Fund the police

[Aloysius]

Well, there's our disagreement then.  Of course partially I am coming from a starting point of the American ideology of race, but your particular ideology of race is also very distinctly American as well.  Some kind of global 'black unity' is really as ahistorical as some kind of global 'white unity'--both are completely modern fictions.  In the meantime I've traveled the world and read a lot of literature both historical and anthropological and have generally concluded, along with mainstream anthropological opinions in academia at least, that these racializations are mostly inventions of the 19th century.  I'm perhaps as much in favor of a pre-racial perspective as I am of a post-racial perspective to break this down--ultimately I insist upon a Catholic perspective of our common humanity, acknowledging and embracing difference. 

I find the ecclesiastical bonds uniting Ethiopians and Coptic Egyptians to be much more significant than some kind of externally imposed generalized 'blackness' uniting Ethiopians and, say, Nigerians, for instance.  Brazilian racial categories are quite widely diverse as well, self reported racial identities on censuses consistently number over 100 different 'races', would be curious where the dividing line is for this global 'black' identity.  Racializations are culturally specific in many instances, and the one you are promoting is a specifically American one, one that many Africans in Africa would find alien to their own experience, in fact.

There's a large diversity among people Americans racialize as "black", just as there's a diversity among who modern day Americans racialize as "white".  My ancestors were Irish, and Americans didn't consider them "white" until the latter half of the 20th century; and as far as I'm concerned, I still personally don't hold any affinity for some kind of a "white" identity, though structurally speaking in ways that are outside of my control I must be racialized as white sociologically speaking, I have no interest in trying to advance some kind of a 'white' race.

But anyway I think we'll probably have to agree to disagree.

[Era Might]

6 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

And therein lies the problem.  Denying and eliminating any identification of cross racial commonality as diminishing self racial “otherness”.  That philosophy effectively eliminates identifying commonality in society.  

We have only one commonality, that we are all children of one God and Father, and therefore we are af the same time brothers and kings. Each man is lord of creation and any social role, class, system, etc. is created by man, not by God. We have absolute freedom to dream and imagine the lives and the worlds we want to live in. We are all kings and lords. The Psalms say know ye not that ye are gods, sons of the Most High.

We can live as competing kings or as kind brothers. The choice is ours. That is Garveyism. Marcus Garvey chose a life of service to his people and saw everything through the lens of what his ppl, black ppl, needed to come together and finally throw off the chains of slavery. Marcus Garvey said nations and races and civilizations rise and fall and no race has any claim to superiority because we are all gods, sons of the Most High. But he believed in the future of his race, his ppl, black ppl, African ppl. He saw everything through the lens of his own ppl. But he did so as a student of world history and the marvelous achievements of all races, all Abraham's and God's children.

One God. One Aim. One Destiny. That was Garvey's motto.

7 minutes ago, Aloysius said:

Well, there's our disagreement then.  Of course partially I am coming from a starting point of the American ideology of race, but your particular ideology of race is also very distinctly American as well.  Some kind of global 'black unity' is really as ahistorical as some kind of global 'white unity'--both are completely modern fictions.  In the meantime I've traveled the world and read a lot of literature both historical and anthropological and have generally concluded, along with mainstream anthropological opinions in academia at least, that these racializations are mostly inventions of the 19th century.  I'm perhaps as much in favor of a pre-racial perspective as I am of a post-racial perspective to break this down--ultimately I insist upon a Catholic perspective of our common humanity, acknowledging and embracing difference. 

I find the ecclesiastical bonds uniting Ethiopians and Coptic Egyptians to be much more significant than some kind of externally imposed generalized 'blackness' uniting Ethiopians and, say, Nigerians, for instance.  Brazilian racial categories are quite widely diverse as well, self reported racial identities on censuses consistently number over 100 different 'races', would be curious where the dividing line is for this global 'black' identity.  Racializations are culturally specific in many instances, and the one you are promoting is a specifically American one, one that many Africans in Africa would find alien to their own experience, in fact.

There's a large diversity among people Americans racialize as "black", just as there's a diversity among who modern day Americans racialize as "white".  My ancestors were Irish, and Americans didn't consider them "white" until the latter half of the 20th century; and as far as I'm concerned, I still personally don't hold any affinity for some kind of a "white" identity, though structurally speaking in ways that are outside of my control I must be racialized as white sociologically speaking, I have no interest in trying to advance some kind of a 'white' race.

But anyway I think we'll probably have to agree to disagree.

That's fine, we don't have to agree. The point is not for white ppl to come to agreement or consensus or feel comfortable. The point is to bring forward into the national consciousness the conversations black ppl are having about themselves, from Toussaint Looverture (a black Catholic slave revolutionary) to Garvey, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, etc. This is about what black ppl are going to do right now, for themselves. Their relations with white ppl is of secondary or tertiary concern. White ppl are doing fine taking care of themselves.

[Era Might]

One last point. White ppl will get huffy about black politics. In their minds, they have nothing racial they want to preserve, so therefore, black ppl should also be casual and dismissive and about race. But just because white ppl don't care about the biological and cultural and historical bonds of race, black ppl do care about these things. It is in fact necessary for black ppl to preserve these things, because black ppl were stripped of everything but their race. The world could destroy Africa mentally, but it couldn't destroy Africans. So white ppl have something like a jealousy about race. If we don't care about it, neither should you. But race is fundamental to black existence and therefore black culture.

[Aloysius]

oh there are certainly white people out there that care about their 'race' very vehemently, their so-called "14 words" ("We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.") sound eerily like the flip side of the coin of what you're talking about, just replace "white" with "black and you'd be saying the same thing, there's a reason Garvey found common cause with the despicable KKK... and plenty of those types today argue they don't believe in superiority either just preservation of their 'race'--I personally reject being lumped in with their ideology of what a race is the same as many Africans would reject being lumped in with the black American ideology of what a "black" race is.  Anyway, I get as 'huffy' with such white identitarians as I do with your ideas here.

I just fundamentally disagree with these 19th century racial ideologies.  those are not fundamental to black identity.  there is of course a particular matrix of racialization in america that is fundamental to black American identity, that's fair enough and there are some things you've said here I don't disagree with.

I don't 'agree to disagree' with you on the basis of your race to just leave black people to talk amongst themselves, as if I accept that I should just leave such a fundamental debate about the nature of humanity to be discussed within separate enclaves of humanity--the implications of your racial ideology for the nature of humanity are profoundly disturbing to me and I will certainly vigorously oppose them in all their forms, not to quell problems and pacify people, I'd be willing to START problems with anyone who promotes such ideologies, preferring 'not peace but a sword of division' with such things I feel are deep untruths about our very human nature... as far as I'm concerned anyone with such a racial "sacred tree" deserves a visit from St. Boniface to hack down that tree as he did in the forests of Germany once.  I just offered to agree to disagree with you as one individual to another because I figure we're at an impasse where we each too fundamentally agree with our own ideology for there to much more productive discussion.  Anyway, I'll finish (well we don't have to finish if we feel we have any more to say I just figure we've basically said enough to understand each other's intractable positions and I doubt there's much further we can go, I personally say we can just leave it now to the reader of the thread decide lol) by saying I do respect you as a provocative thinker with a lot of interesting takes on things, even if I deeply disagree on this topic.

[Aloysius]

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

For anyone interested, here are some good resources on what I mean when I say race is a modern concept and these racial ideologies, both post-racialism AND the racial identitarianism of someone like Garvey, are distinctly modern American ideologies:

https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/historical-foundations-race

https://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_03-godeeper.htm

"The world got along without race for the overwhelming majority of its history. The U.S. has never been without it" -David R. Roediger

"Race is the child of racism, not the father." Ta-Nehisi Coates

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

[Era Might]

11 minutes ago, Aloysius said:

For anyone interested, here are some good resources on what I mean when I say race is a modern concept and these racial ideologies, both post-racialism AND the racial identitarianism of someone like Garvey, are distinctly modern American ideologies:

Yes, any ideology must be modern. You can't live in the modern world with a medieval ideology. And so long as we live in America, we also need a specifically American ideology. By ideology, meaning a way of structuring ideas to operate in your social, political and economic environment. The name of the game in politics is to create the world, but first that requires an ideology that guides your action. The mainstream American ideology is economic nationalism, where everyone is integrated into a territorial economy. This is one sort of nationalism. There is also racial nationalism as in Israel and Africa. Cultural nationalism, etc. The point is, if America cannot reimagine and reshape its national project to catch up with history, from abolition to decolonization, then American nationalism will continue to be a bandaid or mask that covers the racial realities of America's political economy.

[Aloysius]

I don't bring it up to say no modern ideologies should be used, but to say that the fact that it is a modern ideology should tell you something about its nature as a social construction, and that while we cannot escape the racialization of social structures beyond our control we shouldn't essentialize it (as much as I would like to demand people stop identifying me as 'white' because I'm perfectly happy to revert to the non-white status assigned to my Irish ancestors, and it's not that I don't care about racial identity it's that I care very much and absolutely strongly despise such attempts at trying to position me in collective identities with everyone else now and in the past ascribed this identity of 'white'.  on the same token I know there are Africans who don't like the attempt by ideological black Americans to racialize them according to ideologically American categories of race, and there are many black Americans who would feel put upon by certain forms of racial ideology as well, but I suppose that's for all of us to negotiate and argue about)--all I really have to demand is that we maintain a meta-system where people who want to inter-mix are allowed to do so, where public spaces, political power, and economic power are as open to everyone as possible, and people can promote their own identities in the millions of different ways they see fit.  But then again I have a distinctly modern American individualist/libertarian ideology haha.  anyway, just so we're all clear about the context of this concept of "race" being a modernly constructed concept.

[Era Might]

50 minutes ago, Aloysius said:

I don't bring it up to say no modern ideologies should be used, but to say that the fact that it is a modern ideology should tell you something about its nature as a social construction, and that while we cannot escape the racialization of social structures beyond our control we shouldn't essentialize it (as much as I would like to demand people stop identifying me as 'white' because I'm perfectly happy to revert to the non-white status assigned to my Irish ancestors, and it's not that I don't care about racial identity it's that I care very much and absolutely strongly despise such attempts at trying to position me in collective identities with everyone else now and in the past ascribed this identity of 'white'.  on the same token I know there are Africans who don't like the attempt by ideological black Americans to racialize them according to ideologically American categories of race, and there are many black Americans who would feel put upon by certain forms of racial ideology as well, but I suppose that's for all of us to negotiate and argue about)--all I really have to demand is that we maintain a meta-system where people who want to inter-mix are allowed to do so, where public spaces, political power, and economic power are as open to everyone as possible, and people can promote their own identities in the millions of different ways they see fit.  But then again I have a distinctly modern American individualist/libertarian ideology haha.  anyway, just so we're all clear about the context of this concept of "race" being a modernly constructed concept.

What you're describing, your vision of the political system, is simply liberalism, a society of open and free institutions that help channel competition in civilized ways. I'm down with that. But that institutional bubble you're creating is now full. All those institutions you created now have their professional middle class to run them. This includes politicians but also the vast civil army that makes up the press, the publishing industry, the technocrats, etc. They can have all that, as long as they keep the institutions humming and create real opportunities for the lower classes to access and benefit from these institutions. Black ppl are not fighting for access to institutions anymore. They won that war. The question now is how to organize black ppl to solve their own problems, because when we talk about black ppl, we are talking about ppl who share not merely a racial biology but who share a lived experience in particular institutions, such as in the nation-state or in the municipal political economy of cities like Chicago and New York or Los Angeles or Miami or Detroit or Memphis or Houston or Baltimore. Building up black communities means investing in them and in their people. Black people need to develop leaders among themselves to solve problems and create opportunities entrepreneurial, but that requires political leadership. The two national parties are not going into black communities and building political consciousness and mobilizing leaders and entrepreneurs. They just want to create jobs to keep black ppl working because liberal ideology sees black ppl as workers, citizens and minorities. But black ppl are not a sociological or anthropological or economic framework, they are an actual historical nation that you can go and meet throughout America. But nobody is going to lead them, they're going to try and sell them a gospel about buying into the right party or platform. Hip Hop has already pioneered a black-lead institution that represents the black masses. But as we discussed before about the Tea Party, Hip Hop was also coopted by the white ppl who ran and funded the music industry. Black nationalism can and must coexist alongside America's economic nationalism, is my final point.

Edited July 11, 2020 by Era Might

[little2add]

[little2add]

 

[little2add]

War on white people isn’t the answer to improving the lives of black people and the historic discrimination we have faced. It is only through the upliftment of education, a love for our fellow man and assimilating fully into our non-hyphenated American identity that we can move beyond racism.

[Anomaly]

On 7/11/2020 at 9:18 PM, little2add said:

War on white people isn’t the answer to improving the lives of black people and the historic discrimination we have faced. It is only through the upliftment of education, a love for our fellow man and assimilating fully into our non-hyphenated American identity that we can move beyond racism.

“If” you’re calling current protests and BLM, war on white people, that is hurtfully inaccurate.

And what do you mean by assimilating fully into “our” American identity?

In a sense, cultural difference are  stereotyped and visually identified with physical characteristics, we call race.   That is the problem we have in society.  When we act in a negative manner unconsciously or intentionally, based on cultural stereotypes and generalizations.   Everyone does it, but certain groups have more social power than others.  Just because cultural majority Americans have greatly reduced a significant amount of blatant prejudice and negative discrimination, does not mean we can’t now identify more persistent, but subtle (and powerful) ingrained prejudices and negative discrimination.  

 

[little2add]

23 hours ago, Anomaly said:

On 7/11/2020 at 9:18 PM, little2add said:

 

“If” you’re calling current protests and BLM, war on white people, that is hurtfully inaccurate

Sad, but true

[Era Might]

A good article in the LRB on the collapse of the post-WWII world order, the rise of neoliberalism alongside the rise of successful nations such as China and Japan and India. It's important to keep history in perspective when thinking about BLM, this is not an eruption in an otherwise tranquil world order, it's a global shock that reflects historical, institutional, structural confusion and contradiction, in large part because the West is still trying to come to terms with the collapse of colonialism and white supremacy since the 1960s.

Quote

The moralising history of the modern world written by its early winners – the many Plato-to-Nato accounts of the global flowering of democracy, liberal capitalism and human rights – has long been in need of drastic revision. At the very least, it must incorporate the experiences of late-developing nations: their fraught and often tragic quests for meaningful sovereignty, their contemptuously thwarted ideas for an egalitarian world order, and the redemptive visions of social movements, from the Greens in Germany to Dalits in India. The recent explosion of political demagoguery, after years of endless and futile wars, should have been an occasion to interrogate the narratives of British and American narcissism. Trump and Brexit offered an opportunity to ‘break democracy’s spell’ on the Anglo-American mind – something the political theorist John Dunn has been arguing for since the late 1970s, long before Anglo-American triumphalism assumed inflexible forms. Those hypnotised by the word, Dunn argued, had become oblivious to the fact that the political and economic arrangements they preferred, and which they described as ‘democracy’, could neither continue indefinitely nor handle ‘the immediate challenges of collective life within and between individual countries effectively even in the present’.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n14/pankaj-mishra/flailing-state

Edited July 14, 2020 by Era Might

[little2add]

On 7/10/2020 at 9:46 PM, dUSt said:

Wow.