"Wokeist" - When people talk about progressivism without acquaintance

[cardgame]

we're still blaming the toxic culture on this despite that the toxic culture didn't exist prior massive welfare state? the trends for usa's black community before and after adding welfare at large scales/incentivizing single parent households are ridiculous.

Why do you think the welfare state had a disporportionate impact on black people?

Could it be at all related to the fact that they didn't have economic opportunities or generational wealth?

 

[Gorbles]

if you do that, everything is cancel culture though

Man, you're so close.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It is shocking:

A CHILDREN’S SPEECH PATHOLOGIST who has worked for the last nine years with developmentally disabled, autistic, and speech-impaired elementary school students in Austin, Texas, has been told that she can no longer work with the public school district, after she refused to sign an oath vowing that she “does not” and “will not” engage in a boycott of Israel or “otherwise tak[e] any action that is intended to inflict economic harm” on that foreign nation. A lawsuit on her behalf was filed early Monday morning in a federal court in the Western District of Texas, alleging a violation of her First Amendment right of free speech.​

i was wondering how cancel culture could be applied in such a context, since under normal circumstances how would one detect a boycott?. and holy crap, that isn't cancel culture, it's worse. it's outright compelled speech. texas is amazing to me lately, and not in good ways. that's an impressively blatant violation of basic rights. she *should* have no trouble winning a lawsuit...hope she does in fact win it.

Could it be at all related to the fact that they didn't have economic opportunities or generational wealth?

if this is your model, what is your explanation for why numerous groups, including non-whites, have similarly "lacked economic opportunities or generational wealth", and yet have massively more preferable outcomes?

also worth noting, yet again, that there are significant numbers of black people who did and do have generational wealth (in the absolute sense, not the relative sense), and don't seem to be impacted the same way. this similarly doesn't seem to hit recent black immigrants as hard (aka relative to other types of immigrants), despite their similar lack of generational wealth. if this were the explanation you seem to think it is, we should predict different/more consistent outcomes with it than we observe.

 

[cardgame]

and holy crap, that isn't cancel culture, it's worse. it's outright compelled speech. texas is amazing to me lately, and not in good ways. that's an impressively blatant violation of basic rights.

Thank you for acknowledging how bad this is. Florida is also competing for your attention, and the rest of the GOP seems to be looking at these two with awe, not horror. But do go on about how bad the democrats and cancel culture are.

also worth noting, yet again, that there are significant numbers of black people who did and do have generational wealth (in the absolute sense, not the relative sense), and don't seem to be impacted the same way. this similarly doesn't seem to hit recent black immigrants as hard (aka relative to other types of immigrants), despite their similar lack of generational wealth.

Yes, the context for intergenerational culture and trauma is more than skin-deep, so different cultures and those insulated from the economic oppression would not be the same. This is perfectly compatible with my views.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Florida is also competing for your attention

in what way? last i checked its abortion legislature wasn't like texas/louisiana or even oklahoma, and while there was some blathering about "don't say gay", that's not what that piece of legislature actually said in it. i'm not going to say florida is perfect or anything, but what have they been doing lately that puts them on par with crap like this or texas abortion law?

Yes, the context for intergenerational culture and trauma is more than skin-deep

yes, and we observe massive differences in performance and resilience between cultures. some cultures do not perform well. but no "race", for any possible definition of that word, is married/stuck with a particular culture. even more true for individuals who fit that category, if they manage to be separated from it.

i do believe the usa has been nefarious to its poor populations, but not in the particular way woke asserts. i don't think us government much cares which race/culture lands the most people in its prison labor farms, or whose assets get seized in highway banditry, so long as the targets don't/can't fight back too much. that's already bad, but i find it particularly vile that the same people responsible for perpetuating these institutions turn around and talk about how this is all explained by the unrecognized biases of some random person/people in an office somewhere.

 

[El_Machinae]

Why do you think the welfare state had a disporportionate impact on black people?

Could it be at all related to the fact that they didn't have economic opportunities or generational wealth?

That's a very excellent point, nevermind that the post war welfare changes were poorly designed and were going to aggravate some underlying trends. So, the poorly designed welfare interventions were going to hurt poor people more, which then stratified further.

The failures of the post-war 'leftist' efforts should really be critiqued more. Especially along race lines or when they spiraled out negative feedback loops

 

[Berzerker]

Why do you think the welfare state had a disporportionate impact on black people?

Could it be at all related to the fact that they didn't have economic opportunities or generational wealth?

drug war puts daddy in prison and welfare replaces him in the family

single parent households relate to generational wealth

 

[Lexicus]

The failures of the post-war 'leftist' efforts should really be critiqued more. Especially along race lines or when they spiraled out negative feedback loops

Sure, welfare & the projects were the bandaids they put on the gaping holes in the economy when what was needed was a public jobs program and the socialization of economic resources.

 

[Narz]

Why did you quote me?

Was agreeing w you.

 

[João III]

drug war puts daddy in prison and welfare replaces him in the family

single parent households relate to generational wealth

Reminds me somewhat of Pruitt-Igoe (in St. Louis, MO), which favored single-parent over two-parent households in its admission policy, thus incentivizing fatherless households to acquire public housing

 

[Lexicus]

Reminds me somewhat of Pruitt-Igoe (in St. Louis, MO), which favored single-parent over two-parent households in its admission policy, thus incentivizing fatherless households to acquire public housing

This is what happens when universal public goods aren't an option

 

[cardgame]

i do believe the usa has been nefarious to its poor populations, but not in the particular way woke asserts. i don't think us government much cares which race/culture lands the most people in its prison labor farms, or whose assets get seized in highway banditry, so long as the targets don't/can't fight back too much.

All right, well I can somewhat agree with that*, but the kind of critically important thing here is that minorities especially don't/can't fight back, due to the overwhelming power difference between them and the majority, which is why they are intensely targeted and thus further impacted.

* (what is the 'woke assertion'?) here we get back to the OP of the thread. Nobody knows what 'woke' is, as excellently described by schlaufuchs.

I don’t actually think the move typically is to „change“ the meaning of terminology, but rather to drain a term of meaning, leaving behind, an empty signifier, free for each individual subject to apply whatever meanings, significances, and cultural associations one chooses. I think this is part of why the right is so effective at controlling narrative and distorting terminology: it’s the same principle as combatting disinformation where it requires exponentially more time and energy to positively establish the boundaries of a term than it takes to negatively destabilize those same boundaries.

This is also why I think „woke,“ isn’t a useful or meaningful word now that it’s been effectively unmoored from its original context as a term within black communities to describe the process of coming to understand the totality and perniciousness of anti-blackness. It doesn’t have any positive meaning in public discourse anymore, and is instead an empty vessel to fill with whatever your personal cultural antagonisms might be, whether that’s radical direct action; impotent, cynical liberal grand gestures; the mere existence of openly queer people; pronouns in bio; or showing feathered dinosaurs in your nostalgia movie. When any individual person uses the word „woke,“ I have no idea what they actually mean, and so it ends up being a guessing game - more a reflection of the speaker‘s own prejudices than an objective term, dialectically understood between both parties.

It’s the same with all the other big Republican bugbears: CRT, idpol, sjw, PC, socialist/communist/anarchist. Etc..

Also it’s not like the left is immune to this process either: fascist is the big one that immediately comes to mind.

 

[bernie14]

Here's the "wokey" thing. The acceptance of dialectic materialism/conflict theory as a baseline truth. That is the dogma. That is the religion.

 

[sophie]

Here's the "wokey" thing. The acceptance of dialectic materialism/conflict theory as a baseline truth. That is the dogma. That is the religion.

That might be your conception of "woke," but dialectic materialism, for instance, has very little to do with CRT, whose basis is grounded in a liberal critical tradition. Ta-Nehisi Coates is frequently described as "woke," and he openly and self-consciously rejects any kind of Marxian material analysis. And I don't much see what modern paleontology has to do with dialectic/historical materialism.

 

[cardgame]

Here's the "wokey" thing. The acceptance of dialectic materialism/conflict theory as a bseline truth. That is the dogma. That is the religion.

How else would you describe the very material conflict between white and black people in the United States through, at the very minimum, 1968?

 

[El_Machinae]

Sure, welfare & the projects were the bandaids they put on the gaping holes in the economy when what was needed was a public jobs program and the socialization of economic resources.

I wouldn't call them all 'band-aids'. There were perverse incentives that just did harms, nevermind any wealth transfer.

 

[Angst]

Talking about class is like an OVER 9000 times better use of everyone's time than talking about "wokeism" (no offense to Angst)

anyway mfw the thread is derailed into a discussion of class

As to @BornInCantaloup's points, the "rich" are the people who own enough to survive, preferably in style, purely on the rental income. The rest of us survive by selling our labor, and some of us indeed pretend to be rich.

Class is more important (because more of a thing), but I wonder whether it's one of those times another thread is better. Specifically because I think if this thread has done what it could, it's just better to let it die and have another thread up on more important subject matters.

 

[Lexicus]

I wouldn't call them all 'band-aids'. There were perverse incentives that just did harms, nevermind any wealth transfer.

They obviously did not "just do harms", that is patently false. I mean FFS, Obama's mother was on food stamps for a time.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

How else would you describe the very material conflict between white and black people in the United States through, at the very minimum, 1968?

a misrepresentation of actual conflict in most cases.

 

[El_Machinae]

They obviously did not "just do harms", that is patently false. I mean FFS, Obama's mother was on food stamps for a time.

You might be confusing a statement about aggregate effects as a statement about specific effects. And, obviously, there were some benefits. You can't have a spread of policies without some of them helping. I meant there were aspects that caused damage and mainly caused damage.

I'm not impressed by Food Stamps. Craig T. Nelson was on welfare AND on food stamps, and no one helped HIM.