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Urban v's the Commentariat

Idris2002 said:
I think this may be related to the particular conditions in the US. IIRC Angela Davis was opposed to mandatory sentencing for rape, because she held that in the "tough on crime" dogwhistle politics of post-Nixon America, this wouldn't help reduce rape, but would be simply used as a stick to beat Black people with.
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Yes I think a lot of it is people slurping up US ideas but being unable to see how they don't apply in the UK. The daftest example in my personal experience was someone (in a discussion in the UK) referring to black people (living in the UK) as "African Americans" - a stretch so far that he faltered as he said it and we were able to clear it up.

The thing is, this guy wasn't a jargon-spouting loony, he was just from an English city which was pretty much all white, the discussion was taking place in Brixton and so he was feeling nervous and trying to get it right. This would have been in the 90s when the term "African American" had just emerged and was the new correct one - in the USA. (where it has a logic and a resonance).
 
co-op said:
:D
I said that because I'm a bit neurotic about using Proper Theory on U75, there are a lot of people who know more about it than me. I read about Marx probably over 30 years ago now and I've forgotten a lot of what I read too.
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I'm not a very developed marxist thinker either but I don't think theory is something we need to be expert in to use it to help us think creatively. I don't think social change comes about through people being expert in theory so I find the idea that to post in p&p you have to 'know about' politics a bit weird. Surely politics is thinking and doing, trying things out..well, the kind of politics I want to be involved in is.

co-op said:
The way you describe it is how I feel about it, I didn't mean that it wasn't real. In fact I meant that a neurotic population suits consumer capitalism well, it is almost a requirement of it, why else would so many people spend so much effort defining themselves through consumption & comparison? Contented people don't need constant reassurance.
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I think about this stuff quite a lot but I can't think of anything useful or interesting to say right now. I may come back to it :)
 
One little interesting twist in the development of some of these idea is the inversion from the Sojourner Truth Organisation-->Race Traitor and Ted Allen and Noel Ignatiev work from the central importance of rejecting whiteness and its privileges in order to reconfigure the class balance to the absolute imposition of whiteness and by extension absolute entrapment in that identity from outside - usually by people outside of those 'identities'.

edit: just to make clear, i'm not agreeing with the original idea, just noting how elements of it seem to hav ended up here, adrift and de-politicised - or de-socialised anyay.
 
fractionMan said:
Would need a set of ordered lists for each axis of oppression. Very easy for age, might be tricky for things like classism.
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You could have a go at checking with sihhi but I think most of the cards will be on people involved in media and politics so there'd be a limited number of occupations. Be as arbitrary as possible, in keeping with the competitive and divisive nature of the game, and let the players battle it out. If you can actually be bothered to do something on this, you will certainly have earned your place in PD's hallowed 'silo of heroes'. (Anything to take the bare look off it)
 
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It's a racket, a pathetic grasp for identity, the equivalent of teenagers hating it when other people like the same band. I'm the only oppressed in the village.

And a large part seems to motivated by envy at others making a media career out of it.
 
Greebo said:
The winning card on that app would be not owning a smartphone.
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100063_heroa.jpg
 
Twintersectionalist 'Mediocre Dave' is unhappy with Shearsmith and Pemberton's new show.

Spoiler for the first episode of Inside No. 9 on iPlayer: it hinges on a crass an insensitive back story of child abuse, played for laughs.
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He's done a few days working in panto iirc. It must be a living nightmare.
 
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