Labels First And Foremost
Remember, students. You are not an individual, but a mascot of a notional group.
From Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education, By Özlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo.
It occurs to me that when these clowns bang on about analysing events through a racial or identitarian lens, as for instance here and here, what they mean is shoehorning people through an identitarian keyhole, then pretending that the subsequent cartoonery and narrow contrivance, with its phantom evils and funhouse-mirror bigotry, is some universal profundity and proof of the speaker’s personal sophistication. The possible results of such “social justice education,” in which group affiliations, however contrived or incidental, are foregrounded and categorised, and their acknowledgement made habitual and a matter of great importance, are not hard to fathom.
Update, via the comments:
Note too the implied question-begging. Students are to “practise seeing which groups are included and which are not” in meetings, classroom discussions, conversations, etc. Presumably, students are to assume, or at least strongly entertain, unearned conclusions about why person X, or group X, isn’t saying much or isn’t by default given prominence in every social interaction. Which is to say, the explanation to rush to is the person’s notional group identity. And thereby victimhood. This is, after all, the root premise of “social justice education.” Apparently, we will purge the world of bigotry by embracing wholesale the mental habits of the bigot.
And regarding the exhortation to “practise identifying patterns at the group (rather than individual) level,” an inconvenient reply is offered.
Update 2:
Dr DiAngelo is apparently the coiner of the question-begging term “white fragility” – by which she means objections to pernicious racial hokum and slanderous hustlers such as herself. When not raking in large fees for peddling pretentious guilt to people of pallor, Dr DiAngelo, a self-styled “consultant and trainer,” tells students that not being fixated by race is “dangerous,” and that “racism is the foundation of Western society.”
A brief scan of the Twitter feed (all I could tolerate) reveals that someone defending this nonsense – and vigorously – is a Doctor (ok, psychologist) who calls himself ‘centre-right’. I can’t begin to imagine where this places me (and other visitors here) on the political speculum.
… an inconvenient reply is offered.
Heh!
Heh!
I’m not sure pulling on that identitarian thread is going to get them where they want to be.
Yes because categorising and judging people on the colour of their skin not the content of their character has just worked so well before. It’s like they are trying to create more racism so then they’ll have a legit cause to rail against.
Heh!
As we’ve seen, repeatedly, it’s a license for neuroticism and unrealism, a kind of perverse sorting fetish. It’s also a seemingly inexhaustible pretext for spite and obnoxious racial meltdowns.
But hey, “social justice.”
Waitwait, I’ll have a crack:
Longines, a black, queerosexual, gammy legged man, pranced into the windchime outlet.
Yep, nothing offensive here. I’ll take my accolades now
Note too the implied question-begging. Students are to “practice seeing which groups are included and which are not” in meetings, classroom discussions, etc. Presumably, students are to assume, or at least strongly entertain, unearned conclusions about why person X, or group X, isn’t saying much or isn’t by default given prominence in every social interaction. Which is to say, the explanation to rush to is the person’s notional group identity. And thereby victimhood.
This is, after all, the root premise of “social justice education.”
Waitwait, I’ll have a crack
Yoo-neek, a non-binary deaf-blind quadriplegic (of colour, natch – it is Current Year, people!) enters the tower at Heathrow airport, where they is in charge of air traffic control, having smashed through the reality ceiling to universal acclaim.
“Notice your own as well as others’ level of comfort.”
Because nothing, not even “Good morning” in the most benign social or workplace situation, should be spoken without first contemplating the racist, sexist, homophobic, ageist, ableist, or Islamophobic implications of your words.
That’s quite the recipe for social harmony.
Author DeAngelo seems to have built for herself quite the cottage industry of “White People Bad (Except for Me)” books and articles.
Get bent, madam.
…not even “Good morning” in the most benign social or workplace situation…
Some years ago a friend was seconded to ‘work with’ (read: attempt to rescue) a capital-B Black organisation whose reason for existing persistently eluded me. After being completely ignored for several days, the manager told her that they eschewed offering greetings as theirs was a ‘professional’ organisation focussed on hard work at all times. You know, just like all public- and voluntary-sector outfits. It’s their defining characteristic.
…without first contemplating the racist, sexist, homophobic, ageist, ableist, or Islamophobic implications…
You omitted ‘transphobic’. It has been noted.
Note too the implied question-begging.
That.
That.
By which logic, if I’m with a group of people I don’t know particularly well and the conversation turns to car engines or fishing or Etruscan pottery, and you notice that I’m not “included” in the discussion to any great extent, then you should assume or strongly suspect that this is because I’m gay (or black or whatever) and am being structurally oppressed; not because I know bugger all about car engines or fishing or Etruscan pottery.
And again, you can guess which of those answers is more likely to be encouraged and rewarded, regardless of the evasions and assumptions required to get there. In “social justice” circles, it’s the desired destination, the go-to explanation, and all but mandatory.
someone defending this nonsense – and vigorously – is a Doctor (ok, psychologist) who calls himself ‘centre-right’.
A good reminder that leftists lie. After all, most communists call themselves “liberal” or “progressive” or whatever.
…this is because I’m gay (or black or whatever) and am being structurally oppressed; not because I know bugger all about car engines or fishing or Etruscan pottery….
Almost. The question is why – AS A GAY PERSON – you have been excluded from this discussion? Why is this topic of which you know nothing under discussion right now by this group? How has society excluded you from knowing about Etruscan pottery, fishing or car engines? In what ways has the subtle oppression of the Other shaped your interests and perceptions to exclude you from even wanting to know about fishing, Etruscan pottery or car engines?
AS A GAY PERSON you must empower yourself to disrupt such exclusionary discussions by engaging the group with these questions and demanding answers to them. So, if a person is saying “fuel-injection technology actually has some disadvantages to carburation”, you say “why do you hate gay people?” or any similarly disruptive statement to refocus the group on the actual topic of all conversations – LGBTQ awareness and supremacy.
AS A GAY PERSON
I am indifferent to David’s gayness but I am pleased at his cheerfulness.
…except when he throws my coat in the street and sets it on fire.
So, if a person is saying “fuel-injection technology actually has some disadvantages to carburation”, you say “why do you hate gay people?”
Heh. Well, yes, absolutely.
#SocialJusticeWhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong?
– GDH Cole, Chairman of the Fabian Society in the 1940s. (Found in a piece at the Cobden Centre website by Philip Vander Elst, “Labour and the Gulag: The Labour Party’s Record of Support for Totalitarian Socialism”. Worth a read.)
This repudiation of individual rights in favour of collective identity (and therefore imaginary collective responsibility) isn’t new; it’s at the very core of socialism. Not for nothing do we who oppose both consider the far-Left and “far-right” to be essentially the same, and class them together as “collectivist”.
As a related aside, I’m increasingly of the opinion that far more important than liberty is privacy. Collectivist restrictions on liberty are merely second-order effects of the denial of privacy, and the right to a private life. They actually think they’re helping “The People” become free with their pushing, prodding, and cajoling; what they really hate is privacy and private action. Only in private, among groups of your own choosing (but ultimately alone), can your identity as an individual be respected and can you be free to act as you please without interference from those you do not choose.
“theirs was a ‘professional’ organisation focussed on hard work at all times”
Anyone who thinks “professional” means eschewing common courtesy and pleasantry is to be avoided at all costs. In my experience, they’re always terrible at their jobs. I’ve always considered professionalism to be the very opposite of that attitude: professional people should actively cultivate an air of friendliness and approachability towards each other and their clientele.
It’s not a ‘lens’, it’s a filter. It leaves stuff out. Results vary.
Of course, some people use a lens cap…
Students are to “practice seeing which groups are included and which are not” in meetings, classroom discussions, etc
EXCEPT … do NOT notice which groups are/are not included in oil drilling, highway construction, elementary school teachers, coal mining
Argh, that was supposed to be “cheerfully sets it on fire.”
do NOT notice which groups are/are not included in…
crime.
Argh, that was supposed to be “cheerfully sets it on fire.”
Hand me your coat for a second.
Bog-standard cultural Marxism.
Economic Marxism isn’t very good at stoking class resentment to the point of armed rebellion because it’s just not that hard for a prole to become a bourgeois in a free market. Neo-revolutionaries had to move on to immutable biological traits as a basis for class division.
The evidence is that it’s working quite well.
If I’m going to start identifying people by their group attributes I’m going to need a tune-up on both my gaydar and my ESP. Unless you’re going to get comfortable with the idea of being asked a lot of private and personal questions about your identity and I’ll pray “easily offended by being asked private and personal questions” isn’t part of your identity group.
It’s like they’re Klansmen except they wear rainbow-hued gowns.
Incoming!
Just how am I supposed to identify cis-gendered or able bodied unless I would have some actual knowledge of that?
Neo-revolutionaries had to move on to immutable biological traits as a basis for class division.
David Horowitz once pointed out, if I recall correctly, that America today has pretty much everything that the socialists of the 19th Century said they wanted. The Left is never satisfied because they left is not motivated by any sort of honest idea of what a good society should be; rather the Left is motivated by envy, resentment, hatred of normal people, and a lust for absolute power.
Just how am I supposed to identify cis-gendered or able bodied unless I would have some actual knowledge of that?
Merely asking the question (any question) proves that you are an Enemy to be destroyed.
Incoming!
[ Hands out combs and clip-on ties. ]
“Social justice is an actual impediment to acquiring human capital”
–Thomas Sowell
The insidiousness of social justice is that it is used to break the spirit and hope of its victims
https://youtu.be/LdHEbOAQFmY?list=PLq8BgDugd2oyqmYx6RdVlJfQeAdhJkhc3&t=2064
“Notice your own as well as others’ levels of comfort,” we’re told.
Were I surrounded by dogmatic pinheads who were compulsively categorising and sub-categorising people as an act of intersectional piety – labelling them “white cis-man,” “disabled black cis-woman” and so forth – then I’d be inclined to make my excuses while rummaging for the car keys.
Such compulsions generally being an indicator of, at best, obnoxiousness, and, not infrequently, a mind coming undone.
“I’m not sure pulling on that identitarian thread is going to get them where they want to be”
Assuming they know where they want to be (beyond “destroy capitalism”) or are even being sincere about where they want to be.
Farewell, Roger Scruton.
The obsession with tribalism focused on imaginary similarities means the disolution of Left-Right politics. Black Pigeon Speaks has a nice lay-of-land 20 minute video freshly up,exposing this cultural rot-hut.
My initial reaction was, “this person is so full of shit on so many levels that I hardly know where to begin.” Others were able to get past this type of reaction and post some cogent comments, for which I thank them.
When a certain group of people is not present at a certain gathering the implication is that they are being keep out due to racism etc because the meeting is so important. But it could equally be the case that they are staying away voluntarily because the meeting is so unimportant and uninteresting to them. By insisting every meeting be perfectly balanced among various groups you are insuring that a great many people are being forced to go to a great many gatherings they’d rather have missed.
I’m confused as a white male in his early sixties because I don’t know any white supremacists.
What’s wrong with me and how can I become more bigoted?
Just how am I supposed to identify cis-gendered or able bodied unless I would have some actual knowledge of that?
Women with balls can be cisgender and cripples can fly.
For the truly transcendent the trick has nothing to do with dirty white HIStorical definitions of the words being produced, but rather with knowing the simple trick of identifying as someone who gets to redefine and un-define words as they wish.
Re Socialism comment above:
The Chartists had 6 demands:
1. A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime.
2. The secret ballot to protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
3. No property qualification for Members of Parliament in order to allow the constituencies to return the man of their choice.
4, Payment of Members, enabling tradesmen, working men, or other persons of modest means to leave or interrupt their livelihood to attend to the interests of the nation.
5. Equal constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing less populous constituencies to have as much or more weight than larger ones.
6. Annual Parliamentary elections, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since no purse could buy a constituency under a system of universal manhood suffrage in each twelve-month period.
The first four of these have been met and exceeded, the fifth is held up at present by Labour and the SNP etc. and the last is rejected by voters who have no intention of facing such frequent elections.
Farewell, Roger Scruton.
From the Clown Quarter, a poet offers an opinion (backed by his pals).
Being one of our betters, he also offers us advice, “My views are my own, but they should be yours too.”.
“David Horowitz once pointed out, if I recall correctly, that America today has pretty much everything that the socialists of the 19th Century said they wanted”
I remember that back in the ’30s there was some folderol about centralizing the means of production where we can go and get anything we want. Each according to our needs, I think half of the line goes.
When will we ever reach that socialist Nirvana? And then I remembered:
Amazon
Amazon
😀
As best I recall, among the goals Horowitz enumerated were freedom to unionize and social welfare programs.
Step 1: “Practice identifying patterns at the group (rather than individual) level.”
Step 2: Identify the Oppressor and Victim groups – ie Objects.
Step 3: Apply Intersectionality!
Step 4: Feel free to white knight, tweet as an ally, pretend offense, or go nazi hunting as appropriate.
Step 5: Bask in your wokeness!
My favorite part about the whole thing is watching the privileged SJWs (white, cis, etc, etc) get eaten alive by the rest. You think being objectified by a man is bad? Just wait until you’re treated as an Oppressor!
@Another Fred
By insisting every meeting be perfectly balanced among various groups you are insuring that a great many people are being forced to go to a great many gatherings they’d rather have missed.
You’re being too practical-minded. They do not want “perfectly balanced”. They want a high score according to Intersectionality. Cis, white, able men score 0 on the index. A meeting can always have a higher score.
They would cheer meetings of the various company “Employee Resource Groups” (such as at mine) where you find 7 different meetings of homogenous groups of gay, asian, black, women, hispanic, etc people. Once the 0’s are excluded, the next stage in the game is to remove the next lowest scores.
You’d imagine they would stop when the meeting is full of transexual, africans who are obese, crippled, and mentally ill. But if they can get to that point then what is stopping them from going even further?
Dr DiAngelo is apparently the coiner of the question-begging term “white fragility” – by which she means objections to pernicious racial hokum and slanderous hustlers such as herself.
LOL. That.
LOL. That.
It is, though, hokum, and pernicious. It’s mentally blunting and psychologically corrosive. And best understood as an act of malice.
Apparently, we’re to cultivate the habit of “naming people by their key social groups.” But which categories count? There are plenty of ways to classify people, if that’s your thing, and the categories that seem important to a person will vary. Does Dr DiAngelo acknowledge possible groupings such as diligence and IQ – or just race and sex? Because depending on the chosen filter, the “lens” being used, the answers might vary somewhat, perhaps quite dramatically.
But then, we’ve seen the lofty intellectual standards of the race-hustling industry.
Just remember, when academic leftists say ‘analysis’ they really mean ‘spin’.
You are not an individual. You are legion, a massive gestalt defined by your identity, one not even limited by death. You, David Thompson, are every old white male who has ever existed, and you are responsible for their crimes.
So bloody well pay up for slavery reparations, you cheap bugger.
You, David Thompson, are every old white male who has ever existed, and you are responsible for their crimes.
It’s the old that stings.
[ Applies moisturiser. ]