TRA friend and BLM

[maudavery]

I have a very woke friend, she has always been very outspoken on the trans issue but on social media she is surprisingly quiet at the minute, perhaps because JKR has made such brilliant points that it is difficult to argue against. So instead she has been posting a lot about BLM, trying to “educate” her white friends (she is white) about racism and recommend lots of reading. It is normal during this reading to feel defensive and uncomfortable she says. She invites us to DM her so that we can talk about these feelings. She doesn’t intend to sounds preachy and self righteous. She has then listed about 50 forms of covert white supremacy. Some of them I am aware of eg white hero complex, after the Stacey Dooley affair, (but then I wonder, is my friend not demonstrating this herself in her incessant drive to educate others about racism on behalf of people of a different race?)

I always thought not being racist was fairly straightforward- judge people by the content of the character, not the colour of their skin. But apparently this is no longer the case. I need to educate myself (I read very widely and have always read a lot of books by BAME authors, but she is recommending non fiction on the issue of race itself). I’m struggling with it to be honest. “White silence” is a covert act of white supremacy but then because there are seemingly an infinite amount of ways I can be covertly racist, no wonder people are silent because there are so many Microaggressions and covert forms of racism that to say anything at all is risky. (Eg it is racist to tell a black person they are “articulate”) But silence is violence. I just think the whole thing is authoritarian and intolerant the same way that “transwomen are women” is. And if I were to come out as GC on social media, which I have not been brave enough to do yet, then she would dismiss me as a terf and ergo because I don’t sign up to the package deal of the extreme left, I’m probably racist too.

For the record, I work at an outstanding inner city school with a high amount of BAME students. Day in and day out For the last 5 years I have built up relationships with kids of all backgrounds and led my department so that the students achieve excellent academic outcomes. I have diversified the curriculum, but I have also tried to change the curriculum to ensure it is academically challenging and gives our students the “cultural capital” that their more advantaged peers take for granted. I think this is a more meaningful demonstration of my own antiracism than posting a black square on my Instagram, but the former is me being a “white saviour” while the latter is “violence” through silence.

I think black lives matter, I understand why “all lives matter” is wrong, but at the same time, BLM as a political movement is something I cannot support - it’s aims are the end of the nuclear family, the defunding of the police and the overthrowing of capitalism. I also think the conflation of race with certain political beliefs is problematic in itself - a point Priti Patel made well I thought the other day - (although I am not a fan of hers AT ALL) but she seems to have shut down for not being the right kind of race or not having had the right experienced racism - which is surely racist in itself? I was horrified and sickened by the murder of George Floyd. I do not feel personally responsibility or guilt for it though which apparently makes me a racist monster.

I’m wondering if i should engage in a dialogue with my friend about this as she has invited this but wonder if it wouldn’t end well.

[Abitofalark]

How old is your friend, OP? I've seen the same thing from young people on social media. Suddenly they are seized and consumed by a cause and start posting and preaching prolifically, with campaign slogans and symbols. Isn't that the idealism of the young? Influenced by what is all around them, wanting to do something good and worthy, wanting to matter and show social awareness, to support their friends and their causes but, with little analysis or questioning, coming over as zealots and brooking no discussion. What can be done but wait for events to show the shortcomings and pitfalls of rushing to take up positions? Argument will not get through when people are caught up in a kind of fervour. You may just fall out and lose a friend without ever achieving any kind of enlightenment from or acceptance of respective viewpoints.

[terryleather]

The more I think and read about DiAngelo the more her shtick puts me in mind of the selling of indulgences:

One particularly well-known Catholic method of exploitation in the Middle Ages was the practice of selling indulgences, a monetary payment of penalty which, supposedly, absolved one of past sins and/or released one from purgatory after death.

I think I'm right in saying that DiAngelo was brought up in the Catholic faith herself and religious echoes and ideas seem to be present in her ideolgy.

[BovaryX]

@terryleather

The more I think and read about DiAngelo the more her shtick puts me in mind of the selling of indulgences:

One particularly well-known Catholic method of exploitation in the Middle Ages was the practice of selling indulgences, a monetary payment of penalty which, supposedly, absolved one of past sins and/or released one from purgatory after death.

I think I'm right in saying that DiAngelo was brought up in the Catholic faith herself and religious echoes and ideas seem to be present in her ideolgy.

terry

Interesting point. You cited Lindsay before. He's mentioned by Douglas Murray in the Madness of Crowds in relation to a parody paper which was peer reviewed and published, titled 'The conceptual penis as a social construct.' As Murray concludes:

The claims made from the social sciences in recent years have become so unmoored from reality that when their walls have been assailed by genuine intruders it turns out that they have no defences to either detect or repel them

[Goosefoot]

Di Angelo is awful. Awful scholarship and empty.

Redtoothbrush

Your post about social mobility and education was great. A few things have struck me about this over the years, one being that while social mobility has up-sides, I'm not sure we should count on it as the way forward. There will always be some jobs that are less wonderful, some people less capable, and some people earning less than others. That they have dignity, their work is valuable, and they have a political voice seems more important to me than social mobility.

I also thought this was important though If you didn't have an education you couldn't progress in the same way

Good state education is important but not everyone has to be educated for university type of thinking. Increasingly I think that the requirement for many jobs to have degrees, sometimes even masters degrees, is problematic. In many cases there is no necessity for this related to the job, someone who learned on the job, came up through the company, would be equally good or better. The educational requirement simply creates a barrier for many people, be it money, time, how amenable they are to classroom learning. Often it is a way for industry to place the financial burden of training on the individual. When a worker can begin in an industry at the bottom and work their way up through ability in the job and some investment of the company in training and mentorship, that's about the most natural sort of social mobility there is.

We really need to begin to push back against degrees for the sake of it, they are bad for workers and also so bad for universities in the end. A complete bolloxing up decision really.

[Goosefoot]

OP, I have some FB friends like this. Mostly it's useless to talk to them. But sometimes I do try and make a simple point.

One might be to ask, why does she choose to elevate certain black voices/books/perspectives on racism and not others? If she answers you can point out that there are a variety of views within the black community about race/systemic racism/fragility and the rest.


FWIW I think the idea that a lot of the times id politics completely destabilises actual personal relationships with people of other races is correct. It fits my observations.

[terryleather]

BovaryX

Yes Lindsay along with Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian were involved in the so called Grievance Studies Affair which was how I first became aware of him.

The group managed to get 4 papers peer reviewed and published (I think they had 8 or so rejected and few were accepted but had not been published at the time the hoax was discovered) including

"Human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity at urban dog parks in Portland, Oregon"

and

"An Ethnography of Breastaurant Masculinity: Themes of Objectification, Sexual Conquest, Male Control, and Masculine Toughness in a Sexually Objectifying Restaurant"

[twoHopes]

If she answers you can point out that there are a variety of views within the black community about race/systemic racism/fragility and the rest.

Exactly this. A few years ago I listened to a talk by Akala where he was talking about the inherent power imbalance in interracial relationships. I asked a black friend of mine (who is married to a white woman) what he thought and he was incredibly offended that I even asked the question. Fast forward to now, my partner is mixed race, and we would also be offended if people thought there was some kind of racial power imbalance in our relationship.

Some of the views expressed by these authors are very radical and not shared by the majority of BAME people.

[BovaryX]

Human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity at urban dog parks in Portland, Oregon"

It's funny. But then again, it's actually not very funny at all. When you consider how far these incoherent ideas have travelled from their shaky origins in liberal arts colleges on the left coast to dominating public discourse thousands of miles away.

[TorkTorkBam]

I like Trevor Noah's take on it all. I like his observation that people in the USA have difficulty talking about race. I think we in the UK consume so much from the US that we are inadvertently going down the same path of white people being afraid to talk about race with BAME people.

[Goosefoot]

Isn't part of the problem talking about race this insistence on one narrative though? You have a certain type of person saying, you lot are afraid to talk about race because you don't want to challenge yourself. But if the response is something like, ok, I don't think systematic racism is the real issue, or whatever, they are immediately shut down as a bigot and told they are not centering melanated voices, etc.

[maudavery]

Thank you for all of the comments on Themis thread. It seems quite timely when given today's coverage of the appointment of Munira Mirza

[twoHopes]

@maudavery yes the whole "race traitor" criticism from supposed anti-racists is really horrible. The stuff said about Priti Patel has been vile as well. No coincidence that they're both female.

[Z0rr0]

A long time ago I worked for a local mental health charity and on one occasion, before teas were a thing, one of the clients had a mint tea which I was not at all familiar with and I was interested and commented 'wow, that really is minty!' or words to that effect.
The client complained about me that I was condescending to him because he had mental health problems but the honest truth is I would have responded in the same rather over enthusiastic way (I was in my 20s) to anyone who had a mint tea.
He saw me being childish I guess and assumed I was talking down to him, not just that I was youthful and exuberant.
In the same way that his mental health experience informed his view of the situation and he judged me for something perfectly innocent, so the idea that complimenting someone for their articulacy is a racist micro aggression is in itself a sweeping judgement about the intentions of all white people (which is a racist act!). If you would compliment anyone on how well they articulate themselves, it's not automatically racist or white supremacy to compliment a black person. The intent has to be considered as well.
We should be aware of race and racial bias and disadvantage, we should call out racism, if we are in a position of power we should do what we can to offer opportunity and advancement to people of colour, but we should not accept that every white person is inherently racist.
@Glinner posted a really interesting video a while ago about how poor a lot of peer reviewed theory coming out of universities is now, and how that has led to a lot of nonsense around gender theory and some thinking about race which don't stand up to critical thinking, but because we're now taught that everything is white privilege we just blindly accept the idea that we're all inherently racist.
I totally accept that white privilege is real and demonstrable but it simply is racist in itself to brand all white people as racist. We should work to break down the systemic racism and disadvantage that undoubtedly exists but we can't like the OP and @RoughSeas accept guilt for all sins because of the colour of our skin, which, like people of colour, we can't help after all.
Here's the video. (It's short.) youtu.be/NelsKQQDTxU

[Melia100]

the more her shtick puts me in mind of the selling of indulgences

It's another religious movement for secular, progressive whites. Ya know, of which I am one - or was one - think I've been kicked out over my sheer unwillingness to genuflect in front of gender/critical race theory gods.

Class is the huge confound in all these discussions, as any half-aware progressive should know, with poverty and socio-economic disadvantage accounting for things like 'interactions with a brutal and militarised US police force'.

I disagree most strenuously with a belief system that posits a form of original sin for which I must endlessly atone - sort of a Christianity without Christ - and this should fall into the 'agree to disagree' zone of friendship. But won't, with an evangelical friend.

[Melia100]

RoughSeas

Happy to chat via message if you ever want to. I'm in a similar but different (he's an ex) position re race, guilt and relationship, and am working through it at the moment. I don't have any answers but I'd be happy to share how I'm processing what I was finding an almost disabling - and disproportionate - sense of guilt.

[Melia100]

Imagine a whole world in which men were telling other men to reflect on their male privilege. White men, Asian men, black men, Indian men.

Imagine a group of men, of all races, washing the feet of women.

Imagine men in all nations feeling a deep sense of guilt and need for atonement for the violence they perpetuate by virtue of being male.

If that's really hard to imagine, it might be because male socialisation makes men less vulnerable to this pseudo-religious propaganda - where left-wing men engage in it, it's in the exercise of power, not of humility.

Women need a dose of that male socialisation, not in terms of the exercise of power over peers, but in terms of innoculation against the idea that the sins of the world rest on our shoulders.

The whole 'Eve ate the apple' story is not good for us to tell ourselves, even at an unconscious level.

[Melia100]

Here's an article for your friend, if you decide to engage, OP.

It's written by a man of colour, in the Guardian, so it should tick her boxes for 'allowed to listen to'.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/14/white-privilege-is-a-lazy-distraction-leaving-racism-and-power-untouched

[DuDuDuLangaLangaBingBong]

I’ve just been reading posts by African American women about how they have been pushed out/marginalised by the BLM movement.

Same old shit for women wherever we are, eh?

[Thinkingabout1t]

you sound nice, thoughtful and intelligent; she sounds like a bigoted twerp one step away from sending you to the gulag

This.

[maudavery]

One might be to ask, why does she choose to elevate certain black voices/books/perspectives on racism and not others? If she answers you can point out that there are a variety of views within the black community about race/systemic racism/fragility and the rest.

I have asked this.

Apparently it's because as white people we seek out views which are most "palatable" to us.

I'm Not convinced by that argument. I don't think it's about palatability but about a convincing argument, reason, truth??! But theses things have been destroyed as concepts by post structuralist academic thinking.

[Thinkingabout1t]

This does make me wonder if the identity politics that wokeism is founded upon in general is actually pernicious and dangerous. It weaponises our empathy towards each other.

That is a brilliant insight. I’d realised identity politics was harmful, but you’ve nailed the reason why. And that explains the cynical, dishonest basis of it all, turning the good quality of empathy inside out.

[twoHopes]

Apparently it's because as white people we seek out views which are most "palatable" to us

I'm afraid your friend is committing the same sin. What is most palatable to her is the idea that all of the problems of the world originate in white supremacy - for which white people must forever atone. The idea that BAME people live in a state of perpetual vulnerability and victimhood is just as racist as far as I'm concerned. Some of the stuff said to my mixed race partner over the last few weeks, from people who think they're being incredibly woke, has been downright offensive.

[Thinkingabout1t]

This isn’t even about racism, it’s about using you as a psychological podium for her to stand on.

I love reading Mumsnet comments that express something I’ve thought, but much more clearly and succinctly. So articulate, if I dare use such a word

[maudavery]

So many assumptions on the part of the woke seem racist to me

Isn't it racist to think all black people should think the same way?

Isn't it racist to assume black people are trapped in a state of vulnerability and victim hood?

Isn't it racist to think that she as a white person has to act as a sort of champion/spokesperson on behalf of black people?