How do you end 'cancel culture'?

[cardgame]

Openly advocating violence violates things expressly listed as unpermitted in ToS though, so that's not an apples to apples comparison.

The problem remains that companies promise something they don't deliver and/or discriminate/treat their rules differently for different people.

Violating the TOS is violating the TOS, apples to apples. Trump's account is still active.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...s-glorifying-violence-suspended-a9545831.html

 

[Mise]

However, it is a counter-argument to the assertion that racism is the primary organising logic of a given society, which is routinely presented by American progressives.

By refusing to talk about class in substantive terms, and by dogmatically subordinating class to race in their descriptions of society, progressives have left themselves open to this sort of bad faith arguments by right-wingers. Simply highlight that those arguments are bad faith does not plug that gap, and will not convince people who are not already subscribed to the progressive commonsense.

I can understand making this argument in the UK or Europe, but how can you possibly make it in America, when literal slavery and its long-lasting effects dominates American history? American society really is structured around race, it's not just a way of viewing it or a mental model to understand an abstract inequality. There were laws about it until not long ago! Still are plenty of laws that maybe don't say it out right but use a lot of air quotes and winking gestures instead. Black people get murdered by cops and you're telling me that's really about class? Isn't it funny how the objectively best solution you can think of to the problem of race in America just so happens to be the political ideology you've held all your life?

I'm not saying class is unimportant, and I hope you believe me when I say that I sincerely believe and have believed all my life that class is the major dividing line in this country. I'm just saying that, in this particular case of race in America, maybe it really is about race?

 

[Lexicus]

I can understand making this argument in the UK or Europe, but how can you possibly make it in America, when literal slavery and its long-lasting effects dominates American history? American society really is structured around race, it's not just a way of viewing it or a mental model to understand an abstract inequality. There were laws about it until not long ago! Still are plenty of laws that maybe don't say it out right but use a lot of air quotes and winking gestures instead. Black people get murdered by cops and you're telling me that's really about class?

Isn't it funny how the objectively best solution you can think of to the problem of race in America just so happens to be the political ideology you've held all your life?

uh just fyi
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2020/06/23/class-and-racial-inequalities-in-police-killings/

This analysis shows that socioeconomic position plays a big role in police killings. The highest-poverty areas have a police killing rate of 6.4 per million while the lowest-poverty areas have a police killing rate of 1.8 per million, a 3.5-fold difference.

A similar class skew exists within each racial group as well. Whites in the poorest areas have a police killing rate of 7.9 per million, compared to 2 per million for whites in the least-poor areas. Blacks in the poorest areas have a police killing rate of 12.3 per million, compared to 6.7 per million for blacks in the least-poor areas.

I'm not even sure what you think you are arguing about. Slavery is fundamentally a class relationship, and race was essentially devised in the beginning to sidestep pesky critiques of slavery (and also to a lesser extent other forms of class domination which characterized the early European empires in the New World). Slavery is an ancient class and market phenomenon that dates back to long before any modern concept of race as a biological category.

Actually, this post is a good illustration of something mentioned by Reed in the article I linked to earlier:

All too often, “racism” is the subject of sentences that imply intentional activity or is characterized as an autonomous “force.” In this kind of formulation, “racism,” a conceptual abstraction, is imagined as a material entity. Abstractions can be useful, but they shouldn’t be given independent life.

I can appreciate such formulations as transient political rhetoric; hyperbolic claims made in order to draw attention and galvanize opinion against some particular injustice. But as the basis for social interpretation, and particularly interpretation directed toward strategic political action, they are useless. Their principal function is to feel good and tastily righteous in the mouths of those who propound them. People do things that reproduce patterns of racialized inequality, sometimes with self-consciously bigoted motives, sometimes not. Properly speaking, however, “racism” itself doesn’t do anything more than the Easter Bunny does.

Yes, racism exists, as a conceptual condensation of practices and ideas that reproduce, or seek to reproduce, hierarchy along lines defined by race. Apostles of antiracism frequently can’t hear this sort of statement, because in their exceedingly simplistic version of the nexus of race and injustice there can be only the Manichean dichotomy of those who admit racism’s existence and those who deny it. There can be only Todd Gitlin (the sociologist and former SDS leader who has become, both fairly and as caricature, the symbol of a “class-first” line) and their own heroic, truth-telling selves, and whoever is not the latter must be the former. Thus the logic of straining to assign guilt by association substitutes for argument.

My position is—and I can’t count the number of times I’ve said this bluntly, yet to no avail, in response to those in blissful thrall of the comforting Manicheanism—that of course racism persists, in all the disparate, often unrelated kinds of social relations and “attitudes” that are characteristically lumped together under that rubric, but from the standpoint of trying to figure out how to combat even what most of us would agree is racial inequality and injustice, that acknowledgement and $2.25 will get me a ride on the subway. It doesn’t lend itself to any particular action except more taxonomic argument about what counts as racism.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Traditionally slaves were regarded as a class and not a race. They only started to use blacks from Africa across
the pond as slaves when they ran out of white convicts and the native american slaves died out from diseases.

As the US police seem to shoot a lot of non blacks too, it is quite reasonable to regard it as a class problem.

 

[Mise]

uh just fyi
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2020/06/23/class-and-racial-inequalities-in-police-killings/


I'm not even sure what you think you are arguing about. Slavery is fundamentally a class relationship, and race was essentially devised in the beginning to sidestep pesky critiques of slavery (and also to a lesser extent other forms of class domination which characterized the early European empires in the New World). Slavery is an ancient class and market phenomenon that dates back to long before any modern concept of race as a biological category.

Actually, this post is a good illustration of something mentioned by Reed in the article I linked to earlier:

You realise that those figures show that poor black people are more than 50% more likely to be killed than poor white people, and rich black people are MORE THAN 3 TIMES more likely to be killed than rich white people? How are you telling me that isn't a race issue? When white people get lifted out of poverty, they experience a 6-fold decrease in their chancing of getting killed by a cop. For black people, their chances aren't even halved. It clearly shows that class is the major issue for white people, while race is the major issue for black people.

If you're looking at those statistics and ignoring the massive racial disparity in police killing rates then I don't know what to tell you, but I certainly don't want to discuss it with you.

 

[Lexicus]

You realise that those figures show that poor black people are more than 50% more likely to be killed than poor white people, and rich black people are MORE THAN 3 TIMES more likely to be killed than rich white people? How are you telling me that isn't a race issue?

I'm not telling you it's not a race issue

If you're looking at those statistics and ignoring the massive racial disparity in police killing rates then I don't know what to tell you, but I certainly don't want to discuss it with you.

I'm not ignoring the racial disparity
You are exhibiting the Manichean thing in the quote, big-time. Accusing Lexicus of ignoring race? @Manfred Belheim would laugh

 

[EnglishEdward]

Mise@

It is an interesting report, but it doesn't seem to measure the wealth of the people
being killed merely whether they were killed in poor or rich neighbourhoods.

I am not saying that race is not an issue, I am merely saying that class is.

I'd guess that race is (a) indirectly a significant factor in that more blacks live in
poor areas, whether it is a (b) direct issue in that cops are more likely to shoot
blacks due to (i) personal prejudice or (ii) a belief thay are less likely to be held
accountable are genuine questions. But determining the proportionality of
(a) via (b) or within (b) (i) via (ii), is not something that I can hope to quantify.

 

[Mise]

I'm not telling you it's not a race issue



I'm not ignoring the racial disparity
You are exhibiting the Manichean thing in the quote, big-time. Accusing Lexicus of ignoring race? @Manfred Belheim would laugh

Ok, fair enough. So what are you telling me? It sounded like you were telling me that this was really a class issue.

I'm not here to argue that class isn't an issue in the US. It clearly is, as it is everywhere. I'm saying that race is also an issue, outside of class, and that stems from the deep embedding of racism within American society. Yes, there is a deep embedding of class within American society as well, as there is in the UK and Europe too. That's surely not the whole story though, is it?

What I'm saying, perhaps inarticulately, is that class analysis is simply an incomplete description of what is happening to black people in America, and cannot provide solutions to it. TF has talked a lot about the faults in the progressive argument, but his only solution to that is to talk about class instead. Well, class doesn't help black people much does it! Rich black people still 3 times more likely to get shot by a cop than rich white people.

So perhaps it is my ignorance: what does class analysis suggest as the solution to black people getting killed by cops in America?

 

[Crezth]

Revolution.

 

[Mise]

Ok, but in the mean time?

 

[EnglishEdward]

Revolution.

And what type of revolution would that be:

(a) Marxist class based revolution

OR

(b) A black separationist struggle.

Both of which would seem likely to increase the death rate in the short time.

 

[Modder_Mode]

There is no point asking these questions if you're not going to explicitly state what point/issue/statement you think they provide evidence for. It is not possible to argue against this format of question, so deliberately only ever using questions is not properly engaging with the topic.

I was getting to the point that in those examples Cloud_Strife provided, those regimes had systems/policies in place designed to keep black people (and in Nazi Germany Jewish people as well) oppressed.

What policies should the USA adopt or remove to dismantle systemic racism?

 

[Lexicus]

Ok, but in the mean time?

Massive redistribution of wealth to black people and poor people

 

[Crezth]

Ok, but in the mean time?

Half-measures that prolong the inevitable.

And what type of revolution would that be:

(a) Marxist class based revolution

OR

(b) A black separationist struggle.

Both of which would seem likely to increase the death rate in the short time.

Neither and both. Struggles don't come out of nowhere, they are produced by the circumstances. In any case, it would not be the first time Black communists and Black separationists fought one another, and it won't be the last time anyone has heard of the class struggle and seeks to achieve Black liberation through communism.

 

[Gorbles]

But not even close to every single "progressive" is a leftist. Indeed, many "progressives" are openly contemptuous of anticapitalism, or at the least believe that it is useless to try to fight capitalism.

Which is why it doesn't help jumping in on TF's specific discussion because there's context there that I now need to try and unravel. Your expectations around progressives are not his. Your understanding of intersectionality is not his. I don't mind group discussions but I was trying to pin down what he meant vs. what I meant and where wires were being crossed. It's semantics, essentially, but one of the cases where I consider it important and not boring obfuscation for the sake of it (from either him or myself).

Yeah, see this whole line of argument is exactly what Traitorfish is criticizing. Setting up "race" and "class" as abstractions, and then adding the notion that to talk about one necessarily means ignoring the other, is exactly the trap that Traitorfish was describing. Traitorfish is explicitly calling for a unified program which addresses both race and class, and you interpret that as "focusing on race is bad."

I would suggest to anyone interested to read Adolph Reed's writing about "antiracism" for a greater understanding of some of these issues. Reed is a Marxist scholar who is highly critical of the "race-first" turn of liberal/left politics in the later decades of the 20th century; as he puts it, contemporary "antiracism"

I wasn't the one that set up "race" and "class" in context of the discussion. I responded to a claim made about a group labelled as "progressives" on putting race above class, which is far removed from any personal experience I have with progressives. That's the long and short of it.

I went straight to intersectionality because that is what binds all these disparate terms under one cohesive framework going forwards. TF dismissed it pretty much instantly, and I was trying to work out where to go from there before this tangent happened. If talking about "race" and "class" is the trap, it's kind of unfair if I'm also denied intersectionality as a starting point. Bearing in mind the original challenge was the dissemination of the message, and how that can be exploited by right-wing and / or generally-conservative groups. The only alternative is to (revert to) class-first analysis, which is basically a perfect encapsulation of an earlier post describing leftist infighting. "don't do this-first, do that-first".

The problem with messaging is it inherently rests on ease of explanation and, to put it bluntly, attention span. "something-first" is essentially the same as "ignoring the other". That's why it's Black Lives Matter, to take what should be an uncontroversial example for you and I. That's why it's not All Lives Matter. Contextually, race-first can be appropriate. At other times, class-first can be. What I'm seeing here is a rejection of race-first because of the apparent failure to understand class-first analysis, which is intensely funny because I see tons of class-first diatribes in my progressive and outright leftist circles.

Which brings us nicely back to what is a "progressive", and the bit below.

Here's one: polling has consistently shown that upwards of 90% of Democrats rate Barack Obama's presidency as "good" or "excellent." What happened to class inequality under Barack Obama's administration? What does this suggest about the class politics held by upwards of 90% of Democrats?

I am not sure how far these "progressives" you are talking about overlap with the Democrats, but if there is little or no overlap it is likely that the "progressives" you are describing are a politically-insignificant fringe anyway. When I say "progressive" I am talking about, at least, a substantial fraction of Democratic voters.

So your popular example of "progressive" is people who rate Obama highly. That's what I'd call a "liberal". Maybe for you they're synonymous? I don't know, I'm just trying to understand. Because I was under the impression that no leftist, or even progressive, considered any substantial fraction of Democrats to be "progressive". And this, again, is a problem in jumping into a semantic discussion I was trying to establish the bounds of. As I'm now having to do it twice. You, TF and I are possibly unlikely to see the same members in this demographic - that was what I was trying to understand from the offset. Because we could quite easily be talking past each other and making the actual discussion harder than it has to be.

 

[Yeekim]

What I'm saying, perhaps inarticulately, is that class analysis is simply an incomplete description of what is happening to black people in America, and cannot provide solutions to it.

I would expect that racism in America is being reproduced by class issues and vice versa.
For instance, high crime rates among blacks, itself largely a product of socioeconomic issues, create (maybe even subconscious) prejudice in police and judiciary (i.e. "racism"), which in turn leads to these rates becoming even higher (as in, inflated by unfair/prejudiced policing), in turn exacerbating already poor socioeconomic conditions, in sort of loop 22.
Intuitively it would seem that breaking this loop would be a lot easier by addressing the underlying socioeconomic and class issues, rather than (frequently unconscious) prejudice? I mean, I could think of dozens of ways to meaningfully address the former, but nothing to directly address the latter. On the other hand, the prejudice ought to abate once the underlying reasons are eliminated.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Violating the TOS is violating the TOS, apples to apples. Trump's account is still active.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...s-glorifying-violence-suspended-a9545831.html

Depends on which organization we're talking about. Regardless, there is a difference between:

1. *Explicitly* violating ToS (aka doing something they expressly say you can not do) --> This is legit
2. "Violating terms of service" (receiving a notification that you've violated ToS, but no explanation of what action you did violated ToS even when requested) --> This is not, but is a YouTube special regardless
3. Violating "terms of service" (different ToS for different people) --> harder to prove, though we have evidence of it regardless. For example major news organizations are allowed to keep 100% identical video clips that other content creators (who also cover news) get taken down. In this case they actually do flag the clip in question (and it's not a copyright flag, both media outlet and person used same source), so it's confirmable.

For instance, high crime rates among blacks, itself largely a product of socioeconomic issues

It's useful to consider that this was actually less true in the past and has been trending worse rather than better. Education quality and family situation are apparent causal factors, but not the only factors.

 

[EnglishEdward]

.. it would not be the first time Black communists and Black separationists fought one another, ....

And is this going to make the white supremacists quake with fear in their Nazi jackboots?

 

[Mise]

Massive redistribution of wealth to black people and poor people

Again I'm all for massive redistribution of wealth, I've argued for it my whole life, but the stats you posted still shows that rich black people are 3 times more likely to be killed by police than rich white people. You clearly need to do something else on top of that. I don't really get what's controversial about this tbh, that a solution that is no doubt a great one at addressing poverty, won't necessarily entirely address racism?

I would expect that racism in America is being reproduced by class issues and vice versa.
For instance, high crime rates among blacks, itself largely a product of socioeconomic issues, create (maybe even subconscious) prejudice in police and judiciary (i.e. "racism"), which in turn leads to these rates becoming even higher (as in, inflated by unfair/prejudiced policing), in turn exacerbating already poor socioeconomic conditions, in sort of loop 22.
Intuitively it would seem that breaking this loop would be a lot easier by addressing the underlying socioeconomic and class issues, rather than (frequently unconscious) prejudice? I mean, I could think of dozens of ways to meaningfully address the former, but nothing to directly address the latter. On the other hand, the prejudice ought to abate once the underlying reasons are eliminated.

I'm fully on board with addressing the material inequalities that exist in our society, but a lot of faith is being placed on that socioeconomic feedback mechanism eventually, over time, resulting in cops choosing to kill fewer black people. My argument is that this simply isn't enough, or at least, it isn't the only thing that we can do to stop cops murdering black people. This isn't just about diversity training or unconscious bias or any of that stuff that corporations love to spend money on, it's about having structures that limit the power of individuals to (a) act on their racism, and (b) get away with it afterwards. I am not an expert on the police, much less the highly militarised police force they have in America, so me starting this off by talking about police violence in America is my own fault. But here in the UK, there have been several reports on institutional racism in the police force and in other British organisations. My understanding is that very few of the recommendations that came out of the more recent ones have actually been implemented. The Macpherson report, following the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, resulted in big changes in the way the police in this country operated, with the effect of reducing racism within the police force, and improving outcomes for black people. This is nothing to do with class or redistribution, and didn't require the government to distribute wealth to black people or poor people. It just involved changes to how the police operates. We have other reports that have other recommendations, which we could implement.

If I'm being vague about what those recommendations are, it's because I don't know what they are. I'm not an expert on this. But other people are, and they've listed a bunch of things that we could do to make the police force less racist. I doubt any of those recommendations are "redistribute wealth to black people and poor people", though I'm quite certain that would help too. It is, of course, not the only thing you can do. Why not do the other stuff as well?

 

[Mise]

For the record, I also think that TF's analysis that "mainstream" anti-racism is focused largely on having more black people in elite institutions, and not on, say, black membership of trade unions or black participation in grassroots political processes (*cough* Labour *cough*) is basically correct, in that those prescriptions are also inadequate. The "mainstream" anti-racist idea that you can just put more black people onto company boards, or into cabinet positions in government, or into professorships at universities, and magically solve racism is putting far too much faith in a sort of "social trickle-down effect" that probably won't work.

I still think we should do it though.