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Intersectionality

This is even better

daddyappropriation-80iWEY.jpg
 
sihhi said:
It non-black people can't use the clapping emoji on various forms of social media or use "preach" as an exclamative or any form of African American vernacular English.
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How many years (or months) before the woke people on twitter call for segregation of races to avoid such atrocities?
 
Personally, I'm all for 'cultural appropriation' as they call it. If anything we need more of it just to demonstrate that culture is not a static, homogenous, unchanging blob that needs protecting. Culture always has, and always should be, encouraged adapt and intermingle and cross-fertilise. To argue otherwise is to claim that it somehow has an 'essence' or purity that can only be tarnished by outsiders. And there's a proper dodgy conclusion to that line of logic.

Saying that I won't be getting corn-rows anytime soon.
 
That Shanley Daddy thing was ridiculous, yes - and she got loads of shit for it. She's young, she doesn't know that rude heterosexual songs about 'daddy' date back to the 20s at least.

I'm not going to read this whole thread but I do think, if you're a white man shouting loudly about how silly the whole idea of intersectionalism is (because all that matters is class, and you're working class) you should possibly have a look at yourself.
 
bimble said:
That Shanley Daddy thing was ridiculous, yes - and she got loads of shit for it. She's young, she doesn't know that rude heterosexual songs about 'daddy' date back to the 20s at least.

I'm not going to read this whole thread but I do think, if you're a white man shouting loudly about how silly the whole idea of intersectionalism is (because all that matters is class, and you're working class) you should possibly have a look at yourself.
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Sure, intersectionalism as a response to the setbacks of the left and a systematic field trying to explain varieties of oppression, I agree.

But I haven't seen these crude twitter/tumblr politics advocated outside of academic institutions/well educated people.

And then, these people will natter on about disability, but won't for one second consider that disability is an enforced community of identity and can't be conflated with the nation or something to that effect. Which really irked me at the time when I was more militant about these things.

These days I've moved on and am more live and let live. I'm not going to try and educate people on how they should try and understand their oppression - and frankly there is an element of paternalism to that which I can't abide anymore. I'm too far removed from that milieu and frankly hated my time discussing anything with the student left. I'm also more sympathetic to peoples anger, even if crudely expressed on twitter or tumblr. so whatever.
 
ItWillNeverWork said:
Personally, I'm all for 'cultural appropriation' as they call it. If anything we need more of it just to demonstrate that culture is not a static, homogenous, unchanging blob that needs protecting. Culture always has, and always should be, encouraged adapt and intermingle and cross-fertilise. To argue otherwise is to claim that it somehow has an 'essence' or purity that can only be tarnished by outsiders. And there's a proper dodgy conclusion to that line of logic.

Saying that I won't be getting corn-rows anytime soon.
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The argument - outside of teenage student politics - isn't about (for example) whether its okay for white folks to wear dreads. It's about some white folk nicking bits of African-American culture and adopting and presenting it as heir own. Claiming Elvis Presley created rock n roll, for example. Which is offensive.

While it [opposing appropriation] is driven to absurd lengths by some young people, the mainstream desire to decry such behaviour smacks of stupid others not knowing their place.
 
belboid said:
The argument - outside of teenage student politics - isn't about (for example) whether its okay for white folks to wear dreads. It's about some white folk nicking bits of African-American culture and adopting and presenting it as heir own. Claiming Elvis Presley created rock n roll, for example. Which is offensive.

While it [opposing appropriation] is driven to absurd lengths by some young people, the mainstream desire to decry such behaviour smacks of stupid others not knowing their place.
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Surely the intersectionality stuff is mainstream now given its deployment against Corbyn here by both the Labour Right and David Cameron and in the US by Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders.
 
J Ed said:
This is even better

daddyappropriation-80iWEY.jpg
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Shanley Normal-Felcher, you have pleaded guilty to the charges brought by this court, and it is now my duty to pass sentence.

You are an habitual tweeter, who accepts blocking as an occupational hazard, and presumably accepts account throttling in the same casual manner.

We therefore feel constrained to commit you to the maximum term allowed for these offences: you will lose all WhatsApp, Snapchat and Instagram privileges for five years.
 
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bimble said:
I'm not going to read this whole thread but I do think, if you're a white man shouting loudly about how silly the whole idea of intersectionalism is (because all that matters is class, and you're working class) you should possibly have a look at yourself.
Click to expand...
Oddly, the further what you might call a class based traditional left movement recedes into the past, the more I seem to hear about people supposedly claiming that only class matters. A weird phenomenon. Who are these class only warriors? They must be a vanishingly small minority if they exist at all. A bit like dismissing feminism on the grounds of people who only care about board room representation or something perhaps.

I'd also add that if your politics is totally dominated by the middle class/university educated, and deliberately uses a rapidly expanding and unecessary jargon to exclude others, that maybe criticisms from working class people might be worth taking on board rather than dismissing them. Actually, I thought that was what intersectionality was meant to be about, although admittedly it's such a crude tool that it in practice seems to do the opposite of its stated aims.

Student politics is generally going to be silly I suppose. It most likely was when it was more socialist/communist influenced as well, so it shouldn't be judged too harshly on those grounds maybe, but there's plenty of legitimate criticisms of intersectionality.

I think Walter Benn Michaels called this stuff capitalism's HR department, which is a bit glib but also has more than a grain of truth in it. It gives those familiar with academia, the right buzzwords, with the right kind of articulateness, a good way to win internet points and maybe progress careers in various institutions - what does it do for me, as a theoretical tool? What does it do for my family, my community? Somehow we actually negotiate this ground in our everyday lives without all the weird clunky stuff. It looks like yet another example of where ordinary people are in advance of the 'left'/'progressives'. I'm not saying there's not problems, but this solution isn't very appealing, particularly when it means those who know nothing about me or my life declaring they can better speak for me and my experience (frequently contradicting it), and worse still in some cases making money parasiting off the back of it as columnists and academics.

[edited for grammar]
 
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belboid said:
Clapping is African-American??
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There was an interesting TV programme about six years ago about "rednecks", which argued that the clapping that came to be known as being a "thing" in black churches, was a follow-on to the "field" services some of the early white indentured labourers had/were permitted, back before black bodies became cheap enough to be bought wholesale for field labour, and to what the Scots settlements after the Jacobite rising brought with them in terms of worship. It was supposedly used as a time-keeping method and rhythm track for hymns.
 
ItWillNeverWork said:
Personally, I'm all for 'cultural appropriation' as they call it. If anything we need more of it just to demonstrate that culture is not a static, homogenous, unchanging blob that needs protecting. Culture always has, and always should be, encouraged adapt and intermingle and cross-fertilise. To argue otherwise is to claim that it somehow has an 'essence' or purity that can only be tarnished by outsiders. And there's a proper dodgy conclusion to that line of logic.

Saying that I won't be getting corn-rows anytime soon.
Click to expand...

Cultural hybridity is - although plenty of people refuse to acknowledge it - unavoidable, so to go on about "cultural appropriation" as though it's a cultural crime does display some ignorance of what culture is. That said, if one does *borrow from other cultures, it should - if possible - be done respectfully.

*No, my little intersectional warriors, by "borrow" I don't mean having dreads, or cooking Cantonese cuisine when you've never been further east than Cromer.
 
bimble said:
That Shanley Daddy thing was ridiculous, yes - and she got loads of shit for it. She's young, she doesn't know that rude heterosexual songs about 'daddy' date back to the 20s at least.

I'm not going to read this whole thread but I do think, if you're a white man shouting loudly about how silly the whole idea of intersectionalism is (because all that matters is class, and you're working class) you should possibly have a look at yourself.
Click to expand...

Now there's a surprise!
 
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