Munroe Bergdorf makes George Floyd/Black Lives Matter all about Munroe Bergdorf

[GiantKitten]

What MB was cancelled for was not what this is all about, was it?

twitter.com/MunroeBergdorf/status/1267460238678069249?s=20

I am struggling with the idea that white people have racism built into their DNA.

Am I the only one who is hearing echoes of Calvinism and predestination, where essentially you were born saved, or born a sinner because God determined it.

I suspect MB is not a wee free, or even a wee wee free.

To be fair I don't think that's what Bergdorf was trying to say. What was said was basically "they don't learn racism, they (describes the process by which children learn societal attitudes using as many words as possible and trying desperately to sound deep)". Judith Butler would be proud.

In those cases where demonstration has moved more towards riot, it's been because the police are so heavy handed and so militarized that they've pushed things in that direction.

This is a really interesting topic that Reed discusses as a problem with looking at police brutality only or even mainly through the lens of race. If that is your lens, then the answer is that the police behave this way, the authorities behave this way, the police are militarised, because of some sort of psychological propensity to racism. Even in places where the police are highly integrated, or where the city government is mostly non-white.

Which is clearly an impoverished answer and gives us zero to work with to change the situation.

Am I the only one who is hearing echoes of Calvinism and predestination, where essentially you were born saved, or born a sinner because God determined it.

Well, the first requirement in this particular way of thinking is to admit your fault. How one can be redeemed is less clear - it seems that it may not be possible.

Not too different from Calvinism all round, really.

I also think viewing racism as
intrinsic to white people (or sexism as intrinsic to men) is a defeatist attitude that doesn't allow the possibility of change

A poster tried to make the point that if you swapped "men" for "white people" in Bergdorf's initial comments that it would all be fine and no-one would have a problem with what she said as it's simply "class analysis" of men being the oppressor class and that all men benefit. A couple of people mentioned that no, it wasn't any better.

FWR loves "class analysis" but it's a very blunt instrument and I don't think one that translates terribly well to the real world.

I think it translates fine, but it requires both being very careful with the theory, and also understanding how it does and does not apply to non-class situations. Otherwise it's kind of like a machine gun going off with no one controlling it.

If that is your lens, then the answer is that the police behave this way, the authorities behave this way, the police are militarised, because of some sort of psychological propensity to racism.

Yes, that makes a lot of sense of some of my experiences trying to talk to Americans about some of the shit that goes on over there arises. Any attempt to understand how this stuff happens tends to be treated as a why question, and answered with "because they're racist." It was immensely frustrating.

A poster tried to make the point that if you swapped "men" for "white people" in Bergdorf's initial comments that it would all be fine

I don't think this is strictly speaking true.

I've certainly heard some women propose that men are born sexist; they're not. They're born into sexism. There's a difference. Equally, in America everyone is born into racism because it's endemic among their culture.

There's a difference between men/women and white/black though, in that white skin does not confer an inherent physical advantage; the advantage arises because of what skin colour means in a racist society. Thanks to sexual dimorphism, being male does confer an inherent physical advantage, and sociocultural wossnames permit and encourage men to capitalise on that advantage. So while there's merit in the comparison, it's not a perfect fit.

And yes, I do object when I hear women saying all males are born sexist. Our sons and brothers are not born this way; we (collectively) make them this way.

Random aside relating to earlier in the conversation: I was today years old when I learned that Barbary corsairs were coming up the Channel and carrying off white British people as slaves as late as the sixteenth century. The Americans did for them in the end, when the slavers started going after American ships. I gather they were fairly thorough about it too.

@Needmoresleep

I am struggling with the idea that white people have racism built into their DNA.

Am I the only one who is hearing echoes of Calvinism and predestination, where essentially you were born saved, or born a sinner because God determined it.

I suspect MB is not a wee free, or even a wee wee free.

Hah yes, the concept of 'whiteness' is very similar to the doctrine of Total Depravity. However unlike in Calvinism it's possible to 'earn' redemption. If you identify your whiteness, renounce it, denounce it in others and spend your days trying to root out your own whiteness and the whiteness you see in others, maybe, just maybe you'll achieve full humanity.

areomagazine.com/2019/04/25/whiteness-studies-and-the-theory-of-white-fragility-are-based-on-a-logical-fallacy/

So more a sort of original sin.

Spiced up with a good bit of Catholic guilt.

And the un-baptised are heading for Limbo?

Random aside relating to earlier in the conversation: I was today years old when I learned that Barbary corsairs were coming up the Channel and carrying off white British people as slaves as late as the sixteenth century.

Yes, the European slave trade was a real thing, many Americans seem quite unaware of it. Though they tend to know about St Patrick so I'm not sure how they square that.

In the early colonisation period of the US there were white and black indentured slaves, in fact the slave revolt in Haiti included both. Not long after that they divided them into two groups, black chattel slaves and a "free" white underclass.

One explanation for the problem of police behaviour in the US is the kind of people who are attracted to the job. Some of them are sadistic/angry/power-hungry bullies, who want the job so they can act on those impulses; and because of the code that you never tell on a fellow officer, the good ones end up leaving in disgust because they can't live with watching such behaviour and not speaking up.

One way of improving the situation might be requiring psychological screening; another one would be requiring bodycams at all times.

There are also issues with soldiers being hired into police jobs, which are really a very different kind of work. And training in American police forces is very inconsistent - it can be very minimal in some places.

Add a population with a lot of guns, a liability culture, and serious social inequality with all that entails, and it's kind of a recipe for disaster.

Another element people sometimes don't realise is that in the 70s, many black communities asked for more police presence and action in their communities, and this had concrete policy effects, some of which are now seen as evidence of racist policy making.

I've seen seen some interesting suggestion to that the militarisation of the police relates to the change in reference of the middle and upper classes to live in urban centres.

It's also how they're trained. Reading about how they're trained to respond to perceived challenges to their authority can be very illuminating. Those who join and don't have the personality type kesstrel is describing sometimes end up finding a way to stay but avoid situations where they're expected to hurt people - there's one locally who seems to be a genuinely lovely person, but she's an animal cop, so she spends her time doing things like rescuing stray dogs and helping to get people who abuse their pets prosecuted rather than harassing black people for having nice cars.

Yes, the European slave trade was a real thing, many Americans seem quite unaware of it.

You're not wrong there!

I was raised by a military history nerd (among his many obsessions), so this stuff was unavoidable. He got a bit irate when we were talking about this thread today; not happy that West African slavers apparently get a free pass, because it's historically inaccurate.

Someone upthread said the transatlantic slave trade destabilised Africa; this is basically because the American project (as it were) massively increased demand in the long-established slave markets, and the slavers had to push further and further inland to capture enough bodies to meet that demand.

In other words: we didn't found the market, we just put pressure on it that it wasn't equipped to cope with.

There's an obvious parallel with the legalisation of renting women as wanksocks driving an increase in human trafficking in the present day.

Also from a British perspective, if you take people who may already be more prone to reacting poorly to what they perceive as challenges to their authority guns then it's not surprising that that doesn't end well. The psychological impact on both the police themselves and the general population of knowing that they're walking around armed at all times shifts their relationship with the population in a deeply dysfunctional direction, imo. Add racism to the mix and you have a huge fucking mess.

And give them guns, I meant to add to that first sentence.

Also also, a lot of soldiers come home with PTSD, and that's inevitably going to add to any tendencies to be over reactive that they might already have had. Like, think of everything we know about the impact that serving in the various Gulf wars had on people and how twitchy they often remain even years after coming home, then take those people, give them guns, and set them to patrolling a civilian population when they've been socialized to see black people as a threat. In many areas they carry on acting just like they did when they were an occupying force charged with "subduing" what they perceive as the enemy.

It's completely bonkers, Kittens.

Yet the reaction from all sides when anyone suggests maybe the fact that everyone's armed really isn't helping matters...

Also, I thought of just leaving the irony of Goose's last post to speak for itself, but it feels a little underhand. The Barbary Coast is the North African side of the Mediterranean, for those that don't know. The aforementioned corsairs weren't an example of European slavers; nor were they what's considered "white".

That article critiquing "White Fragility" was a real brain workout but did express similar misgivings to my own , that the concept t is a hothouse orchid if an idea that can flourish in an academic hothouse but wilts when applied to the harsher more complex conditions of real life.

Like most things in America it also fails to consider class, which has a substantial impact on whether a person is allowed to perform fragility and have it taken seriously.

My thoughts exactly.

Also, I thought of just leaving the irony of Goose's last post to speak for itself, but it feels a little underhand. The Barbary Coast is the North African side of the Mediterranean, for those that don't know. The aforementioned corsairs weren't an example of European slavers; nor were they what's considered "white".

I'm not sure what you are getting at here? Who said they were white, or European?

I think Tyro didnt realise you meant Trade in european slaves when you said European slavery.

Oh, yes. I can see that is confusing looking back.

It's also how they're trained. Reading about how they're trained to respond to perceived challenges to their authority can be very illuminating.

This is really interesting to me - in general the police here and I suspect in the UK are trained to deescalate situations. That doesn't mean not having authority but it seems really very different than what the American police seem to encourage. The goal is very mch to make any problem situation come out as well as possible for everyone involved, and there is a sense of duty of care even to people who are being a problem.

That being said, over the past 0 years or so there have been some changes and I think examples of worse policing here, particularly noticeable with the Mounties. My husband deals with them some in his work, and his sense is that a lot of it comes from an increased focus on liability. They are so focused on worker safety that the emphasis is always on the officers protecting themselves, wearing vests all the time, and so on - and it creates a different focus when you are trained that way.

And then add to that many officers now travel alone where they used to travel in pairs. Which makes them more vulnerable and more likely to worry about losing control of a situation.