The Contextual Blindness of Being White

go head on n get down witchyo badself tbt.

a much more rational and accessible response than the one i was considering: an updated adaptation of an old classic (with stage directions) i woulda called 'mr charlie's townhome...or how i gained the whole world but lost my shirt in the culture exchange'.

that whole litany of woes which befall we weary whitefolks needs to be reprinted and distributed throughout the third world, if for no other reason than to prove farrakhan ain't gotta solid corner on pitiful revisionism. it's extremely important it be printed on aged vellum (or a clever substitute) with this sentence at the top in display olde english script:

It's not cool these days to aknowledge that white people have ever contributed anything good or worthwhile to this world of ours.

*snaps fingers to the beat*

cuz...like...man, that says it all.

You fall into the same trap that all others do.  There is no black history or white history.  There is only history.

that was pretty funny.

yeah, you could put a label on that manuscript-sized catalogue of complaints whitey has, apparently, so it seems, based on the responses to what it's like to be white. you know, it almost feels like there's a lesson to be learned here . . . people who live in glass houses--no . . . he who is without sin--nope, that's not it . . . oh yeah, i got in now.

GET A GRIP.

tbt

GET A GRIP.

Or just accept reality.  Maybe that is the real answer.

dr. guy,

it sounds good, but it really isn't true.

think about it for a sec. if someone were to compose a comprehensive history, a history en masse of every culture as they developed into what we have now, then we would be close to having "history" in the sense that i think you're intending. but even then you would still have a biased story, the bias of the author, or the editor, or the fact-checker, or the publisher, and there would be so many absences of cultures who could not participate in a written history, either because they are gone or because their own history hasnt been passed on generationally as ours has.

but even suppose that we could collect all the uncollectable information. still you would have the bias of time's perspective, for the historian has to look back, piece together fact with fact, decipher story from true occurrence, and the perspective that the historian watches "history" is unavoidably tainted by his own time and his own culture.

one might theorize that some objective, web of "history" exists--a sum of all factual events throughout time--and still we would have no objective access to the story. first of all, i dont believe that there is such an objective history (though i often have thought that god might possess such omniscience, when i am believing in that sort of god); but second and most importantly, WE CAN NEVER SEE THAT OBJECTIVE HISTORY!

the history that we take for fact is certainly not this mythical, objective history, but instead a series of events that each culture threads together to explain what we have today. these events aren't random, they are carefully selected, like a sherlock holmes discovering clues at best, and like a dictator at worst, trying to re-write facts to demonstrate his own divinity.

our culture, the one that forms the bulk of western civilization, happens to be white. i know that other races figure into the whole, but the population writing our history is a white, politically well-positioned population, that at best is simply unlearned in the intricacies of BLACK or ASIAN or NATIVE AMERICAN, and at worst aggressively indisposed to consider other creeds in our story.

you learned history not only from your parents, your neighborhood, your television, your books, or your schools, but also their parents and books and schools, and they learned from theirs . . . there is a chain that you cant ignore. ours returns to the time of moses and plato and aristotle. the greeks pushed it, the romans spread it, and the empires brought it with them to their colonies throughout the western world. if we meditate and work hard and pray, we may be able to understand where our own bias comes from, and we may understand why cultures forced to the fringe have such a hard time dealing with our history.

but we cant see outside of our own contexts. either we close our eyes and pretend it doesnt exist, or we do our best to evolve.

tbt

think about it for a sec. if someone were to compose a comprehensive history, a history en masse of every culture as they developed into what we have now, then we would be close to having "history" in the sense that i think you're intending. but even then you would still have a biased story, the bias of the author, or the editor, or the fact-checker, or the publisher, and there would be so many absences of cultures who could not participate in a written history, either because they are gone or because their own history hasnt been passed on generationally as ours has.

Every historian has their bias.  But as of now, we have many black historians as well as white, it is up to the intelligent person to read each and assimilate all.  We dont need 'Black history'.  We need black historians to laud their ancestors and tell us what perhaps (but not a given) the other historians may leave out.

I still maintain there is only one history.  I never said that you can get it from one source.

dr. guy,

i understand (or think i do) what you mean, but there is no way to access this "history". it doesn't exist anywhere. if within the next ten years all historians quit and the new ones were all black, they would still need accurate, objective sources for a new version--sources that do not exist. even subjective sources, at least subjective comprehensive sources do not exist for that sort of telling. we can try to piece things together bit by bit--and that is certainly a start--but that cant overwhelm century upon century of western perspective.

let's say that a history such as the one you're suggesting does exist. how are we going to access it when our tunnel vision goes back so far?

well TBT I must agree with doc here, history encompasses all races, religions ad infinitim...

tag team, eh?

okay. show me. show me where.

To TaBoo Tenente:

It's hard to know where to begin, it really is. On the one hand, if I were grading this as a paper presented by someone in the earliest stages of , say, a master's in philosophy, I'd have to say that on technical grounds it's a pass. The standard of writing is very nearly acceptabe.

Unfortunately, it's also a ragbag of unquestioned, uncriticized assumption; an instance of the nonsense that can be created on the back of a reasonably wide acquaintance with technical terminology and assorted postmodern concepts, an acquaintance much wider than the understanding attempting to deploy those concepts, that terminology.

C- in terms of style. F in terms of content.

Here's why.

Let's begin with a 'postmodern contextual blindness'. Is it a postmodern blindness to context we are talking about? Is it a context blind to postmodernism? Or is it a blindness caused by a postmodern context? I suspect you mean the last, and that this plethora of meaning is in itself a part of the sanctimonious condesencion you've mistaken for postmodern wit and neo-Nietszchean ennui.

Ambiguity is only of value when it's ironic, a deliberate communication in its own right. If this were satire it would be wonderful. Unfortunately, it's meant to be an analytical criticism and as such is an utter failure.

Here's why.

My quote provides a brief, general history of Western Civilization, which finds its moral and philisophical roots in a overwhelmingly white perspective

Your history doesn't grasp that 'white' as applied to race is a post-colonial term that has only assumed its significance as 'universal evil' in the era of globalization and the triumph of commodity fetishism, where all bodies are inscribed with market as opposed to moral values, where 'black' has presently a higher market value than 'white' , where postmodernism is no more a metanarrative than Christianity, and where the writing of history is complicit in the revaluation of the categories you think you understand.

Postmodernism is not an explanation, only one more type of questioning. Your 'white perspective' is itself a creation of that questioning and as such cannot be used in the way you try to use it, as an explanation of what went before it. You think you know something, and in the attempt to present what you think you know you demonstrate only ignorance of the conditions which make your knowing possible.

You also demonstrate a chronic ignorance of the history of Christianity.

For example, I should think that we would not be exaggerating in the least if we suggest that Western Civilization rests upon a foundation of both Platonic and Aristitelian logic, while our religious foundation rests on a completely subsumed Judeo-Christian monotheism. I use the word "subsumed" to indicate that the Roman (a conglomerate of Germanic populations absorbing the cultures birthed near the Mediterranean Sea) Empire fully translated the doctrines of early Judeo-Christian culture into a Roman aesthetic.

Western civilization is not to be separated from its 'religious foundation' . The two are inextricably intertwined: from Augustine's Politics and City of God in which the civil foundations of a Christian polity are laid out, to Aquinas' Summa theologiae which synthesized Aristotle and Plato with Christian theology. Rome as a 'conglomerate of Germanic populations absorbing the cultures birthed near the Mediterranean Sea' had nothing to do with this process - other than in giving it a political status by making Christianity the official religion of the Empire. Certainly Western civilization derives from judaeo-christianity, that abominable melange of fear and ass-kissing, but a truly Roman aesthetic predated and was vanquished by Christian morality while what succeeded it was first 'Romano-Christian' and then Roman Catholic.

The monolith you refer to is no monolith but a figment of your own fevered ignorance. Your only excuse is that you've been taught this gibberish by people no less ill-informed than yourself, and learned to dress it in terms culled from books which you've read but not understood.

Subsequently, we can trace all of our religious, literary, philisophical, and mathematical evolutions to this Roman, white perspective (including the absorption of Moorish algebra). What does this all mean? It means that our perspective is a united perspective, but also a limited one. Lingustically this implies that our system of sign and symbol, the development of memory both individual and communal, is based on a white system.

Moorish algebra? Algebra was first developed in pre-Islamic India ('zero' is an Indian, not an Arab, concept). While work was done to develop algebra as a mathematical system by the likes of Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (c. 780-850) his pioneering work had far greater influence upon the 'white' thinkers of Europe than among his fellow Arabs - to so great a degree that 'Arabic Numerals' do not form a part of Arabic script. As to the 'white system' you identify - it may be white in your estimation but in mine it's grey, just like every other system of thought, questionable in its origin, culpable in its uses, and indeterminate in meaning.

Let's leave postmodernism for a minute and examine some of the unquestioned assumptions you so glibly take for granted.

More importantly, it is through this system of understanding that we interpret the world--through this system we were capable of dominating and subhumanizing all other cultural elements. By transplanting subhumanized cultures (those of the various African racial identities and those found throughout the Americas during the period of the "explorers") into our own, we forced those cultures into an environment where their own systems were forced to the fringes, where their languages were also forced to the fringes. Similarly, language theorists have suggested that women have been marginalized in our society by forcing the female-specific system of sign and symbol to a position external to mainstream language.

The culture of domination and 'subhumanization' you refer to is the mainstream of human cultural production since it first began to be recorded in Ur in ancient Mesopotamia some ten thousand years ago. It's the norm. Of course, it's now the proper and polite thing to do to decry humanity's ineradicable tendency towards slaughter and carnage, conquest and domination. But that doesn't alter what actually is.

The injustices you decry are one thing. But your peculiar use of emphasis, in other words the things you reveal about your position by what you choose to emphasise, identifies you as one who, without thought or attempted criticism, has accepted the anodine narative that all violence is morally wrong, that politics must by nature be egalitarian, that difference oughtto be eradicated wherever it is found.

In other words, you are one more whining liberal who wishes to impose a totalitarian vision (tinted no doubt a particularly effete and nauseating shade of pink - and surely a postmodern such as yourself can see the irony of being refered to as 'pink' in this context - can't you?)of how things should be. And here, in your own words, is that vision -

I mention all of this to suggest that it is not an obsolete mode of thinking to refer to historical conditions imposed by our white system of conquest. If we intend to equalize the condition of human beings, regardless of gender or skin color, we must understand why our current condition pushes black people and women to the fringes.

(Emphasis added).

Who is to determine the basis of equality? You? On what ground - your own estimation of your fitness to judge? It's not so much the incomparable arrogance with which you make this announcement of a New World Order that must appal any competent thinker nor even that your political vision is no more than the regurgitated shibboleths of an anile liberalism that no longer grasps what a Liberal was - but the fact that you are utterly oblivious to the meaning of your own words.

One last thing before I abandon you to wallow in your self satisfied ignorance. When you wrote the words 'WHITE SENSES' were you really oblivious to the fact that you were restricting the comprehension of the universe possessed by every individual to something formed only by the color of their skin?

Probably.

Didn't you realize that's racist?

TBT , I think handling EOC response should keep you bizy fer a bit. heh.

To Taboo Tenente:

again, it's difficult to know where to begin. How about at the beginning, with communication as punishment. Because that's the motive behind the production of this effusion of pseudo-intellectual vomitus. You intended to chastise my wife for having the gall to stand up and say what it's no longer considered polite to say - that the narrative of the White man has as much validity, as narrative, as any other. Which is why the body of what you posted is phrased in terms of mockery, and lessons handed down from on high to the ignorant masses.

You should be careful what you mock, TT. It takes a very wise person to not reveal the extent of his folly in what he chooses to laugh at. And that, in this case, is simply another measure of your failure.

I'm going to assume, since you label yourself a postmodern, that you have read Jean-Francois Lyotard, in particular his seminal text of the postmodern movement The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979), as well as his Libidinal Economy (1974). But then again perhaps I shouldn't since the entire thrust of those books is towards a statement such as 'no discourse is privileged to pass judgment on any other' - which is the very point you fail at every level to appreciate.

im just too tired to take responsibility . . .

Then remain asleep. Who asked you to take responsibility for anything? And what are you too tired to take responsibility for? Learning to comprehend a discourse you claim to understand, perhaps? On the basis of what we've discussed so far I'd say you were certainly too tired to do that. Or perhaps it was simply too difficult. Over-reaching oneself is very tiring after all.

But what was it you thought you were being asked to take responsibility for? Educating the ignorant? Illuminating the unenlightened? Saving the whale? Patronising incompetent wannabe that you are, you fail even to realise the first and most glaring consequence of postmodernism as a movement of thought: that a) there is nothing for which we can be held responsible for (since narative is just that and no more, stories about the world, not real events with real consequences) and that there is no one to take responsibility since every social actor is no more than an unwitting participant in an on-going fiction.

In the hands of an actual postmodern this can lead to the realization that irony and laughter can serve to return us to a 'moral' (as opposed to moral) universe, and a politics of civic equity founded on a real grasp of the inability of any narrative to explain the way the world is.

But you suffer from a peculiarly American disease(irrespective of whether you are American or not): chronic iron-y deficiency.

And yet, little hero that you are, and despite your avowed weariness, take responsibility is just what you do.

You take on the responsibility of showing us (everyone other than yourself) all the WICKED AND HORRIBLE AND EVIL AND BAD AND NASTY SHIT THAT HAPPENS IN THE WORLD ALL THE FUCKIN TIME, MAN.

Genocide, Imperial expansion, racial conflict, social marginalization and... and... and...

Shall I hold your hand while you go back to sleep, little hero? Or wipe the snot from your upper lip while you weep your crocodile tears you posturing infant? The point of criticism is not to show the world how clever the critic is but to bring about a shift in consciousness. That such a shift is possible is demonstrated by the relevance of Plato and Aristotle to the present, by the overwhelming role played by Kant's work on reason in the development of that passing curiosity, the individual; by the role of Marx, Hegel and Feuerbach in creating the intellectual conditions necessary for the development of Modernity and the rise of commodity fetishism (which is the true and abiding religion of Corporate Capitalism the world over).

But then, these people were thinkers and real human beings, as opposed to self-satisfied puppets jerking off as they yank the string of their own ego (do you recognise yourself in that last statement, little hero? No? Then go back to sleep, little man, go back to sleep).

you have to take an african studies course or an alternative lit course to read a quality selection of black authors. and if you get one, you've probably already read it. what about in history? cool to have a black history month. that way you can spend at least one month searching for references to influential black citizens. world of science, world of art, world of . . . why go on? as if you did not know, this western world is a white world, built on white philosophies and religions, built on the backs of two old civs, greek, roman, and every ounce of our language and our understanding of the world comes through WHITE SENSES.

I confess, little hero, it's this passage in particular that's made me angry enough to spend this amount of time whipping your worthless hide.

Tell me, TT. Do WHITE SENSES feel hunger in ways that differ from black senses? Do WHITE SENSES experience pain, love, fear, doubt, differently to black senses? If you cut WHITE FLESH does it bleed something different to what black flesh bleeds? If you say yes to any of the foregoing you demonstrate that you are a racist, since you reify universal human characteristics on the basis of skin color. If you say no, you demonstrate that there is no such thing as a WHITE SENSE, just as there is no such thing as a BLACK SENSE. If you say nothing you admit only what is readily apparent: that you are a fool who does not understand what he says even as he says it.

You could of course say that you were arguing in terms of sensibility and aesthetic. A statement such as 'the white world can only be understood in terms of a white sensibility, the black world only in terms of a black sensibility' is perfectly acceptable and demonstrably true. The aesthetic semsibility underpinning the canon of Bach's work is fundamentally opposed to that underpinning the canon of the works of a black rapper. There is no point of communication which makes those two worlds comprehensible to each other.

But so fucking what? To say such a thing is to point out only what is blindingly apparent, as well as glaringly obvious in its absence from the nonsense you actually produced. Your entire production is a demonstration only of what postmodernism is not (an explanation) and an eminently successful presentation of your own ingrained, unquestioned bigotry.

Let me put it in words that even you can understand: to claim to be a postmodern makes it impossible to speak of such a thing as a WHITE SENSE, the former nullifies and makes impossible the latter. A 'WHITE SENSE' would be, if it could be shown to exist in any sense at all, a meta-narrative: the very thing which postmodernism calls into fundamental question.

And yet you present this impossibility to us as if it is a thing existing self-evidently and to be accepted at face value as in some way abrogating the right of the 'white narrative' to exist or be given consideration.

Go back to sleep, little hero. Go back to your dreams of self-importance and your delusions of comprehension. And should you wake up, bear one thing in mind.

Don't ever again presume to condescend to my wife, you arrogant little shit.

crikey, you're an asshole, icehole.

let's (temporarily) assume that you have at least a low-level awareness of what you're talking about:

icehole q#1: "is it a postmodern blindness to context that we are talking about?"
answer: huh? without getting into the historical context of why postmodernism is a response to the severity of modernism, we can (should) agree that postmodernism is a response to the contextual blindness of modernism. in "limiting the postmodern" linda hutcheon writes "postmodernism . . . re-contextualizes both the production and the reception processes and the text itself within an entire communication situation . . . ." cool? postmodern is an awareness and presentation through irony of the limits of our contextual condition. that's what we're talking about. there's no postmodern blindness to context.

icehole q#2: "is it a context blind to postmodernism?"
answer: huh? we might imagine a context blind to postmodernism, like the postcolonial context, like a racist context . . . but let's assume (temporarily) that we don't intend to waste everyone's time searching through the infinitely overlapping contextual elements of this universe. eh? still with me?

icehole q#3: "your history doesnt grasp that 'white' as applied to a race is a post-colonial term that only assumed its significance . . ."
answer: huh? first of all, i'll assume (temporarily) that you're referring to identity politics, or possibly edward said's argument that "negative stereotypes have been used to justify economic and political domination", rather than post-colonialism which in its original form (and you imply it in its original form by referencing the theory as a chronological period) refers to COUNTRIES struggling to find their own NATIONAL identity through philosophy and art, as colonial powers removed themselves from the new world. second of all, i use the term "white" to refer to the civilization that emerged from a confluence of greek philosophy and semetic religious/societal structure, and spread by the germanic peoples known as the roman empire.

the remainder of this paragraph is convoluted tripe referring to nothing relevant within my comments. of course i never suggest anywhere that "white" is synonymous with universal evil, and it is not my intention to blame the devil's existence on white folk. nor do i have any idea what point you're trying to make by saying "postmodernism is no more a metanarrative than christianity" which, again, refers to nothing within my post, and even if it did, it would STILL make absolutely no sense whatsover because

1) a "metanarrative" is a self-reflecting, self reflexive story;
2) a "metanarrative" can fall within a postmodern text, but does not have to, as postmodernism foregrounds a wider wealth of contextuality, and at least as far as literature is concerned, "historiographic metafiction" is postmodern, while "metanarratives" can be found anywhere in "history" such as in Don Quixote, Shakespeare, and even Homer;
3) "commodity fetishism" is, as of course you must be aware since you are using the phrase, a marxist term, and of course since you are using the phrase, that commodity fetishism, in marx's time, was a term used when studying primitive religions . . . . though i would assume that if you knew what commodity fetishism was you certainly wouldn't use it your paragraph because it has no logical place there whatsoever.

icehole q#whatever: "postmodernism is not an explanation, only one more type of questioning . . ."
answer: well, ice, you're closer on this one. postmodernism is certainly not an explanation, and in some ways it IS a type of question (oh thank-you, mr. hater of vague language), but moreover postmodernism implies a system of dialogue, in which the past is critiqued by the present, and the present is critiqued in the light of the past. postmodernism as a movement has often been criticized for nostalgia, for its "obsession with returning to the past." that's really what postmodernism says. it says that everything we believe is a man-made construct, even our awareness of the present, certainly our belief in the past. it is not a method for explaining where we come from, it is another made-made system for realizing that we are part of another man-made system. that is the dialogue that postmodernism implies. cool?

i'm tired, so i'm going to skip this q and a format, okay? next, you demonstrate a complete lack of understanding by quoting a paragraph that supports your subsequent criticism (that western civ comes from greek philosophies and semetic religious societies, blah blah blah) and then your ignorance of the role the roman empire played, not only absorbing the aforementioned ideological compound but institutionalizing it through law and church across the entirety of europe, and when europe broke up into its separate identities, the new nations spread the institution to the new world. how this could have happened without the roman empire i have no idea. if a roman empire hadnt claimed to have seen a burning cross, christianity would STILL be a semetic religion confined to the tortuous struggles that other semetic religions are forced to endure.

i love your mangled interpretation of "moorish" algebra, by the way. semetic concepts transmitted to the greeks, "moorish" understanding absorbed through roman expansion . . . babylonian and egyptians solving quadratic equations 3000 years ago . . . blah blah and blah . . .

anything else that had anything at all to do with my post? oh, right, "mainstream human cultural production." you translate my statement about interpreting the world through a system of sign and symbol, a system passed on as suggested throughout the article, a system which enabled us to dominate and subhumanize the rest of the world into another term i assume you understand because, well, only because you used it here "mainstream human cultural production."

i suppose you are referencing marvin harris and his concept of cultural materialism, which says something like "society's mode of production (technology and work patterns, especially in regard to food) and mode of reproduction (population level and growth) in interaction with the natural environment has profound effects on sociocultural stability and change." well and good. except that this is more or less what i said. did i say that other cultures never de-humanize, or never attempt to dominate? nope. i said that OURS DID, and it so happens that you and i are STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT PARTICULAR CULTURE, to which fact you are, blatantly, CONTEXTUALLY BLIND.

you realize that by using ur as an origin of such policy you are also saying semetic religious societies . . . not much of a refutation of my comment that our civ comes from semetic religious societies . . . . and as to whether or not i am another hairy pinko blah-blah-blah who wants to impose a totalitarian blah-blah-blah, i say

huh? all of your rhetorical blather comes down to your fizzy finale about why egalitarianism is another "anodine narrative" (uh, anodyne narrative? a soothing story?) spewed by pinkos everywhere, and why our genetic and societal evolution plays no role in the reason for racism, intolerance, lack of compassion, lack of empathy, lack of anything resembling coherent thought, eh ice? good thing, too, you non-thinking regurgitator of facist ultra-right-wing nutjob slavemongering tripe, or id have to consider that i come from the same place as you.

wait, you were wrong. oh, nellie.

tbt

oh, brother.

feel free to make incoherent blatherings if you need to, but keep the profanity isolated to your own neo-nazi propaganda-spewing site, okay? you want to have a discussion, let's discuss--though i'd prefer rational, articulate (not an avalanche of rhetorical nonsense) discussions.

deep breath, brother. one, two, three . . . .

now, can we discuss?

tbt

on 2nd thought, perhaps a film would be more effective.

working title: 'afterbirth of a nation--the blacklash'.

synopsis: america finds itself again besieged by colored tricksters determined to milk the huge white teat for all its worth. outnumbered 8 to 1, they plot to goad & beguile our fair-skinned majority population (descendants of those hearty pioneers who purchased the country at highly-inflated prices and have the deeds n titles to prove it!) by orchestrating decades of intentional victimization. this insidious strategy succeeds when all but the most steadfast voluntarily relinguish their right to celebrate a collective heritage while wearing hoods and gowns rather than endure the torment of the worst 'n' word of all: nazi.

crikey, you're an asshole, icehole. let's (temporarily) assume that you have at least a low-level awareness of what you're talking about:

I'd be very careful on this. I may not agree with what Simon has to say, but I think you'll find he has taught at college level? Please correct me if I'm wrong Simon. And "if" he has then he more than likely has more than a low-level awareness

LW,

the only reason i presumed to define his personal blog as neo-nazi propaganda" is because he came on to my site to spout it. youre completely correct, LW. i have never been to his website, and though im sure i have read some of his articles, the reading must have been some time ago. on top of admitting my ignorance as to what makes empicecream tick i have been absent from joeuser for so long that i have no idea what makes anyone tick anymore . . . many of the joeusers who used to participate are no longer around, many of the joeusers that were here and still are have flipflopped on many positions that seemed so important to them only a few short months ago . . .

as usual, when i pop in to take a peak at what's happening, i tend to look first for a few authors who i find interesting. as it happens, your blog is one of them, and while i rarely agree with your positions on anything i always find your articles to be well-crafted, intelligent, and passionate postings, and you seem to take some care to respond to your responders.

as in the case with "what it's like to be white" you make a position, some of which is sound, and some of which seems to be an extension of your passionate ability to write rather than forward a position through logic--which first of all means nothing coming from me; and second of all is part of the blogging deal. we can call this publishing, but there's a difference. we have an understanding--though we tend to break the pact when we're criticizing people on the other side of the aisle (ex: spelling police).

the problem with "what it's like to be white" is not so much the article but the weight of all of the responses it received. my position on the subject of "who has a hard life?" is that we all have hard lives. shit is going to happen, and often it is going to happen to white people. also, sometimes the shit that falls on black people is not going to be white people shit, it's just going to be shit.

that doesnt change the fact that the black culture has been forcibly transplanted into our own culture.

if empicecream really has a problem with the term "white culture" that's fine, i dont need to use it, because im referring to western civ, which as a confluence of different ideas where the structures of semetic religious societies and the philosophies of a few greeks were carried to all parts of the world by the spread and the breakup of the roman empire.

i never said white means evil. i never said that other colors represent peaceful, all-get-along cultures. all i said was that OUR CULTURE is the one in which we're living right now, yes, a blend of many cultures, but these happen to be the places where ours come from.

im not sure if you really feel that empicecream's response to my post was an appropriate response. i dont know if you believe that my post was condescending enough to warrant the two overwhelmingly beligerent and increasingly vague responses emp made here. i also dont know whether or not empicecream was pretending to be unclear on what i was saying.

most of the sources he used were mildly relevant, not all, and i believe that none of it made any concrete argument against what i was saying. it looked like an ad hominem argument rather that one based on logical progression, and certainly didnt appear to be interested in any discourse whatsoever.

he just dropped two logically-fuzzy flame bombs on my site from left field. when you want to talk about something, you dont do that. you come up with some logic. then you write it down.

tbt

dr miller,

obviously empice has some background or he wouldnt be using the terminology . . . that he was using. that doesnt change the fact that most of it was used as an attack on me rather than anything i placed in my article.

whether or not he knows what post-colonialism means, not just today with its feminist and identity politic connotations, but in the sense that he seemed to be suggesting, i dont know. nor do i know why he threw marxist terms used to study primitive religions at me, or why he equates what he calls "metanarratives" with postmodernism when at most, a metanarrative is a technique that sometimes finds its way into postmodern art, but has found its way into art from the very beginning of all art.

none of that is the point. right now i am studying postmodernism in school which is, of course, why im writing about it now. i would love to discuss postmodernism with anyone who knows about it, even (especially) if they disagree with me. but empicecream's response was not a well-thought out argument. it was an often-time illogical, emotional outburst on someone else's page--mine--and little of it had to do with postmodernism. it had to do with is political beliefs and also his relationship to someone i disagreed with.

im sure you will agree that LW is perfectly capable of defending her ideas, which she did, by the way, in her own article where this response was originally posted, as linked at the top of this article.

crikey.

tbt

kingbee,

man, i missed you. what happened to this joeuser thing? there seemed to be some debatable ground last time i checked--i dont know if i would go so far as to call it middle ground--but at least there was some room for interesting discussions. wasnt there?

so i have about 23 bucks before i buy some printer paper. can i buy the rights to your short film? or i can work for film . . . i can play the part of the pig . . .

tbt

TbT I take offense at the "where is the discussion remark" I am open to your thoughts and have always remained civilized and respectfull when answering you.

MM

im not sure why youre sticking to the "TBT condescending to speak" tune. as i mentioned earlier, the considerable numbers and content of responses to your article made me sit back and take some deep breaths. it seems weird to me that you consider my response to be so condescending, LW, but of your own comments within the article and the user responses you make no note. true, my own response was vague and did not critically attack every conservative response i saw (the vagueness was then attacked by empire), and when you responded by commenting on the flavor of puke chunks slipping about your tongue like coagulated bits of chunky salsa . . . a conversation stopper, to say the least.

so please, LW, tell me why my post is so condescending when your post and the subsequent responses were cool and evenhanded:

LW
"Forget the fact that only a small percentage of Southern land owners owned slaves, our entire nation was built by hard-working blacks, while whitey sat around cracking the whip and sipping Mint Juleps. Never mind the fact that it was their own black brethren that captured and sold these slaves, and that many blacks faced lives of slavery in their own land even before being brought here in chains, (arguably an even worse fate.) And forget about the fact that now, hundreds of years later, blacks born and raised here as free men and women live far better than any born in Africa today, where famine, corruption, genocide, and disease flourish unchecked.

Nope, never mind the facts, folks, it's all my fault. I have white skin, you see".

first of all, none of these are simple facts, they are nuances of truth expressed in your emotional style of writing; and second, "never mind the facts, folks" doesnt strike you as condescending?

LW
"If a black person is unemployed, it's because the person who makes hiring decisions is white. It has nothing to do with their skills or qualifications, they didn't get the job because some racist white denied it to them.

If they are in trouble with the law, its because whitey's justice system is prejudiced against them. Every white cop, judge, jailer, probation and parole officer has conspired to incarcerate them. Why? Simply because they are white."

you are portraying a perspective, and you are exaggerating this perspective to the nth degree. whether by suggesting that this "black" perspective spies an absolute white conspiracy or by suggesting that white people have absolutely no responsibility for an utterly transplanted black community, you are being quite condescending.

LW
"If they have piss poor credit because they haven't paid their bills on time, its the fault of the racist banking system in this country."

here's a variety of responses i found (not written by you, necessarily, but just look at the cumulative affect):

"I have seen how blacks can move into a neighborhood and totally turn tha neighborhood into a drug infested, crime-ridden area, that just a few years earlier was a law-abiding upstanding neighborhood."

"I liked him alot.... intelligent, well-spoken....but in the end, he'd rather hold onto his people's truth than listen to ours. He's as black as the rest of them." (suggesting that if he was less black, more white, things would be different . . .)

"I asked Jermayne to exibit some of the same empathy he required of me, to consider what it's actually like on the other side of the fence, to try to see things through my eyes for just a moment. In order to do that, I had to describe what I see. I'm sure it caused him more than a moment of discomfort, but rather than deal with that and make an honest effort, I got more of the same old..."you're a racist and you'll never understand" sort of response, pleasantly (but rather ineptly) disguised." (you asked him to exhibit some of the empathy he required of you, but come on, LW! he's the only black guy in the middle of an unbridled conservative slugfest, and there wasn't much in the way of empathy in your article.)

"We were, correctly, forced by law to get rid of "blacks only" schools, restrooms, payphones, water fountains, lunch counters, bus seats....all the trappngs of segregation.
Until we get rid of BET, the Congressonal Black Caucus, the United Negro College Fund, and all the many ways in which blacks now legally exclude whites, while forcibly including themselves in (white) society at large, it an't happenin'." (while i tend to agree that the more isolated a community becomes, the more likely it is that the community at large wil suffer, but it's just not fair to assume that a culture which is finally beginning to get its head above water wont need support. do i think that every instance of majority-proof collaborative is good? no way. many are money-seeking entrepreneurs picking up a buck from the gullible. that happens everywhere and not just within segregated communities)

all right, that's enough. my point is not to bash the authors of these comments. my point is to show how, en masse, these comments demonstrate a condescending attitude for which you claim to be bashing my post.

and by the way, when you criticized me for vague language, as did emp "Unfortunately, it's also a ragbag of unquestioned, uncriticized assumption" i didnt realize i would receive it up the back end by getting into detail.

so please, LW. again: please explain why you are not being condescending while i am; why your crew is expressing reasonable, evenhanded thoughts? is it simply a matter of rhetoric? i just dont get it. go ahead and bash, i guess.

tbt

moderateman,

you are right: whether or not you agree you are always willing to discuss, and you have some impressive emotional-control skills that i sorely lack. honestly, in the midst of this unexpected whirlwind, i've lost track of the "where's the discussion" comment i made.

was it directed at you? if it was, im sorry.

tbt

will you chill out and listen to yourself?

jermayne handled himself well, no one questioned that ever (except the poster who said he was "just as black as the others" or whatever), but whether or not there is a difference between sarcasm and condescending rhetoric, you and 39 other white, conservative authors arent going to be able to have an open, even dialogue with one black man. if there had been anyone else in sight who took his part, you would have heard "a load of the same old crap" and not just from me. it's not condescending LW, that's dialogue, where people get to point out things that you dont want to say. there were no other people willing to speak up with him, black or white or red or yellow, liberal or conservative. so he can take care of himself. fantastic. so what's wrong with a white person agreeing with him? what happened to your policy of bullshit to the color excuse? now only black people can speak anti-LW?

and give me a break LW. if your article had been written as if you believed literally every word, no sarcasm, no irony, then there would be no discussion here. i wouldnt have responded. i would have thought "well, there goes another ultra-righter that no one can talk to." and beyond that, what kind of dialogue were you hoping to open, LW? a dialogue with you and forty other think-alikes? jermayne stuck it out from a different thread, but i assume you noticed that you werent dialoguing with anyone else. just because i came in late to your "discussion" to make a different case shouldnt make you feel like you opened up an enlightened, uncondescending dialogue any more than i did. it was just as condescending, if not more because you refused to allow my comments, different than yours though they were, into the dialogue. that equals "no dialogue" or monologue or preaching or whatever variation ofthe word "condescending" that doesnt "frost your ass."

you want to talk? fine. talk. but listen. talk and listen.

whether or not you believe that YOU come from a long tradition of cultural influences is up to you, but by now you shouldnt be shocked to hear that many other people do believe that where we come from affects who we are. you're going to keep hearing such heresy if, as you claim, you want a dialogue.

i cant believe that you feel my comments were somehow more insulting than the flames you and emp threw into my thread. sorry if my opinions seem like the same load of crap to you, but would you be shocked to find that your own "groundbreaking" articles sound like the same old crap youve written before? that's how it goes. you believe what you want and unless you confront yourself at a 2am epiphany and suddenly go buddhist, the rest of us are stuck with good ole LW. it just so happens that many of us are willing to listen.

talk. listen. okay, LW, that's dialogue. my crap will sound the same. so does yours. sweet.

tbt

Taboo, you had a great article, but it seems to be deteriorating into a he said she said diatribe. Perhaps we can restart this fresh looking at another aspect of it and try again.

dr,

well, you're probably right, and i hope so, and i suppose that's how it goes.

thanks for the comment, by the way.

tbt