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A Thread About [Black Lives Matter]

1234689

Posts

  • Squidget0Squidget0 Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    TL DR wrote: »
    Personally I'm not attached to the verbiage of "shut up and listen"

    It's a needlessly confrontational phrasing of a good sentiment.

    Except it isn't needless, as it stems from specific historic roots. I really wish people would stop avoiding that aspect.

    I'm not sure why you think using the words "shut up" is needed when there's far less insulting ways of phrasing the sentiment that you should not try and tell <insert oppressed group here> what their problems are and maybe listen to what they are saying.

    The problem is, and it's not something that is drawn just from here, that there is an emphasis placed on confrontation and "calling people out" in equality movements these days. Praise is heaped upon anyone who uses the most violent language possible as a reaction against "respectability politics." I only quote such things to preserve language as I have seen it.

    I think it's a fair criticism of a lot of these movements that they are frequently more interested in fighting The Judean People's Front than they are in fighting with the Romans.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE

  • Death of RatsDeath of Rats Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    TL DR wrote: »
    Personally I'm not attached to the verbiage of "shut up and listen"

    It's a needlessly confrontational phrasing of a good sentiment.

    Except it isn't needless, as it stems from specific historic roots. I really wish people would stop avoiding that aspect.

    I'm not sure why you think using the words "shut up" is needed when there's far less insulting ways of phrasing the sentiment that you should not try and tell <insert oppressed group here> what their problems are and maybe listen to what they are saying.

    The problem is, and it's not something that is drawn just from here, that there is an emphasis placed on confrontation and "calling people out" in equality movements these days. Praise is heaped upon anyone who uses the most violent language possible as a reaction against "respectability politics." I only quote such things to preserve language as I have seen it.

    Thatd because a good number of people are sick and tired of letting good get in the way of progress. Too many people don't understand how bad these problems actually are, if they even recognize these problems exist at all. Politely asking people to pay attention to or not try and take control of a movement that isn't about them doesn't work when the general attitude is that these problems don't exist.

    Confrontation is part of the way these movements can make people aware. And anger is there because they have every god damned reason to be angry. Being call is pretty much asking to be walked all over or ignored.

    No I don't.
  • NarbusNarbus Registered User regular
    Narbus wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    When bullying was brought up previously, it came with a story about how people who hadn't had to deal with bullying had solutions that involved growing a pair and not being such a drama queen. Victim-blaming solutions that did nothing except to absolve the person offering that "help" of any responsibility to fix the problem.

    Likewise, with racism, the "solutions" offered by those who aren't victims of racism are, all too often, along the lines of "well, stop having so many babies you can't afford" or "maybe if you'd listen to the police" or, what you're doing here, "have you tried protesting more politely?"

    That was the point.

    Likewise, a lot of those studies you're looking for have already been done. We know what a boon integration is in addressing educational disparities. We know what harm the "school to prison" pipeline does to minority communities. We are very, very, very aware of how much damage the war on drugs has done to minority communities. We are aware that "basic human compassion" doesn't work because the entire system is set up to paint minority groups as less-than-human. As uneducated thugs or baby machines milking the system, just waiting for the right Henry Higgins to come along and teach them the wonders of civilization.

    AND YET. We still have people in power saying "no no, these aren't the issue, the issue is welfare queens". Because they won't shut up and listen to how these policies actually impact people. They are a group with a vested interest in not solving this hard problem. You're telling the group who are after basic rights that it's all on them, that if they'd just be a little more polite, then everyone will listen! History is pretty clear on how wrong that is. History is also clear on how helpful a clueless white guy can be. White people who listened, white people who realized that this struggle isn't about them, those are the helpful white people.

    Is there no room between the bigot who complains about "welfare queens" and the people who sincerely want to participate in the discussion without being told to shut up?

    That the people in this thread who are insisting they have so much of quality to contribute, in fact, haven't actually contributed anything of quality toward combating racism sorta answers your question.

  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    PantsB wrote: »
    PantsB wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    Surfpossum wrote: »
    Shut up AND listen implies someone else is talking.

    Meaning, feel free to contribute as much as you want, but focus your efforts on amplifying the message, not muting it.

    That's not what it means, though. Spread the Word is a more accurate, yet more boring slogan.

    It's all mincing words. It's only a catchy buzzword that fits on twitter, a code for a concept not literally related to the semantic content of the slogan. If you want to use it, fine, but be prepared for pointless semantic arguments and general resistance to enter it into the historical lexicon.

    The phrase exists because historically, white progressives...haven't been well behaved towards minorities. The problem is that history keeps getting glossed over, until it comes up, and suddenly white progressives look absolutely surprised.
    The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were passed when there were 6 African American Reps and zero African American Governors or Senators. Who the fuck do you think passed those laws? Cherokee libertarians? You're literally defining good as the enemy of perfect.

    Because once those were passed, then everything was fine and racism ended.


    Do you not even see yourself doing it? No one said "everything was fine and racism ended." That would be 'perfect'. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were 2 of the 3 biggest steps forward towards racial equality (with Brown v Board of Education, also decided by white liberals) since the Reformation. That's good. Declaring it as bad, is fucking dumb and is the clearest example of letting the letting the perfect be the enemy of the good I've ever seen.
    I love reminding people that the largest, most vicious fight against integration didn't take place in the South. It took place up in Boston. And it happened well after those laws were passed.
    Then you're reminding people of a lie. The media loved to portray those "riots" and guess how many people were killed? One white dude. One other white dude was almost killed. Literally no black people were killed and almost none were seriously injured. Order was maintained by Boston police and people were arrested for protesting. The Boston "riots" weren't even the biggest desegregation riots of that year. There are bigger riots involved with sporting events every year in the US or any time the G8 or WTO or similar has a meeting.

    In both Detroit and in LA in that time period, scores were killed, thousands were injured and there were billions of dollars (in today's dollars) of damage before the military was sent in to restore order. But you remember the Boston one because it provides a contrast.

    I'm not declaring the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were bad.

    I'm pointing out that when it comes to equality, they were a start, not an end. And as people started to realize what true equality entailed, you began to see pushback across the board. After all, it wasn't a right winger who authored the Moynahan Report, but a liberal member of the Senate. Hell, when the courts were saying the stop and frisk was unconstitutional, you saw voices from both sides pleading for the courts to allow it to continue.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • FuzzytadpoleFuzzytadpole Registered User regular
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    The problem with combating bullying was not that it was a hard problem. The problem was that, in many ways, we were culturally unwilling to actually grapple with the reality of bullying, instead creating an entire mythos around the phenomenon that had no relation to reality.

    So the idea here is that if we were "culturally willing to grapple with the reality of bullying" then the problem would solve itself? Why would that happen? And what would it look like if it did?

    I think this argument implies that bullying and racism are somehow an unnatural state, and that it takes actual work by evil forces to keep the system in a state where they can occur. It seems to be a worldview where if you could only smash the current cultural barriers to natural human goodness, then bullying and racism would disappear forever. Unfortunately, humanity isn't like that. If you put humans into groups there will be bullying and racism and tribalism, because those things are humanity's natural state when we operate in groups. Creating a system where people don't do these things requires setting up artificial structures (like the legal system or harassment policies) which are massively complex and have to be tuned just so in order to work at all. Creating such a system requires a huge amount of research and effort, and maintaining it requires even more. There is a reason the bullying problem was around in every society throughout human history (and still is to a large extent, even if we've made some initial strides) - it's a Hard Problem, not something that naturally solves itself if only every individual in the system believes hard enough.

    The narrative of "If only white people actually cared about black issues, this would be easily solved" is massively contradictory and massively wrong. The data (as well as any remotely politically facebook feed) tells us that white people care more about a single black person getting shot than they do about their health care or their taxes. Racial issues are up there with child molestation in society's list of Things That Everyone Must Care About All The Time. If caring or awareness were going to solve these problems, they would have already solved it a hundred times over.

    But they haven't been solved. Because these are actually Hard Problems. And they are not made any easier by pretending otherwise.

    It is entirely possible to care about something for the wrong reasons though. They don't care about black issues, they care about the way black issues affect white issues.

  • Squidget0Squidget0 Registered User regular
    edited September 2015
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    The problem with combating bullying was not that it was a hard problem. The problem was that, in many ways, we were culturally unwilling to actually grapple with the reality of bullying, instead creating an entire mythos around the phenomenon that had no relation to reality.

    So the idea here is that if we were "culturally willing to grapple with the reality of bullying" then the problem would solve itself? Why would that happen? And what would it look like if it did?

    I think this argument implies that bullying and racism are somehow an unnatural state, and that it takes actual work by evil forces to keep the system in a state where they can occur. It seems to be a worldview where if you could only smash the current cultural barriers to natural human goodness, then bullying and racism would disappear forever. Unfortunately, humanity isn't like that. If you put humans into groups there will be bullying and racism and tribalism, because those things are humanity's natural state when we operate in groups. Creating a system where people don't do these things requires setting up artificial structures (like the legal system or harassment policies) which are massively complex and have to be tuned just so in order to work at all. Creating such a system requires a huge amount of research and effort, and maintaining it requires even more. There is a reason the bullying problem was around in every society throughout human history (and still is to a large extent, even if we've made some initial strides) - it's a Hard Problem, not something that naturally solves itself if only every individual in the system believes hard enough.

    The narrative of "If only white people actually cared about black issues, this would be easily solved" is massively contradictory and massively wrong. The data (as well as any remotely politically facebook feed) tells us that white people care more about a single black person getting shot than they do about their health care or their taxes. Racial issues are up there with child molestation in society's list of Things That Everyone Must Care About All The Time. If caring or awareness were going to solve these problems, they would have already solved it a hundred times over.

    But they haven't been solved. Because these are actually Hard Problems. And they are not made any easier by pretending otherwise.

    It is entirely possible to care about something for the wrong reasons though. They don't care about black issues, they care about the way black issues affect white issues.

    This seems highly uncharitable.

    I feel like you are defining "cares about black issues" in an increasingly narrow manner. If this is supposed to be the One True Solution, maybe we could define the terms better?

    Squidget0 on
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    TL DR wrote: »
    Personally I'm not attached to the verbiage of "shut up and listen"

    It's a needlessly confrontational phrasing of a good sentiment.

    Except it isn't needless, as it stems from specific historic roots. I really wish people would stop avoiding that aspect.

    I'm not sure why you think using the words "shut up" is needed when there's far less insulting ways of phrasing the sentiment that you should not try and tell <insert oppressed group here> what their problems are and maybe listen to what they are saying.

    The problem is, and it's not something that is drawn just from here, that there is an emphasis placed on confrontation and "calling people out" in equality movements these days. Praise is heaped upon anyone who uses the most violent language possible as a reaction against "respectability politics." I only quote such things to preserve language as I have seen it.

    "Respectability politics" is utter gooseshit, and one would think that the major proponent of the philosophy being outed as a fucking serial rapist would have been enough to kill it.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • iTunesIsEviliTunesIsEvil Cornfield? Cornfield.Registered User regular
    Astaereth wrote: »
    I really don't understand what's so ... offensive about the concept of "before storming into a group and yelling that you have the best solution that none of these other folks have thought of, maybe you should sit and listen to those in the group who've had personal experience with the problem your idea is supposed to solve. This will not only give you a better idea of what problems are being faced, by whom, and to what degree, but will also help you to gauge your idea's worth in solving the problem you're interested in helping with."

    When TL;DR said "step one ought to always be Shut up and listen" I sure didn't take it as "white people have no good ideas, and are only bad, and should never talk because white privilege man." Which seems to be the way that an awful lot of people took the sentence/phrase.

    I dunno. Was it just that "shut up and listen" sounds kind of harsh?

    If I wanted to help out in a soup-kitchen, it seems like it'd be a bad idea for me to walk in, step behind the counter and into the kitchen, and just start throwing food/ingredients together because what people need here is food so let's get going making some freakin' food, right guys? I think things would probably go better for me if I sat down and listened to the guy in charge and found out if he needed help unloading a truck, or doing prep-work, cooking prepped stuff, serving what was already prepped/made, or cleaning, or making sure we were only allowing X number of people in at once as to not piss off the Fire Marshall, or any myriad of things that didn't just involve me going "I know best, and since I'm clearly helping solve the problem of 'hungry people' it's all good!" Same concept would apply if I were (say) moved to a new team/department at my job. Before telling them about the great solutions I have, I probably want to talk to the group and understand their situation.

    Clearly this has really gotten some people's hair up, and I don't understand why. I'm not seeing the ridiculous or ludicrous or stupid part of what was said.

    I think your analogy is off-base. The advice given here was more along the lines of:

    "Hi, I came to this soup kitchen because I know how much the homeless need help, what do you want me to do?"
    "First, go home and educate yourself on how much the homeless need help."

    That's not my reading at all. My reading is that the reply is much more along the lines of "Great, why don't you start by talking with some of the people here who we try to help so that you can have a better idea of what has brought these people here, the challenges they face, and how they're currently dealing with those things."

  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    TL DR wrote: »
    Personally I'm not attached to the verbiage of "shut up and listen"

    It's a needlessly confrontational phrasing of a good sentiment.

    Except it isn't needless, as it stems from specific historic roots. I really wish people would stop avoiding that aspect.

    I'm not sure why you think using the words "shut up" is needed when there's far less insulting ways of phrasing the sentiment that you should not try and tell <insert oppressed group here> what their problems are and maybe listen to what they are saying.

    Then you haven't been reading my posts.

    I have. That's why I'm saying this. Because you haven't addressed this point at all.

    Yes, I have - the fact is that white progressives have not been good about letting minority issues come to the forefront historically. And asking nicely hasn't really worked either. Hence the aggravated, "not going to take it anymore" stance inherent in "shut up and listen".

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • FuzzytadpoleFuzzytadpole Registered User regular
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    The problem with combating bullying was not that it was a hard problem. The problem was that, in many ways, we were culturally unwilling to actually grapple with the reality of bullying, instead creating an entire mythos around the phenomenon that had no relation to reality.

    So the idea here is that if we were "culturally willing to grapple with the reality of bullying" then the problem would solve itself? Why would that happen? And what would it look like if it did?

    I think this argument implies that bullying and racism are somehow an unnatural state, and that it takes actual work by evil forces to keep the system in a state where they can occur. It seems to be a worldview where if you could only smash the current cultural barriers to natural human goodness, then bullying and racism would disappear forever. Unfortunately, humanity isn't like that. If you put humans into groups there will be bullying and racism and tribalism, because those things are humanity's natural state when we operate in groups. Creating a system where people don't do these things requires setting up artificial structures (like the legal system or harassment policies) which are massively complex and have to be tuned just so in order to work at all. Creating such a system requires a huge amount of research and effort, and maintaining it requires even more. There is a reason the bullying problem was around in every society throughout human history (and still is to a large extent, even if we've made some initial strides) - it's a Hard Problem, not something that naturally solves itself if only every individual in the system believes hard enough.

    The narrative of "If only white people actually cared about black issues, this would be easily solved" is massively contradictory and massively wrong. The data (as well as any remotely politically facebook feed) tells us that white people care more about a single black person getting shot than they do about their health care or their taxes. Racial issues are up there with child molestation in society's list of Things That Everyone Must Care About All The Time. If caring or awareness were going to solve these problems, they would have already solved it a hundred times over.

    But they haven't been solved. Because these are actually Hard Problems. And they are not made any easier by pretending otherwise.

    It is entirely possible to care about something for the wrong reasons though. They don't care about black issues, they care about the way black issues affect white issues.

    This seems highly uncharitable.

    I disagree that it is uncharitable, otherwise white people would have fixed all these problems on their own if they cared about black problems and not black on white problems as you suggest.

    They could be starting their own shit to make way for new shit, but instead we're here talking about how ineffective or useless the only player in the room is.

  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    edited September 2015
    Narbus wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    When bullying was brought up previously, it came with a story about how people who hadn't had to deal with bullying had solutions that involved growing a pair and not being such a drama queen. Victim-blaming solutions that did nothing except to absolve the person offering that "help" of any responsibility to fix the problem.

    Likewise, with racism, the "solutions" offered by those who aren't victims of racism are, all too often, along the lines of "well, stop having so many babies you can't afford" or "maybe if you'd listen to the police" or, what you're doing here, "have you tried protesting more politely?"

    That was the point.

    Likewise, a lot of those studies you're looking for have already been done. We know what a boon integration is in addressing educational disparities. We know what harm the "school to prison" pipeline does to minority communities. We are very, very, very aware of how much damage the war on drugs has done to minority communities. We are aware that "basic human compassion" doesn't work because the entire system is set up to paint minority groups as less-than-human. As uneducated thugs or baby machines milking the system, just waiting for the right Henry Higgins to come along and teach them the wonders of civilization.

    AND YET. We still have people in power saying "no no, these aren't the issue, the issue is welfare queens". Because they won't shut up and listen to how these policies actually impact people. They are a group with a vested interest in not solving this hard problem. You're telling the group who are after basic rights that it's all on them, that if they'd just be a little more polite, then everyone will listen! History is pretty clear on how wrong that is. History is also clear on how helpful a clueless white guy can be. White people who listened, white people who realized that this struggle isn't about them, those are the helpful white people.

    You bring up 'stop having so many babies you can't afford' as some terrible solution. In fact, its an excellent solution to a wide variety of problems faced by black people. The problem is that many poor black women (and poor women in general) don't have the option or information available to them to make good family planning choices. Giving them these works. It will make them wealthier, happier, healthier, and more integrated into society.

    You are mistakenly associating your allies (those saying, "Hey, freedom, justice and equality are some great ideals, I wish we could change hearts and minds out there. But how about we focus on getting you a higher minimum wage and public transit options? We might be able to do that.") with your enemies (those saying, "Black people are bad")

    tbloxham on
    "That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    TL DR wrote: »
    Personally I'm not attached to the verbiage of "shut up and listen"

    It's a needlessly confrontational phrasing of a good sentiment.

    Except it isn't needless, as it stems from specific historic roots. I really wish people would stop avoiding that aspect.

    I'm not sure why you think using the words "shut up" is needed when there's far less insulting ways of phrasing the sentiment that you should not try and tell <insert oppressed group here> what their problems are and maybe listen to what they are saying.

    Then you haven't been reading my posts.

    I have. That's why I'm saying this. Because you haven't addressed this point at all.

    Yes, I have - the fact is that white progressives have not been good about letting minority issues come to the forefront historically. And asking nicely hasn't really worked either. Hence the aggravated, "not going to take it anymore" stance inherent in "shut up and listen".

    This is an interesting point. Getting aggressive gets attention, and at least some of the people targeted might get over their initial offense and think more deeply about an issue they may have ignored.

    Is an inflammatory approach more effective for motivating change in general?

  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Narbus wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    When bullying was brought up previously, it came with a story about how people who hadn't had to deal with bullying had solutions that involved growing a pair and not being such a drama queen. Victim-blaming solutions that did nothing except to absolve the person offering that "help" of any responsibility to fix the problem.

    Likewise, with racism, the "solutions" offered by those who aren't victims of racism are, all too often, along the lines of "well, stop having so many babies you can't afford" or "maybe if you'd listen to the police" or, what you're doing here, "have you tried protesting more politely?"

    That was the point.

    Likewise, a lot of those studies you're looking for have already been done. We know what a boon integration is in addressing educational disparities. We know what harm the "school to prison" pipeline does to minority communities. We are very, very, very aware of how much damage the war on drugs has done to minority communities. We are aware that "basic human compassion" doesn't work because the entire system is set up to paint minority groups as less-than-human. As uneducated thugs or baby machines milking the system, just waiting for the right Henry Higgins to come along and teach them the wonders of civilization.

    AND YET. We still have people in power saying "no no, these aren't the issue, the issue is welfare queens". Because they won't shut up and listen to how these policies actually impact people. They are a group with a vested interest in not solving this hard problem. You're telling the group who are after basic rights that it's all on them, that if they'd just be a little more polite, then everyone will listen! History is pretty clear on how wrong that is. History is also clear on how helpful a clueless white guy can be. White people who listened, white people who realized that this struggle isn't about them, those are the helpful white people.

    You bring up 'stop having so many babies you can't afford' as some terrible solution. In fact, its an excellent solution to a wide variety of problems faced by black people. The problem is that many poor black women (and poor women in general) don't have the option or information available to them to make good family planning choices. Giving them these works. It will make them wealthier, happier, healthier, and more integrated into society.

    You are mistakenly associating your allies (those saying, "Hey, freedom, justice and equality are some great ideals, I wish we could change hearts and minds out there. But how about we focus on getting you a higher minimum wage and public transit options? We might be able to do that.") with your enemies (those saying, "Black people are bad")

    Except that when the pressing issue for a community is "agents of the state are brutalizing and killing us under color of law", focusing on the minimum wage means that you really aren't their ally.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    The problem with combating bullying was not that it was a hard problem. The problem was that, in many ways, we were culturally unwilling to actually grapple with the reality of bullying, instead creating an entire mythos around the phenomenon that had no relation to reality.

    So the idea here is that if we were "culturally willing to grapple with the reality of bullying" then the problem would solve itself? Why would that happen? And what would it look like if it did?

    I think this argument implies that bullying and racism are somehow an unnatural state, and that it takes actual work by evil forces to keep the system in a state where they can occur. It seems to be a worldview where if you could only smash the current cultural barriers to natural human goodness, then bullying and racism would disappear forever. Unfortunately, humanity isn't like that. If you put humans into groups there will be bullying and racism and tribalism, because those things are humanity's natural state when we operate in groups. Creating a system where people don't do these things requires setting up artificial structures (like the legal system or harassment policies) which are massively complex and have to be tuned just so in order to work at all. Creating such a system requires a huge amount of research and effort, and maintaining it requires even more. There is a reason the bullying problem was around in every society throughout human history (and still is to a large extent, even if we've made some initial strides) - it's a Hard Problem, not something that naturally solves itself if only every individual in the system believes hard enough.

    The narrative of "If only white people actually cared about black issues, this would be easily solved" is massively contradictory and massively wrong. The data (as well as any remotely politically facebook feed) tells us that white people care more about a single black person getting shot than they do about their health care or their taxes. Racial issues are up there with child molestation in society's list of Things That Everyone Must Care About All The Time. If caring or awareness were going to solve these problems, they would have already solved it a hundred times over.

    But they haven't been solved. Because these are actually Hard Problems. And they are not made any easier by pretending otherwise.

    It is entirely possible to care about something for the wrong reasons though. They don't care about black issues, they care about the way black issues affect white issues.

    This seems highly uncharitable.

    I disagree that it is uncharitable, otherwise white people would have fixed all these problems on their own if they cared about black problems and not black on white problems as you suggest.

    They could be starting their own shit to make way for new shit, but instead we're here talking about how ineffective or useless the only player in the room is.

    I thought the general consensus was that white people should step back and let black people fix the problem because "it's not their fight". Isn't a majority white anti-racism group kind of the opposite of that?

  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    The problem with combating bullying was not that it was a hard problem. The problem was that, in many ways, we were culturally unwilling to actually grapple with the reality of bullying, instead creating an entire mythos around the phenomenon that had no relation to reality.

    So the idea here is that if we were "culturally willing to grapple with the reality of bullying" then the problem would solve itself? Why would that happen? And what would it look like if it did?

    I think this argument implies that bullying and racism are somehow an unnatural state, and that it takes actual work by evil forces to keep the system in a state where they can occur. It seems to be a worldview where if you could only smash the current cultural barriers to natural human goodness, then bullying and racism would disappear forever. Unfortunately, humanity isn't like that. If you put humans into groups there will be bullying and racism and tribalism, because those things are humanity's natural state when we operate in groups. Creating a system where people don't do these things requires setting up artificial structures (like the legal system or harassment policies) which are massively complex and have to be tuned just so in order to work at all. Creating such a system requires a huge amount of research and effort, and maintaining it requires even more. There is a reason the bullying problem was around in every society throughout human history (and still is to a large extent, even if we've made some initial strides) - it's a Hard Problem, not something that naturally solves itself if only every individual in the system believes hard enough.

    The narrative of "If only white people actually cared about black issues, this would be easily solved" is massively contradictory and massively wrong. The data (as well as any remotely politically facebook feed) tells us that white people care more about a single black person getting shot than they do about their health care or their taxes. Racial issues are up there with child molestation in society's list of Things That Everyone Must Care About All The Time. If caring or awareness were going to solve these problems, they would have already solved it a hundred times over.

    But they haven't been solved. Because these are actually Hard Problems. And they are not made any easier by pretending otherwise.

    It is entirely possible to care about something for the wrong reasons though. They don't care about black issues, they care about the way black issues affect white issues.

    Do you really feel this way, or are you just pissed off? I would say there are absolutely white people who care about the issues faced by minorities because they genuinely want to help. Its a whole different level of exclusionary language to shift between "We don't think your help is being very effective" and "We don't think you are actually trying to help at all"

    "That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
  • FuzzytadpoleFuzzytadpole Registered User regular
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    The problem with combating bullying was not that it was a hard problem. The problem was that, in many ways, we were culturally unwilling to actually grapple with the reality of bullying, instead creating an entire mythos around the phenomenon that had no relation to reality.

    So the idea here is that if we were "culturally willing to grapple with the reality of bullying" then the problem would solve itself? Why would that happen? And what would it look like if it did?

    I think this argument implies that bullying and racism are somehow an unnatural state, and that it takes actual work by evil forces to keep the system in a state where they can occur. It seems to be a worldview where if you could only smash the current cultural barriers to natural human goodness, then bullying and racism would disappear forever. Unfortunately, humanity isn't like that. If you put humans into groups there will be bullying and racism and tribalism, because those things are humanity's natural state when we operate in groups. Creating a system where people don't do these things requires setting up artificial structures (like the legal system or harassment policies) which are massively complex and have to be tuned just so in order to work at all. Creating such a system requires a huge amount of research and effort, and maintaining it requires even more. There is a reason the bullying problem was around in every society throughout human history (and still is to a large extent, even if we've made some initial strides) - it's a Hard Problem, not something that naturally solves itself if only every individual in the system believes hard enough.

    The narrative of "If only white people actually cared about black issues, this would be easily solved" is massively contradictory and massively wrong. The data (as well as any remotely politically facebook feed) tells us that white people care more about a single black person getting shot than they do about their health care or their taxes. Racial issues are up there with child molestation in society's list of Things That Everyone Must Care About All The Time. If caring or awareness were going to solve these problems, they would have already solved it a hundred times over.

    But they haven't been solved. Because these are actually Hard Problems. And they are not made any easier by pretending otherwise.

    It is entirely possible to care about something for the wrong reasons though. They don't care about black issues, they care about the way black issues affect white issues.

    This seems highly uncharitable.

    I disagree that it is uncharitable, otherwise white people would have fixed all these problems on their own if they cared about black problems and not black on white problems as you suggest.

    They could be starting their own shit to make way for new shit, but instead we're here talking about how ineffective or useless the only player in the room is.

    I thought the general consensus was that white people should step back and let black people fix the problem because "it's not their fight". Isn't a majority white anti-racism group kind of the opposite of that?

    Other people may have said that, but if I did it was unintentional.

  • LoserForHireXLoserForHireX Philosopher King The AcademyRegistered User regular
    Narbus wrote: »
    Narbus wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    When bullying was brought up previously, it came with a story about how people who hadn't had to deal with bullying had solutions that involved growing a pair and not being such a drama queen. Victim-blaming solutions that did nothing except to absolve the person offering that "help" of any responsibility to fix the problem.

    Likewise, with racism, the "solutions" offered by those who aren't victims of racism are, all too often, along the lines of "well, stop having so many babies you can't afford" or "maybe if you'd listen to the police" or, what you're doing here, "have you tried protesting more politely?"

    That was the point.

    Likewise, a lot of those studies you're looking for have already been done. We know what a boon integration is in addressing educational disparities. We know what harm the "school to prison" pipeline does to minority communities. We are very, very, very aware of how much damage the war on drugs has done to minority communities. We are aware that "basic human compassion" doesn't work because the entire system is set up to paint minority groups as less-than-human. As uneducated thugs or baby machines milking the system, just waiting for the right Henry Higgins to come along and teach them the wonders of civilization.

    AND YET. We still have people in power saying "no no, these aren't the issue, the issue is welfare queens". Because they won't shut up and listen to how these policies actually impact people. They are a group with a vested interest in not solving this hard problem. You're telling the group who are after basic rights that it's all on them, that if they'd just be a little more polite, then everyone will listen! History is pretty clear on how wrong that is. History is also clear on how helpful a clueless white guy can be. White people who listened, white people who realized that this struggle isn't about them, those are the helpful white people.

    Is there no room between the bigot who complains about "welfare queens" and the people who sincerely want to participate in the discussion without being told to shut up?

    That the people in this thread who are insisting they have so much of quality to contribute, in fact, haven't actually contributed anything of quality toward combating racism sorta answers your question.

    Well, we do keep getting told we aren't allowed to contribute.

    But yes, I haven't solved racism yet. Sorry about that.

    People have offered criticism in this thread for how BLM has been presented, and has presented itself. Others have said that those criticisms are inappropriate. You are right that we haven't gotten on to having solved racism in America (or the world), but that was never what anyone was trying to do.

    Some of us think that the conversation should involve everyone as active participants, and others have said that this movement isn't theirs and that their participation ought to be very limited, mostly to listening instead of engaging in discussion.

    "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
    "We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    The problem with combating bullying was not that it was a hard problem. The problem was that, in many ways, we were culturally unwilling to actually grapple with the reality of bullying, instead creating an entire mythos around the phenomenon that had no relation to reality.

    So the idea here is that if we were "culturally willing to grapple with the reality of bullying" then the problem would solve itself? Why would that happen? And what would it look like if it did?

    I think this argument implies that bullying and racism are somehow an unnatural state, and that it takes actual work by evil forces to keep the system in a state where they can occur. It seems to be a worldview where if you could only smash the current cultural barriers to natural human goodness, then bullying and racism would disappear forever. Unfortunately, humanity isn't like that. If you put humans into groups there will be bullying and racism and tribalism, because those things are humanity's natural state when we operate in groups. Creating a system where people don't do these things requires setting up artificial structures (like the legal system or harassment policies) which are massively complex and have to be tuned just so in order to work at all. Creating such a system requires a huge amount of research and effort, and maintaining it requires even more. There is a reason the bullying problem was around in every society throughout human history (and still is to a large extent, even if we've made some initial strides) - it's a Hard Problem, not something that naturally solves itself if only every individual in the system believes hard enough.

    The narrative of "If only white people actually cared about black issues, this would be easily solved" is massively contradictory and massively wrong. The data (as well as any remotely politically facebook feed) tells us that white people care more about a single black person getting shot than they do about their health care or their taxes. Racial issues are up there with child molestation in society's list of Things That Everyone Must Care About All The Time. If caring or awareness were going to solve these problems, they would have already solved it a hundred times over.

    But they haven't been solved. Because these are actually Hard Problems. And they are not made any easier by pretending otherwise.

    It is entirely possible to care about something for the wrong reasons though. They don't care about black issues, they care about the way black issues affect white issues.

    Do you really feel this way, or are you just pissed off? I would say there are absolutely white people who care about the issues faced by minorities because they genuinely want to help. Its a whole different level of exclusionary language to shift between "We don't think your help is being very effective" and "We don't think you are actually trying to help at all"

    Everyone knows what road uses good intentions as pavers.

    I don't doubt that they have genuine desire to help. The problem is that there are a large number of them who view the issue through their own lens, and as such demand to "fix" the issue as they see it. The problem is that sort of "help" winds up being counterproductive.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • Squidget0Squidget0 Registered User regular
    edited September 2015
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    The problem with combating bullying was not that it was a hard problem. The problem was that, in many ways, we were culturally unwilling to actually grapple with the reality of bullying, instead creating an entire mythos around the phenomenon that had no relation to reality.

    So the idea here is that if we were "culturally willing to grapple with the reality of bullying" then the problem would solve itself? Why would that happen? And what would it look like if it did?

    I think this argument implies that bullying and racism are somehow an unnatural state, and that it takes actual work by evil forces to keep the system in a state where they can occur. It seems to be a worldview where if you could only smash the current cultural barriers to natural human goodness, then bullying and racism would disappear forever. Unfortunately, humanity isn't like that. If you put humans into groups there will be bullying and racism and tribalism, because those things are humanity's natural state when we operate in groups. Creating a system where people don't do these things requires setting up artificial structures (like the legal system or harassment policies) which are massively complex and have to be tuned just so in order to work at all. Creating such a system requires a huge amount of research and effort, and maintaining it requires even more. There is a reason the bullying problem was around in every society throughout human history (and still is to a large extent, even if we've made some initial strides) - it's a Hard Problem, not something that naturally solves itself if only every individual in the system believes hard enough.

    The narrative of "If only white people actually cared about black issues, this would be easily solved" is massively contradictory and massively wrong. The data (as well as any remotely politically facebook feed) tells us that white people care more about a single black person getting shot than they do about their health care or their taxes. Racial issues are up there with child molestation in society's list of Things That Everyone Must Care About All The Time. If caring or awareness were going to solve these problems, they would have already solved it a hundred times over.

    But they haven't been solved. Because these are actually Hard Problems. And they are not made any easier by pretending otherwise.

    It is entirely possible to care about something for the wrong reasons though. They don't care about black issues, they care about the way black issues affect white issues.

    This seems highly uncharitable.

    I disagree that it is uncharitable, otherwise white people would have fixed all these problems on their own if they cared about black problems and not black on white problems as you suggest.

    They could be starting their own shit to make way for new shit, but instead we're here talking about how ineffective or useless the only player in the room is.

    Again, this seems to presuppose that integrating two different cultures with a history of tension and aggression is not actually a Hard Problem at all, and that the only reason it hasn't been fixed is because no one cares, and/or they're all idiots.

    I think that in general, if you view the most difficult problems of the world this way, you are going to become very frustrated and you will insult a lot of people and not accomplish very much. While if you model the problems of the world as actual problems, things will start to make a lot more sense and you will be able to focus on actual solutions to the problems instead of bickering about how someone else just "doesn't care enough" and that's the only reason the problems of the world aren't already solved.

    I think that the "People don't care enough and they are all too stupid, unlike me" framework for activism is terrible. It's uncharitable, unproductive, and net-harmful even when the underlying cause happens to be something good.

    Squidget0 on
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    edited September 2015
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    TL DR wrote: »
    Personally I'm not attached to the verbiage of "shut up and listen"

    It's a needlessly confrontational phrasing of a good sentiment.

    Except it isn't needless, as it stems from specific historic roots. I really wish people would stop avoiding that aspect.

    I'm not sure why you think using the words "shut up" is needed when there's far less insulting ways of phrasing the sentiment that you should not try and tell <insert oppressed group here> what their problems are and maybe listen to what they are saying.

    Then you haven't been reading my posts.

    I have. That's why I'm saying this. Because you haven't addressed this point at all.

    Yes, I have - the fact is that white progressives have not been good about letting minority issues come to the forefront historically. And asking nicely hasn't really worked either. Hence the aggravated, "not going to take it anymore" stance inherent in "shut up and listen".

    This is an interesting point. Getting aggressive gets attention, and at least some of the people targeted might get over their initial offense and think more deeply about an issue they may have ignored.

    Is an inflammatory approach more effective for motivating change in general?

    (looks in history book)

    Yep.

    Edit: And before you start pointing out nonviolent protests, I will point out that while they may have been non-violent, they were very much intentionally provocative and inflammatory by design.

    AngelHedgie on
    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • JuliusJulius Captain of Serenity on my shipRegistered User regular
    Except that it really isn't your fight, because you're not the one who is actually having to deal with the repercussions of societal racism. You're not the one who is routinely othered by the police, who has to deal with all sorts of discrimination both official and unofficial, who has to worry if your skin color is going to be used as justification for state condoned brutality. And trying to claim it as yours continues a long trend of white progressives reappropriating minority movements for their ends.

    On the other hand, as like with sexism, societal racism does create a world that affects everyone. A racist world is bad for everyone, even though white people are comparatively better off within it. More importantly there is an identification with the cause, which can be described as justice for humanity. To argue that it isn't my fight is silly, I'm just not in danger in this fight (or this society).

  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    The problem with combating bullying was not that it was a hard problem. The problem was that, in many ways, we were culturally unwilling to actually grapple with the reality of bullying, instead creating an entire mythos around the phenomenon that had no relation to reality.

    So the idea here is that if we were "culturally willing to grapple with the reality of bullying" then the problem would solve itself? Why would that happen? And what would it look like if it did?

    I think this argument implies that bullying and racism are somehow an unnatural state, and that it takes actual work by evil forces to keep the system in a state where they can occur. It seems to be a worldview where if you could only smash the current cultural barriers to natural human goodness, then bullying and racism would disappear forever. Unfortunately, humanity isn't like that. If you put humans into groups there will be bullying and racism and tribalism, because those things are humanity's natural state when we operate in groups. Creating a system where people don't do these things requires setting up artificial structures (like the legal system or harassment policies) which are massively complex and have to be tuned just so in order to work at all. Creating such a system requires a huge amount of research and effort, and maintaining it requires even more. There is a reason the bullying problem was around in every society throughout human history (and still is to a large extent, even if we've made some initial strides) - it's a Hard Problem, not something that naturally solves itself if only every individual in the system believes hard enough.

    The narrative of "If only white people actually cared about black issues, this would be easily solved" is massively contradictory and massively wrong. The data (as well as any remotely politically facebook feed) tells us that white people care more about a single black person getting shot than they do about their health care or their taxes. Racial issues are up there with child molestation in society's list of Things That Everyone Must Care About All The Time. If caring or awareness were going to solve these problems, they would have already solved it a hundred times over.

    But they haven't been solved. Because these are actually Hard Problems. And they are not made any easier by pretending otherwise.

    It is entirely possible to care about something for the wrong reasons though. They don't care about black issues, they care about the way black issues affect white issues.

    Do you really feel this way, or are you just pissed off? I would say there are absolutely white people who care about the issues faced by minorities because they genuinely want to help. Its a whole different level of exclusionary language to shift between "We don't think your help is being very effective" and "We don't think you are actually trying to help at all"

    Everyone knows what road uses good intentions as pavers.

    I don't doubt that they have genuine desire to help. The problem is that there are a large number of them who view the issue through their own lens, and as such demand to "fix" the issue as they see it. The problem is that sort of "help" winds up being counterproductive.

    This is a very vague statement on its own which is itself counter-productive because you're just nebulously declaring no one is helping without actually explaining the mechanics of why.

  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    The problem with combating bullying was not that it was a hard problem. The problem was that, in many ways, we were culturally unwilling to actually grapple with the reality of bullying, instead creating an entire mythos around the phenomenon that had no relation to reality.

    So the idea here is that if we were "culturally willing to grapple with the reality of bullying" then the problem would solve itself? Why would that happen? And what would it look like if it did?

    I think this argument implies that bullying and racism are somehow an unnatural state, and that it takes actual work by evil forces to keep the system in a state where they can occur. It seems to be a worldview where if you could only smash the current cultural barriers to natural human goodness, then bullying and racism would disappear forever. Unfortunately, humanity isn't like that. If you put humans into groups there will be bullying and racism and tribalism, because those things are humanity's natural state when we operate in groups. Creating a system where people don't do these things requires setting up artificial structures (like the legal system or harassment policies) which are massively complex and have to be tuned just so in order to work at all. Creating such a system requires a huge amount of research and effort, and maintaining it requires even more. There is a reason the bullying problem was around in every society throughout human history (and still is to a large extent, even if we've made some initial strides) - it's a Hard Problem, not something that naturally solves itself if only every individual in the system believes hard enough.

    The narrative of "If only white people actually cared about black issues, this would be easily solved" is massively contradictory and massively wrong. The data (as well as any remotely politically facebook feed) tells us that white people care more about a single black person getting shot than they do about their health care or their taxes. Racial issues are up there with child molestation in society's list of Things That Everyone Must Care About All The Time. If caring or awareness were going to solve these problems, they would have already solved it a hundred times over.

    But they haven't been solved. Because these are actually Hard Problems. And they are not made any easier by pretending otherwise.

    It is entirely possible to care about something for the wrong reasons though. They don't care about black issues, they care about the way black issues affect white issues.

    This seems highly uncharitable.

    I disagree that it is uncharitable, otherwise white people would have fixed all these problems on their own if they cared about black problems and not black on white problems as you suggest.

    They could be starting their own shit to make way for new shit, but instead we're here talking about how ineffective or useless the only player in the room is.

    Again, this seems to presuppose that integrating two different cultures with a history of tension and aggression is not actually a Hard Problem at all, and that the only reason it hasn't been fixed is because no one cares, and/or they're all idiots.

    I think that in general, if you view the most difficult problems of the world this way, you are going to become very frustrated and you will insult a lot of people and not accomplish very much. While if you model the problems of the world as actual problems, things will start to make a lot more sense and you will be able to focus on actual solutions to the problems instead of bickering about how someone else just "doesn't care enough" and that's the only reason the problems of the world aren't already solved. I think that framework for activism is uncharitable, unproductive, and net-harmful even when the cause happens to be something good.

    There's a difference between hard and unpalatable.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • FuzzytadpoleFuzzytadpole Registered User regular
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    The problem with combating bullying was not that it was a hard problem. The problem was that, in many ways, we were culturally unwilling to actually grapple with the reality of bullying, instead creating an entire mythos around the phenomenon that had no relation to reality.

    So the idea here is that if we were "culturally willing to grapple with the reality of bullying" then the problem would solve itself? Why would that happen? And what would it look like if it did?

    I think this argument implies that bullying and racism are somehow an unnatural state, and that it takes actual work by evil forces to keep the system in a state where they can occur. It seems to be a worldview where if you could only smash the current cultural barriers to natural human goodness, then bullying and racism would disappear forever. Unfortunately, humanity isn't like that. If you put humans into groups there will be bullying and racism and tribalism, because those things are humanity's natural state when we operate in groups. Creating a system where people don't do these things requires setting up artificial structures (like the legal system or harassment policies) which are massively complex and have to be tuned just so in order to work at all. Creating such a system requires a huge amount of research and effort, and maintaining it requires even more. There is a reason the bullying problem was around in every society throughout human history (and still is to a large extent, even if we've made some initial strides) - it's a Hard Problem, not something that naturally solves itself if only every individual in the system believes hard enough.

    The narrative of "If only white people actually cared about black issues, this would be easily solved" is massively contradictory and massively wrong. The data (as well as any remotely politically facebook feed) tells us that white people care more about a single black person getting shot than they do about their health care or their taxes. Racial issues are up there with child molestation in society's list of Things That Everyone Must Care About All The Time. If caring or awareness were going to solve these problems, they would have already solved it a hundred times over.

    But they haven't been solved. Because these are actually Hard Problems. And they are not made any easier by pretending otherwise.

    It is entirely possible to care about something for the wrong reasons though. They don't care about black issues, they care about the way black issues affect white issues.

    Do you really feel this way, or are you just pissed off? I would say there are absolutely white people who care about the issues faced by minorities because they genuinely want to help. Its a whole different level of exclusionary language to shift between "We don't think your help is being very effective" and "We don't think you are actually trying to help at all"

    Our Congress is a majority Republican one, voted in by a majority conservative populace, our mainstream media (not just Fox) are painting BLM as the cause of tragedies instead of the response to them, and their are people who are suggesting that minorities aren't doing enough to stop all this. If a majority of white people cared, the bigoted policies would have been solved a long time ago through politics.

  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Narbus wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    When bullying was brought up previously, it came with a story about how people who hadn't had to deal with bullying had solutions that involved growing a pair and not being such a drama queen. Victim-blaming solutions that did nothing except to absolve the person offering that "help" of any responsibility to fix the problem.

    Likewise, with racism, the "solutions" offered by those who aren't victims of racism are, all too often, along the lines of "well, stop having so many babies you can't afford" or "maybe if you'd listen to the police" or, what you're doing here, "have you tried protesting more politely?"

    That was the point.

    Likewise, a lot of those studies you're looking for have already been done. We know what a boon integration is in addressing educational disparities. We know what harm the "school to prison" pipeline does to minority communities. We are very, very, very aware of how much damage the war on drugs has done to minority communities. We are aware that "basic human compassion" doesn't work because the entire system is set up to paint minority groups as less-than-human. As uneducated thugs or baby machines milking the system, just waiting for the right Henry Higgins to come along and teach them the wonders of civilization.

    AND YET. We still have people in power saying "no no, these aren't the issue, the issue is welfare queens". Because they won't shut up and listen to how these policies actually impact people. They are a group with a vested interest in not solving this hard problem. You're telling the group who are after basic rights that it's all on them, that if they'd just be a little more polite, then everyone will listen! History is pretty clear on how wrong that is. History is also clear on how helpful a clueless white guy can be. White people who listened, white people who realized that this struggle isn't about them, those are the helpful white people.

    You bring up 'stop having so many babies you can't afford' as some terrible solution. In fact, its an excellent solution to a wide variety of problems faced by black people. The problem is that many poor black women (and poor women in general) don't have the option or information available to them to make good family planning choices. Giving them these works. It will make them wealthier, happier, healthier, and more integrated into society.

    You are mistakenly associating your allies (those saying, "Hey, freedom, justice and equality are some great ideals, I wish we could change hearts and minds out there. But how about we focus on getting you a higher minimum wage and public transit options? We might be able to do that.") with your enemies (those saying, "Black people are bad")

    Except that when the pressing issue for a community is "agents of the state are brutalizing and killing us under color of law", focusing on the minimum wage means that you really aren't their ally.

    Except for the fact that I think a good way to deal with this concern is to increase the power and integration of the oppressed group, and that that would be effectively done via a minimum wage increase. If there was less wage inequality, then fines and fees from the police would be less devastating to the black community. Inner cities would have more tax revenue and would need to use their police less as a tax raising force. Parents would be better able to buy their children books and school supplies, which would encourage their kids to stay in school and help them do better. Parents would need to work fewer hours, and so would be around more and have more time to be involved in their community. Those in the community who might turn to crime would be less likely to do so since work would pay better. Even criminals are making value judgements.

    The republicans don't destroy our voting rights by passing a law that says 'Black people can't vote' they erode them by passing laws that say "You need to register to vote at your neighborhood fishing club". In the same vein, we won't solve police brutality by simply passing a 'no more being brutal' law. We need to fix the underlying problems which create stresses between the community and their police. I think the best way to do this is to give the community more money. Other measures may help too, but if the community remains poor they won't do much.

    "That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
  • NarbusNarbus Registered User regular

    Well, we do keep getting told we aren't allowed to contribute.

    But yes, I haven't solved racism yet. Sorry about that.

    People have offered criticism in this thread for how BLM has been presented, and has presented itself. Others have said that those criticisms are inappropriate. You are right that we haven't gotten on to having solved racism in America (or the world), but that was never what anyone was trying to do.

    Some of us think that the conversation should involve everyone as active participants, and others have said that this movement isn't theirs and that their participation ought to be very limited, mostly to listening instead of engaging in discussion.

    I very pointedly didn't say we were solving racism. I said I expected people to contribute to combating racism. You responding to that by saying "welp, I didn't solve it, guess I'm the worst" all passive-aggressively isn't really doing anything to suggest my original point is wrong.

  • zagdrobzagdrob Registered User regular
    Didn't BLM put forward a ten point proposal that directly addressed the "agents of the state are brutalizing and killing us under color of law" issue?

    I don't recall 'raise the minimum wage and see if this stops in a few generations' as being one of those points.

    Yes, there is some intersectionality between the class issues and race issues, but - not to be flippant - we've all seen the episode of Fresh Prince where Carlton and Will were arrested for car theft. As (almost) every upper / upper-middle class black person will tell you, economic status isn't the only problem.

  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Narbus wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    When bullying was brought up previously, it came with a story about how people who hadn't had to deal with bullying had solutions that involved growing a pair and not being such a drama queen. Victim-blaming solutions that did nothing except to absolve the person offering that "help" of any responsibility to fix the problem.

    Likewise, with racism, the "solutions" offered by those who aren't victims of racism are, all too often, along the lines of "well, stop having so many babies you can't afford" or "maybe if you'd listen to the police" or, what you're doing here, "have you tried protesting more politely?"

    That was the point.

    Likewise, a lot of those studies you're looking for have already been done. We know what a boon integration is in addressing educational disparities. We know what harm the "school to prison" pipeline does to minority communities. We are very, very, very aware of how much damage the war on drugs has done to minority communities. We are aware that "basic human compassion" doesn't work because the entire system is set up to paint minority groups as less-than-human. As uneducated thugs or baby machines milking the system, just waiting for the right Henry Higgins to come along and teach them the wonders of civilization.

    AND YET. We still have people in power saying "no no, these aren't the issue, the issue is welfare queens". Because they won't shut up and listen to how these policies actually impact people. They are a group with a vested interest in not solving this hard problem. You're telling the group who are after basic rights that it's all on them, that if they'd just be a little more polite, then everyone will listen! History is pretty clear on how wrong that is. History is also clear on how helpful a clueless white guy can be. White people who listened, white people who realized that this struggle isn't about them, those are the helpful white people.

    You bring up 'stop having so many babies you can't afford' as some terrible solution. In fact, its an excellent solution to a wide variety of problems faced by black people. The problem is that many poor black women (and poor women in general) don't have the option or information available to them to make good family planning choices. Giving them these works. It will make them wealthier, happier, healthier, and more integrated into society.

    You are mistakenly associating your allies (those saying, "Hey, freedom, justice and equality are some great ideals, I wish we could change hearts and minds out there. But how about we focus on getting you a higher minimum wage and public transit options? We might be able to do that.") with your enemies (those saying, "Black people are bad")

    Except that when the pressing issue for a community is "agents of the state are brutalizing and killing us under color of law", focusing on the minimum wage means that you really aren't their ally.

    Except for the fact that I think a good way to deal with this concern is to increase the power and integration of the oppressed group, and that that would be effectively done via a minimum wage increase. If there was less wage inequality, then fines and fees from the police would be less devastating to the black community. Inner cities would have more tax revenue and would need to use their police less as a tax raising force. Parents would be better able to buy their children books and school supplies, which would encourage their kids to stay in school and help them do better. Parents would need to work fewer hours, and so would be around more and have more time to be involved in their community. Those in the community who might turn to crime would be less likely to do so since work would pay better. Even criminals are making value judgements.

    The republicans don't destroy our voting rights by passing a law that says 'Black people can't vote' they erode them by passing laws that say "You need to register to vote at your neighborhood fishing club". In the same vein, we won't solve police brutality by simply passing a 'no more being brutal' law. We need to fix the underlying problems which create stresses between the community and their police. I think the best way to do this is to give the community more money. Other measures may help too, but if the community remains poor they won't do much.

    Gonna disagree on this. Police brutality has become its own problem. It also sure as hell isn't a "black people only" problem, that's just it's most visible aspect. We can ably deal with it for everyone by direct police reforms such as body cameras, civilian oversight etc. and we can implement all of these things in ways where everyone is happy with the result by and large.

  • Kipling217Kipling217 Registered User regular
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Narbus wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    When bullying was brought up previously, it came with a story about how people who hadn't had to deal with bullying had solutions that involved growing a pair and not being such a drama queen. Victim-blaming solutions that did nothing except to absolve the person offering that "help" of any responsibility to fix the problem.

    Likewise, with racism, the "solutions" offered by those who aren't victims of racism are, all too often, along the lines of "well, stop having so many babies you can't afford" or "maybe if you'd listen to the police" or, what you're doing here, "have you tried protesting more politely?"

    That was the point.

    Likewise, a lot of those studies you're looking for have already been done. We know what a boon integration is in addressing educational disparities. We know what harm the "school to prison" pipeline does to minority communities. We are very, very, very aware of how much damage the war on drugs has done to minority communities. We are aware that "basic human compassion" doesn't work because the entire system is set up to paint minority groups as less-than-human. As uneducated thugs or baby machines milking the system, just waiting for the right Henry Higgins to come along and teach them the wonders of civilization.

    AND YET. We still have people in power saying "no no, these aren't the issue, the issue is welfare queens". Because they won't shut up and listen to how these policies actually impact people. They are a group with a vested interest in not solving this hard problem. You're telling the group who are after basic rights that it's all on them, that if they'd just be a little more polite, then everyone will listen! History is pretty clear on how wrong that is. History is also clear on how helpful a clueless white guy can be. White people who listened, white people who realized that this struggle isn't about them, those are the helpful white people.

    You bring up 'stop having so many babies you can't afford' as some terrible solution. In fact, its an excellent solution to a wide variety of problems faced by black people. The problem is that many poor black women (and poor women in general) don't have the option or information available to them to make good family planning choices. Giving them these works. It will make them wealthier, happier, healthier, and more integrated into society.

    You are mistakenly associating your allies (those saying, "Hey, freedom, justice and equality are some great ideals, I wish we could change hearts and minds out there. But how about we focus on getting you a higher minimum wage and public transit options? We might be able to do that.") with your enemies (those saying, "Black people are bad")

    I think its also important to point out here that "having babies they can't afford" is a symptom of racism. If your only job options due to discrimination are shitty sub standard part time gigs, then the number of babies you can afford quickly becomes zero. Since Health Care in the US is closely tied to work, up until recently(thanks ACA) that meant getting decent birth control was expensive. In some cases it still is(thanks Hobby Lobby).

    And seeing as you know having sex and reproducing is a primal urge vs racism being learned behavior, that puts the blame for the "having babies they can't afford" in different light.

    The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    Kipling217 wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Narbus wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    When bullying was brought up previously, it came with a story about how people who hadn't had to deal with bullying had solutions that involved growing a pair and not being such a drama queen. Victim-blaming solutions that did nothing except to absolve the person offering that "help" of any responsibility to fix the problem.

    Likewise, with racism, the "solutions" offered by those who aren't victims of racism are, all too often, along the lines of "well, stop having so many babies you can't afford" or "maybe if you'd listen to the police" or, what you're doing here, "have you tried protesting more politely?"

    That was the point.

    Likewise, a lot of those studies you're looking for have already been done. We know what a boon integration is in addressing educational disparities. We know what harm the "school to prison" pipeline does to minority communities. We are very, very, very aware of how much damage the war on drugs has done to minority communities. We are aware that "basic human compassion" doesn't work because the entire system is set up to paint minority groups as less-than-human. As uneducated thugs or baby machines milking the system, just waiting for the right Henry Higgins to come along and teach them the wonders of civilization.

    AND YET. We still have people in power saying "no no, these aren't the issue, the issue is welfare queens". Because they won't shut up and listen to how these policies actually impact people. They are a group with a vested interest in not solving this hard problem. You're telling the group who are after basic rights that it's all on them, that if they'd just be a little more polite, then everyone will listen! History is pretty clear on how wrong that is. History is also clear on how helpful a clueless white guy can be. White people who listened, white people who realized that this struggle isn't about them, those are the helpful white people.

    You bring up 'stop having so many babies you can't afford' as some terrible solution. In fact, its an excellent solution to a wide variety of problems faced by black people. The problem is that many poor black women (and poor women in general) don't have the option or information available to them to make good family planning choices. Giving them these works. It will make them wealthier, happier, healthier, and more integrated into society.

    You are mistakenly associating your allies (those saying, "Hey, freedom, justice and equality are some great ideals, I wish we could change hearts and minds out there. But how about we focus on getting you a higher minimum wage and public transit options? We might be able to do that.") with your enemies (those saying, "Black people are bad")

    I think its also important to point out here that "having babies they can't afford" is a symptom of racism. If your only job options due to discrimination are shitty sub standard part time gigs, then the number of babies you can afford quickly becomes zero. Since Health Care in the US is closely tied to work, up until recently(thanks ACA) that meant getting decent birth control was expensive. In some cases it still is(thanks Hobby Lobby).

    And seeing as you know having sex and reproducing is a primal urge vs racism being learned behavior, that puts the blame for the "having babies they can't afford" in different light.

    Don't forget abortion restrictions and expense.

  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    Julius wrote: »
    Except that it really isn't your fight, because you're not the one who is actually having to deal with the repercussions of societal racism. You're not the one who is routinely othered by the police, who has to deal with all sorts of discrimination both official and unofficial, who has to worry if your skin color is going to be used as justification for state condoned brutality. And trying to claim it as yours continues a long trend of white progressives reappropriating minority movements for their ends.

    On the other hand, as like with sexism, societal racism does create a world that affects everyone. A racist world is bad for everyone, even though white people are comparatively better off within it. More importantly there is an identification with the cause, which can be described as justice for humanity. To argue that it isn't my fight is silly, I'm just not in danger in this fight (or this society).

    Yes, it does affect every one.

    But on the other hand, as a cishet white male, it affects me a lot less than minorities, women, homosexual individuals, transgender individuals and people who are any combination of the above. For me, this is a fight about having an equal society. For the above, it's much more than that.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • PaladinPaladin Registered User regular
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    TL DR wrote: »
    Personally I'm not attached to the verbiage of "shut up and listen"

    It's a needlessly confrontational phrasing of a good sentiment.

    Except it isn't needless, as it stems from specific historic roots. I really wish people would stop avoiding that aspect.

    I'm not sure why you think using the words "shut up" is needed when there's far less insulting ways of phrasing the sentiment that you should not try and tell <insert oppressed group here> what their problems are and maybe listen to what they are saying.

    Then you haven't been reading my posts.

    I have. That's why I'm saying this. Because you haven't addressed this point at all.

    Yes, I have - the fact is that white progressives have not been good about letting minority issues come to the forefront historically. And asking nicely hasn't really worked either. Hence the aggravated, "not going to take it anymore" stance inherent in "shut up and listen".

    This is an interesting point. Getting aggressive gets attention, and at least some of the people targeted might get over their initial offense and think more deeply about an issue they may have ignored.

    Is an inflammatory approach more effective for motivating change in general?

    (looks in history book)

    Yep.

    Edit: And before you start pointing out nonviolent protests, I will point out that while they may have been non-violent, they were very much intentionally provocative and inflammatory by design.

    Nonviolent protests were protests, but their real power was the intensity of the opposition. Society has worked hard to patch that vulnerability and tone down response. Whoever escalates first loses, and the establishment has learned.

    Marty: The future, it's where you're going?
    Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    Paladin wrote: »
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    TL DR wrote: »
    Personally I'm not attached to the verbiage of "shut up and listen"

    It's a needlessly confrontational phrasing of a good sentiment.

    Except it isn't needless, as it stems from specific historic roots. I really wish people would stop avoiding that aspect.

    I'm not sure why you think using the words "shut up" is needed when there's far less insulting ways of phrasing the sentiment that you should not try and tell <insert oppressed group here> what their problems are and maybe listen to what they are saying.

    Then you haven't been reading my posts.

    I have. That's why I'm saying this. Because you haven't addressed this point at all.

    Yes, I have - the fact is that white progressives have not been good about letting minority issues come to the forefront historically. And asking nicely hasn't really worked either. Hence the aggravated, "not going to take it anymore" stance inherent in "shut up and listen".

    This is an interesting point. Getting aggressive gets attention, and at least some of the people targeted might get over their initial offense and think more deeply about an issue they may have ignored.

    Is an inflammatory approach more effective for motivating change in general?

    (looks in history book)

    Yep.

    Edit: And before you start pointing out nonviolent protests, I will point out that while they may have been non-violent, they were very much intentionally provocative and inflammatory by design.

    Nonviolent protests were protests, but their real power was the intensity of the opposition. Society has worked hard to patch that vulnerability and tone down response. Whoever escalates first loses, and the establishment has learned.

    Not uniformly, though.

    140814152058-aman-ferguson-police-horizontal-gallery1.jpg

  • LoserForHireXLoserForHireX Philosopher King The AcademyRegistered User regular
    Narbus wrote: »

    Well, we do keep getting told we aren't allowed to contribute.

    But yes, I haven't solved racism yet. Sorry about that.

    People have offered criticism in this thread for how BLM has been presented, and has presented itself. Others have said that those criticisms are inappropriate. You are right that we haven't gotten on to having solved racism in America (or the world), but that was never what anyone was trying to do.

    Some of us think that the conversation should involve everyone as active participants, and others have said that this movement isn't theirs and that their participation ought to be very limited, mostly to listening instead of engaging in discussion.

    I very pointedly didn't say we were solving racism. I said I expected people to contribute to combating racism. You responding to that by saying "welp, I didn't solve it, guess I'm the worst" all passive-aggressively isn't really doing anything to suggest my original point is wrong.

    What constitutes combating racism? I think I've done that, but as I don't know what you will count as combating racism, I don't want to make any claims.

    Also, I would argue that a lot of BLM rhetoric doesn't combat racism as much as it allows it to grow further entrenched. Since prior to the inception of the US it's always been about turning poor whites against blacks. It's the same way that prejudice against latinos is maintained in the southwest. When they say that the illegal immigrants are coming for your jobs, they (the rich and powerful and white and racist) aren't talking to other rich guys, they're talking to poor white people. It's always been about downplaying common economic cause to increase racial tension. The confederate army was mostly poor white men, not plantation owners. That isn't to say that it's purely an economic issue either. But when you alienate those who might be your allies, you only make it easier for some to entrench the racism in the system.

    Also, you ignored all but seemingly one line of my post. The real content was located in the words before and after.

    "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
    "We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
  • PaladinPaladin Registered User regular
    TL DR wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    shryke wrote: »
    TL DR wrote: »
    Personally I'm not attached to the verbiage of "shut up and listen"

    It's a needlessly confrontational phrasing of a good sentiment.

    Except it isn't needless, as it stems from specific historic roots. I really wish people would stop avoiding that aspect.

    I'm not sure why you think using the words "shut up" is needed when there's far less insulting ways of phrasing the sentiment that you should not try and tell <insert oppressed group here> what their problems are and maybe listen to what they are saying.

    Then you haven't been reading my posts.

    I have. That's why I'm saying this. Because you haven't addressed this point at all.

    Yes, I have - the fact is that white progressives have not been good about letting minority issues come to the forefront historically. And asking nicely hasn't really worked either. Hence the aggravated, "not going to take it anymore" stance inherent in "shut up and listen".

    This is an interesting point. Getting aggressive gets attention, and at least some of the people targeted might get over their initial offense and think more deeply about an issue they may have ignored.

    Is an inflammatory approach more effective for motivating change in general?

    (looks in history book)

    Yep.

    Edit: And before you start pointing out nonviolent protests, I will point out that while they may have been non-violent, they were very much intentionally provocative and inflammatory by design.

    Nonviolent protests were protests, but their real power was the intensity of the opposition. Society has worked hard to patch that vulnerability and tone down response. Whoever escalates first loses, and the establishment has learned.

    Not uniformly, though.

    140814152058-aman-ferguson-police-horizontal-gallery1.jpg

    Excellent point, and excellent demonstration of where the rhetoric and the movement should be focused.

    Marty: The future, it's where you're going?
    Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
  • FuzzytadpoleFuzzytadpole Registered User regular
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    I feel like focusing too much on lived experience (ie: "Shut Up And Listen") is failing to recognize the integration of minority communities and the reduction of police violence as Hard Problems.

    Someone brought up bullying upthread, and I think it's a good comparison point. Most people do not believe that being a victim of bullying makes them qualified to create a national strategy to effectively combat bullying. This isn't because those people are not smart or because their experiences are not real, but because crafting policy to stop bullying on a national level is a Hard Problem. It's the kind of problem that is studied by experts, on which those experts often disagree. The kind of problem where if you think you have the magic bullet, you're probably overconfident. The kind of problem that, if solved, is most likely going to be solved gradually over many years, with both successful and unsuccessful policy going into effect along the way.

    We should expect the solution to Hard Problems to look less like "I have intuited the solution that will stop all bullying forever based on my personal experience" and more like "Our team of experts has been researching this topic for several years. Three studies found that instituting {policy} reduces reports of bullying by 15-20% over 5 years, while two other studies found no change. We've decided to try the policy on a wider scale, and we expect the next 5 years to show a more consistent trend."

    Integration of minority communities (and in particular, the black community which has lots of cultural barriers on both sides) is a similarly Hard Problem, even harder in some ways. I see no reason to believe that someone's lived experience with racism is, in and of itself, enough to solve this problem, any more than someone's experience with bullying lets them solve the national bullying problem. Lived experience might serve as a motivator for solving the problem - but lots of other things can serve as an equally good motivator, such as basic human compassion. If someone is offering to help, that suggests that they are already motivated, and castigating them for not being motivated for the right reasons only makes the movement seem petty and divisive.

    And as I mentioned in my last post, as a strategy it's highly vulnerable to stereotyping and oversimplification. It becomes very easy to assume that anyone who disagrees with you politically must be one of "those people." Until you've seen women of color shouted down for silencing the voices of women of color, you haven't lived.

    It seems to me that you'd want to get a variety of voices from both the black and white community in order to maximize your chance of reducing friction between the two distinct cultures involved. But of course, it's much easier (and more viscerally satisfying) to give in to the sweet cultural friction and blame the outgroup for any setbacks your ingroup encounters. Rising above petty politics, showing compassion towards everyone, and working with the other side on solving the Hard Problem is difficult. Beating up on an outgroup punching bag (in the form of some clueless white guy who offers to help your movement) is easy and satisfying. And it's even easier if you tell yourself that it's somehow an effective strategy. It isn't. It only deepens the cultural schism and makes it that much harder to work together in the future.

    The problem with combating bullying was not that it was a hard problem. The problem was that, in many ways, we were culturally unwilling to actually grapple with the reality of bullying, instead creating an entire mythos around the phenomenon that had no relation to reality.

    So the idea here is that if we were "culturally willing to grapple with the reality of bullying" then the problem would solve itself? Why would that happen? And what would it look like if it did?

    I think this argument implies that bullying and racism are somehow an unnatural state, and that it takes actual work by evil forces to keep the system in a state where they can occur. It seems to be a worldview where if you could only smash the current cultural barriers to natural human goodness, then bullying and racism would disappear forever. Unfortunately, humanity isn't like that. If you put humans into groups there will be bullying and racism and tribalism, because those things are humanity's natural state when we operate in groups. Creating a system where people don't do these things requires setting up artificial structures (like the legal system or harassment policies) which are massively complex and have to be tuned just so in order to work at all. Creating such a system requires a huge amount of research and effort, and maintaining it requires even more. There is a reason the bullying problem was around in every society throughout human history (and still is to a large extent, even if we've made some initial strides) - it's a Hard Problem, not something that naturally solves itself if only every individual in the system believes hard enough.

    The narrative of "If only white people actually cared about black issues, this would be easily solved" is massively contradictory and massively wrong. The data (as well as any remotely politically facebook feed) tells us that white people care more about a single black person getting shot than they do about their health care or their taxes. Racial issues are up there with child molestation in society's list of Things That Everyone Must Care About All The Time. If caring or awareness were going to solve these problems, they would have already solved it a hundred times over.

    But they haven't been solved. Because these are actually Hard Problems. And they are not made any easier by pretending otherwise.

    It is entirely possible to care about something for the wrong reasons though. They don't care about black issues, they care about the way black issues affect white issues.

    This seems highly uncharitable.

    I disagree that it is uncharitable, otherwise white people would have fixed all these problems on their own if they cared about black problems and not black on white problems as you suggest.

    They could be starting their own shit to make way for new shit, but instead we're here talking about how ineffective or useless the only player in the room is.

    Again, this seems to presuppose that integrating two different cultures with a history of tension and aggression is not actually a Hard Problem at all, and that the only reason it hasn't been fixed is because no one cares, and/or they're all idiots.

    I think that in general, if you view the most difficult problems of the world this way, you are going to become very frustrated and you will insult a lot of people and not accomplish very much. While if you model the problems of the world as actual problems, things will start to make a lot more sense and you will be able to focus on actual solutions to the problems instead of bickering about how someone else just "doesn't care enough" and that's the only reason the problems of the world aren't already solved.

    I think that the "People don't care enough or they're all too stupid, unlike me" framework for activism is uncharitable, unproductive, and net-harmful even when the cause happens to be something good.

    The condescension is noted, by the way. There aren't two equal sides in the racism against black people problem, to meet at a table and discuss the "REAL" issues. The tension and aggression are only really caused by one part of the equation.

    The goal is complete and utter acceptance and equity not a watered-down statement of co-existence. It is not up to black people to prove they are equal, that is the racists social duty to change.

    How would you change a minorities status then?
    What are the real ways to solve this problem?
    Compromise has just led to heartbreak for every minority.

    I find looking at these problems through an Objectivist lens heartless, and being heartless, useless.

  • ElJeffeElJeffe Moderator, ClubPA mod
    OKAY.

    LISTEN UP, Y'ALL.

    This thread has become a big meta clusterfuck that is not actually discussing BLM because it is too busy talking about how to talk about it.

    No more discussion of who gets to contribute ideas or how people feel about yadda yadda blergh. Let us start talking about the actual movement and whatnot.

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  • PaladinPaladin Registered User regular
    Is minnesota actually a BLM hub? Why minnesota?

    Marty: The future, it's where you're going?
    Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    Thanks, Jeffe.
    TL DR wrote: »
    Hillary is taking flak for her ties to the private prison industry.

    BLM and GetEQUAL Call on Clinton to Stand with Black Trans Women
    CLEVELAND, OH -- Moments ago, organizers with GetEQUAL and Black Lives Matter disrupted Hillary Clinton’s grassroots campaign event in Cleveland, OH, demanding that she divest from private prisons and invest in the liberation of black transgender women.

    The organizers interrupted Clinton’s speech in order to name the three black trans women who have been recently murdered in the state of Ohio including Cemia Dove, a black trans woman murdered in Cleveland, carrying signs that read: “Hillary: Divest from Private Prisons, Invest in Black Trans Women.” The action was part of a series of demonstrations happening this week across the country celebrating black transgender women and demanding accountability for the violence that Black transgender women face on a daily basis.

    “Bankrolled by private prison companies and lobbyists like Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group, Hillary Clinton is part of the system of violence that criminalizes and kills Black trans people -- how can we take her policy suggestions to curb mass incarceration and detention seriously while she’s accepting this money?” asked Angela Peoples, co-director of grassroots LGBTQ network GetEQUAL and a disruptor of the event.

    Peoples continued, “These companies and their lobbyists profit from the incarceration and abuse of Black people, especially Black trans women -- an overwhelming 41% of Black trans women report having been arrested at some point in their lives, often after having been profiled by the police.”

    “Hillary Clinton must stand with Black people, especially Black trans women, by refusing to accept funds from or bundled by executives of or lobbyists for private prison companies -- and investing the money she’s already accepted from those companies in the work toward Black trans liberation,” said Rian Brown, GetEQUAL state lead and local Cleveland organizer taking part in the disruption. “Until that happens, we cannot for a moment think that Hillary believes Black Lives Matter.”

    Brown added: “The actions that took place across the country on Tuesday were a call for cisgender Black folks to show up for Black trans people; we’re here to demand that Clinton divest from private prisons in solidarity with our Black trans family.”

    See more from today’s action and this week’s “Trans Liberation Tuesday” under the hashtag #BlackTransLivesMatter. Pictures and video of the disruption are available on GetEQUAL’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/getequal.

    Interviews available upon request.

    ###

    GetEQUAL is a national grassroots social justice organization whose mission is to empower the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community and allies to take bold action to demand full legal and social equality, and to hold accountable those who stand in the way. For more information, go to www.getequal.org. You can also follow GetEQUAL on Facebook at www.facebook.com/getequal or on Twitter at @GetEQUAL.

    Black Lives Matter is working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. We affirm our contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression. We have put our sweat equity and love for Black people into creating a political project–taking the hashtag off of social media and into the streets. The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for ALL Black lives striving for liberation.

  • PolaritiePolaritie Sleepy Registered User regular
    Paladin wrote: »
    Is minnesota actually a BLM hub? Why minnesota?

    It does lean liberal... but on the other hand I've not heard of any major outrages here. Not really sure.

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