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

From my point of view, this is not coming from a position of white liberal guilt. It's coming from a position of my DS asking how on earth current day America could have ended up such that a white police officer knelt on a black man's neck for 8 minutes while the black man told him he couldn't breathe, the onlookers pleaded for the pressure to be released, told the officer the man had gone limp and unresponsive... And why (as became rapidly apparent from the news coverage) does this sort of death happen disproportionately to black people in America. How does a society end up that fucked up?

I find it's impossible to answer that question without some sort of historical context. It's not like each of the incidents was randomly driven, in isolation, by a single "bad apple" in the police acting alone and equally randomly picking someone black as their victim.

And, although I don't subscribe to the idea that one should feel guilty for the actions of one's ancestors either, I can't deny the fact that being born white, as I was, deals one a lucky hand in life. Since it wasn't of my choosing, I don't feel guilt about it, but it would be wrong not to acknowledge it. And wrong not to bring up my son to acknowledge it. I personally don't want to turn into one of those white people who blithely says "oh, I don't even see race", as though this somehow is the ultimate trump card in proving their non-racist credentials.

Would you be able to recommend some of them please, Goosefoot? smile
I'd be interested in reading some blogs or articles that are not from the Critical Race Theory angle.

Cornel West is kind of interesting - in some ways he agrees with the CRT approach, but he seems to put its roots in modern terms in a different place. His background is marxist/Christian, I think.

Adolph Reed ad Toure Reed are both worth reading. There are tons of good articles by the former online and easily accessible. Harpers, The Progressive, would be places to check. He's probably the most significant critic of CRT on the left.

Thomas Sowell is interesting from a more conservative perspective, in many ways coming from the opposite perspective of Reed and West. Roland Fryer I think might also be considered as from the conservative side though in many ways he is very centrist - he did some studies on black interactions with the police that were not at all popular with progressives though.

Given the context, Goose, we should probably also mention the various indigenous American tribes who practised various forms of slavery.

I'm really not sold on the idea that the only slavery worth talking about is the sort that Americans' ancestors were subjected to. It's a pretty relevant area when you're considering women's rights, from antiquity to the present day, for one thing.

What does make me laugh is that MB tells white people that they cannot possibly understand what life is like as a black person, and they are right. And yet that is exactly what Munroe has done to women. And not only has Munroe done it to women, Munroe has then preached to women that they are the ones doing womaning and feminism wrong. Can you imagine a white person painting their face black and then acting in all manner of stereotypical ways, and then telling Munroe that they are just as a legitimate voice for black people as Munroe is? It would be fucking outrageous! I am just totally astonished that no one see the hypocrisy, but that is a different issue I guess.

Yup.

From my point of view, this is not coming from a position of white liberal guilt. It's coming from a position of my DS asking how on earth current day America could have ended up such that a white police officer knelt on a black man's neck for 8 minutes while the black man told him he couldn't breathe, the onlookers pleaded for the pressure to be released, told the officer the man had gone limp and unresponsive... And why (as became rapidly apparent from the news coverage) does this sort of death happen disproportionately to black people in America. How does a society end up that fucked up?

But saying "because race is a problem in America" isn't really an answer to that. It's an observation, not a cause, even if you make it a historical observation.

I'm not sure that looking through the lens of race alone is likely to he enlightening TBH. The problems with policing in the US are bigger than that. The number one thing that makes you a target of police brutality there is not being black, it's being poor. This also happens when cities and police forces are led by black leaders and when the police themselves are highly integrated. That's not an equivocation or whataboutery, those are facts that you have to account for in your analysis for it to be strong, and "white people have racism in their DNA" doesn't really cut it. Even systemic racism doesn't cut it, it's just a name for an observation of a pattern, not an explanation.

Given the context, Goose, we should probably also mention the various indigenous American tribes who practised various forms of slavery. I'm really not sold on the idea that the only slavery worth talking about is the sort that Americans' ancestors were subjected to. It's a pretty relevant area when you're considering women's rights, from antiquity to the present day, for one thing.

I've come somewhat to the conclusion that seeing slavery as entirely normal is actually more normal for people. It seems to have been perfectly natural and sensible and not needing explanation really in the vast majority of societies, even if it wasn't as significant an institution in many.
In a way we are more unusual fr not seeing it that way. And I wonder even so if that's not just a combination of replacing much of it with tech, moving what's left out of view, and renaming it. Any one of us now on our computers in living with the fact that some form of slavery went into their production, from mining to getting rid of the toxic waste.

@Goosefoot

I would rather hear some practical solutions about making the police more accountable and improving the condition of black people in America and elsewhere.

One of the characteristics of Critical Race Theory is that it doesn't really talk about practical solutions or concretely improving people's conditions.

True, it doesn't get beyond ''we need to destroy the system''. It never says what will happen after that. The system they want to destroy is western liberal democracy which they believe to be irredeemebly racist and committed to upholding white supremacy. They never say what it should be replaced with.

I read this article earlier. It has interesting things to say about Robin Diangelo (the inventor of White Fragility) who seems to be using out-dated and/or highly contested claims to back up beliefs on the nature of whiteness*. She claims white people have implicit racist biases and these are good predictors of future behaviour (a claim we've seen repeated in this discussion), unfortunately for Diangelo more recent research throws these claims in to serious doubt. Has she updated her theory? Has she shite.

merionwest.com/2020/06/02/as-the-word-racism-loses-its-meaning/?fbclid=IwAR2rg0A-pxV5NqbK0ysEv7tD9JmtBJWIi2mSrIJRMj3myHhkAFMPqFRrNvc

I'm with Bergdorf on this.

And people who are saying 'it's white Americans' need to think about Windrush and whether that would have happened if they were white.

All the black activists and thinkers that have been talking about the current uprising and protests all put this into a much longer historical context and they do include the colonial past.

Yes slavery always existed and wasn't necessarily linked to color but the modern USA has a particular history which are we intimately linked with. That history is the basis of our "Special Relationship" with the USA. My posts are not about pointing fingers but acknowledging the entire context of how millions of people of European and African descent ended up on the other side of the Atlantic and how that has fed into our society in the UK ever since. The idea that "the slave trade" can be a unit of history and black history a month leads to our blinkered views whenever we don't acknowledge our entire social and economic system is constructed with black bodies at the bottom. Just because those bodies were in the USA, the Caribbean and South Africa doesn't stop our society benefiting.

Ibram x. Kendi
www.democracynow.org/2019/8/13/ibram_x_kendi_class_race_capitalism

Bakari Sellers
www.democracynow.org/2020/6/1/bakari_sellers_400_years_systemic_racism

I'm inclined to agree.

I think we (as in, the West collectively) tend to fall into the same sort of error as I've denounced Americans-on-the-internet for upthread, and assume that our parochial interpretation of this thing we call "ethics" is actually universal, when in fact it's very much a product of our specific circumstances and history.

Excellent point also re: the renaming of instances of slavery. Where we've abandoned the practice, we name it slavery; where we still benefit from it we name it something else entirely.

(My last post was in response to Goose's, btw. Didn't hit refresh!)

I'd be interested in reading some blogs or articles that are not from the Critical Race Theory angle.

James Lindsay on twitter. He has a blog called New Discourses which contains a Dictionary of the Wokeish, i.e an encyclopedia of critical social justice terms.

the idea that "the slave trade" can be a unit of history and black history a month leads to our blinkered views whenever we don't acknowledge our entire social and economic system is constructed with black bodies at the bottom.

I don't think anyone has suggested any bit of history should be a unit a month.

But our entire system isn't constructed with "black bodies" at the bottom. There are all kinds of people at the bottom, and the system doesn't much care what they look like unless it makes things easier for those at the top.

That's why identity politics is basically a feature of neoliberalism, it's goal at this moment is to make sure that the the bottom, and the top, accurately reflect the demographics of the nation, so they can show us that it is all just and natural for it to be that way.

Plenty of women's bodies at the bottom of the heap too. Very little seems to be made of Women's History Month though, which my school totally ignored even though it's apparently been a thing since 1911.

I'd normally not harp on about this point because it could come across as whataboutery, but given who the thread's about I think it's actually important. Women - of all races, ethnicities, and skin tones - are still enslaved today, and I see very few people on the Left denouncing this. On the contrary, they champion it as a free choice to be celebrated.

It would be churlish to reject the basic principle of black lives mattering because of this, but to my mind MB is also part of a movement that doesn't accept that women's lives matter.

Agreed that our history teaching is frequently far too narrowly-focused though. Like when they're teaching about the origins of WWI and fail to mention the role played by eg the American war of independence, or Vlad the Impaler. The wider context is never wide enough.

(the idea that "the slave trade" can be a unit of history and black history a month leads to our blinkered views whenever we don't acknowledge our entire social and economic system is constructed with black bodies at the bottom.

Black people aren't the only people in the world we've been absolute shits too. Just wait until you hear what we did to India.

given who the thread's about I think it's actually important, it is crucial absolute Elephant in the room stuff.

All through history people have opposed these injustices. Unfortunately those with the money and power could control people with the arms of the state (the police and army) while encouraging whites at the bottom of the social classes to feel superior because of white supremacy and not find common cause with people of color.

Trump for example lost the popular vote by 3 million. He was NOT the choice of the American people. However the Founding Fathers as an elite concerned about the "power of the mob" in a democracy included the Electoral College in the Constitution, enabling the elites to have another way to get their candidate into the Presidency. Trump's base is only 25% of the voting population, if more people voted (40-60% of Americans do not vote in elections) that proportion would shrink. Trump and the Republicans are doing everything they can to suppress voter turnout especially for younger voters. The Millennial generation is the most diverse in US history (roughly ages 38-23) and also the largest, while those ages 22 and younger are even more diverse making white Americans one group among many in younger generations, rather than the majority. It's no coincidence that the crowds of protesters are so young.

Trump is the expression of an Oligarchy that is trying to keep racial groups in their place and is very much a reflection of older generations. Those same Boomers however brought us civil and women's rights. If as a result of this uprising younger people finally come out to vote in large numbers they could sweep out of power the old racist guard such as Mitch McConnell, leader of the Senate.

America cannot exist as the richest economy in the world with such huge inequality, especially across the generations and races. The American Dream has always been a mirage for black people but now huge numbers of white people are also struggling economically. If they continue to find common cause the US could become a social-democracy which is what most voters are asking for. There has been lots of public discussion about universal health care, forgiveness of student loans, federal minimum wage and universal guaranteed income. All of which were radical before the economic crash of 2008.

I think most of us realised all of that a long time ago, TuTu. You don't need to preach.

The lack of knowledge about how the world works beyond the pond is a bit skewed in Europeans' favour, I think. We can't actually avoid learning about this stuff even if we wanted to. It's piped into our homes 24/7, y'know?

Bergdorf has tweeted again:

mobile.twitter.com/MunroeBergdorf/status/1268224894547959814

Look at the order of things on this thread. First priority is that L’Oréal haven’t apologised to Bergdorf for the “harm” done three years ago.

Second priority is that they haven’t engaged with black community members.

It’s a good thread overall, but Bergdorf just can’t help putting themselves first. The “harm” from losing a cosmetics contract must be prioritised over engagement with black community members. Repetitive behaviour.

I apologize if I sound preachy but I often find the ethical superiority with which many Brits talk about American issues on here as delusional if you don't also honestly take into account our own British dirty fingers all over the very foundations of these problems. If I come over as an asshole it's a small price to pay for putting some of this into a wider context.

And if noone ever says "guilty as charged" with a bit of acknowledgement of our part in American history right up to now (with Steve Bannon in the early Trump White House & Dominic Cummings in Boris' administration and their links for example) readers such as myself have no idea if posters are even aware of them.

I listened to a phone in in London one time when the discussion was "Why do we have such strong links with the USA" and literally noone in all their musings and rambles talked about the Colonies as the foundation of the USA. Of the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution 2 were English, 2 Scottish, 2 Irish, 1 Welsh and 1 from Northern Ireland (then known as Scotch-Irish).

Out of interest, do we know what's MB's view on the corporatisation (if that's a word) of Pride? Cos I'm assuming MB would be against it, based on that tweet. Is this the case?

I won't say "guilty as charged", TuTu - I'm not on trial for the existence of the British Empire.

You mention wider context; what on earth do you think Goose and I have been talking about, if not the wider context in which the ongoing American situation arose?

Noone is saying that we are "on trial for the British Empire" but if we talk about BLM and police brutality in the USA we should acknowledge an unbroken line to English colonial times in which slavery in North America began and that it was specifically those of African descent who were particularly picked out for unique and violent treatment by English settlers. That was after our descendants had used the native people as we saw fit of course, but unfortunately the pandemics we brought wiped out very large numbers of them.

We got off the boats with guns and our technology meant that British people brought enslaved people at gunpoint to America.

There is the foreshadowing and very long unbroken line to bring us into the 21st century and George Floyd's murder.

You say we're not on trial but you imply it by castigating us for not accepting responsibility using the terminology of the courts.

I'm not disagreeing with you, and I've pulled up my English peers on their woeful ignorance of our own sordid history quite a number of times.

I'm disagreeing with MB's proposition that all white people are inherently and inescapably born racist. Because it's fucking ignorant and ignores a hell of a lot of wider context, not just of world history outside of the Americas but also of how the human social animal functions.

Someone upthread described it as a sort of original sin. I can't think of a more appropriate metaphor.

I can't speak for your descendants, but I've only got the one, and she's never violently exploited any natives, because she's seven.

Thank you to the posters who brought up critical race theory. I had never heard of that before and I am finding it very interesting to read about.