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Protesting and Signal Loss [NFL/NBA etc. Protests]
Pony
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, there is a NFL thread, but it's been made pretty clear that there's a sharp divide in that thread between people who want to discuss current events with political protests in sports like the NFL, NBA, etc. and those who do not and would prefer the thread on football to purely be about football.
This thread can be about those protests instead, but there's also something else I'd like to throw out there on discussion as I see #TakeAKnee trending on twitter, and that's the idea of signal loss in protesting.
Colin Kaepernick's original intent in his act of peaceful, silent protest was to draw attention to the racial injustice in America, very specifically to racial inequality to how black Americans are treated by police. This was his expressly stated motive, that he made abundantly clear in interviews and the like. There were other athletes at the time who supported Kaepernick who supported and agreed with that message, and echoed that sentiment when asked about it directly outside that silent and peaceful protest.
However, I feel as a result of Trump's direct hostility towards athletes engaging in this form of protest, and the resulting anti-Trump backlash from people who in general just despise the man and all that he stands for, #TakeAKnee is losing sight of its original message. It's experiencing signal loss. There's some who are calling this white appropriation of a black narrative, white voices drowning out a black protest, but I'm not going to fully commit to that but instead say it's ultimately people who are turning it into a free speech issue and about people rebuking Trump and tyranny and invoking their right to protest in a general sense...
...which isn't really doing much to draw any attention to the issue that Kaepernick really was trying to put a spotlight on originally.
I think this kind of thing can happen on a long enough timeline to any large-scale modern protest movement, where the original intention gets hijacked and mutated by a multitude of voices with their own agendas and reasons for signing on, and isn't even really specifically a racial issue (although it's blind to say race isn't a factor in it).
A discussion point I want to pose is: Should this kind of signal loss actively be resisted? Should people who simply mean well and are trying to glom onto something generally positive for reasons that aren't necessarily bad but aren't the original purpose be instructed no, look, you're doing it wrong. Are there harms in doing that, or wrong or right ways to approach that?
If anyone wants to try to bullhorn into this discussion about the idea that these athletes and others are protesting "the flag" or "the anthem" or this other, alternative narrative that Trump and his supporters are proposing as a way to try to de-fang and defame and vilify the protesters, I'm going to suggest strongly that you (and everyone else, really) watch this clip from sports commentator Nick Wright:
This thread can be about those protests instead, but there's also something else I'd like to throw out there on discussion as I see #TakeAKnee trending on twitter, and that's the idea of signal loss in protesting.
Colin Kaepernick's original intent in his act of peaceful, silent protest was to draw attention to the racial injustice in America, very specifically to racial inequality to how black Americans are treated by police. This was his expressly stated motive, that he made abundantly clear in interviews and the like. There were other athletes at the time who supported Kaepernick who supported and agreed with that message, and echoed that sentiment when asked about it directly outside that silent and peaceful protest.
However, I feel as a result of Trump's direct hostility towards athletes engaging in this form of protest, and the resulting anti-Trump backlash from people who in general just despise the man and all that he stands for, #TakeAKnee is losing sight of its original message. It's experiencing signal loss. There's some who are calling this white appropriation of a black narrative, white voices drowning out a black protest, but I'm not going to fully commit to that but instead say it's ultimately people who are turning it into a free speech issue and about people rebuking Trump and tyranny and invoking their right to protest in a general sense...
...which isn't really doing much to draw any attention to the issue that Kaepernick really was trying to put a spotlight on originally.
I think this kind of thing can happen on a long enough timeline to any large-scale modern protest movement, where the original intention gets hijacked and mutated by a multitude of voices with their own agendas and reasons for signing on, and isn't even really specifically a racial issue (although it's blind to say race isn't a factor in it).
A discussion point I want to pose is: Should this kind of signal loss actively be resisted? Should people who simply mean well and are trying to glom onto something generally positive for reasons that aren't necessarily bad but aren't the original purpose be instructed no, look, you're doing it wrong. Are there harms in doing that, or wrong or right ways to approach that?
If anyone wants to try to bullhorn into this discussion about the idea that these athletes and others are protesting "the flag" or "the anthem" or this other, alternative narrative that Trump and his supporters are proposing as a way to try to de-fang and defame and vilify the protesters, I'm going to suggest strongly that you (and everyone else, really) watch this clip from sports commentator Nick Wright:
+30
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This sort of signal loss is inevitable, and it is what happens when you don't have that organization behind large scale activity.
I do think it's crucial to energetically and deliberately combat that attempt to reframe the discussion, whether it's deliberate or automatic.
Its not even racism that the NFL owners got upset about, it was Trump telling them what to do. Shannon Sharpe was on point about this, the NFL is fucking craven now, and the sports media industry is right along with them.
Like look at this shit, fucking Roger Goodell on the cover, no Kaepernick
pleasepaypreacher.net
It's the toothlessness of their descent that really grinds my gears.
When you hear white athletes and coaches and owners who didn't say a god damn thing about Kaepernick before now saying "Well gosh, those folks have a right to protest, the President's being so divisive, I support those people expressing their rights, this is America"
That's basically saying you don't actually believe in their cause, you just something something intellectually agree with their right to say it. That's so feckless!
To contrast, here's someone like Gregg Popovich, coach of the San Antonio Spurs, who doesn't engage the signal loss, he boosts the signal and doesn't lose sight that this is about racial injustice and that the actual solution is the confrontation of white privilege and that there are too many people who are unwilling to do so:
Signal loss muddied the waters with the occupy movement to such an extent that you could argue what the real meaning of any given occupy protest was in all sorts of ways at the end.
Signal loss hit black lives matter in much the same way.
This can happen due to opposition, or other groups within the protest branching out and trying to ride the wave to get their own agenda or issue heard more.
Such pressures/influence can fracture the protest, or even make it mean something completely contrary to its original intent in the worst cases.
Taking a knee was meant for a very specific issue. Police Brutality, especially against blacks and other minorities, is out of control in much of the country.
No one is saying there aren't other issues. Especially in regard to minorities in this country. No one is saying no other issue matters.
But the more you tack onto a movement, the less it ultimately means, and the less time it will last and therefore the less difference it will have a chance to make.
It needs to be concise, simple, and easy to convey.
pleasepaypreacher.net
It's not just that they think it's a fake problem. It's that they like the status quo(in this case racism) because it benefits them.
There is the safe space problem as well. This goes cross pro spots. When NBA players were wearing hands up dont shoot shirts and the like. Sports watchers will, and will rigorously defend the right to, absolve themselves from the positive and negative aspects of sports happenings to "just watch sports". This is also part of it.
And then you have the resulting quagmire when someone of power comes in and attempts to coop the movement and refocus his base against it in his normal distraction schemes.
In the end you end up with what we have seen. I do not know how it gets better. I cannot morally say they should stop and reorganize. I think there is inherent good in continuing/limping along, fragmented. At least in the NFL instance. Otherwise it just dies out and goes away and we are left with no real change, how ever small. We end up with with a man in power allowed to bully the largest sports company in the world into complacency.
During the march, the organizers would stop the march to protest gentrification (in a specific Mission district neighborhood). They also said a lot of words that amounted to "Fuck the police" with policemen standing RIGHT THERE at the sidewalk nearby us. :O And I'm all "Wait, I'm here to protest the alt-right and Nazis. Yes, I care about police corruption and brutality, and I care about gentrification, but that's not why I'm here." I felt like the message was being diluted by meandering into other social justice issues during the march. There might have been a feeling of "Well, the Nazis are not going to show, but we have all these people here... what do we do now?", maybe, but it did feel like the main issue was being hijacked. I'm not sure how to feel about that, really.
Both of these attitudes exist, I think. There are people who think racism is over, or all but eradicated, and see this kind of protest as unnecessary whining. There are people who think discrimination against black people is right and proper because they are racist, though they may not necessarily consider their attitudes racist. And these two mindsets reinforce each other and bleed together--if you think other races are genetically inferior, then e.g. worse economic performance is a symptom of their essential attributes, not racism, and it's easy to ignore or dismiss accusations of racism and believe it's gone when you're benefit from a system of racist institutions.
But I think the OP is really as much about a "positive" skewing of a protest, though, one that supports it while diverting it away from its original goal, which is more insidious because fighting against it might cost support.
Its super fucking hard to have even an adequate discussion about race in america, because we are, continue to be, and will continue to be horrifically bad about it to the extent that you can have on camera policeman executing black people and a not insignificant part of our population will defend the policeman. And that's the fucking problem.
pleasepaypreacher.net
This is where a strong and respected leader who comes in and takes charge of the movement is needed.
They need someone that is charismatic, focused, and committed to the cause.
They need someone who is also able to work with others behind the scenes to organize and resolve petty squabbles.
A person like this could get everyone on the same page.
They can say, "This is how and when we protest, this is how we answer, this is how we react".
And they could address those who would divide or change the focus. They could speak calmly and intelligently to the cameras and crowds to let the issue be known with passionate clarity.
Also:
http://www.theroot.com/shannon-sharpe-on-nfl-protest-im-disappointed-and-im-1818736697
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Its also shows the short memory of the people. The players have not been on the field for the anthem for even a decade yet.
I don't know who the person who retweeted this is, it's just who showed up on my timeline with the video.
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Its just one more thing that these protests need, and then when they have it then they need something else. Its like a shell game for any leftist cause.
"You must not incumberance white america, you must have an eloquent not too 'urban' spokesman, you have to always be deferential to anyone you might offend with your ideas." Even when you have all that, oops sorry stop hating america.
pleasepaypreacher.net
It's more about the organization and focus required to achieve change.
And then once a figurehead emerges, every one of their personal foibles and closet skeletons are transfered to the movement regardless of applicability. It's just another toehold for delegitimization.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Yes, 100%, that is what I am driving at.
The people who mean well, who are trying, but either don't get it or are sorta uncomfortable with taking that hard line a stance on an issue?
Like, I saw this pop up on my twitter feed:
That's signal loss.
Gillian Anderson and David Duchoveny mean well here. But this right here? This doesn't help black people being murdered by police. This isn't about that. This is about pissing in Trump's eye. This is about defying an odious man they don't want to be President, and drawing a line on free speech and freedom of expression in America.
This is two white celebrities leveraging their celebrity to raise awareness in the most generic, toothless sense possible. It's turning a black man's protest against police brutality into the ice bucket challenge.
People can organize themselves just fine without edicts from on high. Authoritarian movements don't have a great track record out on the left.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
its about telling Trump to eat a dick.
#Resist
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
And that is Trump's fault.
No, people are actually extrenely bad at that.
yeeeeep
I agree. But said party directly inserted himself into the signal to attempt to eradicate it. Or, in the least, attempt to use it for his own purpose on focusing his base back down and providing a new divisive and distracting battle front.
The Occupy movement was rudderless and leaderless and had no specific underlying structure by design and was probably the most "lossy" protest movement I've ever seen.
It was the lo-fi Youtube upload of a shitty mp3 rip of protest signal quality
There's plenty of fault available for the people who engaged at the anti-Trump level without acknowledging the original intent. At some point, co-opting another protest with your own issues is not ok.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Contrast that with, say, the Civil Rights movement.
I'm not saying everyone has to agree, I'm saying there needs to be organization.
Sure, but that's not entirely what I'm talking about, not in the OP and not now. There's a difference between an external opponent trying to undermine your message and someone who is trying to be your well-meaning ally muddying your waters.
One is very obviously negative and needs to be actively fought tooth and nail. The other is more nuanced and complicated and that was what I was more interested in talking about. Yes, Trump bad. We know.
Occupy is the go-to example of disorganized leftists, sure. But it's far from the only one. Plenty of people are working every day for change with varying degrees of success without rallying around a national figure. National figures on the left tend to get savaged to the point of uselessness by the media and opposition anyway.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Sure. I am not sold on the strength of the signal loss. I would place it at minimal at best... at least with the Mulders, the Star Trek crews and the likes on Instagram.
I mean lost in this shuffle is that Kaepernick was fired, he was fired from the nfl and then black listed. What Trump wanted to happen happened, and it was supported by all the smug sumbitches now "uniting" behind unity? I guess.
pleasepaypreacher.net
But the civil rights movement wasn't really any kind of centralized organization. It was schismatic and decentralized and had tons of local leaders getting things done completely independently of the figureheads.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
There's a difference between organization and figureheads or mouthpieces, however, which is what both me and Fencingsax is saying. We're acknowledging your discomfort with the idea of a "Great Man" needing to be centered around but this sort of de-centralized, anarchic hashtag activism is... well, it is what it is, really.
There's ways that aren't those extremes, and actually account for a lot of forms of activism? As someone personally involved in a lot of organized activist movements it's something I can refer to personally as functional.
There's a difference between organization and centralized authority.
Sure, but so is signal loss.
The whole point of the comment that you need a leader, or at least an organizational structure of some sort, is that you need someone who can authoritatively define what the protest or movement or whatever is actually about. Because without that it tends to go, well, the way of what people are complaining about in this thread. You also tend to get things like "So and so under the label of the movement doing something incredibly stupid or horrible and helping paint the entire movement as something it's not" because there's no one who can authoritatively say "These people don't represent our movement".
There are downsides to that though, as it becomes a lot about that person and their faults and such as you say. But that's not the purpose. It's just part of the trade-off you make for having a coherent message.