round to the debates on the limits of ID politics and are in a position to talk about them more openly.

yes and i think the process is a healthy one, and we're in a better place for having had a surge of "identity politics" with its positives and negatives as the rough edges get worn away <the broad gist of what ive been trying to say all along on this topic.

 

[flypanam]

I fear that you may be being too generous is assuming that they have thought about in that detail. It's just green rhetoric mostly.

As it is often stated South Korea has had a ministry for reunification in some form or other since 1969. We've a couple of civil servants working out of the dept of the Taoiseach.

 

[Idris2002]

As it is often stated South Korea has had a ministry for reunification in some form or other since 1969. We've a couple of civil servants working out of the dept of the Taoiseach.

In fairness, the Korean peninsula is a rather more . . . challenging space than our four green fields.

 

[dilberto]

On the general point.

Progressive change, by causing the social environment of progressive societies to diverge from their traditional native surviving character, has created a social environment which is no longer compatible with a surviving human population which is manifest in the demographic, cultural and class trends of progressive societies and in adapting to that social environment the values of such societies have become intolerant of their own traditional surviving native character and that intolerance is reflected in the historically extreme identity politics of progressive societies.

 

[belboid]

lol

 

[The39thStep]

On the general point.

Progressive change, by causing the social environment of progressive societies to diverge from their traditional native surviving character, has created a social environment which is no longer compatible with a surviving human population which is manifest in the demographic, cultural and class trends of progressive societies and in adapting to that social environment the values of such societies have become intolerant of their own traditional surviving native character and that intolerance is reflected in the historically extreme identity politics of progressive societies.

That’s why I’m always in the kitchen at parties

 

[Brainaddict]

On the general point.

Progressive change, by causing the social environment of progressive societies to diverge from their traditional native surviving character, has created a social environment which is no longer compatible with a surviving human population which is manifest in the demographic, cultural and class trends of progressive societies and in adapting to that social environment the values of such societies have become intolerant of their own traditional surviving native character and that intolerance is reflected in the historically extreme identity politics of progressive societies.

I don't quite understand all of that due to the minimalist approach to punctuation, but fairly sure that any sentence including 'native character' is going to turn out to be trash.

 

[redsquirrel]

I don't quite understand all of that due to the minimalist approach to punctuation, but fairly sure that any sentence including 'native character' is going to turn out to be trash.

Wot BA said

 

[8ball]

I don't quite understand all of that due to the minimalist approach to punctuation, but fairly sure that any sentence including 'native character' is going to turn out to be trash.

I assumed two extra commas, cancelled out some bracketed terms and a tautology masquerading as reasoning, and the algebra suggests “progressives = extremists” as the full meaning of the paragraph.

 

[NoXion]

On the general point.

Progressive change, by causing the social environment of progressive societies to diverge from their traditional native surviving character, has created a social environment which is no longer compatible with a surviving human population which is manifest in the demographic, cultural and class trends of progressive societies and in adapting to that social environment the values of such societies have become intolerant of their own traditional surviving native character and that intolerance is reflected in the historically extreme identity politics of progressive societies.

As much as I have disdain for bourgeois progressivism, it's not the reason why fewer people are having kids. The reason is capitalism; have you seen how expensive it is to raise a child these days? Have you not noticed how the current employment situation leaves most people with no time for reproduction, let alone the funds required?

 

[rekil]

It was an Irish bloke did the famous Che poster, maybe they were on to something.

Years of this assadist shit from himself lordblessusandsaveus.



Obligatory link to you'll never guess who.

Spoiler

 

[CNT36]

Like a fucking plague.

 

[butchersapron]

Moving on from dilberto's turgid regurgitation of half-digested new right and identitarian ideas, rendered even more confused by the inept attempt to disguise their views and do a who are the real racists eh at the same time...

Thanks butchersapron

I keep nonsite on my radar, so I’d spotted that, but didn’t think of posting it here.

They have just put up new symposium on Checking Your Privilege? Perspectives on the Politics of White Identity, which is a talk/debate thing between Katherine Rader, Ashley Jardina, Walter Benn Michaels & Hadass Silver. The first two reprsenting an almost comical view of the ID guilt crap. The latter two are, of course, much better, and WBM gets in a few good shots:

So white identity does a lot of work, and—since naturalizing the inequalities produced by capitalism confronts rich people not with the prospect of their extinction but only with the need to add a few black and brown people to their mix—it does it mainly for rich white people. Every time a white student at Wharton checks his privilege, a venture capitalist gets her wings.5

(There's full vid for the missing presentations btw - and to get to to the essays you need to click on the authors name which then opens it within the page, took me a while to work that out)

The latest issue of the mag is a bit rubbish btw, but there was one fantastic piece that deserves wider circulation (and this week the NFL dropped the plans that the article discusses):

Betting on “The Greek”: How the NFL Is Banking on Biological Racism

Yet a resurgence of racialized medicine, legitimized by a reductionist preoccupation with racial disparities, has produced a new wave of reactionary thinking and practice that threatens black players. On August 25 of last year, two retired NFL players filed legal actions against the NFL in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. In their filings, Najeh Davenport and Kevin Henry allege that the league employs racially discriminatory criteria in evaluating former players for neurocognitive impairments, the presence of which are used to determine eligibility for compensation related to the NFL’s landmark 2013 billion-dollar concussion settlement. In short, the suits allege that NFL-approved doctors are instructed to use different scales for scoring cognitive functioning among black and white former players, with the scale for black players being set at a lower threshold. These differential benchmarks, Davenport and Henry claim, have been used to deny them and other black claimants access to payouts for dementia and other neurocognitive impairments stemming from head traumas sustained while playing in the NFL.3

For its part, the NFL does not seem to be denying these allegations. Rather, it claims that the use of racial “adjustments” in scoring neurocognitive test results reflects standard medical practice and was included as part of the 2013 legal settlement. (My bold)

Race,” then, no more explains patterns of neurocognitive functioning among ex-NFL players today than it explained the enslavement of those descended from Africa in the antebellum United States. Since race is a historical construct with no biological basis, it is incapable of making things happen or explaining anything. The degradation associated with slavery produced the notion of racial inferiority, not the other way around. Similarly, racial difference does not produce the allegedly lower average levels of cognitive functioning among African Americans today—though the medical practice of treating race as an independent variable in analyzing neurocognitive scores reinforces this gravely misguided and dangerous notion. Fields and her sister, Karen E. Fields, refer to this tendency to misattribute material causation to race as “racecraft,” analogous to a belief in witchcraft.7

 

[Pickman's model]

.

 

[Pickman's model]

I don't quite understand all of that due to the minimalist approach to punctuation, but fairly sure that any sentence including 'native character' is going to turn out to be trash.

I do understand it and it's even worse

 

[Diamond]

Can I just recommend the following book?

Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity--And Why This Harms Everybody: Amazon.co.uk: 9781634312028: Books

Buy Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity--And Why This Harms Everybody by (ISBN: 9781634312028) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

www.amazon.co.uk

It's a fascinating read that connects up the kind of stuff that dissuaded me from academia towards the end of my undergrad history degree (Spivak, and faculty politics mainly) into what we now call "woke" stuff - probably better framed as "Critical Theory".

 

[Colin Hunt]

Can I just recommend the following book?

Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity--And Why This Harms Everybody: Amazon.co.uk: 9781634312028: Books

Buy Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity--And Why This Harms Everybody by (ISBN: 9781634312028) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

www.amazon.co.uk

It's a fascinating read that connects up the kind of stuff that dissuaded me from academia towards the end of my undergrad history degree (Spivak, and faculty politics mainly) into what we now call "woke" stuff - probably better framed as "Critical Theory".

From what I can tell this seems to be James Lindsay's career path.

Step 1: Make some generalisations and misrepresentations about a diverse group of theorists.
Step 2: Make a tortured link from those generalisations to contemporary social justice movements.
Step 3: Become a darling of the right-wing media.
Step 4: Partner with a Christian nationalist to set up a fake liberal website and spend most of your time laundering right-wing talking points (A cabal of Jews was trying to bring down Western civilisation from the inside and that's why the far-right can recruit more anti-semites; queer theory is in bed with radical Islamism; climate justice is communism; etc).
Step 5: Profit? If you haven't already profited enough from steps 1-4, that is.

That book isn't really serious scholarship, but then it's not supposed to be.