posted
Awww, poor little Irami. I'm oppressing him!
Dude, this is Hatrack. We are every bit as well-educated and intelligent as you are. Unless you've done years and years of homework in a very particular area, you will get bested here by someone. Here's a hint: race/class/gender/religious oppression is not a small enough subject area to reasonably ever win any argument here.
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quote:I find it fascinating that Irami thinks that subjugation/slavery based on race is entirely a European phenomenon.
And I find it tiresome that you think that I think that subjugation/slavery based on race is entirely a European phenomenon.
And I find it incredible that you think that I think that you think that steven thinks that Irami thinks that erso's doppelganger chanced upon that Tom's roomate discovered the plans that Mucus telepathically determined that Kwea's independent faction of mountain warriors pillaged the microfilm showing that Dan_Raven knew since the beginning of creation that Xavier altered reality using special magic so subjugation/slavery based on race is entirely a European phenomenon.
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posted
Here's what I don't get about this racial contract theory as it is....
I live in a suburban middle class neighborhood, and in my part of town, everyone mows their own lawn. On the richer side of town, or for that matter in richer communities in the Metro area, they hire people to mow them. How can you seriously still consider this to be a race issue and not a socioecnomic issue? Black and white rich people will almost always band together against black and white poor people before they align along race. Ideally we'd all get together, but I think we're far more divided by class than race, and you're deluding yourself by sticking to this.
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posted
I know you've been answering many different people, Irami, but I really would like to hear your thoughts (or anyone else's for that matter) on this. It seems like actual interracial relationships are often left out of race relations discussions. If no one's actually interested in this, I'll drop it after this post.
quote:Originally posted by Juxtapose: Irami,
I'm curious as to how you would account for the rise of multicultural relationships and children in recent decades. Assuming, for the moment, that the "Racial Contract" did in fact have some kind of power in the past, would you at least agree that its power is dissipating?
quote:Black and white rich people will almost always band together against black and white poor people before they align along race.
But Lyrhawn, "rich black" = "pretending to be white", don't you see? A black person can apparently never succeed in society unless they "pretend to be white" - which begs the question: "If social success means pretending to be white, does that mean social failure is inherent in the definition of what it means to be black?"
While Lisa is right (we agree on something! it does happen!), I'm curious.
Irami, what, in your opinion, would be the definition of a "successful black person" in our society? What would a person need to do to become a "success" in your mind while avoiding the stigma of "pretending to be white"? Or do you believe that no black person can ever be successful without "pretending to be white"? And, if so, does that mean that to retain one's identity as a black person one must necessarily seek to fail?
If so, it seems pretty clear that if you feel no one can be successful without "pretending to be white" and that black identity by its very nature means rejecting a pretense of white identity (and therefore, under the auspices of this argument, rejecting social success), that you equate in your mind the ideas of "black" and "social failure", or, as Lisa stated it, you equate the ideas of "black" and "victim". By this logic, if someone refuses to take the role of "victim" or "social failure", then that person can no longer be considered "black".
So, what would a person need to do in our society to be socially successful while retaining their identity as a black person? Or do you feel this is impossible?
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: Y'all are just enabling him.
That sounds suspiciously like patronizing ghetto speak, or was it the whites co-opting black culture schtick? Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Here's a funny thought: if we're going to be talking about this nonsense in contractual, strictly pragmatic terms...how much of this so-called 'racial contract' is justified, seeing as how whites even today make up an overwhelming percentage of race in the United States?
I mean, whites make up about 70% of the population...why shouldn't it be primarily their decision what is culture, art, law, financially sound, blah blah blah? If we're going to use terms like 'contract' to describe the situation, that is.
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The first issue I can think of is labor. There is a lot of grueling work to be done. One of the reasons the illegal immigrant question is so contentious is because we need the Racial Contract in play to get all of our lawns mowed, buildings cleaned, buses driven, and food picked under cost. Our economic system was built on the Racial Contract, treating these laborers like full people risks the entire system crumbling.
That's a practical obstacle to treating certain races as full people, but I'm not sure that it affects the set of principles that our government ought to embody. After all, assuming we have an acceptable definition of "people," what's wrong with the idea that our government should be one that all people would agree to if they didn't know what race they were going to be, how much money they would have, etc. (as John Rawls says)?
Posts: 781 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Irami, what, in your opinion, would be the definition of a "successful black person" in our society?
Any black person who attains their full humanity, and I think that humanity is a plural state involving public truthful interaction without denying, ignoring, excusing, or apologizing for the racial reality of the American public sphere, thereby not being complicit in the political system of white supremacy: Julian Bond, Haki Madhubuti, Aaron McGruder, Toni Morrison, Danielle Allen, Charles Mills, Thurgood Marshall and those are just people in the public eye.
_____________________
Guys, money doesn't address these issues, it just masks the symptoms. If anything, turning this into a class issue just confuses the matter by masking the symptoms. An upper class Jew in an upper class WASP neighborhood is an upper class Jew in a close-knit upper class WASP neighborhood, unless he/she picks her topics of conversation carefully, converts, takes communion and puts up Christmas lights, or is otherwise inoffensive in speaking her truth.
quote:After all, assuming we have an acceptable definition of "people," what's wrong with the idea that our government should be one that all people would agree to if they didn't know what race they were going to be, how much money they would have, etc. (as John Rawls says)?
Omega,
Rawls imports a Kantian idea of personhood to lay down the basic structure of his society. This raceless, sexless, circumstanceless, uninspirable person is so far removed from our political reality and motivations, this person may even be unintelligible that us as a person. It's the equivalent of basing a human society upon how Martians would act. Kant himself said that the ways and means of the choices of this noumenal self(this raceless, sexless, hormonaless, circumstanceless self) outstrip our understanding, since our understanding is conditioned upon our experiences of things through space and time.
These "people" are uninformed by any narratives at all, and part of what makes people, people, especially what makes individual persons, a people, are the shared narratives.
quote:...denying, ignoring, excusing, or apologizing for the racial reality...
The best part about refined racism like Irami's is that, unlike Joe Rebel Flag-wearin' redneck down the street who hates blacks and Mexicans, whose racism can be casually dispelled by a critical eye to reality, Irami's racism pemits all aspects of reality to reinforce his prejudice.
I don't know why people are arguing with Irami about this. He's made it clear in the quote above that those words mean "agree with me about race". Disagree with Irami about race? You're white, either by pigment or social politics.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Any black person who attains their full humanity, and I think that humanity is a plural state involving public truthfully interaction without denying, ignoring, excusing, or apologizing for the racial reality of the American public sphere, thereby not being complicit in the political system of white supremacy
This is an interesting definition, but it sounds a lot like "be the best person you can be" without giving any actual details as to what specifics this entails.
Does Aaron McGruder not make his living from publishers, television networks and newspapers that are predominantly owned by white people? It seems as though he uses the "system" to distribute his "counter system" message.
Would you consider Oprah a successful black person? Or Ray Charles, Al Sharpton, Chuck D, or Tupac Shakur?
I'm also curious - do you feel that this definition of "success" can also be applied to white people? Meaning, can you substitute the word "white" for "black" in the quote above, or does the color of their skin preclude them from being outside the "political system of white supremacy" regardless of their actions/beliefs?
Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:This raceless, sexless, circumstanceless, uninspirable person is so far removed from our political reality and motivations, this person may even be unintelligible that us as a person.
Irami, why do you simply not get that I don't live my life by a "racial narrative?" What in your life is so intrinsically dependent upon your skin color that you would be a different person if you were white?
What, specifically, would you do differently if you were a white guy selling networking gear? Why would you feel compelled to do it differently?
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quote:What in your life is so intrinsically dependent upon your skin color that you would be a different person if you were white?
Because this way, even trivial successes are great triumphs and all degrees of failure are mostly or entirely someone else's fault.
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posted
You know, I'm really reluctant to put words into Irami's mouth. I don't think we should get into guessing his motivations like that; it doesn't seem charitable to me.
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posted
Juxtapose, I'd be interested in hearing Irami's (and other's) take on interracial marriage, partially because I'm in one. Granted it's not to a black man, but brown oughtta count for something.
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posted
You know, no matter how many times we have this discussion with Irami, I still never really understand what he wants America to look like.
All I ever hear is that whitey is keeping everybody down, and that white culture is oppressively dominant, but what does his America look like? What is black American culture, or latino American culture, etc, and what does he imagine they should look like in his ideal America, that they'll supplant white America? Or that we all take turns or something?
I see a whole lot of complaining and blaming, but not much solving.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: Y'all are just enabling him.
That sounds suspiciously like patronizing ghetto speak, or was it the whites co-opting black culture schtick?
"Y'all" is hardly used exlusively by "ghetto speak." It's common in the South and Southwest, and seems even more common on the internet (possibly because it's an acceptable English form of shorthand, though this is a wild guess)
I say y'all all the time, and I was born and raised in California.
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posted
I said it in that case because English uses "you" for both singular and plural second person pronouns. I didn't want it to sound like I was talking to one person in particular, so I used "y'all". Also, I lived in Louisiana for a bit when I was little, and the odd southernism pops out every now and then, particularly when I'm tired.
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quote:Originally posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong: Guys, money doesn't address these issues, it just masks the symptoms. If anything, turning this into a class issue just confuses the matter by masking the symptoms. An upper class Jew in an upper class WASP neighborhood is an upper class Jew in a close-knit upper class WASP neighborhood, unless he/she picks her topics of conversation carefully, converts, takes communion and puts up Christmas lights, or is otherwise inoffensive in speaking her truth.
What do you base those claims on? I live in a town that is mostly upper class with a significant Jewish population. I'm an atheist and I do not recall ever having awkwardness with inter-racial and inter-religious conversations (hell, I have an Indian friend, a Korean friend, and a Jewish friend).
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: What behaviour, institutionalized or otherwise, can be explained by "Racial Contract" theory that cannot be explained by simple racism among individuals, in large numbers or otherwise?
Still wondering about this one...
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: What behaviour, institutionalized or otherwise, can be explained by "Racial Contract" theory that cannot be explained by simple racism among individuals, in large numbers or otherwise?
Still wondering about this one...
"Racial Contract Theory" conveys a quasi-intellectual imprimatur that helps hawk books, or punch-up op-eds, or condemn whole societies, or the entire 1st World, on flimsy abstract rhetoric.
Or short answer, nothing but imaginary unconscious conspiracies.
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posted
I'm going to echo TomD here and politely say that I'm more interested in Irami's take on the issue since he (seems to) genuinely believe in Racial Contract theory.
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posted
I'm still wondering how what has been described could be considered a contract, but Irami has always served up large helpings of pseudo with meager amounts of intellectual, so I'm not really expecting much.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:You know, I'm really reluctant to put words into Irami's mouth. I don't think we should get into guessing his motivations like that; it doesn't seem charitable to me.
Why not, Tom? He's routinely putting words in my (as a white guy) mouth, thoughts into my head, politics into my voting, motives behind my spending.
Also, I never said this is what he would say his motives are. But he obviously feels very free to speculate as to the motives of millions of people he's never met or interacted with. I have interacted with him many times. I'm a helluva lot more charitable than he is.
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posted
First in my class here at MIT Got skills, I'm a champion at D&D M.C. Escher, that's my favorite M.C. Keep you're 40, I'll just have an Earl Grey tea My rims never spin, to the contrary You'll find that they're quite stationary All of my action figures are cherry Stephen Hawking's in my library
My MySpace page is all totally pimped out Got people beggin' for my top eight spaces Yo, I know pi to a thousand places Ain't got no grills but I still wear braces I order all of my sandwiches with mayonnaise I'm a wiz at Minesweeper, I could play for days Once you've see my sweet moves, you're gonna stay amazed My fingers movin' so fast I'll set the place ablaze
There's no killer app I haven't run (run) At Pascal, well I'm number one (one) Do vector calculus just for fun I ain't got a gat, but I got a soldering gun (what?) Happy Days is my favorite theme song I could sure kick your butt in a game of ping pong I'll ace any trivia quiz you bring on I'm fluent in JavaScript as well as Klingon(in part)
They see me roll on my Segway I know in my heart they think I'm White and nerdy
Think I'm just too white and nerdy Think I'm just too white and nerdy Can't you see I'm white and nerdy Look at me I'm white and nerdy
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: First in my class here at MIT Got skills, I'm a champion at D&D M.C. Escher, that's my favorite M.C. Keep you're 40, I'll just have an Earl Grey tea My rims never spin, to the contrary You'll find that they're quite stationary All of my action figures are cherry Stephen Hawking's in my library
My MySpace page is all totally pimped out Got people beggin' for my top eight spaces Yo, I know pi to a thousand places Ain't got no grills but I still wear braces I order all of my sandwiches with mayonnaise I'm a wiz at Minesweeper, I could play for days Once you've see my sweet moves, you're gonna stay amazed My fingers movin' so fast I'll set the place ablaze
There's no killer app I haven't run (run) At Pascal, well I'm number one (one) Do vector calculus just for fun I ain't got a gat, but I got a soldering gun (what?) Happy Days is my favorite theme song I could sure kick your butt in a game of ping pong I'll ace any trivia quiz you bring on I'm fluent in JavaScript as well as Klingon(in part)
They see me roll on my Segway I know in my heart they think I'm White and nerdy
Think I'm just too white and nerdy Think I'm just too white and nerdy Can't you see I'm white and nerdy Look at me I'm white and nerdy
posted
Funny, but we're really not supposed to post that much of a song. The Cards have expressed concern about copyright issues.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:What behaviour, institutionalized or otherwise, can be explained by "Racial Contract" theory that cannot be explained by simple racism among individuals, in large numbers or otherwise?
The talk of freedom and equality. Racial Contract theory creates a way to discuss the gap between how we talk about freedom, democracy, public trust, and equality, and how we act concerning those same issues. It's a way to clarify our political hypocrisy; whereas the current schemes in political philosophy are silent on this issue. ___________________
For all of those questions about inter-racial relationships, I think Carole Pateman wrote a book called "The Sexual Contract," which delves into these issues. My gut reaction is that the Racial Contract concerns strangers, not intimates. For all of our talk about self-reflective individual rights and even the responsibilities of family, I think our political discourse is wanting regarding our aspirations and responsibilities to strangers and strange groups within diverse communities.
posted
Darfur. Is that the white man's fault? I brought that up almost a page ago. Your answer was found...wanting.
Black Africans have owned other black Africans as slaves for centuries at least, perhaps millennia. In some cases, they were born into slavery. I'm trying to figure how this is somehow the white man's fault. I'm not succeeding too well.
[ November 24, 2007, 12:26 AM: Message edited by: steven ]
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I think you could blame SOME of what's wrong in Africa on European whites today, though not specifically Americans. We generally stayed pretty hands off when it came to colonialism and Europe back then. We didn't get involved like Belgium, France, Germany, and Britain did, in taking over whole swaths of land and reordering things to fit whatever they wanted. They created fake tribes, more or less, and screwed things up in pretty lasting ways for a lot of those countries for decades or centuries.
I don't think that means anyone can blame Europe for EVERYTHING, I mean after so many generations you really have to own up and move beyond your past. I don't think Darfur is a white/black racial blame issue though.
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posted
WHile I still find this theory wanting in many ways, I do find it interesting that it would apply (at least to Irami) to strangers. I know that in my personal experience with ACTUAL racism, it is far harder to maintain your hate for another race (or religion, or any other number of other issues) if your do not have actual contact with members of that group.
And by personal experience I mean myself as well. I am not a racist, but when I was younger I had some issues with people who were gay. My only experience with that group had been very negative, which had reinforced my preconceptions.
However, I had been raised to always challenge my beliefs, and as I met more and more people in my life who happened to be gay, the less and less I was able to justify my beliefs. I never thought them evil, or anything like that.....it was more subtle than that.
Now I could care less, and I attribute my change in attitude on two things....my upbringing, which always required me to reexamine any type of discriminatory beliefs, and my exposure to a number of really cool people who just happened to be gay.
It is hard to continue to think of people in that way once you get to know them....it becomes personal.
Although Irami seems to hold on to it well enough.
posted
Irami, you're embarrassing yourself. At least some white people in this country are and have actively worked for racial equality. Some have been more politically motivated than others, but at least they've made the effort, and not all have been politically motivated. OTOH, there are plenty of situations in Africa where class distinctions are made on the basis of race (much smaller differences in race than between blacks and whites in America) and exist for centuries. Nobody in the ruling classes/races there questions it much, unlike whites here in America. As a result, Darfur happens.
The atrocities in Darfur are not all Arab versus Black. I saw an entire episode of Dateline NBC (I believe that was the show) where several women from the (Black) ruling class there had been forced to hide in a home bathroom for weeks on end, hoping to avoid being hacked to death via machete. The (also Black, of a slightly different race) underclass is rebelling and killing them wholesale.
Irami, recognize. Compared to the Black ruling class in Darfur, American whites do not look that bad. Granted, we still have a pretty good ways to go, but acting like whites tend toward racism more than any other group is CRAP, CRAP, CRAP.
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quote:Granted, we still have a pretty good ways to go, but acting like whites tend toward racism more than any other group is CRAP, CRAP, CRAP.
steven, until you understand that Racial Contract Theory is much less about race, racism, violence, or oppression than it is about explaining a profoundly deep-seeded, almost pathological hypocrisy, then we'll just keep talking past each other. What makes European imperialism and America's racial history on through today's immigration debate significant isn't the brutal violence, it's that the brutal violence flowed from a civilization that spoke, and to an alarming degree believed, that this behavior was consistent with the rhetoric about the universal dignity of man.
posted
I don't really see how else things could be done. The natural progression is from inorganic materials, to single-celled organisms, to multi-celled organisms, to vertebrates, to intelligent creatures, to creatures with larger and more world-spanning societies, to creatures with galactic-wide societies. The kind of local, tribal awareness you're talking about isn't necessarily valid from the perspective of a world-wide society. I'm the very first to decry what the white man has done to native groups all over the world. I've posted literally page after page bitching about whites selling white flour, white sugar, and all the other sickening foods to native groups, instead of something useful or at least not as harmful. However, I see it as all part of the larger learning process. Blaming white people exclusively for the problems of the world today is crap, my man. There are kings in Africa who could buy and sell every person in this discussion on this thread 100 times over without noticing the difference in their bank accounts. They are certainly more responsible for any problems in Africa than the average white American. Why not blame them? Am I oppressing them? Look who you're bitching at. And look who's actually treating you like a human.
Your problem, Irami, is that you don't see us as being all in this together. It's your choice to have that perspective, but I'm not sure it's totally valid.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:What makes European imperialism and America's racial history on through today's immigration debate significant isn't the brutal violence, it's that the brutal violence flowed from a civilization that spoke, and to an alarming degree believed, that this behavior was consistent with the rhetoric about the universal dignity of man.
Whoa! Human societies are hypocritical! Shocking! It takes a deep mind to fathom this amazing discrepancy, unique to whitey.
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posted
The funny thing about that is Irami appears to be under the impression that black people JUST discovered that hypocrisy. You don't think there were contemporaries of the time crying foul along the way? Of course there were, and I'd say the majority of them were white, they just happened to find themselves in the minority at the time. And there were plenty of times when whites stood up and spoke and died to try and correct a mistake they thought their peers were making. I'd direct you to couple hundred different books on the Civil War to start with.
And I don't realize how this is so surprising. How many people in history actually look at themselves as the villain? Of course people who do things that us more enlightened people see as barbaric think they are in fact perfectly enlightened themselves. It's called progress.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:until you understand that Racial Contract Theory is much less about race, racism, violence, or oppression than it is about explaining a profoundly deep-seeded, almost pathological hypocrisy...
Wouldn't it be much easier -- and more truthful -- just to say "Western philosophy was largely hypocritical, especially in its application of 'personhood' to others?" There's no need to pretend to any sort of "contract," and I don't think anyone will find anything to argue with in that statement.
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quote:Granted, we still have a pretty good ways to go, but acting like whites tend toward racism more than any other group is CRAP, CRAP, CRAP.
steven, until you understand that Racial Contract Theory is much less about race, racism, violence, or oppression than it is about explaining a profoundly deep-seeded, almost pathological hypocrisy, then we'll just keep talking past each other. What makes European imperialism and America's racial history on through today's immigration debate significant isn't the brutal violence, it's that the brutal violence flowed from a civilization that spoke, and to an alarming degree believed, that this behavior was consistent with the rhetoric about the universal dignity of man.
In other words, when African tribal blacks sold fellow blacks into slavery, they were simply being true to their culture. No hypocrisy, so it's okay. When European whites did the same thing, it was evil.
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posted
What I think Irami misses is that blacks and whites are not, at heart, different. Left to their own devices, blacks would have eventually developed metals technology and the ability to travel to the stars, IMHO. The Masai in East Africa developed iron smelting and refining totally on their own, and about 10 years ago, I saw a special on PBS (or Discovery, or something) about an abandoned city in West Africa. It was a large and extensive stone city, and realistically, it was probably built by a complex society. Based on these two facts, I don't see any fundamental difference between Africans and Europeans.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:In other words, when African tribal blacks sold fellow blacks into slavery, they were simply being true to their culture. No hypocrisy, so it's okay. When European whites did the same thing, it was evil.
It's not okay; it's just a different issue.
quote:Wouldn't it be much easier -- and more truthful -- just to say "Western philosophy was largely hypocritical, especially in its application of 'personhood' to others?"
Western political philosophy is fundamentally hypocritical. The hypocrisy is bone deep, so far that's it's largely taken for granted as common sense. Racial Contract Theory draws attention to this hypocrisy as the norm rather than a deviation from the norm. And once this morally unattractive hypocrisy is revealed, the result will be a new, more compelling series of public questions. The influx of women philosophers in the last 40 years has already done great work in this regard.
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